On the eighteenth of December last I addressed an identic note to the
governments of the nations now at war requesting them to state, more
definitely than they had yet been stated by either group of
belligerents, the terms upon which they would deem it possible to make
peace. I spoke on behalf of humanity and of the rights of all neutral
nations like our own, many of whose most vital interests the war puts in
constant jeopardy. The Central Powers united in a reply which stated
merely that they were ready to meet their antagonists in conference to
discuss terms of peace. The Entente Powers have replied much more
definitely and have stated, in general terms, indeed, but with
sufficient definiteness to imply details, the arrangements, guarantees,
and acts of reparation which they deem to be the indispensable
conditions of a satisfactory settlement. We are that much nearer a
definite discussion of the peace which shall end the present war. We are
that much nearer the discussion of the international concert which must
thereafter hold the world at peace. In every discussion of the peace
that must end this war it is taken for granted that that peace must be
followed by some definite concert of power which will make it virtually
impossible that any such catastrophe should ever overwhelm us again.
Every lover of mankind, every sane and thoughtful man must take that for
granted.
I have sought this opportunity to address you because I thought that I
owed it to you, as the council associated with me in the final
determination of our international obligations, to disclose to you
without reserve the thought and purpose that have been taking form in my
mind in regard to the duty of our Government in the days to come when it
will be necessary to lay afresh and upon a new plan the foundations of
peace among the nations.
It is inconceivable that the people of the United States should play no
part in that great enterprise. To take part in such a service will be
the opportunity for which they have sought to prepare themselves by the
very principles and purposes of their polity and the approved practices
of their Government ever since the days when they set up a new nation in
the high and honorable hope that it might in all that it was and did
show mankind the way to liberty. They cannot in honor withhold the
service to which they are now about to be challenged. They do not wish
to withhold it. But they owe it to themselves and to the other nations
of the world to state the conditions under which they will feel free to
render it.
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.
The terms of the immediate peace agreed upon will determine whether it
is a peace for which such a guarantee can be secured. The question upon
which the whole future peace and policy of the world depends is this: Is
the present war a struggle for a just and secure peace, or only for a
new balance of power? If it be only a struggle for a new balance of
power, who will guarantee, who can guarantee, the stable equilibrium of
the new arrangement? Only a tranquil Europe can be a stable Europe.
There must be, not a balance of power, but a community of power; not
organized rivalries, but an organized common peace.
Fortunately we have received very explicit assurances on this point. The
statesmen of both of the groups of nations now arrayed against one
another have said, in terms that could not be misinterpreted, that it
was no part of the purpose they had in mind to crush their antagonists.
But the implications of these assurances may not be equally clear to
all,--may not be the same on both sides of the water. I think it will be
serviceable if I attempt to set forth what we understand them to be.
They imply, first of all, that it must be a peace without victory. It is
not pleasant to say this. I beg that I may be permitted to put my own
interpretation upon it and that it may be understood that no other
interpretation was in my thought. I am seeking only to face realities
and to face them without soft concealments. Victory would mean peace
forced upon the loser, a victor's terms imposed upon the vanquished. It
would be accepted in humiliation, under duress, at an intolerable
sacrifice, and would leave a sting, a resentment, a bitter memory upon
which terms of peace would rest, not permanently, but only as upon
quicksand. Only a peace between equals can last. Only a peace the very
principle of which is equality and a common participation in a common
benefit. The right state of mind, the right feeling between nations, is
as necessary for a lasting peace as is the just settlement of vexed
questions of territory or of racial and national allegiance.
The equality of nations upon which peace must be founded if it is to
last must be an equality of rights; the guarantees exchanged must
neither recognize nor imply a difference between big nations and small,
between those that are powerful and those that are weak. Right must be
based upon the common strength, not upon the individual strength, of the
nations upon whose concert peace will depend. Equality of territory or
of resources there of course cannot be; nor any other sort of equality
not gained in the ordinary peaceful and legitimate development of the
peoples themselves. But no one asks or expects anything more than an
equality of rights. Mankind is looking now for freedom of life, not for
equipoises of power.
And there is a deeper thing involved than even equality of right among
organized nations. No peace can last, or ought to last, which does not
recognize and accept the principle that governments derive all their
just powers from the consent of the governed, and that no right anywhere
exists to hand peoples about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they
were property. I take it for granted, for instance, if I may venture
upon a single example, that statesmen everywhere are agreed that there
should be a united, independent, and autonomous Poland, and that
henceforth inviolable security of life, of worship, and of industrial
and social development should be guaranteed to all peoples who have
lived hitherto under the power of governments devoted to a faith and
purpose hostile to their own.
