Fourth, and more specifically, there can be no special, selfish economic combinations within the league and no employment of any form of economic boycott or exclusion except as the power ef economic penalty by exclusion from the markets of the world may be vested in the League of Nations itself as a means of discipline and control. Fifth, all international agreements and treaties of every kind must be made known in their entirety to the rest of the world. Special alliances and economic rivalries and hostilities have been the prolific source, in the modern world, of the plans and passions that produce war. It would be an insincere as well as an insecure peace that did not exclude them in definite and binding terms. "No 'ENTANGLing Alliances.” ** The confidence with which I venture to speak for our people in these matters does not spring from our traditions, merely, and the well-known principles of international action which we have always professed and followed. In the same sentence in which I say that the United States will enter into no special arrangements or understandings with particular nations, let me say also that the United States is prepared to assume its full share of responsibility for the maintenance of the common covenants and understandings upon which peace must henceforth rest. We still read Washington's immortal warning against "entangling alliances," with full comprehension and an answering purpose. But only special and limited alliances entangle; and we recognize and accept the duty of a new day in which we are permitted to hope for a general alliance which will avoid entanglements and clear the air of the world for common understandings and the maintenance of common rights. I have made this analysis of the international situation which the war has created, not, of course, because I doubted whether the leaders of the great nations and peoples with whom we are associated were of the same mind and entertained a like purpose, but because the air, every now and again, gets darkened by mists and groundless doubtings and mischievous perversions of counsel, and it is necessary, once and again, to sweep all the irresponsible talk about peace intrigues and weakening morale and doubtful purpose on the part of those in authority utterly, and if need be unceremoniously, aside, and say things in the plainest words that can be found, even when it is only to say over again what has been said before, quite as plainly, if in less unvarnished terms. No MAN FORMED THE ISSUES OF THIS WAR. As I have said, neither I nor any other man in governmental authority, created or gave form to the issues of this war. I have simply responded to them with such vision as I could command. But I have responded gladly and with a resolution that has grown warmer and more confident as the issues have grown clearer and clearer. It is now plain that they are issues which no man can pervert unless it be wilfully. I am bound to fight for them, and happy to fight for them, as time and circumstances have revealed them to me as to all the world. Our enthusiasm for them grows more and more irresistible as they stand out in more and more vivid and unmistakable outline. And the forces that fight for them draw into closer and closer array, organize their millions into more and more unconquerable might, as they become more and more distinct to the thought and purpose of the peoples engaged. It is the peculiarity of this great war that while statesmen have seemed to cast about for definitions of their purpose, and have sometimes seemed to shift their ground and their point of view, the thought of the mass of men, whom statesmen are supposed to instruct and lead, has grown more and more unclouded, more and more certain of what it is that they are fighting for. National purposes have fallen more and more into the background and the common purpose of enlightened mankind has taken their place. The counsels of plain men have become, on all hands, more simple and straightforward and more unified than the counsels of sophisticated men of affairs, who still retain the impression that they are playing a game of power and playing for high stakes. That is why I have said that this is a people's war, not a statesman's. Statesmen must follow the clarified common thought or be broken. I took that to be the significance of the fact that assemblies and associations of mary kinds made up of plain workaday people have demanded, almost every time they came together, and are still demanding that the leaders of their governments declare to them plainly what it is, exactly what it is, that they were seeking in this war, and what they think the items of the final settlement should be. They are not yet satisfied with what they have been told. They still seem to fear that they are getting what they ask for only in statesmen's terms-only in the terms of territorial arrangements and divisions of power, and not in terms of broadvisioned justice and mercy and peace and the satisfaction of those deep-seated longings of oppressed and distracted men and women and enslaved peoples that seem to them the only things worth fighting a war for that engulfs the world. Perhaps statesmen have not always recognized this changed aspect of the whole world of policy and action. Perhaps they have not always spoken in direct reply to the questions asked because they did not know how searching these questions were and what sort of answers they demanded. BUT MEN MUST STATE THE ISSUES. But I, for one, am glad to attempt the answer again and again, in the hope that I may make it clearer and clearer that my one thought is to satisfy those who struggle in the ranks and are, perhaps above all others, entitled to a reply whose meaning no one can have any excuse for misunderstanding, if he understands the language in which it is spoken or can get someone to translate it correctly into his own. And I believe that the leaders of the governments with which we are associated will speak, as they have occasion, as plainly as I have tried to speak. I hope that they will feel free to say whether they think that I am in any degree mistaken in my interpretation of the issues involved or in my purpose with regard to the means by which a satisfactory settlement of these isues may be obtained. Unity of purpose and of counsel are as imperatively necessary in this war as was unity of command in the battle field; and with perfect unity of purpose and counsel will come assurance of complete victory. It can be had in no other way. "Peace drives" can be effectively neutralized and silenced only by showing that every victory of the nations associated against Germany brings the nations nearer the sort of peace which will bring security and reassurance to all peoples and make the recurrence of another such struggle of pitiless force and bloodshed forever impossible, and that nothing else can. Germany is constantly intimating the "terms" she will accept and always finds that the world does not want terms. It wishes the final triumph of justice and fair dealing. THE PROOF-PEACE. OCTOBER 6, 1918-GERMANY ASKS FOR AN ARMISTICE. (Maximilian requests President Wilson to propose an armistice to the Allies, accepting the President's "Fourteen Points" and "Impartial Justice" speech as a basis for peace negotiations.) OCTOBER 8, 1918-PRESIDENT WILSON TAKES UP THE REPLY TO GERMANY'S OVERTURES FOR AN Armistice. (The President, informing the Central Powers that they must consent to withdraw from occupied territory before he could propose an armistice, asks whether Germany wants to ACCEPT the Fourteen Points, or merely wants to TALK ABOUT accepting them. Also, whom the Chancellor is speaking for.) OCTOBER 12, 1918-Second German armisTICE NOTE IS SENT. (Germany, consenting to the evacuation proposition, says it merely wants to arrange practical details of the Fourteen Points, and tries to wriggle away from the question as to who speaks.) OCTOBER 14, 1918-SECOND REPLY OF PRESIDENT. (Fourteen Points fixed upon as a basis, without discussion. Armistice details left to the Allied Armies. Germany will be left without power to resume. Evacuation insisted upon. Atrocities must cease. No dealings with present German autocracy.) OCTOBER 21, 1918-THIRD GERMAN ARMISTICE NOTE DES PATCHED. (Germany willing to leave armistice details to armies. Constitutional reforms reported.) OCTOBER 23, 1918-PRESIDENT WILSON SENDS THIRD AND DECISIVE NOTE ON ARMISTICE. (Agrees to submit armistice question to Allies on basis of Fourteen Points. Demands guarantees against German tricks. Can deal only with German people as real rulers of Germany. Otherwise, "not peace negotiations, but surrender.") OCTOBER 27, 1918-ITALIAN OFFENSIVE BEGINS. (Austria asks for an armistice; Turkey accepts terms of armistice giving Allies passage through the Dardanelles.) NOVEMBER 3, 1918-AUSTRIAN ARMISTICE IS SIGNED. (Evacuation, demobilization, surrender of guns and material, free passage for Allies through Austria, Italia-Irredente restored to Italy.) |