The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1920-10-27
PRESIDENT WILSON ADDRESSES FELLOW
COUNTRYMEN ON LEAGUE

| Washington, Oct. 27.-The text OF
President Wilson's League of Nations
read to a delegation of pro-1eague-Re-
publicans at the White House today
follows:
my Fellow -Countrymen:
1T is to be appeared that the supreme
issue presented for your consideration in
the present campaign is growing more OBJ
scure rather than clear by reason of the
many arbitrary turns the discussion of it
has taken. The editors and publishers of
the country would render II great service If
they would publish the full text of the
covenant of the League of Nations, because
having read that text, you would be able
in which you are now in danger of being
misled. 1 hope sincerely that it will be
very widely and generally published en-
tirely 1t is with a desire to clarity the
issue and to assist your Judgment that l
take the liberty of stating againssthe case
submitted to you in as simple terms as
possible.
The mothers and sisters and wives of
the country know the sacrifice of war.
They will feel that we have misled them
and compelled them to make an entirely
unnecessary sacrifice of their loved ones If
We do not make it as certain as it can be
made that no similar sacrifices will be
demanded Of mothers and sisters and wives
in the future. This duty is SO plain that
it seems to me to constitute a primary
demand upon conscience on every one of
u.s. 1t is Uncomfortable to most of us that
any man should have been SO false SO
heartless as to declare that the women of
the country would again have to suffer the
intolerable burden and privation of war
if the League of Nations were adopted.
The League of Nations is the we'll consid-
cred effort of the whole group of nations
who were opposed to Germany to secure
themselves and the rest of mankind against
repetition of the war 1t will have back
of 1t the watchfulness and material force
of all these nations, and is such a guaran-
tee of a peaceful future as no well in
formed man can question who does not
doubt the whole 9nirit with which the
was conducted against Germany. The great
moral influence of the United States will be
plete the task which our soldiers and
sailors so heroically undertook to execute.
One thing ought to be, said and said
very clearly, about Article of the
covenant of the League of Nations. 1t is
the specific pledge of the members of the
league that they will unite to resist exact
matter who attempts them in the future.
1t is as exact definition as could be
which Germany would have committed if
it could. Germany violated the territorial
integrity of her neighbors and flouted
their political independence in order to
aggrandize herself and almost every war of
history has originated in such decisions.
1t is significant that the nations of the
world should have at least combined to de-
fine the general cause Of war and to exer-
else such concert as may be necessary to
prevent such methods.
Three years ago it was my duty to sum-
mon you to the concert of war, to join
the free nations of the world in meeting
and ending the most sinister peril, that
had ever been developed in the irresponsi-
bic politics of the old world. Your re-
Spouse to that call really settled the for
tunes of war. You will remember that the
morale of the German people broke down
long before the strength of the German
armies was broken. That was obviously
because they felt that a great moral force
which they could. not look in the face mad
come into the contest and that thenceforth
all their professions of right were dis
credited and they were unable to pretend
that their continuation Of the war was not
the support of a government that had
violated every principle of right and every
consideration of humanity.
ut is my privilege to summon you now
to the concert of peace and the completion