When on March 4, 1913, Woodrow Wilson became President of the United States, the American mind was far from thoughts of war and peace. Though for two decades Americans had enjoyed both the material and the emotional satisfactions of imperialist expansion, they had not yet fully accepted the limitations and responsibilities that accompany predominance in world affairs. The acquisition of a colonial empire had marked the formal abandonment of isolationism, but few were aware that now the nation’s destiny might be determined in the chancelleries of the world. Most Americans were still provincial enough to believe that they could assume and divest themselves of the burden of world leadership at will, and in the heat of the 1912 Presidential campaign national energies were once again directed toward domestic issues to the exclusion of any real concern for international interests and commitments. Indeed, while Wilson’s Inaugural Address solemnly pointed the way to national reconstruction, it contained not a single reference to America’s relations with foreign nations or to the seething troubles of the world at large.
Nevertheless, foreign affairs became a major concern of Wilson’s administration. From his first days in office there raged a bitter quarrel with Mexico’s revolutionary leaders which frequently threatened to erupt into war. And the vulnerability of America’s new position of power was strikingly demonstrated by her inability to remain aloof from the world conflict precipitated in the summer of 1914 by the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, heir apparent to the Austro-Hungarian throne. Wilson immediately issued a Proclamation of Neutrality, and at first the European conflagration seemed of small concern to a distant people intent upon domestic reform. Eventually, however, America’s involvement in the stakes of world diplomacy proved stronger than the illusion of isolation, and in April 1917, after several years of vacillation and confusion, she entered the war on the side of the Allies.
No single factor of itself “caused” America to fight, though British propaganda, American economic ties to the Allies, and unrestricted German submarine warfare all played significant roles in leading the nation on the road to war. And in molding American opinion even the outstanding success of British propaganda depended largely upon Americans’ latent sympathy with the Allied cause. Numbers of German-Americans supported the Fatherland, and many citizens of Irish extraction bitterly and continuously denounced the British, but from the very beginning of the war public opinion was for the most part decidedly pro-Ally. The subtle bonds of language, custom, and a common literary and political heritage tied America more closely to England in war than ever before in peace; while traditional attachment to the French was fostered by recollections of France’s gallant contributions to the American Revolution. The stage was set, then, for a widespread propaganda campaign designed to maneuver a cautious but sympathetic public into war. Throughout the nation British-inspired articles, speeches, lectures, debates, and films argued the case against Germany. From college presidents to practicing journalists influential persons in every profession were enlisted to add an aura of validity to even the most outrageously false atrocity stories of German brutality. And Americans were assured on every hand that Germany alone was responsible for a war which ostensibly was a struggle between democracy and civilization on the one side and autocracy and barbarism on the other. Besides, Germany’s feeble propaganda effort proved highly ineffective. It was handicapped both by an inability to grasp American modes of thought and by the bald facts that the Kaiser’s troops did openly violate Belgian neutrality, that a German U-boat did torpedo the Lusitania with the loss of hundreds of lives, and that German espionage agents did attempt sabotage in American munitions plants. Thus the efficient British propaganda machine impressed upon the American mind stereotypes of German motives and ambitions that went far to prepare the nation psychologically for war against the aggressive “Hun.”
Extensive business and financial ties to the Allies further jeopardized American neutrality, for they made the prospect of a German victory materially as well as ideologically unpalatable. When the war began, it had been clear to Wilson and to William Jennings Bryan, his Secretary of State, that economic involvement with either of the belligerents might compromise the nation’s neutral status and lead to war. At first, therefore, the government refused to sanction loans by American bankers to the warring powers. But the President vigorously opposed an embargo that would have cut off altogether shipments abroad, and cash or credit purchases, whether of contraband or noncontraband, could still be made. Though forced to liquidate a large part of their assets in the United States to pay for these goods, the Allies alone benefited from Wilson’s open policy, for control of the seas enabled them to transport foodstuffs and munitions to their own forces and to prevent neutral and enemy vessels alike from reaching Germany with American cargoes. Soon, however, Allied assets and credits in the United States were exhausted by tremendous expenditures, and Wilson was faced with an unhappy choice. If he reversed his earlier position and now approved of large-scale private loans to the Allies to finance continued purchases of American goods, he would skirt the edge of belligerency and endanger American neutrality. Yet if he refused to permit these loans, not only would the Allied cause be seriously endangered, but the national economy, largely geared to war demands, would suffer serious dislocation and depression. Under intense pressure from a frightened business community and from Allied sympathizers among his advisers (the pacific and impartial Bryan had already resigned from the Cabinet), Wilson finally made his fateful choice to withdraw the government’s opposition to private loans for the belligerents. And by the spring of 1917, when the United States formally entered the World War, Americans had already loaned approximately two billion dollars to the Allies (though only $27 million to Germany) and had made their economy even more dependent upon Allied purchases of war material. The nation’s economic stake in an Allied victory had grown enormously; with this huge investment, though not necessarily because of it, had come war.
