indisputable, and I have the conviction that if we do not rise to the expectation of the world and satisfy the souls of great peoples like the people of Italy, we shall have the most unenviable distinction in history. Because what is happening now is that the soul of one people is crying to the soul of another, and no people in the world with whose sentiments I am acquainted want a bargaining settlement. They all want settlements based upon right."

Correspondents of papers opposed to Mr. Wilson's whole procedure agree with other observers in Europe, in saying that the popular reception of the President and his message in the name of the United States of America has been incomparably enthusiastic. The press of France, England and Italy has reflected this enthusiasm and spread the Wilson gospel of international salvation. "He brings to Europe what it lacks -namely, confidence in the justice of the future," shrewdly observes Senator d'Estournelles de Constant.

Mr. Wilson was certainly at his best on this missionary tour. (A collection of the speeches is reproduced on following pages of THE WORLD COURT MAGAZINE.) Americans may well take pride in such spokesmanship. One has the delightful feeling that in these addresses the President speaks for us at our best, not our worst, as a nation. But never is the attitude of super-righteousness assumed. Yet the urge of duty is clear; the principles for which we went into the war are those that peace must maintain among nations. It was the President's serious thought as he reviewed the victorious United States troops in France, on Christmas day, that as in war they had done their duty, so in making peace must he and we do no less.

Constantly President Wilson pleads for the establishment of eternal principles of right and justice by means of a League of Nations. What kind of a League? One that shall operate as the organized moral force of men throughout the world, he said at the Sorbonne. It is the great moral tide now running in the world which is to be reckoned with, he said in the response to King George. Peoples want peace now not merely by conquest but by agreement of mind, ran the Guildhall speech. At church in Carlisle he referred to the league as a combination of moral force, irresistible. In the Italian Chamber of Deputies at Rome he spoke of a League to organize the friendship of the world, the moral forces that make for right and justice and liberty. Again, in Italy, he asserted that force can always be conquered; the spirit of liberty never-its champions have always shown the power of self-sacrifice.

It was at the Guildhall in London that Mr. Wilson declared that the war had been fought to do away with the old order of balance of power and establish a new order, a single, overwhelming group, trustees of the peace of the world. Two days later, at Manchester, after Premier Clemenceau had reiterated his belief in the value of balance of power, President Wilson said:

"If the future had nothing for us but a new attempt to keep the world at a right poise by a balance of power, the United States would take no interest, because she will join no combination of power which is not a combination of all of us. She is not interested merely in the peace of Europe but in the peace of the world."

IN

discussion of the League of Nations to be born of the Peace Conference the immediate question of averting famine and pestilence in Europe forces the actual organization of a Food League. Relief for the populations of liberated countries, neutral and enemy, investigation shows to be imperative. Unity of direction is as necessary as it was for war operations on land and sea respectively. The Allied governments asked that the United States take the lead in the organization and administration of this relief. Two representatives each of Great Britain, France, Italy and the United States already form the Inter-Allied Commission to secure cooperation of food, shipping and financial resources sufficient to solve the relief problem. Mr. Herbert C. Hoover is made director-general of the undertaking. The size of the job in the liberated regions, to say nothing of the neighboring neutrals or Germany, is indicated by an estimated population of 125,000,000 persons whose lands have been devastated and where food from the last harvest will soon be exhausted. It is further estimated that only 40,000,000 out of 420,000,000 Europeans have food enough without imports.

The details of such a problem are appalling. The necessity for international control beyond the emergency of this year of 1919 is clearly indicated. Academic, political and nationalistic objections to league theories must here yield to international cooperation. Mr. Clynes, British Food Controller, says that govern

ment control of the bare necessities

of life must continue in view of constantly rising prices. Dr. Crespi, Italian Food Minister, reports that Austrian and German shipping will ultimately be divided between the associated powers for relief transportation on the seas, and that the Allied Maritime Council has authorized a new joint shipping flag "of three horizontal stripes, with top and bottom white and centre blue.” Mr. Hoover points out the all-important necessity of providing credit for the financial operations in this enormous relief work: "The outstanding fact in the physical, moral and political salvation of the liberated peoples is credit." President Wilson has asked Congress for a relief appropriation of $100,000,000, urging that the westward advance of Bolshevism "cannot be stopped by force, but it can be stopped by food."

