Politicians From Virginia

"When we had finished this we discussed the English Labor program recently announced at Nottingham. Much to my surprise, he said he did not disagree with it further than the minimum wage which he confessed to know little about and he had not thought of any visible way by which it could be maintained. We discussed the trend of liberal opinion in the world and came to the conclusion that the wise thing to do was to lead the movement intelligently and sympathetically and not allow the ignoble element to run away with the situation as they had done in Russia. He spoke of the necessity of forming a new political party in order to achieve these ends. He did not believe the Democratic Party could be used as an instrument to go as far as it would be needful to go and largely because of the reactionary element in the South. I disagreed with him. I thought it would be unwise to attempt the building of a new party without first seeing whether the Democratic Party could be forced into the direction we thought advisable. I did not believe the people of the South would sustain the reactionary element provided the President came out strongly enough against them. I do not know whether I convinced him but at least he stopped arguing against my opinion. Again let me say that the President has started so actively on the liberal road that I find myself, instead of leading as I always did at first, rather in the rear and holding him back. He turned to me and said almost pathetically, “that is a big program for a tired old man to think of undertaking.”"

"[David Lloyd George] said he felt sure Wilson would occupy a great place in history. Neither he (LG) nor Clemenceau in connection with the Peace Conference had done any special thing which could be ear-marked as his work, whereas, for better or worse, Wilson had advocated an idea which had been embodied in the League of Nations. The League might fail, but it would be an historic fact."

"[David Lloyd George] said he thought him more sincere than he had done at first. He talks a lot of sentimental platitudes, but he believes them. He is not a hypocrite nor a humbug. He is sincere. The difference between his point of view and that of old Clemenceau is marked. The old boy believes in none of Wilson's gods and does not understand them."

"I was seated between Jesus Christ and Napoleon."

"Woodrow Wilson dreamed a dream of a League of Nations, but he died before the promise was delivered."

"From Ulysses Grant to William McKinley, the prevailing conservative doctrine was a severe and self defeating laissez faire that left the big fish to eat the little fish while preaching the merits of social Darwinism and the survival of the fittest. Good presidents like Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson were those who dared risk the power of government to challenge this."

"To see the British Prime Minister watching the company, with six or seven senses not available to ordinary men, judging character, motive, and subconscious impulse, perceiving what each was thinking and even what each was going to say next, and compounding with telepathic instinct the argument or appeal best suited to the vanity, weakness, or self-interest of his immediate auditor, was to realize that the poor President would be playing blind man's buff in that party."

"As a college undergraduate some decades ago, I was assigned an essay on the three most evil men of the 20th century. Adolf Hitler, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong were obvious choices, and most of my fellow students chose from that group. I agreed on Hitler and Lenin, but felt that Stalin and Mao were just additional manifestations of the evil Lenin embodied. My third choice was Woodrow Wilson, which upset my professor at the time, but which I stand by today. The Nazis and the Soviet Empire are gone and while meager bands of the admirers of both survive to inhabit steamy corners of various ideological swamps, the evil for which Hitler and Mao were responsible died with the last century. Woodrow Wilson’s legacy, however, simply won’t go away. Schools and think tanks are named for the man and various polls continue to rate him as a great or near-great president. The “progressive” politics of today’s Democrats are part of his legacy, as is the instability of much of the world in which we live. Wilson, the first college president to occupy the White House, banned blacks from government restrooms, was the first president to openly attack the U.S. Constitution and eagerly support laws to prosecute and imprison those who disagreed with his policies. His hostility to black Americans was matched only by his antipathy toward Italian, German and Irish Americans and his desire to rid the nation of those he referred to dismissively as “hyphenated Americans” and against who he railed incessantly."

