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.