_Mr. President_: I am deeply indebted to you for your gracious
greeting. It is very delightful to find myself in France and to feel
the quick contact of sympathy and unaffected friendship between the
representatives of the United States and the representatives of France.
You have been very generous in what you were pleased to say about
myself, but I feel that what I have said and what I have tried to do
has been said and done only in an attempt to speak the thought of the
people of the United States truly, and to carry that thought out in
action.
From the first, the thought of the people of the United States turned
toward something more than the mere winning of this war. It turned to
the establishment of eternal principles of right and justice. It
realized that merely to win the war was not enough; that it must be won
in such a way and the question raised by it settled in such a way as to
insure the future peace of the world and lay the foundations for the
freedom and happiness of its many peoples and nations.
Never before has war worn so terrible a visage or exhibited more
grossly the debasing influence of illicit ambitions. I am sure that I
shall look upon the ruin wrought by the armies of the Central Empires
with the same repulsion and deep indignation that they stir in the
hearts of the men of France and Belgium, and I appreciate, as you do,
sir, the necessity of such action in the final settlement of the issues
of the war as will not only rebuke such acts of terror and spoliation,
but make men everywhere aware that they cannot be ventured upon without
the certainty of just punishment.
I know with what ardor and enthusiasm the soldiers and sailors of the
United States have given the best that was in them to this war of
redemption. They have expressed the true spirit of America. They
believe their ideals to be acceptable to free peoples everywhere, and
are rejoiced to have played the part they have played in giving reality
to those ideals in coöperation with the armies of the Allies. We are
proud of the part they have played, and we are happy that they should
have been associated with such comrades in a common cause.
It is with peculiar feeling, Mr. President, that I find myself in
France joining with you in rejoicing over the victory that has been
won. The ties that bind France and the United States are peculiarly
close. I do not know in what other comradeship we could have fought
with more zest or enthusiasm. It will daily be a matter of pleasure
with me to be brought into consultation with the statesmen of France
and her Allies in concerting the measures by which we may secure
permanence for these happy relations of friendship and coöperation, and
secure for the world at large such safety and freedom in its life as
can be secured only by the constant association and coöperation of
friends.
I greet you not only with deep personal respect, but as the
representative of the great people of France, and beg to bring you the
greetings of another great people to whom the fortunes of France are of
profound and lasting interest.
This meeting of the American and the French presidents at a banquet in
the French capital is a remarkable incident in the history of the
world. The statement of the likelihood of such a meeting would have
been ridiculed before the war.
[Illustration: President Wilson driving from the railroad station in
Paris with President Poincaré of France to the home of Prince Murat, a
descendant of Marshal Murat, Napoleon's great cavalry leader.]
As we read the speeches, however, and grasp their full meaning, we
understand that the most remarkable fact about the historic meeting is
that the leaders of two great republics met with minds and hearts set
upon justice. They were determined that the weak who had suffered
unimaginable wrong should not fail to secure justice because they were
weak and they were equally of a mind that the high and mighty who were
responsible for these wrongs should not escape justice because they
were high and mighty.
Many times in the history of the world, meetings of the great have been
remembered because of the show of Might, on every hand. The meeting of
President Wilson and President Poincaré in Paris on December 14, 1918,
will never be forgotten because it was the greatest demonstration the
world has ever seen of the power of Right.
*******************
Truth forever on the scaffold,
Wrong forever on the throne,--
Yet that scaffold sways the future,
And, behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow,
Keeping watch above His own.