"Even more dramatic was the eagerness, five months later, with which the Wilson administration launched the United States into war corporatism. The pointers had, indeed, been there before. In 1909, Herbert Croly in The Promise of American Life had predicted it could only be fulfilled by the state deliberately intervening to promote 'a more highly socialized democracy'. Three years later, Charles Van Hise's Concentration and Control: a Solution of the Trust Problem in the United States presented the case for corporatism. These ideas were behind Theodore Roosevelt's 'New Nationalism', which Wilson appropriated and enlarged to win the war. There was a Fuel Administration, which enforced 'gasless Sundays,' a War Labor Policies Board, intervening in industrial disputes, a Food Administration under Herbert Hoover, fixing prices for commodities, and a Shipping Board which launched 100 new vessels on 4 July 1918 (it had already taken over 9 million tons into its operating control). The central organ was the War Industries Board, whose first achievement was the scrapping of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, a sure index of corporatism, and whose members (Bernard Baruch, Hugh Johnson, Gerard Swope and others) ran a kindergarten for 1920s interventionism and the New Deal, which in turn inspired the New Frontier and the Great Society. The war corporatism of 1917 began one of the great continuities of modern American history, sometimes underground, sometimes on the surface, which culminated in the vast welfare state which Lyndon Johnson brought into being in the late 1960s. John Dewey noted at the time that the war had undermined the hitherto irresistible claims of private property: 'No matter how many among the special agencies for public control decay with the disappearance of war stress, the movement will never go backward.' This proved an accurate prediction. At the same time, restrictive new laws, such as the Espionage Act (1917) and the Sedition Act (1918), were often savagely enforced: the socialist Eugene Debs got ten years for an anti-war speech, and one man who obstructed the draft received a forty-year sentence. In all the belligerents, and not just in Russia, the climactic year 1917 demonstrated that private liberty and private property tended to stand or fall together."

"As I have intimated, the Commission has recommended that legislation for local credit associations, to be formed by groups of small farmers, be left to the States. This seems to me to be a wise suggestion. Such associations are not needed in many of the States. They are most needed in the southern States where there are a great many poor farmers owning or renting small farms. It is highly desirable that they be released from their dependence on merchants. The formation among them of credit associations with unlimited liability of members might result in a credit foundation on which loans could be made. The unlimited liability feature would not be so distasteful here, perhaps, as elsewhere, since their liability is already unlimited. Cooperation is the essence of these enterprises. Its growth will probably be slow and it will be retarded by the fact that two races are living in the South side by side. Public opinion will have to be educated. Pains should be taken to place before the people the best forms and methods of organization, and the States should be induced if possible to consider and take up necessary legislative action prerequisite to the formation of these associations."

"In the eighty years since he left office, Wilson’s reputation has risen and fallen regularly—but he remains as fascinating and central to an understanding of modern American foreign policy as ever. His many supporters, from Herbert Hoover to Robert McNamara, have argued that his enemies in both Paris and the United States Senate were responsible for the undoing of one of history’s noblest dreams. Others, including Senator Jesse Helms, have viewed Wilson’s determined adversary, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, as a principled protector of American sovereignty and charged Wilson with seeking to undermine the American Constitution. Another school of thought, especially prevalent in the later years of the Cold War, criticized Wilson for unrealistic, overly moralistic goals: among its best-known practitioners are George F. Kennan and Henry Kissinger, who accused Wilson of “extraordinary conceit,” even while conceding that he “originated what would become the dominant intellectual school of American foreign policy.” (To Kissinger’s horror, his president, Richard Nixon placed Wilson’s portrait in the place of honor in the Cabinet Room.)"

"Twice in this century, the world has been threatened by a catastrophe; twice this catastrophe was bom in Europe, and twice you Americans, along with others, were called upon to save Europe, the whole world and yourselves. The first rescue mission—among other things—provided significant help to us Czechs and Slovaks. Thanks to the great support of your President Wilson, our first president, Tomás Garrigue Masaryk, could found our modern independent state. He founded it, as you know, on the same principles on which the United States of America had been founded, as Masaryk’s manuscripts held by the Library of Congress testify."

"Woodrow Wilson has now joined his worthy colleagues in the jingo movement, echoing their clamor for preparedness and their howl of "America for Americans." The difference between Wilson and Roosevelt is this: Roosevelt, a born bully, uses the club; Wilson, the historian, the college professor, wears the smooth polished university mask, but underneath it he, like Roosevelt, has but one aim, to serve the big interests, to add to those who are growing phenomenally rich by the manufacture of military supplies."

"We don't need Karl Marx's conception of a grand warfare between the classes to see that it is in the interest of complex management, economic or political, to dumb people down, to demoralize them, to divide them from one another, and to discard them if they don't conform. Class may frame the proposition, as when Woodrow Wilson, then president of Princeton University, said the following to the New York City School Teachers Association in 1909: "We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forgo the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.""

"Democratic President Woodrow Wilson's Cabinet segregated government offices. Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed KKK member Hugo Black to the Supreme Court. Roosevelt opposed federal lynching laws. Lester Maddox, George Wallace and Orval Faubus, all Democratic governors, were fervent racists. Democratic Attorney General Robert Kennedy had Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. wiretapped, much like we do today to suspected terrorists and criminals. The Democratic Party keeps black Americans and all minority groups in poverty with 'entitlement' programs and policies preventing advancement."

