Once more, as repeatedly before, the spokesmen of the Central Empires
have indicated their desire to discuss the objects of the war and the
possible bases of a general peace. Parleys have been in progress at
Brest-Litovsk between Russian representatives and representatives of the
Central Powers to which the attention of all the belligerents has been
invited for the purpose of ascertaining whether it may be possible to
extend these parleys into a general conference with regard to terms of
peace and settlement. The Russian representatives presented not only a
perfectly definite statement of the principles upon which they would be
willing to conclude peace but also an equally definite program of the
concrete application of those principles. The representatives of the
Central Powers, on their part, presented an outline of settlement which,
if much less definite, seemed susceptible of liberal interpretation
until their specific program of practical terms was added. That program
proposed no concessions at all either to the sovereignty of Russia or to
the preferences of the populations with whose fortunes it dealt, but
meant, in a word, that the Central Empires were to keep every foot of
territory their armed forces had occupied,--every province, every city,
every point of vantage,--as a permanent addition to their territories
and their power. It is a reasonable conjecture that the general
principles of settlement which they at first suggested originated with
the more liberal statesmen of Germany and Austria, the men who have
begun to feel the force of their own peoples' thought and purpose, while
the concrete terms of actual settlement came from the military leaders
who have no thought but to keep what they have got. The negotiations
have been broken off. The Russian representatives were sincere and in
earnest. They cannot entertain such proposals of conquest and
domination.
The whole incident is full of significance. It is also full of
perplexity. With whom are the Russian representatives dealing? For whom
are the representatives of the Central Empires speaking? Are they
speaking for the majorities of their respective parliaments or for the
minority parties, that military and imperialistic minority which has so
far dominated their whole policy and controlled the affairs of Turkey
and of the Balkan states which have felt obliged to become their
associates in this war? The Russian representatives have insisted, very
justly, very wisely, and in the true spirit of modern democracy, that
the conferences they have been holding with the Teutonic and Turkish
statesmen should be held within open, not closed, doors, and all the
world has been audience, as was desired. To whom have we been listening,
then? To those who speak the spirit and intention of the Resolutions of
the German Reichstag of the ninth of July last, the spirit and intention
of the liberal leaders and parties of Germany, or to those who resist
and defy that spirit and intention and insist upon conquest and
subjugation? Or are we listening, in fact, to both, unreconciled and in
open and hopeless contradiction? These are very serious and pregnant
questions. Upon the answer to them depends the peace of the world.
But, whatever the results of the parleys at Brest-Litovsk, whatever the
confusions of counsel and of purpose in the utterances of the spokesmen
of the Central Empires, they have again attempted to acquaint the world
with their objects in the war and have again challenged their
adversaries to say what their objects are and what sort of settlement
they would deem just and satisfactory. There is no good reason why that
challenge should not be responded to, and responded to with the utmost
candor. We did not wait for it. Not once, but again and again, we have
laid our whole thought and purpose before the world, not in general
terms only, but each time with sufficient definition to make it clear
what sort of definitive terms of settlement must necessarily spring out
of them. Within the last week Mr. Lloyd George has spoken with admirable
candor and in admirable spirit for the people and Government of Great
Britain. There is no confusion of counsel among the adversaries of the
Central Powers, no uncertainty of principle, no vagueness of detail. The
only secrecy of counsel, the only lack of fearless frankness, the only
failure to make definite statement of the objects of the war, lies with
Germany and her Allies. The issues of life and death hang upon these
definitions. No statesman who has the least conception of his
responsibility ought for a moment to permit himself to continue this
tragical and appalling outpouring of blood and treasure unless he is
sure beyond a peradventure that the objects of the vital sacrifice are
part and parcel of the very life of society and that the people for whom
he speaks think them right and imperative as he does.
There is, moreover, a voice calling for these definitions of principle
and of purpose which is, it seems to me, more thrilling and more
compelling than any of the many moving voices with which the troubled
air of the world is filled. It is the voice of the Russian people. They
are prostrate and all but helpless, it would seem, before the grim power
of Germany, which has hitherto known no relenting and no pity. Their
power, apparently, is shattered. And yet their soul is not subservient.
They will not yield either in principle or in action. Their conception
of what is right, of what it is humane and honorable for them to accept,
has been stated with a frankness, a largeness of view, a generosity of
spirit, and a universal human sympathy which must challenge the
admiration of every friend of mankind; and they have refused to compound
their ideals or desert others that they themselves may be safe. They
call to us to say what it is that we desire, in what, if in anything,
our purpose and our spirit differ from theirs; and I believe that the
people of the United States would wish me to respond, with utter
simplicity and frankness. Whether their present leaders believe it or
not, it is our heartfelt desire and hope that some way may be opened
whereby we may be privileged to assist the people of Russia to attain
their utmost hope of liberty and ordered peace.
It will be our wish and purpose that the processes of peace, when they
are begun, shall be absolutely open and that they shall involve and
permit henceforth no secret understandings of any kind. The day of
conquest and aggrandizement is gone by; so is also the day of secret
covenants entered into in the interest of particular governments and
likely at some unlooked-for moment to upset the peace of the world. It
is this happy fact, now clear to the view of every public man whose
thoughts do not still linger in an age that is dead and gone, which
makes it possible for every nation whose purposes are consistent with
justice and the peace of the world to avow now or at any other time the
objects it has in view.
