"It has been one of the many distressing revelations of recent years that the great Power which has just been happily defeated put intolerable burdens and injustice upon the helpless peoples of some of the colonies which it annexed to itself, that its interest was rather their extermination than their development, that the desire was to possess their land for European purposes and not to enjoy their confidence in order that mankind might be lifted in these places to the next higher level. "Now the world, expressing its conscience in law, says there is an end of that, that our consciences shall be settled to this thing. States will be picked out which have shown that they can exercise a conscience in this matter and under their tutelage the helpless peoples of the world will come into a new light and into a new hope. "So I think that I can say of this document that it is at one and the same time a practical document, a human document. There is a pulse of sympathy in it. There is a compulsion of conscience throughout it. It is practical, and yet it is intended to purify, to rectify, to elevate. "It was in one sense, said Mr. Wilson, a belated document, for he believed the conscience of the world had long been prepared to express itself in some such way. "We are not just now discovering our sympathy for these peoples and our interest in them. We are simply expressing it, for it has long been felt and in the administration of the affairs of more than one of the great states represented here--so far as I know all of the great states that are represented here--that humane impulse has already expressed itself in their dealings with their colonies whose peoples were yet at a low stage of civilization. ... "Many terrible things have come out of this war, gentlemen, but some very beautiful things have come out of it. Wrong has been defeated, but the rest of the world has been more conscious than it ever was before of the majority of right. People that were suspicious of each other can now live as friends and comrades in a single family, and desire to do so. The miasma of distrust, of intrigue is cleared away. Men are looking eye to eye and saying: 'We are brothers, and have a common purpose. We did not realize it before, but now we do realize it, and this is our covenant of friendship.'"