"I do not know how to avoid the conclusion that a man who is capable of taking the illusions of religion so literally and is so sure of a special personal intimacy with the Almighty is unfitted for relations with ordinary children of men."

"With the exception of Gladstone, probably no man in supreme power in the life of any nation was so profoundly imbued by the Christian faith."

"The Women's Party picketed almost continuously from January 1917 until March 19, 1919. They picketed the White House and Capitol, held military parades, return receptions for Wilson after his trips to Europe and receptions when he departed. They picketed him in Washington, Boston and New York. Only the Irish had attempted such tactics. Later, a Children's Crusade for Amnesty picketed President Harding. Suffrage banners were addressed to foreign visitors and President Wilson's speeches on "freedom" and "democracy" at home and abroad were burned by the suffragists in a "watch-fire of freedom" urn."

"Brave women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony had been the early pioneers, facing abuse and ridicule, violence and even arrests for attempting to vote. Later, women like Dr. Anna Shaw and Carrie Chapman Catt headed the National American Women's Suffrage Association, which struggled against "the lethargy of women and the opposition of men." But by 1916 a younger, bolder and more militant group emerged, which was dissatisfied with the slower process of winning suffrage, state by state, and fought for a constitutional amendment. They organized the Women's Party in 1916, which planned to mobilize the women's vote in all suffrage states only for parties and candidates who would support national suffrage. That year a group of wealthy suffragists financed and toured in a Suffrage Special. They did not campaign directly for the Republican candidate, Charles Evans Hughes, but their slogan was anti-Wilson: "Vote against Wilson! He Kept Us Out of Suffrage!" Many voted for Eugene V. Debs, then in prison."

"Woodrow Wilson spoke fluently and freely on all subjects as a "liberal," but his sorry deeds belied his words. "Self-determination" and "make the world safe for democracy" were the most vulnerable. Demonstrations and delegations of advocates of peace, "Hands off Russia," freedom for Ireland, amnesty for political prisoners and last, but not least, "Votes for Women," confronted him at every turn. His administration was faced with the great steel strike of 1919-20. His plans to join the League of Nations were defeated by the Senate. Members of his administration resigned in protest over various issues-a secretary of state over war, a collector of the New York port over suffrage, the issue that perhaps plagued him most."

"It's not that Jackson had a "dark side," as his apologists rationalize and which all human beings have, but rather that Jackson was the Dark Knight in the formation of the United States as a colonialist, imperialist democracy, a dynamic formation that continues to constitute the core of US patriotism. The most revered presidents-Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Wilson, both Roosevelts, Truman, Kennedy, Reagan, Clinton, Obama-have each advanced populist imperialism while gradually increasing inclusion of other groups beyond the core of descendants of old settlers into the ruling mythology. All the presidents after Jackson march in his footsteps. Consciously or not, they refer back to him on what is acceptable, how to reconcile democracy and genocide and characterize it as freedom for the people."

"In his address to Congress on January 8th, President Wilson said: "It is our heartfelt desire and hope that some way may be opened whereby we may be privileged to assist the people of Russia to attain their utmost hope of liberty..." He professed to be speaking for the American people, and we hope that he was. He was speaking for us. And we would only wish to add two things to his words before the world. First, that the people of Russia, a vast majority of them comprised in the Left Wing of the Socialist Revolutionaries and the Bolsheviki, have set before themselves a hope of liberty that involves the ownership and control of all land, plants, and machinery by those who work them, and the abolition of profits and wage-dependence altogether. We should like to add in parenthesis after the words, utmost hope of liberty, the words, (See the Communist Manifesto). And then, second, we should like to add for ourselves, that it is our heartfelt desire and hope that some way may be opened to awaken in the people of the United States that same "utmost hope of liberty," and that we may be privileged to assist them to attain it."

"In those days, 1913 and 1914, the leadership of the Nation was in the hands of a great President who was seeking to recover for our social system ground that had been lost under his conservative predecessor, and to restore something of the fighting liberal spirit which the Nation had gained under Theodore Roosevelt. It seemed one of our great national tragedies that just when Woodrow Wilson was beginning to accomplish definite improvements in the living standards of America, the World War not only interrupted his course, but laid the foundation for twelve years of retrogression. I say this advisedly because it is not progress, but the reverse, when a nation goes through the madness of the twenties, piling up paper profits, hatching all manner of speculations and coming inevitably to the day when the bubble bursts."

