The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-01-23

some sort of international sanction for
 preservation of the future peace Of the
 world, now already accepted in principle
 by both sets of belligerents in their re- plies to President Wilson's peace note. lies the possibility, which the President today openly expressed, that thereby may be laid the groundwork upon which
 an approach may be made to an end of the present conflict.
 In public utterances the President has hitherto expressed the conviction that the present was the last great war in which the United States could be a neutral; that it no longer could remain in the position
 of being half in and half out of world affairs. In his speech accepting his sec ond nomination and in other public ad-
 dresses he has touched upon the same sentiment which found it's full develop ment in his address today.
 The American people," the President told the Senate, cannot in honor with hold the, service to which they are about to be challenged
 They owe it to themselves" he said, and to the other nations of the world, to state the conditions under which they
 will feel free to render it. I am here to attempt to state those conditions. The present war must first be ended, but we owe it to candor and to just regard for the opinion of mankind to say that so far as our participation in guaran- tees of future peace is concerned, it
 makes a great deal of difference in what way and upon what terms it is ended"
 AMERICA HAS VOICE While the United States would have no voice in what those terms might be- the President said, it would have a voice in determining whether they should be made lasting by guarantees of universal covenant.
 ''No covenant of cooperative peace,' said he, that does not include the peo- ples of the new world can suffice to keep the future safe against war, and yet, there is only one sort of peace that the people of America could join in guaranteeing. The elements of that peace must be the elements that engage the confidence and satisfy the principles of
 the American governments elements con- s1stent with their political faith and with the practical convictions which the peo- ples of America have once for all em- braced and undertaken to defend" From this utterance all the President S hearers drew the common conclusion that he was holding out to the old world a warning that if it would command the potent influence of the new for the fu-
 ture peace of all, the settlement of the war must involve concession and sacri-
 flee, equality of rights, freedom of the seas, and in his own words 'inviolab ble security of life of worship and of indus trial and social development to all peo- ples who have lived hitherto under the
 power of governments devoted to a faith and purpose hostile to their own.'' He specifically mentioned that the statesmen of the belligerents have agreed 1 that there should be "a united, indepen- dent and autonomous plan" but his words were construed to apply to Alsace- Lorraine, Belgium, the Balkans, the Ital- ian portions of Austria and the mixed nationalities of the Balkans as well.
 VIEW OF OPPONENTS Some of the senators who disagreed With the President openly referred to this
 portion of his address as "an attempt to
 parcel out Europe and an interference Tn the affairs of the eastern hemisphere Nevertheless the President went ex-
 haustively into that phase of his proposal saying the world can be at peace only if life is stable, and there can be no sta- bility where the will is in rebellion; where there is not tranquility of spirit
 and sense of justice, of freedom and of right.
 Equality of territory or of resources, of course, there cannot be, nor any other sort of equality not gained in the ordi- nary peaceful and legitimate development Of the people themselves. But no one
 asks or expects anything more than an
 equality of rights Mankind is looking now for freedom of life, not for equipoises of power" Dealing with the question of arma- ments which he declared to be 'the most immediate and intensely practical ques- tion connected with the future of nations and of mankind" the President declared there could be no assurance of safety if great armaments are to be built up and maintained and that difficult as the ques- tion might be, it must be faced with the
 greatest candor, decided in a spirit of real accommodation"
 Previously the President had touched
 upon collateral point when he said:
 Mere agreements may not make peace secure. It will be absolutely necessary that force. be created as a gauarantor of the permanency of the settlement, so
 much greater than the force of any na- tion now engaged or any alliance hitherto formed or projected, that no nation, no
 probable combination of nations, could face or withstand it. If the peace pres- ently to be made is to endure it must be a peace made secure by the organized major force of mankind" This declara- ton called to the mindsof the President S hearers the statement of Arthur Balfour, British foreign minister, in his recent note which said an international sanction for peace should be backed by a force
 which would give pause to the hardest aggressor."
 OPEN MESSAGE TO WORLD President Wilson's address was
 sent to American diplomats in the bclligerent countries last Monday, two days before the United States received the note from Minister
 BalfOur of the British foreign of flee. suppIementing the entente reply to his peace note, and on n eign Minister Zimmerman declared it was impossible for the central
 powers to openly lay down their
 terms