I speak of this, not because of any desire to exalt an abstract
political principle which has always been held very dear by those who
have sought to build up liberty in America, but for the same reason that
I have spoken of the other conditions of peace which seem to me clearly
indispensable,--because I wish frankly to uncover realities. Any peace
which does not recognize and accept this principle will inevitably be
upset. It will not rest upon the affections or the convictions of
mankind. The ferment of spirit of whole populations will fight subtly
and constantly against it, and all the world will sympathize. The world
can be at peace only if its life is stable, and there can be no
stability where the will is in rebellion, where there is not
tranquillity of spirit and a sense of justice, of freedom, and of right.
So far as practicable, moreover, every great people now struggling
towards a full development of its resources and of its powers should be
assured a direct outlet to the great highways of the sea. Where this
cannot be done by the cession of territory, it can no doubt be done by
the neutralization of direct rights of way under the general guarantee
which will assure the peace itself. With a right comity of arrangement
no nation need be shut away from free access to the open paths of the
world's commerce.
And the paths of the sea must alike in law and in fact be free. The
freedom of the seas is the _sine qua non_ of peace, equality, and
cooeperation. No doubt a somewhat radical reconsideration of many of the
rules of international practice hitherto thought to be established may
be necessary in order to make the seas indeed free and common in
practically all circumstances for the use of mankind, but the motive for
such changes is convincing and compelling. There can be no trust or
intimacy between the peoples of the world without them. The free,
constant, unthreatened intercourse of nations is an essential part of
the process of peace and of development. It need not be difficult either
to define or to secure the freedom of the seas if the governments of the
world sincerely desire to come to an agreement concerning it.
It is a problem closely connected with the limitation of naval armaments
and the cooeperation of the navies of the world in keeping the seas at
once free and safe. And the question of limiting naval armaments opens
the wider and perhaps more difficult question of the limitation of
armies and of all programs of military preparation. Difficult and
delicate as these questions are, they must be faced with the utmost
candor and decided in a spirit of real accommodation if peace is to come
with healing in its wings, and come to stay. Peace cannot be had without
concession and sacrifice. There can be no sense of safety and equality
among the nations if great preponderating armaments are henceforth to
continue here and there to be built up and maintained. The statesmen of
the world must plan for peace and nations must adjust and accommodate
their policy to it as they have planned for war and made ready for
pitiless contest and rivalry. The question of armaments, whether on land
or sea, is the most immediately and intensely practical question
connected with the future fortunes of nations and of mankind.
I have spoken upon these great matters without reserve and with the
utmost explicitness because it has seemed to me to be necessary if the
world's yearning desire for peace was anywhere to find free voice and
utterance. Perhaps I am the only person in high authority amongst all
the peoples of the world who is at liberty to speak and hold nothing
back. I am speaking as an individual, and yet I am speaking also, of
course, as the responsible head of a great government, and I feel
confident that I have said what the people of the United States would
wish me to say. May I not add that I hope and believe that I am in
effect speaking for liberals and friends of humanity in every nation and
of every program of liberty? I would fain believe that I am speaking for
the silent mass of mankind everywhere who have as yet had no place or
opportunity to speak their real hearts out concerning the death and ruin
they see to have come already upon the persons and the homes they hold
most dear.
And in holding out the expectation that the people and Government of the
United States will join the other civilized nations of the world in
guaranteeing the permanence of peace upon such terms as I have named I
speak with the greater boldness and confidence because it is clear to
every man who can think that there is in this promise no breach in
either our traditions or our policy as a nation, but a fulfilment,
rather, of all that we have professed or striven for.
I am proposing, as it were, that the nations should with one accord
adopt the doctrine of President Monroe as the doctrine of the world:
that no nation should seek to extend its polity over any other nation or
people, but that every people should be left free to determine its own
polity, its own way of development, unhindered, unthreatened, unafraid,
the little along with the great and powerful.
I am proposing that all nations henceforth avoid entangling alliances
which would draw them into competitions of power, catch them in a net of
intrigue and selfish rivalry, and disturb their own affairs with
influences intruded from without. There is no entangling alliance in a
concert of power. When all unite to act in the same sense and with the
same purpose all act in the common interest and are free to live their
own lives under a common protection.
I am proposing government by the consent of the governed; that freedom
of the seas which in international conference after conference
representatives of the United States have urged with the eloquence of
those who are the convinced disciples of liberty; and that moderation of
armaments which makes of armies and navies a power for order merely, not
an instrument of aggression or of selfish violence.
These are American principles, American policies. We could stand for no
others. And they are also the principles and policies of forward looking
men and women everywhere, of every modern nation, of every enlightened
community. They are the principles of mankind and must prevail.