ion which seems as yet to assume
no final and ordered form, but to run from one fluid change to another,
until thoughtful men are forced to ask themselves, with what governments
and of what sort are we about to deal in the making of the covenants of
peace? With what authority will they meet us, and with what assurance
that their authority will abide and sustain securely the international
arrangements into which we are about to enter? There is here matter for
no small anxiety and misgiving. When peace is made, upon whose promises
and engagements besides our own is it to rest?

Let us be perfectly frank with ourselves and admit that these questions
cannot be satisfactorily answered now or at once. But the moral is not
that there is little hope of an early answer that will suffice. It is
only that we must be patient and helpful and mindful above all of the
great hope and confidence that lie at the heart of what is taking place.
Excesses accomplish nothing. Unhappy Russia has furnished abundant
recent proof of that. Disorder immediately defeats itself. If excesses
should occur, if disorder should for a time raise its head, a sober
second thought will follow and a day of constructive action, if we help
and do not hinder.

The present and all that it holds belongs to the nations and the peoples
who preserve their self-control and the orderly processes of their
governments; the future to those who prove themselves the true friends
of mankind. To conquer with arms is to make only a temporary conquest;
to conquer the world by earning its esteem is to make permanent
conquest. I am confident that the nations that have learned the
discipline of freedom and that have settled with self-possession to its
ordered practice are now about to make conquest of the world by the
sheer power of example and of friendly helpfulness.

The peoples who have but just come out from under the yoke of arbitrary
government and who are now coming at last into their freedom will never
find the treasures of liberty they are in search of if they look for
them by the light of the torch. They will find that every pathway that
is stained with the blood of their own brothers leads to the wilderness,
not to the seat of their hope. They are now face to face with their
initial test. We must hold the light steady until they find themselves.
And in the meantime, if it be possible, we must establish a peace that
will justly define their place among the nations, rem