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"America has a great cause which is not confined to the American continent. It is the cause of humanity itself."

"The one thing that the world cannot permanently resist is the moral force of great and triumphant convictions."

"Our ambition, also, all the world has knowledge of. It is not only to be free and prosperous ourselves, but also to be the friend and thoughtful partisan of those who are free or who desire freedom the world over. If we have had aggressive purposes and covetous ambitions, they were the fruit of our thoughtless youth as a nation and we have put them aside. We shall, I confidently believe, never again take another foot of territory by conquest. We shall never in any circumstances seek to make an independent people subject to our dominion; because we believe, we passionately believe, in the right of every people to choose their own allegiance and be free masters altogether."

"The mission of America in the world is essentially a mission of peace and good-will among men. She has become the home and asylum of men of all creeds and races. Within her hospitable borders they have found homes and congenial associations and freedom and a wide and cordial welcome, and they have become part of the bone and sinew and spirit of America itself. America has been made up out of the nations of the world and is the friend of the nations of the world."

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. . America will have forgotten her traditions whenever on any occasion she fights merely for herself under such circumstances as will show that she has forgotten to fight for all mankind. And the only excuse that America can ever have for the assertion of her

physical force is that she asserts it in behalf of the interest of humanity.

"What a splendid thing it is to have so singular a tradition-a tradition of unselfishness! When America ceases to be unselfish, she will cease to be America. When she forgets the traditions of devotion to human rights in general, which gave spirit and impulse to her founders, she will have lost her title deeds to her own nationality."

We are part of the world, and nothing that concerns the whole world can be indifferent to us. We want always 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."

"We wish to serve no selfish ends."

"Our motive will not be revenge or the victorious assertion of the physical might of the nation, but only the vindication of right, of human right, of which we are only a single champion."

"Our object now, as then, is to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the life of the world as against selfish and autocratic power, and to set up amongst the really free and self-governed peoples of the world such a concert of purpose and of action as will henceforth ensure the observance of those principles."

"We have said in the beginning that we planted this great Government that men who wish freedom might have a place of refuge and a place where their hope could be realized, and now, having established such a Government, having preserved such a Government, we are saying to all mankind: 'We did not set this Government

up in order that we might have a selfish and separate liberty, for we are now ready to come to your assistance and fight upon the field of the world the cause of human liberty.' In this thing America attains her full dignity and the full fruition of her great purpose."

"The position of America in this war is so clearly avowed that no man can be excused for mistaking it. She seeks no material profit or aggrandizement of any kind. She is fighting for no advantage or selfish object of her own, but for the liberation of peoples everywhere from the aggressions of autocratic force."

"We are fighting for the liberty, the self-government, and the undictated development of all peoples, and every feature of the settlement that concludes this war must be conceived and executed for that purpose."

"The purposes of the United States in this war are known to the whole world-to every people to whom the truth has been permitted to come. They do not need to be stated again. We seek no material advantage of any kind."

"My dream is that as the years go on and the world knows more and more of America it will also drink at these fountains of youth and renewal; that it also will turn to America for those moral inspirations which lie at the basis of all freedom; that the world will never fear America unless it feels that it is engaged in some enterprise which is inconsistent with the rights of humanity; and that America will come into the full light of the day when all shall know that she puts human rights above all other rights, and that her flag is the flag not only of America, but of humanity."

"And now, by circumstances which she did not choose, over which she had no control, she has been thrust out into the great game of mankind, on the stage of the world itself, and here she must know what she is about, 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.

"What I intend to preach from this time on is that America must show that as a member of the family of nations she has the same attitude toward the other nations that she wishes her people to have toward each other: That America is going to take this position, that she will lend her moral influence not only, but her physical force, if other nations will join her, to see to it that no nation and no group of nations tries to take advantage of another nation or group of nations, and that the only thing ever fought for is the common rights of humanity."

"It is clear that nations must in the future be governed by the same high code of honour that we demand of individuals."

"We are at the beginning of an age in which it will be insisted that the same standards of conduct and of responsibility for wrong doing shall be observed among nations and their governments that are observed among the individual citizens of civilized states."

"When I have made a promise as a man I try to keep it, and I know of no other rule permissible to a nation. The most distinguished nation of the world is the nation that can and will keep its promises, even to its own hurt."

"I am proud to belong to a strong nation that says:

"This country, which we could crush, shall have just as much freedom in her own affairs as we have. If I am strong, I am ashamed to bully the weak. In proportion to my strength is my pride in withholding that strength from the oppression of another people."

"A patriotic American is a man who is not niggardly and selfish in the things he enjoys that make for human liberty and the rights of man. He wants to share them with the whole world, and he is never so proud of the great flag under which he lives as when it comes to mean to other people as well as to himself a symbol of hope and liberty. I would be ashamed of this flag if it ever did anything outside America that we would not permit it to do inside America."

"I am sometimes very much interested when I see gentlemen supposing that popularity is the way to success in America. The way to success in this great country, with its fair judgments, is to show that you are not afraid of anybody except God and His final verdict. If I did not believe that, I would not believe in democracy. If I did not believe that, I would not believe that people can govern themselves. If I did not believe that the moral judgment would be the last judgment, the final judgment, in the minds of men as well as at the tribunal of God, I could not believe in popular government. But I do believe these things, and therefore I earnestly believe in the democracy not only of America but of every awakened people that wishes and intends to govern and control its own affairs."

"But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts-for democracy, for the right of those

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