We entered this war because violations of right had occurred which
touched us to the quick and made the life of our own people impossible
unless they were corrected and the world secured once for all against
their recurrence. What we demand in this war, therefore, is nothing
peculiar to ourselves. It is that the world be made fit and safe to live
in; and particularly that it be made safe for every peace-loving nation
which, like our own, wishes to live its own life, determine its own
institutions, be assured of justice and fair dealing by the other
peoples of the world as against force and selfish aggression. All the
peoples of the world are in effect partners in this interest, and for
our own part we see very clearly that unless justice be done to others
it will not be done to us. The program of the world's peace, therefore,
is our program; and that program, the only possible program, as we see
it, is this:
I. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall
be no private international understandings of any kind, but diplomacy
shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.
II. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial
waters, alike in peace and in war, except as the seas may be closed in
whole or in part by international action for the enforcement of
international covenants.
III. The removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the
establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations
consenting to the peace and associating themselves for its maintenance.
IV. Adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will be
reduced to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety.
V. A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all
colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in
determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the
populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims
of the government whose title is to be determined.
VI. The evacuation of all Russian territory and such a settlement of all
questions affecting Russia as will secure the best and freest
cooeperation of the other nations of the world in obtaining for her an
unhampered and unembarrassed opportunity for the independent
determination of her own political development and national policy and
assure her of a sincere welcome into the society of free nations under
institutions of her own choosing; and, more than a welcome, assistance
also of every kind that she may need and may herself desire. The
treatment accorded Russia by her sister nations in the months to come
will be the acid test of their good will, of their comprehension of her
needs as distinguished from their own interests, and of their
intelligent and unselfish sympathy.
VII. Belgium, the whole world will agree, must be evacuated and
restored, without any attempt to limit the sovereignty which she enjoys
in common with all other free nations. No other single act will serve as
this will serve to restore confidence among the nations in the laws
which they have themselves set and determined for the government of
their relations with one another. Without this healing act the whole
structure and validity of international law is forever impaired.
VIII. All French territory should be freed and the invaded portions
restored, and the wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter
of Alsace-Lorraine, which has unsettled the peace of the world for
nearly fifty years, should be righted, in order that peace may once more
be made secure in the interest of all.
IX. A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along
clearly recognizable lines of nationality.
X. The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish
to see safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the freest
opportunity of autonomous development.
XI. Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro should be evacuated; occupied
territories restored; Serbia accorded free and secure access to the sea;
and the relations of the several Balkan states to one another determined
by friendly counsel along historically established lines of allegiance
and nationality; and international guarantees of the political and
economic independence and territorial integrity of the several Balkan
states should be entered into.
XII. The Turkish portions of the present Ottoman Empire should be
assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now
under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and
an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development and the
Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a free passage to the ships
and commerce of all nations under international guarantees.
XIII. An independent Polish state should be erected which should include
the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which
should be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose
political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be
guaranteed by international covenant.
XIV. A general association of nations must be formed under specific
covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political
independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.
In regard to these essential rectifications of wrong and assertions of
right we feel ourselves to be intimate partners of all the governments
and peoples associated together against the Imperialists. We cannot be
separated in interest or divided in purpose. We stand together until the
end.
For such arrangements and covenants we are willing to fight and to
continue to fight until they are achieved; but only because we wish the
right to prevail and desire a just and stable peace such as can be
secured only by removing the chief provocations to war, which this
program does remove. We have no jealousy of German greatness, and there
is nothing in this program that impairs it. We grudge her no achievement
or distinction of learning or of pacific enterprise such as have made
her record very bright and very enviable. We do not wish to injure her
or to block in any way her legitimate influence or power. We do not wish
to fight her either with arms or with hostile arrangements of trade if
she is willing to associate herself with us and the other peace-loving
nations of the world in covenants of justice and law and fair dealing.
We wish her only to accept a place of equality among the peoples of the
world,--the new world in which we now live,--instead of a place of
mastery.
Neither do we presume to suggest to her any alteration or modification
of her institutions. But it is necessary, we must frankly say, and
necessary as a preliminary to any intelligent dealings with her on our
part, that we should know whom her spokesmen speak for when they speak
to us, whether for the Reichstag majority or for the military party and
the men whose creed is imperial domination.
We have spoken now, surely, in terms too concrete to admit of any
further doubt or question. An evident principle runs through the whole
program I have outlined. It is the principle of justice to all peoples
and nationalities, and their right to live on equal terms of liberty and
safety with one another, whether they be strong or weak. Unless this
principle be made its foundation no part of the structure of
international justice can stand. The people of the United States could
act upon no other principle; and to the vindication of this principle
they are ready to devote their lives, their honor, and everything that
they possess. The moral climax of this the culminating and final war for
human liberty has come, and they are ready to put their own strength,
their own highest purpose, their own integrity and devotion to the test.