Class ^^^^_^l2^ _ Bnok _^a\a1^___ THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS Speeches, Messages, and Addresses made b}^ the President between February 24, 1919, and July 8, 1919, Covering the Active Period of the Peace Conference at Paris BY WOODROW WILSON PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 11. S' 'Prft^lclen-i', J1)3-/^j^^ CW#Isotj) Harper &. Brothers Publishers New York and London Books by WOODROW WILSON THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS INTERNATIONAL IDEALS GUARANTEES OF PEACE IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR WHY WE ARE AT WAR A HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE WHEN A MAN COMES TO HIMSELF ON BEING HUMAN THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK [Established 1817] Gift Publisher liEo 20 1919 CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE Foreword vii I. The Force of an Idea i II. Government the Servant of the People 17 III. Defending the League Constitution . 22 IV. The Amended Covenant 41 V. A Statement 43 VI. The Principles of Peace 45 VII. The New League Covenant 52 VIII. A Memorandum to Orlando 59 IX. A Proclamation 66 X. America Is Ready 70 XI. Domestic Legislation 79 XII. The Presidential Task 97 XIII. A Memorial Day Message 104 XIV. The ^Memorial Day Address 106 XV. A League of Right 116 XVI. Nations in Partnership 127 XVII. The Treaty a New Magna Charta . . 132 XVIII. Farewell to France 135 XIX. A Parting Word to Great Britain . . 137 XX. The Laws of Freedom 139 XXI. A Just Peace 149 XXII. A Home Greeting 155 FOREWORD The Triumph of Ideals forms the fifth con- secutive volume of President Wilson's public utterances, the preceding titles being, Why We Are at War^ In Our First Year of War, Guarantees of Peace, and International Ideals. The present collection contains the speeches, messages, and addresses delivered by the Presi- dent between February 24, 19 19, and July 8, 1 91 9, covering the working session of the Peace Conference at Paris. Among the most im- portant titles may be noted: **The Force of an Idea'* (the speech at Mechanics Hall, Boston); ** Defending the League Constitu- tion" (the address at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York) ; "The Principles of Peace" (the pubHc statement upon the Adriatic ques- tion); "The New League Covenant" (an ad- dress before the plenary session of the Peace Conference); "A Memorandum to Orlando"; "America Is Ready" (an address before the Academy of Moral and Political Science, Paris); "Domestic Legislation" (the Message to the Congress); "The Presidential Task" (an address at the dinner in honor of Doctor FOREWORD Pessoa, President-elect of Brazil); ''The Me- morial Day Address"; *'A League of Right" (an address delivered at the Palace in Brus- sels); ''The Laws of Freedom" (an address delivered aboard the George Washington) ; and **A Just Peace" (the Carnegie Hall speech). The bulk of the subject-matter deals with the ethical abstractions which Mr. Wilson so well knows how to discuss with illuminating clarity and force. Yet these papers show no lack of definite constructive statesmanship, and his summing up of the vexed Adriatic question, together with the famous memo- randum to Orlando, show the President at his best in their keen deductive logic and unanswerable conclusions. Mr. Wilson has probably written more state papers and de- livered more important speeches than any two or three of his predecessors in his great office. Partizan critics and partizan admirers may agree on one thing certainly: When Mr. Wilson speaks the whole world stops to listen. Editorial revision by the President being impossible, the publishers assume responsi- bility for the chapter and sub-titles and for the general arrangement of the subject-matter. By the President's direction all royalties are paid over to the American Red Cross. THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS THE FORCE OF AN IDEA (Boston, February 24^ iQiQ-) Speaking in Mechanics Hall before an im- mense audience the President said: Governor Coolidge, Mr. Mayor, Fel- low-citizens: I wonder if you are half as glad to see me as I am to see you. It warms my heart to see a great body of my fellow- citizens again, because in some respects during the recent months I have been very lonely indeed without your comradeship and counsel, and I tried at every step of the work which fell to me to recall what I was sure would be yoin- counsel with regard to the great matters which were under consideration. I do not want you to think that I have not been appreciative of the extraordinarily gen- erous reception which was given to me on the other side. In saying that it makes me very 2 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS happy to get home again I do not mean to say that I was not very deeply touched by the cries that came from the great crowds on the other side. But I want to say to you in all honesty that I felt them to be a call of greeting to you rather than to me. I did not feel that the greeting was personal. I had in my heart the overcrowning pride of being your representative and of receiving the plaudits of men everywhere who felt that your hearts beat with theirs in the cause of liberty. There was no mistaking the tone in the voices of those great crowds. It was not a tone of mere greeting; it was not a tone of mere gen- erous welcome; it was the calling of comrade to comrade, the cries that come from men who say, '*We have waited for this day when the friends of liberty should come across the sea and shake hands with us, to see that a new world was constructed upon a new basis and foundation of justice and right." TRUSTED THROUGHOUT WORLD I can't tell you the inspiration that came from the sentiments that come out of those simple voices of the crowd, and the proudest thing I have to report to you is that this great country of ours is trusted throughout the world. I have not come to report the proceedings THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 3 or the results of the proceedings of the Peace Conference; that would be premature. I can say that I have received very happy impressions from this conference; the impres- sion that while there are many differences of judgment, while there are some divergences of object, there is nevertheless a common spirit and a common realization of the necessity of setting up new standards of right in the world. Because the men who are in conference in Paris realize as keenly as any American can realize that they are not the masters of their people; that they are the servants of their people and that the spirit of their people has awakened to a new purpose and a new concep- tion of their power to realize that purpose, and that no man dare go home from that conference and report anything less noble than was expected of it. The conference seems to you to go slowly; from day to day in Paris it seems to go slowly; but I wonder if you realize the complexity of the task which it has undertaken. It seems as if the settlements of this war affect, and affect directly, every great, and I sometimes think every small, nation in the world, and no one decision can prudently be made which is not properly linked in with the great series of other decisions which must accompany it, and it must be reckoned in with the final result 4 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS if the real quality and character of that result is to be properly judged. HEARING THE WHOLE CASE What we are doing is to hear the whole case; hear it from the mouths of the men most interested ; hear it from those who are officially commissioned to state it; hear the rival claims; hear the claims that affect new na- tionalities, that affect new areas of the world, that affect new commercial and economic connections that have been established by the great World War through which we have gone. And I have been struck by the moderateness of those who have represented national claims. I can testify that I have nowhere seen the gleam of passion. I have seen earnestness, I have seen tears come to the eyes of men who pleaded for downtrodden people whom they were privileged to speak for; but they were not the tears of anguish, they were the tears of ardent hope. And I don't see how any man can fail to have been subdued by these pleas, subdued to this feeling, that he was not there to assert an individual judgment of his own, but to try to assist the cause of humanity. And in the midst of it all, every interest seeks out first of all, when it reaches Paris, the representatives of the United States. Why? THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 5 Because — and I think I am stating the most wonderful fact in history — because there is no nation in Europe that suspects the motives of the United States. Was there ever so wonderful a thing seen before? Was there ever so moving a thing? Was there ever any fact that so bound the nation that had won that esteem forever to deserve it ? I would not have you understand that the great men who represent the other nations there in conference are disesteemed by those who know them. Quite the contrary. But you understand that the nations of Europe have again and again clashed with one another in competitive interest. It is impossible for men to forget those sharp issues that were drawn between them in times past. It is impossible for men to believe that all ambitions have all of a sudden been foregone. They remember territory that was coveted; they remember rights that it was attempted to extort; they remember political ambitions which it was attempted to realize, and, while they believe that men have come into a dif- ferent temper, they cannot forget these things, and so they do not resort to one another for a dispassionate view of the matters in con- troversy. They resort to that nation which has won the enviable distinction of being re- garded as the friend of mankind. 2 6 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS Whenever it is desired to send a small force of soldiers to occupy a piece of territory where it is thought nobody else will be welcome, they ask for American soldiers, and where other soldiers would be looked upon with suspicion and perhaps met with resistance, the American soldier is welcomed with acclaim. I have had so many grounds for pride on the other side of the water that I am very thankful that they are not grounds for per- sonal pride, but for national pride. If they were grounds for personal pride I'd be the most stuck-up man in the world, and it has been an infinite pleasure to me to see those gallant soldiers of ours, of whom the Con- stitution of the United States made me the proud commander. You may be proud of the Twenty-sixth Division, but I commanded the Twenty-sixth Division, and see what they did under my direction. And everybody praises the Amer- ican soldier with the feeling that in praising him he is subtracting from the credit of no one else. Europe's belief in America I have been searching for the fundamental fact that converted Europe to believe in us. Before this war Europe did not believe in us as she does now. She did not believe in us THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 7 throughout the first three years of the war. She seems really to have believed that we were holding off because we thought we could make more by staying out than by going in. And all of a sudden, in a short eighteen months, the whole verdict is reversed. There can be but one explanation for it. They saw what we did — that without making a single claim we put all our men and all our means at the disposal of those who were fight- ing for their homes, in the first instance, but for a cause, the cause of human rights and justice; and that we went in not to support their national claims, but to support the great cause which they held in common. And when they saw that America not only held ideals, but acted ideals, they were con- verted to America and became firm partizans of those ideals. I met a group of scholars when I was in Paris — some gentlemen from one of the Greek universities who had come to see me, and in whose presence, or rather in the presence of whose traditions of learning, I felt very young indeed. I told them that I had one of the delightful revenges that sometimes come to a man. All my life I had heard men speak with a sort of condescension of ideals and of ideal- ists, and particularly those separated, en- cloistered persons whom they choose to term academic, who were in the habit of uttering 8 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS ideals in the free atmosphere when they clash with nobody in particular. A SWEET REVENGE And I said I have had this sweet revenge. Speaking with perfect frankness in the name of the people of the United States, I have ut- tered as the objects of this great war ideals, and nothing but ideals, and the war has been won by that inspiration. Men were fighting with tense muscles and lowered head until they came to realize those things, feeling they were fighting for their lives and their country, and when these accents of what it was all about reached them from America they lifted their heads, they raised their eyes to heaven, when they saw men in khaki coming across the sea in the spirit of crusaders, and they found that these were strange men, reckless of danger not only, but reckless because they seemed to see something that made that danger worth while. Men have testified to me in Europe that our men were possessed by something that they could only call a religioas fervor. They were not like any of the other soldiers. They had a vision, they had a dream, and they were fighting in the dream, and fighting in the dream they turned the whole tide of battle and it never came back. One of our American humorists, meeting THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 9 the criticism that American soldiers were not trained long enough, said, ''It takes only half as long to train an American soldier as any other, because you only have to train him one way, and he did only go one way, and he never came back until he could do it when he pleased." CONFIDENCE IMPOSES BURDEN And now do you realize that this confidence we have established throughout the world im- poses a burden upon us — ^if you choose to call it a burden. It is one of those burdens which any nation ought to be proud to carry. Any man who resists the present tides that run in the world will find himself thrown upon a shore so high and barren that it will seem as if he had been separated from his human kind forever. The Europe that I left the other day was full of something that it had never felt fill its heart so full before. It was full of hope. The Europe of the second year of the war, the Europe of the third year of the war, was sink- ing to a sort of stubborn desperation. They did not see any great thing to be achieved even when the war should be won. They hoped there would be some salvage; they hoped that they could clear their territories of invading armies; they hoped they could set lo THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS up their homes and start their industries afresh, but they thought it would simply be the re- sumption of the old life that Europe had led — led in fear, led in anxiety, led in constant suspicious watchfulness. They never dreamed that it would be a Europe of settled peace and of justified hope. BUOYED UP WITH HOPE And now these ideals have wrought this new magic, that all the peoples of Europe are buoyed up and confident in the spirit of hope, because they believe that we are at the eve of a new age in the world when nations will understand one another, when nations will support one another in every just cause, when nations will unite every moral and every political strength to see that the right shall prevail. If America were at this juncture to fail the world, what would come of it? I do not mean any disrespect to any other great people when I say that America is the hope of the world; and if she does not justify that hope the re- sults are unthinkable. Men will be thrown back upon the bitterness of disappointment not only, but the bitterness of despair. All nations will be set up as hostile camps again; the men at the Peace Conference will go home with their heads upon their breasts, THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS ii knowing that they have failed — for they were bidden not to come home from there until they did something more than sign a treaty of peace. Suppose we sign the treaty of peace and that it is the most satisfactory treaty of peace that the confusing elements of the modem world will afford and go home and think about our labors, we will know that we have left written upon the historic table at Versailles, upon which Vergennes and Benjamin Franklin wrote their names, nothing but a modern scrap of paper; no nations united to defend it, no great forces combined to make it good, no assurance given to the downtrodden and fearful people of the world that they shall be safe. Any man who thinks that America will take part in giving the world any such rebuff and dis- appointment as that does not know America. INVITATION TO A TEST I invite them to test the sentiments of the nation. We set this up to make men free and we did not confine our conception and pur- pose to America, and now we will make men free. If we did not do that the fame of Amer- ica would be gone and all her powers be dis- sipated. She then would have to keep her power for those narrow, selfish, provincial pur- poses which seem so dear to some minds that have no sweep beyond the nearest horizon. iz THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS I should welcome no sweeter challenge than that. I have fighting blood in me, and it is sometimes a delight to let it have scope, but if it is a challenge on this occasion it will be an indulgence. Think of the picture, think of the utter blackness that would fall on the world. America has failed! America made a little essay at generosity and then withdrew. America said, *'We are your friends," but it was only for to-day, not for to-morrow. America said, ''Here is our power to vindicate right," and then the next day said, ''Let right take care of itself and we will take care of our- selves." America said, "We set up a fight to lead men along the paths of liberty, but we have lowered it; it is intended only to light our own path." We set up a great ideal of liberty and then we said: "Liberty is a thing that you must win for yourself. Do not call upon us." And think of the world that we would leave. Do you realize how many new nations are going to be set up in the presence of old and powerful nations in Europe and left there, if left by us, without a disinterested friend ? POLAND AND ARMENIA Do you believe in the Polish cause, as I do ? Are you going to set up Poland, immature, inexperienced, as yet unorganized, and leave THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 13 her with a circle of armies around her ? Do you believe in the aspiration of the Czecho-Slovaks and the Jugo-Slavs as I do? Do you know how many powers would be quick to pounce upon them if there were not the guarantees of the world behind their liberty? Have you thought of the sufferings of Ar- menia? You poured out your money to help succor the Armenians after they suffered; now set your strength so that they shall never suffer again. The arrangements of the present peace can- not stand a generation unless they are guar- anteed by the united forces of the civilized world. And if we do not guarantee them cannot you see the picture? Your hearts have instructed you where the burden of this war fell. It did not fall upon the national treas uries, it did not fall upon the instruments of administration, it did not fall upon the re- sources of the nation. It fell upon the victims' homes everywhere, where women were toiling in hope that their men would come back When I think of the homes upon which dull despair would settle were this great hope dis- appointed, I should wish, for my part, never to have had America play any part whatever in this attempt to emancipate the world. But I talk as if there were any question. I have no more doubt of the verdict of America in 14 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS this matter than I have doubt of the blood that is in me. NO STOPPING SHORT OF GOAL And so, my fellow-citizens, I have come back to report progress, and I do not believe that the progress is going to stop short of the goal. The nations of the world have set their heads now to do a great thing, and they are not going to slacken their purpose. And when I speak of the nations of the world I do not speak of the governments of the world. I speak of the peoples who constitute the nations of the world. They are in the saddle, and they are going to see to it that if their present governments do not do their will some other governments shall, and the secret is out and the present governments know it. There is a great deal of harmony to be got out of common knowledge. There is a great deal of sympathy to be got out of living in the same atmosphere, and except for the dif- ferences of languages, which puzzled my Amer- ican ear very sadly, I could have believed I was at home in France or in Italy or in England when I was on the streets, when I was in the presence of the crowds, when I was in great halls where men were gathered together irre- spective of class. I did not feel quite as much at home there THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 15 as I do here, but I felt that now, at any rate, after this storm of war had cleared the air, men were seeing eye to eye ever3rwhere and that these were the kind of folks who would understand what the kind of folks at home would understand and that they were thinking the same things. I feel about you as I am reminded of a story of that excellent wit and good artist, Oliver Herford, who one day, sitting at luncheon at his club, was slapped vigorously on the back by a man whom he did not know very well. He said, ''Oliver, old boy, how are you?'