United States -- Politics and government -- 1913-1921; World War, 1914-1918 -- United States
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 cannot 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.
The present war must first be ended; but we owe it to candor and to a
just regard for the opinion 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 the 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 cooeperative 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
the confidence and satisfy the principles of the American governments,
elements consistent with their political faith and with the practical
convictions which the peoples of America have once for all embraced and
undertaken to defend.
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 secure. It will be absolutely necessary
that a force be created as a guarantor 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. If the peace
presently to be made is to endure, it must be a peace made secure by the
organized major force of mankind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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