The position of America in this war is so clearly avowed that no man
can be excused for mistaking it. She seeks no material profit or
aggrandizement of any kind. She is fighting for no advantage or
selfish object of her own, but for the liberation of peoples
everywhere from the aggressions of autocratic force. The ruling
classes in Germany have begun of late to profess a like liberality
and justice of purpose, but only to preserve the power they have set
up in Germany and the selfish advantages which they have wrongly
gained for themselves and their private projects of power all the way
from Berlin to Bagdad and beyond. Government after Government has, by
their influence, without open conquest of its territory, been linked
together in a net of intrigue directed against nothing less than the
peace and liberty of the world. The meshes of that intrigue must be
broken, but cannot be broken unless wrongs already done are undone;
and adequate measures must be taken to prevent it from ever again
being rewoven or repaired.
Of course the Imperial German Government and those whom it is using
for their own undoing are seeking to obtain pledges that the war will
end in the restoration of the _status quo ante_. It was the
_status quo ante_ out of which this iniquitous war issued forth,
the power of the Imperial German Government within the empire and its
widespread domination and influence outside of that empire. That
status must be altered in such fashion as to prevent any such hideous
thing from ever happening again.