THE HOPE OF THE WORLD Messages and Addresses delivered by the President between July 10, 1919 and December 9, 1919 Including selections from his Country-wide speeches in behalf of the Treaty and Covenant BY WOODROW WILSON PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES Harper & Brothers Publishers New York and London THE HOPE OF THE WORLD Printed in the United States of America Published, May, 1920 CONTENTS FOREWORD I. THE TREATY AND THE COVENANT "". II. THE HIGH COST OF LIVING .... III. A MEMORANDUM UPON SHANTUNG . . IV. AN INDUSTRIAL TRUCE NECESSARY . V. THE REPLY TO THE RAILWAY SHOPMEN VI. ECONOMY THE WATCHWORD .... VII. A REPORT TO THE PEOPLE .... VIII. A DEFENSE OF ARTICLE X J" . . . IX. A UNION FOR ARBITRATION .... X. A PLEDGE TO BE REDEEMED . . . XI. A GREAT HISTORICAL DOCUMENT . . XII. THE WORLD Is WAITING ON Us . . XIII. RESERVATIONS MEAN DELAY XIV. A TURNING-POINT IN HISTORY . XV. THE FIRST PEOPLE S TREATY XVI. THE TASK ONLY HALF DONE XVII. RESERVATIONS NOT NECESSARY XVIII. UNDERWRITING CIVILIZATION XIX. NATIONS MUST UNITE" LODGE . , ..<" XX. NEW HOPE FOR CHINA XXI. OUR RIGHTS SAFE UNDER THE LEAGUE XXII. Six VOTES TO ONE XXIII. VOTIV; POWER IN THE LEAGUE 4!730t> CHAP. XXIV. XXV. XXVI. XXVII. CONTENTS MUST COMPOSE DIFFERENCES . A STATEMENT TO THE MINERS . THE RED CROSS DRIVE . . . A MESSAGE ON ARMISTICE DAY PAGE i ;o 1 . . . 181 XXVIII. MESSAGE TO THE CONGRESS . . . . /"* ig& XXIX. A FAIR DEAL TO THE MINERS ..... 205 FOREWORD FOLLOWING upon the earlier volumes in the series of Mr. Wilson s messages and addresses (Why We Are at War, In Our First Year of War, Guarantees oj Peace, International Ideals, and The Triumph of Ideals ), the present com pilation contains the state papers of President Wilson from July 10, 1919, to date, together with the speeches made on his country-wide tour. The bulk of the material deals with the Treaty of Versailles and with the covenant of the League of Nations. ( Mr. Wilson believes that he has a good case, and he presents the talking points of his argument with his cus tomary clearness and cogency. Whether or not we agree with him, no intelligent and patriotic American can afford to ignore this exhaustive presentation upon the great issues with which the future happiness and prosperity of our country are so closely associated. It is difficult to estimate the magnitude of the task to which Mr. Wilson addressed himself, and under whose burden he finally broke down, without considering in extenso the tremendous viii FOREWORD bulk of his public utterances on the subject. The mere statement that the number of separate speeches made by the President, on tour, totals thirty-seven is impressive in itself. As the subject-matter in these addresses is confined to the Peace Treaty and the League of Nations, it is obvious that repetition of the principal argument is inevitable. A selection, therefore, has been made from the mass of material, presenting the more cogent and sig nificant portions of Mr. Wilson s appeal to the public. The important state papers include the address to the Senate, presenting the treaty. and covenant ; the message on the high cost of living, delivered at a joint session of the Con gress; the memorandum upon Shantung; the statement to the railway shopmen ; the Labor Day message; the letter to the National In dustrial Conference; the appeal to the coal miners; and the message to the new Congress. The messages and addresses of the President being the common property of the people, the customary author s royalties are paid by the publishers to the American Red Cross. THE HOPE OF THE WORLD THE HOPE OF THE WORLD THE TREATY AND THE COVENANT (WASHINGTON, July 10, 1919) President Wilson, in presenting the Peace Treaty and the League of Nations to the Senate, spoke as jollows: GENTLEMEN OF THE SENATE : The treaty of peace with Germany was signed at Versailles on the 28th of June. I avail myself of the. earliest opportunity to lay the treaty before you for ratification, 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 something less than a treatise. My services and all the information I possess will be at your disposal and at the disposal of your Committee on Foreign Relations at at. jt in : i THE HOPE OF THE WORLD time, either informally or in session, as you may prefer, and I hope that you will not hesi tate to make use of them. I shall at this time, prior to your own study of the document, 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 cog nizant 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 relation ship, and the new alike, followed so intricate a pattern and were for the most part cut so deep by historical circumstances which dominated action where it would have been best to ignore or reverse them. The cross-currents of poli tics 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 ambitious than that and more clearly suggested by my duty to report to the Congress the part it seemed nec essary for my colleagues and me to play as the representatives of the government of the rr nited States. part was dictated by the role America THE TREATY AND THE COVENANT 3 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 struggle. The United States entered the war upon a different footing from every other nation ex cept our associates on this side the sea. We entered it, not because our material interests were directly threatened 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 re spected neither right nor obligation, and whose very system of government flouted the rights of the citizen as against the autocratic au thority 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 ourselves 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 among them, except in 4 THE HOPE OP THE WORLD their stoutest spirits, a somber foreboding of disaster. The war ended in November, eight months ago, but you have only to recall what was feared in midsummer 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 re doubtable soldiers and marines had already closed the gap the enemy had succeeded in opening for their advance upon Paris had al ready turned the tide of battle back toward 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 suc cessfully 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 vigor, of the confidence that showed itself in every movement of their stal wart figures and every turn of their swinging march, in their steady, comprehending eyes THE TREATY AND THE COVENANT 5 and easy discipline, in the indomitable air that added spirit to everything they did made every one 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 vigor. They carried the great ideals of a free people at their hearts and with that vision were unconquerable. Their very pres ence brought reassurance ; their fighting made victory certain. They were recognized as crusaders, and as their thousands swelled into millions their strength was seen to mean salvation. And they were 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 mis sion I may speak also of the pride I shared with every American who saw or dealt with them there. They were the sort of men Amer ica would wish to be represented by, the sort of men every American would wish to claim as fellow-countrymen and comrades in a great 6 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD cause. They were terrible in battle and gentle and helpful out of it, remembering the mothen and the sisters, the wives and the little childrer at home. They were free men under arms not forgetting their ideals of duty in the midsl of tasks of violence. I am proud to have hac the privilege of being associated with them anc of calling myself their leader. But I speak now of what they meant to the men by whose sides they fought and to the vecple with whom they mingled with suet utter simplicity, as friends who asked only tc be of service. They were for all the visible eiTibodiment of America. What they die 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 every thing it held dear, in deadly fear that its bonds were never to be loosed, its hopes forever tc be mocked and disappointed. And the compulsion of what they stood foi 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, sc far as we were able to influence it, to quiet the fears and realize the hopes of the peoples whc had been living in that shadow, the nations that had come by our assistance to their free- THE TREATY AND THE COVENANT 7 dom. It was our duty to do everything that it was within our power to do to make the tri umph of freedom and of right a lasting triumph in the assurance of which men might every where 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 without restraint. Engagements which contemplated any dispositions of terri tory, 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 con cerned might wish or profit by; and these could not always be honorably 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. Butj with very few exceptions, the men who sat with us at the peace table desired as sin cerely as we did to get away from the bad influences, the illegitimate purposes, the de moralizing ambitions, the international coun sels 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 be- 8 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD cause we had come in to hasten and assure the victory and insisted upon them, but because they were readily acceded to as the principles to which honorable and enlightened minds everywhere had been bred. They spoke the conscience of the world as well as the con science 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 co-operate for their unfailing spirit of co-operation, their constant effort to accom modate 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 created, not by the ambitions of strong government, but by the hopes and aspirations of small nations and of peoples hitherto under bondage to the power that victory had shattered and destroyed. Two great empires had been forced into po litical 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 THE TREATY AND THE COVENANT 9 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 obedi ence, but veritable 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 any 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 obedi ence 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 intelligently to establish a new order which would rest upon the free choice of peoples rather than upon the arbitrary authority of Hapsburgs or Hohenzollerns. io THE HOPE OF THE WORLD More than that, great populations bound by sympathy and actual kin to Rumania were also linked against their will to the conglomerate Austro-Hungarian monarchy or to other alien sovereignties, 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 adjustment and redemption. It was necessary to look constantly forward 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, inhuman force. Its peoples cried aloud for release, for succor 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 guaran ties of friendly protection, guidance, and assistance. And out of the execution of these great en- THE TREATY AND THE COVENANT u terprises 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 interna tional covenants; an opportunity to limit and regulate military establishments where they were most likely to be mischievous ; an oppor tunity to effect a complete and systematic in ternationalization 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 commerce of unfair ob structions of law or of privilege and the very welcome opportunity to secure for larjor the concerted protection of definite international pledges of principle and practice. These were not tasks which the Conference looked about it to find and went out of its wiy to perform. They were inseparable from the settlements of peace. They were thrust upon it by circumstances which could riot be overlooked. The war had created them. In all quarters of the world old-established relationships had been disturbed 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 12 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD not be adjusted by merely prescribing in a treaty what should be done. J New states were to be set up which could not hope to live through their first period of weakness without assured support by the great nations that had consented to their crea tion 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 au thority among the nations to which they were to be responsible in the execution of their trust. Future international conventions with re gard to the control of waterways, with regard to illicit traffic of many kinds, in arms or in deadly drugs, or with regard to the adjustment of many varying international administrative 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 co-operative authority and common counsel among the governments to which the world was looking to enforce justice and give pledges of an enduring settlement, regions like the Sarre Basin could not be put under a THE TREATY AND THE COVENANT 13 temporary administrative regime which did not involve a transfer of political sovereignty and which contemplated a final determination of its political connections by popular vote to be taken at a distant date; no free city like Danzig could be created which was, under elaborate international guaranties, to accept exceptional obligations with regard to the use of its port and exceptional relations with a state of which it was not to form a part; properly safeguarded plebiscites 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 undertake to complete within the next generation might entirely break down ; the reconsideration and revision of adminis trative arrangements and restrictions which the treaty prescribed, but which it was recog nized might not prove of lasting advantage or entirely fair if too long enforced, would be impracticable. The promises governments were making to one another about the way in which labor was to be dealt with, by law not only, but in fact as well, would remain a mere humane thesis if i 4 HIE HOPE OF THE WORLD 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 prac tical 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 an indispensable instrumentality for the main tenance of the new order it has been their pur pose 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 feel ing 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 THE TREATY AND THE COVENANT 15 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 conference 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 ap plied by such methods as the chances of poli tics might make available, if they did not pro vide a means of common counsel which all were obliged to accept, a common authority whose decisions would be recognized as de cisions 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 na tions was to continue, under a definite cove nant which had been agreed upon and which all were convinced was workable. They could 16 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD go forward with confidence to make arrange ments 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 determina tion, of all administrative problems which were to require a continuing oversight. What had seemed a counsel of perfection had come to seem a plain counsel of necessity. The League of Nations was the practical states man s hope of success in many of the most difficult things he was attempting. 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 of carrying out the provisions of a particular 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 na tions 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 de sired dominion and other nations had known THE TREATY AND THE COVENANT 17 no means of defense except armaments and alliances. War had lain at the- heart of every arrange ment of the Europe of every arrangement of the world that preceded the war. Restive peoples had been told that fleets and armies, which they toiled to sustain, meant peace; and they now knew that 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 any thing else but force, force always force. And they knew r that it was intolerable. Every true heart in the world and every enlightened judgment 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 mon ster 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 ag gression and the world must be given peace. If there was not the will or the intelligence to 1 8 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD 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 eould hold it against all such. / Convenient, indeed indispensable, as states- / men found the newly planned League of Na- / tions to be for the execution of present plans / of peace and reparation, they saw it in a new I aspect before their work was finished. They \ saw it as the main object of the peace, as the only thing that could complete or make it \ worth while. They saw it as the hope of the ^world, and that hope they did not dare to disappoint. 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 com plete. The difficulties encountered were very many. Sometimes they seemed insuperable. THE TREATY AND THE COVENANT 19 It was impossible to accommodate the in terests 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 prin ciples agreed upon as the basis of the peace as well 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 aggression 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 determined, as I have said, before my colleagues and I got to Paris de termined by the universal expectations of the nations whose representatives, drawn from ali 3 20 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD 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 normal 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 without prejudice or favor. We were generously accepted as the unaffected cham pions of what was right. It was a very responsible r61e to play ; but I am happy to report that the fine group of Americans who helped with their expert ad- THE TREATY AND THE COVENANT 21 vice in each part of the varied settlements sought in every transaction to justify the high confidence reposed in them. And that confidence, it seems to me, is the measure of our opportunity 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 dis covery 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 possession of rich islands on the other side of the world and brought us into association with other governments in the 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 dominions. They were accus tomed to think of new neighbors as a new menace, of rivals as watchful enemies. There were persons among us at home who looked with deep disapproval and avowed anxiety on such extensions of our national au thority over distant islands and over peoples 22 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD 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 honor 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 everywhere 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, ind now fear of us is ended also, our counsel : v nd 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 to have answered that question. Our participation 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 THE TREATY AND THE COVENANT 23 was 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 every where, 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 as serted 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 respon sibility have come to this great nation that we honor and which we would all wish to lift to ye j :< higher levels of service and achievement. 1 Tie stage is set, the destiny disclosed. It % %ad come about by no plan of our conceiving, J buiy oy the hand of God, who led us into this way. \7e cannot turn back. We can only go forward, with lifted <*yes 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 j path ahead, and nowhere else. II THE HIGH COST OF LIVING (WASHINGTON, August 6 t 1919) In his address to the joint session of Congress President Wilson said: GENTLEMEN OF THE CONGRESS: I have sought this opportunity to address you because it is clearly my duty to call your attention to the present cost of living and to urge upon you with all the persuasive force of which I am capable the legislative measures which would be most effective in controlling it and bringing it down. The prices the people of this country are paying for everything that it is necessary for them to use in order to live are not justified by a shortage in supply, either present or pros pective, and are in many cases artificially and deliberately created by vicious practices which ought immediately to be checked by law. They constitute a burden upon us which is the more unbearable because we know that it is wilfully imposed by those who have the THE HIGH COST OF LIVING 25 power, and that it can, by vigorous public action, be greatly lightened and made to square with the actual conditions of supply and de mand. Some of the methods by which these prices are produced are already illegal, some of them criminal, and those who employ them will be energetically proceeded against; but others have not yet been brought under the law and should be dealt with at once by legislation. I need not recite the particulars of this critical matter. The prices demanded and paid at the sources of supply, at the factory, in the food markets, at the shops, in the res taurants and hotels, are alike in the city and in the village. They are familiar to you. They are the talk of every domestic circle, and of every group of casual acquaintances, even. It is matter of familiar knowledge, also, that a process has set in which is likely, unless something is done, to push prices and rents and the whole cost of living higher and yet higher in a vicious circle to which there is no logical or natural end. With the increase in the prices of the neces saries of life come demands for increases in wages demands which are justified if there be no other means of enabling men to live. Upon the increase of wages there follows close an increase in the price of the products whose producers have been accorded the increase > 26 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD not a proportionate increase, for the manufact urer does not content himself with that but an increase considerably greater than the added wage cost, and for which the added wage cost is oftentimes hardly more than an excuse. The laborers who do not get an increase in pay when they demand it are likely to strike, and the strike only makes matters worse. It checks production. If it affects the railways, it prevents distribution and strips the mar kets, so that there is presently nothing to buy, and there is another excessive addition to prices resulting from the scarcity. These are facts and forces with which we have become only too familiar; but we are not justified, because of our familiarity with them or because of any hasty and shallow conclusion that they are natural" and in evitable, in sitting inactively by and letting them work their fatal results if there is any thing that we can do to check, correct, or re verse them. I have sought this opportunity to inform the Congress what the Executive is doing by way of remedy and control, and to suggest where effective legal remedies are lacking and may be supplied. We must, I think, frankly admit that there is no complete, immediate remedy to be had from legislation and executive action. The free processes of supply and demand will not THE HIGH COST OF LIVING 27 operate of themselves and no legislative or executive action can force them into full and natural operation until there is peace. There is now neither peace nor war. All the world is waiting with what unnerving fears and haunting doubts who can adequately say ? waiting to know when it comes; a peace in which each nation shall make shift for itself as it can, or a peace buttressed and supported by the will and concert of the nations that have the purpose and the power to do and to enforce what is right. Politically, economically, socially the world is on the operating-table, and it has not been possible to administer any anesthetic. It is conscious. It even watches the capital opera tion upon which it knows that its hope of healthful life depends. It cannot think its business out or make plans or give intelligent and provident direction to its affairs while in such a case. Where there is no peace of mind there can be no energy in endeavor. There can be no confidence in industry, no calcula ble basis for credits, no confident buying or systematic selling, no certain prospect of employment, no normal restoration of business, no hopeful attempt at reconstruction or the proper reassembling of the dislocated elements of enterprise until peace has been established and, so far as may be, guaranteed. Our national life has no doubt been less 28 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD radically disturbed and dismembered than the national life of other peoples whom the war more directly affected, with all its terrible ravaging and destructive force, but it has been, nevertheless, profoundly affected and disar ranged, and our industries, our credits, our productive capacity, our economic processes are inextricably interwoven with those of other nations and peoples most intimately of all with the nations and peoples upon whom the chief burden and confusion of the war fell, and who are now most dependent upon the co-operative action of the world. We are just now shipping more goods out of our ports to foreign markets than we ever shipped before not foodstuffs merely, but stuffs and materials of every sort; but this is no index of what our foreign sales will con tinue to be, or of the effect the volume of our exports will have on supplies and prices. It is impossible yet to predict how far or how long foreign purchasers will be able to find the money or the credit to pay for or sus tain such purchases on such a scale ; how soon or to what extent foreign manufacturers can resume their former production, foreign farm ers get their accustomed crops from their own fields, foreign mines resume their former out put, foreign merchants set up again their old machinery of trade with the ends of the earth. All these things must remain uncertain THE HIGH COST OF LIVING 29 until peace is established and the nations of the world have concerted the methods by which normal life and industry are to be restored. All that we shall do, in the mean time, to restrain profiteering and put the life of our people upon a tolerable footing will be make shift and provisional. There can be no settled conditions here or elsewhere until the treaty of peace is out of the way and the work of liquidating the war has become the chief concern of our government and of the other governments of the world. Until then business will inevitably remain speculative and sway now this way and again that, with heavy losses or heavy gains, as it may chance, and the consumer must take care of both the gains and the losses. There can be no peace prices so long as our whole finan cial and economic system is on a war basis. Europe will not, cannot recoup her capital or put her restless, distracted peoples to work until she knows exactly where she stands in respect of peace; and what we will do is for her the chief question upon which her quietude of mind and confidence of purpose depend. While there is any possibility that the peace terms may be changed or may be held long in abeyance or may not be enforced because of divisions of opinion among the powers asso ciated against Germany it is idle to look for permanent relief. 30 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD But what we can do we should do, and should do at once. And there is a great deal that we can do, provisional though it be. Wheat shipments and credits to facilitate the purchase of our wheat can and will be limited and controlled in such a way as not to raise but rather to lower the price of flour here. The government has the power, within certain limits, to regulate that. We cannot deny wheat to foreign peoples who are in dire need of it, and we do not wish to do so; but fortunately, though the wheat crop is not what we hoped it would be, it is abundant if handled with provident care. The price of wheat is lower in the United States than in Europe and can with proper management be kept so. By way of immediate relief, surplus stocks of both food and clothing in the hands of the government will be sold, and, of course, sold at prices at which there is no profit. And by way of a more permanent correc tion of prices surplus stocks in private hands will be drawn out of storage and put upon the market. Fortunately, under the terms of the food-control act the hoarding of foodstuffs can be checked and prevented; and it will be, with the greatest energy. Foodstuffs can be drawn out of storage and sold by legal action which the Department of Justice will institute wherever necessary; but THE HIGH COST OF LIVING 31 so soon as the situation is systematically dealt with it is not likely that the courts will often have to be resorted to. Much of the accu mulating of stocks has no doubt been due to the sort of speculation which always results from uncertainty. Great surpluses were ac cumulated because it was impossible to foresee what the market would disclose, and dealers were determined to be ready for whatever might happen, as well as eager to reap the full advantage of rising prices. They will now see the disadvantage, as well as the danger, of holding off from the new process of distribution. Some very interesting and significant facts with regard to stocks on hand and the rise of prices in the face of abundance have been dis closed by the inquiries of the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Labor, and the Federal Trade Commission. They seem to justify the statement that in the case of many necessary commodities effective means have been found to prevent the normal operation of the law of supply and demand. Disregarding the surplus stocks in the hands of the government, there was a greater supply of foodstuffs in this country on June ist of this year than at the same date last year. In the combined total of a number of the most im portant foods in dry and cold storage the excess is quite 19 per cent. And yet prices have risen. 