cause 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 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
cooeperation. 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 cooeperation 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 difficult question of the limitation of
armies and of all programs of milita