Part 24 (1/2)
I recall a talk the President had with me on the way to New York on the afternoon of the delivery of this speech when he requested ave it tothe Allies] will not like this speech, for there are s in it which will displease the Imperialists of Great Britain, France, and Italy The worldno favourites and that America has her own plan for a world settleerreatly fear, now that the end seeo back to the old days of alliances and co We must see to it, therefore, that there is not another Alsace-Lorraine, and that when peace finally co peace We must now serve notice on everybody that our aims and purposes are not selfish In order to do this and to ht impressions, we must be brutally frank with friends and foes alike”
As we discussed the subject athered from the President's statements to me that he clearly foresaw the end of the war and of the possible proposal for a settleht be made by the Allies Therefore, he felt it incumbent upon hi settlement should be As one examines this speech to-day, away from the excitement of that critical hour in which it was delivered, he can easily find in it statements and utterances that must have caused sharp irritation in certain chancelleries of Europe In nearly every line of it there was a challenge to European Imperialism to come out in the open and avow its purposes as to peace
Many of the Allied leaders had been addressing their people on the ed by an American president to place their cards face up on the table An exaht of subsequent events, reemphasizes the President's pre-vision:
At every turn of the e gain a fresh consciousness of e mean to accomplish by it When our hope and expectation are most excited we thinkupon it and of the purposes which must be realized by means of it For it has positive and well-defined purposes which we did not determine and which we cannot alter No statesman or assembly created them; no statesman or assembly can alter them They have arisen out of the very nature and circumstances of the war The most that statesmen or assemblies can do is to carry them out or be false to them They were perhaps not clear at the outset; but they are clear now The war has lasted more than four years and the whole world has been drawn into it The common will of mankind has been substituted for the particular purposes of individual states Individual statesmen may have started the conflict, but neither they nor their opponents can stop it as they please It has become a peoples' war, and peoples of all sorts and races, of every degree of power and variety of fortune, are involved in its sweeping processes of change and settlement We came into it when its character had become fully defined and it was plain that no nation could stand apart or be indifferent to its outco we cared for and lived for
The voice of the war had becoripped our hearts Our brothers from many lands, as well as our ownto us, and we responded, fiercely and of course
The air was clear about us We saw things in their full, convincing proportions as they were; and we have seen the comprehension ever since We accepted the issues of the war as facts, not as any group of men either here or elsewhere had defined them, and we can accept no outcome which does not squarely meet and settle them Those issues are these:
Shall the roup of nations be suffered to deterht to rule except the right of force?
Shall strong nations be free to wrong weak nations and make them subject to their purpose and interest?
Shall peoples be ruled and dominated, even in their own internal affairs, by arbitrary and irresponsible force or by their oill and choice?
Shall there be a coe for all peoples and nations or shall the strong do as they will and the weak suffer without redress?
Shall the assertion of right be haphazard and by casual alliance or shall there be a cohts?
No roup of le
They _are_ issues of it; and they ement or compromise or adjustment of interests, but definitely and once for all and with a full and unequivocal acceptance of the principle that the interest of the weakest is as sacred as the interest of the strongest
That is e mean e speak of a perently, and with a real knowledge and comprehension of the matter we deal with
As I have said, neither I nor any other ave form to the issues of this war I have simply responded to theladly and with a resolution that has groarrown clearer and clearer It is now plain that they are issues which no ht for theht for them as time and circumstance have revealed therows more and more irresistible as they stand out in more and more vivid and unht for theanize their ht, as they becoht and purposes of the peoples engaged It is the peculiarity of this great war that while statesmen have seemed to cast about for definitions of their purpose and have soround and their point of view, the thought of the mass of rown more and more unclouded,for National purposes have fallen round and the cohtened mankind has taken their place The counsels of plain htforward and more unified than the counsels of sophisticated men of affairs, who still retain the i for high stakes That is why I have said that this is a peoples' war, not a statesht or be broken
I take that to be the significance of the fact that assemblies and associations of many kinds made up of plain workaday people have deether, and are still deovernments declare to them plainly what it is, exactly what it is, that they were seeking in this war, and what they think the items of the final settlement should be
They are not yet satisfied hat they have been told They still see what they ask for only in statesements and divisions of power, and not in terms of broad-visioned justice and ings of oppressed and distracted men and wos worth fighting a war for that engulfs the world Perhaps statesed aspect of the whole world of policy and action Perhaps they have not always spoken in direct reply to the questions asked because they did not kno searching those questions were and what sort of answers they deain and again, in the hope that I ht is to satisfy those who struggle in the ranks and are, perhaps above all others, entitled to a reply whose , if he understands the language in which it is spoken or can get someone to translate it correctly into his own And I believe that the leaders of the governments hich we are associated will speak, as they have occasion, as plainly as I have tried to speak I hope that they will feel free to say whether they think I aree mistaken in my interpretation of the issues involved or in ard to the means by which a satisfactory settlement of those issues may be obtained Unity of purpose and of counsel are as imperatively necessary as was unity of command in the battlefield, and with perfect unity of purpose and counsel will come assurance of complete victory It can be had in no other way ”Peace drives” can be effectively neutralized and silenced only by showing that every victory of the nations associated against Gers the nations nearer the sort of peace which will bring security and reassurance to all peoples and le of pitiless force and bloodshed for ever i else can Ger the ”terms” she will accept; and always finds that the world does not want ter
When I had read the speech, I turned to the President and said: ”This speech will bring Germany to terms and will convince her that we play no favourites and will compel the Allies openly to avow the terms upon which they will expect a war settlement to be reached In my opinion, it means the end of the war” The President was surprised at the emphasis I laid upon the speech, but he was more surprised when I ventured the opinion that he would be in Paris within six ton _Post_, a critic of the President, characterized this speech, in an editorial on September 29, 1918, as ”a marvellous intellectual perfore”
CHAPTER xxxIV
GERMANY CAPITULATES
Gerun to weaken, and suddenly aware of the catastrophe that lay just ahead, changed her chancellor, and called upon the President for an armistice upon the basis of the Fourteen Points The explanation of Germany's attitude in this nized that Wilson was the only hope of a reasonable peace from the Berlin point of view Ger Wilson for the ”benefit of clergy”