as the council associated with me in the
final determination of our international obligations, to disclose
to you without reserve the thought and purpose that have been taking
form in my mind in regard to the duty of our Government in the
days to come when it will be necessary to lay afresh and upon a
new plan the foundations of peace among the nations.

"It is inconceivable that the people of the United States should play
no part in that great enterprise. To take part in such a service will
be the opportunity for which they have sought to prepare themselves
by the very principles and purposes of their polity and the approved
practices of their Government ever since the days when they set up a
new nation in the high and honorable hope that it might in all that
it was and did show mankind the way to liberty. They cannot in honor
withhold the service to which they are now about to be challenged.
They do not wish to withhold it. But they owe it to themselves and
to the other nations of the world to state the conditions under
which they will feel free to render it.

"That service is nothing less than this, to add their authority
and their power to the authority and force of other nations to
guarantee peace and justice throughout the world. Such a settlement
cannot now be long postponed. It is right that before it comes
this Government should frankly formulate the conditions upon which
it would feel justified in asking our people to approve its formal
and solemn adherence to a League for Peace. I am here to attempt
to state those conditions.

"The present war must first be ended; but we owe it to candor and
to a just regard for the opinion of mankind to say that, so far as
our participation in guarantees of future peace is concerned, it
makes a great deal of difference in what way and upon what terms it
is ended. The treaties and agreements which bring it to an end must
embody terms which will create a peace that is worth guaranteeing
and preserving, a peace that will win the approval of mankind, not
merely a peace that will serve the several interests and immediate
aims of the nations engaged. We shall have no voice in determining
what those terms shall be, but we shall, I feel sure, have a voice
in determining whether they shall be made lasting or not by the
guarantees of a universal covenant; and our judgment upon what is
fundamental and essential as a condition precedent to permanency
should be spoken now, not after