* He looked at him rather coldly. He said, **I don't know your name, I don't know your face, but your manners are very familiar." And I must say that your manners are very familiar, and, let me add, very delightful. FORCE OF AN IDEA It is a great comfort, for one thing, to realize that you all understand the language I am speaking. A friend of mine said that to talk through an interpreter was like witnessing the compound fracture of an idea. But the beauty of it is that, whatever the impediments of the channel of communication, the idea is the same, that it gets registered, and it gets registered in responsive hearts and receptive purposes. i6 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS I have come back for a strenuous attempt to transact business for a little while in Amer- ica, but I have really come back to say to you, in all soberness and honesty, that I have been trying my best to speak your thoughts. When I sample myself I think I find that I am a typical American, and if I sample deep enough and get down to what is probably the true stuff of a man, then I have hope that it is part of the stuff that is Hke the other fel- low's at home. And, therefore, probing deep in my heart and trying to see the things that are right, without regard to the things that may be de- bated as expedient, I feel that I am interpreting the purpose and the thought of America; and in loving America I find that I have joined the great majority of my fellow-men through- out the world. II GOVERNMENT THE SERVANT OF THE PEOPLE (Washington, March 3, 1919.) Addressing the conference of governors and mayors, called together to discuss the labor situ- ation, President Wilson said: Gentlemen: I wish that I could promise myself the pleasure and the profit of taking part in your deliberations. I find that nothing deliberate is permitted me since my return. I have been trying, under the guidance of my secretary, Mr. Tumulty, to do a month's work in a week, and I am hoping that not all of it has been done badly; but inasmuch as there is a necessary pressure upon my time, I know that you will excuse me from taking a part in your conference, much as I should be profited by doing so. My pleasant duty is to bid you a hearty welcome and to express my gratification that so many executives of cities and of states have found the time and the inclination to come together on the very important matter we have to discuss. i8 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS The primary duty of caring for our people in the intimate matters that we want to dis- cuss here, of course, falls on the states and upon the municipalities, and the function of the Federal government is to do what it is trying to do in a conference of this sort — draw the executive minds of the country together so that they may profit by one another's sug- gestions and plans, and so that we may offer our services to co-ordinate their efforts in any way that they may deem it wise to co- ordinate. In other words, it is the privilege of the Federal government in matters of this sort to be the servants of the executives of the states and municipalities and counties, and we shall perform that duty with the great- est pleasure if you will guide us with your suggestions. WIDE SCOPE NEEDED I hope that the discussion of this conference will take as wide a scope as you think neces- sary. We are met to discuss the proper method of restoring all the labor conditions of the country to a normal basis as soon as possible, and to effect such fresh allocations of labor and industry as the circumstances may make necessary. I think I can testify, from what I have seen on the other side of the water, that we are more fortunate than other nations THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 19 in respect to these great problems. Our in- dustries have been disturbed and disorganized — disorganized as compared with a peace basis very seriously indeed — by the war, but not so seriously as the industries of other coun- tries; and it seems to me, therefore, that we should approach these problems that we are about to discuss with a good deal of confidence — with a good deal of confidence that if we have a common purpose we can realize that common purpose without serious or insur- mountable difficulties. HELP FOR AVERAGE MAN The thing that has impressed me most, gentlemen, not only in the recent weeks when I have been in conference on the other side of the water, but for many months before I went across the water, was this: We are at last learning that the business of government is to take counsel for the average man. We are at last learning that the whole matter of the prosperity of peoples runs down into the great body of the men and women who do the work of the world and that the process of guidance is not completed by the mere suc- cess of great enterprises; it is completed only by the standard of the benefits that it confers upon those who in the obscure ranks of life contribute to the success of those enterprises. 20 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS MANY HEARTS STIRRED The hearts of the men and women and children of the world are stirred now in a way that has never been known before. They are not only stirred by their individual circum- stances, but they are beginning to get a vision of what the general circumstances of the world are, and there is for the first time in history an international sympathy which is quick and vital, a sympathy which does not display itself merely in the contact of governments, but displays itself in the silent intercourse of sympathy between great bodies that consti- tute great nations; and the significance of a conference like this is that we are expressing in it, and will, I believe, express in the results of this conference our consciousness that we are servants of this great silent mass of people who constitute the United States; and that as their servants it is our business, as it is our privilege, to find out how we can best assist in making their lives what they wish them to be, giving them the opportunities that they ought to have, assisting by public counsel in the private affairs upon which the happiness of men depends. SERVANTS OF PEOPLE And so I am the more distressed that I cannot take part in these councils because my THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 21 present business is to understand what plain men everywhere want. It is perfectly under- stood in Paris that we are not meeting there as the masters of anybody — that we are meet- ing there as the servants of, I believe it is, about seven hundred million people, and that unless we show that we understand the busi- ness of servants we will not satisfy and we will not accomplish the peace of the world, and that if we show that we want to serve any interest but theirs, we will have become candidates for the most lasting discredit that will ever attach to men in history. And so it is with this profound feeling of the significance of the things you are under- taking that I bid you welcome, because I believe you have come together in the spirit which I have tried to indicate, and that we will together concert methods of co-operation and individual notion which will really ac- complish what we wish to see accomplished in steadying and easing and facilitating the whole labor processes of the United States. 3 Ill DEFENDING THE LEAGUE CONSTITUTION (New York, March 5, igig.) At the Metropolitan Opera House, on the eve of his second journey to Paris, the President spoke as follows: My Fellow-citizens : I accept the intima- tion of the air just played. I will not come back ''Till It's Over, Over There." And yet I pray God, in the interest of peace and of the world, that that may be soon. The first thing that I am going to tell the people on the other side of the water is that an overwhelming majority of the American people is in favor of the League of Nations. I know that that is true. I have had un- mistakable intimations of it from all parts of the country, and the voice rings true in every case. I count myself fortunate to speak here under the unusual circumstances of this evening. I am happy to associate myself with Mr. Taft in this cause. He has displayed an elevation THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 23 of view and a devotion to public duty which are beyond praise. NO PARTY DARE OPPOSE IT And I am more happy because this means that this is not a party issue. No party has the right to appropriate this issue, and no party will in the long run dare oppose it. We have listened to so clear and admirable an exposition of many of the main features of the proposed covenant of the League of Nations that it is perhaps not necessary for me to discuss in any particular way the con- tents of the document. I will seek rather to give you its setting. I do not know when I have been more im- pressed than by the conferences of the com- mission set up by the conference of peace to draw up a covenant for the League of Nations. The representatives of fourteen nations sat around that board — not new men, not men inexperienced in the affairs of their own coun- tries, not men inexperienced in the politics of the world — and the inspiring influence of every meeting was the concurrence of purpose on the part of all those men to come to an agree- ment, and an effective working agreement, with regard to this league of the civilized world. There was a conviction in the whole im- 24 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS pulse, there was conviction of more than one sort, there was the conviction that this thing ought to be done, and there was also the con- viction that not a man there would venture to go home and say that he had not tried to do it. Mr. Taft has set the picture for you of what a failure of this great purpose would mean. We have been hearing for all these weary months that this agony of war has lasted because of the sinister purpose of the Central Empires, and we have made maps of the course that they meant their conquests to take. Where did the lines of that map lie, of that central line that we used to call from Bremen to Bagdad? WILL WATCH INTRIGUE They lay through these very regions to which Mr. Taft has called your attention, but they lay then through the United Empire, through the Austro-Hungarian Empire, whose integrity, which Germany was bound to re- spect as her ally, lay in the path of that line of conquest. The Turkish Empire, whose in- terests she professed to make her own, lay in the direct path that she intended to tread. And now what has happened? The Austro- Hungarian Empire has gone to pieces and the THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 25 Turkish Empire has disappeared, and the na- tions that effected that great result — for it was a result of liberation — are now responsible as the trustee of the assets of those great nations. You not only would have weak nations lying in this path, but you would have nations in which that old poisonous seed of intrigue could be planted with the certainty that the crop would be abundant, and one of the things that the League of Nations is intended to watch is the course of intrigue. Intrigue cannot stand publicity, and if the League of Nations were nothing but a great debating society it would kill intrigue. PUBLICITY TO PREVENT WARS It is one of the agreements of this covenant that it is the friendly right of every nation a member of the league to call attention to any- thing that it thinks will disturb the peace of the world, no matter where that thing is occurring. There is no subject that may touch the peace of the world which is exempt from in- quiry and discussion, and I think everybody here present will agree with me that Germany would never have gone to war if she had per- mitted the world to discuss the aggression upon Serbia for a single week. 26 • THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS The British Foreign Office suggested, it pleaded that there might be a day or two delay so that the representatives of the nations of Europe could get together and discuss the possibilities of a settlement. Germany did not dare permit a day's discussion. You know what happened. So soon as the world realized that an outlaw was at large the na- tions 'began one by one to draw together against her. We know for a certainty that if Germany had thought for a moment that Great Britain would go in with France and with Russia she never would have undertaken the enter- prise. And the League of Nations is meant as a notice to all outlaw nations that not only Great Britain, but the United States and the rest of the world will go in to stop enterprises of that sort. WHAT THE LEAGUE IS And so the League of Nations is nothing more nor less than the covenant that the world will always maintain the standards which it has now vindicated by some of the most precious blood ever spilled. The liberated peoples of the Austro-Hun- garian Empire and of the Turkish Empire call out to us for this thing. It has not arisen in the council of statesmen, Europe is a bit sicjc THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 27 at heart at this very moment because it sees that statesmen have had no vision and that the only vision has been the vision of the people. Those who suffer see. Those against whom wrong is wrought know how desirable is the right and the righteous. The nations that have long been under the heel of the Austrian, that have long cowered before the German, that have long suffered the indescribable agonies of being governed by the Turk, have called out to the world, generation after generation, for justice, for liberation, for succor, and no cabinet in the world has heard them. Private organizations, pitying hearts, phil- anthropic men and women have poured out their treasure in order to relieve these suffer- ings, but no nation has said to the nations re- sponsible, *'You must stop; this thing is in- tolerable, and we will not permit it," and the vision has been with the people. My friends, I wish you would reflect upon this proposition. The vision as to what is necessary for great reforms has seldom come from the top in the nations of the world. It has come from the need and the aspiration and the self-assertion of great bodies of men who meant to be free, and I can explain some of the criticisms which have been leveled against this great enterprise only by the sup- position that the men who utter the criti- 28 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS cisms have never felt the great pulse of the heart of the world. And I am amazed — not alarmed, but amazed — that there should be in some quarters such comprehensive ignorance of the state of the world. These gentlemen do not know what the mind of men is just now. Everybody else does. I do not know where they have been closeted; I do not know by what influences they have been blinded; but I do know that they have been separated from the general currents of the thoughts of mankind. And I want to utter this solemn warning, not in the way of a threat; the forces of the world do not threaten, they operate. The great tides of the world do not give notice that they are going to rise and run; they rise in their majesty and overwhelming might, and those who stand in the way are overwhelmed. world's heart awake Now the heart of the world is awake and the heart of the world must be satisfied. Do not let yourselves suppose for a moment that the uneasiness in the populations of Europe is due entirely to economic causes or economic motives; something very much deeper under- lies it all than that. They see that their governments have never THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 29 been able to defend them against intrigue or aggression, and that there is no force of fore- sight or of prudence in any modern cabinet to stop war. And therefore they say, ''There must be some fundamental cause for this," and the fundamental cause they are beginning to per- ceive to be that nations have stood single or in little jealous groups against each other, fostering prejudice, increasing the danger of war, rather than concerting measures to pre- vent it ; and that if there is right in the world, if there is justice in the world, there is no reason why nations should be divided in the support of justice. They are therefore saying if you really be- lieve that there is a right, if you really believe that wars ought to be stopped, stop thinking about the rival interests of nations and think about men and women and children through- out the world. THE DESTINY OF NATIONS Nations are not made to afford distinction to their rulers by way of success in the maneu- vers of politics; nations are meant, if they are meant for anything, to make the men and women and children in them secure and happy and prosperous, and no nation has the right to set up its special interests against the in- 30 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS terests and benefits of mankind, least of all this great nation which we love. It was set up for the benefit of mankind; it was set up to illustrate the highest ideals and to achieve the highest aspirations of men who wanted to be free; and the world — the world of to-day believes that and counts on us, and would be thrown back into the black- ness of despair if we deserted it. I have tried once and again, my fellow- citizens, to say to little circles of friends or to larger bodies what seems to be the real hope of the peoples of Europe, and I tell you frankly I have not been able to do so, be- cause when the thought tries to crowd itself into speech the profound emotion of the thing is too much; speech will not carry. I have felt the tragedy of the hope of those suffering peoples. It is tragedy because it is a hope which cannot be realized in its perfection, and yet I have felt besides its tragedy, its compulsion, its compulsion upon every living man to exer- cise every influence that he has to the utmost to see that as little as possible of that hope is disappointed, because if men cannot now, after this agony of bloody sweat, come to their self-possession and see how to regulate the affairs of the world, we will sink back into a period of struggle in which there will be no hope, and, therefore, no mercy. THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 31 THE soldiers' TEMPER There can be no mercy where there is no hope, for why should you spare another if you yourself expect to perish ? Why should you be pitiful if you can get no pity ? Why should you be just if upon every hand you are put upon? There is another thing which I think the critics of this covenant have not observed. They not only have not observed the temper of the world, but they have not even observed the temper of those splendid boys in khaki that they sent across the seas. I have had the proud consciousness of the reflected glory of those boys, because the Constitution made me their Commander-in-chief, and they have taught me some lessons. When we went into the war we went into it on the basis of declarations which it was my privilege to utter, because I believed them to be an interpretation of the purpose and thought of the people of the United States. And those boys went over there with the feeling that they were sacredly bound to the realization of those ideals; that they were not only going over there to beat Germany; they were not going over there merely with resent- ment in their hearts against a particular out- law nation ; but that they were crossing those three thousand miles of sea in order to show to Europe that the United States, when it 32 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS became necessary, would go anywhere where the rights of mankind were threatened. They would not sit still in the trenches. They would not be restrained by the prudence of experienced continental commanders. They thought they had come over there to do a particular thing, and they were going to do it and do it at once. And just as soon as that rush of spirit as well as rush of body came in contact with the lines of the enemy they began to break, and they continued to break until the end. They continued to break, my fellow-citizens, not merely because of the physical force of those lusty youngsters, but because of the irresistible spiritual force of the armies of the United States. SPIRIT AWED THEIR FOES It was that they felt. It was that that awed them. It was that that made them feel if these youngsters ever got a foothold they could never be dislodged, and that therefore every foot of ground that they won was permanently won for the liberty of mankind. And do you suppose that having felt that crusading spirit of these youngsters, who went over there not to glorify America, but to serve their fellow-men, I am going to permit myself for one moment to slacken in my effort to be THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 33 worthy of them and their cause? What I said at the opening I said with a deeper meaning than perhaps you have caught. I do mean not to come back until it's over over there, and it must not be over until the nations of the world are assured of the permanency of peace. Gentlemen on this side of the water would be very much profited by getting into com- munication with some gentlemen on the other side of the water. We sometimes think, my fellow-citizens, that the experienced states- men of the European nations are an unusually hard-headed set of men, by which we generally mean, although we do not admit it, that they are a bit cynical; that they say, "This is a very practical world," by which you always mean that it is not an ideal world; that they do not believe that things can be settled upon an ideal basis. Well, I never came into intimate contact with them before, but if they used to be that way they are not that way now. They have been subdued, if that was once their temper, by the awful significance of recent events and the awful importance of what is to ensue; and there is not one of them with whom I have come in contact who does not feel that he cannot in conscience return to his people from Paris unless he has done his utmost to do something more than attach his name to a treaty of peace. 