32 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD The supply of fresh eggs on hand in June of this year, for example, was greater by nearly 10 per cent, than the supply on hand at the same time last year, and yet the wholesale price was 40 cents a dozen as against 30 cents a year ago. The stock of frozen fowls had increased more than 298 per cent., and yet the price had risen, also, from 34^ cents per pound to 37>^ cents. The supply of creamery butter had increased 129 per cent, and the price from 41 to 53 cents per pound. The supply of salt beef had been augmented 3 per cent., and the price had gone up from $34 a barrel to $36 a barrel. Canned corn had increased in stock nearly 92 per cent, and had remained substantially the same in price. In a few foodstuffs the prices had declined, but in nothing like the proportion in which the supply had increased. For example, the stock of canned tomatoes had increased 102 per cent, and yet the price had declined only 25 cents per dozen cans. In some cases there had been the usual result of an increase of price following a decrease of supply, but in almost every instance the in crease of price had been disproportionate to the decrease in stock. The Attorney-General has been making a careful study of the situation as a whole and of the laws that can be applied to better it, THE HIGH COST OF LIVING 33 and is convinced that under the stimulation and temptation of exceptional circumstances combinations of producers and combinations of traders have been formed for the control of supplies and of prices which are clearly in restraint of trade, and against these prosecu tions will be promptly instituted and actively pushed, which will in all likelihood have a prompt corrective effect. There is reason to believe that the prices of leather, of coal, of lumber, and of textiles have been materially affected by forms of concert and co-operation among the producers and marketers of these and other universally necessary commodities which it will be possible to redress. No watchful or energetic effort will be spared to accomplish this necessary result. I trust that there will not be many cases in which prosecution will be necessary. Public action will no doubt cause many who have perhaps unwittingly adopted illegal methods to aban don them promptly and of their own motion. And publicity can accomplish a great deal. The purchaser can often take care of himself if he knows the facts and influences he is dealing with; and purchasers are not disin clined to do anything, either singly or col lectively, that may be necessary for their self- protection. The Department of Commerce, the Department of Agriculture, the Depart- 34 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD ment of Labor, and the Federal Trade Com mission can do a great deal toward supplying the public, systematically and at short inter vals, with information regarding the actual supply of particular commodities that is in existence and available, and with regard to supplies which are in existence but not avail able because of hoarding, and with regard to the methods of price-fixing which are being used by dealers in certain foodstuffs and other necessaries. There can be little doubt that retailers are in part sometimes in large part responsible for exorbitant prices; and it is quite prac ticable for the government, through the agencies I have mentioned, to supply the public with full information as to the prices at which retailers buy and as to the costs of transportation they pay, in order that it may be known just what margin of profit they are demanding. Opinion and concerted action on the part of purchasers can probably do the rest. That is, those agencies may perform this indispensable service provided the Congress will supply them with the necessary funds to prosecute their inquiries and keep their price- lists up to date. Hitherto the appropriation committees of the Houses have not always, I fear, seen the full value of these inquiries, and the departments and commissions have been THE HIGH COST OF LIVING 35 very much straitened for means to render this service. That adequate funds be provided by appro priation for this purpose, and provided as promptly as possible, is one of the means of greatly ameliorating the present distressing conditions of livelihood that I have come to urge, in this attempt to concert with you the best ways to serve the country in this emer gency. It is one of the absolutely necessary means, underlying many others, and can be supplied at once. There are many other ways. Existing law is inadequate. There are many perfectly legitimate methods by which the government can exercise restraint and guidance. Let me urge, in the first place, that the present food-control act should be extended both as to the period of time during which it shall remain in operation and as to the com modities to which it shall apply. Its pro- visions against hoarding should be made to apply not only to food, but also to foodstuffs, to fuel, to clothing, and to many other com modities which are indisputably necessaries of life. As it stands now it is limited in operation to the period of the war and becomes inoperative i upon the formal proclamation of peace. But I should judge that it was clearly within the I constitutional power of the Congress to make 36 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD similar permanent provisions and regulations with regard to all goods destined for interstate commerce and to exclude them from interstate shipment if the requirements of the law are not complied with. Some such regulation is imperatively neces sary. The abuses that have grown up in the manipulation of prices by the withholding of foodstuffs and other necessaries of life cannot otherwise be effectively prevented. There can be no doubt of either the necessity or the legitimacy of such measures. May I not call attention to the fact also that, although the present act prohibits profit eering, the prohibition is accompanied by no penalty. It is clearly in the public interest that a penalty should be provided which will be persuasive. To the same end I earnestly recommend, in the second place, that the Congress pass a law regulating cold storage as it is regulated, for example, by the laws of the state of New Jersey, which limit the time during which goods may be kept in storage, prescribe the method of disposing of them if kept beyond the permitted period, and require that goods released from storage shall in all cases bear the date of their receipt. It would materially add to the service ability of the law, for the purpose we now have in view, if it were also prescribed that all goods THE HIGH COST OF LIVING 37 released from storage for interstate shipments should have plainly marked upon each package the selling or market price at which they went into storage. By this means the purchaser would always be able to learn what profits stood between him and the producer or the wholesale dealer. It would serve as a useful example to the other communities of the country, as well as greatly relieve local distress, if the Congress were to regulate all such matters very fully for the District of Columbia, where its legis lative authority is without limit. I would also recommend that it be required that all goods destined for interstate commerce should, in every case where their form or package makes it possible, be plainly marked with the price at which they left the hands of the producer. Such a requirement would bear a close analogy to certain provisions of the Pure Food Act, by which it is required that certain detailed information be given on the labels of packages of foods and drugs. And it does not seem to me that we can con fine ourselves to detailed measures of this kind if it is, indeed, our purpose to assume na- i tional control of the processes of distribution. I take it for granted that that is our purpose and our duty. Nothing less will suffice. We need not hesitate to handle a national question in a national way. We should go 3 8 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD beyond the measures I have suggested. We should formulate a law requiring a Federal license of all corporations engaged in inter state commerce and embodying in the license, or in the conditions under which it is to be issued, specific regulations designed to secure competitive selling and prevent unconscion able profits in the method of marketing. Such a law would afford a welcome oppor tunity to effect other much-needed reforms in the business of interstate shipment and in the methods of corporations which are engaged in it; but for the moment I confine my recom mendations to the object immediately in hand, which is to lower the cost of living. May I not add that there is a bill pending before the Congress which, if passed, would do much to stop speculation and to prevent the fraudulent methods of promotion by which our people are annually fleeced of many mill ions of hard-earned money. I refer to the measure proposed by the Capital Issues Com mittee for the control of security issues. It is a measure formulated by men who know the actual conditions of business, and its adoption would serve a great and beneficent purpose. We are dealing, gentlemen of the Congress, I need hardly say, with very critical and very difficult matters. We should go forward with confidence along the road we see, but we should also seek THE HIGH COST OF LIVING 39 to comprehend the whole of the scene amid which we act. There is no ground for some of the fearful forecasts I hear uttered about me, but the condition of the world is unques tionably very grave and we should face it compr ehendingly . The situation of our own country is excep tionally fortunate. We of all peoples can afford to keep our heads and to determine upon moderate and sensible courses of action which will insure us against the passions and distempers which are working such deep un- happiness for some of the distressed nations on the other side of the sea. But we may be involved in their distresses unless we help, and help with energy and intelligence. The world must pay for the appalling de struction wrought by the Great War, and we are part of the world. We must pay our share. For five years now the industry of all Europe has been slack and disordered; the normal crops have not been produced; the normal quantity of manufactured goods has not been turned out. Not until there are the usual crops and the usual production of manufact ured goods on the other side of the Atlantic can Europe return to the former conditions, and it was upon the former conditions, not the present, that our economic relations with Europe were built up. We must face the fact that unless we help 40 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD Europe to get back to her normal life and pro duction a chaos will ensue there which will inevitably be communicated to this country. For the present, it is manifest, we must quicken, not slacken, our own production. We, and we almost alone, now hold the world steady. Upon our steadfastness and self- possession depend the affairs of nations everywhere. It is in this supreme crisis this crisis for all mankind that America must prove her met tle. In the presence of a world confused, distracted, she must show herself self-pos sessed, self-contained, capable of sober and effective action. She saved Europe by her action in arms; she must now save it by her action in peace. In saving Europe she will save herself, as she did upon the battle-fields of the war. The calmness and capacity with which she deals with and masters the problems of peace will be the final test and proof of her place among the peoples of the world. And if only in our own interest we must help the people overseas. Europe is our big gest customer. We must keep her going or thousands of our shops and scores of our mines must close. There is no such thing as letting her go to ruin without ourselves sharing in the disaster. In such circumstances, face to face witH such tests, passion must be discarded. Pas- THE HIGH COST OF LIVING 41 sion and a disregard for the rights of others have no place in the counsels of a free people. We need light, not heat, in these solemn times of self-examination and saving action. There must be no threats. Let there be only intelligent counsel, and let the best reasons win, not the strongest brute force. The world has just destroyed the arbitrary force of a military junta. It will live under no other. All that is arbitrary and coercive is in the discard. Those who seek to employ it only prepare their own destruction. We cannot hastily and overnight revolu tionize all the processes of our economic life. We shall not attempt to do so. These are days of deep excitement and of extravagant speech; but with us these are things of the surface. Every one who is in real touch with the silent masses of our great people knows that the old strong fiber and steady self-control are still there, firm against violence or any distempered action that would throw their affairs into confusion. I am serenely confident that they will readily find themselves, no matter what the circum stances, and that they will address themselves to the tasks of peace with the same devotion and the same stalwart preference for what is right that they displayed to the admiration of the whole world in the midst of war. And I entertain another confident hope. 42 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD I have spoken to-day chiefly of measures of imperative regulation and legal compulsion, of prosecutions and the sharp correction of selfish processes; and these no doubt are necessary. But there are other forces that we may count on besides those resident in the Department of Justice. We have just fully awakened to what has been going on and to the influences, many of them very selfish and sinister, that have been producing high prices and imposing an intoler able burden on the mass of our people. To have brought it all into the open will accom plish the greater part of the result we seek. I appeal with entire confidence to our pro ducers, our middlemen, and our merchants to deal fairly with the people. It is their oppor tunity to show that they comprehend, that they intend to act justly, and that they have the public interest sincerely at heart. And I have no doubt that housekeepers all over the country and every one who buys the things he daily stands in need of will presently exercise a greater vigilance, a more thoughtful econ omy, a more discriminating care as to the mar ket in which he buys or the merchant with whom he trades than he has hitherto exercised. I believe, too, that the more extreme leaders of organized labor will presently yield to a sober second thought and, like the great mass of their associates, think and act like true THE HIGH COST OF LIVING 43 Americans. They will see that strikes under taken at this critical time are certain to make matters worse, not better worse for them and for everybody else. The worst thing, the most fatal thing that can be done now is to stop or interrupt pro duction or to interfere with the distribution of goods by the railways and the shipping of the country. We are all involved in the distress ing result of the high cost of living and we must unite, not divide, to correct it. There are many things that ought to be corrected in the relations between capital and labor, in respect of wages and conditions of labor and other things even more far-reaching, and I for one am ready to go into conference about these matters with any group of my fellow-country men who know what they are talking about and are willing to remedy existing conditions by frank counsel rather than by violent contest. No remedy is possible while men are in a temper, and there can be no settlement which does not have as its motive and standard the general interest. Threats and undue insist ence upon the interest of a single class make settlement impossible. I believe, as I have hitherto had occasion to say to the Congress, that the industry and life of our people and of the world will suffer irreparable damage if employers and workmen 44 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD are to go on in a perpetual contest as antago nists. They must, on one plan or another, be effectively associated. Have we not steadiness and self-possession and business sense enough to work out that result? Undoubtedly we have, and we shall work it out. In the mean time now and in the days of readjustment and recuperation that are ahead of us let us resort more and more to frank and intimate counsel and make ourselves great and tri umphant by making ourselves a united force in the life of the world. It will not then have looked to us for leadership in vain. Ill A MEMORANDUM UPON SHANTUNG (WASHINGTON, August n, 1919) In a letter addressed to the Senate President Wilson said: To THE SENATE : I have received the resolu tions of the Senate, dated July i$th and July 1 7th, asking: First, for a copy of any treaty purporting to have been projected between Germany and Japan, such as was referred to in the press despatch inclosed, together with any informa tion in regard to it which may be in possession of the State Department, or any information concerning any negotiations between Japan and Germany during the progress of the war. In reply to this resolution, I have the honor to report that I know of no such negotiations. I had heard the rumors that are referred to, but was never able to satisfy myself that there was any substantial foundation for them. Second, requesting a copy of any letter or written protest by the members of the Ameri- 46 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD can Peace Commission, or any officials at tached thereto, against the disposition or adjustment which was made in reference to Shantung, and particularly a copy of a letter written by Gen. Tasker H. Bliss, member of the Peace Commission, on behalf of himself, Hon. Robert Lansing, Secretary of State, and Hon. Henry White, members of the Peace Commission, protesting against the provisions of the treaty with reference to Shantung. In reply to this request, let me say that- General Bliss did write me a letter in which he took very strong grounds against the proposed Shantung settlement, and that his objections were concurred in by the Secretary of State and Mr. Henry White. But the letter cannot properly be described as a protest against the final Shantung decision, because it was written before that decision had been arrived at, and in response to my request that my colleagues on the commission apprise me of their judg ment in the matter. The final decision was very materially qualified by the policy which Japan undertook to pursue with regard to the return of the Shantung Peninsula in full sovereignty to China. I would have no hesitation in sending the Senate a copy of General Bliss s letter were it not for the fact that it contains references to other governments which it was perfectly proper for General Bliss to make in a confiden- A MEMORANDUM UPON SHANTUNG 47 tial communication to me, but which I am sure General Bliss would not wish to have repeated outside our personal and intimate exchange of views. I have received no written protest from any officials connected with or attached to the American Peace Commission with regard to this matter. I am also asked to send you any memo randum or other information with reference to an attempt of Japan or her Peace Delegates to intimidate the Chinese Peace Delegates. I am happy to say that I have no such memo randum or information. IV AN INDUSTRIAL TRUCE NECESSARY (WASHINGTON, August 26, ip/p) Following is the President s statement to the public on the railway labor difficulties: MY FELLOW-CITIZENS: A situation has arisen in connection with the administration of the railways which is of such general sig nificance that I think it my duty to make a public statement concerning it, in order that the whole country may know what is involved. The railroad shopmen have demanded a large increase in wages. They are receiving 58, 63, and 68 cents an hour. They demand 85 cents an hour. This demand has been given careful and serious consideration by the board which was constituted by the Railroad Ad ministration to adjust questions of wages, a board consisting of an equal number of repre sentatives of employees and of the operating managers of the railroad companies. This board has been unable to come to an agree ment, and it has therefore devolved upon the AN INDUSTRIAL TRUCE NECESSARY 4 9 Direct or- General of Railroads and myself to act upon the merits of the case. The shopmen urge that they are entitled to higher wages because of the higher wages for the present received by men doing a similar work in shipyards, navy-yards, and arsenals, as well as in a number of private industries, but I concur with the Director-General in thinking that there is no real basis of com parison between the settled employment af forded mechanics by the railroads under liv ing conditions as various as the location and surroundings of the railway shops themselves and the fluctuating employment afforded in industries exceptionally and temporarily stim ulated by the war and located almost without exception in industrial centers where the cost of living is highest. The substantial argument which the shop men urge is the very serious increase in the cost of living. This is a very potent argument in deed. But the fact is that the cost of living has certainly reached its peak, and will prob ably be lowered by the efforts which are now everywhere being concerted and carried out. It will certainly be lowered so soon as there are settled conditions of production and of commerce ; that is, so soon as the treaty of peace is ratified and in operation, and mer chants, manufacturers, farmers, miners all have a certain basis of calculation as to what 50 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD their business will be and what the conditions will be under which it must be conducted. The demand of the shopmen, therefore, and all similar demands, are in effect this : That we make increases in wages, which are likely to be permanent, in order to meet a temporary situation which will last nobody can certainly tell how long, but in all probability only for a limited time. Increases in wages will, more over, certainly result in still further increasing the costs of production and, therefore, the cost of living, and we should only have to go through the same process again. Any substantial increase of wages in leading lines of industry at this time would utterly crush the general campaign which the govern ment is waging, with energy, vigor, and sub stantial hope of success, to reduce the high cost of living. And the increases in the cost of transportation which would necessarily re sult from increases in the wages of railway em ployees would more certainly and more im mediately have that effect than any other enhanced wage costs. Only by keeping the cost of production on its present level, by increasing production, and by rigid economy and saving on the part of the people can we hope for large decreases in the burdensome cost of living which now weighs us down. The Director-General of Railroads and I have felt that a peculiar responsibility rests AN INDUSTRIAL TRUCE NECESSARY 51 upon us, because in determining this question we are not studying the balance-sheets of cor porations merely, we are in effect determining the burden of taxation which must fall upon the people of the country in general. We are acting not for -private corporations, but in the name of the government and the public, and must assess our responsibility accordingly. For it is neither wise nor feasible to take care of increases in the wages of railroad employees at this time by increases in freight rates. It is impossible at this time, until peace has come and normal conditions are restored, to estimate what the earning capacity of the rail roads will be when ordinary conditions return. There is no certain basis, therefore, for cal culating what the increases of freight rates should be, and it is necessary, for the time being at any rate, to take care of all increases in the wages of railway employees through appropriations from the public treasury. In such circumstances it seems clear to me, and I believe will seem clear to every thought ful American, including the shopmen them selves when they have taken second thought, and to all wage-earners of every kind, that we ought to postpone questions of this sort until normal conditions come again and we have the opportunity for certain calculation as to the relation between wages and the cost of living. It is the duty of every citizen of the 5 52 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD country to insist upon a truce in such con tests until intelligent settlements can be made, and made by peaceful and effective common counsel. I appeal to my fellow-citizens of every em ployment to co-operate in insisting upon and maintaining such a truce, and to co-operate also in sustaining the government in what I conceive to be the only course which conscien tious public servants can pursue. Demands unwisely made and passionately insisted upon at this time menace the peace and prosperity of the country as nothing else could, and thus contribute to bring about the very results which such demands are intended to remedy. There is, however, one claim made by the railway shopmen which ought to be met. They claim that they are not enjoying the same advantages that other railway employees are enjoying because their wages are calculated upon a different basis. The wages of other railway employees are based upon the rule thai they are to receive for eight hours work the same pay they received for the longer workday that was the usual standard of the pre-war period. This claim is, I am told, well founded ; and I concur in the conclusion of the Director- General that the shopmen ought to be given the additional four cents an hour which the readjustment asked for will justify. There are certain other adjustments, also, pointed AN INDUSTRIAL TRUCE NECESSARY 53 out in the report of the Director-General which ought in fairness to be made, and which will be made. Let me add, also, that the position which the government must in conscience take against general increases in wage levels while the present exceptional and temporary circum stances exist will of course not preclude the railroad administration from giving prompt and careful consideration to any claims that may be made by other classes of employees for readjustments believed to be proper to secure impartial treatment for all who work in the railway service. THE REPLY TO THE RAILWAY SHOPMEN (WASHINGTON, August 26, 1919} Following is ike Presidents statement to the railway employees department of the American Federation oj Labor: GENTLEMEN: I request that you lay this critical matter before the men in a new light. The vote they have taken was upon the ques tion whether they should insist upon the wage increase they were asking or consent to the submission of their claims to a new tri bunal to be constituted by new legislation. That question no longer has any life in it. Such legislation is not now in contemplation. I request that you ask the men to reconsider the whole matter in view of the following con siderations, to which I ask their thoughtful attention as Americans, and which I hope that you will lay before them as I here state them. We are face to face with a situation which is more likely to affect the happiness and pros- REPLY TO THE RAILWAY SHOPMEN 55 perity, and even the life, of our people than the war itself. We have now got to do nothing less than bring our industries and our labor of every kind back to a normal basis after the greatest upheaval known to history, and the winter just ahead of us may bring suffering infinitely greater than the war brought upon us if we blunder or fail in the process. An admirable spirit of self-sacrifice, of patriotic devotion, and of community action guided and inspired us while the fighting was on. We shall need all these now, and need them in a heightened degree, if we are to ac complish the first task as of peace. They are more difficult than the tasks of war more complex, less easily understood and require more intelligence, patience, and sobriety. We mobilized our man-power for the fighting, let us now mobilize our brain-power and our consciences for the reconstruction. If we fail, it will mean national disaster. The primary first step is to increase pro duction and facilitate transportation, so as to make up for the destruction wrought by the war, the terrible scarcities it created, and as soon as possible relieve our people of the cruel burden of high prices. The railways are at the center of this whole process. The government has taken up with all its energy the task of bringing the profiteer to book, making the stocks of necessaries in the 56 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD country available at lowered prices, stimu lating production and facilitating distribution, and very favorable results are already begin ning to appear. There is reason to entertain the confident hope that substantial relief will result, and result in increasing measure. A general increase in the levels of wages would check and might defeat all this at its very beginning. Such increases would inevitably raise, not lower, the cost of living. Manu facturers and producers of every sort would have innumerable additional pretexts for in creasing profits, and all efforts to discover and defeat profiteering would be hopelessly confused. I believe that the present efforts to reduce the cost of living will be successful if no new elements of difficulty are thrown in the way; and I confidently count upon the men engaged in the service of the railways to assist, not ob struct. It is much more in their interest to do this than to insist upon wage increases which will undo everything the government attempts. They are good Americans, along with the rest of us, and may, I am sure, be counted on to see the point. It goes without saying that if our efforts to bring