During the war machinery of international cooperation by the Allies was gradually established, which headed up in the Supreme War Council. It is not clear that the Food Control had the right of way among Councils on War Purchases, the Allied Maritime Transportation Control, or the System of International Credit Exchange. But readjustment to the demands of relief following the war will doubtless be achieved. And the development of a League of Nations through functions necessary to the preservation of life and anything like civilization in Europe must strike the Peace Conference as of first importance.

war often moved us to counsel prudence.

They brought with them, in arriving here, the enthusiasm of Crusaders leaving for the Holy Land. It is their right to-day to look with pride upon the work accomplished and to tell themselves that they have powerfully aided in their courage and their faith.

Eager as they were to meet the enemy, they did not know when they arrived the enormity of his crimes. That they might know how the German armies make war it has been necessary that they see towns systematically burned down, mines flooded, factories reduced to ashes, orchards devastated, cathedrals shelled and fired-all that deliberate savagery, aimed to destroy national wealth, nature and beauty, which the imagination could not conceive at a distance from the men and things that have endured it and to-day bear

witness to it.

In your turn, Mr. President, you will be able to measure with your own eyes the extent of these disasters, and the French government will make known to you the authentic documents in which the German General Staff developed with astounding cynicism its programme of pillage and industrial annihilation. Your noble conscience will pronounce a verdict on these facts.

Should this guilt remain unpunished, could it be renewed, the most splendid victories would be in vain.

Mr. President, France has struggled, has endured and has suffered during four long years; she has bled

at every vein; she has lost the best of her children; she mourns for her youths. She yearns now, even as you do, for a peace of justice and security.

It was not that she might be exposed once again to aggression that she submitted to such sacrifices. Nor was it in order that criminals should go unpunished that they might lift their heads again to make ready for new crimes, that, under your strong leadership, America armed herself and crossed the ocean.

Faithful to the memory of Lafayette and Rochambeau, she came to the aid of France because France herself was faithful to her traditions. Our common ideal has triumphed. Together we have defended the vital principles of free nations.

Now we must build together such a peace as will forbid the deliberate and hypocritical renewing of an organism aiming at conquest and oppression.

Peace must make amends for the misery and sadness of yesterday, and it must be a guarantee against the dangers of to-morrow. The association which has been formed for the purpose of war between the United States and the Allies, and which contains the seed of the permanent institutions of which you have spoken so eloquently, will find from this day forward a clear and profitable employment in the concerted search for equitable decisions and in the mutual support which we need if we are to make our rights prevail.

Whatever safeguards we may erect for the future no one, alas! can as

sert that we shall forever spare to mankind the horrors of new wars. Five years ago the progress of science and the state of civilization might have permitted the hope that no government, however autocratic, would have succeeding in hurling armed nations upon Belgium and Serbia.

Without lending ourselves to the illusion that posterity will be forever more safe from these collective follies, we must introduce into the peace we are going to build all the conditions of justice and all the safeguards of civilization that we can embody in it.

To such a vast and magnificent task, Mr. President, you have chosen to come and apply yourself in concert with France. France offers you her thanks. She knows the friendship of America. She knows your rectitude and elevation of spirit. It is in the fullest confidence that she is ready to work with you.

I lift my glass, Mr. President, in your honor and in honor of Mrs. Wilson. I drink to the prosperity of the Republic of the United States, our great friend of yesterday and of other days, of to-morrow and of all times.

PRESIDENT WILSON'S RESPONSE In reply, President Wilson said:

Mr. President-I am deeply indebted to you for your gracious greeting. It is very delightful to find myself in France and to feel the quick contact of sympathy and unaffected friendship between the representatives of the United States and the representatives of France.

You have been very generous in what you were pleased to say about myself, but I feel that what I have said and what I have tried to do has been said and done only in an attempt to speak the thought of the people of the United States truly, and carry that thought out in action.

From the first the thought of the United States turned toward something more than the mere winning of this war. It turned to the establishment of eternal principles of right and justice. It realized that merely to win the war was not enough; that it must be won in such a way and the question raised by it settled in such a way as to insure the future peace of the world and lay the foundation for the freedom and happiness of its many peoples and nations.

Never before has war worn so terrible a visage or exhibited more grossly the debasing influence of illicit ambitions. I am sure that I shall look upon the ruins wrought by the armies of the Central Empires with the same repulsion and deep indignation that they stir in the hearts of the men of France and Belgium, and I appreciate, as you do, sir, the necessity of such action in the final settlement of the issues of the war as will not only rebuke such acts of terror and spoliation but make men everywhere aware that they cannot be ventured upon without the certainty of just punishment.

I know with what ardor and enthusiasm the soldiers and sailors of the United States have given the best that was in them to this war of redemption. They have expressed the