lated. And now, by circumstances which she did not choose, over which she had no control, she has been thrust out into the great game of mankind, on the stage of the world itself, and here she must know what she is about, and no nation in the world must doubt that all her forces are gathered and organized in the interest of justice, righteousness, and humane government. . . .

76. Extract from an Address of President Wilson. October 26, 1916

(New York Times, October 27, 1916)

What I intend to preach from this time on is that America must show that as a member of the family of nations she has the same attitude toward the other nations that she wishes her people to have toward each other: That America is going to take this position, that she will lend her moral influence, not only, but her physical force, if other nations will join her, to see to it that no nation and no group of nations tries to take advantage of another nation or group of nations, and that the only thing ever fought for is the common rights of humanity.

A great many men are complaining that we are not fighting now in order to get something-not something spiritual, not a right, not something we could be proud of, but something we could possess and take advantage of and trade on and profit by. They are complaining that the Government of the United States has not the spirit of other Governments, which is to put the force, the army and navy, of that Government behind investments in foreign countries. Just so certainly as you do that, you join this chaos of competing and hostile ambitions.

Have you ever heard what started the present war? If you have, I wish you would publish it, because nobody else

Nothing in particular started
There had been growing up

has, so far as I can gather. it, but everything in general. in Europe a mutual suspicion, an interchange of conjectures about what this Government and that Government was going to do, an interlacing of alliances and understandings, a complex web of intrigue and spying, that presently was sure to entangle the whole of the family of mankind on that side of the water in its meshes.

Now, revive that after this war is over and sooner or later you will have just such another war, and this is the last war of the kind or of any kind that involves the world that the United States can keep out of.

I

say

that because I believe that the business of neutrality is over; not because I want it to be over, but I mean this, that war now has such a scale that the position of neutrals sooner or later becomes intolerable. Just as neutrality would be intolerable to me if I lived in a community where everybody had to assert his own rights by force and I had to go around among my neighbors and say: "Here, this cannot last any longer; let us get together and see that nobody disturbs the peace any more." That is what society is and we have not yet a society of nations.

We must have a society of nations, not suddenly, not by insistence, not by any hostile emphasis upon the demand, but by the demonstration of the needs of the time. The nations of the world must get together and say, “Nobody can hereafter be neutral as respects the disturbance of the world's peace for an object which the world's opinion can not sanction." The world's peace ought to be disturbed if the fundamental rights of humanity are invaded, but it ought not to be disturbed for any other thing that I can think of, and America was established in order to indicate, at any rate in one Government, the fundamental rights of man.

America must hereafter be ready as a member of

the family of nations to exert her whole force, moral and physical, to the assertion of those rights throughout the round globe.

77. Extract from an Address of President Wilson. October 28, 1916

(New York Times, October 29, 1916)

We have peace, we have a peace founded upon the definite understanding that the United States, because it is powerful, self-possessed, because it has definite objects does not need to make a noise about them; because it knows that it can vindicate its right at any time, does not have to proclaim its right in terms of violent exaggeration. We have determined, whether we get the respect of the rest of the world or not, that we will deserve it by the way in which we act.

78. Extract from an Address of President Wilson. November 4, 1916

(New York Times, November 5, 1916)

The world will never be again what it has been. The United States will never be again what it has been. The United States was once in enjoyment of what we used to call splendid isolation. The three thousand miles of the Atlantic seemed to hold all European affairs at arm's length from us. The great spaces of the Pacific seemed to disclose no threat of influence upon our politics.

Now, from across the Atlantic and from across the Pacific we feel to the quick the influences which are affecting ourselves, and, in the meantime, whereas we used to be always in search of assistance and stimulation from out

of other countries, always in search of the capital of other countries to assist our investments, depending upon foreign markets for the sale of our securities, now we have bought in more than 50 per cent of those securities; we have become not the debtors but the creditors of the world, and in what other nations used to play in promoting industries which extended as wide as the world itself, we are playing the guiding part.

We can determine to a large extent who is to be financed and who is not to be financed. That is the reason I say that the United States will never be again what it has been. So it does not suffice to look, as some gentlemen are looking, back over their shoulders, to suggest that we do again what we did when we were provincial and isolated and unconnected with the great forces of the world, for now we are in the great drift of humanity which is to determine the politics of every country in the world.

With this outlook, is it worth while to stop to think of party advantage? Is it worth stopping to think of how we have voted in the past? We are now going to vote, if we be men with eyes open that can see the world, as those who wish to make a new America in a new world mean the same old thing for mankind that it meant when this great Republic was set up; mean hope and justice and righteous judgment and unselfish action. Why, my fellow-citizens, it is an unprecedented thing in the world that any nation in determining its foreign relations should be unselfish, and my ambition is to see America set the great example; not only a great example morally, but a great example intellectually.

Every man who has read and studied the great annals of this country may feel his blood warm as he feels these great forces of humanity growing stronger and stronger, not only, but knowing better and better from decade to decade how to concert action and unite their strength. In the days to come

men will no longer wonder how America is going to work out her destiny, for she will have proclaimed to them that her destiny is not divided from the destiny of the world; that her purpose is justice and love of mankind.

A LEAGUE OF NATIONS

79. Extract from a Communication of Secretary Lansing to the United States representatives at the capitals of the belligerent powers. December 18, 1916

(Congressional Record, LIV, 633)

The President suggests that an early occasion be sought to call out from all the nations now at war such an avowal of their respective views as to the terms upon which the war might be concluded and the arrangements which would be deemed satisfactory as a guaranty against its renewal or the kindling of any similar conflict in the future as would make it possible frankly to compare them. He is indifferent as to the means taken to accomplish this. He would be happy himself to serve, or even to take the initiative in its accomplishment, in any way that might prove acceptable, but he has no desire to determine the method or the instrumentality. One way will be as acceptable to him as another if only the great object he has in mind be attained.

He takes the liberty of calling attention to the fact that the objects which the statesmen of the belligerents on both sides have in mind in this war are virtually the same, as stated in general terms to their own people and to the world. Each side desires to make the rights and privileges of weak peoples and small states as secure against aggression or denial in the future as the rights and privileges of the great and powerful states now at war. Each wishes itself to be