the cost of living down should fail, after we have had time enough to establish either success or failure, it will of course be necessary to accept the higher costs of living as a per- REPLY TO THE RAILWAY SHOPMEN 57 ffianent basis of adjustment, and railway wages should be readjusted along with the rest. All that I am now urging is that we should not be guilty of the inexcusable inconsistency of making general increases in wages on the as sumption that the present cost of living will be permanent at the very time that we are trying with great confidence to reduce the cost of living and are able to say that is actually beginning to fall. I am aware that railway employees have a sense of insecurity as to the future of the rail roads and have many misgivings as to whether their interests will be properly safeguarded when the present form of Federal control has come to an end. No doubt it is in part this sense of uncertainty that prompts them to insist that their wage interests be adjusted now, rather than under conditions which they cannot certainly foresee. But I do not think that their uneasiness is well grounded. I anticipate that legislation dealing with the future of the railroads will, in explicit terms, afford adequate protection for the interests of the employees of the roads; but, quite apart from that, it is clear that no legislation can make the railways other than what they are a great public interest and it is not likely that the President of the United States, whether in the possession and control of the railroads or not, will lack opportunity or per- 58 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD suasive force to influence the decision of ques tions arising between the managers of the rail roads and railway employees. The employees may rest assured that, during my term of office, whether I am in actual possession of the rail roads or not, I shall not fail to exert the full influence of the Executive to see that justice is done them. I believe, therefore, that they may be justi fied in the confidence that hearty co-operation with the government now in its efforts to re duce the cost of living will by no means be prejudicial to their own interests, but will, on the contrary, prepare the way for more favor able and satisfactory relations in the future. I confidently count on their co-operation in this time of national test and crisis. VI ECONOMY THE WATCHWORD (WASHINGTON, August 31, 1919) The President s Labor Day message read as follows: MY FELLOW-CITIZENS: I am encouraged and gratified by the progress which is being made in controlling the cost of living. The support of the movement is widespread and I confidently look for substantial results, al though I must counsel patience as well as vigilance, because such results will not come instantly or without team-work. Let me again emphasize my appeal to every citizen of the country to continue to give his personal support in this matter, and to make it as active as possible. Let him not only re frain from doing anything which at the mo ment will tend to increase the cost of living, but let him do all in his power to increase the production; and, further than that, let him at the same time himself carefully economize in the matter of consumption, By common 60 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD action in this direction we shall overcome a danger greater than the danger of war. We will hold steady a situation which is fraught with possibilities of hardship and suffering to a large part of our population ; we will enable the processes of production to overtake the processes of consumption; and we will speed the restoration of an adequate purchasing power for wages. I am particularly gratified at the support which the government s policy has received from the representatives of organized labor, and I earnestly hope that the workers generally will emphatically indorse the position of their leaders and thereby move with the govern ment instead of against it in the solution of this greatest domestic problem. I am calling for as early a date as practicable a conference in which authoritative representa tives of labor and of those who direct labor will discuss fundamental means of bettering the whole relationship of capital and labor and putting the whole question of wages upon another footing. VII A REPORT TO THE PEOPLE (COLUMBUS, OHIO, September 4, In his address here to-day President Wilson said: IT is with very profound pleasure that I find myself face to face with you. I have for a long time chafed at the confinement of Wash ington. I have for a long time wished to fulfil the purpose with which my heart was full when I returned to our beloved country, namely, to go out and report to my fellow-countrymen concerning those affairs of the world which now need to be settled. The only people I owe any report to are you and the other citizens of the United States, and it has become increasingly necessary, ap parently, that I should report to you. After all the various angles at which you have heard the treaty held up perhaps you would like to know what is in the treaty. I find it very difficult in reading some of the speeches that I have read to form any conception of that great document. 62 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD It is a document unique in the history of the world for many reasons, and I think I cannot do you a better service or the peace of the world a better sendee than by pointing out to you just what this treaty contains and what it seeks to do. In the first place, my fellow-countrymen, it seeks to punish one of the greatest wrongs ever done in history, the wrong which Germain- sought to do to the world and to civilization, and there ought to be no weak purpose with regard to the application of the punishment. She attempted an intolerable thing, and she must be made to pay for the attempt. The terms of the treaty are severe, but they are not unjust. I can testify that the men associated with me at the Peace Conference in Paris had it in their hearts to do justice and not wrong, but they knew, perhaps with a more vivid sense of what had happened than we could possibly know on this side of the water, the many solemn covenants which Germany had disregarded, the long preparation she had made to overwhelm her neighbors, the utter disregard which she had shown for human rights, for the rights of women and children and those who were helpless. They hatl seen their lands devastated by an enemy that devoted itself not only to the effort of victory, but to the effort of terror, seeking to terrify the people whom they fought, A REPORT TO THE PEOPLE 63 and I wish to testify that they exercised re straint in the terms of this treaty. They did not wish to overwhelm any great nation, and they had no purpose in overwhelming the Ger man people, but they did think that it ought to be burned into the consciousness of men forever that no people ought to permit its government to do what the German govern ment did. In the last analysis, my fellow-countrymen, as we in America would be the first to claim, a people are responsible for the acts of their government; if their government purposes things that are wrong, they ought to take measures and see to it that that purpose is not executed. Germany was self -governed. Her rulers had not concealed the purposes that they had in mind, but they had deceived their people as to the character of the methods they were going to use, and I believe from what I can learn that there is an awakened consciousness in Germany itself of the deep iniquity of the thing that was attempted. When the Austrian delegates came before the Peace Conference they, in so many words, spoke of the origination of the war as a crime, and admitted in our presence that it was a thing intolerable to contemplate. They knew in their hearts that it had done them the deepest conceivable wrong; that it had put 64 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD their people and the people of Germany at the judgment seat of mankind, and throughout this treaty every term that was applied to Ger many was meant not to humiliate Germany, but to rectify the wrong that she had done. And if you will look even into the severe terms of reparation, for there was no indemnity no indemnity of any sort was claimed merely reparation merely paying for the de struction done, merely making good the losses, so far as the losses could be made good, which she had unjustly inflicted, not upon the governments (for the reparation is not to go to the governments), but upon the people whose rights she had trodden upon, with absolute absence of everything that even resembled pity There is no indemnity in this treaty, but there is reparation, and even in the terms of reparation a method is devised by which the reparation shall be adjusted to Germany s ability to pay it. I am astonished at some of the statements I see made about this treaty, and the truth is that they are made by persons who have not read the treaty or who, if they have read it, have not comprehended its meaning. There is a method of adjustment in the treaty by which the reparation shall not be pressed beyond the point which Germany can pay, but she will be pressed to the utmost A REPORT TO THE PEOPLE 6$ point that she can pay, which is just, which is righteous. It would be intolerable if there had been anything else, for, my fellow-citizens, this treaty is not meant merely to end this single war; it is meant as a notice to every government who in the future will attempt this thing that mankind will unite to inflict the same punishment. There is no national triumph sought to be recorded in this treaty. There is no glory sought for any particular nation. The thought of the statesmen collected around that table was of their people, of the sufferings that they had gone through, of the losses they had in curred, that great throbbing heart which was so depressed, so forlorn, so sad in every memory that it had had of the five tragical years, my fellow-countrymen. Let us never forget the purpose, the high purpose, the dis interested purpose, with which America lent its strength, not for its own glory, but for the advance of mankind. AiiJ, :.s I ooid, this treaty was not intended merely to end this war; it was intended to prevent any similar war. I wonder if some of the opponents of the League of Nations have forgotten the promises we made our people before we went to that peace table. We had taken by processes of law the flower of our youth from every country side, from every household, and we told those 66 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD mothers and fathers and sisters and wives and sweethearts that we were taking those men to fight a war which would end business of that sort, and if we do not end it, if we do not do the best that human concert of action can do to end it, we are of all men the most unfaithful the most unfaithful to the loving hearts who suffered in this war, the most unfaithful to those households bowed in grief, yet lifted with the feeling that the lad laid down his life for a great thing among other things in order that other lads might not have to do the same thing. That is what the League of Nations is for, to end this war justly, and it is not merely to serve notice on governments which would contemplate the same thing which Germany contemplated, that they will do so at their peril, but also concerning the combination of power which will prove to them that they will do it at their peril. It is idle to say the world will combine against you because it may not, but it is persuasive to say the world is com bined against you and will remain combined against any who attempt the same things that you attempted. The League of Nations is the only thing that can prevent the recurrence of this dreadful catastrophe and redeem our promises. And the character of the League is based upon the experience of this very war. A REPORT TO THE PEOPLE 67 I did not meet a single public man who did not admit these things that Germany would not have gone into this war if she had thought Great Britain was going into it, and that she most certainly would never have gone into this war if she had dreamed America was going into it, and they have all admitted that a notice beforehand that the greatest powers of the world would combine to prevent this sort of thing would have prevented it absolutely. When gentlemen tell you, therefore, that the League of Nations is intended for some other purpose than this, merely reply this to them, If we do not do this thing, we have neglected the central covenant that we made to our people," and there will be no statesman of any country who can thereafter promise his people any alleviation from the perils of war. The passions of this world are not dead ; the rivalries of this world have not cooled; they have been rendered hotter than ever. The harness that is to unite nations is more neces sary now than it ever was before, and unless there is this sureness of combined action before wrong is attempted, wrong will be attempted just as soon as the most ambitious nations can recover from the financial stress of this war. *Now look what else is in the treaty. This treaty is unique in the history of mankind because the center of it is the redemption of weak nations. 6 68 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD f There never was a congress of nations before that considered the rights of those who could not enforce their rights. There never was a congress of nations before that did not seek to effect some balance of power brought about by means of serving the strength and interest of the strongest powers concerned, whereas this treaty builds up nations that never could have won their freedom in any other way. It builds them up by gift, by^la-r-gess, not by obligation; builds them up because of the conviction of the men who wrote the treaty that the rights of people transcend the rights of governments, because of the conviction of the men who wrote that treaty that the fertile source of war is wrong ; that the Austro -Hun garian Empire, for example, was held together by military force and consisted of peoples who did not want to live together; who did not have the spirit of nationality as toward each other; who were constantly chafing at the bands that held them. Hungary, though a willing partner of Aus tria, was willing to be her partner because she could share Austria s strength for accomplish ing her own ambitions, and her own ambitions were to hold under the Jugoslavic peoples that lie to the south of her. Bohemia, an unhappy partner a partner by duress, flowing in all her veins the strongest national impulse that was to be found anywhere in Europe; and north A REPORT TO THE PEOPLE 69 of that pitiful Poland, a great nation divided up among the great powers of Europe, torn asunder kinship disregarded, natural ties treated with contempt and an obligatory di vision among sovereigns imposed upon her, a part of her given to Russia, a part of her given to Austria, and a part of her given to Germany, and great bodies of Polish people never permitted to have the normal intercourse with their kinsmen for fear that that fine in stinct of the heart should assert itself which binds families together. Poland could never have won her indepen dence. Bohemia never could have broken away from the Austro-Hungarian combina tion. The Slavic peoples to the south, running down into the great Balkan peninsula, had again and again tried to assert their nation ality and their independence, and had as often been crushed, not by the immediate power they were fighting, but by the combined power of Europe. -The old alliances, the old balances of power, were meant to see to it that no little nation asserted its rights to the disturbance of the peace of Europe, and every time an assertion of rights was attempted they were suppressed by combined influence and force. And this itreaty tears away all that and says these people have a right to live their own lives under the governments which they themselves 70 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD choose to set up; That is the American prin ciple and I was glad to fight for it, and whei strategic considerations were urged I said (no I alone, but it was a matter of commo; council) that strategic conditions were not ii our thoughts; that we were not now arranging for future wars, but were giving people wha belonged to them. My fellow-citizens, I do not think there i any man alive who has a more tender sym pathy for the great people of Italy than I have and a very stern duty was presented to us whei we had to consider some of the claims of Itab on the Adriatic, because strategically, fron the point of view of future wars, Italy needec a military foothold on the other side of th< Adriatic, but her people did not live then except in little spots. It was a Slavic people and I had to say to my Italian friends tha everywhere else in this treaty we have giver territory to the people who lived on it, and J do not think that it is for the advantage o Italy, and I am sure it is not for the advantage of the world, to give Italy territory when other people live. I felt the force of the argument for whal they wanted, and it was the old argument thai had always prevailed, namely, that the) needed it from a military point of view, anc I have no doubt that if there is no League o Nations they will need it from a militar A REPORT TO THE PEOPLE 71 point of view. But if there is a League of Nations they will not need it from a military point of view. If there is no League of Na tions the military point of view will prevail in every instance and peace will be brought into contempt, but if there is a League of Nations Italy need not fear the fact that the shores on the other side of the Adriatic lower above her sandy shores on her side of the sea, because there will be no threatening guns there, and the nations of the world will have considered not merely to see that the Slavic peoples have itheir rights but that the Italian people have itheir rights as well. I would rather have everybody on my side than be armed to the teeth; and every settlement that is right, pvery settlement that is based upon the prin- piples I have alluded to, is a safe settlement because the sympathy of mankind will be JDehind it. Some gentlemen have feared with regard to );he League of Nations that we will be obliged jo do things we don t want to do. If the treaty were wrong, that might be so; but if the Ireaty is right, we will wish to preserve right. 1 think I know the heart of this great people, jv hom I for the time being have the high honor o represent, better than some other men that hear talk. I have been bred and am proud to have een bred^in the old Revolutionary stock which 72 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD set this government up when America was set up as a friend of mankind, and I know, if they do not, that America has never lost that vision or that purpose. But I haven t the slightest fear that arms will be necessary if the purpose is there. If I know that my adversary is armed and I am not, I do not press the controversy; and if any nation entertains selfish purposes, set against the principles established in this treaty, and is told by the rest of the world that it must withdraw its claims, it will not press them. The heart of this treaty, then, my fellow- * citizens, is not even that it punishes Germany that is a temporary thing it is that it . rectifies the age-long wrong which charac terized the history of Europe. \ There were some of us who wished that the scope of the treaty would reach some other age-long wrong. It was a big job, and I don t say that we wished that it were bigger; but there were other wrongs elsewhere than in Europe, and of the same kind, which no doubt ought to be righted, and some day will be righted, but which we could not draw into the treaty because we could deal only with the countries whom the war had engulfed and affected. But, so far as the scope of our treaty went, we rectified the wrongs which have been the fertile source of war in Europe, A REPORT TO THE PEOPLE 73 Have you ever reflected, my fellow-country men, on the real source of revolutions? Men don t start revolutions in a sudden passion. Do you remember what Thomas Carlyle said about the French Revolution? He was speaking of the so-called Hundred Days of Terror which reigned, not only in Paris, but throughout France, in the days of the French Revolution; and he reminded his readers that back of that Hundred Days of Terror lay several hundred years of agony and of wrong. The French people had been deeply and consistently wronged by their govern ment; robbed; their human rights disre garded, and the slow agony of those hundreds of years had after a while gathered into a hot agony that could not be suppressed. Revolutions don t spring up overnight;, revolutions gather through the ages; revolu- tions come from the long suppression of the human spirit; revolutions come because men know that they have rights and that they are ! disregarded. And when we think of the future of the world in connection with this treaty, we must remember that one of the chief efforts of those who made this treaty was to remove that anger from the heart of great peoples great peoples who had always been suppressed and always been used, who had always been the tools in the hands of governments generally 74 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD of alien governments not their own. And the makers of the treaty knew that if these wrongs were not removed, there could be no peace in the world, because, after all, my fellow-citizens, war comes from the seed of wrong, and not from the seed of right. This treaty is an attempt to right the history of Europe, and in my humble judgment it is a measurable success. I say "measurable," my fellow-citizens, because you will realize the difficulty of this. Here are two neighboring peoples. The one people have not stopped at a sharp line, and the settlements of the other people, or their migrations, begun at that sharp line; they have intermingled. There are regions where you can t draw a national line and say there are Slavs on this side and Italians on that ; there is this people there and that people there. It can t be done You have to approximate the line. You have to come to it, as near to it as you can, and then trust to the process of history to redistribute, it may be, the people who are on the wrong side of the line. And there are many such lines drawn in this treaty and to be drawn in the Austrian treaty, and where, perhaps, there are more lines of that sort than in the German treaty. When we came to draw the line between the Polish people and the German people (not the line between Germany and Poland there A REPORT TO THE PEOPLE 75 wasn t any Poland, strictly speaking) there were districts like the upper part of Silesia, or rather the eastern part of Silesia, which is called "Upper Silesia" because it is mountain ous and the other part is not. High Silesia is chiefly Polish, and when we came to clraw a line to represent Poland it was necessary to include High Silesia if we were really going to play fair and make Poland up of the Polish people wherever we found them in sufficiently close neighborhood to one another. But it wasn t perfectly clear that Upper or High Silesia wanted to be part of Poland. At any rate, there were Germans in High Silesia who said that it did not, and therefore we did there what we did in many other places we said, "Very well, then, we will let the people that live there decide." We will have a referendum within a certain length of time after the war under the super vision of an international commission which will have a sufficient armed force behind it to preserve order and see that nobody interferes with the elections. We will have an absolutely free vote, and High Silesia shall go either to Germany or to Poland, as the people in High Silesia prefer. And that illustrates many other cases where we provided for a referendum, or a plebiscite, as they choose to call it; and are going to leave it to the people themselves, as we should 76 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD have done, what government they shall live under. It is none of my prerogatives to allot peoples to this government and the other. It is no body s right to do that allotting except the people themselves, and I want to testify that this treaty is shot through with the American principle of the choice of the governed. Of course, at times it went farther than we could make a practical policy of, because vari ous peoples were keen upon getting back por tions of their populations which were separated from them by many miles of territory, and we could not spot over with little pieces of separated states. I even had to remind my Italian colleagues that if they were going to claim every place where there was a large Italian population we would have to cede New York to them, be cause there are more Italians in New York than in any Italian city. But I believe I hope that the Italians in New York City are as glad to stay there as we are to have them. I would not have you sup pose that I am intimating that my Italian col leagues entered any claim for New York City. We, of all peoples in the world, my fellow- citizens, ought to be able to understand the questions of this treaty and without anybody explaining them to us ; for we are made up out of all the peoples of the world, I dare say A REPORT TO THE PEOPLE 77 that in this audience there are representatives of practically all the peoples dealt with in this treaty. You don t have to have me explain national ambitions to you, national aspirations. You have been brought up to them; you learned of them since you were children, and it is those national aspirations which we sought to realize, to give an outlet to, in this great treaty. ;cBut we do much more than that. This treaty contains, among other things, a Magna Charta of labor a thing unheard of until this interesting year of grace. There is a whole section of the treaty devoted to arrangements by which the interests of those who labor with their hands all over the world, whether they be men or women or children, are all of them to be safeguarded. And next month there is to meet the first assembly under this section of the League and let me tell you it will meet, whether the treaty is ratified by that time or not. There is to meet an assembly which repre sents the interests of laboring men throughout the world, not their political interests. There is nothing political about it. It is the interests of men concerning the conditions of their labor, concerning the character of labor which women shall engage in, the character of labor which children shall be permitted to engage in ; 78 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD the hours of labor, and, incidentally, of course, the remuneration of labor. The labor shall be remunerated in proportion, of course, to the maintenance of the standard of living which is proper for the man who is expected to give his whole brain and intelligence and energy to a particular task. I hear very little said about this Magna Charta of labor which is embodied in this. It forecasts the day which ought to have come long ago, when statesmen will realize that no nation is fortunate which is not happy, and that no nation can be happy whose people are not contented contented in their industry, contented in their lives, and fortunate in the circumstances of their lives. If I were to state what seems to me to be the central idea of this treaty it would be this : It is almost a discovery in international con ventions "that nations do not consist of their government, but consist of their people." That is a rudimentary idea; it seems to go without saying to us in America; but, my fellow-citizens, it was never the leading idea in any other international congress that I ever heard of that is to say, international con gress made up of the representatives of government. They were always thinking of national pol icy, of national advantages, of the rivalries of trade, of the advantages of territorial conquest. A REPORT TO THE PEOPLE 79 There is nothing of that in this treaty. You will notice that even the territories which are taken away from Germany, like her col onies, are not given to anybody. There isn t a single act of annexation in this treaty. But territories inhabited by people not yet able to govern themselves, either because of economic or other circumstances or the stage of their development, are put under the care of powers who are to accept as trustees trustees respon sible in the forum of the world, at the bar of the League of Nations, and the terms upon which they are to exercise their trusteeship are outlined. They are not to use those people by way of profit and to fight their wars for them; they are not to permit any form of slavery among them or of enforced labor. They are to see to it that there are humane conditions of labor with regard not only to the women and children, but the men, too. They are to establish no fortifications; they are to regulate the liquor and opium traffic; they are to see to it, in other words, that the lives of the people whose care they assume not sovereignty over whom they as sume, but whose care they assume are kept clean and safe and holy. There again the principle of the treaty comes out, that the object of the arrangement is the welfare of the people who live there and not the advantages of the government. 