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66th Congress Q-p'WATfi' fDoctJMENT 
 
 1st Session iSiiiiNAiJi. | ^^^ ^^ 
 
 Treaty of Peace with Germany 
 
 ADDRESS 
 
 OF THE 
 
 PRESIDENT OF THE 
 UNITED STATES 
 
 TO THE 
 
 SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 RELATIVE TO THE TREATY 
 OF PEACE WITH GERMANY 
 
 DELIVERED ON 
 
 JULY 10, 1919 
 
 WASHINGTON 
 GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 
 
 1919 
 
•Rio 
 
 SUBMITTED BY MR. PITTMAN. 
 
 In" the Senate of the United States, 
 
 July 10, 1919. 
 Ordered, That the address of the President of the United States, 
 delivered in the Senate Chamber this "day, be printed as a Senate 
 document and that 50,000 copies be printed for the use of the 
 Senate. 
 
 Attest : 
 
 George A. Sanderson, 
 
 Secretary. 
 2 
 
 n; of J. 
 
 AUG 2 |9]9 
 
TREATY OF PEACE WITH GERMANY. 
 
 Gentlemen of the Senate: The treaty of peace with Germany 
 was signed at Versailles on the twenty-eighth of June. I avail my- 
 self of the earliest opportunity to lay the treaty before you for rati- 
 fication and to inform you with regard to the work of the Conference 
 by which that treaty was formulated. 
 
 The treaty constitutes nothing less than a world settlement. It 
 would not be possible for me either to summarize or to construe its 
 manifold provisions in an address which must of necessity be some- 
 thing less than a treatise. My services and all the information I pos- 
 sess will be at your disposal and at the disposal of your Committee 
 on Foreign Relations at any time, either informally or in session, as 
 you may prefer ; and I hope that you will not hesitate to make use 
 of them. I shall at this time, prior to your own study of the docu- 
 ment, attempt only a general characterization of its scope and 
 purpose. 
 
 In one sense, no doubt, there is no need that I should report to you 
 what was attempted and done at Paris. You have been daily cogni- 
 zant of what was going on there, — of the problems with which the 
 Peace Conference had to deal and of the difficulty of laying down 
 straight lines of settlement anywhere on a field on which the old lines 
 of international relationship, and the new alike, followed so intricate 
 a pattern and were for the most part cut so deep by historical cir- 
 cumstances which dominated action even where it would have been 
 best to ignore or reverse them. The cross currents of politics and of 
 interest must have been evident to you. It would be presuming in me 
 to attempt to explain. the questions which arose or the many diverse 
 elements that entered into them. I shall attempt something less ambi- 
 tious than that and more clearly suggested by my duty to report to 
 the Congress the part it seemed necessary for my colleagues and me 
 to play as the representatives of the Government of the United States. 
 
 That part was dictated by the role America had played in the war 
 and by the expectations that had been created in the minds of the 
 peoples with whom we had associated ourselves in that great strug- 
 
 rrlo 
 
 The United States entered the war upon a different footing from 
 every other nation except our associates on this side the sea. Wo 
 entered it, not because our material interests were directly threatened 
 
 3 
 
4 TREATY OF PEACE WITH GERMANY. 
 
 or because any special treaty obligations to which we were parties 
 had been violated, but only because we saw the supremacy, and even 
 the validity, of right everywhere put in jeopardy and free govern- 
 ment likely to be everywhere imperiled by the intolerable aggression 
 of a power which respected neither right nor obligation and whose 
 very system of government flouted the rights of the citizen as against 
 the autocratic authority of his governors. And in the settlements of 
 the peace we have sought no special reparation for ourselves, but only 
 the restoration of right and the assurance of liberty everywhere 
 that the effects of the settlement were to be felt. We entered the 
 war as the disinterested champions of right and we interested our^ 
 selves in the terms of the peace in no other capacity. 
 