"We all remember well known examples of what an ill-advised shift from liberal to conservative leadership can do to an incompleted liberal program. Theodore Roosevelt, for example, started a march of progress during his seven years in the Presidency but, after four years of President Taft, little was left of the progress that had been made. Think of the great liberal achievements of Woodrow Wilson's New Freedom and how quickly they were liquidated under President Harding. We have to have reasonable continuity in liberal government in order to get permanent results."

"In testimony of the respect in which his memory is held by the Government and people of the United States, I do hereby direct that the flags of the White House and of the several Departmental buildings be displayed at half staff for a period of thirty days, and that suitable military and naval honors under orders of the Secretary of War and of the Secretary of the Navy may be rendered on the day of the funeral."

"To the people of the United States, the death of Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States from March 4, 1913, to March 4, 1921, which occurred at 11:15 o'clock today at his home at Washington, District of Columbia, deprives the country of a most distinguished citizen, and is an event which causes universal and genuine sorrow. To many of us it brings the sense of a profound personal bereavement... His early profession as a lawyer was abandoned to enter academic life. In this chosen field he attained the highest rank as an educator, and has left his impress upon the intellectual thought of the country. From the Presidency of Princeton University he was called by his fellow citizens to be the Chief Executive of the State of New Jersey. The duties of this high office he so conducted as to win the confidence of the people of the United States, who twice elected him to the Chief Magistracy of the Republic. As President of the United States he was moved by an earnest desire to promote the best interests of the country as he conceived them. His acts were prompted by high motives and his sincerity of purpose can not be questioned. He led the nation through the terrific struggle of the world war with a lofty idealism which never failed him. He gave utterance to the aspiration of humanity with an eloquence which held the attention of all the earth and made America a new and enlarged influence in the destiny of mankind."

"The European War, which began in 1914, is now generally recognized to have been a war between two rival empires, an old one and a new, the new becoming such a successful rival of the old, commercially and militarily, that the world-stage was, or was thought to be, not large enough for both. Germany spoke frankly of her need for expansion, and for new fields of enterprise for her surplus population. England, who likes to fight under a high-sounding title, got her opportunity in the invasion of Belgium. She was entering the war 'in defense of the freedom of small nationalities'. America at first looked on, but she accepted the motive in good faith, and she ultimately joined in as the champion of the weak against the strong. She concentrated attention upon the principle of self-determination and the reign of law based upon the consent of the governed. "Shall", asked President Wilson, "the military power of any small nation, or group of nations, be suffered to determine the fortunes of peoples over whom they have no right to rule except the right of force?" But the most flagrant instance of violation of this principle did not seem to strike the imagination of President Wilson, and he led the American nation- peopled so largely by Irish men and women who had fled from British oppression- into the battle and to the side of the nation that for hundreds of years had determined the fortunes of the Irish people against their wish, and had ruled them, and was still ruling them, by no other right than the right of force."

"The League of Nations had no sooner been created than it received an almost mortal blow. The United States abandoned President Wilson’s offspring. The President himself, ready to do battle for his ideals, suffered a paralytic stroke just as he was setting forth on his campaign, and lingered henceforward a futile wreck for a great part of two long and vital years, at the end of which his party and his policy were swept away by the Republican Presidential victory of 1920. Across the Atlantic on the morrow of the Republican success isolationist conceptions prevailed. Europe must be left to stew in its own juice, and must pay its lawful debts. At the same time tariffs were raised to prevent the entry of the goods by which alone these debts could be discharged. At the Washington Conference of 1921, far-reaching proposals for naval disarmament were made by the United States, and the British and American Governments proceeded to sink their battleships and break up their military establishments with gusto. It was argued in odd logic that it would be immoral to disarm the vanquished unless the victors also stripped themselves of their weapons. The finger of Anglo-American reprobation was presently to be pointed at France, deprived alike of the Rhine frontier and of her treaty guarantee, for maintaining, even on a greatly reduced scale, a French Army based upon universal service."

"The war sharpened Liberal dissatisfaction with the traditional methods of conducting foreign policy. ... They found in President Wilson a man after their own hearts. His views and theirs coincided at many points: a just peace without annexations or indemnities; the map of Europe redrawn on the principle of self-determination; "open covenants openly arrived at", arbitration and the rule of law; disarmament and the replacing of exclusive alliances by a League of Nations; above all, a devotion to the ideal of the brotherhood of man."