8o THE HOPE OF THE WORLD It goes beyond that, and it seeks to gather under the common supervision of the League of Nations the various instrumentalities by which the world has been trying to check the evils that were in some places debasing men, like the opium traffic, like the traffic for it was a traffic in men, women, and children ; like the traffic in other dangerous drugs ; like the traffic in arms among uncivilized peoples, who could use arms only for their detriment ; for sanita tion ; for the work of the Red Cross. Why, those clauses, my fellow-citizens, draw the hearts of the world into league; draw the noble impulses of the world together and make a poem of them. I used to be told that this was an age in which mind was monarch, and my comment was that if that were true then mind was one of those modern monarchs that reign and do not govern; but as a matter of fact we were governed by a great representative assembly, made up of the human passions, and that the best we could manage was that the high and fine passions should be in a majority, so that they could control the face of passion, so that they could check the things that were wrong, and this treaty seeks something like that. In drawing the humane endeavors together it makes a mirror of the fine passions of the world, of its philanthropic passions, and of its passion of pity, of this passion of human sym- A REPORT TO THE PEOPLE 81 pathy, of this passion of human friendliness and helpfulness, for there is such a passion. It is the passion that has lifted us along the slow road of civilization ; it is the passion that has made ordered government possible; it is the passion that has made justice and estab lished the thing in some happy part of the world. That is the treaty. Did you ever hear of it before? Did you ever know before what was in this treaty? Did anybody before ever tell you what the treaty was intended to do? I beg, my fellow-citizens, that you and the rest of these Americans with whom we are happy to be associated all over this broad land will read the treaty for themselves, or (if they won t take time to do that, for it is a technical document that is hard to read) that they will accept the interpretation of those who made it and know what the intentions were in the making of it. I hear a great deal, my fellow-citizens, about the selfishness and the selfish ambitions of other governments, but I would not be doing justice to the gifted men with whom I was associated on the other side of the water if I didn t testify that the purposes that I have outlined were their purposes. We differed as to the method very often; we had discussions as to the details, but we never had any serious discussion as to the prin- 82 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD ciples. And while we all acknowledge that the principles might, perhaps, in detail have been better, really we are all back of those principles. There is a concert of mind and of purpose and of policy in the world that was never in existence before. I am not saying that by way of credit to myself or to those colleagues to whom I have alluded, because what hap pened to us was that we got messages from ouru people; we were there under instructions! whether they were written down or not, as we didn t dare come home without fulfilling those instructions. If I could not have brought back the kind of treaty I brought back I never would have come back, because I would have been an unfaithful servant and you would have had the right to condemn me in any way that you chose to use. So that I testify that this is an American treaty, not only, but it is a treaty that ex presses the heart of the peoples of the great peoples who were associated together in the war against Germany. I said at the opening of this informal ad dress, my fellow-citizens, that I had come to make a report to you. I want to add to that a little bit. I have not come to debate the treaty. It speaks for itself if you will let it. The arguments directed against it are directed against it with a radical misunderstanding of the instrument itself. Therefore, I am not A REPORT TO THE PEOPLE 83 going anywhere to debate the treaty. I am going to expound it and I am going, right here now to-day, to urge you, in every vocal method that you can use, to assert the spirit of the American people in support of it. Don t let them pull it down. Don t let them misrepresent it. Don t let them lead this nation away from the high purposes with which this war was inaugurated and fought. As I came through that line of youngsters in khaki a few minutes ago I felt that I could salute it because I had done the job in the way I promised them I would do it, and when the treaty is accepted men in khaki will not have to cross the seas again. That is the reason I believe in it. I say "when it is accepted," for it will be accepted. I have never entertained a moment s doubt of that, and the only thing I have been impatient of has been the delay. It is not a dangerous delay, except for the temper of the peoples scattered throughout the world who are waiting. Do you realize, my fellow-citizens, that the whole world is waiting on America? The only country in the world that is trusted at this moment is the United States, and they are waiting to see whether their trust is justified or not. That has been the ground of my impatience. I knew their trust was justified, but I begrudge 84 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD the time th~/: certain gentlemen oblige us to take in telling them so. We shall tell them so in a voice as authentic as any voice in history, and in the years to come men will be glad to remember that they had some part in the great struggle which brought this incomparable consummation of the hopes of mankind. VIII A DEFENSE OF ARTICLE X (INDIANAPOLIS, September 4, 1919) The President spoke in part as j allows: So great a company as this tempts me to make a speech [laughter and applause], and yet I want to say to you in all seriousness and soberness that I have not come here to make a speech in the ordinary sense of that term. I have come upon a very sober errand in deed. I have come to report to you upon the work which the representatives of the United States attempted to do at the conference of peace on the other side of the sea, because I realize, my fellow-citizens, that my colleagues and I, in the task we attempted over there, were your servants. We went there with a distinct errand, which it was our duty to perform in the spirit which you have dis played in the prosecution of the war and in conceiving the purposes and objects of that war. You have heard a great deal about Article 86 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD X of the Covenant of the League of Nations. Article X speaks the conscience of the world. Article X is the article which goes to the heart of this whole bad business, for that article says that the members of this League (and that is intended to be all the great nations of the world) engage to resist and to preserve against all external aggression the territorial integrity and political independence of the na tions concerned. That promise is necessary in order to prevent this sort of war recurring, and we are absolutely discredited if we fought this war and then neglect the essential safeguard against it. You have heard it said, my fellow-citizens, that we are robbed of some degree of our sovereign independence of choice by articles of that sort. Every man who makes * a choice to respect the rights of his neighbors deprives himself of absolute sovereignty, but he does it by promising never to do wrong, and I cannot, for one, see anything that, robs me of any inherent right that I ought to retain when I promise that I will do right. We engage, in the first sentence of Article X, to respect and preserve from external aggres sion the territorial integrity and the existing political independence, not only of the other states, but of all states, and if any member of the League of Nations disregards that promise, then what happens? The Council of the A DEFENSE OF ARTICLE X 87 League advises what should be done to enforce the respect for that covenant on the part of the nation attempting to violate it. And there is no compulsion upon us to take that advice except the compulsion of our good conscience and judgment. So it is perfectly evident that if, in the judgment of the people of the United States, the Council adjudged wrong, and that this was not an occasion for the use of force, there would be no necessity on the part of the Congress of the United States to vote the use of force. But there could be no advice of the Council on any such subject without unanimous vote, and the unanimous vote would include our own. And if we accepted the advice we would be accepting our own advice. For I need not tell you that the representatives of the govern ment of the United States would not vote without instructions from their government at home, and that what we united in advising we could be certain that our people would desire to do. -There is in that covenant not one note of surrender of the independent judgment of the government of the United States, but an expression of it, because that independent judgment would have to join with the judg ment of the rest. But when is that judgment going to be ex pressed, my fellow-citizens? Only after it is 88 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD evident that every other resource has failed; and I want to call your attention to the central machinery of the League of Nations. If any member of that League, or any nation not a member, refuses to submit the question at issue either to arbitration or to discussion by the Council, there ensues automatically, by the engagements of this covenant, an absolute economic boycott. There will be no trade with that nation by any member of the League ; there will be no interchange of communication by post or telegraph ; there will be no travel to or from that nation ; its borders will be closed ; no citizen of any other state will be allowed to enter it, and no one of its citizens will be al lowed to leave it. It will be hermetically sealed by the united action of the most power ful nations in the world, and if this economic boycott bears with unequal weight, the mem bers of the League agree to support one an other and to relieve one another in any excep tional disadvantages that may arise out of it. And I want you to realize that this war was won not only by the armies of the world, but it was won by economic means as well. Without the economic means the war would have been much longer continued. What happened was that Germany was shut off from the economic resources of the rest of the globe and she could not stand it ; and a nation that is boycotted is a nation that is in sight of surrender. Apply A DEFENSE OF ARTICLE X 89 this economic, peaceful, silent, deadly remedy and there will be no need for force. It is a terrible remedy. It does not cost a life outside the nation boycotted, but it brings a pressure upon that nation which, in my judgment, no modern nation could resist. I dare say that some of those ideas are new to you, because, while it is true, as I said this forenoon in Columbus, that apparently nobody has taken the pains to say what is in the cove nant of the League of Nations, they have dis cussed three (chiefly three) out of twenty-six articles, and the other articles contain this heart of the matter, that instead of war, there shall be arbitration ; instead of war, there shall be discussion ; instead of war, there shall be the closure of intercourse; that instead of war, there shall be the irresistible pressure of the opinion of all mankind. I need not tell you that I speak with knowl edge in this matter knowledge of the purpose of the men with whom the men representing America were associated at the peace table. Every one I consulted with came there with the same idea, that wars had arisen in the past because the strong had taken advantage of the weak, and that the only way to stop war was to band ourselves together to protect the weak. And so, when you read the covenant, read the treaty with it. I want you to notice another interesting 90 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD point that has never been dilated upon in con nection with the League of Nations. I am now treading upon delicate ground, and I must express myself with caution. There were a good many delegations that visited Paris, wanting to be heard by the Peace Conference, who had real causes to present, and which ought to be presented to the view of the world. But we had to point out to them that they did not happen, unfortunately, to come within the area of settlement ; that their questions were not questions which were neces sarily drawn into the things that we were deciding. I therefore want to call your attention, if you will turn it up when you go home, to Article XI, following Article X, of that cove nant of the League of Nations. That Article XI, let me say, is the favorite article in the treaty, so far as I am concerned. It says that every matter which is likely to affect the peace of the world is everybody s business, and that it shall be the friendly right of any nation to call attention in the League to anything that is likely to affect the peace of the world, or the good understanding between nations upon which the peace of the world depends, whether that matter immediately concerns the nation drawing attention to it or not. In other words, at present we have to mind A DEFENSE OF ARTICLE X 91 our own business. Under the covenant of the League of Nations we can mind other people s business, and anything that affects the peace of the world, whether we are parties to it or not, can, by our delegates, be brought to the attention of mankind. IX A UNION FOR ARBITRATION (Sx. Louis, September 5, 1919) In his speech at the Chamber of Commerce luncheon President Wilson said: I AM glad to hear the Mayor say (and I believe it is true) that politics is adjourned. Politics has no place I mean party politics has no place my fellow-citizens, in the subjects that we are now obliged to discuss and to decide. The treaty of peace with Germany is a charter and constitution of a new system for the world, and that new system is based upon an absolute reversal of the principles of the old system. The essential object of that treaty is to establish the independence and protect the integrity of the weak peoples of the world. I hear some gentlemen who are themselves incapable of altruistic purposes say: "Oh, but that is altruistic. It is not our business to take care of the weak nations of the world." No, but it is our business to prevent wars, and A UNION FOR ARBITRATION 93 if we don t take care of the weak nations of the world there will be war. Let them show me how they will keep out of war by not pro tecting them. Let them show me how they will prove that, having gone into an enterprise, they are not absolutely contemptible quitters if they don t see the game through. What was the old formula of Pan-German ism? From Bremen to Bagdad, wasn t it? Well, look at the map. What lies between Bremen and Bagdad? After you get past the German territory there is Poland, there is Bo hemia, which we have made into Czecho slovakia; there is Hungary, which is now di vided from Austria and does not share Austria s strength; there is Rumania, there is Jugo slavia, there is broken Turkey, and then Persia and Bagdad. We have undertaken to say this route is closed. Our own business? Is there a merchant present here, or any manufacturer, or any banker that can say that our interests are separate from the interests of the rest of the world commercially, industrially, financially? And when he draws a picture to himself, if he is frank, of what some gentlemen propose, this is what he sees: America minding her own business, and having no other. Despised, suspected, distrusted. And on the other side of the water the treaty and its operation interrupted? Not at all. 94 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD We are a great nation, my fellow-citizens, but the treaty is going to be applied just the same, whether we take part in it or not. I beg that you will not conceive of the League of Nations as a combination of the world for war, for that is exactly what it is not. It is a combination of the world for arbitration and discussion. Any member of the League which breaks these promises with regard to arbitration or discussion is to be deemed thereby to have committed an act of war against the other members of the League not merely to have done an immoral thing, but by refusing to obey those processes to have com mitted an act of war. And you know what then happens. You say, "Yes; we form an army and go to fight them." Not at all. We shut our doors and lock them out; we boycott them. Just so soon as that is done, they cannot ship cargoes out or receive them shipped in; they cannot send a telegraphic message; they cannot send or receive a letter. I don t think that after that it will be necessary to do any fighting at all. Now, that is the League of Nations an agreement to arbitrate and discuss, and an agreement that if you do not arbitrate and discuss you shall be absolutely boycotted and starved out. And there is added to this, this very interest- A UNION FOR ARBITRATION 95 ing thing: There can hereafter be no secret treaties. The provision of the covenant is that every treaty or international understand ing shall be registered (I believe the word is) with the General Secretary of the League ; that the General Secretary shall publish it in full just as soon as it is possible for him to publish it; that no treaty shall be valid which is not thus registered. It was very embarrassing, my fellow-citizens, when you thought you were approaching an ideal solution of a momentous question to find that some of your principal colleagues had given the whole thing away. And that leads me to speak just in passing of what has given a great many people un natural distress. I mean the Shantung settle ment the settlement with regard to a portion of the province of Shantung in China. Great Britain and others, as everybody knows, in order to make it more certain that Japan would come into the war and so assist to clear the Pacific of the German fleets, had promised that any rights that Germany had in China should, in the case of the victory of the Allies, pass to Japan. There was no quali fication in the promise. She was to get exactly what Germany had. And so the only thing that was possible was to induce Japan to promise and I want to say in all fairness, for it wouldn t be fair if I didn t say it, that 96 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD Japan did very handsomely make the promises which were requested of her that she would retain in Shantung none of the sovereign rights which Germany had enjoyed there, but would return the sovereignty without qualification to China and retain in Shantung Province only what other nationalities had elsewhere- economic rights with regard to development and administration of the railroad and of certain mines which had become attached to the railway. That is her promise. And, personally, I haven t the slightest doubt that she will fulfil that promise. She cannot fulfil it right now because the thing doesn t come into operation until three months after the treaty is ratified, so that we must not be too impatient about it. But she will fulfil those promises. And suppose that we said we wouldn t assent. England and others must assent, and if we are going to get Shantung Province back for China and those gentlemen don t want to engage in foreign wars, how are they going to get it back? Their idea of not getting into trouble seems to be to stand for the greatest possible number of unworkable propositions. All very well to talk about standing by China. But how are you standing by China when you withdraw from the only arrangements by which China can be assisted? A UNION FOR ARBITRATION 97 If you are China s friend, don t go into the council where you can act as China s friend. If you are China s friend, then put her in a position where these concessions, which have been made, need not be carried out. If you are China s friend, scuttle and run. That is not the kind of American I am. A PLEDGE TO BE REDEEMED (Sx. Louis, September 5, 1919) President Wilson in his address at the Coliseum said: WE have met upon an occasion which is much too solemn to care how we look. [This referred to a photographer s attempt to take a flashlight before the President spoke.] We ought to care how we think. And I have come here to-night to ask permission to discuss with you some of the very curious aberrations of thinking that have taken place in this country of late. I have sought I think I have sought with out prejudice to understand the point of view of the men who have been opposing the treaty and the covenant of the League of Nations. Many of them are men whose judgment of a patriotic feeling I have been accustomed to admire and respect. And yet I must admit to you, my fellow-countrymen, that it is very hard for me to believe that they have followed their line of thinking to its A PLEDGE TO BE REDEEMED 99 logical and necessary conclusion, because when you reflect upon their position it is either that we ought to reject this treaty alto gether or that we ought to change it in such a way as will make it necessary to reopen nego tiations with Germany and reconsider the settlements of the peace in many essential particulars. That is what these gentlemen call playing a one hand. It is, indeed, playing a lone hand; t is playing a hand that is frozen out. We nust contribute the money which other na tions are to use in order to rehabilitate their ndustry and credit, and we must make them )ur antagonists and rivals and not our partners. . put that proposition to any business man, young or old, in the United States and ask lim how he likes it, and whether he considers ;hat a useful way for the United States to itand alone. We have got to carry this burden of recon struction, whether we will or not, or be ruined, ind the question is, shall we carry it and be ruined, anyhow, for that is what these gentle- nen propose, that at every point we shall be embarrassed by the whole financial affairs of the world being in the hands of other nations. The men who propose these things do not understand the selfish interests of the Uni ted States. Because here is the rest of the picture: hot rivals, burning suspicions, jeal- 8 ioo THE HOPE OF THE WORLD ousies, arrangements made everywhere if possible to shut us out, because if we won t come in as equals we ought to be shut out. As it stands now, every nation trusts us. They look to us. They long that we shall undertake anything for their assistance rather than that any other nation should undertake it. And if we say that we are in this world to live by ourselves and get what we can get out of it by any selfish process, then the reaction will change the whole heart and attitude of the world toward this great, free, justice- loving people, and after you have changed the attitude of the world, what have you produced r Peace? Why, my fellow-citizens, is there any man here, or any woman, let me say, is there any child, who does not know that the seed oi war in the modern world is industrial and commercial rivalry? Ladies and gentlemen, I don t say it because I am an American and my heart is full of the same pride that fills yours with regard to the power and the spirit of this great nation, but merely because it is a fact which I think everybody would admit outside of America as well as inside of America the organizatior contemplated by the League of Nations, with out the United States, would merely be ar alliance and not a League of Nations. Il would be an alliance in which the partnership would be between the more powerful Europear A PLEDGE TO BE .REDEEMED ioi nations and Japan, and the other party to the world arrangement, the antagonists, the dis- associative party, the party to be standing off and to be watched by the alliance, would be the United States of America. You can t afford to be unfriendly to every body, unless you can afford to have everybody unfriendly to you. This war was a commercial and industrial war. It was not a political war. Very well, then, if we must stand apart and be the hostile rivals of the rest of the world, then we must do something else, we must be physically ready for anything to come. We must have a great standing army. We must see to it that every man in America is trained to arms. We must see to it that there are munitions and guns enough for an army. That means a mobilized nation. That means that arms are not only laid up in store, but also that they are kept up to date so that they are ready to use to-morrow. And what does that mean? Reduction of taxes ? No. Not only the continuation of the present taxes, but the increase of the present taxes? It means something very much more serious than that. We can stand that so far as the expense is concerned, if we care to keep up the high cost of living and enjoy the other luxuries that we have recently enjoyed. But what is much more serious, we have got to have the sort of idr T^ T E tiOPE OF THE WORLD organization which is the only kind of organiza tion that can handle armies of that sort. We may say what we please of the German gov ernment that has been destroyed, my fellow- citizens, but it was the only sort of government that could handle an armed nation. You can t handle an armed nation by vote. You can t handle an armed nation if it is demo cratic, because democracies don t go to war that way. You have got to have a concen trated, militaristic organization of government to run a nation of that sort. And you can t watch other nations with your unassisted eye. You have got to watch them by secret agencies planted everywhere. And let me testify to this, my fellow-citizens, I not only did not know it until we got into this war, but I did not believe it when I was told that it was true. Germany was not the only country that maintained a secret service. Every country in Europe maintained it be cause they had to be ready for Germany s spring upon them, and the only difference between the German secret service and the other secret services was that the German secret service found out more than the others did. Under the League plan, the financial leader ship will be ours, the industrial supremacy will be ours, the commercial advantage will be ours, and the other countries of the world will A PLEDGE TO BE REDEEMED 103 look to us, and shall I say, are looking to us, for leadership and direction. Very well, then, if I am to compete with the critics of this League and of this treaty, as a selfish American I say I want to get in and get in as quickly as I can ; I want to be inside and know how the thing is run, and help to run it, so that you have the alternative armed iso lation or peaceful partnership. Can any sane man hesitate as to the choice, and can any sane man ask the question, which is the way of peace ? This nation went into this war to see it through to the end, and the end has not come yet. This is the beginning, not of the war, but of the processes which are going to render war like this impossible. There are no other processes than these that are proposed in this great treaty. It is a great treaty. It is a treaty of justice. We are in the presence, therefore, of the most solemn choice that this people was ever called upon to make. That choice is nothing less I than this : Shall America redeem her pledges to the world? America is made up of the peoples of the world and she has said to mankind at her birth, "We have come to redeem the world by giving it liberty and justice." Now we are called upon before the tribunal of mankind to redeem that immortal pledge. XI A GREAT HISTORICAL DOCUMENT (KANSAS CITY, September 6, 1919) In his address at Convention Hall President Wilson said: I CAME back from Paris, bringing one of the greatest documents of human history. One of the things that made it great was that it was penetrated throughout with the principles to which America has devoted her life. Let me hasten to say that one of the most delightful circumstances of the work on the other side of the water was that I discovered that what we called American principles had penetrated to the heart and to the understanding, not only of the great peoples of Europe, but to the hearts and understandings of the great men who were representing the peoples of Europe. I think that I can say that one of the things that America has had most at heart through out her existence has been that there should be substituted for the brutal processes of war the friendly processes of consultation and A GREAT HISTORICAL DOCUMENT 105 arbitration, and that is done in the covenant of the League of Nations. I am very anxious that my fellow-citizens should realize that that is the chief topic of the covenant of the League of Nations the greater part of its provisions. The whole intent and purpose of the document are expressed in provisions by which all the member states agree that they will never go to war without first having done one or the other of two things either sub mitted the matter in controversy to arbitra tion, in which case they agree to abide by the verdict, or submitting it to discussion in the council of the League of Nations, and for that purpose they consent to allow six months for the discussion, and, whether they like the opinion expressed or not, that they will not go to war for three months after that opinion has been expressed. So that you have, whether you get arbitra tion or not, nine months discussion, and I want to remind you that that is the central principle of some thirty treaties entered into between the United States of America and some thirty other sovereign nations, all of which are confirmed by the Senate of the United States. We have such an agreement with France; we have such an agreement with Great Brit ain; we have such an agreement with prac tically every great nation except Germany, 106 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD which refused to enter into such an arrange ment because, my fellow-citizens, Germany knew that she intended something that did not bear discussion and that, if she had sub mitted the purpose which led to this war to so much as one month s discussion, she never would have dared go into the enterprise against mankind which she finally did go into. [Applause.] And, therefore, I say that this principle of discussion is the principle already adopted by America. And what is the compulsion to do this? The compulsion is this, that if any member state violates that promise to submit either to arbitration or discussion, it is thereby, ipso facto, deemed to have committed an act of war against all the rest. Then, you will ask, do we at once take up arms and fight