 The hopes of the nations allied against the central powers were at 
 a very low ebb when our soldiers began to pour across the sea. There 
 was everywhere amongst them, except in their stoutest spirits, a 
 sombre foreboding of disaster. The war ended in November, eight 
 months ago, but you have only to recall what was feared in midsum- 
 mer last, four short months before the armistice, to realize what it 
 was that our timely aid accomplished alike for their morale and their 
 physical safety. That first, never-to-be-forgotten action at Chateau- 
 Thierry had already taken place. Our redoutable soldiers and ma- 
 rines had already closed the gap the enemy had succeeded in opening 
 for their advance upon Paris, — had already turned the tide of battle 
 back towards the frontiers of France and begun the rout that was to 
 save Europe and the world. Thereafter the Germans were to be 
 always forced back, back, were never to thrust successfully forward 
 again. And yet there was no confident hope. Anxious men and 
 women, leading spirits of France, attended the celebration of the 
 fourth of July last year in Paris out of generous courtesy, — with no 
 heart for festivity, little zest for hope. But they came away with 
 something new at their hearts : they have themselves told us so. The 
 mere sight of our men, — of their vigour, of the confidence that showed 
 itself in every movement of their stalwart figures and every turn of 
 their swinging march, in their steady comprehending eyes and easy 
 discipline, in the indomitable air that added spirit to everything they 
 did, — made everyone who saw them that memorable day realize that 
 something had happened that was much more than a mere incident 
 in the fighting, something very different from the mere arrival of 
 fresh troops. A great moral force had flung itself into the struggle. 
 The fine physical force of those spirited men spoke of something more 
 than bodily vigour. They carried the great ideals of a free people 
 at their hearts and with that vision were unconquerable. Their very 
 presence brought reassurance ; their fighting made victory certain. 
 
 They were recognized as crusaders, and as their thousands swelled 
 to millions their strength was seen to mean salvation. And they were 
 
TKEATY OF PEACE WITH GEEMANY. 5 
 
 fit men to carry such a hope and make good the assurance it forecast. 
 Finer men never went into battle; and their officers were worthy of 
 them. This is not the occasion upon which to utter a eulogy of the 
 armies America sent to France, but perhaps, since I am speaking of 
 their mission, I may speak also of the pride I shared with every Ameri- 
 can who saw or dealt with them there. They were the sort of men 
 America would wish to be represented by, the sort of men every Ameri- 
 can would wish to claim as f ellowcountrymen and comrades in a great 
 cause. They were terrible in battle, and gentle and helpful out of it, 
 remembering the mothers and the sisters, the wives and the little 
 children at home. They were free men under arms, not forgetting 
 their ideals of duty in the midst of tasks of violence. I am proud to 
 have had the privilege of being associated with them and of calling 
 myself their leader. 
 
 But I speak now of what they meant to the men by whose sides they 
 fought and to the people with whom they mingled with such utter 
 simplicity, as friends who asked only to be of service. They were for 
 all the visible embodiment of America. What they did made America 
 and all that she stood for a living reality in the thoughts not only of 
 the people of France but also of tens of millions of men and women 
 throughout all the toiling nations of a world standing everywhere in 
 peril of its freedom and of the loss of everything it held dear, in 
 deadly fear that its bonds were never to be loosed, its hopes forever 
 to be mocked and disappointed. 
 
 And the compulsion of what they stood for was upon us who 
 represented America at the peace table. It was our duty to see to it 
 that every decision we took part in contributed, so far as we were able 
 to influence it, to quiet the fears and realize the hopes of the peoples 
 who had been living in that shadow, the nations that had come by 
 our assistance to their freedom. It was our duty to do everything 
 that it was within our power to do to make the triumph of freedom 
 and of right a lasting triumph in the assurance of which men might 
 everywhere live without fear. 
 
 Old entanglements of every kind stood in the way, — promises 
 which Governments had made to one another in the days when, 
 might and right were confused and the power of the victor was with- 
 out restraint. Engagements which contemplated any dispositions of 
 territory, any extensions of sovereignty that might seem to be to 
 the interest of those who had the power to insist upon them, had been 
 entered into without thought of what the peoples concerned might 
 wish or profit by ; and these could not always be honourably brushed 
 aside. It was not easy to graft the new order of ideas on the old, 
 and some of the fruits of the grafting may, I fear, for a time be 
 bitter. But, with very few exceptions, the men who sat with us at 
 the peace table desired as sincerely as we did to get away from the 
 
6 TREATY OF PEACE WITH GEEMANY. 
 
 bad influences, the illegitimate purposes, the demoralizing ambitions, 
 the international counsels and expedients out of which the sinister 
 designs of Germany had sprung as a natural growth. 
 
 It had been our privilege to formulate the principles which were 
 accepted as the basis of the peace, but they had been accepted, not 
 because we had come in to hasten and assure the victory and in- 
 sisted upon them, but because they were readily acceded to as the 
 principles to which honourable and enlightened minds everywhere 
 had been bred. They spoke the conscience of the world as well as the 
 conscience of America, and I am happy to pay my tribute of respect 
 and gratitude to the able, forward-looking men with whom it was 
 my privilege to cooperate for their unfailing spirit of cooperation, 
 their constant effort to accommodate the interests they represented 
 to the principles we were all agreed upon. The difficulties, which 
 were many, lay in the circumstances, not often in the men. Almost 
 without exception the men who led had caught the true and full 
 vision of the problem of peace as an indivisible whole, a problem, 
 not of mere adjustments of interest, but of justice and right action. 
 