Still, whatever the underlying causes of America’s ultimate readiness to join forces with the Allies, it was the German U-boat that immediately plunged the nation into war. Mistress of the seas, England had again and again taken liberties with American neutral rights in her efforts to blockade the Central Powers; she had arbitrarily declared the North Sea a military zone, making that vital trade area largely inaccessible to neutral shipping; she had forced countless American ships to distant ports for visit and search; and under a vastly extended contraband list she had seized American cargoes bound directly or indirectly (through other neutral countries) for Germany. Yet British depredations had not taken American lives; American shippers had been generously compensated for their property losses; and though the State Department went through the formality of protesting these high-handed practices, the emotional and economic ties between the two countries were far too close to permit even the threat of retaliation.
On the other hand, German violations of American rights were received very differently, for here there was no reservoir of friendship and interest to temper national indignation. Early in 1915 Germany proclaimed a submarine war zone around the British Isles in order to counter the Allied blockade, warning that enemy ships would be torpedoed on sight. But now the American government refused to acquiesce as timidly as it had with the British earlier. Instead it continued to permit its citizens unlimited travel aboard Allied ships in the restricted zone, ominously declaring that Germany alone would be held to “strict accountability” if American lives or property were lost.
Submarine warfare very quickly took its toll. On May 7, 1915, a British liner, the Lusitania, was torpedoed and sunk without warning, with the loss of nearly 1,200 persons, over 100 of whom were Americans. Other American lives and ships were lost during the year that followed, and though Wilson himself insisted that “There is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight,” the bitterness and seeming finality of American protests led the Germans, on May 4, 1916, to pledge that unresisting merchantmen would not be sunk without warning and adequate provision for passengers and crew. But eight months later, in January 1917, Germany announced that unrestricted submarine warfare would resume immediately and that U-boats would torpedo all ships, whether neutral or belligerent, found in the war zone. The logic behind this new position was clear, though mistaken. The German High Command had recognized that such a policy would be followed by war with the great Western power, but it was equally convinced that in the near future America could not aid the Allies any more as an active belligerent than she had as a “benevolent” neutral, for now German U-boats would be totally unrestricted in their efforts to send American cargoes to the bottom of the sea. Then on April 2, 1917, after several more American ships had been torpedoed, Woodrow Wilson appeared before the Congress to take up the German challenge. “Property can be paid for,” said the President in his memorable war message, but “the lives of peaceful and innocent people cannot be. The present German submarine warfare against commerce is a warfare against mankind.” Four days later the Congress acceded to the President’s request, and war was declared against Germany.
Wilson’s own role in molding America’s final decision to enter the war is difficult to evaluate, for at no time was the austere reformer free from tormenting conflict on the grave issue before him. As an historian, Wilson was familiar enough with the ways of international power politics to see through many of the Allied propaganda claims, and when the war began in Europe he called upon the American people to be “impartial in thought as well as in action” so that the nation might maintain absolute neutrality between the belligerents. Even as late as the presidential election of 1916, when the Republican Charles Evans Hughes opposed Wilson, the Democrats were able to make effective use of the slogan “He kept us out of war.” But official proclamations could not change, nor even disguise, Wilson’s own deep involvement with the Allied cause. His broad sympathy for the English and his intense feeling that the Allies were fighting “our fight” far outweighed his dim and merely intellectual awareness of the war’s imperialist origins. Yet even these fervid sympathies did not permit him fully and satisfactorily to resolve his personal inner conflict between the choices of war and peace, for the controlled and puritanical President was not capable of lightly brushing aside his understanding and totally succumbing to his feelings. At length, of course, he chose war, but not without the gravest of misgivings engendered both by his somewhat reluctant recognition of the essentially nonideological nature of the world struggle and by his basic antipathy to war itself. To a less scrupulous, less self-demanding statesman such misgivings would have brought balance and humility; but to the perfectionist Wilson they brought only confusion and a tortured sense of guilt which convinced him that the war must be a holy crusade to “make the world safe for democracy.”
