ey have but one
chance to perpetuate their military power, or even their controlling
political influence. If they can secure peace now, with the immense
advantage still in their hands, they will have justified themselves
before the German people. They will have gained by force what they
promised to gain by it--an immense expansion of German power and an
immense enlargement of German industrial and commercial opportunities.
Their prestige will be secure, and with their prestige their political
power. If they fail, their people will thrust them aside. A
government accountable to the people themselves will be set up in
Germany, as has been the case in England, the United States, and
France--in all great countries of modern times except Germany. If they
succeed they are safe, and Germany and the world are undone. If they
fail, Germany is saved and the world will be at peace. If they
succeed, America will fall within the menace, and we, and all the rest
of the world, must remain armed, as they will remain, and must make
ready for the next step in their aggression. If they fail, the world
may unite for peace and Germany may be of the union."

The task of replying to the Pope was left by the Allied governments to
Wilson, who was not hampered by secret treaties. In this remarkable
document he drove still further the wedge between the German people and
the Kaiser. "The American people have suffered intolerable wrongs at
the hands of the Imperial German Government, but they desire no
reprisal upon the German people who have themselves suffered all things
in this war which they did not choose. They believe that peace should
rest upon the rights of peoples, not the rights of Governments--the
rights of peoples great or small, weak or powerful--their equal right
to freedom and security and self-government and to a participation upon
fair terms in the economic opportunities of the world, the German
people of course included if they will accept equality and not seek
domination."

In conclusion he said: "We cannot take the word of the present rulers
of Germany as a guarantee of anything that is to endure, unless
explicitly supported by such conclusive evidence of the will and
purpose of the German people themselves as the other peoples of the
world would be justified in accepting. Without such guarantees,
treaties of settlement, agreements for disarmament, covenants to set up
arbitration in the place of force, territorial