prepare themselves for defence. If so, Europe, when the war is over, will be far poorer in men, in money and in mutual good will than it was when the war began, but it will not be safer, and the hope for the future of the world entertained by the PresiIdent will be as far as ever from fulfilment. "There are those who think that for this disease international treaties and international laws may provide a sufficient cure. But such persons have ill learned the lessons so clearly taught by recent history.

"While other nations, notably the United States of America and Britain, were striving by treaties of arbitration to make sure that no chance quarrel should mar the peace they desired to make perpetual, Germany stood aloof. Her historians and philosophers preached the splendors of war; power was proclaimed as the true end of the state, and the general staff forged with untiring industry the weapons by which at the appointed moment power might be achieved. These facts proved clearly enough that treaty arrangements for maintaining peace were not likely to find much favor at Berlin; they did not prove that such treaties once made would be utterly ineffectual. This became evident only when war had broken out, though the sought demonstration, when it came, was overwhelming.

"So long as Germany remains the Germany which without a shadow of justification overran and barbarously ill-treated a country it was pledged to defend, no state can regard its rights as secure if they have no better protection than a solemn treaty.

"The case is made worse by the reflection that these methods of calculated brutality were designed by the Central Powers not merely to crush to the dust those with whom they were at war, but to intimidate those with whom they were still at peace.

"Belgium was not only a victim; it was an example. Neutrals were intended to note the outrages which accompanied its conquest; the reign of terror which followed on its occupation; the deportation of a portion of its population; the cruel oppression of the remainder. And lest the nations happily protected either by British fleets or by their own from German armies should suppose themselves safe from German methods, the submarine has (within its limits) assiduously imitated the barbarous practices of the sister service. The war staffs of the Central Powers are well content to horrify the world if at the same time they can terrorize it.

"If then the Central Powers succeed, it will be to methods like these that they owe their success. How can any reform of international relations be based on a peace thus obtained? Such a peace would repre

It

sent the triumph of all the forces which make war certain and make it brutal. would advertise the futility of all the methods on which civilization relies to eliminate the occasions of international dispute and to mitigate their ferocity.

"Germany and Austria made the present war inevitable by attacking the rights of one small state, and they gained their initial triumphs by violating the treaty guarantees of the territories of another. Are small states going to find in them their protectors or in treaties made by them a bulwark against aggression? Terrorism by land and sea will have proved itself the instrument of victory. Are the victors likely to abandon it on the appeal of neutrals? If existing treaties are no more than scraps of paper, can fresh treaties help us? If they be crowned with success, will it not be in vain that the assembled nations labor to improve their code? None will profit by their rules but Powers who break them. It is those who keep them that will suffer.

"Though therefore the people of this country share to the full the desire of the President for peace, they do not believe peace can be durable if it be not based on the success of the Allied cause. For a durable peace can hardly be expected unless three conditions are fulfilled. The first is that existing causes of international unrest should be as far as possible removed or weakened. The second is that the aggressive aims and the unscrupulous methods of the Central Powers should fall into disrepute among their own peoples. The third is that behind international law and behind all treaty arrangements for preventing or limiting hostilities some form of international sanction should be devised which would give pause to the hardiest aggressor.

"These conditions may be difficult of fulfilment. But we believe them to be in general harmony with the President's ideas and we are confident that none of them can be satisfied, even imperfectly, unless peace be secured on the general lines indicated (so far as Europe is concerned) in the joint note.

"Therefore it is that this country has made, is making and is prepared to make, sacrifices of blood and treasure unparalleled in its history. It bears these heavy burdens not merely that it may thus fulfil its treaty obligations nor yet that it may secure a barren triumph of one group of nations over another. It bears them because it firmly believes that on the success of the Allies depend the prospects of peaceful civilization and of those international reforms which the best thinkers of the new world as of the old dare to hope may follow on the cessation of our present calamities."

Government would throw any obstacle in the way of any terms of peace the Governments now at war might agree upon, or seek to upset them when made, whatever they might be. I only take it for granted that mere terms of peace between the belligerents will not satisfy even the belligerents themselves. Mere agreements may not make peace secure. It will be absolutely necessary that a force be created as a guarantor of the permanency of the settlement so much greater than the force of any nation now engaged or any alliance hitherto formed or projected that no nation, no probable combination of nations, could face or withstand it.

If the peace presently to be made is to endure it must be a peace made secure by the organized major force of mankind.