Earlier Wilson had called for a “peace without victory”; now he placed America’s physical and moral might behind his famous Fourteen Points for a just and lasting peace. Wilson’s Fourteenth Point, providing for a “general association of nations . . . for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike,” was the cornerstone of his plans for international order. And when the Treaty of Versailles was drawn up at the end of the war Wilson made several concessions in his other idealistic demands in order to assure the creation of a meaningful League of Nations. These concessions to Clemenceau of France, Lloyd George of England, and Orlando of Italy were to no avail, however, for it was the Republican leaders of the United States Senate, not the nationalist statesmen of Europe, who fought most bitterly against Wilson’s League and who contributed to its ultimate defeat by refusing American participation.
Doubtlessly partisanship played a decisive role in formulating Congressional opposition to the League. Those “irreconcilable” isolationists who bitterly opposed American participation in any formal international organization were alone too few to prevent the two-thirds Senate vote necessary for ratification of the Treaty of Versailles, into which was written the Covenant of the League of Nations. Indeed, Wilson’s leading Republican opponent, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Chairman of the powerful Committee on Foreign Relations, had only a few years earlier heartily endorsed a league to enforce peace. But the Treaty before the Senate was exclusively Wilsonian and Democratic, and the Massachusetts Republican was determined either to defeat Wilson’s creation or, preferably, to make it over into a Republican document through extensive reservations and amendments. Wilson was equally determined to have the treaty as it stood or not at all. Neither man was willing to give way to the other. In November, 1919, and again in March 1920, moderate Republicans joined with the hard core of Senate isolationists to defeat the Treaty without the Lodge reservations. And Wilson Democrats, obeying their intransigent chief’s wishes, joined with these same isolationists to defeat the Treaty with the Lodge reservations.
Thus Wilson must share with Lodge and his followers much of the responsibility for the defeat of the Treaty and the League in the Senate. Sincerely convinced that only a totally unqualified League could justify and atone for the death and destruction brought by the holocaust to which he had himself committed the nation, Wilson had lost all sense of political necessity. Late in 1918, on the very eve of victory, he had made a foolishly partisan appeal to the country to elect a Democratic Congress, implying that only the party in power might successfully end the war and make peace secure; and the nation had replied by electing a Republican House and a Republican Senate. When he went to Europe later that year Wilson took only one Republican adviser, and not a single Senator, to the Versailles Peace Conference, thereby antagonizing not only an already highly aroused opposition party, but also the legislative body that must ultimately accept or reject whatever treaty he might bring home. Finally, in the summer of 1919 Wilson took his case to the country in an exhausting round of speeches, of which the most moving was his address at Pueblo, Colorado, where he finally succumbed to physical exhaustion and suffered a near-fatal stroke. But the President had unfortunately forgotten the role of compromise in the democratic process, and his efforts were in vain. The irony of Wilson’s Presidency was that the domestic reformer should have been so completely caught up in the embroilments of world affairs. Its supreme tragedy was that his own single-minded devotion to the establishment of the machinery of international cooperation—exactly as he had conceived it, without reservation or amendment—should have helped destroy the lasting peace for which he had fought so valiantly and which he considered a personal as much as a national imperative.
Gentlemen of the Congress: I have called the Congress into extraordinary session because there are serious, very serious, choices of policy to be made, and made immediately, which it was neither right nor constitutionally permissible that I should assume the responsibility of making.
On the third of February last I officially laid before you the extraordinary announcement of the Imperial German Government that on and after the first day of February it was its purpose to put aside all restraints of law or of humanity and use its submarines to sink every vessel that sought to approach either the ports of Great Britain and Ireland or the western coasts of Europe or any of the ports controlled by the enemies of Germany within the Mediterranean. That had seemed to be the object of the German submarine warfare earlier in the war, but since April of last year the Imperialist Government had somewhat restrained the commanders of its undersea craft in conformity with its promise then given to us that passenger boats should not be sunk and that due warning would be given to all other vessels which its submarines might seek to destroy, when no resistance was offered or escape attempted, and care taken that their crews were given at least a fair chance to save their lives in their open boats. The precautions taken were meagre and haphazard enough, as was proved in distressing instance after instance in the progress of the cruel and unmanly business, but a certain degree of restraint was observed. The new policy has swept every restriction aside. Vessels of every kind, whatever their flag, their character, their cargo, their destination, their errand, have been ruthlessly sent to the bottom without warning and without thought of help or mercy for those on board, the vessels of friendly neutrals along with those of belligerents. Even hospital ships and ships carrying relief to the sorely bereaved and stricken people of Belgium, though the latter were provided with safe conduct through the proscribed areas by the German Government itself and were distinguished by unmistakable marks of identity, have been sunk with the same reckless lack of compassion or of principle.
