The Goldfield news and weekly tribune. [volume] (Goldfield, Nev.) 1911-1947, 1919-01-04
SMOOTHING THE PATHWAY TO PEACE

According to late cablegrams the American program in
the peace conference has been made more elastic and the fear
that the country would try to dictate a peace along the lines
of the much discussed fourteen points which our president
uttered in one of his speeches has apparently been dissipated.
The president himself, it is understood in both France and
England, is willing to forego those points upon which there
can be no substantial agreement. He wants peace to be made,
and that as speedily as possible.
Judged by these results and concessions the visit of the
president abroad has been a useful one, not only for him, but
for the allied nations. Even a president in his study room,
sitting before his own typewriter, may evolve ideas that are
not practical ones. 1t is one thing to speculate on what ought
to be in this world, but getting it is apt to be quite a different
thing. That is what the president has been able to find out
by talking to those who have studied the same questions
overseas. And the fact that he is willing to forego some of
his own ideas is creditable to him.
The points that are especially made into stumbling blocks
are those that have to do with the freedom of the seas-of
which we have had plenty until the Germans tried to hamper
it-and the league of nations and the removal of trade bar
riers. So far as the league of nations is concerned it is some
thing to be desired, but only in a general way. The world as
still constituted cannot be organized into one vast republic
composed of states. The idea is preposterOus in many ways.
The United States for one does not want to be made the chief
policeman of the world, and that is about what they would
expect from us. We are the one outsider, and we are big and
rich and we give like drunken sailors, and so all the other
little fellows are anxious to look to us to protect them and
they flatter us with alterations. But it is a job that we do
not care to undertake. We have enough policing to do at
home and we do not care to undertake to do it also in the
Balkans and in %benighted Asia.
And so far as "free trade is concerned that is about as
general a proposition as the freedom of the seas, and more
impossible in the present world than the league of nations.
We have not all been made over into altruists simply because
we have suffered in a great war. We are still selfish, all of
us, and we are not going to give up our advantages to pool
with the rest of the world for some general good. That is
an ideal, but it is not something that we are going to be able
to realize in the immediate future, if ever.
We are now told that the president is willing to let these
three points go by the board if peace can be more quickly
procured by SO doing. We are glad indeed to hear it. Meth
er in this country nor in Europe were the people agreed upon
the presidents fourteen points. On the contrary, we are just
finding out how utterly Objectionable many of the points are
when applied to our own case. We do not want any form of
world free trade and we do not want our own individuality as
a nation complicated or compromised with any vague bonds
binding us to other nations, especially those nations and peo-
pies who through oppression and turbulence are just pass
ing into a new and formative stage.