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 A GREAT HISTORICAL DOCUMENT .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 
 
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