The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1919-07-10
New Order Makes |t
 Indispensable That
 League Be AcCeptet

able. Their very presence brought re- | assurance, their fighting made victory
 certain.
 But I speak now of what they meant to the men by whose sides ! they fought and to the people with l whom they mingled in such utter ] simplicity and friends who asked only ! to be of service. They were for all 1 the visible embodiment of America. ! What they did made America and all | that she stood for a living reality in l the thoughts not only of the people ! of France but also of tens of millions l of men and women throughout all ! the toiling nations of a world stand 1 ing everywhere in peril of it's free ! dom and of the loss of everything 1t i held dear, in deadly fear that it's 1 bonds were never to be loosed, it's l hopes forever to be smocked and dis 1 appointed.
 And the compulsion of what they 1 stood for was upon us who represent 1 ed America at the peace table. It 1 was our duty to see to it that every 1 decision we took part in contributed 1 so far as we were able to influence it, 1 to quiet the fears and realize the l hopes of the peoples who had been i living in that shadow, the nations i that had come by our assistance to l their freedom. It was our duty to ] do everything that it was within our 1 power to do to make the triumph of l freedom and of right lasting tri- ! umph in the assurance of which men ] might everywhere live without fear. Old entanglements of every kind stood in the way---promises which 1 governments had made to one an 1 other in the days when might and right were confused and the power of the victor was without restraint. En- agreements which contemplated any dispositions of territory, any exten- i sions 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 fbe honorably brushed aside. It was not easy to graft the new or 1 the fruits of the grating may, I fear, the friuts of the grating may, I fear, for a time be bitter. But, with very few exceptions the men who sat with us at the peace table desired sin cerely as did, to get away from the bad influences. the inegitimate | purposes, the demoralizing ambitions, the international counsel and expedi- erts 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 1 they had been accepted, not because we had come in to hasten and assure l the victory and insisted upon them. 1 but because they were readily ceded to as the principles to which | honorable and enlightened minds l everywhere had been bred. They spoke the conscience of the world as
 well as the conscience of America and
 I 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
 an indivisible whole, a problem, not | 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-
 
 l power that victory had shattered
 and destroyed. Two great empires
 had been forced into political bank | ruptcy and we were the receivers. l Our task was not only to make peace | with the central empires and rem 1 edy the wrongs their armies had l done. The central empires had liv- 1 ed in open violation of many of the | very rights for which the war had I al | pies over whom they had no natural | right to rule, enforcing, not obedi- l ence but veritab1e bondage, exploit 1 ing those who were weak for the 1 benefit of those who were masters
 and overlords only by force of arms. 1 There could be no peace until the | whole order of central Europe was 1 set right.
 That meant that new nations were to be created-Po1and, Czech SIovaki | to be created-Poland Czecho Slova-
 kia, Hungary itself. No part of an- cient 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 l so long been an artificial part; and
 the uneasy partnership between Aus 1 tria and Hungary had been one of 1 interest than of kinsship or sympathy. Slaves whom Austria had chosen to 1 force into her empire on the south 1 were kept to their obedience by noth-
 ing but fear. Their hearts were with
 their kinsmen in the Balkans. These 1 were all arrangements of power not
 arrangements of natural union 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 Hapsburgs
 or Hohenzollerns.
 More than that. great populations
 bound by sympathy and actual kin to
 Rumania were also linked against
 their will to the conglome crate Austro-
 Hungarian monarchy or to other alien sovereignties and it was part of the task of peace to make a new Ru-
 mania, well as a new Slavic state
 clustering about Serbia.
 The remainder of the Presidents | od