New-York tribune., 1919-09-05
Text of President Wilson's First Address Defence of Treaty

high honor to represent better than
some other men that / hear talk.
II have been bred and am proud to
have been bred Of the old Revolution
between the Polish people and the
ary stock which set this government
up, when America was set up as
friend of mankind and | know-if
they do not--thar America has never
lost that viaion or that purpose.
"But haven't the slightest fear
that arn.s VIII be necessary if the
pU:poseSis there. If know that my
adversary IS armed and ! am not, /
do not press tae controversy. and if
any nation en.crtains selfish pur-
poses set against the principles
established ia tfis treaty and is told
by the rest of the world that it must
withdraw it's clailns, it will not press
them,
'The heart of this treaty then, my
fellow citizens, is not even that it
P"'1'i'e9 Nei"'1'iy 1Hdo ~ tSiu-
porary thingt is that it rcctifics
the agelong wrongs which character
lied the history Of Europe.
"There we're some of us who wish
ed that the scope of the treaty would
reach some other age-long wrong. l.
was a big job, and don't say that we
w Nod k,,<
were other wrongs elsewhere than in
Europe, and of the same kind, which
no doubt ought to be righted, and
some day will be righted, but which
we could not draw into the treaty
because we could deal only with the
countries whom the war had engulf-
ed and affected. But so far as the
scope OF our treaty went, We recti-
fed the wrongs which have been the
fertile source of war in Europe.
Have you ever reflected, my fell
low countrymen, on the real source
of revolutions? Men don't start
revolutions in a sudden passion. Do
you remember what Thomas Carlyle
said about the French Revolution?
He was speaking of the so-called
Hundred Days Terror, which reigned
not only in Paris, but throughout
France, in the days of the French
Revolution; and he reminded his
readers that back Of that Hundred
Days Of Terror lay several hundred
years of agony and of wrong. The
French people had been deeply and
consistently wronged by their gov
ernment, robbed their human rights
disregarded, and the slow agony of
those hundreds Of years had after
while gathered into a hot agony
that could not be suppressed
Revolutions Don't
Spring up Overnight"
Revolutions don't spring up over
night; revolutions gather through
the ages; revolutions come from the
long suppression Of the human
spirit; revolutions come because
men know that they have rights and
that they are disregarded. And when
we think of the future OF the world
in connection with this treaty we
must remember that one of the chief
efforts of those who made this treaty
was to remove that anger from the
heart of great peoples, great peoples
1x,bo koJ
always been used, who had always
been the tools in the hands of gov
generally of alien govern
ments-not their own. And the
makers of the treaty knew that if
these wrongs were not removed there
could be no peace in the world, be-
cause, after all, my fellow citizens,
war comes from the seed of wrong
and not from the seed of right. This
treaty is an attempt to right the
history Of Europe, and in my humble
judgment it is measurable sue
cess.
81 say 'measureable.' my fellow cit
liens. because you will realize the
difficulty of this. Here are two
ncighboring peoples. The one peo-
pie have not stopped at sharp line
and the settlements of the other
people, or their migrations, begun
at that sharp line; they have in
termingled.
Regions Where National
Lines Can't Be Drawn
"There are regions where you
can't draw a national line and say
there are Slavs on this side and
Italians on that there is this peo-
pie there and that people there. 1t
can't be done. You have to approx
innate the line. You have to come to
it, as near to it as you can, and then
trust 10 the process of history to
redistribue, i may be, he people
who are on the wrong side of the
line. And there are many such lines