Evening star., 1917-01-22
must be a peace without victory.

must be a peace without victory.
1t is not pleasant to say this. |
beg that | may be permitted to
put my own Interpretation upon
it and that it may be understood
that no other Interpretation was
in my thought. l am seeking only
to face realities and to face them
without soft concealments. Vic
tory would mean peace forced
upon the loser, a victor's terms
imposed upon the vanquished.
"It would be accepted in humil-
iation, under duress, at an intol-
orable sacrifice, and would leave
a sting, a resentment, a bitter
memory upon which terms of
peace would rest, not permanent
ly, but only as upon quicksand.
Only peace between equals can
last. Only peace the very prin-
ciple of which is equality and a
common participation in a COM
mon benefit. The right state of
mind, the right feeling between
nations, is as necessary for last
ing peace as is the just settlement
Of vexed questions of territory or
i of racial and national allegiance.
/ "The equality of nations upon
which peace must be founded if it
is to last must be an equality of
rights; the guarantees exchanged
must neither recognize nor imply
difference between big nations
and small, ,between.those that are
powerful and those that are
weak. Right must be based upon
the common strength, not upon
the individual strength, of the ma
tions upon whose concert peace
will depend.
Equality of territory or of re-
sources there, of course, cannot
be; nor any other sort of equal
ity not gained in the ordinary
peaceful and legitimate develop
! ment of the peoples themselves.
But no one asks or expects any
, thing more than an equality of
rights. Mankind is looking now
for freedom of life, not for
equipoises- OF power.
And there is a deeper thing
involved than even equality Of
right among organized nations.
No peace can last, or ought to
last, which does not recognize and
accept the principle that govern
ments derive all their just powers
from the consent of the governed,
and that no right anywhere exists
to hand people about from SOW
ereignty to sovereignty as if they
were property.
Il take 1t for granted, for in
stance, if l may venture upon a
single example, that statesmen
everywhere are agreed that there
should be a united, independent
and autonomous Poland and that
henceforth inviolable security OF
life, of worship and of industrial
and social development should be
guaranteed to all peoples who
have lived hitherto under the
power of governments devoted to
a faith and purpose hostile to
their own.
Il speak of this not because of
any desire to exalt an abstract
political principle which has al
ways been held very dear by
those who have sought to build
up liberty in America, but for the
same reason that | have spoken
of the other conditions of peace
which seem to me clearly indis-
pensable-because | wish frank
ly to uncover realities. ANY
peace which does not recognize
and accept this principle will in
evitably be upset.
1t will not rest upon the af-
fections or the convictions of
mankind. The ferment Of spirit
|of whole populations will fight
subtly and constantly against it,
and all the world will sympathize.
The world can be at peace only
if its life is stable, and there can
be no stability where the will is
in rebellion, where there is not
tranquility of spirit and sense of
justice, of freedom and of right.
$50 far as practicable, more
over, every great people now
struggling toward a full develop
ment of its resources and of its
powers should be assured a direct
outlet to the great highways of
the sea. Where this cannot be
done by the cession of territory