them? No. We do something very much more terrible than that. We absolutely boy cott them. Let any merchant put up to himself that if he enters into a covenant and then breaks it and the people all around absolutely desert his establishment and will have nothing to do with him ask him after that if it will be neces sary to send the police. The most terrible thing that can happen to any individual and the most conclusive thing that can happen to a nation is to be read out of decent society. [Applause.] A GREAT HISTORICAL DOCUMENT 107 There was another thing that we needed to accomplish, that is accomplished in this docu ment. We wanted disarmament, and this doc ument provides in the only possible way for disarmament by common agreement. Ob serve, my fellow-citizens, that just now every great fighting nation in the world is a member of this partnership except Germany, and inas much as Germany has accepted a limitation of her army to 100,000 men, I don t think for the time being she may be regarded as a great fighting nation. And you know, my fellow-citizens, that armaments mean great standing armies and great stores of war material. They do not mean burdensome taxation merely, they do not mean merely compulsory military service, which saps the economic strength of the na tion, but they mean the building up of a military class. Then there was another thing we wanted to do, my fellow-citizens, that is done in this doc ument. We wanted to see that helpless people were nowhere in the world put at the mercy of unscrupulous enemies and masters. There is one pitiful example which is in the hearts of all of us. I mean the example of Armenia. There was a Christian people, helpless, at the mercy of a Turkish government which thought it the service of God to destroy them. At this moment, my fellow-citizens, it is an open ,io8 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD question whether the Armenian people will not, while we sit here and debate, be absolutely j destroyed. When I think of words piled on words, of debate following debate, when these unspeak able things that cannot be handled until the debate is over are happening in these pitiful parts of the world, I wonder that men do not wake up to the moral responsibility of what they are doing. Great peoples are driven out upon a desert, where there is no food and can be none, and they are compelled to die, and then men, women, and children thrown into a common grave, so imperfectly covered up that here and there is a pitiful arm stretched out to heaven, and there is no pity in the world. When shall we wake to the moral responsibility of this great occasion? There never before has been provided a world forum in which the legitimate grievances of peoples entitled to consideration can be brought to the common judgment of mankind. And if I were the advocate of any suppressed or oppressed people I surely could not ask any better forum than to stand up before the world and challenge the other party to make good its excuses for not acting in that case. To reject that treaty, to alter that treaty, is to impair one of the first charters of man kind. And yet there are men who approach the question with passion, with private pas- A GREAT HISTORICAL DOCUMENT 109 sion, and party passion, who think only of some immediate advantage to themselves or to a group of their fellow-country men, f "and who look at the thing with the jaundiced eyes of those who have some private purpose of their own. When at last, in the annals of mankind, they are gibbeted, they will regret that the gibbet is so high. "I would not have you think that I am try ing to characterize those who conscientiously object to anything in this great document. I take off my hat in the presence of any man s genuine conscience, and there are men who are conscientiously opposed to it, though they will pardon me if I say ignorantly opposed. I have no quarrel with them. It has been a great pleasure to confer with some of them and to tell them as frankly as I would have told my most intimate friend the whole inside of my mind, and every other mind that I knew anything about that had been concerned with the conduct of affairs at Paris, in order that they might understand this thing and go with the rest of us in the confirmation of what is necessary for the peace of the world. I have no intolerant spirit in the matter; but I also assure you that from the bottom of rny feet to the top of my head I have got a fighting spirit about it. And if anybody dares to defeat this great experiment, then they must gather together i io THE HOPE OF THE WORLD the counselors of the world and do something better. I have not come to fight or antagonize any individual or body of individuals. I have, let me say, without the slightest affectation, the greatest respect for the United States Senate, but, my fellow-citizens, I have come out to fight for a cause. That cause is greater than the Senate; it is greater than the government. It is as great as the cause of mankind, and I intend, in office or out, to fight that battle as long as I live. My ancestors were troublesome Scotchmen and among them were some of that famous group that were known as the Covenanters. Very well, there is the covenant of the League of Nations. I am a covenanter. XII THE WORLD IS WAITING ON US (DBS MOINES, IOWA, September 6, 1919) In his speech at the Coliseum President Wilson said: THE world is desperately in need of the settled conditions of peace, and it cannot wait much longer. It is waiting upon us. That is the thought, that is the burdensome thought upon my heart to-night, that the world is wait ing for the verdict of the nation to which it looked for leadership and which it thought would be the last that would ask the world to wait. What happened in Russia was not a sudden and accidental thing. The people of Russia were maddened with the suppression of czar- ism. When at last the chance came to throw off those chains, they threw them off, at first with hearts full of confidence and hope, and then they found out that they had been again deceived. There was no Assembly chosen to frame a constitution for them, or rather there ii2 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD was an Assembly chosen to choose a constitu tion for them and it was suppressed and dispersed, and a little group of men just as selfish, just as ruthless, just as pitiless as the Czar himself assumed control and exercised their power by terror and not by right. And in other parts of Europe the poison spread the poison of disorder, the poison of revolt, the poison of chaos. And do you hon estly think, my fellow-citizens, that none of that poison has got in the veins of this free people? Do you not know that the world is all now one single whispering gallery? These antennas of the wireless telegraph are the sym bols of our age. All the impulses of mankind are thrown out upon the air and reach to the ends of the earth. With the tongue of the wireless and the tongue of the telegraph all the suggestions of disorder are spread through the world, and money, coming from nobody knows where, is deposited by the millions in capitals like Stockholm to be used for the propaganda of disorder and dis content and dissolution throughout the world, and men look you calmly in the face in America and say they are for that sort of revolution, when * that sort of revolution means govern ment by terror, government by force, not government by vote. It is the negation of everything that is American, but it is spreading, and so long as THE WORLD IS WAITING ON US 113 disorder continues , so long as the world is kept waiting for the answer to the question of the kind of peace we are going to have and what kind of guaranties there are to be behind that peace, that poison will steadily spread, more and more rapidly until it may be that even this beloved land of ours will be distracted and distorted by it. That is what is concerning me, my fellow- countrymen. I know the splendid steadiness of the American people, but, my fellow- citizens, the whole world needs that steadiness and the American people are the makeweight in the fortunes of mankind. How long are we going to debate into which scale we will throw that magnificent equipoise that belongs to us? How long shall we be kept waiting for the answer whether the world may trust us or despise us? They have looked to us for leadership. ,They have looked to us for example. They have built their peace upon the basis of our suggestions. That great volume that con tains the treaty of peace is drawn along the specifications laid down by the American government, and now the world stands at amaze because an authority in America hesi tates whether it will indorse an American document or not. The confidence of the men who sat at Paris was such that they put it in the document n 4 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD that the first meeting of the labor conference under that part of the treaty should take place in Washington upon the invitation of the President of the United States. I am going to issue that invitation whether we can attend the conference or not. But think of the mortification. Think of standing by in Washington itself and see the world take counsel upon the rudimental matter of civiliza tion without us. The thing is inconceivable, rmt it is true. CjThe world is waiting waiting to see, not whether we will take part, but whether we will^ serve and lead, for it has expected us to lead. In Paris, delegations from all over the world came to me to solicit the friendship of America. They frankly told us that they were not sure of anybody else that they could trust, but that they did absolutely trust us to do them justice and to see that justice was done them. That is the attitude of the world, and reflect upon the reaction, the reaction of despair, that would come if America said : We do not want to lead you. You must do without our ad vice. You must shift without us." How are we going to bring about a peace for which everything waits? I have been very much amazed and very much amused, if I could be amused in such critical circumstances, to see that the statesmanship of some gentle men consists in the very interesting proposition THE WORLD IS WAITING ON US 115 that we do nothing at all. I heard of standing pat before, but I never had before heard of standpatism going to the length of saying it is none of our business and we do not care what happens to the rest of the world. Some gentlemen are saying, "Yes, we made a great promise to mankind, but it will cost too much to redeem it." My fellow-citizens, that is not the spirit of America, and you can not have peace, you cannot have even your legitimate part in the business of the world, unless you are partners with the rest. If you are going to say to the world, "We will stand off and see what we can get out of this," the world will see to it that you do not get anything out of it. If it is your deliberate choice that instead of being friends you will be rivals and antagonists, then you will get just exactly what rivals and antagonists al ways get, just as little as can be grudgingly ; vouchsafed you. Is there any business man here who would be willing to see the world go bankrupt and the business of the world stop? I do not like to a/gue this thing on this basis, but if you want to talk business I am ready to talk business. It is a matter of how much you are going to get from your money. You will not get half as much as antagonists as you will get as partners. So think that over, if you have none of that ii6 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD thing that is so lightly spoken of, known as altruism, and believe me, my fellow-country men, the only people in the world who are going to reap the harvest of the future are the people who can entertain ideals, who can follow ideals to the death. So, my fellow-citizens, you have got to make up your minds, because, after all, it is you who are going to make up the minds of this country. I do not owe a report or the slightest respon sibility to anybody but you. I mean you and the millions besides you, thoughtful, respon sible American men and women all over this country. They are my bosses, and I am mighty glad to be their servant. XIII RESERVATIONS MEAN DELAY (OMAHA, NEBRASKA, September 8, 1919} In his speech at the Auditorium President Wilson said: I DIDN T come here this morning so much to expound the treaty as to talk about reserva tions. A reservation is an assent with a 44 but" to it. "We agree, but" Now I want to call your attention to some of these "buts." I will take them as far as I can in the order in which they deal with the clauses of the League itself. In the first article of the covenant it is pro- i vided that a nation can withdraw from the j League on two years notice, provided that at j the time of this withdrawal, that is to say, at I the expiration of the two years, it has fulfilled all its international obligations and all its (obligations under the covenant. But some of our friends are very uneasy j about that. They want to sit close to the door and with their hand on the knob, and n8 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD they want to say, "We are in this thing, but we are in it with infinite timidity, and we are in it only because you overpersuaded us and wanted us to come in, but we are going to sit here and try this door every once in a while and see if it isn t locked, and just as soon as we see anything we don t like we are going to scuttle. " [Laughter and applause.] Now, what is the trouble? I want you to put this to every man you know who makes this objection. What is he afraid of? Is he afraid that when the United States wishes to withdraw it will not have fulfilled its inter national obligations? Is he willing to bring that indictment against this beloved country? My fellow-citizens, we never did fail to fulfil any obligations we have made. And, with God to guide and help us, we never will. And I, for one, am not going to admit in any con nection the slightest doubt that if we ever choose to withdraw we will not have fulfilled our obligations. Because if we make reservations, as they are called, about this, what do we do? This cove nant does not set up any tribunal to judge whether we have fulfilled our obligations at that time or not. There is only one thing to restrain us, and that is the opinion of man kind. Are these gentlemen such poor patriots that they are afraid the United States will cut a poor figure in the opinion of mankind ? And RESERVATIONS MEAN DELAY 119 do they think that they can bring this great people to withdraw from that League if at that time their withdrawal would be con demned by the opinion of mankind ? We always have been at pains to earn the respect of mankind, and we shall always be at pains to retain it. I, for one, am too proud as an American to say that any doubt will ever hang upon our right to withdraw upon the conditions of the fulfilment of our inter national obligations. But I must not turn away from this great subject without attention to the Shantung clause, the provision with regard to the transfer of certain German rights in that province of Shantung, China, to Japan. I frankly said to my Japanese colleagues at the conference therefore I can without impropriety say it here that I was very deeply dissatisfied with that part of the treaty. But, my fellow-citizens, Japan agreed at that very time, and as part of the understanding upon which these clauses were put into the treaty, that she would relinquish every item of sovereignty that Germany had enjoyed to China, and that she would retain what other nations have elsewhere in China certain economic concessions with regard to the rail ways and the mines, which she was to operate under a corporation and subject to the laws of China, As I say, I wish she would have done 120 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD more, but suppose, as some have suggested, that we dissent from that clause in the treaty ? You can t sign all of a treaty but one part, my fellow-citizens. It is like the President s veto; he can t veto provisions of a bill; he has got either to sign the bill or veto it. We can t sign the treaty with the Shantung pro vision out of it, and if we could, what sort of service would that be doing China? If I felt that I personally in any way stood in the way of this settlement, I would be glad to die that it might be consummated, because I have a vision, my fellow-citizens, that if this thing should by some mishap not be accom plished there would arise from that upon the fair name of this people a stain which never could be effaced, which would be intolerable to every lover of America, intolerable to every man who knew America and was ready with stout heart to uphold it. XIV A TURNING-POINT IN HISTORY (Sioux FALLS, SOUTH DAKOTA, September 8, 1919) President Wilson spoke in part as follows: I MUST admit that every time I face a great audience of my fellow-countrymen on this trip I am filled with a feeling of peculiar solem nity, because I believe, my fellow-countrymen, that we have come to one of the turning-points in the history of the world. And what I, as an American, covet for this great country is that on every great occasion when mankind s fprtunes are hung in the balance, America may have the distinction of leading the way. I want to remind you, my fellow-country men that that war was not an accident; that that war didn t just happen. There was not some sudden cause which brought on the con flagration. On the contrary, Germany had been preparing for that war for generations. Germany had been preparing every resource and perfecting every skill, developing every invention which would enable her to master 122 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD the European world and to dominate the rest of the world. Everybody had been looking on. Everybody had known for example, it was known in every war-office in Europe and in the depart ment at Washington that the Germans not only had a vast supply of field-guns, but they had ammunition enough for every one of these guns to wear out the guns. And yet we were living in a fool s paradise. We thought Ger many meant what she said, that she was armed for defense, and that she never would. use that great store of guns against her fellow- men. Why, my friends, it was foreordained the minute Germany conceived these purposes that she should do the thing which she did in 1914. Now I have brought back from Europe with me, my fellow-citizens, a treaty in which Ger many is disarmed and in which all the other nations of the world agree never to go to war. [Applause.] That is all. If Germany had dreamed that anything like the greater part of the world would combine against her, she never would have begun the war, and she didn t dare to let the opinions of mankind crystallize against her, by the dis cussion of the purposes which she had in mind. So what I want to point out to you is that we are making a fundamental choice. You cannot have a new system unless you supply a A TURNING-POINT IN HISTORY 123 substitute, an adequate substitute for the old, and I want to say that when certain of our fellow-citizens take the position that we do not want to go into it alone, but want to take care of ourselves, I say that is the German position. Germany, through the mouth of her Em- .peror, through her writers, and through every ! action, said: "Here we stand ready to take care of ourselves. We will not enter into any combination. We are armed for self-defense i and we know that no nation can compete with us." That appears to be the American pro gram in the eyes of some gentlemen, and I ; want to tell you that in the last two weeks the pro-Germanism element has lifted its head again. It says, "I see a chance for Germany and America to stay out and take care of themselves." There were passions let loose on the field of the world at war which have not grown quiet, and which will not for a long time. Every element of disorder is hoping that there will be no staying hand from the Council of Nations to hold the order of the world steady until we can make the final arrangements of justice and peace. I sometimes think, when I wake up in the night, of the wakeful nights that anxious fathers, mothers, and friends spent during the weary years of the awful war, and I hear the cry of mothers of the children, millions on the i2 4 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD other side and thousands on this side, in God s name give us security, peace, and right. America can stay out, but I want you to witness that the peace of the world cannot be established with the peace of the individual nations. America is necessary to the peace of the world. The peace and good will of the world are necessary to America, lest you disappoint the world, center its suspicion on you, make it feel that you are filled with jealousy and selfishness. We are not thinking of money, we are think ing of redeeming the reputation of America, rather than to have all of the money in the world. I am not ready to die for money, and neither are you, but you and I are ready to die for America. XV THE FIRST PEOPLE S TREATY (BILLINGS, MONTANA, September n, 1919) The President spoke in part as follows: I HAVE come to consult with you in the light of certain circumstances which I want to ex plain to you circumstances which affect not only this great nation which we love and which we try to constitute an honorable part, but also affect the whole world. I wonder when we speak of the whole world whether we have a true conception of the fact that the human heart beats everywhere the same. We are making a mistake, I take the liberty of saying, in debating it as if it were an ordi nary treaty with some particular country, a treaty we could ourselves modify without con flicting with the affairs of the world, whereas, as matters were, it is not really a treaty with Germany. Matters were drawn into this treaty which affected the peace and happiness of the whole continent of Europe, America, and the furthermost populations in Africa, the peoples we hardly know about in the usual 126 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD affairs of our country, where the influence of German policy had existed and everywhere that influence had to be guarded, had to be rejected, had to be altered. Consider the circumstances. For the first time in the world some twenty nations sent their men, thoughtful and responsible men, to consult together at the capital of France to effect a settlement of the affairs of the world, and I want to render my testimony that these gentlemen entered upon their deliberations with great openness of mind. Their dis cussions were characterized by the utmost candor, and they realized, my fellow-citizens, what, as a student of history, I venture to say, no similar body ever acknowledged before that they were nobody s masters. They did not have the right to vary a line to any na tion s advantage in determining on the settle ments and the basis of peace; they were in the service of their people and the service of the world. This settlement, my fellow-citizens, is the first international settlement intended for the happiness and safety of men and women throughout the world. This is in deed and in truth a people s treaty. It is the first people s treaty, and I venture to say that no Parlia ment or Congress will attempt to alter it. And it is this treaty or no treaty. It is this treaty because there can be no other, THE FIRST PEOPLE S TREATY 127 It is a people s treaty, notwithstanding the fact that it is also a treaty with Germany, and it is not an unjust treaty with Germany, as isome have characterized it. My fellow-citizens, Germany tried to com- fmit a crime against civilization, and this | treaty is justified as a memorandum to make I Germany pay for the crime up to her full i capacity for payment. Some of the very gentlemen who are now I characterizing this treaty as harsh are the same men who less than twelve months ago were criticizing the Administration at Wash ington in the fear that we would compound the crime. They were pitiless then; they are pitiful now. It is meet, my fellow-citizens, that we should not forget what this war meant. I am amazed at the indications that we are forgetting what we went through. There are some indications that on the other side of the water they are about to forget what they went through. I venture to say that there are thousands of parents, fathers, mothers, wives, sisters, sweet hearts, who are never going to forget what they went through. Thousands of our gallant youth lie buried in France. Buried for what? For the protection of America ? America was not directly attacked. For the salvation of mankind everywhere and not alone for the salvation of America. 128 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD I appeared once in the presence of a little handful of men whom I revere, who fought in the Civil War, and it seems to me that they fought for the great principle in their day, and we know with what reverence we look upon these men who fought for the safety of the nation. I say this, although I was born below the Mason and Dixon line. We are not going to deny those sentiments to the boys who were in this war. Don t you think that when they are old men a halo will seem to be about them because they were crusaders for the liberty of the civilized world ? One of the hardest things for me to do among the many men of this country was merely to advise and direct and not take a gun and go myself. The fundamental feature of this treaty is the principle that had its birth and growth in this country that the countries of the world be long to the people who live in them. And they have a right to determine their own affairs, their own form of government, their own policy, and that no body of statesmen, sitting anywhere in the world, should have the right to assign to any people any advantage. This is the great treaty which is to be de bated. This is the treaty which is to be examined with a microscope. My friends, are you going to be narrow-minded enough and near-sighted enough to allow them to weigh THE FIRST PEOPLE S TREATY 129 that great charter of human liberty in that way? That is impossible. Now the chance is there to accept this treaty or play a lone hand. What does that mean? To play a lone hand now means that we must always be ready to play by ourselves. It means that we must always be armed, that we must always be ready to mobilize the man strength and the manufacturing resources of the country. That means that we must con tinue to live under not diminishing but in creasing taxes and be strong enough to beat any nation in the world, and absolutely con trary to the high ideals of American history. If you are going to play a lone hand, the hand that you play must be upon the handle of the sword. The lone hand must have a weapon in it, and the weapon must be the young men of the country, trained to arms, and the business of the country must be prepared for making armament and arms for the men. And do you suppose, my fellow-citizens that any nation is willing to stand for that ? The fact that the world is in a state of un settled unrest is not due to the extreme condi tions arising out of the war and the extraor dinary circumstances. It is due to the unusual effect of the conditions under which men live and labor which now exist. That is the con dition all over the world. There is no use in 130 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD talking about a political democracy unless we also have an industrial democracy. This is the best treaty that can possibly be got, and in my judgment it is a mighty good treaty if it has justice, or an attempt at jus tice, at any rate, at the heart of it. Don t you think some insurance is better than none at all, and the security obtained by this treaty at its minimum as it is, is a great deal better than no security at all, and without it there is no security at all ? The leisureliness of some of the debate cre ates the impression in my mind that some men think there is leisure. There is no leisure in the world with regard to the reform of the con ditions under which men live. I desire to say that, as many of you know, I have called a conference to sit in Washington the first week of next month; a conference of men in the habit of managing business and of men engaged in manual labor; what we generally call em ployers and employees. And I have called them together for the sake of getting their minds together, and getting their purposes together, getting them to look at the factors of our life at the same time, in the same light, and from the same angle so that they can see the things that ought to be done. The President went on : We have served mankind and we shall con tinue to serve mankind, for I believe that we THE FIRST PEOPLE S TREATY 131 are the flower of mankind so far as civilization is concerned. I am just as sure what the verdict will be as if already rendered, and what has con vinced me most is what plain people have said to me, particularly what women have said to me. But when I see a woman with marks of labor upon her, and she says, "God bless you, Mr. President, and God bless the League of Nations," then I know the League of Nations is safe. I know the League of Nations is close to the hearts of these people. A woman came to me the other day and took my hand and said, "God bless you, Mr. Presi dent," and turned away in tears. I asked a neighbor, "What is the matter?" and he said, "She was intending to say something to you, but she lost a son in France." That woman did not take my hand with the feeling that her son should not be sent to France. I sent her son to France. She took my hand and blessed it, but she could not say anything more because a whole world of spirit came up in her throat. Down deep in the heart of love for her boy she felt that we had done something so that no other woman s boy would be called upon to lay his life down for a thing like that. I anticipate your verdict to what I am pledged with deep and serious thought, to satisfy the heart of the world. 