34 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS THE LEAGUE IS VITAL Every man in that conference knows that the treaty of peace in itself will be inoperative, as Mr. Taft has said, without this constant support and energy of a great organization such as is supplied by the League of Nations. And men who when I first went over there were skeptical of the possibility of forming a League of Nations admitted that if we could but form it, it would be an invaluable instru- mentality through which to secure the opera- tion of the various parts of the treaty; and when that treaty comes back gentlemen on this side will find the covenant not only in it, but so many threads of the treaty tied to the covenant that you cannot dissect the covenant from the treaty without destroying the whole vital structure. The structure of peace will not be vital without the League of Nations, and no man is going to bring back a cadaver with him. I must say that I have been puzzled by some of the criticisms — not by the criticisms them- selves; I can understand them perfectly, even when there was no foundation for them; but the fact of the criticism. I cannot imagine how these gentlemen can live and not live in the atmosphere of the world. I cannot imagine how they can live and not be in contact with the events of their times, THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 35 and I particularly cannot imagine how they can be Americans and set up a doctrine of careful selfishness thought out to the last detail. CRITICISMS LACK GENEROSITY I have heard no counsel of generosity in their criticism. I have heard no constructive sug- gestion. I have heard nothing except, "Will it not be dangerous to us to help the world?" It would be fatal to us not to help it. From being what I will venture to call the most famous and the most powerful nation in the world we would of a sudden have become the most contemptible. So I did not need to be told, as I have been told, that the people of the United States wo aid support this cove- nant. I am an American and I knew they would. What a sweet revenge it is upon the world! They laughed at us once; they thought we did not mean our professions of principle. They thought so until April of 191 7. It was hardly credible to them that we would do more than send a few men over and go through the forms of helping; and when they saw multitudes hastening across the sea, and saw what those multitudes were eager to do when they got to the other side, they stood at amaze and said, "The thing is real; this 36 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS nation is the friend of mankind, as it said it was." The enthusiasm, the hope, the trust, the confidence in the future bred by that change of view is indescribable. Take an individual American and you may often find him selfish and confined to his special interests; but take the American in the mass and he is willing to die for an idea. The sweet revenge, therefore, is this, that we believed in righteousness, and now we are ready to make the supreme sacrifice for it, the supreme sacrifice of throwing in our fort- unes with the fortunes of men everywhere. Mr. Taft was speaking of Washington's utter- ance about entangling alliances, and if he will permit me to say so, he put the exactly right interpretation upon what Washington said, the interpretation that is inevitable if you read what he said, as most of these gentlemen do not. EXPLANATIONS NEEDLESS The only place a man can feel at home is where nothing has to be explained to him. Nothing has to be explained to me in America, least of all the sentiment of the American people. I mean about great fundamental things like this. There are many differences of judgment as THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 37 to policy — and perfectly legitimate. Some- times profound differences of judgment, but those are not differences of sentiment, those are not differences of purpose, those are not differences of ideals. And the advantage of not having to have anything explained to you is that you recognize a wrong explanation when you hear it. In a certain rather abandoned part of the frontier at one time it was said they found a man who told the truth; he was not found telling it, but he could tell it when he heard it. And I think I am in that situation with regard to some of the criticisms I have heard. They do not make any impression on me be- cause I know there is no medium that will transmit them, that the sentiment of the coun- try is proof against such narrowness and such selfishness as that. I commend these gentlemen to communion with their fellow-citizens. What are we to say, then, as to the future? I think, my fellow-citizens, that we can look forward to it with great confidence. I have heard cheering news since I came to this side of the water about the progress that is being made in Paris toward the discussion and clari- fication of a great many difficult matters, and I believe that settlements will begin to be made rather rapidly from this time on at those conferences. 4 38 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS MEN ARE GATHERING HEART But what I believe — ^what I know as well as believe — is this: that the men engaged in those conferences are gathering heart as they go, not losing it; that they are finding com- munity of purpose and community of ideal to an extent that perhaps they did not expect; and that amid all the interplay of influence — because it is infinitely complicated — amid all the int Aplay of influence there is a forward movement which is running toward the right. Men have at last perceived that the only permanent thing in the world is right, and that a wrong settlement is bound to be a temporary settlement — bound to be a tem- porary settlement for the very best reason of all, that it ought to be a temporary settlement, and the spirits of men will rebel against it, and the spirits of men are now in the saddle. When I was in Italy a little limping group of wounded Italian soldiers sought an inter- view with me. I could not conjecture what it was they were going to say to me, and with the greatest simplicity, with a touching simplicity, they presented me with a petition in favor of the League of Nations. Their wounded limbs, their impaired vitality, were the only arguments they brought with them. It was a simple request that I lend all the influence that I might happen to have to THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 39 relieve future generations of the sacrifices that they had been obliged to make. That appeal has remained in my mind as I have ridden along the streets in European capitals and heard cries of the crowd, cries for the League of Nations from lips of people who, I venture to say, had no particular notion of how it was to be done, who were not ready to propose a plan for a League of Nations, but whose hearts said that something by way of a combination of all men everywhere must come out of this. WHAT THE FLOWERS MEANT As we drove along the country roads weak old women would come out and hold flowers to us. Why should they hold flowers up to strangers from across the Atlantic? Only be- cause they believed that we were the mes- sengers of friendship and of hope, and these flowers were their humble offerings of gratitude that friends from so great a distance should have brought them so great a hope. It is inconceivable that we should disappoint them, and we shall not. The day will come when men in America will look back with swelling hearts and rising pride that they should have been privileged to make the sacrifice which it was necessary to make in order to combine their might and their moral 40 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS power with the cause of justice for men of every kind everywhere. God give us the strength and vision to do it wisely. God give us the privilege of knowing that we did it without counting the cost, and because we were true Americans, lovers of liberty and of the right. IV THE AMENDED COVENANT (Paris, March 27, 191Q.) President Wilson issued the following state- ment: In view of the very surprising impression which seems to exist in some quarters that it is the discussions of the commission on the League of Nations that are delaying the final formulation of peace, I am very glad to take the opportunity of reporting that the con- clusions of this commission were the first to be laid before the plenary conference. They were reported on February 14th, and the world has had a full month in which to discuss every feature of the draft covenant then submitted. THE WORK OF REVISION During the last few days the commission has been engaged in an effort to take advantage of the criticisms which the publication of the covenant has fortunately drawn out. A com- mittee of the commission has also had the 42 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS advantage of a conference with representatives of the neutral states, who are evidencing a very deep interest and a practically unanimous desire to align themselves with the league. The revised covenant is now practically fin- ished. It is in the hands of a committee for the final process of drafting and will almost im- mediately be presented a second time to the public. The conferences of the commission have in- variably been held at times when they could not interfere with the consultation of those who have undertaken to formulate the general conclusions of the conference with regard to the many other complicated problems of peace, so that the members of the commission con- gratulate themselves on the fact that no part of their conferences has ever interposed any form of delay. V A STATEMENT (Paris, April 14^ iQiQ^) A statement by President Wilson in behalf of the Council of Four reads: In view of the fact that the questions which must be settled in the peace with Germany have been brought so near a complete solution that they can now be quickly put through the final process of drafting, those who have been most constantly in conference about them have decided to advise that the German plenipo- tentiaries be invited to meet the representa- tives of the associated belligerent nations at Versailles on the 25 th of April. This does not mean that the many other questions connected with the general peace settlement will be interrupted, or that their consideration, which has long been under way, will be retarded. On the contrary, it is ex- pected that rapid progress will now be made with these questions, so that they may also presently be expected to be ready for final settlement. 44 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS A SPEEDY AGREEMENT PREDICTED It is hoped that the questions most directly, affecting Italy, especially the Adriatic ques- tion, can now be brought to a speedy agree- ment. The Adriatic questions will be given for the time precedence over other questions and pressed by continual study to its final stage. The statements that belong especially to the treaty with Germany will in this way be got out of the way at the same time that all other settlements are being brought to a com- plete formulation. It is realized that though this process must be followed, all the questions of the present great settlement are parts of a single whole. VI THE PRINCIPLES OF PEACE (Paris, April 23, 1919.) President Wilson issued the following state- ment as to the controversy with Italy over the Adriatic question: In view of the capital importance of the questions affected, and in order to throw all possible light upon what is involved in their settlement, I hope that the following state- ment will contribute to the final formation of opinion and to a satisfactory solution. When Italy entered the war she entered upon the basis of a definite private understanding with Great Britain and France, now known as the Pact of London. Since that time the whole face of circumstances has been altered. Many other powers, great and small, have entered the struggle with no knowledge of that private understanding. The Austro-Hungarian Empire, then the enemy of Europe, and at whose expense the Pact of London was to be kept in the event of victory, has gone to pieces and no longer 46 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS exists. Not only that, but the several parts of that empire, it is agreed now by Italy and all her associates, are to be erected into inde- pendent states and associated in a League of Nations, not with those who were recently our enemies, but with Italy herself and the powers that stood with Italy in the great war for liberty. MUST SAFEGUARD RIGHTS OF SMALL NATIONS We are to establish their liberty as well as our own. They are to be among the smaller states whose interests are henceforth to be safeguarded as scrupulously as the interests of the most powerful states. The war was ended, moreover, by proposing to Germany an armistice and peace which should be founded on certain clearly defined principles which set up a new order of right and justice. Upon those principles the peace with Ger- many has been conceived not only, but for- mulated. Upon those principles it will be executed. We cannot ask the great body of powers to propose and effect peace with Austria and establish a new basis of independence and right in the states which originally constituted the Austro-Hungarian Empire and in the states of the Balkan group on principles of another kind. We must apply the same prin- THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 47 ciples to the settlement of Europe in those quarters that we have applied in the peace with Germany. It was upon the explicit avowal of those principles that the initiative for peace was taken. It is upon them that the whole structure of peace must rest. If those principles are to be adhered to, Fiume must serve as the outlet of the com- merce not of Italy, but of the land to the north and northeast of that port: Hungary, Bo- hemia, Rumania, and the states of the new Jugo-Slav group. To assign Fiume to Italy would be to create the feeling that we have deliberately put the port upon which all those countries chiefly depend for their access to the Medi- terranean in the hands of a power of which it did not form an integral part and whose sov- ereignty, if set up there, must inevitably seem foreign, not domestic or identified with the commercial and industrial life of the regions which the port must serve. It is for that reason, no doubt, that Fiume was not included in the Pact of London, but there definitely assigned to the Croatians. PACT DESIGNED AS GUARD AGAINST AUSTRIA And the reason why the line of the Pact of London swept about many of the islands of the eastern coast of the Adriatic and around 48 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS the portion of the Dalmatian coast which lies most open to that sea was not only that here and there on those islands, and here and there on that coast, there are bodies of people of Italian blood and connection, but also, and no doubt chiefly, because it was felt that it was necessary for Italy to have a foothold amid the channels of the Eastern Adriatic in order that she might make her own coasts safe against the naval aggression of Austria- Hungary. But Austria-Hungary no longer exists. It is proposed that the fortifications which the Austrian government constructed there shall be razed and permanently destroyed. It is part also of the new plan of European order which centers in the League of Nations that the new states erected there shall accept a limitation of armaments which puts aggres- sion out of the question. There can be no fear of the unfair treatment of groups of Italian people there, because adequate guarantees will be given, under international sanction, of the equal and equitable treatment of all racial or national minorities. In brief, every question associated with this settlement wears a new aspect — a new aspect given it by the very victory for right for which Italy has made the supreme sacrifice of blood and treasure. Italy, along with the four other great powers, has become one of the chief THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 49 trustees of the new order which she has played so honorable a part in establishing. Italy's other frontiers restored And on the north and northeast her natural frontiers are completely restored, along the whole sweep of the Alps from northeast to southeast to the very end of the Istrian Pen- insula, including all the great watershed within which Trieste and Pola lie, and all the fair regions whose face nature has turned toward the great peninsula upon which the historic life of the Latin people has been worked out through centuries of famous story ever since Rome was first set upon her seven hills. Her ancient unity is restored. Her lines are extended to the great walls which are her natural defense. It is within her choice to be surrounded by friends; to exhibit to the newly liberated peoples across the Adriatic that noblest quality of greatness, magna- nimity, friendly generosity, the preference of justice over interest. The nations associated with her, the nations that know nothing of the Pact of London or of any other special understanding that lies at the beginning of this great struggle, and who have made their supreme sacrifice also in the interest not of national advantage or defense, but of the settled peace of the world, are now so THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS united with her older associates in urging her to assume a leadership which cannot be mis- taken in the new order of Europe. AMERICA S DUTY TO INSIST ON JUSTICE America is Italy's friend. Her people are drawn, millions strong, from Italy's own fair countryside. She is linked in blood, as well as in affection, with the Italian people. Such ties can never be broken. And America was privileged by the generous commission of her associates in the war to initiate the peace we are about to consummate — to initiate it upon terms which she had herself formulated and in which I was her spokesman. The compulsion is upon her to square every decision she takes a part in with those prin- ciples. She can do nothing else. She trusts Italy, and in her trust believes that Italy will ask nothing of her that cannot be made un- mistakably consistent with those sacred ob- ligations. The interests are not now in question, but the rights of peoples, of states new and old, of liberated peoples and peoples whose rulers have never accounted them worthy of a right ; above all, the right of the world to peace and to such settlements of interest as shall make peace secure. These, and these only, are the principles THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 51 for which America has fought. These, and these only, are the principles upon which she can consent to make peace. Only upon these principles, she hopes and believes, will the people of Italy ask her to make peace. VII THE NEW LEAGUE COVENANT (Paris, April 2S, 1919.) Following is ike text of President Wilson* s speech before the plenary session of the Peace Conference: Mr. President: Wlicn the text of the covenant of the League of Nations was laid before you I had the honor of reading the covenant in extenso. I will not detain you to-day to read the covenant as it has now been altered, but will merely take the liberty of explaining to you some of the alterations that have been made. The report of the commission has been cir- culated. You yourselves have in hand the text of the covenant, and will no doubt have noticed that most of the changes that have been made are mere changes of phraseology, not changes of substance; and that, besides that, most of the changes are intended to clarify the document, or, rather, to make ex- plicit what we all have assiuned was implicit in the document as it was originally presented to THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 53 you. But I shall take the liberty of calling your attention to the new features, such as they are. Some of them are considerable, the rest trivial. CHANGES MADE NECESSARY The first paragraph of Article I is new. In view of the insertion of the covenant in the peace treaty, specific provision as to the signa- tories of the treaty, who would become mem- bers of the league, and also as to neutral states to be invited to accede to the covenant, were obviously necessary. The paragraph also pro- vides for the method by which a neutral state may accede to the covenant. The third paragraph of Article I is new, pro- viding for the withdrawal of any member of the league on a notice given of two years. The second paragraph of Article IV is new, providing for a possible increase in the council, should other powers be added to the League of Nations whose present accession is not anticipated. The last two paragraphs of Article IV are new, providing specifically for one vote for each member of the league in the council, which was understood before, and providing also for one representative of each member of the league. The first paragraph of Article V is new, ex- 5 54 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS pressly incorporating the provision as to the unanimity of voting, which was at first taken for granted. The second paragraph of Article VI has had added to it that a majority of the assem- bly must approve the appointment of the secretary-general. CAPITAL OF THE LEAGUE The first paragraph of Article VII names Geneva as the seat of the league and is fol- lowed by a second paragraph which gives the council power to establish the seat of the league elsewhere should it subsequently deem it necessary. The third paragraph of Article VII is new, establishing equality of employment of men and women — that is to say, by the league. The second paragraph of Article XIII is new, inasmuch as it undertakes to give in- stances of disputes which are generally suit- able for submission to arbitration, instances of what have been called "justiciable" ques- tions. The eighth paragraph of Article XV is new. This is the amendment regarding domestic jurisdiction, that where the council finds that a question arising out of an international dis- pute affects matters which are clearly under the domestic jurisdiction of one or other of the THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 55 parties it is to report to that effect and make no recommendation. The last paragraph of Article XVI is new, providing for expulsion from the league in certain extraordinary circumstances. Article XXI is new. THE PRINCIPLE OF MANDATORIES The second paragraph of Article XXII in- serts the words with regard to mandatories, ''and who are willing to accept it," thus ex- plicitly introducing the principle that a man- date cannot be forced upon a nation unwill- ing to accept it. Article XIII is a combination of several former articles, and also contains the following : A clause providing for the just treatment of aborigines; a clause looking toward a pre- vention of the white-slave traffic and the traffic in opium, and a clause looking toward progress in international prevention and con- trol of disease. Article XXV specifically mentions the Red Cross as one of the international organiza- tions which are to connect their work with the work of the league. Article XXVI permits the amendment of the covenant by a majority of the states com- posing the assembly, instead of three-fourths of the states, though it does not change the 56 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS requirement in that matter with regard to the vote in the council. The second paragraph of Article XXVI is also new, and was added at the request of the Brazilian delegation in order to avoid certain constitutional difficulties. It