When the Paris Peace Conference convened in January 1919, Lord Robert Cecil was firmly established as part of the British foreign policy-making elite. As early as 3 February, the former Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, had described the League as 'the supreme question' of contemporary politics. Liberal newspapers such as the Westminster Gazette and the Manchester Guardian voiced their enthusiasm for the Covenant through their leader columns during the week of Woodrow Wilson's presentation of the draft Covenant to the Council of Ten. They also gave their approval to the early deliberations of the British LNU (League of Nations Union), which continued to lobby the British delegation to the peace conference. The Paris Peace Conference led to an improvement in Cecil's relations with Wilson, but this development was undermined by the subsequent failure of the American government to sign the Treaty of Versailles and to join the League.