 The atmosphere in which the Conference worked seemed cre- 
 ated, not by the ambitions of strong governments, but by the hopes 
 and aspirations of small nations and of peoples hitherto mider bond- 
 age to the power that victory had shattered and destroyed. Two 
 great empires had been forced into political bankruptcy, and we were 
 the receivers. Our task was not only to make peace with the central 
 empires and remedy the wrongs their armies had done. The central 
 empires had lived in open violation of many of the very rights for 
 which the war had been fought, dominating alien peoples over whom 
 they had no natural right to rule, enforcing, not obedience, but verita- 
 ble bondage, exploiting those who were weak for the benefit of those 
 who were masters and overlords only by force of arms. There could 
 be no peace until the whole order of central Europe was set right. 
 
 That meant that new nations were to be created, — Poland, Czecho- 
 slovakia, Hungary itself. No part of ancient Poland had ever in 
 anj^ true sense become a part of Germany, or of Austria, or of 
 Russia. Bohemia was alien in every thought and hope to the 
 monarchy of which she had so long been an artificial part; and the 
 uneasy partnership between Austria and Hungary had been one 
 rather of interest than of kinship or sympathy. The Slavs whom 
 Austria had chosen to force into her empire on the south were kept 
 to their obedience by nothing but fear. Their hearts were with 
 their kinsmen in the Balkans. These were all arrangements of 
 power, not arrangements of natural union or association. It was the 
 imperative task of those who would make peace and make it intelli- 
 gently to establish a new order which would rest upon the free 
 
TREATY OF PEACE WITH GERMANY. 7 
 
 choice of peoples rather than upon the arbitrary authority of 
 Hapsburgs or Hohenzollerns. 
 
 More than that, great populations bound by sympathy and actual 
 kin to Rumania were also linked against their will to the con- 
 glomerate Austro-Hungarian monarchy or to other alien sovereign- 
 ties, and it was part of the task of peace to make a new Rumania 
 as well as a new slavic state clustering about Serbia. 
 
 And no natural frontiers could be found to these new fields of ad- 
 justment and redemption. It was necessary to look constantly for- 
 ward to other related tasks. The German colonies were to be disposed 
 of. They had not been governed; they had been exploited merely, 
 without thought of the interest or even the ordinary human rights of 
 their inhabitants. 
 
 The Turkish Empire, moreover, had fallen apart, as the Austro- 
 Hungarian had. It had never had any real unity. It had been held 
 together only by pitiless, inhiiman force. Its peoples cried aloud 
 for release, for succour from unspeakable distress, for all that the 
 new day of hope seemed at last to bring within its dawn. Peoples 
 hitherto in utter darkness were to be led out into the same light and 
 given at last a helping hand. Undeveloped peoples and peoples ready 
 for recognition but not yet ready to assume the full responsibilities of 
 statehood were to be given adequate guarantees of friendly protec- 
 tion, guidance, and assistance. 
 
 And out of the execution of these great enterprises of liberty sprang 
 opportunities to attempt what statesmen had never found the way 
 before to do ; an opportunity to throw safeguards about the rights of 
 racial, national, and religious minorities by solemn international 
 covenant; an opportunity to limit and regulate military establish- 
 ments where they were most likely to be mischievous ; an opportunity 
 to effect a complete and systematic internationalization of waterways 
 and railways which were necessary to the free economic life of more 
 than one nation and to clear many of the normal channels of com- 
 merce of unfair obstructions of law or of privilege; and the very 
 welcome opportunity to secure for labour the concerted protection of 
 definite international pledges of princijole and practice. 
 
