ranza proposed that the offer of mediation be accepted. The American reply was a suggestion for conferences to arrange for a settlement, which, having been accepted, a joint commission was decided upon July 28, 1916. Again a peaceful way out of the Mexican trouble was sought, and this in spite of the extremity of the situation and the vociferous demands in some parts of the United States for armed intervention.

PROGRAM OF THE PRESIDENT

During the latter part of May President Wilson delivered two addresses that revealed how far his thought had moved during the past year. Before the League to Enforce Peace, May 27, 1916, he advocated, for the first time in concrete terms and wholly without reserve, what he had hinted ever since the spring of 1915,- the permanent participation of the United States in world affairs. (Statement No. 60.) It came upon the country as a shock to find its president apparently abandoning the traditional policy of aloofness and isolation which had for its entire history characterized the attitude of the United States in international matters which did not concern its interests at home, in the western hemisphere, or in the Far East.

"We are participants," President Wilson said, "whether we would or not, in the life of the world. The interests of all nations are our own also. . . . What affects mankind is inevitably our affair as well as the affair of the nations of Europe and of Asia. . . . Henceforth

there must be a common agreement for a common object, and . . . at the heart of that common object must lie the inviolable rights of peoples and mankind. . . . We believe these fundamental things: First, that every people has a right to choose the sovereignty under which they shall live. Second, that the small states of the world have a right to enjoy the same respect for their sovereignty and for their territorial integrity that great and powerful nations expect and insist upon. And, third, that the world has a right to be free from every disturbance of its peace that has its origin in aggression and disregard of the rights of peoples and nations."

With this statement of aims the President went on to give expression to his belief regarding the means to attain them. He was convinced that there should be "an universal association of nations to maintain the inviolate security of the highway of the seas for the common and unhindered use of all the nations of the world, and to prevent any war begun either contrary to treaty covenant or without warning and full submission of the causes to the opinion of the world,— a virtual guarantee of territorial integrity and political independence." And he ventured to assert, with full consciousness of his position as spokesman for his people as well as for his government, "that the United States is willing to become a partner in any feasible association of nations formed in order to realize these objects and make them secure against violation.” If the President were to be forced into a war, by the neces

sity to defend the freedom of the seas, the great purpose to be achieved had at last become clear.

On Memorial Day, 1916, at Arlington National Cemetery, the President came back to the same theme in answer to criticism which had recalled with emphatic approval Washington's warning1 against "entangling alliances." (Statement No. 61.) He said: "I shall never myself consent to an entangling alliance, but I would gladly assent to a disentangling alliance — an alliance which would disentangle the peoples of the world from those combinations in which they seek their own separate and private interests and unite the people of the world to preserve the peace of the world upon a basis of common right and justice. There is liberty there, not limitation. There is freedom, not entanglement. There is achievement of the highest things for which the United States has declared its principle." And he reaffirmed his belief "that the people of the United States were ready to become partners in any alliance of the nations that would guarantee public right above selfish aggression."

During these six months, December, 1915, to June, 1916, President Wilson advanced the first half of his preparedness program,— the military half, the strengthening of the army and navy of the United States. of the United States. Doubtless he regarded other kinds of preparedness as of even greater

1 Washington's advice had been used before in criticism of Wilson at the time of the "A. B. C." mediation in Mexico. Infa, p. 37.

importance, but he did something in behalf of an increase in American military power which he had done for no other of his policies, he left his desk and appeared on the platform to emphasize this great need before the nation. Just how great the necessity was appeared when the administration faced the two most difficult crises in foreign relations it had yet met, one with Germany and one with Mexico. Both of these crises were settled by peaceful means before the year was out, but not without revealing the precariousness of the position of the United States in such a greatly disordered world. Perhaps it was the painful realization of the futility of the use of diplomacy not backed by force and the utter abhorrence of the use of naked military power alone to make secure national rights that induced the President to seek a new sanction for international law in a league of nations. In the beginning of the period, in December, he proposed to the states of the new world an association to eliminate the causes of strife among themselves by guaranteeing their mutual independence and integrity. At the end of the period in May he publicly advocated that the United States enter a confederation of the world to keep the peace of the world.

CHAPTER VI

FORMULATION OF THE ISSUE

New Conception of the Position of the United States in the World - Opportunities and Obstacles - Treatment of Mexico -Preparedness in the Caribbean - Redeeming Promises in the Philippines-Controlling Spirit of Wilson's Foreign Policy America's Chance to Serve the World - Foundations of Peace and Forces Endangering it-The Ends for which the United States Will Fight-Need for Defining the Purposes of the Great War-An International Confederation for International Peace.

THE note which President Wilson struck with such certainty and emphasis in his League to Enforce Peace speech, continued to be the keynote of his public addresses during the remainder of the year. He let pass no opportunity to remind the people of the United States of the lofty principles for which the United States stood and its mission as the guardian of those principles, and to hint that in the discharge of this duty to mankind, a duty which other nations had abandoned, the United States ought to be ready to play a high part whenever it became necessary. Even in the purely political speeches delivered in the latter part of the campaign for the presidency, whether or not his main theme were foreign affairs, the President rarely failed to emphasize that the United States was intended to serve mankind and should