10 XVI THE TASK ONLY HALF DONE (HELENA, MONTANA, September u, ipip) The President s speech was in part as follows: I WANT to say to you very solemnly that notwithstanding the splendid achievement of our boys on the other side of the sea, who, I don t hesitate to say, saved the world; not withstanding the noble things that they did, their task is only half done, and it remains for us to complete it. If we left the thing where it is and did not carry out the program of the treaty of peace in all its fullness men like these would have to die to do the work over again and convince provincial statesmen that the world is one, and that only by an organization of the world can you save the young men of the world. [Applause.] As I think upon this theme there is a picture very distinctly in my mind. On last Memorial Day I stood in an American cemetery in France, just outside Paris, on the slopes of Suresnes. The hill slopes to a little plain. THE TASK ONLY HALF DONE 133 When I went out there all the slope of the hill was covered with men in the American uni form, standing, but rising tier on tier as if on a great witness-stand. Then below them over a little level space were simple crosses that marked the resting-place of the American dead, and just by the stand where I spoke was a group of Frenchwomen who had lost their own sons. Just because they had lost their sons and because their hearts went out in thought and sympathy to the mothers on this side of the sea, they had made themselves, so to say, mothers of those graves, and every day had gone to take care of them, every day had strewn them with flowers. And they stood there, their cheeks wetted with tears, while I spoke, not of the French dead, but of the American boys who had died in the common cause. They seemed to be thrown together in that day and in that little spot with the hearts of the world, and I took occasion to say that day that those who stood in the way of completing the task those men had died for would some day look back upon it as those others have looked back upon the days when they tried to divide this Union and prevent it from being a single nation, united in a single form of liberty. For the completion of the work of those men is this: That the thing that they fought to stop shall never be attempted again. THE HOPE OF THE WORLD I call to your minds that we did not go into this war willingly. I was in a position to know. In the providence of God the leader ship of this nation was intrusted to me during those early years of the war when we were not in it. I was aware through many subtle chan nels of the movement of opinion in this coun try, and I know that the thing that this country chiefly desired, that you here in the West chiefly desired, the thing that, of course, every living woman had at her heart, was that we should keep out of the war. I remember, not once, but often, sitting at the Cabinet table in Washington, and I asked my colleagues what their impression of the opinion of the country was before we went into the war, and I remember one day one of my colleagues said to me, "Mr. President, I think the people of the country would take our advice and do what you suggested." But I said : "That is not what I am waiting for. If they cannot go in with a whoop, there is no use going in. I don t want them to wait on me; I am waiting on them. I want to know what the conscience of this country is saying. I want to know what ideas are arising in the minds of the people of this country with regard to this war situation." The German people is a great, educated people. So far as I have been able to learn, they are following peaceful pursuits. The THE TASK ONLY HALF DONE 135 bankers and the merchants and the manufact urers did not want to go into that war. They have said that they were not consulted. But the masters of Germany were the General Military Staff. Not even the members of the Reichstag were consulted by the General Staff, and it was these men who nearly brought a complete catastrophe upon civilization itself. America has, if I may take the liberty of saying so, a greater interest in the prevention of war than any other nation. America is less exhausted by war she is not exhausted at all. America has paid for the war that has gone less heavily in proportion to her wealth than other nations. America still has capital capital enough for its own industries and for the indus tries of the other countries that have to build their industries anew ; and the next war would have to be paid for in American blood and American money. The nation, of all nations, that is most in terested to prevent the recurrence of what has already happened is the nation which would assuredly have to bear the brunt of that great catastrophe. [Applause.] XVII RESERVATIONS NOT NECESSARY (SPOKANE, WASHINGTON, September 12, 1919) President Wilson s address was in part as follows: I WANT to discuss with you very frankly in deed, just as frankly as I know how, the diffi culty that has been suggested, because I think that not one of the qualifications which have been suggested in this discussion is justified by the language of the instrument. It is provided that any member state may withdraw from the League upon two years notice, provided that at the time of with drawal it has fulfilled its national obligations and the obligations under the covenant. And gentlemen object that it is not said who shall determine whether it has fulfilled its inter national obligations and its obligations under the covenant or not. Having sat at the table where the instru ment was drawn, I know that that was not done accidentally, because that is a matter upon which no nation can sit in judgment RESERVATIONS NOT NECESSARY 137 upon another. That is left to the consciences and to the independent determination of the nation that is withdrawing. And there is only one jury that it need fear and that is the great embodied jury, expressing the opinions of mankind. There is one part of the covenant the prin cipal part of it where it speaks of arbitration and where it provides that any member state failing to keep these covenants (these particu lar covenants) shall be regarded as thereby ipso facto to have committed an act of war against the other members. The way it originally read was "shall thereby ipso facto be deemed at war with the other nations," and I said: "No, I cannot agree to that. That provision would put the United States at war without the consent of the Congress of the United States, and I have no right in this part of the covenant, or any other, to consent to a provision which would deprive the Congress of the United States of its free choice, whether it makes war or not." At every point in the covenant where it was necessary to do so I insisted upon language which would leave the Congress of the United States free. I fought that fight and I won it. They don t have to fight it over again. [Cheers.] Taking up the proposed reservation to Article X, the President said that the vote of 138 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD the United States would be required to insure any decision of the League covenant. Yet I hear gentlemen say, he went on, that this is a violation of our sovereignty. If it is anything it is an exaggeration of our sovereignty. This extends our sovereignty to saying whether other nations shall go to war or not. He went on: You will say, It is all very well, what you say about the word of the United States being necessary, provided the United States is not one of the parties to the dispute. In that case it cannot vote. * That is very true, but in that case it has got the fight on its hands, anyhow, because if it is one of the parties to the dispute the war belongs to it. It does not have to go into it. Therefore it cannot be forced by the vote into the war. The only thing the vote can do is to force it out of the war. And I want to ask you to think what it means when it is suggested that the United States may be a party. A party to what ? A party to seize somebody s property? A party to infringe some other country s political inde pendence ? Is any one willing to stand on this platform and say that the United States is likely to do either of these things? I chal lenge any man to stand before an American audience and say that is the danger. RESERVATIONS NOT NECESSARY 139 Ah, but some one may seek to seize our terri tory, impair our political independence. Well, who? Who has an arm long enough, who has an audacity great enough, to try to take a single inch of American territory, to seek to interfere for one moment with the political independence of the United States? These gentlemen are dreaming of things that can t happen. And I cannot bring myself to feel uneasy about things that I know are not so. The great difficulty in this discussion, as in many others, is the number of things that men know are not so. XVIII UNDERWRITING CIVILIZATION (TACOMA, WASHINGTON, September 13, 1919) President Wilson s address at the Armory was in part as follows: I FEEL, as I am sure you feel, that we have reached one of the most critical periods in the history of the United States. The shadow of the war is not lifted from us, and we have just come out of the depths of the valley of death. I want to remind you many other nations were put under a deeper temptation than we. It would have been possible for little, helpless Belgium at any time to make terms with the enemy. Belgium knew that resistance was useless. Belgium knew that she could get any terms of advantage from Germany that she pleased, if she would only submit. And at the cost of everything that she had Belgium did nothing else than underwrite civilization. I do not know anywhere in history of a more inspiring fact than that. UNDERWRITING CIVILIZATION 141 Belgium lies prostrate because she fulfilled her pledge to civilization. Italy could have had her terms at the hands of Austria at almost any periods of the war, particularly just before she made her final stand at the Piave River, but she would not compound with the enemy. She, too, had underwritten civilization. And this passage which I have read to you, which the whole country accepted as its pledge, is but an underwriting of civilization. But in order to let you remember what the thing cost, just let me read you a few figures. If I did not have them on official authority I would deem them incredible. Here is what the war cost those who were engaged against Germany : Great Britain and her dominions, $38,000,- 000,000; France, $26,000,000,000; the United States, $22,000,000,000; Russia, $18,000,000,- ooo; Italy, $13,000,000,000, and the total, including Belgium, Japan, and other smaller countries, $133,000,000,000. It cost the Central Powers: Germany, $39,000,000,000; Austria-Hungary, $21,000,- 000,000; Turkey and Bulgaria, $3,000,000,000, a total of $63,000,000,000; a grand total of direct war cost of $186,000,000,000 an in credible sum to save civilization. Now the question is, are we going to keep safe? The expenditures of the United States were at the rate of $1,000,000 an hour for two i 4 2 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD years, $1,000,000 an hour, including the night- time, for two years ! Battle deaths (and this is the cost that touches our hearts) were : Russia, 1,700,000; Germany, 1,600,000; France, 1,385,- ooo ; Great Britain, 900,000; Austria, 800,000; Italy, 364,000; the United States, 50,300; a total of all belligerents of 7,450,200 men dead on the field of battle. The total wounded for the United States army was 230,000, excluding those, of course, who were killed. The total of all battle deaths in all of the wars of the world from the years 1793 to 1914 were something under 6,000,000. So that in all the wars of the world for more than one hundred years fewer men died than have been killed upon the field of battle in the last five years. These are terrible facts and we ought never to forget them. America alone cannot underwrite civiliza tion. All the great free peoples of the world must underwrite it, and only the free peoples of the world can join the League of Nations. Germany is for the present excluded because she must prove that she is self-governing. She must prove that she has changed the proc ess of her constitution and the purpose of her power. When she has proved these things, she can become one of the partners, guaran teeing that civilization shall not suffer again these intolerable_things. UNDERWRITING CIVILIZATION 143 The League is not only a union of free peoples to guarantee civilization; it is some thing much more than that. It is a League of Nations to advance civilization by substitut ing something that will make the improvement of civilization possible. I call you to witness that our civilization is not satisfactory. It is an industrial civiliza tion, and at the heart of it is an antagonism between those who labor with their hands and those who direct labor. You cannot compose those differences in the midst of war, and you cannot advance civilization unless you have a peace of which you make the fullest use in bringing these elements of civilization together into a common partnership in which every man will have the same interest in the work of his community that those have who direct the work of the community. We have got to have leisure and freedom of mind to settle these things. This was a war against autocracy, and if you have disordered, if you have disrupted, populations, if you have insurgent elements in your populations, you are going to have au- cocracy, because the stronger is going to seize the power as it has seized it in Russia. I want to declare that I am the enemy of the rulership of any minority, however constituted. Minorities often have been right, but they cease to be right when they use disorderly means. i 4 4 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD I believe for my part that the League of Nations covenant is 98 per cent, insurance against war. I take it you want some assur ance against war. Even if it were only a 10- per-cent. insurance it would be worth while. It is of particular importance to remember at this moment, when some men have dared to introduce party passion into this question, that some of the leading spirits, perhaps I might say the leading spirit, in the concep tion of this great idea were leading figures of the Republican party. [On his first return from Paris, Mr. Wilson went on, he had received certain suggestions from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which came for the most part from the Re publican side of the committee. Returning to the Peace Conference, he said, he had seen that they were carried out. He continued:] When I advocated the things in this League of Nations, I had the full and proud conscious ness that I was only expressing the best thought and the best conscience of my beloved fellow-countrymen . The only things that I have any special connection with in the League of Nations cove nant are things that I was careful to have put in there because of the very considerations that are now being urged. One of the most distinguished lawyers of the United States, Mr. Wickersham of New York, UNDERWRITING CIVILIZATION 145 who was the Attorney-General in Mr. Taft s Cabinet, came over to Europe, I am told, to oppose the things that he understood the American Peace Mission was trying to accom plish. And what happened to Mr. Wicker- sham ? He was absolutely converted, above all things else, to the necessity of having a League of Nations not only, but this League of Na tions. I need not tell you of the conspicu ously fine work which his chief, Mr. Taft, has been doing in the same cause. I say these things because I want to read the riot act to anybody who tries to introduce politics into this thing. I am very proud to forget party lines, because there is one thing that is so much greater than being a Repub lican or a Democrat that those names ought never to be mentioned nor connected with it. That is being an American, and the way to be an American is to fulfil the pledges we have made. XIX "NATIONS MUST UNITE" LODGE (PORTLAND, OREGON, September 15, The text of President Wilson s address was in part as follows: I FOUND quoted in one of your papers the other day a passage so appropriate that I do not know that I can do better than read it as the particular thing that it is found necessary to do: "Nations must unite as men unite, in order to preserve peace and order. The great nations must be so united as to be able to say to any single country, You must not go to war, and they can say that effectively when the country desiring war knows that the force which the united nations apply behind peace is irresistible. In differences between individuals the decision of a court is final, be cause in the last resort the entire force of the community is behind the court decision. In differences between nations which go beyond the limited range of arbitral questions, peace can only be maintained by putting behind it "NATIONS MUST UNITE" LODGE 147 the force of united nations determined to uphold it and prevent war." That is a quotation from an address said to have been delivered at Union College in June, 1915, a year after the war began, by Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts. I entirely concur in Senator Lodge s conclusion and I hope I shall have his co-operation in bringing about the desired result. In other words, the only way we can prevent the unspeakable thing from happening again is that the nations of the world should unite and put an irresistible force behind peace and order. There is only one conceivable way to do that, and that is by means of a League of Nations. I don t find any man anywhere rash or bold enough to say that he does not desire a League of Nations. I only find men here and there saying that they do not desire this League of Nations. And I want to ask you to reflect upon what that means. When this covenant was drawn up in its first form I had the oc casion to return for a few weeks to this country. I brought the covenant in its first shape. I submitted it in an intimate conference to the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate of the United States ; or, rather, to the two com mittees of the two Houses, the Foreign Rela tions Committee of the Senate and the Com mittee on Foreign Affairs of the House. We 11 I 4 8 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD discussed all parts of the document. Many suggestions were made. I took all of these suggestions back to Paris and the Conference of the League of Nations adopted every one of the suggestions made. No counsels were listened to more carefully or yielded to more willingly in that Conference than the counsels of the United States. Some things were put into the covenant which personally I did not think necessary, but which they had no objection to putting in explicitly. For example, take the Monroe Doctrine. What is the Monroe Doctrine? The Monroe Doctrine is that no nation shall come to the Western Hemisphere and try to establish its power or interfere with the self-government of people in this hemisphere. Very well. That is the doctrine of the covenant. No nation shall anywhere extend its power or seek to interfere with the political independence of the peoples of the world. And inasmuch as the Monroe Doctrine had been made the universal doctrine, I did not think that it was necessary to mention it particularly, but when I sug gested that it was the desire of the United States that it should be explicitly recognized, it was explicitly recognized. The Monroe Doctrine is left intact and the United States is left free to enforce it. I want to emphasize in every discussion of "NATIONS MUST UNITE" LODGE 149 this matter the absolutely non-partizan charac ter of the covenant and the treaty. I am not in favor of the ratification of this treaty, in cluding the covenant of the League of Nations, because I am a Democrat, but because I am an American and a lover of humanity. XX NEW HOPE FOR CHINA (SAN FRANCISCO, September 17, 1919) President Wilson in his speech at the Asso ciated Women s Club luncheon said: AGAIN and again as I have crossed the con tinent, generous women women I did not know have shaken my hand and said, "God bless you, Mr. President." Some of them, like many of you, had lost sons and husbands and brothers in the war. Why should they bless me? I advised Congress to declare war. I advised Congress to send their sons to death. As Commander-in-Chief of the Army I sent them over the seas and they were killed. Why do they bless me? Because in the generosity of their hearts they want the sons of other women saved henceforth. They believe that the methods proposed, at any rate merit a very hopeful ex pectation that similar wars will be prevented and that other armies will not have to go from the United States to die upon distant fields of battle. NEW HOPE FOR CHINA 151 I suppose I could not command words which would exaggerate the present expectations of the world with regard to the United States. We cannot desert humanity. We are the trustees of humanity, and we must see that we redeem the pledges which are always im plicit in so great a trusteeship. I cannot conceive a motive adequate to hold men off from this thing. Let me take the point in which my initial sympathy is most with them, the matter of the cession to Japan of the interests of Germany in Shantung in China. I said to my Japanese colleagues on the other side of the sea that I am not satisfied with this settlement. I think it ought to be different. But when gentlemen propose to cure it by striking that clause out of the treaty, or by ourselves withholding our adherence to the treaty, they propose an irrational thing. It was in 1898 that China ceded these rights and concessions to Germany. The pretext was that some German missionaries had been killed. My heart aches, I must say, when I think how we have made an excuse of religion sometimes to work a deep wrong. The central government of China had done all it could to protect those German missionaries. Their death was due to local disturbances, to local passions, to local antipathy against the for eigner. There was nothing that the Chinese i 5 2 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD government as a whole could justly be held responsible for. But suppose there had been? Two Chris tian missionaries are killed, and, therefore, one great nation robs another nation and does a thing which is fundamentally unchristian and heathen. For there was no adequate excuse for what Germany exacted of China. I read again only the other day the phrases in which poor China was made to make the concession. She was made to make that in words dictated by Germany in view of her gratitude to Germany for certain services rendered the deepest hypocrisy conceivable. She was obliged to do so by force. Then Russia came in and obliged China to cede to her Port Arthur and Talien-wan, not for quite so long a period, but on substantially the same terms. Then England must needs have Wei-hai-wei as an equivalent concession to that which had been made to Germany. And presently certain ports and territory back of them ^were ceded upon similar principles to France. Everybody got in except the United States and said, "If Germany is going to get some thing we will get something. Why ? No one of them was entitled to it ; no one of them had any business in there on such terms. And then, when the Japanese-Russian War came, Japan did what she has done in this war she NEW HOPE FOR CHINA 153 attacked Port Arthur and captured Port Arthur, and Port Arthur was ceded to her as a consequence of the war. No protest was made by the government of the United States against the original con cession of this Shantung territory to Germany. One of the highest-minded men of our history was President at this time I mean Mr. McKinley. One of the ablest men we ever had as Secretary of State, John Hay, occupied that great office. And in the message of Mr. McKinley about this transaction he says that inasmuch as the powers that had taken those territories had agreed to keep the doors open for our commerce, there was no reason why we should object. Just so we could trade with these stolen territories, we were willing to let them be stolen. Which of these gentlemen who are now ob jecting to the cession of the German rights in Shantung in China were prominently pro testing against the original cession or any one of those original cessions ? It makes my heart burn when some men are so late in doing justice. Now, in the* mean time, before we got into this war, but after the war had begun, because they deemed the assistance of Japan in the Pacific absolutely indispensable, Great Britain and France both agreed that if Japan would enter the war she could do the same thing 154 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD with regard to Shantung that she had done with regard to Port Arthur that if she would take what Germany had in Shantung she could keep it. It was Germany s right in Shantung and not China s that we conceded : by the treaty to Japan, but with a condition which was not insisted upon at the cession of Port Arthur upon a condition that no other nation in doing similar things in China has ever yielded to. Japan is under solemn promise to forgo all sovereign rights in the province of Shantung and to retain only what private corporations have elsewhere in China. Coupled with this arrangement is the League of Nations, under which Japan solemnly un dertakes, with the rest of us, to respect and protect the territorial integrity of China. And back of her promise is likewise the similar promise of every other nation, that nowhere will there come a disregard for the territorial integrity or the political independence of that great, helpless people. It is the first time in the history of the world that anything has been done for China. And, sitting around our council board in Paris, I put this question : May I expect that this will be the beginning of the retrocession to China of the exceptional rights which other govern ments have enjoyed there? And the respon sible representatives of the other great gov ernments said, "Yes, you may expect it." NEW HOPE FOR CHINA 155 Your attention is constantly drawn to Article X, and that is the article, the heart of the covenant, which guarantees the political integrity not only of China but of other coun tries more helpless, even, than China. But besides Article X there is Article XI, which makes it the right of every member of the League to draw attention to anything any where that is likely to disturb the peace of the world or the good understanding between nations upon which the peace of the world depends. Whenever formerly anything was done in detriment of the interests of China v we had to approach the government that did it with apologies. Now, when you have the treaty and the League of Nations the representative of the United States has the right to stand up and say: "This is against the covenant of peace. It can t be done," and if occasion arises we can add, "It shall not be done." The weak and oppressed and wronged peoples of the world have never before had a forum made for them to which they could summon their enemies in the presence of the judgment of mankind. XXI OUR RIGHTS SAFE UNDER THE LEAGUE (SAN FRANCISCO, September 18, 1919) Replying to a list of questions presented by a San Francisco League of Nations organization, President Wilson made the following statements: I. WILL you state the underlying considera tion which dictated an awarding of six votes to the British Empire in the assembly, and is it true that Great Britain will outvote us in the League of Nations and thereby control the League s action? Answer. The consideration which led to assigning six votes to self-governing portions of the British Empire was that they have in effect, in all but foreign policies, become autonomous self-governing states, their policy in all but foreign affairs being independent of the control of the British government and in many respects dissimilar from it. But it is not true that the British Empire can outvote us in the League of Nations and therefore con trol the action of the League, because in every OUR RIGHTS SAFE UNDER LEAGUE 157 matter except the admission of new members in the League, no action can be taken without the concurrence of a unanimous Vote of the repre sentatives of the states which are members of the council, so that in all matters of action the affirmative vote of the United States is neces sary and equivalent to the united vote of the representatives of the several parts of the British Empire. The united votes of the several parts of the British Empire cannot offset or overcome the vote of the United States. 2. Is it true that under the League of Nations foreign countries can order the sending of American troops to foreign countries? Answer. It is not. The right of Congress to determine such matters is in no wise impaired. 3. What effect will the League of Nations have in either forwarding or hindering the final restoration of Shantung to China ? What effect will the League of Nations have in pre venting further spoliation of China and the abrogation of all such special privileges now enjoyed in China by foreign countries? "Answer. The League of Nations will have a very powerful effect in forwarding the final restoration of Shantung to China and no other instrumentality or action can be substituted which could bring that result about. The authority of the League will under Article X 158 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD be constantly directed toward safeguarding the territorial integrity and political inde pendence of China. It will, therefore, abso lutely prevent the further spoliation of China, promote the restoration in China of the several privileges now long enjoyed by foreign countries and assure China of the completion of the process by which Shantung will presently be returned to her in full sovereignty. In the past there has been no tribunal which could be resorted to for any of these purposes. 4. Is there anything in the League of Na tions covenant or the Peace Treaty which di rectly or indirectly in any manner imposes on the United States any obligations, moral or otherwise, of the slightest character to support England in any way in case of revolt in Ireland ? Answer. There is not. The only guaran ty contained in the covenant is against ex ternal aggression, and those who framed the covenant were scrupulously careful in no way to interfere with what they regarded as the sacred rights of self-determination. 