I was for a little while unable to believe that such things would in fact be done by any government that had hitherto subscribed to the humane practices of civilized nations. International law had its origin in the attempt to set up some law which would be respected and observed upon the seas, where no nation had right of dominion and where lay the free highways of the world. By painful stage after stage has that law been built up, with meagre enough results, indeed, after all was accomplished that could be accomplished, but always with a clear view, at least, of what the heart and conscience of mankind demanded. This minimum of right the German Government has swept aside under the plea of retaliation and necessity and because it had no weapons which it could use at sea except these which it is impossible to employ as it is employing them without throwing to the winds all scruples of humanity or of respect for the understandings that were supposed to underlie the intercourse of the world. I am not now thinking of the loss of property involved, immense and serious as that is, but only of the wanton and wholesale destruction of the lives of non-combatants, men, women, and children, engaged in pursuits which have always, even in the darkest periods of modern history, been deemed innocent and legitimate. Property can be paid for; the lives of peaceful and innocent people cannot be. The present German submarine warfare against commerce is a warfare against mankind. . . .
When I addressed the Congress on the twenty-sixth of February last I thought that it would suffice to assert our neutral rights with arms, our right to use the seas against unlawful interference, our right to keep our people safe against unlawful violence. But armed neutrality, it now appears, is impracticable. Because submarines are in effect outlaws when used as the German submarines have been used against merchant shipping, it is impossible to defend ships against their attacks as the law of nations has assumed that merchantmen would defend themselves against privateers or cruisers, visible craft giving chase upon the open sea. It is common prudence in such circumstances, grim necessity indeed, to endeavour to destroy them before they have shown their own intention. They must be dealt with upon sight, if dealt with at all. The German Government denies the right of neutrals to use arms at all within the areas of the sea which it has proscribed, even in the defense of rights which no modern publicist has ever before questioned their right to defend. The intimation is conveyed that the armed guards which we have placed on our merchant ships will be treated as beyond the pale of law and subject to be dealt with as pirates would be. Armed neutrality is ineffectual enough at best; in such circumstances and in the face of such pretensions it is worse than ineffectual: it is likely only to produce what it was meant to prevent; it is practically certain to draw us into the war without either the rights or the effectiveness of belligerents. There is one choice we cannot make, we are incapable of making: we will not choose the path of submission and suffer the most sacred rights of our nation and our people to be ignored or violated. The wrongs against which we now array ourselves are no common wrongs; they cut to the very roots of human life.
With a profound sense of the solemn and even tragical character of the step I am taking and of the grave responsibilities which it involves, but in unhesitating obedience to what I deem my constitutional duty, I advise that the Congress declare the recent course of the Imperial German Government to be in fact nothing less than war against the Government and people of the United States; that it formally accept the status of belligerent which has thus been thrust upon it; and that it take immediate steps not only to put the country in a more thorough state of defense but also to exert all its power and employ all its resources to bring the Government of the German Empire to terms and end the war. . . .
While we do these things, these deeply momentous things, let us be very clear, and make very clear to all the world what our motives and our objects are. My own thought has not been driven from its habitual and normal course by the unhappy events of the last two months, and I do not believe that the thought of the nation has been altered or clouded by them. I have exactly the same things in mind now that I had in mind when I addressed the Senate on the twenty-second of January last; the same that I had in mind when I addressed the Congress on the third of February and on the twenty-sixth of February. Our object now, as then, is to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the life of the world as against selfish and autocratic power and to set up amongst the really free and self-governed peoples of the world such a concert of purpose and of action as will henceforth ensure the observance of those principles. Neutrality is no longer feasible or desirable where the peace of the world is involved and the freedom of its peoples, and the menace to that peace and freedom lies in the existence of autocratic governments backed by organized force which is controlled wholly by their will, not by the will of their people. We have seen the last of neutrality in such circumstances. We are at the beginning of an age in which it will be insisted that the same standards of conduct and of responsibility for wrong done shall be observed among nations and their governments that are observed among the individual citizens of civilized states.
