Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922, 1919-07-11

the illegitimate purposes, the de
moralizing ambitions, the interna
tional counsels and expedients GU
of which the sinister designs OF Ger
many had sprung as . natura
growth. -,-. IS
1t had been our privilege to for
mulate the principles which wer
accepted as the basis of the peac,
but they had been accomplished
not because we had come in Il
hasten and assure the victory ant
insisted upon them but because the!
were readily acceded to as thu
principles to which honorable ant
enlightened minds everywhere has
been bred. They spoke the con
science of the world as well as thu
conscience of America, and l an
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 un'
failing spirit of cooperation, theii
constant effort to accommodate the
interests they represented to the
principles we were all agreed upon
Circumstances Altered Course.
The difficulties, which were many.
lay in the circumstances, not often
in the men. Almost without ex-
ception the men who led had caught
the true and full vision of the prob
lem of peace as an indivisible whole,
a problem, not of mere adjustments
of interest, but of justice and right
action. =
THE atmosphere in which the
conference worked seemed created,
not by the ambitions of strong gov
ernments, but by the hopes and as
pnations of small nations and OF
peoples hitherto under bondage to
the power that victory had shatter-
ed and destroyed. Two, great en-
pires had been forced into political
bankruptcy and we we're the re-
ceivers. 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 obedi-
cree. but veritable bondage, ex-
plotting those who were weak for
the benefit of those who were mas
tiers and over-lords only by force of
arms. There could be no peace un-
til the whole order of central En-
rope was set right.
Made New Countries.
THAT meant that new nations
were to be created-Poland,
Czecho- Slovaka, Hungary itself. No
part of ancient Poland had ever in
any true sense become a part of
Germany, or of Austria, or of Rus
STA. Bohemia was alien in every
thought and hope to the monarchy
of which it had so long been an
artificial part; and the uneasy part
nership between Austria and Hun
gary had been one rather of interest
than of kinship or sympathy.
The Slavs whom Austria had
chosen to force into its empire on
the south were kept to their obedi-
ence by nothing but fear. Their
hearts were with their kinsmen in
the Balkans. These were all ar
rangements of power, not arrange
ments of natural union or associa-
ton. 1t was the imperative task
of those who would make peace and
make it intelliger1tly to establish a
new order which would rest upon
the free choice of peoples rather
than upon the arbitrary authority of
or Hohenzollerns.
Freedom Given Roumania.
more than that, great popula-
tons bound by sympathy and actual
kin to Roumania, were also linked
against their will to the conglom-
crate Austro- Hungarian monarchy
or to other alien sovereignties, and
it was part of the task of peace to
make a new Roumania as we'll as
a new Slavic state clustering about
Serbia.
"And no natural frontiers could
be found to these new fields of ad-
justment and redemption. 1t was
necessary to look constantly for
ward to other related tasks. The
German colonies were to be dis
posed of. They had not been gov
erned; they had been exploited
merely, without thought of the in
terest or even the ordinary human
rights of their inhabitants.
Turkish Empire Had Fallen.
THE Turkish empire, moreover,
had fallen apart, as the Austro- Hun
yarian had. 1t had never had any
real unity. 1t had been held togeth-
r only by pitiless, inhuman force.
It's peoples cried aloud for release,
or succor from unspeakable dis |
ress, for all that the new day of |
hope seemed at last to bring within |
is dawn. Peoples hitherto in utter