permits any member of the league to dissent from an amendment, the effect of such dissent being withdrawal from the league. And the annex is added, giving the names of the signatories of the treaty, who become members, and the names of the states invited to accede to the covenant. These are all the changes, I believe, which are of moment. Mr. President, I take the opportunity to move the following resolutions in order to carry out the provisions of the covenant. You will notice that the covenant provides that the first secretary-general shall be chosen by this conference. It also provides that the first choice of the four member states who are to be added to the five great powers on the council is left to this conference. THE SECRETARY-GENERAL NOMINATED I move, therefore, that the first secretary- general of the council shall be the Honorable Sir James Eric Drummond, and, second, that until such time as the assembly shall have selected the first four members of the league THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 57 to be represented on the council in accordance with Article IV of the covenant, representa- tives of Belgium, Brazil, Greece, and Spain shall be members; and, third, that the powers to be represented on the council of the League of Nations are requested to name representa- tives who shall form a committee of nine to prepare plans for the organization of the league and for the establishment of the seat of the league and to make arrangements and to prepare the agenda for the first meeting of the assembly, this committee to report both to the council and to the assembly of the league. I think it not necessary to call your attention to other matters we have previously discussed — the capital significance of this covenant, the hopes which are entertained as to the effect it will have upon steadying the affairs of the world, and the obvious necessity that there should be a concert of the free nations of the world to maintain justice in interna- tional relations, the relations between people and between the nations of the world. A PROPOSED AMENDMENT If Baron Makino will pardon me for intro- ducing a matter which I absent-mindedly over- looked, it is necessary for me to propose the alteration of several words in the first line of 58 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS Article V. Let me say that in several parts of the treaty, of which this covenant will form a part, certain duties are assigned to the coun- cil of the League of Nations. In some instances it is provided that the action they shall take shall be by a majority vote. It is therefore necessary to make the covenant conform with the other portions of the treaty by adding these words. I will read the first line and add the words: Except where otherwise expressly provided in this covenant, or by the terms of this treaty, decisions at any meeting of the assembly or of the council shall require the agreement of all the members of the league represented at the meeting. ''Except where otherwise expressly provided in this covenant," is the present reading, and I move the addition, "or by the terms of this treaty." With that addition, I move the adoption of the covenant. VIII A MEMORANDUM TO ORLANDO (Paris, April 2Q, 191 9.) Following is the memorandum sent by Presi- dent Wilson, on April 14th, to the Italian dele- gation to the Peace Conference: There is no question to which I have given more careful or anxious thought than I have given to this, because in common with all my colleagues it is my earnest desire to see the utmost done for Italy. Throughout my consideration of it, however, I have felt that there was one matter in which I had no choice and could wish to have none. I felt bound to square every conclusion that I should reach as accurately as possible with the fourteen principles of peace which I set forth in my address to the Congress of the United States on the 8th of January, 1918, and in subsequent addresses. ONE PEACE FOR ALL These fourteen points and the principles l^i4 down in the subsequent addresses were 6o THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS formally adopted, with only a single reserva- tion, by the powers associated against Germany and will constitute the basis of peace with Germany. I do not feel at liberty to suggest one basis for peace with Germany and another for peace with Austria. It will be remembered that in reply to a communication from the Austrian govern- ment offering to enter into negotiations for an armistice and peace on the basis of the fourteen points to which I have alluded I said that there was one matter to which those points no longer applied. They had demanded autonomy for the several states which had constituted parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and I pointed out that it must now be left to the choice of the people of these several countries what their destinies and political relations should be. They have chosen with the sympathy of the whole world to be set up as independent states. Their complete separation from Austria and the complete dissolution of the Austro-Hun- garian Empire has given a new aspect and sig- nificance to the settlements which may be effected with regard, at any rate, to the eastern boundaries of Italy. Personally, I am quite willing that Italy should be accorded along the whole front of her northern frontier, and wherever she comes into contact with Austrian territory, all that THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 6i was accorded her in the so-called Pact of London, but I am of the clear opinion that the Pact of London can no longer apply to the settlement of her eastern boundaries. THE PACT OP LONDON The line drawn in the Pact of London was conceived for the purpose of establishing an absolutely adequate frontier of safety for Italy against any possible hostility or aggres- sion on the part of Austria. But Austria- Hungary no longer exists. These eastern frontiers will touch countries stripped of the military and naval power of Austria, settled in interdependence of Austria and organized for the purpose of satisfying legitimate national aspirations, and created states not hostile to the new European order, but arising out of it, interested in its maintenance, dependent upon the cultivation of friendship, and bound to a common policy of peace and accom- modation by the covenant of the League of Nations. It is with these facts in mind that I have approached the Adriatic question. It is com- monly agreed, and I very heartily adhere to the agreement, that the ports of Trieste and Pola, and with them the greater part of the Istrian Peninsula, should be ceded to Italy, her eastern frontier running along the natural 62 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS strategic line established by the physical con- formation of the country — a line which it has been attempted to draw with some degree of accuracy on the map. Within this line on the Italian side will lie considerable bodies of non-Italian populations, but their fortunes are so naturally linked by the nature of the country itself with the rest of the Italian people that I think their inclusion is fully justified. FlUME AN INTERNATIONAL PORT There would be no justification, in my judg- ment, in including Fiume, or any part of the coast-line to the south of Fiume, within the boundaries of the Italian kingdom. Fiume is by situation and by all the circumstances of its development not an Italian, but an inter- national, port, serving the countries to the east and north of the Gulf of Fiume. Just because it is an international port and cannot with justice be subordinated to any one sovereignty, it is my clear judgment that it should enjoy a very considerable degree of genuine autonomy, and while it should be in- cluded, no doubt, within the customs system of the new Jugoslavic state, it should, neverthe- less, be left free in its own interest and in the interest of the states lying about it, to devote itself to thQ service of th^ commerce which THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 63 naturally and inevitably seeks an outlet or in- let at its port. The states which it serves will be new states. They will have complete confidence in their access to an outlet on the sea. The friend- ship and the connections of the future will largely depend upon such an arrangement as I have suggested, and friendship, co- operation, and freedom of action must under- lie every arrangement of peace if peace is to be lasting. I believe there will be common agreement that the island of Lissa should be ceded to Italy, and that she should retain the port of Volpna. I believe that it will be generally agreed that the fortifications which the Aus- trian government established upon the islands near the eastern coast of the Adriatic should be permanently dispensed with under inter- national guaranty, and that the disarmament which is to be arranged under the League of Nations should limit the states on the eastern coast of the Adriatic to only such minor naval forces as are necessary for policing the waters of the islands and the coast. These are con- clusions which I am forced to by compulsion of the understandings which underlie the whole initiation of the present peace. No other conclusions seem to be susceptible to being rendered concise with these under- standings. They were undervStandings accepted 64 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS by the whole world, and bear with peculiar compulsion upon the United States, because the privilege was accorded her of taking the initiative of bringing about the negotiations for peace, and her plans underlie the whole difficult business. Italy's great historic object And certainly Italy obtains under such a settlement the great historic object which her people have so long had in mind. The histori- cal wrongs inflicted upon her by Austria-Hun- gary and by a long series of unjust transactions, which I hope will before long sink out of the memory of man, are completely redressed. Nothing is denied her which will complete her national unity. Here and there upon the islands of the Adri- atic and upon the eastern coast of that sea there are settlements containing large Italian elements of population, but the pledge under which the new states enter the family of nations will abundantly safeguard the liberty, the development, and all the* just rights of national and racial minorities, and back of these safeguards will always lie the watchful authority of the League of Nations. And at the v^ery outset we shall have avoided the fatal error of making Italy's nearest neigh- bors on her east her enemies and nursing just THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 65 such a sense of injustice as has disturbed the peace of Europe for generations together and played no small part in bringing on the ter- rible conflict through which we have just passed. IX A PROCLAMATION (Paris, May /, 1919.) President Wilson's appeal in favor of the drive to secure associate members of the Boy Scout organization reads as follows: The Boy Scouts of America have rendered notable service to the nation during the World War. They have done effective work in the Liberty Loan and War Savings campaigns, in discovering and reporting upon the black- walnut supply, in co-operating with the Red Cross and other war-work agencies, in acting as despatch-bearers for the Committee on Pub- lic Information, and in other important fields. The Boy Scouts have not only demonstrated their worth to the nation, but have also ma- terially contributed to a deeper appreciation by the American people of the higher concep- tion of patriotism and good citizenship. The Boy Scout movement should not only be preserved, but strengthened. It deserves the support of all public-spirited citizens. The available means for the Boy Scout movement THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS (y^ have thus far sufficed for the organization and training of only a small proportion of the boys of the country. There are approximately ten million boys in the United States between the ages of twelve and twenty-one. Of these only three hundred and seventy-five thousand arc enrolled as members of the Boy Scouts of America. America cannot acquit herself commensur- ately with her power and influence in the great period now facing her and the world unless the boys of America are given better oppor- tunities than heretofore to prepare themselves for the responsibilities of citizenship. Every nation depends for its future upon the proper training and development of its youth. The American boy must have the best training and discipline our great democracy can provide if America is to maintain her ideals, her stand- ards and her influence in the world. The plan, therefore, for a Boy Scout week during which a universal appeal will be made to all Americans to supply the means to put the Boy Scouts of America in a position to carry forward effectively and continuously the splendid work they are doing for the youth of America should have the unreserved support of the nation. Therefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States of America, do hereby recommend that the period beginning Sunday, 68 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS June 8th, to Flag Day, June 14th, be observed as Boy Scout Week through the United States for the purpose of strengthening the work of the Boy vSeouts of America. I earnestly recommend that in every com- munity a Citizens* Committee, under the leadership of a National Citizens' Committee, be organized to co-operate in carrying out a program for a definite recognition of the effective services rendered by the Boy Scouts of America; for a survey of the facts relating to the boyhood of each community; in order that with the co-operation of churches, schools, and other organizations definitely engaged in work for boys, adequate provision may be made for extending the 13oy Scout program to a larger proportion of American boyhood. The Boy Scout movement offers unusual opportunity for volunteer service. It needs men to act as committee-men and as leaders of groups of boys. I hope that all who can will enlist for such personal service, enroll as associate members, and give all possible finan- cial assistance to this worthy organization of American boyhood. Anything that is done to increase the effectiveness of the Boy Scouts of America will be a genuine contribution to the welfare of the nation. In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed. THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 69 Done this first day of May in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and nine- teen, and of the independence of the United States of America the one hundred and forty- third. WooDRow Wilson. By the President: Robert Lansing, Secretary of State, X AMERICA IS READY (Paris, May lo, 1919.) Speaking at the session of the Academy of Moral and Political Science y President Wilson said: Sir Thomas and Gentlemen: I esteem it a very great pleasure to find myself in this distinguished company and in this companion- ship of letters. Sir Thomas has been peculiarly generous, as have the gentlemen at the other end of the table, in what they have said of me, but they have given me too high a role to play up to. It is particularly difficult to believe oneself to be what has been described in so intimate a company as this. When a great body of people is present, one can assume a pose which is impossible when there is so small a number of critical eyes looking directly at you. And yet there was one part of Sir Thomas's generous interpretation which was true. What I have tried to do, and what I have said in speaking for America, was to speak the mind THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 71 of America, to speak the impulse and the principles of America. And the only proof I has^e of my success is that the spirit of America responded — responded without stint or limit — and proved that it was ready to do that thing which I was privileged to call upon it to do, A GUIDE FOR THE FUTURE And we have illustrated in this spirit of America something which perhaps may serve as a partial guide for the future. May I say that one of the things that have disturbed me in recent months is the unqualified hope that men have entertained everywhere of imme- diate emancipation from the things that have hampered and oppressed them. You cannot in human experience rush into the light. You have to go through the twilight into the broadening day before the noon comes and the full sun is on the landscape; and we must see to it that those who hope are not disappointed, by showing them the processes by which that hope must be realized — processes of law, proc- esses of slow disentanglement from the many things that have bound us in the past. You cannot throw off the habits of society immediately, any more than you can throw off the habits of the individual immediately. They must be slowly got rid of, or, rather, they must be slowly altered. They must be slowly 72 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS adapted, they must be slowly shapen to the new ends for which we would use them. That is the process of law, if law is intelligently conceived. I thought it a privilege to come here to-night, because your studies were devoted to one of the things which will be of most consequence to men in the future, the intelligent develop- ment of international law. In one sense, this great, unprecedented war was fought to give validity to international law, to prove that it has a reality which no nation could afford to disregard; that, while it did not have the ordi- nary sanctions, while there was no international authority as yet to enforce it, it nevertheless had something behind it which was greater than that, the moral rectitude of mankind. A NEW INTERNATIONAL LAW If we can now give to international law the kind of vitality which it can have only if it is a real expression of our moral judgment, we shall have completed in some sense the work which this war was intended to emphasize. International law has perhaps sometimes been a little too much thought out in the closet. International law has — may I say it without offense? — been handled too exclusively by lawyers. Lawyers like definite lines. They like systematic arrangements. They are un- THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 73 easy if they depart from what was done yes- terday. They dread experiments. They like charted seas, and, if they have no charts, hardly venture to undertake the voyage. Now we must venture upon uncharted seas, to some extent, in the future. In the new League of Nations we are starting out on un- charted seas, and, therefore, we must have, I will not say the audacity, but the steadiness of purpose which is necessary in such novel cir- cumstances. And we must not be afraid of new things, at the same time that we must not be intolerant of old things. We must weave out of the old materials the new garments which it is necessary that men should wear. world's heart under plain jacket It is a great pri\ ilege if we can do that kind of thinking for mankind — human thinking, thinking that is made up of comprehension of the needs of mankind. And when I think of mankind I must say I do not always think of well-dressed persons. Most persons are not well dressed. The heart of the world is under very plain jackets, the heart of the world is at very simple firesides, the heart of the world is in very humble circumstances; and, unless you know the pressure of life of the humbler classes, you know nothing of life whatever. Unless you know where the pinch comes yoa 74 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS do not know what the pulse has to stand, you do not know what strain the muscles have to bear, you do not know what trial the nerves have to go through to hold on. To hold on where there is no glee in life is the hard thing. Those of us who can sit some- times at leisure and read pleasant books and think of the past, the long past, that we have no part in, and project the long future — we are not specimens of mankind. The specimens of mankind have no time to do that, and we must use our leisure, when we have it, to feel with them and think for them, so that we can translate their desire into a fact, so far as that is possible, and see that that most complicated and elusive of all things which we call justice is accomplished. An easy word to say, and a noble word upon the tongue, but one of the most difficult enterprises of the human spirit. JUSTICE FOR ALL MEN If it IS hard to be just to those with whom you are intimate; how much harder it is to conceive the problems of those with whom you are not intimate, and be just to them. To live and let live, to work for people and with people, is at the bottom of the kind of experi- ence which must underlie justice. The sympathy that has the slightest touch THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 75 of condescension in it has no touch of helpful- ness abodt it. If you are aware of stooping to help a man you cannot help him. You mast realize that he stands on the same earth with yo arse If and has a heart hke your own, and that you are helping him, standing on that common level and using that common impulse of humanity. In a sense, the old enterprise of national law is played out. I mean that the future of man- kind depends more upon the relations of na- tions to one another, more upon the realiza- tion of the common brotherhood of mankind^ than upon the sejmrate and selfish develop- ment of national systems of law; so that the men who can, if I may express it so, think without language, think the common thoughts of humanity, are the men who will be most serviceable in the immediate future. God grant that there may be many of them, that many men may see this hope and wish to advance it, and that the plain men every- where may know that there is no language of society in which he has no brothers or colabor- ers, in order to reach the great ends of equity and of high justice. The President continued with a strong dis- claimer of the idea that the American people were largely materialists or dollar -worshipers. He went on to say: 76 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS I have had in recent months one very deep sense of privilege. I have been keenly aware that there have been times when the peoples of Europe haven't understood the people of the United States. We have been too often supposed to have been devoted chiefly, if not entirely, to material enterprises. We have been supposed, in the common phrase, to worship the almighty