We have no quarrel with the German people. We have no feeling towards them but one of sympathy and friendship. It was not upon their impulse that their government acted in entering the war. It was not with their previous knowledge or approval. It was a war determined upon as wars used to be determined upon in the old, unhappy days when peoples were nowhere consulted by their rulers and wars were provoked and waged in the interest of dynasties or of little groups of ambitious men who were accustomed to use their fellow men as pawns and tools. Self-governed nations do not fill their neighbour states with spies or set the course of intrigue to bring about some critical posture of affairs which will give them an opportunity to strike and make conquest. Such designs can be successfully worked out only under cover and where no one has the right to ask questions. Cunningly contrived plans of deception or aggression, carried, it may be, from generation to generation, can be worked out and kept from the light only within the privacy of courts or behind the carefully guarded confidences of a narrow and privileged class. They are happily impossible where public opinion commands and insists upon full information concerning all the nation’s affairs.
A steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained except by a partnership of democratic nations. No autocratic government could be trusted to keep faith within it or observe its covenants. It must be a league of honour, a partnership of opinion. Intrigue would eat its vitals away; the plottings of inner circles who could plan what they would and render account to no one would be a corruption seated at its very heart. Only free peoples can hold their purpose and their honour steady to a common end and prefer the interests of mankind to any narrow interest of their own. . . .
We are accepting this challenge of hostile purpose because we know that in such a government, following such methods, we can never have a friend; and that in the presence of its organized power, always lying in wait to accomplish we know not what purpose, there can be no assured security for the democratic governments of the world. We are now about to accept gauge of battle with this natural foe to liberty and shall, if necessary, spend the whole force of the nation to check and nullify its pretensions and its power. We are glad, now that we see the facts with no veil of false pretence about them, to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its peoples, the German peoples included: for the rights of nations great and small and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and of obedience. The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of nations can make them.
Just because we fight without rancour and without selfish object, seeking nothing for ourselves but what we shall wish to share with all free peoples, we shall, I feel confident, conduct our operations as belligerents without passion and ourselves observe with proud punctilio the principles of right and of fair play we profess to be fighting for. . . .
It will be all the easier for us to conduct ourselves as belligerents in a high spirit of right and fairness because we act without animus, not in enmity towards a people or with the desire to bring any injury or disadvantage upon them, but only in armed opposition to an irresponsible government which has thrown aside all considerations of humanity and of right and is running amuck. We are, let me say again, the sincere friends of the German people, and shall desire nothing so much as the early re-establishment of intimate relations of mutual advantage between us—however hard it may be for them, for the time being, to believe that this is spoken from our hearts. We have borne with their present government through all these bitter months because of that friendship—exercising a patience and forbearance which would otherwise have been impossible. We shall, happily, still have an opportunity to prove that friendship in our daily attitude and actions towards the millions of men and women of German birth and native sympathy who live amongst us and share our life, and we shall be proud to prove it towards all who are in fact loyal to their neighbours and to the Government in the hour of test. They are, most of them, as true and loyal Americans as if they had never known any other fealty or allegiance. They will be prompt to stand with us in rebuking and restraining the few who may be of a different mind and purpose. If there should be disloyalty, it will be dealt with with a firm hand of stern repression; but, if it lifts its head at all, it will lift it only here and there and without countenance except from a lawless and malignant few.
It is a distressing and oppressive duty, Gentlemen of the Congress, which I have performed in thus addressing you. There are, it may be, many months of fiery trial and sacrifice ahead of us. It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts—for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free people as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free. To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no other.
Gentlemen of the Congress:
. . . 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. The program of the world’s peace, therefore, is our program; and that program, the only possible program, as we see it is this:
I. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.
II. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in war, except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part by international action for the enforcement of international covenants.
III. The removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace and associating themselves for its maintenance.
IV. Adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will be reduced to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety.
V. A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined.
VI. The evacuation of all Russian territory and such a settlement of all questions affecting Russia as will secure the best and freest coöperation of the other nations of the world in obtaining for her an unhampered and unembarrassed opportunity for the independent determination of her own political development and national policy and assure her of a sincere welcome into the society of free nations under institutions of her own choosing; and, more than a welcome, assistance also of every kind that she may need and may herself desire. The treatment accorded Russia by her sister nations in the months to come will be the acid test of their good will, of their comprehension of her needs as distinguished from their own interests, and of their intelligent and unselfish sympathy.
