at the moral crimes
committed in the past are not repeated or allowed to stain yet darker
the record of humanity. That is why I hold the first article of the
Union of Democratic Control as a sacred principle: "No Province shall be
transferred from one Government to another without the consent by
plebiscite of the population of such province." We must oppose those
odious maxims which have weighed too long on the populations they
enslave and which quite recently Professor Lasson dared to repeat as a
threat for the future, in his cynical Catechism of Force (_Das
Kulturideal und der Krieg_).[27]

And this principle must be proposed and adopted at once without any
delay. If we waited to announce it until--the war being over--the
congress of the Powers were assembled, we should be suspected of wishing
to make justice serve the interest of the conquered. It is now, when the
forces of the two sides are equal, that we must establish this
primordial right which soars over all the armies.

From this principle we can deduce an immediate application. Since the
whole of Europe is disorganized let us profit by it to set in order
this untidy house! For a long time injustices have been accumulating.
The moment of settling the general account will be an opportunity of
rectifying them. The duty of all of us who feel for the brotherhood of
mankind is to stand for the rights of the small nations. There are some
in both camps: Schleswig, Alsace, Lorraine, Poland, the Baltic nations,
Armenia, the Jewish people. At the beginning of the war Russia made some
generous promises. We have registered them in our minds; let her not
forget them! We are as determined about Poland, torn by the claws of
three imperial eagles, as we are about Belgium crucified. We remember
all. It is because our fathers, obsessed by their narrow realism and by
selfish fears, let the rights of the people of Eastern Europe be
violated, that today the West is shattered, and the sword hangs over the
small nations, over you, my friends, as over the country which is
befriending me, Switzerland. Whoever harms one of us harms all the
others. Let us unite! Above all race questions, which are for the most
part a mask behind which pride crouches and the interests of the
financial or aristocratic classes dissemble, there is a law of humanity,
eternal and universal, of which we are all the servants and guardians;
it is that of the right of a people to rule themselves. And he who
viol