APPENDIX

AMERICA AND WORLD-POLITICS

THE fullest expression of President Wilson's conception of the future rôle of the United States in international politics is to be found in his address to the Senate on January 21, 1917, and his second Inaugural on March 5, 1917. Speaking, in the one case to the assembly particularly associated with him by the Constitution and by usage in the direction of foreign policy, and in the other to the nation as a whole, the President enunciated principles whose acceptance would involve, in some respects the profound modification, in others the complete supersession, of the Monroe Doctrine.

The new policy thus unfolded had been foreshadowed in Mr. Wilson's declarations on the proposed League to Enforce Peace and in his address to the Pan-American Scientific Conference in January 1916, but it had never before been worked out in all its fullness in the light of the lessons of the European War. A leader who called on America to abandon frankly and irrevocably the detachment and isolation that for ninety years had been the corner-stone of her foreign policy was making heavy demands on

the loyalty of his followers. But there can be little question that the demand will be met, and that those who to-day are charging the President with embarking on perilous adventures will tomorrow be the first to acknowledge his prescience. The two addresses in full are here subjoined.

THE SPEECH TO THE SENATE.

"GENTLEMEN OF THE SENATE,

On the 18th of December last I addressed an identic Note to the Governments of the nations now at war requesting them to state, more definitely than they had yet been by either group of belligerents, the terms upon which they would deem it possible to make peace.

"I spoke on behalf of humanity and of the rights of all neutral nations like our own, many of whose most vital interests the war puts in constant jeopardy.

"The Central Powers united in a reply which stated merely that they were ready to meet their antagonists in conference to discuss terms of peace.

"The Entente Powers have replied much more definitely, and have stated, in general terms indeed, but with sufficient definiteness to imply details, the arrangements, guarantees, and acts of reparation which they deem to be the indispensable conditions of a satisfactory settlement. We are much nearer a definite discussion of the peace which shall end the present war. We are that much nearer the discussion of the international concert which must thereafter hold the world at peace. In every discussion of the peace

that must end this war it is taken for granted that peace must be followed by a definite concert of the Powers which will make it virtually impossible that any such catastrophe should ever overwhelm us again. Every lover of mankind, every sane and thoughtful man, must take that for granted.

"I have sought this opportunity to address you because I thought that I owed it to you, as the council associated with me in the final determination of our international obligations, to disclose to you without reserve the thought and purpose that have been taking form in my mind with regard to the duty of our Government in the days to come, when it will be necessary to lay afresh and upon a new plan the foundations of peace among the nations.

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It is inconceivable that the people of the United States should play no part in that great enterprise. To take part in such a service will be the opportunity for which they have sought to prepare themselves by the very principles and purposes of their polity and the approved practices of their Government ever since the days when they set up a new nation in the high and honourable hope that it might in all that it was and did show mankind the way to liberty. They cannot in honour withhold the service to which they are now about to be challenged. They do not wish to withhold it. But they owe it to themselves and to the other nations of the world to state the conditions under which they will feel free to render it.

"That service is nothing less than this: To add their authority and their power to the authority and force of other nations to guarantee peace and justice throughout the world. Such a settlement cannot now be long postponed.

It

is right that before it comes this Government should frankly formulate the conditions upon which it would feel justified in asking our people to approve its formal and solemn adherence to a league for peace. I am here to attempt to state those conditions.

"The present war must first be ended, but we owe it to candour and to a just regard for the opinion of mankind to say that, so far as our participation in guarantees of future peace is concerned, it makes a great deal of difference in what way and upon what terms it is ended.

"The treaties and agreements which bring it to an end must embody terms that will create a peace that is worth guaranteeing and preserving, a peace that will win the approval of mankind, not merely a peace that will serve the several interests and immediate aims of the nations engaged.

"We shall have no voice in determining what those terms shall be, but we shall, I feel sure, have a voice in determining whether they shall be made lasting or not by the guarantees of a universal covenant; and our judgment upon what is fundamental and essential as a condition precedent to permanency should be spoken now, not afterwards, when it may be too late.

"No covenant of co-operative peace that does not include the peoples of the New World can suffice to keep the future safe against war; and yet there is only one sort of peace that the peoples of America could join in guaranteeing. The elements of that peace must be elements that engage the confidence and satisfy the principles of the American Government, elements consistent with the political faith and the practical convictions which the peoples of America have once for all embraced and undertaken to defend.

"I do not mean to say that any American 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.

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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 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 a balance of power, but a community of power; not organized rivalries, but an organized common peace.

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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