We shall regard the war only as won when the German people say to us,
through properly accredited representatives, that they are ready to
agree to a settlement based upon justice and the reparation of the
wrongs their rulers have done. They have done a wrong to Belgium
which must be repaired. They have established a power over other
lands and peoples than their own--over the great empire of
Austria-Hungary, over hitherto free Balkan states, over Turkey, and
within Asia--which must be relinquished.
Germany's success by skill, by industry, by knowledge, by enterprise,
we did not grudge or oppose, but admired rather. She had built up for
herself a real empire of trade and influence, secured by the peace of
the world. We were content to abide the rivalries of manufacture,
science and commerce that were involved for us in her success, and
stand or fall as we had or did not have the brains and the initiative
to surpass her. But at the moment when she had conspicuously won her
triumphs of peace she threw them away to establish in their stead
what the world will no longer permit to be established--military and
political domination by arms, by which to oust where she could not
excel the rivals she most feared and hated.
The peace we make must remedy that wrong. It must deliver the once
fair lands and happy peoples of Belgium and northern France from the
Prussian conquest and the Prussian menace, but it must also deliver
the peoples of Austria-Hungary, the peoples of the Balkans, and the
peoples of Turkey, alike in Europe and in Asia, from the impudent and
alien domination of the Prussian military and commercial autocracy.
We owe it, however, to ourselves to say that we do not wish in any
way to impair or to rearrange the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It is no
affair of ours what they do with their own life, either industrially
or politically. We do not purpose nor desire to dictate to them in
any way. We only desire to see that their affairs are left in their
own hands, in all matters, great or small. We shall hope to secure
for the peoples of the Balkan peninsula and for the people of the
Turkish Empire the right and opportunity to make their own lives
safe, their own fortunes secure against oppression or injustice and
from the dictation of foreign courts or parties, and our attitude and
purpose with regard to Germany herself are of a like kind.