It is a problem closely connected with the limitation of naval
armaments and the cooperation 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
armies 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 among 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.