The Idaho Republican. [volume] (Blackfoot, Idaho) 1904-1932, 1918-07-12
WILSON REPLEDGES
NATION TO THE
CAUSE OF HUMAN LIBERTY
Continued from page one)

of the influence they were setting
afoot-that Washington and his
associates, like the barons at Runny-
mede, spoke and acted, not for a
single people only, but for all man
kind. They were thinking, not of
themselves and of he material inter-
ests which centered in the little
and men of affairs with whom they
were accustomed to act, in Virginia
and in the colonies to the north and
south of her, but of people which
wished to be done with classes and
special interest and the authority
of men who had not had themselves
chosen to rule over them. They en-
tertained no private purpose, de-
sired no peculiar privilege. They
were consciously planning that men
America a place to which men out
of every nation might resort who
wished to share with them the rights
and privileges of free men. And we
take our cue from them-do we not
We intend What-they intend. We
here tn America believe our partici-
patton in this present war to be only
the fruitage of what they planted.
Our case differs from theirs only in
this, that it is our i1estimable priv
ilege to concert with men out of
every nation what still shall make
not only the liberties of America Sc
cure, but the liberties of every other
people as well. We are happy in
the thought that we are permitted
to do what they would have done
had they been in our place. There
must now be settled once for all
what was settled for America in the
great age upon whose inspiration
we draw today. This is surely
fitting place from which calmly to
look out upon our task, that we may
fortify our spirits for it's accom-
plishment and this is the appropriate
place from which to avow, alike to
the friends who look on and to the
friends with whom we have the
happiness to be associated in action,
the faith and purpose with which we
act.
This, then, is our conception of
the great struggle in which we are
engaged. The plot is written plain
upon every scene and every act of
the supreme tragedy. On the one
hand stand the people of the world
hot only the peoples actually ems
gagged, but many others also who
suffer under mastery, but cannot act;
people of many races and in every
part of the world,--the people of
stricken Russia still among the rest
tho they are for the moment unor-
ganized and headless. Opposed to
them, masters of many armies, stand
an isolated, friendless group of gov
| ernmets who sepak no common pur-
pose, but only selfish ambitions of
their own by which none can profit
but themselves, and whose peoples
are fuel in their hands; governments
which fear their people and yet are
for the time their sovereign lords,
making every choice for them and
disposing of their lives and fortunes
as they will, as well as of the lives
and fortunes of every people who
fall under their power--government
clothed with the strange trappings
and the primitive authority of an
age that is altogether alien and hos
tile to our own. The past and the
present are in deadly grapple and
the people of the world are being
done to death between them.
There can be but one issue. The
settlement must be final. There can
be no compromise. No half way de-
cision would be tolerable. No half
way decision is conceivable. These
are the ends for which the associated
peoples of the world are fighting and
which must be conceded them be-
fore there can be peace: /. agl
1.-The destruction of every ar
bitrary power anywhere that can