VII. Belgium, the whole world will agree, must be evacuated and restored, without any attempt to limit the sovereignty which she enjoys in common with all other free nations. No other single act will serve as this will serve to restore confidence among the nations in the laws which they have themselves set and determined for the government of their relations with one another. Without this healing act the whole structure and validity of international law is forever impaired.
VIII. All French territory should be freed and the invaded portions restored, and the wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which has unsettled the peace of the world for nearly fifty years, should be righted, in order that peace may once more be made secure in the interest of all.
IX. A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearly recognizable lines of nationality.
X. The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to see safe-guarded and assured, should be accorded the freest opportunity of autonomous development.
XI. Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro should be evacuated; occupied territories restored; Serbia accorded free and secure access to the sea; and the relations of the several Balkan states to one another determined by friendly counsel along historically established lines of allegiance and nationality; and international guarantees of the political and economic independence and territorial integrity of the several Balkan states should be entered into.
XII. The Turkish portions of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development, and the Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a free passage to the ships and commerce of all nations under international guarantees.
XIII. An independent Polish state should be erected which should include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenant.
XIV. A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.
In regard to these essential rectifications of wrong and assertions of right we feel ourselves to be intimate partners of all the governments and peoples associated together against the Imperialists. We cannot be separated in interest or divided in purpose. We stand together until the end.
For such arrangements and covenants we are willing to fight and to continue to fight until they are achieved; but only because we wish the right to prevail and desire a just and stable peace such as can be secured only by removing the chief provocations to war, which this program does not remove. We have no jealousy of German greatness, and there is nothing in this program that impairs it. We grudge her no achievement or distinction of learning or of pacific enterprise such as have made her record very bright and very enviable. We do not wish to injure her or to block in any way her legitimate influence or power. We do not wish to fight her either with arms or with hostile arrangements of trade if she is willing to associate herself with us and the other peace-loving nations of the world in covenants of justice and law and fair dealing. We wish her only to accept a place of equality among the peoples of the world,—the new world in which we now live,—instead of a place of mastery.
Neither do we presume to suggest to her any alteration or modification of her institutions. But it is necessary, we must frankly say, and necessary as a preliminary to any intelligent dealings with her on our part, that we should know whom her spokesmen speak for when they speak to us, whether for the Reichstag majority or for the military party and the men whose creed is imperial domination.
We have spoken now, surely, in terms too concrete to admit of any further doubt or question. An evident principle runs through the whole program I have outlined. It is the principle of justice to all peoples and nationalities, and their right to live on equal terms of liberty and safety with one another, whether they be strong or weak. Unless this principle be made its foundation no part of the structure of international justice can stand. The people of the United States could act upon no other principle; and to the vindication of this principle they are ready to devote their lives, their honor, and everything that they possess. The moral climax of this the culminating and final war for human liberty has come, and they are ready to put their own strength, their own highest purpose, their own integrity and devotion to the test.
. . . There have been unpleasant impressions as well as pleasant impressions, my fellow citizens, as I have crossed the continent. I have perceived more and more that men have been busy creating an absolutely false impression of what the treaty of peace and the covenant of the League of Nations contain and mean. . . . Therefore, in order to clear away the mists, in order to remove the impressions, in order to check the falsehoods that have clustered around this great subject, I want to tell you a few simple things about the treaty and the covenant.
. . . It is a people’s treaty, that accomplishes by a great sweep of practical justice the liberation of men who never could have liberated themselves, and the power of the most powerful nations has been devoted not to their aggrandizement but to the liberation of people whom they could have put under their control if they had chosen to do so. Not one foot of territory is demanded by the conquerors, not one single item of submission to their authority is demanded by them. The men who sat around that table in Paris knew that the time had come when the people were no longer going to consent to live under masters, but were going to live the lives that they chose themselves, to live under such governments as they chose themselves to erect. That is the fundamental principle of this great settlement. . . .
