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CHAPTER IV.

President Wilson's First Great War Speech.

Uncle Sam, the Peace-Maker.

What is this war about? was the question no one could or would answer. France and Russia blamed Germany, and Germany blamed her eastern and western neighbors and-England. These countries were crowding one another in their colonization schemes and in trade relationship. "Made in Germany," became very offensive to the English. The theft in 1871 of Alsace and Lorraine by Germany from France, and on top one thousand million dollars indemnity, aggravated the French. The building of a railroad through to Bagdad, with German capital, worried both Russia and England. Thus the great European powers were in a nervous strain of mind. This was the condition.

And

But, whatever may have caused the war, that was a by-gone question, since the war was started, and the paramount question, the war aims, attained prominence and demanded an answer. our President, in the spirit of a true Christian peace-maker, addressed a note to the belligerents, and it was respecting this note and the answer received, and also for the purpose of stating the views of our Republic that President Wilson appeared before Congress, January 22nd, 1917, to deliver his first great war speech, as follows:

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 had yet been stated by either group of belligerents, the terms upon which they would deem it possible to make peace. I spoke on behalf of humanity and 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 that 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 peace that must end this war it is taken for granted that that peace must be given by some definite concert of power 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.

America Must Play Part.

"I have sought this chance to address you because I thought 1 owed it to you, as the council associated with me in the final determination of our international obligation, to disclose to you without reserve, the thought and purpose that have been taking form in my mind in regard to the duty of our government in these days to come, when it will be necessary to lay afresh and upon a new plan the foundations of peace among nations.

"It is inconceivable that the people of the United States should play no part in the 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 this policy and the approved practices of their government ever since the days when they set up a new nation in the high and honorable hope that it might in all that it was and did show mankind the way to liberty. They can not, in honor, 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 can not 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.

Terms Must be Basis of Lasting Peace.

"The present war must first be ended; but we owe it to candor and to a just regard for the opinions 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 which will create a peace that is worth guaranteeing and preserving, a peace that will win 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 con

fidence and satisfy the principles of the American governments, elements consistent with their political faith and the practical convictions which the peoples of America have once for all embraced and undertaken to defend.

League Must be All-Powerful.

"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 sure. It will be absolutely necessary that a force be created as a guarantee 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."

Balance of Power or Community of Power.

The President makes a fine distinction between balance of power and community of power, between organized rivalry and organized common peace:

"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 there is a peace where such guarantee can be secured. The question upon which the whole future peace and policy of the world depends is this:

"Is the present war 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 rivalry, but an organized common peace.

"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 mind to crush their antagonists. But the implications of these assurances may not be equally clear to all-may not be the same on both sides of the water. I think it will be serviceable if I attempt to set forth what we understand them to be.

Peace Without Victory, an Essential Condition.

"They imply first of all that it must be a peace without victory. It is not pleasant to say this. I beg that I may be permitted to put my own interpretation upon it and that it may be understood that no other interpretation was in my thoughts. I am seeking only to face realities and to face them without soft concealments. Victory would mean peace forced upon the loser, a victor's terms

imposed upon the vanquished. It would be made in humiliation, under duress at an intolerable sacrifice and would leave a sting, a resentment, a bitter memory upon which terms of peace would rest, not permanently but only as upon quicksand. Only a peace between equals can last; only a peace the very principle of which is equality and a common participation in a common benefit.

"The right state of mind, the right feeling between nations, is as necessary for lasting peace as is the just settlement of vexed questions of territory or of racial and national allegiance.

Equality of Rights.

"The equality of nations upon which peace must be founded, if it is to last, must be an equality of rights; the guarantees exchanged must neither recognize nor imply a difference between big nations and small, between those that are powerful and those that are weak. Right must be based upon the common strength of the nations upon whose concert peace will depend. Equality of territory or of resources there, of course, cannot be; nor any other sort of equality not gained in the ordinary peaceful and legitimate development of the peoples themselves. But no one asks or expects anything more than an equality of rights. Mankind is looking now for freedom of life, not for equipoises of power.

A Fine Distinction. A Deeper Thing.

"And there is a deeper thing involved than even equality of right among organized nations. No peace can last, or ought to last, which does not recognize and accept the principle that gov ernments derive all their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that no right anywhere exists to hand peoples about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were property. I take it for granted, for instance, if I may venture upon a single example, that statesmen everywhere are agreed that there should be a united independent and autonomous Poland, and that henceforth an inviolable security of life, of worship and of industrial and social development should be guaranteed to all peoples who have lived hitherto under the power of governments devoted to a faith and purpose hostile to their own.

Principle Indispensable.

"I speak of this not because of any desire to exalt an abstract political principle, which has always been held very dear by those who have sought to build up liberty in America, but for the same reason that I have spoken of the other conditions of peace which seem to me clearly indispensable because I wish frankly to uncover realities. Any peace which does not recognize and accept this principle will inevitably be upset. It will not rest upon the affections or the convictions of mankind. The ferment of spirit of whole populations will fight subtly and constantly against it and all the world will sympathize. The world can be at peace only if

its life is stable and there can be no stability where the will is in rebellion, where there is not tranquility of spirit and a sense of justice and freedom and right.

Direct Outlet to the Sea.

"So far as practicable, moreover, every great people now struggling towards a full development of its resources and of its powers should be assured a direct outlet to the great highways of the seas. Where this cannot be done by the cession of territory, it can no doubt be done by the neutralization of direct rights of way under the general guarantee which will assure the peace itself. With a right comity of arrangement no nation need be shut away from free access to the open paths of the world's commerce.

"And the paths of the sea must alike in law and fact be free. The freedom of the seas is the sine qua non of peace, equality and co-operation. No doubt a somewhat radical consideration of many of the rules of international practice hitherto sought to be established may be necessary in order to make the seas indeed free and common in practically all circumstances for use of mankind, but the motive for such changes is convincing and compelling. There can be no trust or intimacy between the peoples of the world without them. The free, constant, unthreatened intercourse of nations is an essential part of the process of peace and development. It need not be difficult to define or to secure the freedom of the seas if the governments of the world sincerely desire to come to an agreement concerning it.

Only One in Authority at Liberty to Speak.

"It is a problem closely connected with the limitation of naval armaments and the co-operation of the navies of the world in keeping the seas at once free and safe. And the question of limiting naval armaments opens the wider and perhaps more difficult question of the limitation of armies and of all programs of military preparation. Difficult and delicate as these questions are, they must be faced with the utmost candor and decided in a spirit of real accommodation if peace is to come with healing in its wings, and come to stay. Peace cannot be had without concession and sacrifice. There can be no sense of safety and equality among the nations if great preponderating armaments are henceforth to continue here and there to be built up and maintained. The statesmen of the world must plan for peace, and nations must adjust and accommodate their policy to it as they planned for war and made ready for pitiless contest and rivalry. The question of armaments, whether on land or sea, is the most immediately and intensely practical question connected with the future fortunes of nations and of mankind.

Only One in Authority at Liberty to Speak.

"I have spoken upon these great matters without reserve and with the utmost explicitness, because it has seemed to me to be necessary if the world's yearning desire for peace was anywhere