President Wilson Speaks

Taihape Daily Times, 30 September 1918, Page 5

President Wilson Speaks

WITH NO UNCERTAIN SOUND. CENTRAL POWERS WITHOUT HONOUR. IMPOSSIBLE TO COME TO TERMS WITH THEM. GERMANY MUST REDEEM HER \ CHARACTER. A LEAGUE OF NATIONS INDIS-. PENSABLE. FOR WORLD’S FUTURE PEACE. Received 9.20 a.m. * NEW YORK, Sept 28. President Wilson, in his 'Loan speech, said individual statesmen may have started the war, 'but neither they nor their opponents can stop it, as they had placed it beyond' a people’s war Peoples of all sorts and races, of every degree were involved. The issues had become such as must be settled by no arrangement or compromise or adjustment of interests, but definitely, once for all, and with an unequivocal acceptance of the principle that interest of weakness is as sacred as the interest of the strongest. The Brest Litovsk and Bucharest treaties and peace agreements have convinced us that the governments of the Central Empires . are wtihout honour, and do not intend justice. They observe no covenants, accept no principle but force and their own interest. They have made it impossible for us to come to terms with them. If it be indeed, and I trust it is, the common object of the governments associated against 'Germany and the nations they govern, to achieve by coming settlements to secure a lasting peace, it will be necessary that they | all sit at the peace table, and shall come ready and willing to pay the price that will secure it. We must create in some virile fashion an instrumentality whereby it can be made certain- that the agreements’ 'Shall ’ be honoured and fulfilled, and that-the price is impartial. There must-be justice in. every i item of the settlement, no matter whose interests are crossed. That indispensable instrumentality is a (League of Nations, formed under covenants that shall be efficacious. Without such an instrumentality the peace of the world will rest, as in the past, upon the world of outlaws, and only upon that ■world, for Germany will have to redeem her character, not by what happens at the peace table,' but by what follows. Such a cannot be formed now; if so formed it would be merely a new alliance- confined to the nations associated'against i a common enemy. It was not likely ! it could be .formed after that gettle- ! ment. Peace cannot be guaranteed as ' an afterthought, dealing with sonVe j particulars. .. . , j President Wilson declared he spoke j with the greatest confidence, 'because he could state them authoritatively as his Government’s .interpretation Its one duty in regard to peace that these particulars were impartially considered and justice meted out. This must involve no discrimination to those to whom we wish to be just and" to those to whom we do not wish to be just. We must know no standard but the equaj rights of the several peoples involved. No Special or separate interest of any single nation or group of nations can be made the basis of any part of the settlement. Consistent with the common interest of all there j can be no leagues or alliances, or spe- | cial covenants and understandings j within the general and common fam- | ily of the League of Nations; no spe- | cial selfish or economic combinations j within the League, and no employ- ! ment of any form of econo’mic boycott or exclusion, except as the power of an economic penalty by the exclusion from the markets of the world, which may be vested in the League of Nations itself as a means of discipline and control. All international treaties of every kind must be made known entirely to the rest of the world Special alliances, and economic rivalry and hostilities have been a prolific source of passions producing the war. It would be an insincere ana insecure peace which did not exclude them in definite binding terms. The United States was prepared to assume its full* share of the responsibility for the maintenance of common covenants and understanding whereon peace henceforth must rest. They could still read ‘Washington’s warning against entangling alliances with full comprehension, but only special, and limited alliances entangle,, and we recognise and accept the duty of the new days, in which we are. permitted to hope for a general alliance, which will avoid entanglements and clear the air of the world for commpn, understandings and the maintenance of common rights. He made this analysis of the international situation which the war had created, both because he was doubtful whether the leaders of the great nations and peoples with whom we are associated were of the same mind and entertained a -like purpose, but to clear the air of most groundless doublings and mischievous

perversions and irresponsible talk about a peace intrigue. President Wilson then strongly urged the necessity of placing the whole issues clearly and openly before the people of the world in a language they can translate, and from which they can gather the replies to questions they are asking, adding: “My one thought is to satisfy those who struggle in doubt and are perhaps above all others entitled to a repl3 - whose meaning none can have any excuse for misunderstanding.” He believed the leaders of the Governments with which the United States was associated would speak as they had occasion, plainly, as he tried to speak. The only real peace the assurance of which made the recurrence of such a struggle of pitiless force and bloodshed for ever impossible.