"Raymond Fosdick came to my room and awakened me last night to tell me the following story and ask me what he should do about it: When he reached the 23rd street ferry on his way to the boat at 6 A.M. December 4, he noticed hundreds of young men and women and old men and women hurrying off the ferry boat and away into the darkness. He asked his tax driver who they were and was told that they were sweat shop workers. He happened to meet one of them buying a morning paper and asked the man how long he worked a day. The man replied: “Fourteen hours. But do you see that boat (pointing across the river towards the George Washington) there’s a man aboard her that is going to Europe to change all that.” I advised Fosdick to tell the story to the President and to advise him that he must see to it that a bill of industrial human rights was written into the treaty of peace – a bill providing for world wide maximum hours of labor (at least in civilized countries) minimum wages, unemployment insurance, etc. Fosdick did this today. The President replied that it frightened him to think how much the common people of the world expect of him. That he did not consider it possible to take up any such matters at the peace conference. That he hoped the international labor conference on which he looked with much favo[r] would press for these matters."

"McCarthy was a Republican. The Democrats, however, have skeletons in their own closet and it's worth remembering them, too. For example, Democrat Woodrow Wilson's Attorney General, A. Mitchell Palmer, who was just as rabid an anti-Communist as McCarthy, did far more to repress free speech and political freedom than McCarthy ever attempted."

"I sat next to the Duchess at tea. It was just as I feared it would be: Her rumblings abdominal Were truly phenomenal, And everyone thought it was me!"

"As a beauty I'm not a great star, There are others more handsome by far, But my face, I don't mind it, Because I'm behind it — Tis the people in front that I jar."

"I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the civilized world: no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men."

"It is like writing history with lightning. And my only regret is that it is all so terribly true."

"Gossips are only sociologists upon a mean and petty scale."

"If I am to speak ten minutes, I need a week for preparation; if fifteen minutes, three days; if half an hour, two days; if an hour, I am ready now."

"The great malady of public life is cowardice. Most men are not untrue, but they are afraid. Most of the errors of public life, if my observation is to be trusted, come not because men are morally bad, but because they are afraid of somebody. God knows why they should be: it is generally shadows they are afraid of."

"The sum of the whole matter is this, that our civilization cannot survive materially unless it be redeemed spiritually."

"Perhaps it was providential that I was stricken down when I was. Had I kept my health I should have carried the League. Events have shown that the world was not ready for it. It would have been a failure. Countries like France and Italy are unsympathetic with such an organisation. Time and sinister happenings may eventually convince them that some such scheme is required. It may not be my scheme. It may be some other. I see now, however, that my plan was premature. The world was not ripe for it."

"Of course, like every other man of intelligence and education I do believe in organic evolution. It surprises me that at this late date such questions should be raised."

"It will take one hundred years to eradicate this prejudice, and we must deal with it as practical men. Segregation is not humiliating, but a benefit, and ought to be so regarded by you gentlemen."

"Reconstruction was detestable] not because the Republican Party was dreaded but because the dominance of an ignorant and inferior race was justly dreaded."

"The highest and best form of efficiency is the spontaneous cooperation of a free people."

"Do not think of this treaty of peace as merely a settlement with Germany. It is that. It is a very severe settlement with Germany, but there is not anything in it that she did not earn. Indeed, she earned more than she can ever be able to pay for, and the punishment exacted of her is not a punishment greater than she can bear, and it is absolutely necessary in order that no other nation may ever plot such a thing against humanity and civilization. But the treaty is so much more than that. It is not merely a settlement with Germany; it is a readjustment of those great injustices which underlie the whole structure of European and Asiatic society. This is only the first of several treaties. They are all constructed upon the same plan. The Austrian treaty follows the same lines. The treaty with Hungary follows the same lines. The treaty with Bulgaria follows the same lines. The treaty with Turkey, when it is formulated, will follow the same lines. What are those lines? They are based upon the purpose to see that every government dealt with in this great settlement is put in the hands of the people and taken out of the hands of coteries and of sovereigns who had no right to rule over the people. It is a people's treaty, that accomplishes by a great sweep of practical justice the liberation of men who never could have liberated themselves, and the power of the most powerful nations has been devoted not to their aggrandizement but to the liberation of people whom they could have put under their control if they had chosen to do so. Not one foot of territory is demanded by the conquerors, not one single item of submission to their authority is demanded by them. The men who sat around that table in Paris knew that the time had come when the people were no longer going to consent to live under masters, but were going to live the lives that they chose themselves, to live under such governments as they chose themselves to erect. That is the fundamental principle of this great settlement. And we did not stop with that. We added a great international charter for the rights of labor. Reject this treaty, impair it, and this is the consequence to the laboring men of the world, that there is no international tribunal which can bring the moral judgments of the world to bear upon the great labor questions of the day. What we need to do with regard to the labor questions of the day, my fellow countrymen, is to lift them into the light, is to lift them out of the haze and distraction of passion, of hostility, not into the calm spaces where men look at things without passion. The more men you get into a great discussion the more you exclude passion. Just so soon as the calm judgment of the world is directed upon the question of justice to labor, labor is going to have a forum such as it never was supplied with before, and men everywhere are going to see that the problem of labor is nothing more nor less than the problem of the elevation of humanity. We must see that all the questions which have disturbed the world, all the questions which have eaten into the confidence of men toward their governments, all the questions which have disturbed the processes of industry, shall be brought out where men of all points of view, men of all attitudes of mind, men of all kinds of experience, may contribute their part to the settlement of the great questions which we must settle and can not ignore."

