What else? The union. The final act in the world-wide drama of
democracy. The union of the democracies of the world to insure mutual
protection and peace. I mean a union for this purpose of all those
governments where the people, by their representatives, control. The
union on two hemispheres of what the spirit of Lafayette foresaw,
symbolized, and battled for on both.
The union ought to include the Austrian and German people themselves. It
can never, however, include the Prussian military autocracy or any other
military autocracy. I quote again from the President's message: "A
steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained except by a
partnership of democratic nations. No autocratic government could be
trusted to keep faith within it or observe its covenants. It must be a
league of honour, a partnership of opinion. Intrigue would eat its
vitals away; the plottings of inner circles who could plan what they
would and render account to no one would be a corruption seated at its
very heart. Only free peoples can hold their purpose and their honour
steady to a common end and prefer the interests of mankind to any narrow
interest of their own.... One of the things that has served to convince
us that the Prussian autocracy was not and could never be our friend is
that from the very outset of the present war it has filled our
unsuspecting communities and even our offices of government with spies,
and set criminal intrigues everywhere afoot against our national unity
of counsel, our peace within and without, our industries, and our
commerce. Indeed it is now evident that its spies were here even before
the war began; and it is unhappily not a matter of conjecture, but a
fact proved in our courts of justice, that the intrigues which have more
than once come perilously near to disturbing the peace and dislocating
the industries of the country have been carried on at the instigation,
with the support, and even under the personal direction of official
agents of the Imperial Government accredited to the Government of the
United States."
The union must be a union to keep the future safe against war, a league
to compel every nation after the close of the present war to settle any
claim it may have against its neighbour in the same way that individuals
settle their disputes--by rules of right and reason instead of by the
law of might. It must be "some definite concert of power that will make
it virtually impossible that any such catastrophe should ever overwhelm
us again." In a memorable address to the Senate of the United States on
January 22, 1917, the President urged that the United States enter into
such a league after the close of the present war, and on the point of
effectiveness said: "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."