"They imply, first of all, that it must be a peace without victory.
It is not pleasant to say this. I beg that I may be permitted to
put my own interpretation upon it and that it may be understood
that no other interpretation was in my thought. I am seeking only to
face realities and to face them without soft concealments. Victory
would mean peace forced upon the loser, a victor's terms imposed
upon the vanquished. It would be accepted in humiliation, under
duress, at an intolerable sacrifice, and would leave a sting, a
resentment, a bitter memory upon which terms of peace would rest,
not permanently, but only as upon quicksand. Only a peace between
equals can last. Only a peace the very principle of which is equality
and a common participation in a common benefit. The right state
of mind, the right feeling between nations, is as necessary for
a lasting peace as is the just settlement of vexed questions of
territory or of racial and national allegiance.

"The equality of nations upon which peace must be founded if it
is to last must be an equality of rights; the guarantees exchanged
must neither recognize nor imply a difference between big nations
and small, between those that are powerful and those that are weak.
Right must be based upon the common strength, not upon the individual
strength, of the nations upon whose concert peace will depend.
Equality of territory or of resources there of course cannot be;
nor any other sort of equality not gained in the ordinary peaceful
and legitimate development of the peoples themselves. But no one
asks or expects anything more than an equality of rights. Mankind
is looking now for freedom of life, not for equipoises of power.

"And there is a deeper thing involved than even equality of right
among organized nations. No peace can last, or ought to last, which
does not recognize and accept the principle that governments derive
all their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that
no right anywhere exists to hand peoples about from sovereignty to
sovereignty as if they were property. I take it for granted, for
instance, if I may venture upon a single example, that statesmen
everywhere are agreed that there should be a united, independent,
and autonomous Poland, and that henceforth inviolable security of
life, of worship, and of industrial and social development should
be guaranteed to all peoples who have lived hitherto under the power
of governments devoted to a faith