"My dear Swope, Your letter of yesterday interests me very deeply, I need hardly say, and furnishes much material for constructive thinking, but my present judgment is that this is not the time for formulation. If we were dealing with only one class, a statement could be made which I think would guide and stimulate rather than disturb, but just so certainly as such a statement was attempted at this time, there would spring up a grand controversy in which the selfish and exclusive interests of the country would speak loudest because through the largest number of the journals and magazines. I am afraid that, while we could easily hold our own in such a debate, this is not the wise time to start a debate which would distract attention from the matters immediately in hand and pressing for the right solution. Don’t you think there is something in that? Cordially and sincerely yours, Woodrow Wilson."

"Those who know you, know what a passion you have always felt for the many as against the few. Your life has been marked by real devotion to the cause of the people. Would it not be wise now to make a reaffirmation of this faith; to visualize for those who see in your [you] their friend and leader those conditions of life that the new order is to create? In such an exposition there could be included such points as: Living wage; hours of labor; representation of labor in the direct[or]ate of the undertaking in which it is engaged; profit-sharing; pension system; old age; health and employment insurance; national labor exchanges; housing; welfare conditions; the right to change employment without sacrifice of pension interest (with which goes the connotation of reward for continuous and efficient service); plans for the transitional period of demobilization; greater ease of land purchases; elasticity in loaning operations; readjustments of taxation; the development of a deeper national and community interest. This is but a rough outline of the points that might be encompassed in such an address as I have in mind. Some of them, perhaps, are visionary and impractical, but I am including them because even if they are not susceptible of immediate achievement they belong, properly, in such a vision of the future as you, best of all, could paint. You have done it for the world. Why not draw in the details for America?"

"I have spoken thus only that the whole world may know the true spirit of America — that men everywhere may know that our passion for justice and for self-government is no mere passion of words but a passion which, once set in action, must be satisfied. The power of the United States is a menace to no nation or people. It will never be used in aggression or for the aggrandisement of any selfish interest of our own. It springs out of freedom and is for the service of freedom."

"Our whole strength will be put into this war of emancipation, — emancipation from the threat and attempted mastery of selfish groups of autocratic rulers, — whatever the difficulties and present partial delays. We are indomitable in our power of independent action and can in no circumstances consent to live in a world governed by intrigue and force. We believe that our own desire for a new international order under which reason and justice and the common interests of mankind shall prevail is the desire of enlightened men everywhere. Without that new order the world will be without peace and human life will lack tolerable conditions of existence and development. Having set our hand to the task of achieving it, we shall not turn back."

"After all, the test of whether it is possible for either government to go any further in this comparison of views is simple and obvious. The principles to be applied are these: First, that each part of the final settlement must be based upon the essential justice of that particular case and upon such adjustments as are most likely to bring a peace that will be permanent; second, that peoples and provinces are not to be bartered about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were mere chattels and pawns in a game, even the great game, now forever discredited, of the balance of power; but that third, every territorial settlement involved in this war must be made in the interest and for the benefit of the populations concerned, and not as a part of any mere adjustment or compromise of claims amongst rival states; and fourth, that all well defined national aspirations shall be accorded the utmost satisfaction that can be accorded them without introducing new or perpetuating old elements of discord and antagonism that would be likely in time to breaks the peace of Europe and consequently of the world. A general peace erected upon such foundations can be discussed. Until such a peace can be secured we have no choice but to go on."