Part 12 (2/2)
These terms have been summed up again and again in three general words:
RESt.i.tUTION, REPARATION, GUARANTEES FOR THE FUTURE.
It is for us to discuss the details which are implied in these terms, not with our enemy, but with our friends who have borne the brunt of this German war against peace.
Nothing which would make their sacrifice vain could ever satisfy the heart and conscience of the United States.
We cannot honorably accept a peace which would leave Belgium, Luxembourg, Servia, Montenegro, Roumania crushed and helpless in the hands of their captors.
We cannot honorably accept a peace which would leave our sister-republic France hopelessly exposed to the same kind of an a.s.sault which Germany made upon her in 1870 and in 1914.
We cannot honorably accept a peace which would leave Great Britain crippled and powerless to work with us in the maintenance of the freedom of the sea.
We cannot honorably accept a peace which would leave the Italian demand for unity unsatisfied, and the new Russian Republic helpless before its foes. Such, it seems to me, are the principles which must guide and govern us in the coming conference with our friends about the terms of peace.
In regard to the right of the peoples of the world, small or great, to determine their own form of government and their own action, we are fully committed. This principle is fundamental to our existence as a nation. President Wilson has reaffirmed it again and again, never more clearly or significantly than in his address to the Senate on January 22, 1917.
”And there is a deeper thing involved than even equality of rights among organized nations. No peace can last which does not recognize and accept the principle that governments derive all their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that no right anywhere exists to hand people about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were property.
”I take it for granted, for instance, if I may venture upon a single example, that statesmen everywhere are agreed that there should be a united, independent, and autonomous Poland, and that henceforth inviolable security of life, of wors.h.i.+p, and of industrial and social development should be guaranteed to all peoples who have lived hitherto under the power of governments devoted to a faith and purpose hostile to their own.”
This ”example” must be interpreted in its full bearing upon all the questions which are likely to come up in the conference in regard to the terms of peace.
There is one more fixed point in the terms of a peace which the United States and the Allies can accept with honor. That is the formation, after this war is ended, of a compact, an alliance, a league, a union--call it what you will--of free democratic nations, pledged to use their combined forces, diplomatic, economic, and military, against the beginning of war by any nation which has not previously submitted its cause to international inquiry, conciliation, arbitration, or judicial hearing.
Here, again, experience enables me to throw a little new light upon the situation. In November, 1914, on my way home to America for surgical treatment, I had the privilege of conveying a personal, unofficial message to Was.h.i.+ngton from the British Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sir Edward (now Viscount) Grey. Remember, at this time America was neutral, and the ”League to Enforce Peace” had not been formed.
This was the substance of the message: ”The presence and influence of America in the council of peace after the war will be most welcome to us provided we can be a.s.sured of two things: First, that America stands for the restoration of all that Germany has seized in Belgium and France.
Second, that America will enter and support, by force if necessary, a league of nations pledged to resist and punish any war begun without previous submission of the cause to international investigation and judgment.”
This was the message that I took to Was.h.i.+ngton in 1914. Since that time the ”League to Enforce Peace” has been organized in America (June 17, 1915). In my opinion it would be better named the ”League to Defend Peace.” But the name makes little difference. It is the principle, the idea, that counts.
This idea has been publicly approved by the leading spokesmen of all the allied nations, and notably by President Wilson in his speech at the League banquet, May 27, 1916, and in his address to the Senate, January 22, 1917, in which he said:
”Mere terms of peace between the belligerents will not satisfy even the belligerents themselves. Mere agreements may not make peace secure. It will be absolutely necessary that a force be created as a guarantor of the permanency of the settlement so much greater than the force of any nation now engaged in any alliance hitherto formed or projected that no nation, no probable combination of nations, could face or withstand it.
If the peace presently to be made is to endure it must be a peace made secure by the organized major force of mankind.”
Consider for a moment what such an organization would mean.
It would mean, first of all, the strongest possible condemnation of the att.i.tude and action of Germany and her a.s.sistants in plotting, choosing, beginning, and forcing the present war upon the world.
It is precisely because she disdained and refused to submit the Austro-Servian quarrel, and her own secret plans and purposes to investigation, conference, judicial inquiry, that her blood-guiltiness is most flagrant, and her criminal a.s.sault upon the world's peace cries to Heaven for punishment.
Moreover, such an organization of free democratic states would mean a practical step toward a new era of international relations. It would amount, in effect, to what Premier Ribot, in his recent address at the anniversary of the battle of the Marne, called ”a league of common defense.” It would be a new kind of treaty of alliance--open, not secret--made by peoples, not by monarchs--an alliance against wars of aggression and conquest--an alliance against all wars whose beginners are unwilling to submit their cause to the common judgment of mankind.
Such an open treaty of defense would practically condemn and cancel all secret treaties for offensive war as treasonable conspiracies against the commonwealth of the world.
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