Gentlemen
of the Senate:
On
the 18th of December last I addressed an identical note to the governments of
the nations now at war requesting them to state, more definitely than they had
yet been stated by either group of belligerents, the terms upon which they
would deem it possible to make peace. I spoke on behalf of humanity and of the
rights of all neutral nations like our own, many of whose most vital interests
the war puts in constant jeopardy. The Central powers united in a reply which
stated merely that they were ready to meet their antagonists in conference to
discuss terms of peace. The Entente powers have replied much more definitely
and have stated, in general terms, indeed, but with sufficient definiteness to
imply details, the arrangements, guarantees, and acts of reparation which they
deem to be the indispensable conditions of a satisfactory settlement. We are
that much nearer a definite discussion of the peace which shall end the present
war. We are that much nearer the discussion of the international concert which
must thereafter hold the world at peace. In every discussion of the peace that
must end this war it is taken for granted that that peace must be followed by
some definite concert of power which will make it virtually impossible that any
such catastrophe should ever overwhelm us again. Every lover of mankind, every
sane and thoughtful man, must take that for granted.
I
have sought this opportunity to address you because I thought that I owed it to
you, as the council associated with me in the final determination of our
international obligations, to disclose to you without reserve the thought and
purpose that have been taking form in my mind in regard to the duty of our
Government in the days to come when it will be necessary to lay afresh and upon
a new plan the foundations of peace among the nations.
It
is inconceivable that the people of the United States should play no part in
that great enterprise. To take part in such a service will be the opportunity for
which they have sought to prepare themselves by the very principles and
purposes of their polity and the approved practices of their Government ever
since the days when they set up a new nation in the high and honourable hope
that it might in all that it was and did show mankind the way to liberty. They
can not in honour withhold the service to which they are now about to be
challenged. They do not wish to withhold it. But they owe it to themselves and
the other nations of the world to state the conditions under which hey will
feel free to render it....
The
present war must first be ended; but we owe it to candour and to a just regard
for the opinion of mankind to say that, so far as our participation in
guarantees of future peace is concerned, it makes a great deal of difference in
what way and upon what terms it is ended. The treaties and agreements which
bring it to an end must embody terms which will create a peace that is worth
guaranteeing and preserving, a peace that will win the approval of mankind, not
merely a peace that will serve the several interests and immediate aims of the
nations engaged. We shall have no voice in determining what those terms shall
be, but we shall, I feel sure, have a voice in determining whether they shall
be made lasting or not by the guarantees of a universal covenant; and our
judgment upon what is fundamental and essential as a condition precedent to
permanency should be spoken now, not afterwards when it may be too late.
No
covenant of cooperative peace that does not include the peoples of the New
World can suffice to keep the future safe against war; and yet there is only
one sort of peace that the peoples of America could join in guaranteeing. The
elements of that peace must be elements that engage the confidence and satisfy
the principles of the American governments, elements consistent with their
political faith and with the practical convictions which the peoples of America
have once for all embraced and undertaken to defend. . . .
The
terms of the immediate peace agreed upon will determine whether it is a peace
for which such a guarantee can be secured. The question upon which the whole
future peace and policy of the world depends is this: Is the present war a
struggle for a just and secure peace, or only for a new balance of power? If it
be only a struggle for a new balance of power, who will guarantee, who can
guarantee, the stable equilibrium of the new arrangement? Only a tranquil
Europe can be a stable Europe. There must be, not a balance of power, but a community
of power; not organized rivalries, but an organized common peace. . . .
. .
. it must be a peace without victory. . . .Victory would mean peace forced upon
the loser, a victor's terms imposed upon the vanquished. It would be accepted
in humiliation, under duress, at an intolerable sacrifice, and would leave a
sting, a resentment, a bitter memory upon which terms of peace would rest, not
permanently, but only as upon quicksand. Only a peace between equals can last,
only a peace the very principle of which is equality and a common participation
in a common benefit. The right state of mind, the right feeling between
nations, is as necessary for a lasting peace as is the just settlement of vexed
questions of territory or of racial and national allegiance.
The
equality of nations upon which peace must be founded if it is to last must be
an equality of rights; the guarantees exchanged must neither recognize nor
imply a difference between big nations and small, between those that are
powerful and those that are weak. Right must be based upon the common strength,
not upon the individual strength, of the nations upon whose concert peace will
depend. Equality of territory or of resources there of course cannot be; nor
any other sort of equality not gained in the ordinary peaceful and legitimate
development of the peoples themselves. But no one asks or expects anything more
than an equality of rights. Mankind is looking now for freedom of life, not for
equipoises of power.
And
there is a deeper thing involved than even equality of right among organized
nations. No peace can last, or ought to last, which does not recognize and
accept the principle that governments derive all their just powers from the
consent of the governed, and that no right anywhere exists to hand peoples
about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were property. . . ..
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 amongst 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. . . .
And
in holding out the expectation that the people and Government of the United
States will join the other civilized nations of the world in guaranteeing the
permanence of peace upon such terms as I have named I speak with the greater
boldness and confidence because it is clear to every man who can think that
there is in this promise no breach in either our traditions or our policy as a
nation, but a fulfilment, rather, of all that we have professed or striven for.
. . .
I
am proposing, as it were, that the nations should with one accord adopt the
doctrine of President Monroe as the doctrine of the world: that no nation
should seek to extend its polity over any other nation or people, but that
every people should be left free to determine its own polity, its own way of
development, unhindered, unthreatened, unafraid, the little along with the
great and powerful.
I
am proposing that all nations henceforth avoid entangling alliances which would
draw them into competitions of power, catch them in a net of intrigue and
selfish rivalry, and disturb their own affairs with influences intruded from
without. There is no entangling alliance in a concert of power. When all unite
to act in the same sense and with the same purpose, all act in the common
interest and are free to live their own lives under a common protection.
I
am proposing government by the consent of the governed; that freedom of the
seas which in international conference after conference representatives of the
United States have urged with the eloquence of those who are the convinced
disciples of liberty; and that moderation of armaments which makes of armies
and navies a power for order merely, not an instrument of aggression or selfish
violence.
These
are American principles, American policies. We could stand for no others. And
they are also the principles and policies of forward-looking men and women
everywhere, of every modern nation, of every enlightened community. They are
the principles of mankind and must prevail.