and compelling. There can be no trust or intimacy between the peoples of the world without them. The free, constant, unthreatened intercourse of nations is an essential part of the process of peace and of development. It need not be difficult either to define or to secure the freedom of the seas if the governments of the world sincerely desire to come to an agreement concerning it.

It is a problem closely connected with the limitation of naval armaments and the cooperation of the navies of the world in keeping the seas at once free and safe. And the question of limiting naval armaments opens the wider and perhaps more difficult question of the limitation of armies and of all programmes of military preparation. Difficult and delicate as these questions are, they must be faced with the utmost candour and decided in a spirit of real accommodation if peace is to come with healing in its wings, and come to stay. Peace cannot be had without concession and sacrifice. There can be no sense of safety and equality among the nations if great preponderating armaments are henceforth to continue here and there to be built up and maintained. The statesmen of the world must plan for peace and nations must adjust and accommodate their policy to it as they have planned for war and made ready for pitiless contest and rivalry. The question of armaments, whether on land or sea, is the most immediately and intensely practical question connected with the future fortunes of nations and of mankind.

I have spoken upon these great matters without reserve and with the utmost explicitness because it has seemed to me to be necessary if the world's yearning desire for peace was anywhere to find free voice and utterance. Perhaps I am the only person in high authority amongst all the peoples of the world who is at liberty to speak and hold nothing back. I am speaking as an individual, and yet I am speaking also, of course, as the responsible head of a great government, and I feel confident that I have said what the people of the United States would wish me to say. May I not add that I hope and believe that I am in effect speaking for liberals and friends of humanity in every nation and of every

programme of liberty? I would fain believe that I am speaking for the silent mass of mankind everywhere who have as yet had no place or opportunity to speak their real hearts out concerning the death and ruin they see to have come already upon the persons and the homes they hold most dear.

And in holding out the expectation that the people and Government of the United States will join the other civilized nations of the world in guaranteeing the permanence of peace upon such terms as I have named I speak with the greater boldness and confidence because it is clear to every man who can think that there is in this promise no breach in either our traditions or our policy as a nation, but a fulfilment, rather, of all that we have professed or striven for.

I am proposing, as it were, that the nations should with one accord adopt the doctrine of President Monroe as the doctrine of the world; that no nation should seek to extend its policy over any other nation or people, but that every people should be left free to determine its own polity, its own way of development, unhindered, unthreatened, unafraid, the little along with the great and powerful.

I am proposing that all nations henceforth avoid entangling alliances which would draw them into competitions of power, catch them in a net of intrigue and selfish rivalry, and disturb their own affairs with influences intruded from without. There is no entangling alliance in a concert of power. When all unite to act in the same sense and with the same purpose all act in the common interest and are free to live their own lives under a common protection.

I am proposing government by the consent of the governed; that freedom of the seas which in international conference after conference representatives of the United States have urged with the eloquence of those who are the convinced disciples of liberty; and that moderation of armaments which makes of armies and navies a power for order merely, not an instrument of aggression or of selfish violence.

These are American principles, American policies. We could stand for no others. And they are also the prin

ciples and policies of forward looking men and women everywhere, of every modern nation, of every enlightened community. They are the principles of mankind and must prevail.

APPENDIX III

Speech of February 28, 1917, in reply to the President's Address of January 22, 1917.

MR. LODGE. Let me say, first, Mr. President, that I shall make no allusion whatever to the note from Germany which has startled the country this morning. That note is in the hands of the President, in the hands of the Chief Executive. It places upon him a great responsibility, and no word shall fall from my lips which by any possibility could embarrass him in dealing with that note. I shall confine myself absolutely to the propositions of the recent address by the President to the Senate.

Mr. President, I have cherished an earnest hope that we might conclude the necessary business of Congress before the 4th of March and spare to ourselves and to the country the misfortune of another summer session. It is therefore with extreme reluctance that I venture to take any time in discussing a subject not immediately connected with the measures now demanding action if we are to avoid an extra session. I can find justification for doing so only in the extreme seriousness of the questions forced upon the attention of Congress by the President's address delivered in the Senate Chamber on Monday, the 22d of January. Moreover, the President was kind enough to say that he sought this opportunity to address us because he thought that he owed it to us, as the council associated with him in the final determination of our international obligations, to disclose to us without reserve the thought and purpose that had been taking form in his mind in regard to the duty of our Government in the days to come when it will be necessary to lay afresh and upon a new plan the foundations of peace among the nations.

The President has thus recognized the duties imposed upon the Senate by the Constitution in regard to our

foreign relations and has invited an expression of our opinions. We have abundant evidence of the gravity of the questions thus presented. The newspaper press and others, employing generous if inaccurate language, have decorated the speech with the adjective "epochal,' which calls at once to mind the movement of glaciers and vast tracts of geologic time. I shall content myself with a simpler word and say that the President's utterances in this Chamber, especially as he declared that he said what the people of the United States would wish him to say, and that he was setting forth the principles of mankind, are in a high degree important. I do not think that the failure on the part of the Senate to discuss the President's statements would imply either approval or disapproval or would by implication bind either the Senate or the country to any given course of action. But none the less it seems to me most desirable that as we were chosen in this instance to be the medium of communication with foreign nations and with the people of the United States we should at least give our own understanding of what the President proposed.

It is not necessary, of course, to say anything as to the many general and just observations made by the President in regard to the horrors and miseries of war, or the dangers and complications with which the present conflict threatens the United States, or as to his or our duty as servants of humanity. Of course, we all agree most heartily with the proposition that peace-just and righteous peace is infinitely better than war; that virtue is better than vice; that, in Browning's words:

"It's wiser being good than bad;
It's safer being meek than fierce:
It's fitter being sane than mad.”

In all these declarations we must be cordially and thoroughly of one mind. All that I desire to do is to speak briefly of the substantive propositions contained in the President's address and, by analysis, discover, if I can, to precisely what policies and course of action he is undertaking to commit the country. We have a right-indeed, it is our duty-to learn, if possible, just what the Presi