dollar. We have accumulated wealth, sir, we have devoted ourselves to material enterprises with extraordinary success, but there has underlain all of that, all the time, a common sense of humanity and a common sympathy with the high principles of justice, which has never grown dim in the field even of enterprise; and it has been my very great joy in these recent m.onths to interpret the people of the United States to the people of the world. The President asserted that the American peo- ple yWho came into the world consecrated to liberty, were ready to cast in their lot in common with the lot oj those whose liberty is threatened wherever the cause of liberty was seen to be imperiled; he added: This is the spirit of the people of the United States, and they have been privileged to send two million men over here to tell you so. It has been their great privilege not merely THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS ^^ to tell you so in words, but to tell you so in men and material — the pouring out of their wealth and the offering of their blood. A great many of my colleagues in American university life got their training, even in polit- ical science, as so many men in civil circles did, in German universities. I have been obliged at various times to read a great deal of bad German, difficult German, awkward Ger- man, and I have been aware that the thought was as awkward as the phrase, that the thought was rooted in a fundamental misconception of the state of the political life of peoples. CORRECTING WRONG IDEAS And it has been a portion of my effort to disengage the thought of American university teachers from the misg aided instruction which they have received on this side of the sea. Their American spirit anticipated most of them, as a matter of course, but the form of the thought sometimes misled them. They speak too often of the state as a thing which would ignore the individual, as a thing which was privileged to dominate the fortune of men by a sort of inherent and sacred authority. Now, as an utter Democrat, I have never been able to accept that view of the state. My view of the state is that it must stop and listen to what I have to say, no matter how humble 78 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS I am, and that each man has the right to have his voice heard and his counsel heeded, in so far as it is worthy of him. 1 have always been among those who be- lieve that the greatest freedom of speech was the greatest safety, because if a man is a fool the best thing to do is to encourage him to advertise the fact by speaking. It cannot be so easily discovered if you allow him to remain silent and look wise, but if you let him speak the secret is out and the world knows that he is a fool. BENEFITS OF FREE SPEECH So it is by the exposure of folly that it is defeated, not by the seclusion of folly; and in this free air of free speech men get into that sort of communication with one another which constitutes the basis of all common achievement. France, through many vicissi- tudes and through many bitter experiences, found the way to this sort of freedom, and now she stands at the front of the world as the representative of constitutional liberty. XI DOMESTIC LEGISLATION (Paris, May 20, 191 9.) The President's Message to the Congress was transmitted by cable. The text follows : Gentlemen of the Congress: I deeply regret my inability to be present at the open- ing of the extraordinary session of the Con- gress. It still seems to be my duty to take part in the counsels of the Peace Conference and contribute what I can to the solution of the innumerable questions to whose settlement it has had to address itself. For they are ques- tions which affect the peace of the whole world, and from them, therefore, the United States cannot stand apart. I deemed it my duty to call the Congress together at this time because it was not wise to postpone longer the provisions which must be made for the sup- port of the government. Many of the ap- propriations which are absolutely necessary for the maintenance of the government and the fulfilment of its varied obligations for 8o THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS the fiscal year 1919-20 have not yet been made^ the end of the present fiscal year is at hand, and action upon these appropriations can no longer be prudently delayed. It is necessary, therefore, that I should immediately call your attention to this critical need. It is hardly necessary for me to urge that it may receive your prompt attention. PEACE SUBJECTS LATER I shall take the liberty of addressing you on my return on the subjects which have most en- grossed our attention and the attention of the world during these last anxious months, since the armistice of last November was signed, the international settlements which must form the subject-matter of the present treaties of peace of the immediate future. It would be prema- ture to discuss them or to express a judgment about them before they are brought to their complete formulation by the agreements which are now being sought at the table of the con- ference. I shall hope to lay them before you in their many aspects so soon as arrangements have been reached. I hesitate to venture any opinion or press any recommendation with regard to domestic legislation while absent from the United States and out of daily touch with intimate sources of information and counsel. I am conscious THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 8i that I need, after so long an absence from Washington, to seek the advice of those who have remained in constant touch with domestic problems and who have known them close at hand from day to day; and I trust that it will very soon be possible for me to do so. But there are several questions pressing for consideration, to which I feel that I may, and indeed must, even now direct your attention, if only in general terms. In speaking of them I shall, I dare say, be doing little more than speak your own thoughts. I hope that I shall speak your own judgment also. THE LABOR QUESTON The question which stands at the front of all others in every country amid the present great awakening is the question of labor; and perhaps I can speak of it with as great ad- vantage while engrossed in the consideration of interests which affect all countries alike as I could at home and amid the interests which naturally most affect my thought, because they are the interests of our own people. By the question of labor I do not mean the question of efficient industrial productioa, the question of how labor is to be obtained and made effective in the great process of sustain- ing population and winning success amid com- mercial and industrial rivalries. I mean that 82 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS much greater and more vital question: How are the men and women who do the daily labor of the world to obtain progressive im- provement in the conditions of their labor, to be made happier, and to be served better by the communities and the industries which their labor sustains and advances? How are they to be given their right advantage as citizens and human beings? We cannot go any farther in our present direction. We have already gone too far. We cannot live our right life as a nation or achieve our proper success as an industrial community if capital and labor are to continue to be antagonistic instead of being partners; if they are to continue to distrust one another and contrive how they can get the better of one another ; or what perhaps amounts to the same thing, calculate by what form and degree of coercion they can manage to extort, on the one hand, work enough to make enterprise profitable; on the other, justice and fair treat- ment enough to make life tolerable. That bad road has turned out a blind alley. It is no thoroughfare to real prosperity. We must find another, leading in another direction, and to a very different destination. It must lead not merely to accommodation, but also to a genuine co-operation and partnership based upon a real community of interest and partici- pation in control. THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 83 CAPITAL AND LABOR AS PARTNERS There is now, in fact, a real community of interest between capital and labor, but it has never been made evident in action. It can be made operative and manifest only in a new organization of industry. The genius of our business men and the sound practical sense of our workers can certainly work such a partnership out when once they realize exactly what it is that they seek and sincerely adopt a common purpose with regard to it. Labor legislation lies, of course, chiefly with the states; but the new spirit and method of organization which must be effected are not to be brought about by legislation so much as by the common counsel and voluntary co-operation of capitalist, manager, and work- man. Legislation can go only a very little way in commanding what shall be done. The organization of industry is a matter of corpo- rate and individual initiative and of practical business arrangement. Those who really de- sire a new relationship between capital and labor can readily find a way to bring it about, and perhaps Federal legislation can help more than state legislation could. DEMOCRATIZATION OF INDUSTRY The object of all reform in this essential matter must be the genuine democratization 84 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS of industry, based upon a full recognition of the right of those who work, in whatever rank, to participate in some organic way in every decision which directly affects their welfare or the part they are to play in industry. Some positive legislation is practicable. The Con- gress has already shown the way to one reform which should be world-wide, by establishing the eight-hour day as the standard day in every field of labor over which it can exercise control. It has sought to find the way to pre- vent child labor, and will, I hope and believe, presently find it. It has served the whole country by leading the way in developing the means of preserving and safeguarding life and health in dangerous industries. It can now help in the difficult task of giving a new form and spirit to industrial organization by co- ordinating the several agencies of conciliation and adjustment which have been brought into existence by the difficulties and mistaken policies of the present management of industry, and by setting up and developing new Federal agencies of service and information which may serve as a clearing-house for the best experi- ments and the best thought on this great matter, upon which every thinking man must be aware that the future development of society directly depends. Agencies of in- ternational counsel and suggestion are pres- ently to be created in connection with the THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 85 League of Nations in this very field; but it is national action and the enlightened policy of individuals, corporations, and societies within each nation that must bring about the actual reforms. The members of the committees on labor in the two Houses will hardly need sug- gestions from me as to what means they shall seek to make the Federal government the agent of the whole nation in pointing out and, if need be, guiding the process of reorganization and reform. AID FOR RETURNING SOLDIERS I am sure that it is not necessary for me to remind you that there is one immediate and very practical question of labor that we should meet in the most liberal spirit. We must see to it that our returning soldiers are assisted in every practicable way to find the places for which they are fitted in the daily work of the country. This can be done by develop- ing and maintaining upon an adequate scale the admirable organization created by the Department of Labor for placing men seek- ing work; and it can also be done, in at least one very great field, by creating new oppor- tunities for individual enterprise. The Sec- retary of the Interior has pointed out the way by which returning soldiers may be helped to find and take up land in the hitherto un- 7 86 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS developed regions of the country which the Federal government has already prepared or can readily prepare for cultivation, and also on many of the cut-over or neglected areas which lie within the limits of the older states, and I once more take the liberty of recom- mending very urgently that his plans shall receive the immediate and substantial sup- port of the Congress. INDUSTRY*S GREAT FUTURE Peculiar and very stimulating conditions await our commerce and industrial enterprise in the immediate future. Unusual oppor- tunities will soon present themselves to our merchants and producers in foreign markets, and large fields for profitable investment will be opened to our free capital. But it is not only of that I am thinking ; it is not chiefly of that I am thinking. Many great industries prostrated by the war wait to be rehabilitated in many parts of the world, where what will be lacking is not brains or willing hands or organizing capacity or experienced skill, but machinery and raw materials and capital. I believe that our business men, our merchants, our manufacturers, and our capitalists will have the vision to see that prosperity in one part of the world ministers to prosperity every- where; that there is in a very true sense a THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 87 solidarity of interest throughout the world of enterprise, and that our dealings with the countries that have need of our products and our money will teach them to deem us more than ever friends whose necessities we seek in the right way to serve. TO FACILITATE WORLD TRADE Our new merchant-ships, which have in some quarters been feared as destructive rivals, may prpve helpful rivals rather, and common servants, very much needed and very welcome. Our great shipyards, new and old, will be so opened to the use of the world that they will prove immensely serviceable to every maritime people in restoring much more rapidly than would otherwise have been possible the ton- nage wantonly destroyed in the war. I have only to suggest that there are many points at which we can facilitate American enter- prise in foreign trade by opportune legislation and make it easy for American merchants to go where they will be welcomed as friends rather than as dreaded antagonists. America has a great and honorable service to perform in bringing the commercial and industrial un- dertakings of the world back to their old scope and swing again, and putting a solid structure of credit under them. All our legislation should be friendly to such plans and purposes. 88 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS TAXATION LEGISLATION NEEDED And credit and enterprise alike will be quickened by timely and helpful legislation with regard to taxation. I hope that the Con- gress will find it possible to undertake an early reconsideration of Federal taxes in order to make our system of taxation more simple and easy of administration and the taxes them- selves as little burdensome as they can be made and yet suffice to support the government and meet all its obligations. The figures to which those obligations have risen are very great indeed, but they are not so great as to make it difficult for the nation to meet them, and meet them, perhaps, in a single generation by taxes which will neither crush nor discour- age. These are not so great as they seem, not so great as the immense sums we have had to borrow added to the immense sums we have had to raise by taxation, would seem to indicate; for a very large proportion of those sums were raised in order that they might be loaned to the governments with which we were associated in the war, and those loans will, of course, constitute assets, not liabilities, and will not have to be taken care of by our taxpayers. The main thing that we shall have to care for is that our taxation shall rest as lightly as possible on the productive resources of the THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 89 country, that its rates shall be stable, and that it shall be constant in its revenue-yielding power. We have found the main sources from which it must be drawn. I take it for granted that its mainstays will henceforth be the in- come tax, the excess-profits tax, and the estate tax. All these can be so adjusted to yield constant and adequate returns and yet not constitute a too grievous burden on the tax- payer. A revision of the income tax has already been provided for by the Act of 1918, but I think you will find that further changes can be made to advantage, both in the rates of the tax and in the method of its collection. The excess-profits tax need not long be main- tained at the rates which were necessary while the enormous expenses of the war had to be borne, but it should be made the basis of a permanent system which will reach undue profits without discouraging the enterprise and activity of our business men. The tax on inheritances ought, no doubt, to be recon- sidered in its relation to the fiscal systems of the several states, but it certainly ought to remain a permanent part of the fiscal system of the Federal government also. MANY MINOR TAXES UNJUSTIFIABLE Many of the minor taxes provided for in the revenue legislation of 191 7 and 191 8, 90 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS though no doubt made necessary by the press- ing necessities of the war-time, can hardly find sufficient justification under the easier circumstances of peace, and can now, happily, be got rid of. Among these, I hope you will agree, are the excises upon various manufact- ures and the taxes upon retail sales. They are unequal in the incidence on different in- dustries and on different individuals. Their collection is difficult and expensive. Those which are levied upon articles sold at retail are largely evaded by the readjustment of retail prices. On the other hand, I should assume that it is expedient to maintain a considerable range of indirect taxes, and the fact that alcoholic liquors will presently no longer afford a source of revenue by taxation makes it the more necessary that the field should be carefully restudied in order that equivalent sources of revenue may be found which it will be legitimate, and not burden- some, to draw upon. But you have at hand in the Treasury Department many experts who can advise you upon the matters much better than I can. I can only suggest the lines of a permanent and workable system, and the placing of the taxes where they will least hamper the life of the people. There is, fortunately, no occasion for under- taking in the immediate future any general revision of our systern of import duties, Nq THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 91 serious danger of foreign competition now threatens American industries. Our country has emerged from the war less disturbed and less weakened than any of the European countries which are our competitors in manu- facture. Their industrial establishments have been subjected to greater strain than ours, their labor force to a more serious disorgan- ization, and this is clearly not the time to seek an organized advantage. The work of mere reconstruction will, I am afraid, tax the capacity and the resources of their people for years to come. So far from there being any danger or need of accentuated foreign com- petition, it is likely that the conditions of the next few years will greatly facilitate the marketing of American manufactures abroad. Least of all should we depart from the policy adopted in the Tariff Act of 19 13 of permitting the free entry into the United States of the raw materials needed to supplement and en- rich our own abundant supplies. SOME TARIFF REVISIONS NEEDED Nevertheless, there are parts of our tariff system which need prompt attention. The experiences of the war have made it plain that in some cases too great reliance on foreign supply is dangerous, and that in determining certain parts of our ta^ff policy domestic 92 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS considerations must be borne in mind which are political as well as economic. Among the industries to which special consideration should be given is that of the manufacture of dye- stuffs and related chemicals. Our complete dependence upon German supplies before the war made the interruption of trade a cause of exceptional economic disturbance. The close relation between the manufacturer of dye- stuffs, on the one hand, and of explosives and poisonous gases, on the other, moreover, has given the industry an exceptional significance, and value. Although the United States will gladly and unhesitatingly join in the program of international disarmament, it will, never- theless, be a policy of obvious prudence to make certain of the successful maintenance of many strong and well-equipped chemical plants. German chemical industry, with which we will be brought into competition, was and may well be again a thoroughly knit monopoly capable of exercising a competition of a pecul- iarly insidious and dangerous kind. PROTECTION AGAINST COMPETITION The United States should, moreover, have the means of properly protecting itself when- ever our trade is discriminated against by foreign nations, in order that we may be as- sured of that equality of treatment which wq THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 93 hope to accord and to promote the world over, Our tariff laws as they now stand provide no weapon of retaliation in case other govern- ments should enact legislation unequal in its bearing on our products as compared with the products of other countries. Though we are as far as possible from desiring to enter upon any course of retaliation, we must frankly face the fact that hostile legislation by other nations is not beyond the range of possibility, and that it may have to be met by counter legislation. This subject has fortunately been exhaustively investigated by the United States Tariff Commission. A recent report of that commission has shown very clearly that we lack and that we ought to have the instruments necessary for the assurance of equal and equitable treatment. The attention of the Congress has been called to this matter on past occasions, and the past measures which are now recommended by the Tariff Com- mission are substantially the same that have been suggested by previous administrations. I recommend that this phase of the tariff question receive the early attention of the Congress. SHOULD HASTEN WOMAN SUFFRAGE Will you not permit