Denver labor bulletin., 1917-09-08
PRESIDENT WILSON'S REPLY TOPOPE
BENEDICT, TERSELY DEFINING THE
ATTITUDE OF AMERICA in WORLD WAR

the German government has of late
accustomed the world. Can peace be
based upon restitution of its power
or upon any word of honor it could
pledge in a treaty of settlement and
accommodation
Freedom and Security.
! Responsible statesmen must now
everywhere see, if they never saw be-
fore, that no peace can rest securely
upon political or economic restrictions
meant to benefit some nations and
cripple or embarrass others upon vim
dictive action of any sort or any kind
of revenge or deliberate injury. The
American people have suffered intol-
cradle wrongs at the hands of the i'm
perial German government, but they
desire no reprisal upon the German
people, who have themselves suffered
all things in this war, which they did
not choose.
"They believe that peace should rest
upon the rights of peoples, not the
rights of governments-the rights of
peoples, great or small, weak or pow
erful-their equal right to freedom
and security and self-government and
to a participation upon fair terms in
the economic opportunities of the
world-the German people, of course,
included if they will accept equality
and not seek domination.
"The test, therefore, of every plan
of peace is this: Is it based upon the
faith of all the peoples involved or
merely upon the word of an ambitious
and intriguing government on the one
hand, and of a group of free peoples
on the other? This is a test which
goes to the root of the matter: and it
is the test which must be applied.
Seek no Material Gain.
"The purposes of the United States
in this war are known to the whole
world-to every people to whom the
truth has been permitted to come.
They do not need to be stated again.
We seek no material advantage of any
kind. We believe that the intolerable
wrongs done in this war by the furious
and brutal power of the imperial Ger
man government ought to be repaired,
but not at the expense of the sover-
eighty of any people-rather a vim
diCation of the sovereignty both of
those that are weak and those that are
strong.
Punitive damages, the dismember-
ment Of empires, the establishment of
selfish and exclusive economic leagues,
we deem ineXpedient and in the end
worse than futile no proper basis for
a peace of any kind, least of all for
an enduring peace. That must be
based upon justice and fairness and
the common rights Of mankind.
Plea to German People.
I'VE cannot take the word of the
present rulers of Germany as a guar
antee of anything that is to endure
unless explicitly supported by such
conclusive evidence of the will and
purpose of the German people them
selves as the other peoples of the
world would be justified in accepting.
Without such guarantees treaties of
settlement, agreements for disarma-
ment, covenants to set up arbitration
in the place of force, territorial ad-
justments, reconstitutions of small ma
tons, if made with the German gov
ernment, no man, no nation could now
depend on. We must await some new
evidence of the purposes of the great
peoples of the central powers. God
grant it may be given soon and in a
way to restore the confidence of all
peoples everywhere in the faith of ma
tions and the possibility of coven-
anted peace. -
ROBERT LONSING,
Secretary of State of the United
States of America"