and cordial cooperation. Much of the politics of the world in the years to come will depend upon their relationships with one another. It is a barren and provincial statesmanship that loses sight of such things!

The future, the immediate future, will bring us squarely face to face with many great and exacting problems which will search us through and through whether we be able and ready to play the part in the world that we mean to play. It will not bring us into their presence slowly, gently, with ceremonious introduction, but suddenly and at once, the moment the war in Europe is over. They will be new problems, most of them; many will be old problems in a new setting and with new elements which we have never dealt with or reckoned the force and meaning of before. They will require for their solution new thinking, fresh courage and resourcefulness, and in some matters radical reconsiderations of policy. We must be ready to mobilize our resources alike of brains and of materials.

It is not a future to be afraid of. It is, rather, a future to stimulate and excite us to the display of the best powers that are in us. We may enter it with confidence when we are sure that we understand it,— and we have provided ourselves already with the means of understanding it.

Look first at what it will be necessary that the nations of the world should do to make the days to come tolerable and fit to live and work in; and then look at our part in what is to follow and our own duty of preparation. For we must be prepared both in resources and in policy.

There must be a just and settled peace, and we here in America must contribute the full force of our enthusiasm and of our authority as a nation to the organization of that peace upon world-wide foundations that cannot easily be shaken. No nation should be forced to take sides in any quarrel in which its own honour and integrity and the for

tunes of its own people are not involved; but no nation can any longer remain neutral as against any wilful disturbance of the peace of the world. The effects of war can no longer be confined to the areas of battle. No nation stands wholly apart in interest when the life and interests of all nations are thrown into confusion and peril. If hopeful and generous enterprise is to be renewed, if the healing and helpful arts of life are indeed to be revived when peace comes again, a new atmosphere of justice and friendship must be generated by means the world has never tried before. The nations of the world must unite in joint guarantees that whatever is done to disturb the whole world's life must first be tested in the court of the whole world's opinion before it is attempted.

These are the new foundations the world must build for itself, and we must play our part in the reconstruction, generously and without too much thought of our separate interests. We must make ourselves ready to play it intelligently, vigorously, and well.

One of the contributions we must make to the world's peace is this: We must see to it that the people in our insular possessions are treated in their own lands as we would treat them here, and make the rule of the United States mean the same thing everywhere, the same justice, the same consideration for the essential rights of men.

THE GREAT OPPORTUNITY FOR THE UNITED STATES TO SERVE THE WORLD

68. Extract from an Address of President Wilson. September 4, 1916

(Congressional Record, LIII, Appendix, 2160)

The commands of democracy are as imperative as its privileges and opportunities are wide and generous. Its compulsion is upon us. It will be great and lift a great light for the guidance of the nations only if we are great and carry that light high and for the guidance of our own feet. We are not worthy to stand here unless we ourselves be in deed and in truth real democrats and servants of mankind, ready to give our very lives for the freedom and justice and spiritual exaltation of the great nation which shelters and

nurtures us.

69. Extract from an Address of President Wilson.1 September 25, 1916

(From the official printed copy; for the entire address see New York Times, September 26, 1916)

America has stood in the years past for that sort of political understanding among men which would let every man feel that his rights were the same as those of another and as good as those of another, and the mission of America in the field of the world's commerce is to be the same, that when an American comes into that competition he comes without any arms that would enable him to conquer by force, but only with those peaceful influences of intelligence, a desire to serve, a knowledge of what he is about, before

1 Statements Nos. 69 to 78 inclusive are speeches delivered by Mr. Wilson in his campaign for the presidency in 1916.

which everything softens and yields and renders itself subject. That is the mission of America, and my interest, so far as my small part in American affairs is concerned, is to lend every bit of intelligence I have to this interesting, this vital, this all-important matter of releasing the intelligence of America for the service of mankind.

70. Extract from an Address of President Wilson. October 5, 1916

(New York Times, October 6, 1916)

We have never yet sufficiently formulated our program for America with regard to the part she is going to play in the world, and it is imperative that she should formulate it at once. But, in order to carry out a program, you must have a unification of spirit and purpose in America which no influence can invade.

In making that program what are we to say to ourselves? And what are we to say to the world? It is very important that the statesmen of other parts of the world should understand America. America has held off from the present conflict with which the rest of the world is ablaze, not because she was not interested, not because she was indifferent, but because the part she wanted to play was a different part from that.

The singularity of the present war is that its origin and objects never have been disclosed. They have obscure European roots which we do not know how to trace. So great a conflagration could not have broken out if the tinder had not been there, and the spark in danger of falling at any time. We were not the tinder. The spark did not come from us. It will take the long inquiry of history to explain

this war.

But Europe ought not to misunderstand us. We are holding off, not because we do not feel concerned, but because when we exert the force of this nation we want to know what we are exerting it for. You know that we have always remembered and revered the advice of the great Washington, who advised us to avoid foreign entanglements. By that I understand him to mean avoid being entangled in the ambitions and the national purposes of other nations. It does not mean if I may be permitted to venture an interpretation of the meaning of that great man - that we are to avoid the entanglements of the world, for we are part of the world, and nothing that concerns the whole world can be indifferent to us. We want always to hold the force of America to fight for what? Not merely for the rights of property or of national ambition, but for the rights of mankind.

71. Extract from an Address of President Wilson. October 5, 1916

(New York Times, October 6, 1916)

America up to the present time has been, as if by deliberate choice, confined and provincial, and it will be impossible for her to remain confined and provincial. Henceforth she belongs to the world and must act as part of the world, and all of the attitudes of America will henceforth be altered.

The extraordinary circumstances that for the next decade, at any rate after that it will be a matter of our own choice whether it continues or not but for the next decade, at any rate, we have got to serve the world. That alters every commercial question, it alters every political question,