me, turning from these matters, to speak once more, and very ear- 94 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS nestly, of the proposed amendment to the Constitution which would extend the suffrage to women, and which passed the House of Representatives at the last session of the Congress? It seems to me that every consid- eration of justice and of public advantage calls for the immediate adoption of that amend- ment and its submission forthwith to the legislatures of the several states. Through- out all the world this long-delayed extension of the suffrage is looked for; in the United States, longer, I believe, than anywhere else, the necessity for it, and the immense advantage of it to the national life, have been urged and debated by women and men who saw the need for it, and urged the policy of it when it re- quired steadfast courage to be so much before- hand with the common conviction; and I, for one, covet for our country the distinction of being among the first to act in a great reform. RETURN OP WIRES AND RAIL LINES The telegraph and telephone lines will, of course, be returned to their owners as soon as the retransfer can be effected without ad- ministrative confusion; so soon, that is, as the change can be made with least possible in- convenience to the public and to the owners themselves. The railroads will be handed over to their owners at the end of the calendar THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 95 year; if I were in immediate contact with the administrative questions which must govern the retransfer of the telegraph and telephone lines, I could name the exact date for their return also. Until I am in direct contact with the practical questions involved I can only suggest that in the case of the telegraphs and telephones, as in the case of the railways, it is clearly desirable in the public interest that some legislation should be considered which may tend to make of these indispensable in- strumentalities of our modern life a uniform and co-ordinated system which will afford those who use them as complete and certain means of communication with all parts of the country as has so long been afforded by the postal system of the government, and at rates as uniform and intelligible. Expert advice is, of course, available in this very practical mat- ter, and the public interest is manifest. Neither the telegraph nor the telephone service of the country can be said to be in any sense a national system. There are many confusions and inconsistencies of rates. The scientific means by which communication by such in- strumentalities could be rendered more thor- ough and satisfactory has not been made full use of. An exhaustive study of the whole question of electrical communication and of the means by which the central authority of the nation can be used to unify and improve 96 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS it, if undertaken by the appropriate com- mittees of the Congress, would certainly re- sult indirectly, even if not directly, in a great public benefit. REMOVE BAN ON WINES AND BEERS The demobilization of the military forces of the country has progressed to such a point that it seems to me entirely safe now to remove the ban upon the manufacture and sale of wines and beers, but I am advised that without further legislation I have not the legal au- thority to remove the present restrictions. I, therefore, recommend that the Act approved November 21, 191 8, entitled, *'An Act to en- able the Secretary of Agriculture to carry out, during the fiscal year ending June 30, 19 19, the purposes of the Act entitled,* An Act to pro- vide further for the national security and defense by stimulating agriculture and facili- tating the distribution of agricultural products,* and for other purposes," be amended or re- pealed in so far as it applies to wines and beers. I sincerely trust that I shall very soon be at my post in Washington again to report upon the matters which made my presence at the peace table apparently imperative, and to put myself at the service of the Congress in every matter of administration or counsel that may seem to demand executive action or advice. XII THE PRESIDENTIAL TASK (Paris, May 27, iqiq.) At the dinner given by the Pan-American Peace Delegation in honor of Dr. Epitacio Pessoa, President-elect of Brazil^ President Wilson spoke as follows: Mr. President and Gentlemen: The honor has been accorded me of making the first speech to-night, and I am very glad to avail myself of that privilege. I want to say that I feel very much at home in this company, though, after all, I suppose no one of us feels thoroughly at home except on the other side of the water. We all feel in a very real sense that we have a common home, because we live in the atmosphere of the same conceptions and, I think, with the same political ambitions and principles. I am particularly glad to have the oppor- tunity of paying my respects to Mr. Pessoa. It is very delightful, for one thing, if I may say so, to know that my Presidency is not ahead of me and that his Presidency is ahead of him. I wish him every happiness and every success 98 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS with the greatest earnestness, and yet I can- not, if I may judge by my own experience, expect for him a very great exhilaration in the performance of the duties of his office, because, after all, to be the head of an American state is a task of unrelieved responsibility. Amer- ican constitutions, as a rule, put so many duties of the highest sort upon the President, and so much of the responsibility of the affairs of state is centered upon him, that his years of office are apt to be years a little weighted with anxiety, a little burdened with the sense of the obligation of speaking for his people, speaking what they really think and endeavor- ing to accomplish what they really desire. INTERPRETING THE NATIONAL SPIRIT I suppose no more delicate task is given any man than to interpret the feelings and the purposes of a great people. I know that, if I may speak for myself, the chief anxiety I have had has been to be the true interpreter of a national spirit, expressing no private and peculiar views, but trying to express the gen- eral spirit of a nation. And a nation looks to its President to do that; and the comradeship of an evening like this does not consist merely of the sense of neighborhood. We are neigh- bors. We have always been friends. But that is all old. Something new has happened. THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 99 I am not sure that I can put it into words, but there has been added to the common prin- ciples which have united the Americans time out of mind a feeHng that the world at large has accepted those principles, that there has gone a thrill of hope and of expectation throughout the nations of the world which somehow seems to have its source and fountain in the things we always believed in. It is as if the pure waters of the fountains we had always drunk from had now been put to the lips of all peoples, and they had drunk and were refreshed. And it is a delightful thought to believe that these are fountains which sprang up out of the soil of the Americas. I am not, of course, suggesting or believing that political liberty had its birth in the American hemisphere, be- cause, of course, it had not; but the peculiar expression of it characteristic of the modern time, that broad republicanism, that genuine feeling and practice of democracy, that is becoming characteristic of the modern world, did have its origin in America; and the response of the peoples of the world to this new expres- sion is, we may perhaps pride ourselves, a response to an American suggestion. A PECULIAR SERVICE OWING If that is true, we owe the world a peculiar service. If we originated great practices, we loo THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS must ourselves be worthy of them. I re- member not long ago attending a very inter- esting meeting which was held in the interest of combining Christian missionary effort throughout the world. I mean eliminating the rivalry between churches and agreeing that Christian missionaries should not represent this, that, or the other church, but represent the general Christian impulse and principle of the world. I said I was thoroughly in sym- pathy with the principle, but that I hoped, if it was adopted, the inhabitants of the heathen countries would not come to look at us, be- cause we were not ourselves united, but divided; that while we were asking them to unite, we ourselves did not set the example. My moral from that recollection is this: We, among other friends of liberty, are ask- ing the world to unite in the interest of broth- erhood and mutual service and the genuine advancement of individual and corporate lib- erty throughout the world; therefore we must set the example. AN AMERICAN LEAGUE OF NATIONS I will recall here to some of you an effort that I myself made some years ago, soon after I assumed the Presidency of the United States, to do that very thing. I was urging the other states of America to unite with the United THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS loi States in doing something which very closely resembled the formation of the present League of Nations. I was ambitious to have the Americas do the thing first and set the example to the world of what we are now about to realize. I had a double object in it, not only my pride that the Americas should set the example and show the genuineness of their principles, but that the United States should have a new relation to the other Americas. The United States upon a famous occasion warned the governments of Europe that it would regard it as an unfriendly act if they tried to overturn free institutions in the Western Hemisphere and to substitute their ow^n systems of government, which at that time were inimical to those free institutions; but, while the United States thus undertook of its own motion to be the champion of America against such aggressions from Eu- rope, it did not give any ^conclusive assurance that it would never itself be the aggressor. What I wanted to do in the proposals to which I have just referred was to offer to the other American states our own bond that they were safe against us, and any illicit ambitions we might entertain, as well as safe, so far as the power of the United States could make them safe, against foreign nations. Of course, I am sorry that happy consum- mation did not come, but, after all, no doubt 102 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS the impulse was contributed to by us which has now led to a sort of mutual pledge on the part of all the self-governing nations of the world that they will be friends to each other, not only, but that they will take pains to secure each other's safety and independence and territorial integrity. No greater thing has ever happened in the political world than that, and I am particu- larly gratified to-night to think of the hours I have had the pleasure of spending with Mr. Pessoa as a member, along with him, of the commission on the League of Nations, which prepared the covenant which was submitted to the conference. I have felt, as I looked down the table and caught his eye, that we had the same American mind in regard to the business, and when I made suggestions or used arguments that I felt were character- istically American, I would always catch sym- pathy in his eyes. When others perhaps did not catch the point at once, he always caught it, because, though we were not bred to the same language literally, we were bred to the same political language and the same political thought, and our ideas were the same. It is, therefore, with a real sense of com- munication and of fellowship and of some- thing more than neighborly familiarity that I find myself in this congenial company and that I take my part with you in paying my THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 103 tribute and extending my warmest, best wishes to the great country of Brazil and to the gentleman who will worthily represent her in her presidential chair. I ask you to Join with me in drinking the health of the President-elect of Brazil. XIII A MEMORIAL DAY MESSAGE (Paris, May 2q, 1919.) President Wilson sent the following Memorial Day message to the American people: Memorial Day this year wears an added significance, and I wish, if only by a message, to take part with you in its observation and in expressing the sentiments which it invariably suggests. In observing the day we com- memorate not only the reunion of our own country, but also, now, the liberation of the world from one of the most serious dangers to which free government and the free life of men were exposed. We have buried the gallant and now im- mortal men who died in this great war of liberation with a new sense of consecration. Our thoughts and our purposes now are con- secrated to the maintenance of the liberty of the world and of the union of its people in a single comradeship of liberty and of right. It was for this that our men conscientiously offered their lives They came to the field of THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 105 battle with the high spirit and pure heart of crusaders. We must never forget the duty that their sacrifice has laid upon us of fulfilling their hopes and their purposes to the utmost. This, it seems to me, is the impressive lesson and the inspiring mandate of the day. XIV THE MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS (Paris, May jo, 1919.) Following is the text of President Wilson's Memorial Day address at Suresnes Cemetery, near Paris, Mr. Ambassador, Ladies and Gentlemen, Fellow-countrymen : No one with a heart in his breast, no Amer- ican, no lover of humanity, can stand in the presence of these graves without the most pro- found emotion. These men who He here are men of a unique breed. Their Hke has not been seen since the far days of the Crusades. Never before have men crossed the seas to a foreign land to fight for a cause of humanity which they did not pretend was particularly their own, but knew was the cause of humanity and of mankind. And when they came they found com- rades for their courage and their devotion. They found armies of liberty already in the field — men who, though they had gone through three years of fiery trial, seemed only to be THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 107 just discovering, not for a moment losing, the high temper of the great affair, men sea- soned in the bloody service of liberty. Join- ing hands with these, the men of America gave that greatest of all gifts, the gift of life and the gift of spirit. It will always be a treasured memory on the part of those who knew and loved these men that the testimony of everybody who saw them in the field of action was their un- flinching courage, their ardor to the point of audacity, their full consciousness of the high cause they had come to serve, and their con- stant vision of the issue. It is delightful to learn from those who saw these men fight, and saw them waiting in the trenches for the summons to the fight, that they had a touch of the high spirit of religion, that they knew they were exhibiting a spiritual as well as a physical might, and those of us who know and love America know that they were discovering to the whole world the true spirit and devotion of their motherland. It was America who came in the person of these men, and who will forever be grateful that she was so represented. FRENCH MOTHERS CARE FOR OUR DEAD And it is the more delightful to entertain these thoughts because we know that these io8 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS men, though buried in a foreign land, are not buried in an aHen soil. They are at home, sleeping with the spirits of those who thought the same thoughts and entertained the same aspirations. The noble women of Suresnes have given evidence of the loving sense with which they received these dead as their own, for they have cared for their graves, they have made it their interest, their loving in- terest, to see that there was no hour of neglect, and that constantly through all the months that have gone by the mothers at home should know that there were mothers here who remembered and honored their dead. You have just heard in the beautiful letter from M. Clemenceau what I believe to be the real message of France to us on a day like this — a message of genuine comradeship, a message of genuine sympathy, and I have no doubt that if our British comrades were here they would speak in the same spirit and in the same language. For the beauty of this war is that it has brought a new partnership, and a new comradeship, and a new under- standing into the field of the effort of the nation. But it would be no profit to us to eulogize these illustrious dead if we did not take to heart the lesson which they have taught us. They are dead ; they have done their utmost to THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 109 show their devotion to a great cause, and they have left us to see to it that that cause shall not be betrayed, whether in war or peace. America's duty of consecration It is our privilege and our high duty to consecrate ourselves afresh on a day like this to the objects for which they fought. It is not necessary that I should rehearse to you what these objects were. These men did not come across the sea merely to defeat Germany and her associated powers in the war. They came to defeat for- ever the things for which the Central Powers stood, the sort of power they meant to assert in the world, the arrogant, selfish domination which they meant to establish; and they came, moreover, to see to it that there should never be a war like this again. It is for us, particularly for us who are civilized, to use our proper weapons of counsel and agreement, to see to it that there never is such a war again. The nation that should now fling out of this common concord of counsel would betray the human race. So it is our duty to take and maintain the safeguards which will see to it that the mothers of America, and the mothers of France and England and Italy and Belgium and all other suffering nations, should never be called upon no THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS for this sacrifice again. This can be done. It must be done. And it will be done. SEES LEAGUE AS LEGACY OF HONOR The things that these men left us, though they did not in their counsels perceive it, is the great instrument which we have just erected in the League of Nations. The League of Nations is the covenant of govern- ment that these men shall not have died in vain. I like to think that the dust of those sons of America who were privileged to be buried in their mother-country will mingle with the dust of the men who fought for the preserva- tion of the Union, and that as those men gave their lives in order that America might be united, these men have given their lives in order that the world might be united. Those men gave their lives in order to secure the freedom of a nation. These men have given theirs in order to secure the freedom of man- kind; and I look forward to an age when it will be just as impossible to regret the results of their labor as it is now impossible to regret the result of the labor of those men who fought for the union of the states. I look for the time when every man who now puts his counsel against the united service of mankind under the League of Nations will be THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS in just as ashamed of it as if he now regretted the union of the states. OLD ORDER STILL SEEKS TO PREVAIL You are aware, as I am aware, that the airs of an older day are beginning to stir again, that the standards of an old order are trying to assert themselves again. There is here and there an attempt to insert into the counsel of statesmen the old reckoning of selfishness and bargaining and national advantage which were the roots of this war, and any man who coun- sels these things advocates a renewal of the sacrifice which these men have made, for if this is not the final battle for right, there will be another that will be final. Let these gentlemen who suppose that it is possible for them to accomplish this return to an order of which we are ashamed, and that we are ready to forget, realise they can- not accomplish it. The peoples of the world are awake and the peoples of the world are in the saddle. Private counsels of statesmen can- not now and cannot hereafter determine the destinies of nations. If we are not the servants of the opinion of mankind, we are of all men the littlest, the most contemptible, the least gifted with vision. If we do not know courage we cannot accomplish our purpose; and this age is an age which looks forward, not back- 112 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS ward; which rejects the standard of national selfishness that once governed the counsels of nations, and demands that they shall give way to a new order of things in which the only question will be: "Is it right?" *'Is it just?" **Is it in the interest of mankind?" This is a challenge that no previous genera- tion ever dared to give ear to. So many things have happened, and they have hap- pened so fast in the last four years, that I do not think many of us realize what it is that has happened. Think how impossible it would have been to get a body of responsible states- men seriously to entertain the idea of the organization of a League of Nations four years ago ! And think of the change that has taken place ! I was told before I came to France that there would be confusion of counsels about this thing, and I found unity of counsel. I was told that there would be opposition, and I found union of action. I found the statesmen with whom I was about to deal united in the idea that we must have a League of Nations; that we could not merely make a peace settle- ment and then leave it to make itself effectual, but that we must conceive some common organization by which we should give our com- mon faith that this peace would be maintained and the conclusions at which we had arrived should be made as secure as the united coun- THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 113 sels of all the great nations that fought against Germany could make them. We have lis- tened to the challenge, and that is the proof that there shall never be a war like this again. Ladies and Gentlemen: We all believe, I hope, that the spirits of these men are not buried with their bones. Their spirits live. I hope — I believe — that their spirits are present with us at this hour. I hope that I feel the compulsion of their presence. I hope that I realize the significance of their presence. Think, soldiers, of those comrades of yours who are gone. If they were here what would they say? They would not remember what you are talking about to-day. They would remember America, which they left with their high hope and purpose. They would remember the terrible field of battle. They would remember what they constantly recalled in times of danger, what they had come for, and how worth while it was to give their lives for it. THE UNSPOKEN MANDATE OF THE DEAD And they would say: ** Forget all the little circumstances of the day. Be ashamed of the jealousies that divide you. We command you in the name of those who, like ourselves, have died to bring the counsel of men together; and 114 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS we remind you what America said she was born for. She was born, she said, to show mankind the way to Hberty. She was born to make this great gift a common gift. She was born to show men the way of experience by which they might reaHze this gift and maintain it; and we adjure you, in the name of all the great traditions of America, to make yourselves soldiers now, once for all, in this common cause, where we need wear no uniform except the uniform of the heart, clothing ourselves with the principles of right and saying to men everywhere, *You are our brothers and we in- vite you into the comradeship of liberty and of peace."