It has long been a widely accepted theory that the only sanction for the right conduct of nations, for those rules of conduct which nations seek to enforce upon each other, is the exercise of force; that behind their diplomatic argument rests, as the ultimate argument, the possibility of war. But I think there has been developing in the later years of progress in civilization that other sanction, of the constraining effect of the public opinion of mankind, which rests upon the desire for the approval of one's fellowmen. The progress of which you have spoken, Mr. Ambassador, in American international relations, is a progress along the pathway that leads from the rule of force as the ultimate sanction of argument to the rule of public opinion, which enforces its decrees by an appeal to the desire for approbation among men. That progress is towards the independence, the freedom, the dignity, the happiness of every small and weak nation. It tends to realize the theory of international law, the real national equality. The process is one of attrition. Isolation among nations leaves no appeal for the enforcement of rules of right conduct, but the appeal to force. Communication, intercourse, friendship, the desire for good opinion, the exercise of all the qualities that adorn, that elevate, that refine human nature, bring to the defense of the smaller nation the appeal to the other sanction, the sanction of public opinion. What we are doing now, because the time has come for it to be done, is to help in our day and generation in the creation of a public opinion in America which shall approve all that is good in national character and national conduct and punish all that is wrong with that most terrible penalty, the disapproval of all America. As that process approaches its perfection, the work of our friends, of the armies and navies of America, will have been accomplished. It is not a work of selfishness; it is a work for universal civilization. It is a work by which we will repay to France and Portugal and to Sweden--to all our mother lands across the Atlantic--all the gifts of civilization, of literature, of art, of the results of their long struggles upward from barbarism to light, with which they have endowed us. For in the vast fields of incalculable wealth that the American continents offer to the enterprise and the cultivation of the world, the older nations of Europe will find their wealth, and opportunity for the exercise of their powers in peace and with equality.