5. What effect, if any, will the League of Nations covenant have in either hindering or furthering the cause of Irish freedom ? Answer. It was not possible for the Peace Conference to act with regard to the self- determination of any territories except those which had belonged to the defeated empires, OUR RIGHTS SAFE UNDER LEAGUE 159 but in the covenant of the League of Nations it has set up for the first time in Article XI a forum where all claims of self-determination, which are likely to disturb the peace of the world or the good understanding between nations upon which the peace of the world depends, can be brought. XXII SIX VOTES TO ONE (Los ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, September 25, 1919) The full text of the President s explanation on this question of voting is as follows: ANOTHER thing that is giving some of our fellow-countrymen pangs of some sort, pangs of jealousy, perhaps, is that, as they put it, Great Britain has six votes in the League and we have only one. Well, our one vote, it happens, counts just as heavily as if every one of our states was represented and we had forty-eight votes, because it happens, though these gentlemen have overlooked it, that the Assembly is not an independent voting body. Great Britain has only one representative and one vote in the Council of the League of Na tions, which originates all action, and its six votes are in the Assembly, which is a debating and not an executive body, and in every matter on which the Assembly can vote along with the Council it is necessary that all the nations represented on the Council should SIX VOTES TO ONE 161 concur in the affirmative vote to make it valid; so that in every vote, no matter how many vote for it in the Assembly, in order for it to become valid it is necessary that the United States should vote aye. Now, inasmuch as the Assembly is a de bating body, that is the place where this ex posure that I have talked about to the open air is to occur, it would not be wise for any body to go into the Assembly for purposes that will not bear exposure, because that is the great cooling process of the world, that is the great place where gases are to be burned off. I ask you, in debating the affairs of mankind, would it have been fair to give Panama a vote, as she will have, Cuba a vote, both of them very much under the influence of the United States, and not give a vote to the Do minion of Canada, to that great energetic republic in South Africa, to that place from which so many liberal ideas and liberal actions have come, that stout little Commonwealth of Australia? Why, when I was in Paris, the men I could not tell apart, except by their hats, were the Americans and the Australians. They both had the swing of fellows who say, "The gang is all here, what do we care?" Could we deny a vote to that other little self- governing nation, for it practically is such in everything but its foreign affairs, New Zea land, or, last but not least, to those toiling 162 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD I was about to say uncounted millions in India? Would you vote to deprive these great communities of a voice in the debate? Why, my fellow-citizens, it is a proposition which has never been stated, because to state it answers it. But they cannot outvote us. If we, as I said a minute ago, had forty-eight votes in the Assembly, they would not count any more than our one, because they would have to be com bined, and it is easier to combine one than to combine forty-eight. The vote of the United States is potential to prevent anything the United States does not care to approve. All this nonsense about six votes and one vote can be dismissed, and you can sleep with perfect quiet. In order that I may not be said to have misled you, I must say that there is one matter upon which the Assembly can vote and which it can decide by a two-thirds majority without the concurrence of all the states represented in the Council, and that is the admission of new members to the League. XXIII VOTING POWER IN THE LEAGUE (PUEBLO, COLORADO, September 25, IQIQ) In the President s final address he made a particular point of explaining the six votes of Great Britain and her colonies in the League Assembly. Mr. Wilson said in part: BUT you say, "we have heard that we might be at a disadvantage in the League of Nations." Well, whoever told you that either was delib erately falsifying or he had not read the cove nant of the League of Nations. I leave him the choice. I want to give you a very simple account of the organization of the League of Nations and let you judge for yourselves. It is a very simple organization. The power of the League, or rather the activ ities of the League, lie in two bodies. The first is a council, which consists of one repre sentative from each of the principal allied and associated powers that is to say, the United States, Great Britain. France, Italy, 12 164 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD and Japan, along with four other representa tives of smaller powers, chosen out of the general body of the membership of the League. The Council is the source of every active policy of the League, and no active policy of the League can be adopted without a unani mous vote of the Council. That is explicitly stated in the covenant itself. Does it not evi dently follow that the League of Nations can adopt no policy whatever without the consent of the United States ? The affirmative vote of the representative of the United States is necessary in every case. Now, you have heard of six votes belonging to the British Empire. Those six votes are not in the Council, they are injhe Assembly, and the interesting thing is that the Assembly does not vote. I must qualify that statement V lit tier, but essentially it is. absolutely true. In every matter in which the Assembly is given a voice, and there are only four or five, its vote does not count unless concurred in by the representatives of all the nations repre sented on the Council, so that there is no validity to any vote of the Assembly unless in that vote also the representative of the United States concurs. That one vote of the United States is as big as the six votes of the British Empire. I am not jealous for advantage, my fellow-citizens, but I think that is a perfectly VOTING POWER IN THE LEAGUE 165 safe situation. There is not any validity in a vote either by the Council or the Assembly in which we do not concur. So much for the statements about the six votes of the British Empire. And look at it in another aspect. The As sembly is the talking body. The Assembly was created in order that anybody that pur posed anything wrong should be subjected to the awkward circumstances that everybody could talk about it. This is the great Assem bly in which all the things that are likely to disturb the peace of the world or the good understanding between nations are to be ex posed to the general view, and I want to ask you if you think it was unjust, unjust to the United States, that speaking parts should be assigned to the several portions of the British Empire? Do you think it unjust that there should be some spokesman in debate for that fine, little, stout republic down in the Pacific, New Zea land? Do you think it was unjust that Australia should be allowed to stand up and take part in the debate, Australia from which we have learned some of the most useful pro gressive policies of modern times, a little na tion of only five million in a great continent, but counting for several times five in its activi ties and in its interest in liberal reform ? Do you think it unjust that that little re- 166 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD public down in South Africa whose gallant resistance to being subjected to any outside authority at all we admired for so many months and whose fortunes we followed with such interest should have a speaking part? Great Britain obliged South Africa to submit to her sovereignty, but she immediately after that felt that it was convenient and right to hand the whole self-government of that colony over to the very men whom she had beaten, and among the representatives of South Africa in Paris were two of the most distinguished generals of the Boer army, two of the realest men I ever met, two men that could talk sober counsel and wise advice along with the best statesmen in Europe. To exclude General Botha and General Smuts from the right to stand up in the parliament of the world and say something concerning the affairs of man kind would be absurd. And what about Canada? Isn t Canada a good neighbor? I ask you, isn t Canada more likely to agree with the United States than with Great Britain? Canada has a speaking part. And then for the first time in the history of the world that great, voiceless multitude, that throng, hundreds of millions strong, in India, has a voice. And I want to testify that some of the wisest and most dignified figures in the Peace Conference at Paris came from India, VOTING POWER IN THE LEAGUE 167 men who seemed to carry in their minds an older wisdom than the rest of us had, whose traditions ran back into so many of the un happy fortunes of mankind that they seemed very useful counselors as to how some ray of hope and some prospect of happiness could be opened to its people. I for my part have no jealousy whatever of those five speaking parts in the Assembly, and these speaking parts cannot translate them selves into five votes that can in any matter override the voice and purpose of the United States Let us sweep aside all this language of jealousy. Let us be big enough to know the facts and to welcome the facts. Because the facts are based upon the principle that America has always fought for, namely, the equality of self-governing peoples, whether they were big or little, not counting men, "But" counting rights, not counting representation, but count ing the purpose of that representation. When you hear an opinion quoted, you do / not count the number of persons who hold it. / You ask, "Who said that?" You weigh/ opinions, you do not count them, and the! beauty of all democracies is that every voice can be heard, every voice can have its effect, every voice can contribute to the general judgment that is finally arrived at. That is the object of democracy. 168 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD Let us accept what America has always fought for, and accept it with pride that Amer ica showed the way and made the proposal. I do not mean that America made the proposal in this particular instance, I mean that the principle was an American principle, proposed by America. The chief pleasure of my trip has been that it has nothing to do with my personal fortunes. That it has nothing to do with my personal reputation, that it has nothing to do with any thing except great principles uttered by Amer icans of all sorts and of all parties which we are now trying to realize at this crisis of the affairs of the world. But there have been unpleasant impressions as well as pleasant impressions. My fellow- citizens, as I have crossed the continent I have perceived more and more that men have been busy creating an absolutely false impression of what the treaty of peace and the covenant of the League of Nations contain and mean. I find, moreover, that there is an organized propaganda against the League of Nations and against the treaty, proceeding from the same sources that the organized propaganda proceeded from which threatened this country here and there with disloyalty, and I want to say, I cannot say too often, any man who carries a hyphen about with him carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals VOTING POWER IN THE^ LEAGUE 169 of this Republic whenever he gets ready. If I can catch any man with a hyphen in this great country I will know that I have got an enemy of the Republic. For, my fellow-citi zens, it is only certain bodies of foreign sym pathizers, certain bodies in sympathy with foreign nations that are organized against this great document which the American repre sentatives have brought back from Paris. XXIV MUST COMPOSE DIFFERENCES (WASHINGTON, October 22, 1919} President Wilsoris letter to the National In dustrial Conference, as made public by Secretary Lane, follows: GENTLEMEN: I am advised by your chair man that you have come to a situation which appears to threaten the life of your conference, and because of that I am presuming to address a word of very solemn appeal to you as Amer icans. It is not for me to assess the blame for the present condition. I do not speak in a spirit of criticism of any individual or of any group. But having called this conference, I feel that my temporary indisposition should not bar the way to a frank expression of the seriousness of the position in which this coun try will be placed should you adjourn without having convinced the American people that you had exhausted your resourcefulness and your patience in an effort to come to some common agreement. MUST COMPOSE DIFFERENCES 171 At a time when the nations of the world are endeavoring to find a way of avoiding inter national war, are we to confess that there is no method to be found for carrying on industry except in the spirit and with the very method of war ? Must suspicion and hatred and force rule us in civil life ? Are our industrial leaders and our industrial workers to live together without faith in each other, constantly strug gling for advantage over each other, doing naught but what is compelled ? My friends, this would be an intolerable out look, a prospect unworthy of the large things done by this people in the mastering of this continent; indeed, it would be an invitation to national disaster. From such a possibility my mind turns away, for my confidence is abiding that in this land we have learned how to accept the general judgment upon matters that affect the public weal. And this is the very heart and soul of democracy. It is my understanding that you have di vided upon one portion only of a possible large program which has not fully been developed. Before a severance is effected, based upon present differences, I believe you should stand together for the development of that full pro gram touching the many questions within the broad scope of your investigations.-* It was in my mind when this conference was called that you would concern yourselves with the dis- 1 72 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD covery of those methods by which a measur able co-operation within industry may have been secured, and if new machinery needs to be designed by which a minimum of conflict between employers and employees may reason ably be hoped for, that we should make an effort to secure its adoption. It cannot be expected that at every step all parties will agree upon each proposition or method suggested. It is to be expected, how ever, that, as a whole, a plan or program can be agreed upon which will advance further the productive capacity of America through the establishment of a surer and heartier co-opera tion between all the elements engaged in indus try. The public expects not less than that you shall have that one end in view and stay together until the way is found leading to that end or until it is revealed that the men who work and the men who manage American in dustry are so set upon divergent paths that all effort at co-operation is doomed to failure. I renew my appeal with full comprehension of the almost incomparable importance of your tasks to this and to other peoples, and with full faith in the high patriotism and good faith of each other that you push your task to a happy conclusion, XXV A STATEMENT TO THE MINERS (WASHINGTON, October 26, ON September 23, 1919, the convention of the United Mine Workers of America at Cleve land, Ohio, adopted a proposal declaring that all contracts in the bituminous field shall be declared as having automatically expired No vember i, 1919, and making various demands, including a 6o-per-cent. increase in wages and the adoption of a six-hour work-day and a five-day week, and providing that, in the event a satisfactory wage agreement should not be secured for the central competitive field before November i, 1919, the national officials should be authorized and instructed to call a general strike of all bituminous miners and mine work ers throughout the United States, effective November i, 1919. Pursuant to these instructions, the officers of the organization have issued a call to make the strike effective November ist. This is one of the gravest steps ever pro posed in this country, affecting the economic 174 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD welfare and the domestic comfort and health of the people. It is proposed to abrogate an agreement as to wages which was made with the sanction of the United States Fuel Ad ministration and which was to run during the continuance of the war, but not beyond April i, 1920. This strike is proposed at a time when the government is making the most earnest effort to reduce the cost of living and has appealed with success to other classes of workers to postpone similar disputes until a reasonable opportunity has been afforded for dealing with the cost of living. It is recognized that the strike would prac tically shut off the country s supply of its principal fuel at a time when interference with that supply is calculated to create a disastrous fuel famine. All interests would be affected alike by a strike of this character, and its vic tims would be not the rich only, but the poor and the needy as well those least able to pro vide in advance a fuel supply for domestic use. It would involve the shutting down of count less industries and the throwing out of employ ment of a large number of the workers of the country. It would involve stopping the opera tion of railroads, electric light, and gas plants, street railway lines, and other public utilities, and the shipping to and from this country, thus preventing our giving aid to the allied A STATEMENT TO THE MINERS 175 countries with supplies which they so seriously need. The country is confronted with this prospect at a time when the war itself is still a fact; when the world is still in suspense as to nego tiations for peace; when our troops are still being transported and when their means of transport is in urgent need of fuel. From whatever angle the subject may be viewed it is apparent that such a strike in such circumstances would be the most far-reaching plan ever presented in this country to limit the facilities of production and distribution of a necessity of life and thus indirectly to restrict the production and distribution of all the neces saries of life. A strike under these circum stances is not only unjustifiable ; it is unlawful. The action proposed has apparently been taken without any vote upon the specific proposition by the individual members of the United Mine Workers of America throughout the United States, an almost unprecedented proceeding. I cannot believe that any right of any American worker needs for its protec tion the taking of this extraordinary step, and I am convinced that when the time and money are considered, it constitutes a fundamental attack, which is wrong, both morally and legally, upon the rights of society and upon the welfare of our country. I feel convinced that individual members of the United Mine 176 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD Workers would not vote upon full considera tion in favor of such a strike under these conditions. When a movement reaches a point where it appears to involve practically the entire pro ductive capacity of the country with respect to one of the most vital necessities of daily domestic and industrial life, and when the movement is asserted in the circumstance I have stated, and at a time and in a manner calculated to involve the maximum of dangers to the public welfare in this critical hour of our country s life, the public interest becomes the paramount consideration. In these circumstances I solemnly request both the national and the local officers and also the individual members of the United Mine Workers of America to recall all orders looking to a strike on November ist, and to take whatever step may be necessary to prevent any stoppage of work. It is time for plain speaking. These matters with which we now deal touch not only the welfare of a class, but vitally concern the well- being, the comfort, and the very life of all the people. I feel it is my duty in the public in terest to declare that any attempt to carry out the purpose of this strike and thus to paralyze the industry of the country with the consequent suffering and distress of all our people must be considered a grave moral and A STATEMENT TO THE MINERS 177 legal wrong against the government and the people of the United States. I can do nothing else than to say that the law will be enforced, and the means will be found to protect the in terests of the nation in any emergency that may arise out of this unhappy business. 1 express no opinion on the merits of the con troversy. I have already suggested a plan by which a settlement may be reached, and I hold myself in readiness at the request of either or both sides to appoint at once a tribunal to investigate all the facts with a view to aiding in the earliest possible orderly settlement of the questions at issue between the coal operators and the coal miners, to the end that the just rights, not only of those interests, but also of the general public may be fully protected. XXVI THE RED CROSS DRIVE (WASHINGTON, November, IQIQ) President Wilson has addressed the following letter to the people of the country appealing for support of the third Red Cross Roll Call, which is to be held November 2d to nth: As President of the United States and as president of the American Red Cross, I recom mend and urge a generous response to the third Red Cross Roll Call, which opens on November 2d with the observance of Red Cross Sunday and appropriately closes on the nth, the first anniversary of the armistice. Twenty million adults joined the Red Cross during the war, prompted by a patriotic desire to render service to their country and to the cause for which the United States was engaged in war. Our patriotism should stand the test of peace as well as the test of war, and it is an intelligently patriotic program which the Red Cross proposes, a continuance of service to our soldiers and sailors who look to it for THE RED CROSS DRIVE 179 many things, and a transference to the prob lems of peace at home of the experience and methods which it acquired during the war. It is on membership more than money con tributions that the stress of the present cam paign is laid, for the Red Cross seeks to asso ciate the people in welfare work throughout the land, especially in those communities where neither official nor unofficial provision has been made for adequate public health and social service. It is in the spirit of democracy that the people should undertake their own welfare activities, and the National Red Cross wisely intends to exert upon community action a stimulating and co-ordinating influence and to place the energies of the organization behind all sound public health and welfare agencies. The American Red Cross does not purpose indefinite prolongation of its relief work abroad, a policy which would lay an unjust burden upon our own people and tend to under mine the self-reliance of the peoples relieved, but there is a necessary work of completion to be performed before the American Red Cross can honorably withdraw from Europe. The Congress of the United States has imposed upon the Red Cross a continuing responsi bility abroad by authorizing the Secretary of War to transfer to the American Red Cross such surplus army medical supplies and sup- is i8o THE HOPE OF THE WORLD piemen tary and dietary foodstuffs now in Europe as shall not be required by the army, to be used by the Red Cross to relieve the dis tress which continues in certain countries of Europe as a result of the war. To finance these operations, to conclude work which was begun during the war, and to carry out some comparatively inexpensive constructive plans for assisting persons in eastern Europe to develop their own welfare organizations, the American Red Cross re quires, in addition to membership fees, a sum of money small in comparison with gifts poured into its treasury by our generous people during the war. Both the greater enduring domestic pro gram and the lesser temporary foreign program of the Red Cross deserve enthusiastic support, and I venture to hope that its peace-time mem bership will exceed rather than fall below its impressive war membership. XXVII A MESSAGE ON ARMISTICE DAY (WASHINGTON, November n, 1919) To MY FELLOW-COUNTRYMEN: A year ago to-day our enemies laid down their arms in ac cordance with an armistice f which rendered them impotent to renew hostilities, and gave to the world an assured opportunity, to recon struct its shattered order^ and to work out in peace ^a new and juster set of international re lations. The soldiers and people of the Euro pean allies had fought and endured for more than four years to uphold the barrier of civiliza tion against the aggressions of armed force. We ourselves had been in the conflict some thing more than a year and a half. With splendid forgetfulness of mere personal con cerns, we remodeled our industries, concen trated our financial resources, increased our agricultural output and assembled a great army, so that at the last our power was a de cisive factor in the victory. We were able to bring the vast resources, material and moral, of a great and free people to the assistance of 182 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD our associates in Europe who had suffered and sacrificed without limit in the cause for which we fought. Out of this victory there arose new pos sibilities of political freedom and economic concert. The war showed us the strength of great nations acting together for high purposes, and the victory of arms foretells the enduring conquests which can be made in peace when nations act justly and in furtherance of the common interests of men. To us in America the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country s service, and with grati tude for the victory both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of nations. XXVIII MESSAGE TO THE CONGRESS (WASHINGTON, December 2, 1919} To THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRE SENTATIVES: I sincerely regret that I cannot be present at the opening of this session of the Congress. I am thus prevented from present ing in as direct a way as I could wish the many questions that are pressing for solution at this time. Happily, I have the advantage of the advice of the heads of the several executive departments who have kept in close touch with affairs in their detail and whose thoughtful recommendations I earnestly second. In the matter of the railroads and the read justment of their affairs, growing out of Fed eral control, I shall take the liberty at a later clay of addressing you. I hope that Congress will bring to a con clusion at this session legislation looking to the establishment of a budget system. That there should be one single authority respon sible for the making of all appropriations and that appropriations should be made not inde pendently of each other, but with reference to 1 84 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD one single comprehensive plan of expenditure properly related to the nation s income, there can be no doubt. I believe the burden of preparing the budget must, in the nature of the case, if the work is to be properly done and responsibility con centrated instead of divided, rest upon the Executive. The budget so prepared should be submitted to and approved or amended by a single committee of each House of Congress, and no single appropriation should be made by the Congress except such as may have been included in the budget prepared by the Execu tive or added by the particular committee of Congress charged with the budget legislation. Another and not less important aspect of the problem is the ascertainment of the economy and efficiency with which the moneys appro priated are expended. Under existing law the only audit is for the purpose of ascertaining whether expenditures have been lawfully made within the appropriations. No one is authorized or equipped to ascertain whether the money has been spent wisely, economically, and effectively. The auditors should be highly trained offi cials with permanent tenure in the Treasury Department, free of obligations to or motives of consideration for this or any subsequent Administration, and authorized and empow ered to examine into and make report upon the MESSAGE TO THE CONGRESS 185 methods employed and the results obtained by the executive departments of the government. Their reports should be made to the Congress and to the Secretary of the Treasury. I trust that the Congress will give its imme diate consideration to the problem of future taxation. Simplification of the income and profits taxes has become an immediate neces sity. These taxes performed indispensable service during the war. They must, however, be simplified, not only to save the taxpayer inconvenience and expense, but in order that his liability may be made certain and definite. With reference to the details of the revenue law, the Secretary of the Treasury and the Commissioner of Internal Revenue will lay before you for your consideration certain amendments necessary or desirable in connec tion with the administration of the law- recommendations which have my approval and support. It is of the utmost importance that in dealing with this matter the present law should not be disturbed so far as regards taxes for the calen dar year 1920, payable in the calendar year 1921. The Congress might well consider whether the higher rates of income and profits taxes can in peace times be