At the front of this great treaty is put the covenant of the League of Nations. . . . Unless you get the united, concerted purpose and power of the great Governments of the world behind this settlement, it will fall down like a house of cards. There is only one power to put behind the liberation of mankind, and that is the power of mankind. It is the power of the united moral forces of the world, and in the covenant of the League of Nations the moral forces of the world are mobilized. . . . They enter into a solemn promise to one another that they will never use their power against one another for aggression; that they never will impair the territorial integrity of a neighbor; that they never will interfere with the political independence of a neighbor; that they will abide by the principle that great populations are entitled to determine their own destiny and that they will not interfere with that destiny; and that no matter what differences arise amongst them they will never resort to war without first having . . . either submitted the matter of controversy to arbitration, in which case they agree to abide by the result without question or submitted it to the consideration of the Council of the League of Nations . . . agreeing that there shall be six months allowed for the mature consideration of . . . the Council, and agreeing that at the expiration of the six months, even if they are not then ready to accept the advice of the Council with regard to the settlement of the dispute, they will still not go to war for another three months. In other words, they consent, no matter what happens, to submit every matter of difference between them to the judgment of mankind, and just so certainly as they do that, . . . war will be pushed out of the foreground of terror in which it has kept the world for generation after generation, and men will know that there will be a calm time of deliberate counsel. The most dangerous thing for a bad cause is to expose it to the opinion of the world. The most certain way that you can prove that a man is mistaken is by letting all his neighbors know what he thinks, by letting all his neighbors discuss what he thinks, and if he is in the wrong you will notice that he will stay at home, he will not walk on the street. He will be afraid of the eyes of his neighbors. He will be afraid of their judgment of his character. He will know that his cause is lost unless he can sustain it by the arguments of right and of justice. The same law that applies to individuals applies to nations. . . .
When you come to the heart of the covenant, my fellow citizens, you will find . . . there is something in article 10 that you ought to realize and ought to accept or reject. Article 10 is the heart of the whole matter. . . . Article 10 provides that every member of the League covenants to respect and preserve the territorial integrity and existing political independence of every other member of the League as against external aggression. Not against internal disturbance. There was not a man at that table who did not admit the sacredness of the right of self-determination, the sacredness of the right of any body of people to say that they would not continue to live under the Government they were then living under, and under article 11 of the covenant they are given a place to say whether they will live under it or not. For following article 10 is article 11, which makes it the right of any member of the League at any time to call attention to anything, anywhere, that is likely to disturb the peace of the world or the good understanding between nations upon which the peace of the world depends. . . . Now, read articles 10 and 11. You will see that international law is revolutionized by putting morals into it. Article 10 says that no member of the League, and that includes all these nations that have demanded these things unjustly of China, shall impair the territorial integrity or the political independence of any other member of the League. China is going to be a member of the League. Article 11 says that any member of the League can call attention to anything that is likely to disturb the peace of the world or the good understanding between nations, and China is for the first time in the history of mankind afforded a standing before the jury of the world. I, for my part, have a profound sympathy for China, and I am proud to have taken part in an arrangement which promises the protection of the world to the rights of China. The whole atmosphere of the world is changed by a thing like that, my fellow citizens. The whole international practice of the world is revolutionized.
But you will say, “what is the second sentence of article 10? That is what gives very disturbing thoughts.” The second sentence is that the Council of the League shall advise what steps, if any, are necessary to carry out the guaranty of the first sentence, namely, that the members will respect and preserve the territorial integrity and political independence of the other members. I do not know any other meaning for the word “advise” except “advise.” The Council advises, and it can not advise without the vote of the United States. Why gentlemen should fear that the Congress of the United States would be advised to do something that it did not want to do I frankly can not imagine, because they can not even be advised to do anything unless their own representative has participated in the advice. It may be that that will impair somewhat the vigor of the League, but, nevertheless, the fact is so, that we are not obliged to take any advice except our own, which to any man who wants to go his own course is a very satisfactory state of affairs. Every man regards his own advice as best, and I dare say every man mixes his own advice with some thought of his own interest. Whether we use it wisely or unwisely, we can use the vote of the United States to make impossible drawing the United States into any enterprise that she does not care to be drawn into.
Yet article 10 strikes at the taproot of war. Article 10 is a statement that the very things that have always been sought in imperialistic wars are henceforth forgone by every ambitious nation in the world. I would have felt very lonely, my fellow countrymen, and I would have felt very much disturbed if, sitting at the peace table in Paris, I had supposed that I was expounding my own ideas. Whether you believe it or not, I know the relative size of my own ideas; I know how they stand related in bulk and proportion to the moral judgments of my fellow countrymen, and I purposed nothing whatever at the peace table at Paris that I had not sufficiently certain knowledge embodied the moral judgment of the citizens of the United States. I had gone over there with, so to say, explicit instructions. Don’t you remember that we laid down fourteen points which should contain the principles of the settlement? They were not my points. In every one of them I was conscientiously trying to read the thought of the people of the United States, and after I uttered those points I had every assurance given me that could be given me that they did speak the moral judgment of the United States and not my single judgment. . . .