 These were not tasks which the Conference looked about it to find 
 and went out of its way to perform. They were inseparable from 
 the settlements of peace. They were thrust upon it by circum.stances 
 which could not be overlooked. The war had created them. In all 
 quarters of the world old established relationships had been dis- 
 turbed or broken and affairs were at loose ends, needing to be mended 
 or united again, but could not be made what they were before. They 
 had to be set right by applying some uniform principle of justice or 
 enlightened expediency. And they could not be adjusted by merely 
 prescribing in a treaty what should be done. New states were to be 
 
8 TREATY OF PEACE WITH GERMANY. 
 
 set up which could not hope to live through their first period of weak- 
 ness without assured support by the great nations that had consented 
 to their creation and won for them their independence. Ill governed 
 colonies could not be put in the hands of governments which were to 
 act as trustees for their people and not as their masters if there was 
 to be no common authority among the nations to which they were to 
 be responsible in the execution of their trust. Future international 
 conventions with regard to the control of waterways, with regard to 
 illicit traffic of many kinds, in arms or in deadly drugs, or with re- 
 gard to the adjustment of many varying international administra- 
 tive arrangements could not be assured if the treaty were to provide 
 no permanent common international agency, if its execution in such 
 matters was to be left to the slow and uncertain processes of co- 
 operation by ordinary methods of negotiation. If the Peace 
 Conference itself was to be the end of cooperative authority and 
 common counsel among the governments to which the world was 
 loolring to enforce justice and give pledges of an enduring settlement, 
 regions like the Saar basin could not be put under a temporary ad- 
 ministrative regime which did not involve a transfer of political 
 sovereignty and which contem^plated a final determination of its 
 political connections by popular vote to be taken at a distant date; 
 no free city like Dantzig could be created which was, under elaborate 
 international guarantees, to accept exceptional obligations with re- 
 gard to the use of its port and exceptional relations with a State 
 of which it was not to form a part; properly safeguarded plebes- 
 cites could not be provided for where populations were at some 
 future date to make choice what sovereignty they would live under; 
 no certain and uniform method of arbitration could be secured for 
 the settlement of anticipated difficulties of final decision with regard 
 to many matters dealt with in the treaty itself; the long-continued 
 supervision of the task of reparation which Germany was to under- 
 take to complete Avithin the next generation might entirely break 
 down; the reconsideration and revision of administrative arrange- 
 ments and restrictions which the treaty prescribed but which it was 
 recognized might not prove of lasting advantage or entirely fair if 
 too long enforced would be impracticable. The promises govern- 
 inents were making to one another about the way in which labour 
 was to be dealt with, by law not only but in fact as well, would re- 
 main a mere humane thesis if there was to be no common tribunal of 
 opinion and judgment to which liberal statesmen could resort for the 
 influences which alone might secure their redemption. A league of 
 free nations had become a practical necessity. Examine the treaty 
 of peace and you will find that everywhere throughout its manifold 
 provisions its framers have felt obliged to turn to the League of 
 Nations as on indispensable instrumentality for the maintenance 
 
TKEATY OF PEACE WITH GERMANY. 9 
 
 of the new order it has been their purpose to set up in the world, — the 
 world of civilized men. 
 
 That there should be a league of nations to steady the counsels 
 and maintain the peaceful understandings of the world, to make, not 
 treaties alone, but the accepted principles of international law as 
 well, the actual rule of conduct among the governments of the world, 
 had been one of the agreements accepted from the first as the basis 
 of peace with the central powers. The statesmen of all the belligerent 
 countries were agreed that such a league must be created to sustain 
 the settlements that were to be effected. But at first I think there 
 was a feeling among some of them that, while it must be attempted, 
 the formation of such a league was perhaps a counsel of perfection 
 which practical men, long experienced in the world of affairs, must 
 agree to very cautiously and with many misgivings. It was only as 
 the difficult work of arranging an all but universal adjustment of 
 the world's affairs advanced from day to day from one stage of con- 
 ference to another that it became evident to them that what they 
 were seeking would be little more than something written upon paper, 
 to be interpreted and applied by such methods as the chances of 
 politics might make available if they did not provide a means of 
 common counsel which all were obliged to accept, a common author- 
 ity whose decisions would be recognized as decisions which all must 
 respect. 
 
 And so the most practical, the most skeptical among them turned 
 more and more to the League as the authority through which inter- 
 national action was to be secured, the authority without which, as 
 they had come to see it, it would be difficult to give assured effect 
 either to this treaty or to any other international understanding 
 upon which they were to depend for the maintenance of peace. The 
 fact that the Covenant of the League was the first substantive part 
 of the treaty to be worked out and agreed upon, while all else was 
 in solution, helped to make the formulation of the rest easier. The 
 Conference^ was, after all, not to be ephemeral. The concert of 
 nations was to continue, under a definite Covenant which had been 
 agreed upon and which, all were convinced was workable. They 
 could go forward with confidence to make arrangements intended 
 to be permanent. The most practical of the conferees were at last 
 the most ready to refer to the League of Nations the superintendence 
 of all interests which did not admit of immediate determination, of 
 all administrative problems which were to require a continuing over- 
 sight. What had seemed a counsel of perfection had come to seem 
 a plain counsel of necessity. The League of Nations was the 
 practical statesman's hope of success in many of the most difficult 
 things he was attempting. 
 
