After watching the course of the struggle for more than thirty months, taking note of the difference between the methods of warfare employed by the opposing groups of belligerents; after ascertaining their respective aims; after long, patient and careful deliberation, the greatest of all the neutral judges came to the conclusion that "civilization itself seems to be in the balance." (It will not be forgotten in the Entente countries, I feel sure, that though unlimited submarine "frightfulness" was the immediate _casus belli_, the martyrdom of Armenia played an important part in leading President Wilson and the people of the United States to that conclusion.) The world's greatest Democracy, imbued with a deep-rooted love of peace and abhorrence of war as to which no doubt or suspicion anywhere exists, has broken away from a century-old tradition, which was the very foundation of its external policy, and drawn the sword impelled not by ambition or the furtherance of material interests of any kind, but by honour and the instinctive call of true chivalry to stand by those who have carried on a long and fierce struggle to save the "desperately assaulted" free institutions, principles and ideals which are its own and humanity's most precious and sacred possessions. For the first time in history--I think one can safely say that--a great nation, led by a great and sagacious leader, has gone to war prompted almost entirely with the disinterested motive of upholding its own ideals and the ideals and rights of humanity--truly an event of which the best elements of the human race will always be proud; which will ever stand out as a bright and noble landmark in the history of the world. While these epoch-making events have stamped the cause of the Allies with the seal of supreme moral sanction, they have also made assurance doubly sure that the end of the war will confer upon the world a lasting peace based upon _real_ justice and equity. The presence of the delegates of the United States at the Peace Conference side by side with the representatives of the British Empire, France, Italy, and free Russia will constitute a sure and sterling guarantee to the world that the determining factors in the moulding of its destinies will not be the selfish interests, avowed or veiled, of this or that empire, not the whims and ambitions of despots and ruling castes or the greed of cosmopolitan financiers, but "the pure milk," of the broad interests of justice and peace, the rights of nations great and small and the freedom and welfare of mankind itself. To the Armenian people it is a final pledge that the reparation to be demanded and obtained for them, in the terms of peace will be commensurate, in full measure, with the magnitude of the wrongs and sufferings inflicted upon them because, in a vast waste of ancient barbarism and fraud, they formed an oasis embodying the ideals and principles which the democracies of Europe and America are struggling to vindicate.