ed the present discussion. All
Europe was impressed by the truth, and by President Wilson's recognition
of the truth, that from any other great war after this America will
be unable to abstain. Can America come into this dispute at the end to
insist upon something better than a new diplomatic patchwork, and so
obviate the later completer Armageddon? Is there, above the claims
and passions of Germany, France, Britain, and the rest of them, a
conceivable right thing to do for all mankind, that it might also be in
the interest of America to support? Is there a Third Party solution, so
to speak, which may possibly be the way out from this war?

And further I would go on to ask, is not this present exchange of Notes,
appealing to the common sense of the world, really the beginning, and
the proper beginning, of the unprecedented Peace Negotiations to end
this unprecedented war? And, I submit, the longer this open discussion
goes on before the doors close upon the secret peace congress the better
for mankind.

2

Let me sketch out here what I conceive to be the essentials of a world
settlement. Some of the items are the mere commonplaces of everyone who
discusses this question; some are less frequently insisted upon. I have
been joining up one thing to another, suggestions I have heard from
this man and that, and I believe that it is really possible to state a
solution that will be acceptable to the bulk of reasonable men all about
the world. Directly we put the panic-massacres of Dinant and Louvain,
the crime of the _Lusitania_ and so on into the category of symptoms
rather than essentials, outrages that call for special punishments and
reparations, but that do not enter further into the ultimate settlement,
we can begin to conceive a possible world treaty. Let me state the broad
outlines of this pacification. The outlines depend one upon the other;
each is a condition of the other. It is upon these lines that the
thoughtful, as distinguished from the merely the combative people, seem
to be drifting everywhere.

In the first place, it is agreed that there would have to be an
identical treaty between all the great powers of the world binding them
to certain things. It would have to provide:--

That the few great industrial states capable of producing modern war
equipment should take over and control completely the manufacture of all
munitions of war in the world. And that they should absolutely close the
supply of such