effectively pro ductive of revenue, and whether they may not, on the contrary, be destructive of business activity and productive of waste and ineffi- 1 86 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD ciency. There is a point at which in peace times high rates of income and profits taxes discourage energy, remove the incentive to new enterprise, encourage extravagant ex penditures, and produce industrial stagnation with consequent unemployment and other attendant evils. The problem is not an easy one. A funda mental change has taken place with reference to the position of America in the world s affairs. The prejudice and passions engen dered by decades of controversy between two schools of political and economic thought the one believers in protection of American indus tries, the other believers in tariff for revenue only must be subordinated to the single consideration of the public interest in the light of utterly changed conditions. Before the war America was heavily the debtor of the rest of the world, and the interest payments she had to make to foreign countries on American securities held abroad, the ex penditures of American travelers abroad, and the ocean freight charges she had to pay to others, about balanced the value of her pre war favorable balance of trade. During the war America s exports have been greatly stimulated, and increased prices have increased their value. On the other hand, she has pur chased a large proportion of the American se curities previously held abroad, has loaned MESSAGE TO THE CONGRESS 187 some nine billion dollars to foreign govern ments and has built her own ships. Our favorable balance of trade has thus been greatly increased, and Europe has been deprived of the means of meeting it heretofore existing. Europe can have only three ways of meeting the favorable balance of trade in peace times by imports into this country of gold or of goods, or by establishing new credits. Europe is in no position at the present time to ship gold to us, nor could we contemplate large further imports of gold into this country without concern. The time has nearly passed for international governmental loans, and it will take time to develop in this country a market for foreign securities. Anything, therefore, which would tend to prevent foreign countries from settling for our exports by shipments of goods into this coun try could only have the effect of preventing them from paying for our exports and therefore of preventing the exports from being made. The productivity of the country, greatly stimu lated by the war, must find an outlet by exports to foreign countries, and any measures taken to prevent imports will inevitably curtail exports, force curtailment of production, load the bank ing machinery of the country with credits to carry unsold products, and produce industrial stagnation and unemployment. If we want to sell, we must be prepared to i88 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD buy. Whatever, therefore, may have been our views during the period of growth of American business concerning tariff legislation, we must now adjust our own economic life to a changed condition growing out of the fact that Amer ican business is full grown and that America is the greatest capitalist in the world. No policy of isolation will satisfy the growing needs and opportunities of America. The provincial standards and policies of the past, which have held American business as if in a strait jacket, must yield and give way to the needs and exigencies of the new day in which we live, a day full of hope and promise for American business, if we will but take advan tage of the opportunities that are ours for the asking. The recent war has ended our isolation and thrown upon us a great duty and respon sibility. The United States must share the expanding world markets. The United States desires for itself only equal opportunity with the other nations of the world, and that through the process of friendly co-operation and fair competition the legitimate interests of the nations concerned may be successfully and equitably adjusted. There are other matters of importance upon which I urged action at the last session of Con gress which are still pressing for solution. I am sure it is not necessary for me again to MESSAGE TO THE CONGRESS 189 remind you that there is one immediate and very practicable question resulting from the war which we should meet in the most liberal spirit. It is a matter of recognition and relief to our soldiers. I can do no better than to quote from my last message urging this very- action : We must see to it that our returning sol diers 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 developing and maintaining upon an ade quate scale the admirable organization created by the Department of Labor for placing men seeking work, and it can also be done, in at least one very great field, by creating new op portunities for individual enterprise. "The Secretary of the Interior has pointed out the way by which returning soldiers may be helped to find and take up land in the hitherto undeveloped regions of the country which the Federal government has already prepared or can readily prepare for cultiva tion, 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 recommending very urgently that his plans shall receive the immediate and sub stantial support of the Congress." In the matter of tariff legislation, I beg to call your attention to the statements cpn- 190 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD tained in my last message urging legislation with reference to the establishment of the chemical and dyestuff s industry in America : "Among the industries to which special con sideration should be given is that of the manu facture of dyestuffs and related chemicals. Our complete dependence upon German sup plies before the war made the interruption of trade a cause of exceptional economic dis turbance. The close relation between the manufacture of dyestuffs, on the one hand, and of explosives and poisonous gases on the other, moreover, has given the industry an excep tional significance and value. "Although the United States will gladly and unhesitatingly join in the program of inter national disarmament it will, nevertheless, be a policy of obvious prudence to make certain of the successful maintenance of many strong and well-equipped chemical plants. The Ger man 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 peculiarly insidious and dangerous kind." During the war the farmer performed a vital and willing service to the nation. By ma terially increasing the production of his land, he supplied America and the Allies with the increased amounts of food necessary to keep their immense armies in the field. He indis- MESSAGE TO THE CONGRESS 191 pensably helped to win the war. But there is now scarcely less need of increasing the pro duction in food and the necessaries of life. I ask the Congress to consider means of en couraging effort along these lines. The importance of doing everything possible to promote production along economical lines, to improve marketing, and to make rural life more attractive and healthful, is obvious. I would urge approval of the plans already pro posed to the Congress by the Secretary of Agri culture to secure the essential facts required for the proper study of this question, through the proposed enlarged program for farm man agement studies and crop estimates. I would urge also the continuance of Federal participation in the building of good roads under the terms of existing law and under the direction of present agencies; the need of further action on the part of the states and the Federal government to preserve and de velop our forest resources, especially through the practice of better forestry methods on private holdings and the extension of the publicly owned forests; better support for country schools and the more definite direc tion of their courses of study along lines related to rural problems; and fuller pro vision for sanitation in rural districts and the building up of needed hospital and medical facilities in these localities. 192 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD Perhaps the way might be cleared for many of these desirable reforms by a fresh, compre hensive survey made of rural conditions by a conference composed of representatives of the farmers and of the agricultural agencies re sponsible for leadership. I would call your attention to the wide spread condition of political restlessness in our body politic. The causes of this unrest, while various and complicated, are superficial rather than deep-seated. Broadly, they arise from or are connected with the failure on the part of our government to arrive speedily at a just and permanent peace permitting return to normal conditions, from the transfusion of radical theories from seething European cen ters pending such delay, from heartless profit eering resulting in the increase of the cost of living, and lastly from the machinations of passionate and malevolent agitators. With the return to normal conditions this unrest will rapidly disappear. In the mean time it does much evil. It seems to me that in dealing with this situation Congress should not be impatient or drastic, but should seek rather to remove the cause. It should en deavor to bring our country back speedily to a peace basis, with ameliorated living conditions under the minimum of restrictions upon per sonal liberty that is consistent with our recon struction problems. And it should arm the MESSAGE TO THE CONGRESS 193 Federal government with power to deal in its criminal courts with those persons who by vio lent methods would abrogate our time-tested institutions. With the free expression of opinion and with the advocacy of orderly political change, how- lever fundamental, there must be no inter ference, but toward passion and malevolence ; tending to incite crime and insurrection under guise of political evolution there should be no leniency. Legislation to this end has been recommended by the Attorney-General and should be enacted. In this direct connection I w r ould call your attention to my recommendations on August 8th, pointing out legislative measures which would be effective in controlling and bringing down the present cost of living, which con tributes so largely to this unrest. On only one of these recommendations has the Congress acted. If the government s campaign is to be effective it is necessary that the other steps suggested should be acted on at once. I renew and strongly urge the necessity of the extension of the present Food Control Act as to the period of time in which it shall remain in operation. The Attorney-General has sub mitted a bill providing for an extension of this act for a period of six months. As it now stands it is limited in operation to the period of the war and becomes inoperative upon the 194 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD formal proclamation of peace. It is impera tive that it should be extended at once. The Department of Justice has built up extensive machinery for the purpose of enforcing its pro visions; all of which must be abandoned upon the conclusion of peace unless the provisions of this act are extended. During this period the Congress will have an opportunity to make similar, permanent provisions and regulations with regard to all goods destined for interstate commerce, and to exclude them from interstate shipment if the requirements of the law are not complied with. Some such regulation is imperatively neces sary. The abuses that have grown up in the manipulation of prices by the withholding of foodstuffs and other necessaries of life cannot otherwise be effectively prevented. There can be no doubt of either the necessity or the legitimacy of such measures. As I pointed out in my last message, pub licity can accomplish a great deal in this cam paign. The aims of the government must be clearly brought to the attention of the con suming public, civic organizations, and state officials who are in a position to lend their assistance to our efforts. You have made available funds with which to carry on this campaign, but there is no pro vision in the law authorizing their expenditure for the purpose of making the public fully in- MESSAGE TO THE CONGRESS 195 formed about the efforts of the government. Specific recommendation has been made by the Attorney-General in this regard. I would strongly urge upon you its immediate adop tion, as it constitutes one of the preliminary steps to this campaign. I also renew my recommendation that the Congress pass a law regulating cold storage as it is regulated, for example, by the laws of the state of New Jersey, which limit the time dur ing which goods may be kept in storage, pre scribe the method of disposing of them if kept beyond the permitted period, and require that goods released from storage shall in all cases bear the date of their receipt. It would materially add to the serviceability of the law, for the purpose we now have in view, if it were also prescribed that all goods released from storage for interstate shipment should have plainly marked upon each package the selling or market price at which they went into storage. By this means the purchaser would always be able to learn what profits stood between him and the producer or the wholesale dealer. I would also renew my recommendation that all goods destined for interstate com merce should in every case, where their form or package makes it possible, be plainly marked with the price at which they left the hands of the producer. 14 196 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD We should formulate a law requiring a Federal license of all corporations engaged in interstate commerce and embodying in the li cense, or in the conditions under which it is to be issued, specific regulations designed to se cure competitive selling and prevent uncon scionable profits in the method of marketing. Such a law would afford a welcome oppor tunity to effect other much needed reforms in the business of interstate shipment and in the methods of corporations which are engaged in it; but for the moment I confine my recom mendations to the object immediately in hand, which is to lower the cost of living. No one who has observed the march of events in the last year can fail to note the ab solute need of a definite program to bring about an improvement in the conditions of labor. There can be no settled conditions leading to increased production and a reduc tion in the cost of living if labor and capital are to be antagonists instead of partners. Sound thinking and an honest desire to serve the interests of the whole nation, as distinguished from the interests of a class, must be applied to the solution of this great and pressing problem. The failure of other na tions to consider this matter in a vigorous way has produced bitterness and jealousies and antagonisms, the food of radicalism. The only way to keep men from agitating against MESSAGE TO THE CONGRESS 197 grievances is to remove the grievances. An unwillingness even to discuss these matters produces only dissatisfaction and gives com fort to the extreme elements in our country which endeavor to stir up disturbances in order to provoke governments to embark upon a course of retaliation and repression. The seed of revolution is repression. The remedy for these things must not be negative in character. It must be constructive. It must comprehend the general interest. The real antidote for the unrest which manifests itself is not suppression, but a deep considera tion of the wrongs that beset our national life and the application of a remedy. Congress has already shown its willingness to deal with these industrial wrongs by estab lishing the eight-hour day as the standard in every field of labor. It has sought to find a way to prevent child labor. It has served the whole country by leading the way in develop ing the means of preserving and safeguarding lives and health in dangerous industries. It must now help in the difficult task of finding a method that will bring about a genuine demo cratization of industry, based on the full recog nition of the right of those who work, in what ever rank, to participate in some organic way in every decision which directly affects their w T elfa,re. It is with this purpose in mind that I called 198 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD a conference to meet in Washington on De cember ist to consider these problems in all their broad aspects, with the idea of bringing about a better understanding between these two interests. The great unrest throughout the world, out of which has emerged a demand for an im mediate consideration of the difficulties be tween capital and labor, bids us put our own house in order. Frankly there can be no per manent and lasting settlements between cap ital and labor which do not recognize the fundamental concepts for which labor has been struggling through the years. The whole world gave its recognition and indorsement to these fundamental purposes in the League of Nations. The statesmen gath ered at Versailles recognized the fact that world stability could not be had by reverting to industrial standards and conditions against which the average workman of the world had revolted. It is, therefore, the task of the statesmen of this new day of change and readjustment to recognize world conditions and to seek to bring about, through legisla tion, conditions that will mean the ending of age-long antagonisms between capital and labor and that will hopefully lead to the build ing up of a comradeship which will result not only in greater contentment among the mass of workmen, but also bring about a greater MESSAGE TO THE CONGRESS 199 production and a greater prosperity to business itself. To analyze the particulars in the demands of labor is to admit the justice of their com plaint in many matters that lie at their basis. The workman demands an adequate wage, sufficient to permit him to live in comfort, unhampered by the fear of poverty and want in his old age. He demands the right to live and the right to work amid sanitary surround ings, both in home and workshop, surroundings that develop and do not retard his own health and well-being; and the right to provide for his children s wants in the matter of health and education. In other words, it is his de sire to make the conditions of his life and the lives of those dear to him tolerable and easy to bear. The establishment of the principles regard ing labor laid down in the covenant of the League of Nations offers us the way to indus trial peace and conciliation. No other road lies open to us. Not to pursue this one is longer to invite enmities, bitterness, and an tagonisms which in the end only lead to industrial and social disaster. The unwilling workman is not a profitable servant. An employee whose industrial life is hedged about by hard and unjust conditions, which he did not create and over which he had no control, lacks that fine spirit of enthusiasm 200 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD and volunteer effort which are the necessary ingredients of a great producing entity. Let us be frank about this solemn matter. The evidences of worldwide unrest which manifest themselves in violence throughout the world bid us pause and consider the means to be found to stop the spread of this con tagious thing before it saps the very vitality of the nation itself. Do we gain strength by withholding the remedy? Or is it not the business of statesmen to treat these manifesta tions of unrest which meet us on every hand as evidences of an economic disorder and to apply constructive remedies wherever necessary, being sure that in the application of the remedy we touch not the vital tissues of our industrial and economic life. There can be no recession of the tide of unrest until construc tive instrumentalities are set up to stem that tide. Governments must recognize the right of men collectively to bargain for humane ob jects that have at their base the mutual pro tection and welfare of those engaged in all industries. Labor must not be longer treated as a commodity. It must be regarded as the activity of human beings, possessed of deep yearnings and desires. The business man gives his best thought to the repair and replenishment of his ma- jchinery, so that its usefulness will not be im- MESSAGE TO THE CONGRESS 201 paired and its power to produce may always be at its height and kept in full vigor and mo tion. No less regard ought to be paid to the human machine, which, after all, propels the machinery of the world and is the great dy namic force that lies back of all industry and progress. Return to the old standards of wage and industry in employment is unthinkable. The terrible tragedy of war which has just ended and which has brought the world to the verge of chaos and disaster would be in vain if there should ensue a return to the conditions of the past. Europe itself, whence has come the unrest which now holds the world at bay, is an ex ample of standpatism in these vital human matters which America might well accept as an example, not to be followed, but studiously to be avoided. Europe made labor the differ ential, and the price of it all is enmity and antagonism and prostrated industry. The right of labor to live in peace and comfort must be recognized by governments, and America should be the first to lay the foundation stones upon which industrial peace shall be built. Labor not only is entitled to an adequate wage, but capital should receive a reasonable return upon its investment and is entitled to protection at the hands of the government in 202 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD every emergency. No government worthy of the name can "play" the elements against each other, for there is a mutuality of interest between them which the government must seek to express and to safeguard at all cost. The right of individuals to strike is inviolate and ought not to be interfered with by any process of government, but there is a predomi nant right and that is the right of the govern ment to protect all of its people and to assert its power and majesty against the challenge of any class. The government, when it asserts that right, seeks not to antagonize a class, but simply to defend the right of the whole people as against the irreparable harm and injury that might be done by the attempt by any class to usurp a power that only government itself has a right to exercise as a protection to all. In the matter of international disputes which have led to war, statesmen have sought to set up as a remedy arbitration for war. Does this not point the way for the settlement of industrial disputes by the establishment of a tribunal, fair and just alike to all, which will settle industrial disputes which in the past have led to war and disaster? America, witnessing the evil consequences which have followed out of such disputes be tween the contending forces, must not admit itself impotent to deal with these matters by means of peaceful processes. Surely there MESSAGE TO THE CONGRESS 203 must be some method of bringing together in a council of peace and amity these two great interests, out of which will come a happier day of peace and co-operation, a day that will make for more comfort and happiness in living and a more tolerable condition among all classes of men. Certainly human intelligence can devise some acceptable tribunal for adjusting the differences between capital and labor. This is the hour of test and trial for America. By her prowess and strength, and the indomi table courage of her soldiers, she demonstrated her power to vindicate on foreign battlefields her conception of liberty and justice. Let not her influence as a mediator between capital and labor be weakened and her own failure to settle matters of purely domestic concern be pro claimed to the world. There are those in this country who threaten direct action to force their will upon a ma jority. Russia to-day, with its blood and terror, is a painful object-lesson of the power of minorities. It makes little difference what minority it is ; whether capital or labor, or any other class; no sort of privilege will ever be permitted to dominate this country. We are a partnership or nothing that is worth while. We are a democracy, where the majority are the masters, or all the hopes and purposes of the men who founded this govern ment have been defeated and forgotten. 204 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD In America there is but one way by which great reforms can be accomplished and the relief sought by classes obtained, and that is through the orderly processes of representative government. Those who would propose any other method of reform are enemies of this country. America will not be daunted by threats nor lose her composure or calmness in these distressing times. We can afford, in the midst of this day of passion and unrest, to be self-contained and sure. The instrument of all reform in America is the straight road of justice to all classes and conditions of men. Men have but to follow this road to realize the full fruition of their ob jects and purposes. Let those beware who would take the shorter road of disorder and revolution. The right road is the road of justice and orderly process. XXIX A FAIR DEAL TO THE MINERS (INDIANAPOLIS, December 9, 1919) The text of President Wilson s proposal to the miners was made public following presentation to the Conference: I HAVE watched with deep concern the de velopments in the bituminous coal strike and am convinced there is much confusion in tne minds of the people generally and possibly of both parties to this unfortunate controversy as to the attitude and purposes of the govern ment in its handling of the situation. The mine owners offered a wage increase of 20 per cent., conditioned, however, upon the price of coal being raised to an amount suffi cient to cover this proposed increase of wages, which would have added at least $150,000,000 to the annual coal bill of the people. The Fuel Administrator, in the light of present in formation, has taken the position, and I think with entire justification, that the public is now paying as high prices for coal as it ought to be 206 THE HOPE OF THE WORLD requested to pay, and that any wage increase made at this time ought to come out of the profits of the coal operators. In reaching this conclusion, the Fuel Ad ministrator expressed the personal opinion that the i4-per-cent. increase in all mine wages is reasonable because it would equalize the miners wages on the average with the cost of living, but he made it perfectly clear that the operators and the miners are at liberty to agree upon a large increase provided the operators will pay it out of their profits so that the price of coal would remain the same. The Secretary of Labor, in an effort at con ciliation between the parties, expressed his personal opinion in favor of a larger increase. His effort at conciliation failed, however, be cause the coal operators were unwilling to pay the scale he proposed unless the government would advance the price of coal to the public, and this the government was unwilling to do. The Fuel Administrator had also suggested that a tribunal be created in which the miners and operators would be equally represented to consider further questions of wages and work ing conditions, as well as profits of operators and proper prices for coal. I shall, of course, be glad to aid in the formation of such a tribunal. I understand the operators have generally agreed to absorb an increase of 14 per cent, in A FAIR DEAL TO THE MINERS 207 wages, so that the public would pay not to exceed the present price fixed by the Fuel Ad ministrator, and thus a way is opened to secure the coal of which the people stand in need, if the miners will resume work on these terms pending a thorough investigation by an im partial commission which may readjust both wages and prices. By the acceptance of such a plan, the miners are assured immediate steady employment at a substantial increase in wages and are further assured prompt investigation and action upon questions which are not now settled to their satisfaction. I must believe that with a clear understanding of these points they will promptly return to work. If, nevertheless, they persist in remaining on strike they will put themselves in an attitude of striking in order to force the government to increase the price of coal to the public, so as to give a still further increase in wages at this time rather than allow the question of a further increase in wages to be dealt with in an orderly manner by a fairly constituted tribunal representing all parties interested. No group of our people can justify such a position, and the miners owe it to themselves, their families, their fellow-workmen in other industries, and to their country to return to work. Immediately upon a general resumption of 2o8 THE HOPE OF "THE WORLD mining I shall be glad to aid in the prompt formation of such a tribunal as I have indi cated to make further inquiries into this whole matter and to review not only the reasonable ness of the wages at which the miners start to work, but also the reasonableness of the gov ernment prices for coal. Such a tribunal should within sixty days make its report which could be used as a basis for negotiation for a wage agreement. I must make it clear, how ever, that the government cannot give its aid to any such further investigation until there is a general resumption of work. I ask every individual miner to give his personal thought to what I say. I hope he understands fully that he will be hurting his own interest a nd the interest of his family and will be throwing countless other laboring men out of employment if he shall continue the present strike, and, further, that he will create an unnecessary and unfortunate preju dice against organized labor which will be injurious to the best interests of workingmen everywhere. THE END >AY USE JRN ,?- ROM WHICH BORROWED LOAN DEPT. This book is due on the last date stamped below, or on the date to which renewed. Renewals only: _. Tel. 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