The terms of the immediate peace agreed upon will determine whether it is a peace for which such a guarantee can be secured. The question upon which the whole future peace and policy of the world depends is this: Is the present war a struggle for a just and secure peace or only for a new balance of power? If it be only a struggle for a new balance of power who will guarantee, who can guarantee, the stable equilibrium of the new arrangement? Only a tranquil Europe can be a stable Europe. There must be not only a balance of power but a community of power; not organized rivalries, but an organized common peace.

Fortunately we have received very explicit assurances on this point. The statesmen of both of the groups of nations now arrayed against one another have said, in terms that could not be misinterpreted, that it was no part of the purpose they had in mind to crush their antagonists. But the implications of these assurances may not be equally clear to all, may not be the same on both sides of the water. I think it will be serviceable if I attempt to set forth what we understand them to be.

They imply first of all that it must be a peace without victory. It is not pleasant to say this. I beg that I may be permitted to put my own interpretation upon it and that it may be understood that no other interpretation was in my thought. I am seeking only to face realities and to face them without soft concealments. Victory would mean peace forced upon the loser, a victor's terms imposed upon the vanquished. It would be accepted in humiliation, under duress, at an intolerable sacrifice and would leave a sting, a resentment, a bitter memory upon which terms of peace would rest not permanently but only as upon quickstand.

Only a peace between equals can last. Only a peace the very principle of which is equality and common participation in a common benefit. The right state of mind,

the right feeling between nations, is as necessary for a lasting peace as is the just settlement of vexed questions of territory or of racial and national allegiance.

The equality of nations upon which peace must be founded if it is to last must be an equality of rights; the guarantees exchanged must neither recognize nor imply a difference between big nations and small, between those that are powerful and those that are weak. Right must be based upon the common strength, not upon the individual strength, of the nations upon whose concert peace will depend. Equality of territory or of resources there, of course, cannot be; nor any sort of equality not gained in the ordinary peaceful and legitimate development of the peoples themselves. But no one asks or expects anything more than an equality of rights. Mankind is looking now for freedom of life, not for equipoise of power.

And there is a deeper thing involved than even equality of rights among organized nations. No peace can last, or ought to last, which does not recognize and accept the principle that governments derive all their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that no right anywhere exists to hand peoples about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were property.

I take it for granted, for instance, if I may venture upon a single example, that statesmen everywhere are agreed that there should be a united, independent and autonoomous Poland, and that henceforth inviolable security of life, of worship and of industrial and social development should be guaranteed to all peoples who have lived hitherto under the power of governments devoted to a faith and purpose hostile to their own.

I speak of this not because of any desire to exalt an abstract political principle which has always been held very dear by those who have sought to build up liberty in America, but for the same reason that I have spoken of the other conditions of peace which seem to me clearly indispensable, because I wish frankly to uncover realities. Any peace which does not recognize and accept this principle will inevitably be upset. It will not rest upon the affections or the convictions of mankind. The ferment of spirit of whole populations will fight subtly and constantly against it, and all the world will sympathize. The world can be at peace only if its life is stable, and there can be no stability where the will is in rebellion, where there is not tranquility of spirit and a sense of justice, of freedom and of right.

So far as practicable, moreover, every great people now struggling toward a full development of its resources and of its powers should be assured a direct outlet to

the great highways of the sea. Where this cannot be done by the cession of territory, it can no doubt be done by the neutralization of direct rights of way under the general guarantee which wil. assure the peace itself. With a right comity of arrangement no nation need be shut aw y from free access to the open paths of the world's commerce.

And the paths of the sea must alike in law and in fact be free. The freedom of the seas is the sine qua non of peace, equality and cooperation. No doubt a somewhat radical reconsideration of many of the rules of international practice hitherto sought to be established may be necessary in order to make the seas indeed free and common in practically all circumstances for the use of mankind, but the motive of such changes is convincing and and compelling. There can be no trust or intimacy between the peoples of the world without them. The free, constant, unthreatened intercourse of nations is an essential part of the process of peace and development. It need not be difficult either to define or to secure the freedom of the seas if the Governments of the world sincerely desire to come to an agreement concerning it.