10 TREATY or PEACE WITH GERMANY. 
 
 And it had validated itself in the thought of every member of 
 the Conference as something much bigger, much greater every way, 
 than a mere instrument for carrying out the provisions of a par- 
 ticular treaty. It was universally recognized that all the peoples 
 of the world demanded of the Conference that it should create 
 such a continuing concert of free nations as would make wars of 
 aggression and spoliation such as this that has just ended forever 
 impossible. A cry had gone out from every home in every stricken 
 land from which sons and brothers and fathers had gone forth to 
 the great sacrifice that such a sacrifice should never again be exacted. 
 It was manifest why it had been exacted. It had been exacted 
 because one nation desired dominion and other nations had known 
 no means of defence except armaments and alliances. War had lain 
 at the heart of every arrangement of the Europe, — of every arrange- 
 ment of the world, — that preceded the war. Eestive peoples had 
 been told that fleets and armies, which they toiled to sustain, meant 
 peace ; and they now knew that they they had been lied to : that 
 fleets and armies had been maintained to promote national ambitions 
 and meant war. They knew that no old policy meant anything else 
 but force, force, — always force. And they knew that it was intoler- 
 able. Every true heart in the world, and every enlightened judg- 
 ment demanded that, at whatever cost of independent action, every 
 government that took thought for its people or for justice or for 
 ordered freedom should lend itself to a new purpose and utterly 
 destroy the old order of international politics, Statesmen might see 
 difficulties, but the people could see none and could brook no denial. 
 A war in which they had been bled white to beat the terror that 
 lay concealed in every Balance of Power must not end in a mere 
 victory of arms and a new balance. The monster that had resorted 
 to arms must be put in chains that could not be broken. The united 
 power of free nations must put a stop to aggression, and the world 
 must be given peace. If there was not the will or the intelligence 
 to accomplish that now, there must be another and a final war and 
 the world must be swept clean of every power that could renew the 
 terror. The League of Nations was not merely an instrument to 
 adjust and remedy old wrongs under a new treaty of peace.: it was 
 the only hope for mankind. Again and again had the demon of 
 war been cast out of the house of the peoples and the house swept 
 clean by a treaty of peace; only to prepare a time when he would 
 enter in again with spirits worse than himself. The house must 
 now be given a tenant who could hold it against all such. Con- 
 venient, indeed indispensable, as statesmen found the newly planned 
 League of Nations to be for the execution of present plans of peace 
 and reparation, they saw it in a new aspect before their work was 
 
TREATY OF PEACE WITH GERMANY. 11 
 
 finished. They saw it as the main object of the peace, as the only- 
 thing that could complete it or make it worth while. They saw it 
 as the hope of the world, and that hope they did not dare to dis- 
 appoint. Shall we or any other free people hesitate to accept this 
 great duty? Dare we reject it and break the heart of the world? 
 
 And so the result of the Conference of Peace, so far as Germany is 
 concerned, stands complete. The difficulties encountered were very 
 many. Sometimes they seemed insuperable. It was impossible to 
 acconunodate the interests of so great a body of nations, — interests 
 which directly or indirectly affected almost every nation in the 
 world, — without many minor compromises. The treaty, as a result, 
 is not exactly what we would have written. It is probably not what 
 any one of the national delegations would have written. But results 
 were worked out which on the whole bear test. I think that it will 
 be found that the compromises which were accepted as inevitable 
 nowhere cut to the heart of any principle. The work of the Con- 
 ference squares, as a whole, with the principles agreed upon as the 
 basis of the peace as weU as with the practical possibilities of the 
 international situations which had to be faced and dealt with as facts. 
 
 I shall presently have occasion to lay before you a special treaty 
 with France, whose object is the temporary protection of France 
 from unprovoked aggTession by the Power with whom this treaty of 
 peace has been negotiated. Its terms link it with this treaty. I take 
 the liberty'-, however, of reserving it for special explication on another 
 occasion. 
 
