They call to us to say what it is that we desire--in what, if in
anything, our purpose and our spirit differ from theirs; and I
believe that the people of the United States would wish me to respond
with utter simplicity and frankness. Whether their present leaders
believe it or not, it is our heartfelt desire and hope that some way
may be opened whereby we may be privileged to assist the people of
Russia to attain their utmost hope of liberty and ordered peace.
It will be our wish and purpose that the processes of peace, when
they are begun, shall be absolutely open, and that they shall involve
and permit henceforth no secret understandings of any kind. The day
of conquest and aggrandizement is gone by; so is also the day of
secret covenants entered into in the interest of particular
governments and likely, at some unlooked-for moment, to upset the
peace of the world. It is this happy fact, now clear to the view of
every public man whose thoughts do not still linger in an age that is
dead and gone, which makes it possible for every nation whose
purposes are consistent with justice and the peace of the world to
avow now, or at any other time, the objects it has in view.
We entered this war because violations of right had occurred which
touched us to the quick and made the life of our own people
impossible unless they were corrected and the world secured once for
all against their recurrence. What we demand in this war, therefore,
is nothing peculiar to ourselves. It is that the world be made fit
and safe to live in; and particularly that it be made safe for every
peace-loving nation which, like our own, wishes to live its own life,
determine its own institutions, be assured of justice and fair
dealing by the other peoples of the world as against force and
selfish aggression. All the peoples of the world are in effect
partners in this interest, and for our own part we see very clearly
that unless justice be done to others it will not be done to us.