It is a problem closely connected with the limitation of naval armaments and the cooperation of the navies of the world in keeping the seas at once free and safe. And the question of limiting naval armaments opens the wider and perhaps more difficult question of the limitation of armies and of all programmes of military preparation. Difficult and delicate as these questions are, they must be faced with the utmost candor and decided in a spirit of real accommodation if peace is to come with healing in its wings and come to stay. Peace cannot be had without concession and sacrifice. There can be no sense of safety and equality among the nations if great preponderating armies are henceforth to continue here and there to be built up and maintained. The statesmen of the world must plan for peace and nations must adjust and accommodate their policy to it as as they have planned for war and made ready for pitiless conquest and rivalry.

The question of armaments, whether on land or sea, is the most immediately and intensely practical question connected with the future fortunes of nations and of mankind.

I have spoken upon these great matters without reserve and with the utmost explicitness because it has seemed to me to be necessary if the world's yearning desire for peace was anywhere to find free voice and utterance. Perhaps I am the only person in high authority among all the peoples of the world who is at liberty to speak and hold nothing back. I am speaking as an individual, and yet I am speaking also, of

course, as the responsible head of a great Government, and I feel confident that I have said what the people of the United States would wish me to say.

May I not add that I hope and believe that I am in effect speaking for liberals and friends of humanity in every nation and of every programme of liberty? I would fain believe that I am speaking for the silent mass of mankind everywhere who have as yet had no place or opportunity to speak their real hearts out concerning the death and ruin they see to have come already upon the persons and the homes they hold most dear.

And in holding out the expectation that the people and Government of the United States will join the other civilized nations of the world in guaranteeing the permanence of peace upon such terms as I have named, I speak with the greater boldness and confidence because it is clear to every man who can think that there is in this promise no breach in either our traditions or our policy as a nation, but a fulfilment rather of all that we have professed or striven for.

I am proposing, as it were, that the nations should with one accord adopt the doctrine of President Monroe as the doctrine of the world: that no nation should seek to extend its policy over any other nation or people, but that every people should be left free to determine its own policy, its own way of development, unhindered, unthreatened, unafraid, the little along with the great and powerful.

I am proposing that all nations henceforth avoid entangling alliances which would draw them into competitions of power, catch them in a net of intrigue and selfish rivalry and disturb their own affairs with influences intruded from without. There is no entangling alliance in a concert of power. When all unite to act in the same sense and with the same purpose all act in the common interest and are free to live their own lives under a common protection.

I am proposing government by the consent of the governed; that freedom of the seas which in international conference after conference representatives of the United States have urged with the eloquence of those who are the convinced disciples of liberty, and that moderation of armaments which makes of armies and navies a power for order merely, not an instrument of aggression or of selfish violence.

These are American principles, American policies. We can stand for no others. And they are also the principles and policies of forward looking men and women everywhere, and of every modern nation and of every enlightened community. They are the principles of mankind and must prevail.

N the 17th of January the exchange of ratifications of a treaty between Denmark and the United States had the effect of transferring to American sovereignty the West Indian Islands of St. Thomas, Santa Cruz and St. John, which lie eastward of Porto Rico and substantially control the Virgin Passage through the Lesser Antilles. The other three maritime routes through the bow of the West Indies, the straits of Florida between Florida and Cuba, the Windward Passage between Cuba and the Island of San Domingo and the Mona Passage between San Domingo and Porto Rico,-are already substantially under the control of the United States. To control the four approaches through the West Indies to the Panama Canal, the United States is paying $25,000,000 to Denmark for three islands of an area of 138 square miles.

ter upon a new chapter of colonial administration. What will be the circumstances under which the motley and mottled population of the islands, less than 30,000 in number, will become nationals of the United States? The question is the more appropriate to ask at the present time because the status of Philippine and Porto Rican citizens is just now to the front, and consideration of three such problems together may result in some changes of policy toward the human content of these American dependencies.

Except for any treaty provisions as to the inhabitants of the islands, the United States will be entirely free to deal with the population of its new West Indian possessions as it sees fit. The attorney general of the United States laid down the rule when he wrote in 1898:

"When territory is acquired by treaty or conquest, or otherwise, its relation to the nation acquiring it depends upon the laws of that nation, unless controlled by the instrument of cession." (22 Op. Atty. Gen. 150.)

The United States is neither in a position nor of an intention to interpret such a rule harshly. In the case of the West Indies it will probably go even further than it did in the case of the cessions from Spain as a result of the war of 1898. The treaty of Paris of December 19, 1898, provided:

Art. IX. Spanish subjects, natives of the