and purpose hostile to their
own.

"I speak of this, not because of any desire to exalt an abstract
political principle which has always been held very dear by those
who have sought to build up liberty in America, but for the same
reason that I have spoken of the other conditions of peace which
seem to me clearly indispensable,--because I wish frankly to uncover
realities. Any peace which does not recognize and accept this principle
will inevitably be upset. It will not rest upon the affections
or the convictions of mankind. The ferment of spirit of whole
populations will fight subtly and constantly against it, and all
the world will sympathize. The world can be at peace only if its
life is stable, and there can be no stability where the will is in
rebellion, where there is not tranquillity of spirit and a sense
of justice, of freedom, and of right.

"So far as practicable, moreover, every great people now struggling
towards a full development of its resources and of its powers should
be assured a direct outlet to the great highways of the sea. Where
this cannot be done by the cession of territory, it can no doubt
be done by the neutralization of direct rights of way under the
general guarantee which will assure the peace itself. With a right
comity of arrangement no nation need be shut away from a free access
to the open paths of the world's commerce.

"And the paths of the sea must alike in law and in fact be free.
The freedom of the seas is the _sine qua non_ of peace, equality,
and co-operation. No doubt a somewhat radical reconsideration of
many of the rules of international practice hitherto thought to be
established may be necessary in order to make the seas indeed free
and common in practically all circumstances for the use of mankind,
but the motive for such changes is convincing and compelling. There
can be no trust or intimacy between the peoples of the world without
them. The free, constant, unthreatened intercourse of nations is
an essential part of the process of peace and of development. It
need not be difficult either to define or to secure the freedom
of the seas if the governments of the world sincerely desire to
come to an agreement concerning it.

"It is a problem closely connected with the limitation of naval
armaments and the co-operation of the navies of the world in keeping
the seas at once free and safe. And the question of limiting naval
armaments opens the wider and perhaps more difficu