* Let us go away hearing these unspoken mandates of our dead comrades. If I may speak a personal word, I beg you to realize the compulsion that I myself feel that I am under. By the Constitution of our great country, I was the Commander-in-chief of these men. I advised the Congress to de- clare that a state of war existed. I sent these lads over here to die. Shall I — can I — ever speak a word of counsel which is inconsistent with the assurances I gave them when they came over? It is inconceivable. There is something better, if possible, that a man can give than his life, and that is his living spirit to a service that is not easy, to resist counsels that are hard to resist, to stand THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 115 against purposes that are difficult to stand against, and to say, "Here stand I, conse- crated in the spirit of the men who were once my comrades, and who are now gone, and who left me under eternal bonds of fidelity." XV A LEAGUE OF RIGHT (Brussels, June ig, 1919.) Addressing the Chamber oj Deputies, the President said: Your Majesty and Gentlemen: It is with such profound emotion that I express my deepest appreciation of the generous wel- come you have given me that I am not at all sure that I can find the words to say what it is in my heart to say. Mr. Hymans has repeated to you some of the things which America tried to do to show her profound friendship and sympathy with Bel- gium, but Mr. Hymans was not able to testify, as I am, to the heart of America that was back of her efforts. For America did not do these things merely because she conceived it her duty to do them, but because she re- joiced in this way to show her real hu- manity and her real knowledge of the needs of an old and faithful friend. And these things, I hope, will be the dearer in your memory because of the spirit which was be- hind them. THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 117 They were small in themselves. We often had the feeling that we were not doing as much as we could do. We knew all the time we were not doing as much as we wanted to do. And it is this spirit, and not what was done, which deserves, I hope, to be remem- bered. DUTY WELL DONE It is very delightful to find myself at last in Belgium. I have come at the first moment that I was relieved from imperative duty, I could not come for my own pleasure, and in neglect of duty, to a country where I knew that I should meet men who had done their duty. Where I knew I should meet a sovereign who had constantly identified himself with the interests and the life of his people at every sacrifice to himself. Where I should be greeted by a burgomaster who never allowed the enemy to thrust him aside, and always asserted the majority and authority of the municipality which he represented. Where I should have the privilege of meeting a cardinal who was the true shepherd of his flock, the majesty of whose spiritual authority awed even the un- scrupulous enemy himself, who knew that he did not dare lay hand upon this servant of God, and where I should have the privilege of grasping the hand of a general who never ii8 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS surrendered, and on every hand should meet men who had known their duty and had done it. I could not come to Belgium until I felt that I was released from my duty. I sought in this way to honor you by recognizing the spirit which I knew I should meet with here. When I realize that at my back are the fight- ing standards of Belgium it pleases me to think that I am in the presence of those who knew how to shed their blood as well as do their duty for their country. They need no en- comium from me. I would rather turn for a moment with you to the significance of the place which Belgium bears in this contest, which, thank God, is ended. I came here because I wished to as- sociate myself in counsel with the men who I knew had felt so deeply the pulse of this ter- rible struggle, and I wanted to come also be- cause I realized, I believe, that Belgium and her part in the war are in one sense the key of the whole struggle, because the violation of Belgium was the call to duty which aroused the nations. AWAKENED THE WORLD The enemy committed many outrages in this war, gentlemen, but the initial outrage was the fundamental outrage of all. They, THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 119 with that insolent indifference, violated the sacredness of treaties. They showed that they did not care for the honor of any pledge. They showed that they did not care for the indepen- dence of any nation, whether it had raised its hand against them or not; that they were ruthless in their determination to have their whim at their pleasure. Therefore, it was the violation of Belgium that awakened the world to the realization of the character of the struggle. A very interesting thing came out of that struggle which seems almost like an illogical consequence. One of the first things that the representatives of Belgium said to me after the war began was that they did not want their neutrality guaranteed. They did not want any neutrality. They wanted equality, not because, as I understood them, their neu- trality was insecure, but because their neu- trality put them upon a different basis of action from other peoples. In their natural and proper pride they desired to occupy a place that was not exceptional, but in the ranks of free peoples under all governments. I honored this instinct in them, and it was for that reason that the first time I had oc- casion to speak of what the war might ac- complish for Belgium, I spoke of her winning a place of equality among the nations. So Belgium has, so to say, once more come into I20 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS her own through this deep valley of suffering through which she has gone. A LEAGUE OF RIGHTS Not only that, but her cause has Jinked the governments of the civilzied world together. They have realized their common duty. They have drawn together, as if instinctively, into a league of rights. They have put the whole power of organized manhood behind this con- ception of justice which is common to man- kind. That is the significance, gentlemen, of the League of Nations. The League of Nations was an inevitable consequence of this war. It was a league of rights, and no thoughtful statesman who let his thought run into the future could wish for a moment to slacken those bonds. His first thought would be to strengthen them and to perpetuate this com- bination of the great governments of the world for the maintenance of justice. The League of Nations is the child of this great war, for it is the expression of those permanent resolutions which grew out of the temporary necessities of this great struggle; and any nation which declines to adhere to this covenant deliberately turns away from the most telling appeal that has ever been made to its conscience and to its manhood. THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 121 The nation that wishes to use the League of Nations for its convenience, and not for the service of the rest of the world, deHberately chooses to turn back to those bad days of selfish contest when every nation thought first and always of itself, and not of its neigh- bors; thought of its rights and forgot its du- ties; thought of its power and overlooked its responsibility. THE OLD ORDER GONE Those bad days, I hope, are gone, and the great moral power, backed, if need be, by the great physical power of the civilized nations of the world, will now stand firm for the main- tenance of the fine partnership which we have thus inaugurated. It cannot be otherwise. Perhaps the con- science of some chancelleries was asleep, and the outrage of Germany awakened it. You cannot see one great nation violate every prin- ciple of right without beginning to know what the principles of right are and to love them, to despise those who violate them, and to form the firm resolve that such a violation shall now be punished, and in the future be prevented. These are the feelings with which I have come to Belgium, and it has been my thought to propose to the Congress of the United States, as a recognition and as a welcome of Belgium 122 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS into her new status of complete independence, to raise the mission of the United States of America to Belgium to the rank of an embassy, and send an ambassador. This is the rank which Belgium enjoys in our esteem; why should she not enjoy it in form and in fact? So, gentlemen, we turn to the future. Mr. Hymans has spoken in true terms of the necessities that lie ahead of Belgium and of many another nation that has come through this great war with suffering and with loss. We have shown Belgium, in the forms which he has been generous enough to recite, our friendship in the past. It is now our duty to organize our friendship along new lines. The Belgian people and the Belgian leaders need only the tools to restore their life. Their thoughts are not crushed; their purposes are not obscured; their plans are complete and their knowledge of what is involved in in- dustrial revival is complete. What their friends must do is to see to it that Belgium gets the necessary priority with regard to obtaining raw materials, the nec- essary priority in obtaining the means to re- store the machinery by which she can use these raw materials, and the credit by which she can bridge over the years which it will be necessary for her to wait to begin again. These are not so much tasks for governments ^s they are tasks for thoughtful bvisiiaes^ nieu THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 123 and financiers and those who are producers in other countries. It is a question of shipping also. But the shipping of the world will be relieved of its burdens of troops in a compara- tively near future, and there will be new bot- toms in which to carry the cargoes, and the cargoes ought readily to impel the master of the ship to steer for Belgian ports. I believe, after having consulted many times with my very competent advisers in the mat- ter, that an organized method of accomplishing these things can be found. It is a matter of almost daily discussion in Paris, and I believe that as we discuss from day to day we come nearer and nearer to a workable solution and a probable plan. I hope not only, but I be- lieve, that such a plan will be found, and you may be sure that America will be pleased, I will not say more than any other friend of Belgium, but as much as any other friend of Belgium, if these plans are perfected and car- ried out. FRIENDSHIP IS PRACTICAL Friendship, gentlemen, is a very practical matter. One thing that I think I have grown weary of is sentiment that doeis not express itself in action. How real the world has been made by this war! How actual all its facts seem! How terrible the circumstances of it§ 124 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS life! And if we be friends we must think of each other not only, but we must act for each other; we must not only have a sentimental regard, but we must put that regard into actual deeds. There is an old proverb which has no lit- erary beauty, but it has a great deal of sig- nificance, "The proof of the pudding is the eating thereof.'* It is by that maxim that all friendships are to be judged. It is when a friendship is put to the proof that its quality is found. So our business now is not to talk, but to act. It is not so much to debate as to resolve. It is not so much to hesitate upon the plan as to perfect the details of the plan, and at every turn to be sure that we think not only of ourselves, but of humanity. For, gentlemen, the realities of this world are not discussed around dinner-tables. Do you realize for how small a percentage of mankind it is possible to get anything for to-morrow if you do not work to-day; how small a percentage of mankind can slacken their physical and thoughtful effort for a mo- ment and not find the means of subsistence fail them? Some men can take holidays, some men can relieve themselves from the burden of work. But most men cannot, most women cannot, and the children wait upon the men and women who work — work every day, work THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 125 from the dawn until the evening. These are the people we must think about. They con- stitute the rank and file of mankind. They are the constituents of statesmen, and states- men must see to it that pohcies are not now run along the lines of national pride, but along the lines of humanity, along the lines of ser- vice, along those lines which we have been taught are the real lines by the deep suffering of this war. This is the healing peace of which Mr. Hymans eloquently spoke. You help the na- tions by serving the nations, and you serve them by thinking of mankind. In his address during the luncheon at the American Legation, President Wilson said: Your Majesties, Ladies and Gentlemen: I want to express my pleasure not only to be in Belgium, but to be personally associated with the King and the Queen. We have found them what all the world has told us they were — ^perfectly genuine, perfectly delightful, and perfectly devoted to the interests of the people, and not only so, but, what is very rare just now, very just in their judgments of the events of the past and of the events that are now taking place. I could not help expressing the opinion which I did yesterday that this must arise from the 126 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS fact that they had intimately associated them- selves in life with their people. If you live with the talkers you get an impression; if you live with the doers you get another impres- sion, you come into contact with the realities, and only realities make you wise and just. I want, within this very brief space in which I am speaking from my heart, to propose the health and long life of His Majesty the King, and Her Majesty the Queen. XVI NATIONS IN PARTNERSHIP (Paris, June 26, iqiq.) At a dinner given by President PoincarS in honor of President Wilson and the delegates to the Peace Conference, Mr. Wilson spoke as follows: Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: I thank you most sincerely for the words that you have uttered. I cannot pretend, sir, that the prospect of going home is not very delightful to me, but I can say with the greatest sincerity that the prospect of leaving France is very painful to me. I have received a peculiarly generous wel- come here, and it has been pleasing for me to feel that that welcome was intended not so much for myself as for the people whom I represent. And the people of France know how to give a welcome that makes a man's heart glad. They have a spontaneity about them, a simplicity of friendship, which is altogether delightful, 128 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS THE ROOTS OF FRIENDSHIP I feel that my stay here, sir, has enlight- ened both my heart and my mind. It has en- abled me personally to see the evidence of the suffering and the sacrifices of France. It has enabled me to come into personal touch with the leaders of the French people, and through the medium of intercourse with them to understand better, I hope, than I under- stood before, the motives, the ambitions, and the principles which actuate this great nation. It has, therefore, been to me a lesson in the roots of friendship, in those things which make the intercourse of nations profitable and ser- viceable for all the rest of mankind. Sometimes the work of the conference has seemed to go very slowly indeed. Sometimes it has seemed as if there were unnecessary ob- stacles to agreement, but as the weeks have lengthened I have seemed to see the profit that came out of that. Quick conclusions would not have produced that intimate knowl- edge of each other's minds which I think has come out of these daily conferences. We have been constantly in the presence of each other's minds and motives and char- acters, and the comradeships which are based upon that sort of knowledge are sure to be very much more intelligent not only, but to breed a much more intimate sympathy and THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 129 comprehension than could otherwise be created. PEOPLES MORE CLOSELY KNIT These six months have been six months which have woven new fibers of connection between the hearts of our people. And some- thing more than friendship and intimate sym- pathy has come out of this intercourse. Friendship is a very good thing. Intimacy is a very enlightening thing. But friendship may end with sentiment. A new thing that has happened is that we have translated our common principles and our common pur- poses into a common plan. When we part we are not going to part with a finished work, but with a work one portion of which is finished and the other portion of which is only begun. We have finished the formulation of the peace, but we have begun a plan of co- operation which I believe will broaden and strengthen as the years go by, so that this grip of the hand that we have taken now will need to be relaxed. We have been and shall continue to be comrades. We shall continue to be co-workers in tasks which, because they are comimon, will weave out of our sentiments a common conception of duty and a common conception of the rights of m-en of every race I30 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS and of every clime. If it be true that that has been accomplished, it is a very great thing. PARTNERSHIP OF NATIONS As I go away from these scenes I think I shall realize that I have been present at one of the most vital things that have happened in the history of nations. Nations have formed contracts with each other before, but they never have formed partnerships; they have associated themselves temporarily, but they have never before associated themselves permanently. The wrong that was done in the waging of this war was a great wrong, but it wakened the world to a great moral necessity of seeing that it was necessary that men should band themselves together in order that such a wrong should never be perpetrated again. Merely to beat a nation that was wrong once is not enough. There must follow the warning to all other nations that would do like things that they in turn will be van- quished and shamed if they attempt a dis- honorable purpose. You can see, therefore, sir, with what deep feelings those of us who must now for a little while turn away from France shall leave your shores, and though the ocean is broad, it will seem very narrow in the future. It will be THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 131 easier to understand each other than it ever was before, and with the confident intercourse of co-operation the understanding will be strengthened into action, and action will itself educate alike our purpose and our thought. So, sir, in saying good-by to France, I am only saying a sort of physical good-by, not a spiritual good-by. I shall retain in my heart always the warm feelings which the generous treatment of this great people has generated in my heart. And I wish, in my turn, sir, to propose, as you have proposed, the continued and increasing friendship of the two nations, the safety and prosperity of France, and closer and closer communion of free peoples, and the strengthening of every influence which instructs the mind and the purpose of humanity. XVII THE TREATY A NEW MAGNA CHARTA (Washington, June 28, 1919.) The following message from President Wilson to the American people was given out by Secretary Tumulty: My Fellow-countrymen: The treaty of peace has been signed. If it is ratified and acted upon in full and sincere execution of its terms, it will furnish the charter for a new order of affairs in the world. It is a severe treaty in the duties and penalties it imposes upon Germany, but it is severe only because great wrongs done by Germany are to be righted and repaired; it imposes nothing that Germany cannot do, and she can regain her rightful standing in the world by the prompt and honorable fulfilment of its terms. MUCH MORE THAN A TREATY And it is much more than a treaty of peace with Germany. It liberates great peoples who have never before been able to find the way THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 133 to liberty. It ends, once for all, an old and in- tolerable order under which small groups of selfish men could use the peoples of great em- pires to serve their ambition for power and dominion. It associates the free governments of the world in a permanent league in which they are pledged to use their united power to maintain peace by maintaining right and jus- tice. It makes international law a reality supported by imperative sanctions. It does away with the right of conquest and rejects the policy of annexation and substitutes a new order under which backward nations — populations which have not yet come to polit- ical consciousness, and peoples who are ready for independence, but not yet quite prepared to dispense with protection and guidance — shall no more be subjected to the domination and exploitation of a stronger nation, but shall be put under the friendly direction and af- forded the helpful assistance of governments which undertake to be responsible to the world for the execution of their task by accepting the direction of the League of Nations It recog- nizes the inalienable rights of nationality, the rights of minorities, and the sanctity of religious belief and practice. It lays the basis for con- ventions which shall free the commercial inter- course of the world from unjust and vexatious restrictions, and for every sort of international co-operation that will serve to cleanse the life 10 134 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS of the world and facilitate its common action in beneficent service of every kind. It fur- nishes guarantees such as were never given nor even contemplated for the fair treatment of all who labor at the daily tasks of the world. It is for this reason that I have spoken of it as a great charter for a new order of affairs. There is ground here for deep satisfaction, universal reassurance, and confident hope. XVIII FAREWELL TO FRANCE (Paris, June 28^ 1919.) President Wilson, on the eve of his departure for France J made the following statement: As I look back over the eventful months I have spent in France, my memory is not of conferences and hard work alone, but also of innumerable acts of generosity and friendship which have made me feel how genuine the sentiments of France are toward the people of America, and how fortunate I have been to be the representative of our people in the midst of a nation which knows how to show us kindness with so much charm and so much open manifestation of what is in its heart. Deeply happy as I am at the prospects of joining my own countrymen again, I leave France with genuine regret, my deep sympathy for her people and belief in her future con- firmed, my thought enlarged by the privilege of association with her public men, conscious of more than one affectionate friendship formed and profoundly grateful for unstinted hospi- 136 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS tality and for countless kindnesses which have made me feel welcome and at home. I take the liberty of bidding France God- speed as well as good-by and of expressing once more my abiding interest and entire con- fidence in her future. XIX A PARTING WORD TO GREAT BRITAIN (London, June 2g, 1919.) A peace message from President Wilson to ' ' The Daily Mail ''and'' The Weekly Dispatch,' ' says: Many things crowd intot he mind to be said about the peace treaty, but the thought that stands out in front of all others is that by the terms of the treaty the greatest possible measure of compensation has been provided for people whose homes and lives were wrecked by the storm of war, and security has been given them that the storm shall not arise again. In so far as we came together to insure these things, the work of the conference is finished, but in a larger sense its work begins to-day. In answer to an unmistakable ap- peal, the League of Nations has been consti- tuted and a covenant has been drawn which shows the way to international understanding and peace. 