The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1919-02-25
PRESIDENT WILSON'S SPEECH
GIVEN AT BOSTON MONDAY

resistance. the American soldier is well
coined with acclaim
Il have had So many grounds for pride
on the other side of the water that am
for personal pride I'd be the most stuck
up man in the world. And it has been no
infinite pleasure to me TO see those gallant
soldiers Of ours, of whom the constitution
of the United States made me the proud
commander. You may be proud of the
twenty-sixth division, but | commanded the
twenty sixth division and see what they did
under my direction. And everybody praises
in praising him he is subtracting from the
credit of no one else.
Il have been searching for the funda-
mental fact that converted Europe to be-
Ieve in us. Before this Europe did
, not believe in us as she does now. She
did not believe in us thruout the first
| to have believed that we We're holding off
because We thought we could make more IRE
| of sudden in /. short eighteen months the
whole verdict is reversed. There can be
but one explanation for it. They saw what
| We dfd-that without making single
claim we put all our men and all our
| fighting for their homes in the first in
stance. but for a cause, the cause of hu-
| man rights and justice. and that we went
| in not to support their national claims but
| to support the great cause which they held
| in common.
| And when they saw that America not
| only held ideals but acted ideals. they
were converted to America and became
firm m partisans of those ideals Tho, wac
, in Paris-some gentlemen from one of the
| Greek universities who had come to see
! presence of those traditions of learning.
/ felt very young indeed | told them that
/ had one of the delightful revenges that
| sometimes comes to man.
All my life / have heard men speak
| with sort of condescension OF Ideals ana
of idealists and particularly those sep
arated encloistered persons whom they
chose to term academic who were in the
habit of uttering ideals in the free at
mosphere when they clash with nobody in
particular And l said l have had this
sweet revenge. Speaking with perfect
franknesS in the rame of the people of the
| United States.
Il have uttered as the objects of this
great war ideals and nothing but ideals
SEPARATION. Men fighting with tense
to realize those things. feeling they were
fighting for their lives and their country
and when these accents of what it was all
lifted their heads, they raised their eyes to
heaven when they saw men in khaki com
ing across the sea in the spirit of crusaders
and they found that these Tere strange
men, reckless of danger not only but reck-
less because they seemed to see something
that made that danger worth while.
Not Like Others.
Men have testified to me in Europe
that our men were possessed by some
thing that they could only call a religious
!
other soldiers. They had vision, they
had dream, and they were fighting in the
. ! dream and fighting in the dream they
! turned the whole tide of battle and ii
, never came back.
one of our American humorists meet
ing the criticism that American soldiers
: were not trained long enough said. 1T
takes only half as long to train an Ameri-
can soldier any other, because you
only have to train him one way and he
, did only go one way and he never came
} back until he could do it when he pleased
And now do you realize that this con
fidence we have established turnout the
! world imposes a burden upon us-if you
choose to call it burden. 1t is one OF
2 those burdens which any nation ought tC
be proud to carry. Any man who resists
S the present tides that run in the world
high and barren that it will seem il
, he had been separated from his human
''The Europe that I left the other day
! was full of something that it had never
full of hope. The Europe of the second
year of the war. the Europe of the third
; year, of the war was sinking to a sort OF
stubborn desperation. They did not see
! any great thing TO be achieved even wheI
the war should be won. They hoped there
: would be some salvage; they hoped that
they could clear their territories of invad-
ing armies; they hoped they could set uI
their homes and start their industries
afresh. But they thought it would simply
| be the resumption of the old life that
Europe had led-led in fear, led in anxiety
They never dreamed it would be Europe
I of settled peace and Justified hope.
And now these ideals have wrought this
j new magic, that ell the peoples of Europe
are buoyed up and confident in the spirit
of hope, because they believe that we are
! at the eve of age in the world wher
l. nations will understand one another, wheT
nations will support one another in every
o just cause, when nations will unite every
4 moral and every physical strength to sec
r that the right shall prevail.
i America Must Not Fail.
of America were at this junction to fa
. the world, what would come of it? l dc
. not mean any disrespect to any other great
I ! people when L say that America is the
:, hope of the world; and if she does not
q Justify that hope the results unthink-
: able. Men will be thrown back upon bit
3 terness of disappointment not only but the
bitterness of despair. All nations will be-
set up as hostile camps again; the nen a
the peace conference will go home witt
s their heads upon their breasts knowing
= that they have failed-for they were bidder
! not to come home from there until they
! did something more than sign a treaty oil
: peace.
i Suppose we sign the treaty of peace
. t and that it is the most satisfactory treaty
i of peace that the confusing elements Of
b the modern world will afford and go home