IV--THE PEACE TREATY--ITS MEANING TO AMERICA America's "Place in the Sun" Due to Her Efforts to Secure a Just Peace By GEORGE W. WICKERSHAM Formerly Attorney-General of the United States. "The cause of our entrance into the great war," declares Dr. David Jayne Hill in a recent essay, "being the violation by the German Imperial Government of our legal rights as a nation, our object in the war was to make our rights respected. The one clear duty of the treaty-making power in concluding peace with Germany, therefore, is to secure this result."[25] [25] "Americanizing the Treaty."--_North American Review_, August, 1919. In these words, one of the most distinguished and accomplished of the opponents of the treaty of Paris reveals the profound abyss which separates those who oppose from those who are urging the approval of the Treaty of Versailles. Dr. Hill, perhaps unconsciously, gives expression to a sordid, narrow, selfish view of the issues of the war, which would transmute into the most elemental act of self-defense one of the greatest crusades of high idealism ever conducted by any people in the history of nations. If, in fact, the cause of our participation in the war was merely to repel attacks upon our legal rights as a nation, then indeed, that end being attained, and the aggressor reduced to impotence for the future, we may return within our own borders, withdraw unto ourselves, disclaim all responsibility for the condition of the world elsewhere and plunge into the selfish exploitation of our national resources, "the world forgetting, by the world forgot." It is a strange perversion of the facts of recent history that leads to such a conception of America's responsibility for the future of civilization.