as it is the enemy of peace and right and freedom throughout the world.

To gain America's independence, to defeat oppression and tyranny, was indeed to gain a great cause. To defend the very foundations of liberty and humanity, the very groundwork of fair dealing between nations, the very basis of peaceable living together among the peoples of the earth against the fierce and brutal onslaught of ruthless, lawless, faithless might; to spend the lives and the fortunes of this generation so that our descendants may be freed from the dreadful calamity of war and the fear of war, so that the energies and millions and billions of treasure now devoted to plans and instruments of destruction may be given henceforth to fruitful works of peace and progress and to the betterment of the conditions of the people that is the highest cause for which any people ever unsheathed its sword.

THE BASIS FOR ENDURING PEACE

WOODROW WILSON

EVERY heart that has not been blinded and hardened by this terrible war must be touched by this moving appeal of his Holiness the Pope; must feel the dignity and force of the humane and generous motives which prompted it, and must fervently wish that we might take the path of peace he so persuasively points out. But it would be folly to take it if it does not in fact lead to the goal he proposes.

Our response must be based upon the stern facts, and upon nothing else. It is not a mere cessation of arms he desires; it is a stable and enduring peace. This agony must not be gone through with again, and it must be a matter of very sober judgment what will insure us against

it.

His Holiness, in substance, proposes that we return to the status quo ante bellum, and that then there be a general condonation, disarmament, and a concert of nations based upon an acceptance of the principle of arbitration; that by a similar concert freedom of the seas be established, and that the territorial claims of France and Italy, the perplexing problems of the Balkan states, and the restitution of Poland be left to such conciliatory adjustments as may be possible in the new temper of such a peace, due regard being paid to the aspirations of

Reply of President Wilson to the peace note of Pope Benedict XV, signed, as is customary, by the Secretary of State.

the peoples whose political fortunes and affiliations will be involved.

It is manifest that no part of this program can be successfully carried out unless the restitution of the status quo ante furnishes a firm and satisfactory basis for it.

The object of this war is to deliver the free peoples of the world from the menace and the actual power of a vast military establishment controlled by an irresponsible government which, having secretly planned to dominate the world, proceeded to carry the plan out without regard either to the sacred obligations of treaty or the long established practices and long cherished principles of international action and honor; which chose its own time for the war, delivered its blow fiercely and suddenly, stopped at no barrier either of law or of mercy, swept a whole continent within the tide of blood · not the blood of soldiers only but the blood of innocent women and children also, and of the helpless and the poor- and now stands, balked but not defeated, the enemy of four fifths of the world.

This power is not the German people. It is the ruthless master of the German people. It is no business of ours how that great people came under its control or submitted with temporary zest to the domination of its purpose, but it is our business to see to it that the history of the rest of the world is no longer left to its handling.

To deal with such a power by way of peace, upon the plan proposed by his Holiness the Pope, would, so far as we can see, involve a recuperation of its strength and a renewal of its policy; would make it necessary to create a permanent hostile combination of nations against the German people, who are its instruments, and would result in abandoning the new-born Russia to the intrigue, the manifold subtle interference, and the certain counter

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revolution, which would be attempted by all the malign influences to which the German government has of late accustomed the world.

Can peace be based upon a restitution of its power or upon any word of honor it could pledge in a treaty of settlement and accommodation?

Responsible statesmen must now everywhere see, if they never saw before, that no peace can rest securely upon political or economic restriction meant to benefit some nations and cripple or embarrass others, upon vindictive action of any sort, or any kind of revenge or deliberate injury.

The American people have suffered intolerable wrongs at the hands of the Imperial German government, but they desire no reprisal upon the German people, who have themselves suffered all things in this war, which they did not choose. America believes that peace should rest upon the rights of peoples, not the rights of governments the rights of peoples great or small, weak or powerful - their equal right to freedom and security and self-government and to a participation upon fair terms in the economic opportunities of the world - the German people of course included, if they will accept equality and not seek domination.

The test, therefore, of every plan of peace is this: Is it based upon the faith of all the peoples involved, or merely upon the word of an ambitious and intriguing government on the one hand and a group of free peoples on the other? This is the test which goes to the root of the matter; and it is the test which must be applied.

The purposes of the United States in this war are known to the whole world to every people to whom the truth has been permitted to come. They do not need to be stated again. We seek no material advantage of any

kind. We believe that the intolerable wrongs done in this war by the furious and brutal power of the Imperial German government ought to be repaired, but not at the expense of the sovereignty of any people rather a vindication of the sovereignty both of those that are weak and of those that are strong.

Punitive damages, the dismemberment of empires, the establishment of selfish and exclusive economic leagues, we deem inexpedient and in the end worse than futile, no proper basis for a peace of any kind, least of all for an enduring peace. That must be based upon justice and fairness and the common rights of mankind.

We cannot take the word of the present rulers of Germany as a guaranty of anything that is to endure, unless explicitly supported by such conclusive evidence of the will and purpose of the German people themselves as the other peoples of the world would be justified in accepting.

Without such guaranties, treaties of settlement, agreements for disarmament, covenants to set up arbitration in the place of force, territorial adjustments, reconstitutions of small nations, if made with the German government, no man, no nation, could now depend on.

We must await some new evidence of the purposes of the great peoples of the central powers.

God grant it may be given soon and in a way to restore the confidence of all peoples everywhere in the faith of nations and the possibility of a covenanted peace.