Слике страница
PDF
ePub

stand for national agression, but . . . for the just conceptions and bases of peace, for the competition of merit alone, and for the generous rivalry of liberty." (Statement No. 73.) And at Shadow Lawn, October 16th, he came to the same topic again. The United States by circumstances which it did not choose or control "has been thrust out into the great game of mankind, on the stage of the world itself . . . and no nation in the world must doubt that all her forces are gathered and organized in the interest of justice, righteousness, and humane government." (Statement No. 75.)

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

An emphatic and definite forecast of the future in respect to the part the United States was to play appeared in an address at Shadow Lawn, October 14th, when he said: "It has been said . . . that the people of the United States do not want to fight about anything. But... they want to be sure that they are fighting for the things that will bring to the world justice and peace. Define the elements; let us know that we are not fighting for the prevalence of this nation over that, for the ambitions of this nation over that, for the ambitions of this group of nations as compared with the ambitions of that group of nations; let us once be convinced that we are called in to a great combination to fight for the rights of mankind, and America will unite her force and spill her blood for the great things which she has always believed in and followed. America is always willing to fight for things which are American." (Statement No. 74.)

He was no less emphatic and even more bold at Cin

cinnati on October 26th. (Statement No. 76.)

"This

is the last war . . . of any kind that involves the world," he said, "that the United States can keep out of. . . . I believe the business of neutrality is over, not because I want it to be over but . . . war now has such a scale that the position of neutrals sooner or later becomes intolerable. America must hereafter be ready as a member of the family of nations to exert her whole force, moral and physical, to the assertion of those rights throughout the round globe."

[ocr errors]

While thus preparing the minds of his countrymen to accept the possibility of war and putting before their minds the ideals for which they could honourably fight, President Wilson did not forget the concrete ends to be achieved. Whether the United States were drawn into the great European conflict or not, when that conflict was over the United States had a great duty to perform. “It will be the duty of America to join with the other nations of the world in some kind of league for the maintenance of peace," he said at Indianapolis, October 12th. (Statement No. 73.) The United States was saving itself in order that it might "unite in that final league of nations in which it shall be understood that there is no neutrality where any nation is doing wrong," was his assertion at Shadow Lawn, October 14th. (Statement No. 74.) "The nations of the world must get together and say, 'Nobody can hereafter be neutral as respects the disturbance of the world's peace for an object which the world's opinion can not sanction,' " he declared at Cincinnati, Oc

tober 26th. (Statement No. 76.) Never again could the United States be "provincial and isolated and unconnected with the great forces of the world"; it was now "in the great drift of humanity which is to determine the politics of every country in the world." Such were his thoughts at the close of the campaign in a speech at Shadow Lawn, November 4th. (Statement No. 78.)

Thus during the summer and autumn did the President labour on the other and more important half of his preparedness program,- the preparation of the people of the United States to accept a new attitude toward their relations to the rest of the world. Standing on the firm basis of the principles enunciated during his whole administration from the refusal to recognize Huerta down to the Sussex ultimatum, he dwelt continuously on the high ideals which should actuate a democracy and the great purposes it should serve. He boldly cut loose from the old policy of isolation from Europe and advocated a union of the nations of the world in league to keep t the world at peace. He warned his countrymen that they might have to enter the Great War sooner or later, and his own words made clear to them the issues at stake in that war. By repeatedly emphasizing the obscurity of the origin of that war and of the purposes of the belligerents in it he foreshadowed the demand he was to make, on the 18th of December, of the warring nations that they state clearly, so that the opinion of mankind could judge, what their aims were.

[ocr errors]

CHAPTER VII

WAR TO INSURE PEACE

Position of President Wilson (December, 1916)- Interest of the United States in the Settlement of the European War — Peace without Victory"— Bases of Durable Peace Germany vs. Neutral Nations - American Decision-" Armed Neutrality"- German Proposals to Mexico - Effect of the Russian Revolution United States Enters the War

the United States

Restatements of Purpose.

[ocr errors]

Principles of

THE time had come for President Wilson to take the action which his previous utterances had foreshadowed and which impelling events now made so necessary. Inasmuch as the Central Powers had taken steps in early December to bring about a negotiation for peace in Europe, it was essential, if the United States was to have a part in the readjustment at the close of hostilities, that the President present at once his plans for the basis of permanent peace and international co-operation.2 Such a step was natural at this time, even if the Central Powers had not acted. Nor could it well have been taken earlier. With the recent verdict of the American electorate as an endorsement of his administration of foreign

1 Text of the proposals of the Central Powers in Current History, (New York Times,) V, 588-590.

2 Address of May 27, 1916, before the League to Enforce Peace was an unofficial utterance, as were subsequent speeches in which he had urged the same procedure.

affairs, the President was free to proceed, as he had not been during the presidential campaign and as he could not have been at this time had he been defeated and been preparing to turn over the government to a successor.

With the responsibility his own, President Wilson on December 18, 1916, asked the belligerents to state the terms upon which they would deem it possible to make peace. (Statement No. 79.) He was careful to say that he was not proposing peace nor even mediation. To have

done so and succeeded in bringing about a conference might have defeated the very ends he sought. His interest was in the preliminaries that must precede a successful peace conference. He was not desirous of simply stopping the war, as he had been two years earlier. He and his country and the world had gone beyond that. He was asking the belligerents in the name of the neutral world to state their purposes, not in the general terms in which each group had indulged again and again, but definitely, so that the world might know them and that a comparison might be made of them.

The United States, affected vitally by the war, had to consider its future course if the war was to continue. Not only because of vital national interests was this true. Above them there was a greater question. The United States was interested in the settlement of the war in such a way that a stable peace was to be assured after the war. If the war was to continue for purely national aims, the possibility of a league of the nations at the close of hostilities grew increasingly remote.

« ПретходнаНастави »