Why We are at War | Page 2

sought this opportunity to address you because I thought that I
owed it to you, as the council associated with me in the final
determination of our international obligations, to disclose to you,
without reserve, the thought and purpose that have been taking form in
my mind in regard to the duty of our Government in these days to come
when it will be necessary to lay afresh and upon a new plan the
foundations of peace among the nations.
DECLARES PEACE IS NOT FAR OFF
It is inconceivable that the people of the United States should play no
part in that great enterprise. To take part in such a service will be the
opportunity for which they have sought to prepare themselves by the
very principles and purposes of their polity and the approved practices
of their Government, ever since the days when they set up a new nation
in the high and honorable hope that it might in all that it was and did
show mankind the way to liberty.
They cannot, in honor, withhold the service to which they are now
about to be challenged. They do not wish to withhold it. But they owe it
to themselves and to the other nations of the world to state the
conditions under which they will feel free to render it. That service is
nothing less than this--to add their authority and their power to the
authority and force of other nations to guarantee peace and justice
throughout the world. Such a settlement cannot now be long postponed.
It is right that before it comes this Government should frankly
formulate the conditions upon which it would feel justified in asking
our people to approve its formal and solemn adherence to a league for
peace. I am here to attempt to state those conditions.
MUST NOT SERVE SELFISH AIMS
The present war must first be ended; but we owe it to candor and to a
just regard for the opinion of mankind to say that so far as our
participation in guarantees of future peace is concerned it makes a great
deal of difference in what way and upon what terms it is ended. The
treaties and agreements which bring it to an end must embody terms
which will create a peace that is worth guaranteeing and preserving, a
peace that will win the approval of mankind; not merely a peace that
will serve the several interests and immediate aims of the nations
engaged.
We shall have no voice in determining what those terms shall be, but

we shall, I feel sure, have a voice in determining whether they shall be
made lasting or not by the guarantees of a universal covenant, and our
judgment upon what is fundamental and essential as a condition
precedent to permanency should be spoken now, not afterward, when it
may be too late.
No covenant of co-operative peace that does not include the peoples of
the New World can suffice to keep the future safe against war, and yet
there is only one sort of peace that the peoples of America could join in
guaranteeing.
The elements of that peace must be elements that engage the
confidence and satisfy the principles of the American Governments,
elements consistent with their political faith and the practical
convictions which the peoples of America have once for all embraced
and undertaken to defend.
WORLD ALLIANCE IS NECESSARY
I do not mean to say that any American Government would throw any
obstacle in the way of any terms of peace the Governments now at war
might agree upon, or seek to upset them when made, whatever they
might be. I only take it for granted that mere terms of peace between
the belligerents will not satisfy even the belligerents themselves.
Mere agreements may not make peace secure. It will be absolutely
necessary that a force be created as a guarantor of the permanency of
the settlement so much greater than the force of any nation now
engaged in any alliance hitherto formed or projected that no nation, no
probable combination of nations, could face or withstand it.
If the peace presently to be made is to endure it must be a peace made
secure by the organized major force of mankind.
The terms of the immediate peace agreed upon will determine whether
it is a peace for which such a guarantee can be secured. The question
upon which the whole future peace and policy of the world depends is
this:
Is the present war a struggle for a just and secure peace or only for a
new balance of power? If it be only a struggle for a new balance of
power, who will guarantee, who can guarantee, the stable equilibrium
of the new arrangement?
NO VICTORY FOR EITHER SIDE