The Birmingham age-herald., 1919-07-11

of the loss of everything it held dear in deadly fear. that it's bonds were never to be loosed, its hopes forever to be mocked and disappointed.
 MAKE TRIUMPH COMPLETE
 And the compulsion of what they stood for was upon us who represented America at the peace table. It was our duty to SC to it that every decision we took part in contributed. so far as we were able to influence it. to quiet the fears and realize the hopes of the people who had been living in that shadow, the na- tions that had come by our assistence to their freedom. It was our duty to do everything that it was within our power to do to make the triumrh of freedom and of right q lasting triumph in the as surance of which men might everywhere live without fear.
 "Old entanglements of every kind stood in the vay-promises which governments had made to one another in the days when might and right were confused, and the power of the victor was without restraint. Engagements which contem- plated any dispositions of territory; any extensions of sovereignty that might seem to be to the interest of those who had the power to insist upon them, had been entered into without thought Of what the peoples concerned might wish, or profit hv. and these could not always be honorablv brushed aside. It was not easy to graft the new order of ideals and some of the fruit of the grating may I fear for time be bitter. But with very few exceptions the men who sat with us a the peace table decided as sincerely as we did to get away from the bad influences, the illegitimate purposes, the demoralizing ambitions, the interna- tional counsels and eXpedients out Of which the sinister designs of Germany haI a a
 Tt had been our privilege to formulate the principles which were accepted as the basis of the peace, but they had been accepted, not because we had come m to hasten and assure the victory and ln- sisted upon them, but because they were read dily acceded to as the principles to which honorable and enlightened minds everywhere had been bred. They spoke the conscience of the world as well as the conscience of America, and l am happy to pay my tribute of respect and gratitude to the able, forward looking men with whom it was my privilege to cooperate for their unfailing spirit of CO., operation, their constant effort to ac- ccmmodate the interests they represented to the principles we were all agreed upon. The differences, which were many, lay in the circumstances, not often in the men, Almost without exception the men who led had caught the true and full vision of the problem of peace as an in- divisible whole, a problem not of mere adjustments of interests, but of justice and right action.
 RECEIVERS OF EMPIRES
 "The atmosphere in which the confer ence worked, seemed created, not by the ambitions of strong governments, but by the hopes and aspirations of small na- tions and of peoples hitherto under bond age to the power that victory had shat rrtxTr prnr had been forced into political bankruptcy and we were the receivers. Our task was not only to make peace with the central empires and remedy the wrongs their armies had done. The central empires had lived in open violation of many of the very rights for which the war had been fought, dominating alien peoples over whom they had no natural right to rule, enforcing not obedience, but veritable bondage exploiting those who were wea K for the benefit of those who were mas ters, and over-lords only by force of arms There could be no peace until the whole order of central Europe control was set right That meant that new nations were to be created-Polano. Czecho-S -Slovakia Hungary itself. No part of ancient Poland had ever in any true sense become part of Germany, or or Austria, or of Russia. Bohemia was allen in every thought and hope to the mon 
 an artificial part and the uneasy part nership between Austria and Hungary had been one rather of interest than or kinship or sympathy. The Slavs whom Austria had chosen to force into her em- pre on the south were kept to thelr oped- fence by nothing but fear. Their hearts were with their kinsmen in the Balkans. These were all arrangements of power rot arrangements Of natural union or as sociation It was the imperative task oe those who would make peace ana make ft intellgently to establish new order which would rest upon the free cho1ce or peoples rather than upon the arbitrary authority of Hapsburgs or HOhenzoi- lerns.
 More than that, great populations bound by sympathy and actual kin to Ru- mania were also linked against tnelr will to the conglomerate Austro-Hunsar- ian monarchy. or to other allen soV- ereignties, and it was part or the task of peace to make new Rumania as we'll as a new Slavic state clustering about SeI- bia And no natural frontiers could be found to these new fields of adjustment and redemption.
 Tt was necessary to look constantly forward to other related tasks. The Ger man colonies were to be disposed of. They had not been governed: they had been exploited merely, without thought of the interest, or even the ordinary human rights of their inhabitants.
 THE TURKISH TANGLE
 '.The Turkish Empire. moreover had fallen apart as the Austro- Hungarian had. It had never had any real unity. 1t had been held together only by pitt less, inhuman force. Its peoples cried aloud for release, for succor from un- speakable distress, for all that the new day of hope seemed at last to bring with in it's dawn. Peoples hitherto in utter darkness were to be led out into the same light and given at last helping hand Undeveloped peoples and peoples ready for recognition but not yet ready to assume the full responsibilities of state hood, were to be given adequate guaran- rees C. rrisndiy protection, guidance, and assistance.
 And out of the execution of these great enterprises of liberty sprang op- portunites to attempt what statesmen had never found the way before to do- an opportunity to throw safeguards about the rights of racial national and religious minorities by solemn interna- tional covenant: an opportunity to limit and regulate military establishme Is where they were most likely to be n l. chievous. and opportunity to effect a complete and systematic international- ization of waterways, and railways which were necessary to the free economic life of more than one nation and to clear many of the normal channels of com oP foi nr,c of I,xx