Edgefield advertiser. [volume] (Edgefield, S.C.) 1836-current, 1919-07-16

freedom. 1t was our duty to dc
everything that it was within our
power to do to make the triumph of
freedom.
Old entanglements of every kind
stood in the way-promises which
governments had made to one anoth-
er in the days when might and right
were confused and the power OF the
victor was without restraint. Entan-
clements which contemplated any
positions 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 by; and these could not always
be honorably brushed aside. 1t was
not easy to graft the new order OF
ideas on the old, and some of the
fruits Of the grating may, fear, for
a time be bitter. But, with very few
exceptions, the men who sat with US
at the peace table desired as sincerely
as we did to get away from the bad
Influences, the illegitimate purposes,
the demoralizing ambitions, the inter
national counsels and expedients out
of which the sinister designs Of Ger
maay had sprung as natural growth.
1t had been our privilege to formu-
late the principles which were accept
ed as the basis of the peace, but they
had been accepted, not because we
had come to hasten and assure the
victory and insisted upon them, but
because they were readily acceded to
as the principles to which honorabi~
and enlightened minds everywhere had
been bred. They spoke the conscience
Of the world, as well as the conscience
Of America, and 1 am happy to pay
my tribute Of respect and gratitude to
the able; forward-looking men with
whom it was my privilege to cooper
ate for their unfailing spirit OF coop
GRAFTON, their constant effort to accom-
modate 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 e1-
ception the men who led had caught
the true and full vision Of the prob
lem Of peace as an 'indivisable whole,
a problem not of merely 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 peoples
hitherto under bondage to the power
that victory had shattered and de-
stroyed. Two great empires 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 vio-
lation of many of the 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, ex-
plotting these 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, Czecho Slo-
vakia, Hungary itself. No part of an
cient Poland had ever in any true
sense become part of Germany, or OF
Austria, or of Russia, Bohemia was
alien in every thought and hope to
the monarchy of which she had so
long been an artificial part; and the
uneasy partnership between Austria
and Hungary had been one rather of
interest than of kinship or sympathy.
The Slavs whom austria had chosen
to force into her empire on the south
were kept to their obedience by moth
ing but fear. Their hearts were with
their kinsmen in the Balkans. These
were all arrangements of power, not
arrangements of natural union or as
sociation. 1t was the imperative task
of those who would make peace and
make it intelligently to establish a
new order which would rest upon the
free choice of peoples, rather than
upon the arbitrary authority OF Haps-
burgs or Hohenzollerns.
More than that, great populations
bound by sympathy and actual kin to
Rumania also were linked against
their will to the conglomerate Austro-
Hungarian monarchy or to other alien
sovereignties, and it was port of the
task of peace to make new Rumania
as well as new Slavic state cluster
ing about Servia.
And no natural fronties could be
found to these new fields of adjust
ment and redemption. 1t was neces-
sary to look constantly forward to
.4ho, -o1o+od tasks. Tie German COL