I am dwelling upon these points, my fellow citizens, in spite of the fact that I dare say to most of you they are perfectly well known, because in order to meet the present situation we have got to know what we are dealing with. We are not dealing with the kind of document which this is represented by some gentlemen to be; and inasmuch as we are dealing with a document simon-pure in respect of the very principles we have professed and lived up to, we have got to do one or other of two things—we have got to adopt it or reject it. There is no middle course. You can not go in on a special-privilege basis of your own. I take it that you are too proud to ask to be exempted from responsibilities which the other members of the League will carry. We go in upon equal terms or we do not go in at all; and if we do not go in, my fellow citizens, think of the tragedy of that result—the only sufficient guaranty to the peace of the world withheld! Ourselves drawn apart with that dangerous pride which means that we shall be ready to take care of ourselves, and that means that we shall maintain great standing armies and an irresistible navy; that means we shall have the organization of a military nation; that means we shall have a general staff, with the kind of power that the general staff of Germany had, to mobilize this great manhood of the Nation when it pleases, all the energy of our young men drawn into the thought and preparation for war. What of our pledges to the men that lie dead in France? We said that they went over there, not to prove the prowess of America or her readiness for another war but to see to it that there never was such a war again. It always seems to make it difficult for me to say anything, my fellow citizens, when I think of my clients in this case. My clients are the children; my clients are the next generation. They do not know what promise and bonds I undertook when I ordered the armies of the United States to the soil of France, but I know, and I intend to redeem my pledges to the children; they shall not be sent upon a similar errand.
Again and again, my fellow citizens, mothers who lost their sons in France have come to me and, taking my hand, have shed tears upon it not only, but they had added, “God bless you, Mr. President!” Why, my fellow citizens, should they pray God to bless me? I advised the Congress of the United States to create the situation that led to the death of their sons. I ordered their sons overseas. I consented to their sons being put in the most difficult parts of the battle line, where death was certain, as in the impenetrable difficulties of the forest of Argonne. Why should they weep upon my hand and call down the blessings of God upon me? Because they believe that their boys died for something that vastly transcends any of the immediate and palpable objects of the war. They believe, and they rightly believe, that their sons saved the liberty of the world. They believe that wrapped up with the liberty of the world is the continuous protection of that liberty by the concerted powers of all civilized people. They believe that this sacrifice was made in order that other sons should not be called upon for a similar gift—the gift of life, the gift of all that died—and if we did not see this thing through, if we fulfilled the dearest present wish of Germany and now dissociated ourselves from those alongside whom we fought in the war, would not something of the halo go away from the gun over the mantelpiece, or the sword? Would not the old uniform lose something of its significance? These men were crusaders. They were not going forth to prove the might of the United States. They were going forth to prove the might of justice and right, and all the world accepted them as crusaders, and their transcendent achievement has made all the world believe in America as it believes in no other nation organized in the modern world. There seems to me to stand between us and the rejection or qualification of this treaty the serried ranks of those boys in khaki, not only these boys who came home, but those dear ghosts that still deploy upon the fields of France.
My friends, on last Decoration Day I went to a beautiful hillside near Paris, where was located the cemetery of Suresnes, a cemetery given over to the burial of the American dead. Behind me on the slopes was rank upon rank of living American soldiers, and lying before me upon the levels of the plain was rank upon rank of departed American soldiers. Right by the side of the stand where I spoke there was a little group of French women who had adopted those graves, had made themselves mothers of those dear ghosts by putting flowers every day upon those graves, taking them as their own sons, their own beloved, because they had died in the same cause—France was free and the world was free because America had come! I wish some men in public life who are now opposing the settlement for which these men died could visit such a spot as that. I wish that the thought that comes out of those graves could penetrate their consciousness. I wish that they could feel the moral obligation that rests upon us not to go back on those boys, but to see the thing through, to see it through to the end and make good their redemption of the world. For nothing less depends upon this decision, nothing less than the liberation and salvation of the world. . . .