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must continue to hold. If we expect others to rely on our fairness and
justice we must show that we rely on their fairness and justice.

If we are to judge by past experience, there is much to be hoped for in
international relations from frequent conferences and consultations. We
have before us the beneficial results of the Washington conference and
the various consultations recently held upon European affairs, some of
which were in response to our suggestions and in some of which we were
active participants. Even the failures can not but be accounted useful
and an immeasurable advance over threatened or actual warfare. I am
strongly in favor of continuation of this policy, whenever conditions
are such that there is even a promise that practical and favorable
results might be secured.

In conformity with the principle that a display of reason rather than a
threat of force should be the determining factor in the intercourse
among nations, we have long advocated the peaceful settlement of
disputes by methods of arbitration and have negotiated many treaties to
secure that result. The same considerations should lead to our adherence
to the Permanent Court of International Justice. Where great principles
are involved, where great movements are under way which promise much for
the welfare of humanity by reason of the very fact that many other
nations have given such movements their actual support, we ought not to
withhold our own sanction because of any small and inessential
difference, but only upon the ground of the most important and
compelling fundamental reasons. We can not barter away our independence
or our sovereignty, but we ought to engage in no refinements of logic,
no sophistries, and no subterfuges, to argue away the undoubted duty of
this country by reason of the might of its numbers, the power of its
resources, and its position of leadership in the world, actively and
comprehensively to signify its approval and to bear its full share of
the responsibility of a candid and disinterested attempt at the
establishment of a tribunal for the administration of even-handed
justice between nation and nation. The weight of our enormous influence
must be cast upon the side of a reign not of force but of law and trial,
not by battle but by reason.

We have never any wish to interfere in the political conditions of any
other countries. Especially are we determined not to become implicated
in the political controver