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 rights
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 people 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.