 The role which America was to play in the Conference seemed de- 
 termined, as I have said, before my colleagues and I got to Paris, — ■ 
 determined by the universal expectations of the nations whose repre- 
 sentatives, drawn from all quarters of the globe, we were to deal with. 
 It was universally recognized that America had entered the war to 
 promote no private or peculiar interest of her own but only as the 
 champion of rights which she was glad to share with free men and 
 lovers of justice everywhere. We had formulated the principles upon 
 which the settlement was to be made, — ^the principles upon which the 
 armistice had been agreed to and the parleys of peace undertaken, — 
 and no one doubted that our desire was to see the treaty of peace 
 formulated along the actual lines of those principles, — and desired 
 nothing else. We were welcomed as disinterested friends. We were 
 resorted to as arbiters in many a difficult matter. It was recognized 
 that our material aid would be indispensable in the days to come, 
 when industry and credit would have to be brought back to their nor- 
 mal operation again and communities beaten to the ground assisted to 
 their feet once more, and it was taken for granted, I am proud to say, 
 that we would play the helpful friend in these things as in all others 
 
12 TREATY OF PEACE WITH GERMANY. 
 
 without prejudice or favour. We were generously accepted as the un- ' 
 affected champions of what was right. It was a very responsible role 
 to play ; but I am happy to report that the fine group of Americans 
 who helped with their expert advice in each part of the varied settle- 
 ments sought in every transaction to justify the high confidence re- 
 posed in them. 
 
 And that confidence, it seems to me, is the measure of our oppor- 
 tunity and of our duty in the days to come, in which the new hope of 
 the peoples of the world is to be fulfilled or disappointed. The fact 
 that America is the friend of the nations, whether they be rivals or 
 associates, is no new fact: it is only the discovery of it by the rest of 
 the world that is new. 
 
 America may be said to have just reached her majority as a 
 world power. It was almost exactly twenty-one years ago that 
 the results of the war with Spain put us unexpectedly in posses- 
 sion of rich islands on the other side of the world and brought 
 us into association with other governments in th^ control of the 
 West Indies. It was regarded as a sinister and ominous thing by 
 the statesmen of more than one European chancellery that we should 
 have extended our power beyond the confines of our continental do- 
 minions. They were accustomed to think of new neighbours as a 
 new menace, of rivals as watchful enemies. There were persons 
 amongst us at home who looked with deep disapproval and avowed 
 anxiety on such extensions of our national authority over distant 
 islands and over peoples whom they feared we might exploit, not 
 serve and assist. But we have not exploited them. We have been 
 their friends and have sought to serve them. And our dominion has 
 been a menace to no other nation. We redeemed our honour to the 
 utmost in our dealings with Cuba. She is weak but absolutely free; 
 and it is her trust in us that makes her free. Weak peoples every- 
 where stand ready to give us any authority among them that will 
 assure them a like friendly oversight and direction. They know that 
 there is no ground for fear in receiving us as their mentors and guides. 
 Our isolation was ended twenty years ago; and now fear of us is 
 ended also, our counsel and association sought after and desired. 
 There can be no question of our ceasing to be a world power. The 
 only question is whether we can refuse the moral leadership that is 
 offered us, whether we shall accept or reject the confidence of the 
 world. 
 
 The war and the Conference of Peace now sitting in Paris seem to 
 me 4o 4i.ave. answered that question. Our ^partixiipation in the war 
 established our position among the nations and nothing but our own 
 mistaken action can alter it. It was not an accident or a matter of 
 sudden choice that we are no longer isolated and devoted to a policy 
 which has only our own interest and advantage for its object. It was 
 
TREATY OF PEACE WITH GERMANY. 13 
 
 our duty to go in, if we were indeed the champions of liberty and of 
 right. We answered to the call of duty in a way so spirited, so utterly 
 without thought of what we spent of blood or treasure, so effective, 
 so worthy of the admiration of true men everywhere, so wrought out 
 of the stuff of all that was heroic, that the whole world saw at last, 
 in the flesh, in noble action, a great ideal asserted and vindicated, by 
 a nation they had deemed material and now found to be compact of 
 the spiritual forces that must free men of every nation from every 
 unworthy bondage. It is thus that a new role and a new responsi- 
 bility have come to this great nation that we honour and which we 
 would all wish to lift to yet higher levels of service and achievement. 
 The stage is set, the destiny disclosed. It has come about by no 
 plan of our conceiving, but by the hand of God who led us into this 
 way. We cannot turn back. We can only go forward, with lifted 
 eyes and freshened spirit, to follow the vision. It was of this that we 
 dreamed at our birth. America shall in truth show the way. The 
 light streams upon the path ahead, and nowhere else. 
 
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