e should be
assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now
under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and
an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development and the
Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a free passage to the ships
and commerce of all nations under international guarantees.

XIII. An independent Polish state should be erected which should include
the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which
should be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose
political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be
guaranteed by international covenant.

XIV. A general association of nations must be formed under specific
covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political
independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.

In regard to these essential rectifications of wrong and assertions of
right we feel ourselves to be intimate partners of all the governments
and peoples associated together against the Imperialists. We cannot be
separated in interest or divided in purpose. We stand together until the
end.

For such arrangements and covenants we are willing to fight and to
continue to fight until they are achieved; but only because we wish the
right to prevail and desire a just and stable peace such as can be
secured only by removing the chief provocations to war, which this
program does remove. We have no jealousy of German greatness, and there
is nothing in this program that impairs it. We grudge her no achievement
or distinction of learning or of pacific enterprise such as have made
her record very bright and very enviable. We do not wish to injure her
or to block in any way her legitimate influence or power. We do not wish
to fight her either with arms or with hostile arrangements of trade if
she is willing to associate herself with us and the other peace-loving
nations of the world in covenants of justice and law and fair dealing.
We wish her only to accept a place of equality among the peoples of the
world,--the new world in which we now live,--instead of a place of
mastery.

Neither do we presume to suggest to her any alteration or modification
of her institutions. But it is necessary, we must frankly say, and
necessary as a preliminary to any intelligent dealings with her on our
part, that we should know whom her spokesmen speak for when they speak
to u