138 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS We stand at the crossroads, however, and the way is only pointed out. Those who saw through the travail of war the vision of a world made secure for mankind must now con- secrate their lives to its realization. XX THE LAWS OF FREEDOM (At Sea, July 4, 1919.) In his Fourth of July address to the soldiers and sailors aboard the ''George Washington j" the President spoke as follows: Fellow-countrymen: It is very delightful to find myself here and in this company. I know a great many of you have been home- sick on the other side of the water, but I do not believe a man among you has been as homesick as I have. It is with profound delight that I find myself bound westward again for the country we all love and are trying to serve, and when I was asked to make a speech and sat down and tried to think out what I should say, I found that the suggestions of this Fourth of July crowded into my mind in such a way that they could not be set in order; and I doubt if I can find expression to them, because this Fourth of July has a significance that no preceding Fourth of July ever had in it, not even the first. 140 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS WE HAVE KEPT THE VISION I think that we can look back upon the history of the years that separated us from the first Fourth of July with very great satisfac- tion, because we have kept the vision in America, we have kept the promise to our- selves that we would maintain a regime of liberty and of constitutional government. We have made errors of judgment, we have committed errors of action, but we have always tried to correct the errors when we have made them. We have always tried to get straight in the road again for that goal for which we set out in those famous days when America was made as a government. So there has always been abundant justification for what was not self-glorification, but self-gratulation, in our Fourth of July celebration. We have successfully maintained the lib- erties of a great nation. The past is secure and the past is glorious; and in the present the Fourth of July has taken on a new significance. We told our fellow-men throughout the world when we set up the free state of America that we wanted to serve Hberty everywhere and be the friends of men in every part of the world who wanted to throw off the unjust shackles of arbitrary government. Now we have kept our pledge to humanity as well as our pledge to ourselves, for we have thrown THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 141 everything that we possessed — all the gifts that nature had showered upon us and our own lives — into the scales to show that we meant to be the servants of humanity and of free men everywhere. THE FULL MEANING OF THE WAR America did not at first see the full meaning of the war that has just ended. At first it looked like a natural raking out of the pent-up jealousies and rivalries of the complicated politics of Europe. Nobody who really knew anything about history supposed that Ger- many could build up a great military machine like she did and not refrain from using it. They were constantly talking about it as a guarantee of peace, but every man in his senses knew that it was a threat of war, and the threat was finally fulfilled and the war began. We, at the distance of America, looked on at first without a full comprehension of what the plot was getting into, and then at last we realized that there was here noth- ing less than a threat against the freedom of free men everywhere. Then America went in, and if it had not been for America the war would not have been won. My heart swells with a pride that I cannot express when I think of the men who crossed the seas from America to fight on those 142 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS battle-fields. I was proud of them when I could not see them, and now that I have mixed with them and seen them I am prouder of them still. For they are men to the core, and I am glad to have had Europe see this specimen of our manhood. I am proud to know how the men who per- formed the least conspicuous services and the humblest services performed them just as well as the men who performed the conspicu- ous services and the most complicated and difficult. I will not say that the men were worthy of their officers. I will say that the officers were worthy of their men. They sprang out of the ranks, they were like the ranks, and all — rank and file — were specimens of America. THE COMPULSION OF THE FUTURE And you know what has happened. Having sampled America that way, Europe believes in and trusts America. Is not that your own personal experience and observation? In all the councils at Paris, whenever they wanted to send soldiers anywhere and not have the people jealous of their presence or fear the consequences of their presence, they suggested that we should send Americans there; because they knew that everywhere in Europe we were believed to be the friends of the countries THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 143 where we sent garrisons, and where we sent forces of supervision we were welcome. Am I not, therefore, justified in saying that we have fulfilled our pledge to humanity ? We have proved that we were the champions of liberty throughout the world, that we did not wish to keep it as a selfish and private pos- session of our own, but wanted to share it with men everywhere and of every kind. When you look forward to the future do you not see what a compulsion that puts upon us? You cannot earn a reputation like that and then not live up to it. You cannot reach a standard like that and then let it down by never so little. Every man of us has to live up to it. The welcome that was given to our arms and the cheers that received us are the compulsion that is now put upon us to con- tinue to be worthy of that welcome and of those cheers. We must continue to put America at the service of mankind. Not for any profit we shall get out of it, not for any private benefit we shall reap from it, but because we believe in the right and mean to serve it wherever we have a chance to serve it. NEW FREEDOM OUT OP WAR I was thinking to-day that new freedom has come to the peoples of the world out of this 144 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS war. It has no date. It has no Fourth of July. There has nowhere been written a Declaration of Independence. The only date I can think of for it is the eleventh of last November, when the Central Powers admitted they were beaten and accepted an armistice. From that time they knew they had to submit to the terms of liberty, and perhaps some of these days we shall date the freedom of the peoples from the eleventh of November, 191 8. And yet if that be not the date of it, it in- terests my thought to think that, as it had no date for beginning, we should see to it that it had no date for ending; that as it began with- out term, it should end without term, and that in every council we enter into, in every force we contribute to, we shall make it a condition that the liberty of men throughout the world shall be served and that America shall con- tinue to redeem her pledge to humanity and to mankind. Why, America is made up of mankind. We do not come from any common stock. We do not come from any single nation. The characteristic of America is that it is made up of the best contributed out of all nations. Sometimes when I am in the presence of an American citizen who was an immigrant to America, I think that he has a certain ad- vantage over me. I did not choose to be an American, but he did. I was born to it. I hope THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 145 if I had not been, I would have had sense enough to choose it. But the men who came afterward deliberately chose to be Americans. They came out of other countries and said, "We cast in our lot with you, we believe in you, and will live with you." A country made up like that ought to understand other na- tions. It ought to know how to fraternize with and assist them. It is already the friend of mankind, because it is made up of all people, and it ought to redeem its lineage. It ought to show that it is playing for no private hand. It ought to show that it is trying to serve all the stocks of mankind from which it itself is bred. And more than that, my fellow- countrymen, we ought to continue to prove that we know what freedom is. MUST REDEEM PRINCIPLES Freedom is not a mere sentiment. We all feel the weakness of mere sentiment. If a man professes to be fine, we always wait for him to show it. We do not take his word for it. If he professes fine motives, we expect him thereafter to show that he is acting upon fine motives. And the kind of freedom that America has always represented is a freedom expressing itself in fact. It is not the profes- sion of principles, merely, but the redemption of those principles, making good on those 146 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS principles, and knowing how to make good on those principles. When I have thought of liberty, I have some- times thought how we deceived ourselves in the way we talked about it. Some people talk as if liberty meant the right to do anything you please. Well, in some sense you have that right. You have the right to jump overboard, but if you do, this is what will happen: "You fool, don't you know the consequences? Didn't you know that water will drown you?'* You can jump off the top of the mast, but when you get down, your liberty will be lost, because if it was not an accident you made a fool of yourself. The sailor, when he is sailing a ship, talks about her running free in the wind. Does he mean that she is resisting the wind? Throw her up into the wind and see the canvas shake, see her stand still, '* caught in irons," as the sailor says. But let her fall off; she is free. Free, why? Because she is obeying the laws of nature, and she is a slave until she does. And no man is free who does not obey the laws of freedom. The laws of freedom are these: Accommo- date your interests to other people's interests; that you shall not insist in standing in the light of other people, but that you shall make a member of a team of yourself and nothing more or less, and that the interests of the THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 147 team shall take precedence in everything that you do to your interest as an individual. THE TRUE FREEDOM That is freedom, and men who live under autocratic governments are not free, because the autocrat arranges the government to suit himself. The minute he arranges it to suit his subjects then his subjects are free. But if I disobey the laws of freedom, if I infringe on the rights of others, then I presently find myself deprived of my freedom. I am clapped in jail, it may be, and if the jailer is a philosopher he will say: *'You brought it upon yourself, my dear fellow. You were free to do right, but you were not free to do wrong. Now, what I blame you for is not so much for your malice as for your ignorance.'* One reason why America has been free, I take leave to say, is that America has been intelligent enough to be free. It takes a lot of intelligence to be free. Stupid people do not know how, and we all go to the school of intelligence that comes out of the discipline of our own self -chosen institutions. That is what makes you free, and my confi- dent ambition for the United States is that she will know in the future how to make each Fourth of July as it comes grow more dis- tinguished and more glorious than its prede- 148 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS cesser, by showing that she, at any rate, understands the laws of freedom by under- standing the laws of service, and that man- kind may always confidently look to her as a friend, as a co-operator, as one who will stand shoulder to shoulder with free men everywhere to assert the right. That is what I meant at the outset of these few remarks by saying that the suggestions of this Fourth of July crowd too thick and fast to be set in order. This is the most tremendous Fourth of July that men ever imagined, for we have opened its franchises to all the world. XXI A JUST PEACE (New York, July 8, 1919.) President Wilson, on his return from Europe in the steamship ''George Washington,^' spoke to a great audience in Carnegie Hall as follows : Fellow-countrymen: I am not going to try this afternoon to make you a real speech. I am a bit alarmed to find out how many speeches I have in my system undelivered, but they are all speeches that come from the mind, and I want to say to you this afternoon only a few words from the heart. You have made me deeply happy by the generous welcome you have extended to me, but I do not believe that the welcome you ex- tend to me is half as great as that which I extend to you. Why, Jerseyman though I am, this is the first time I ever thought that Hoboken was beautiful. I have really, though I have tried on the other side of the water to conceal it, been the most homesick man in the American Expeditionary Force, and it is with feelings that it would be vain for me to try to 11 I50 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS express that I find myself in this beloved country again. I do not say that because I lack in admi- ration of other countries. There have been many things that softened my homesickness. One of the chief things that softened it was the very generous welcome that they extended to me as your representative on the other side of the water. And it was still more softened by the pride that I had in discovering that America had at last convinced the world of her true character. I was welcome because they had seen with their own eyes what America had done for the world. They had deemed her selfish. They had deemed her devoted to material interests, and they had seen her boys come across the water with a vision even more beautiful than that which they conceived when they had en- tertained dreams of liberty and of peace. AN ARMY OF CLEAN MEN And then I had the added pride of finding out by personal observation the kind of men we had sent over. I had crossed the seas with the kind of men who had taken them over, without whom they could not have got to Europe; and then when I got there I saw that army of men, that army of clean men, that army of men devoted to the high interests of THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 151 humanity, that army that one was glad to point out and say, ''These are my fellow- countrymen." It softens the homesickness a good deal to have so much of home along with you, and these boys were constantly reminding me of home. They did not walk the streets like anybody else. I do not mean that they walked the streets self -assertively. They did not. They walked the streets as if they knew that they belonged wherever free men lived, that they were welcome to the great republic of France and were comrades with the other armies that had helped to win the great battle and to show the great sacrifice. Because it is a wonderful thing for this na- tion, hitherto isolated from the large affairs of the world, to win not only the universal con- fidence of the people of the world, but their universal affection. And that, and nothing less than that, is what has happened. Wherever it was suggested that troops should be sent and it was desired that troops of occupation should excite no prejudice, no uneasiness on the part of those to whom they were sent, the men who represented the other nations came to me and asked me to send American soldiers. They not only implied, but they said, that the presence of American soldiers would be known not to mean any- thing except friendly protection and assist- 152 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS ance. Do you wonder that it made our hearts swell with pride to realize these things? But while these things in some degrees softened my homesickness, they have made me all the more eager to get home where the rest of the folks live; to get home where the great dynamo of national energy is situated; to get home where the great purposes of na- tional action were formed; and to be allowed to take part in the counsels and in the action which were to be taken by this great nation, which from first to last has followed the vision of the men who set it up and created it. A DISTANT HORIZON We have had our eyes very close upon our tasks at times, but whenever we lifted them we were accustomed to lift them to a distant horizon. We were aware that all the peoples of the earth had turned their faces toward us as those who were the friends of freedom and of right, and whenever we thought of national policy and of its relation upon the affairs of the world we knew we were under bonds to do the large thing and the right thing. It is a privilege, therefore, beyond all computation for a man, whether in a great capacity or a small, to take part in the counsels and in the resolutions of a people like this. I am afraid some people, some persons, do THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 153 not understand that vision. They do not see it. They have looked too much upon the ground. They have thought too much of the interests that were near them, and they have not Hstened to the voices of their neighbors. I have never had a moment's doubt as to where the heart and purpose of this people lay. When any one on the other side of the water has raised the question, "Will America come in and help?" I have said: "Of course America will come in and help. She cannot do any- thing else. She will not disappoint any high hope that has been formed of her. Least of all will she in this day of new-born liberty all over the world fail to extend her hand of sup- port and assistance to those who have been made free." I wonder if at this distance you can have got any conception of the tragic intensity of the feeling of those peoples of Europe who have had yokes thrown off them. Have you reckoned up in your mind how many peoples, how many nations, were held unwillingly under the yoke of the Austro-Hungarian Em- pire, tinder the yoke of Turkey, under the yoke of Germany? These yokes have been thrown off. These peoples breathe the air and look around to see a new day dawn about them, and whenever they think of what is going to fill that day with action they think first of us. They 154 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS think first of the friends who through the long years have spoken for them, who were privi- leged to declare that they came into the war to release them, who said that they would not make peace upon any other terms than their liberty, and they have known that America's presence in the war and in the conference was the guarantee of the result. A NEW TASK BEGUN The Governor has spoken of a great task ended. Yes, the formulation of the peace is ended, but it creates only a new task just begun. I believe that if you will study the peace you will see that it is a just peace and a peace which, if it can be preserved, will save the world from unnecessary bloodshed. And now the great task is to preserve it. I have come back with my heart full of enthusiasm for throwing everything that I can by way of influence or action, in with you to see that the peace is preserved; that when the long reckon- ing comes men may look back upon this gen- eration of America and say, ''They were true to the vision which they saw at their birth." XXII A HOME GREETING (Washington, July