Republican farmer., 1919-07-11
New Order Makes It
 Indispensable That
 League Be Accepted

purposes, the demoralizing ambitions, the international counsel and eNpedi- ents out of which the sinister designs of Germany had sprung as a natural growth.
 It had been our privilege to formu- late the principles which were ac- cepted as the basis of the peace but they had been accepted, not because wa had come in to hasten and assure tho victory and insisted upon them, but because they were readily ac ceded 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 am happy to pay my tribute of re- spect and gratitude to the able, for ward-looking men with whom it was my privilege to cooperate for their unfailing spirit of cooperation. their constant effort to accommodate the interests they represented to the principles we were all agreed upon. The difficulties 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
 
 of mere adjustments of interests but of justice and right action.
 The atmosphere in which the con- ference worked seemed created. not by the ambitions of strong govern ments. but by the hopes and aspira- tions of small nations and of peo- ples hitherto under bondage to the power that victory had shattered and destroyed. Two great empires had been forced into political bank ruptCy ano we were the receivers. Our task was not only to make peace with the central empires and rem edy the wrongs their armies had done. The central empires had liv- ed in open violation of many of the very rights for which the war had been fought, dominating alien peo- pies over whom they had no natural right to rule. enforcing, not obedi- ence but veritable bondage, exploit ing those who were weak for the benefit of those who were masters and overlords only by force of arms. There could be no peace until the whole order of central Europe was set right.
 That meant that new nations were to be created-Poland, Czech Slovaki to be crested-Poland Czecho Slova- kia. Hungary itself. No part of an cicnt Poland had ever in any true sense become a part of Germany, or of Austora- or of Russia. Bohemia was alien in every thought and prin- ciple to the monarchy of which she so long been an artificial part; and the uneasy partnership between Aus tria and Hungary had been. one of Interest than of lsinsship or sympathy. Slaves whom Austria had chosen to force into her empire on the south were kept to their obedience by noth- ing but fear. Their hearts were with their l1insmen in the Balkans. These were all arrangements of power not arrangements of natural union or as sociation. It was the imperative task of those who would make peace and make it intelligently, to establish new order which would rest upon the free choice of peoples rather upon the arbitrary authority of Ha psburgs or HohenzoIlerns.
 More than that, great populations bound by sympathy and actual kin to Rumania were also linked against their will to the conglomerate Austro- Hungarian monarchy or to other alien sovereignties and it was part of the task of peace to make a new Ru- mania, as well as a new Slavic state clustering about Serbia.