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
toward 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 cooperation.
No doubt a somewhat radical reconsideration of many of the rules
of international practice hitherto sought 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 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.