saw him reject the doctrine of isolation. "We are participants," he
said on the 27th of May, "whether we would or not, in the life of the
world. The interests of all nations are our own also. We are partners with
the rest. What affects mankind is inevitably our affair as well as the
affair of the nations of Europe and of Asia." This recognition of our
interest in world affairs immediately took him considerably beyond the
position he had assumed during the earlier stages of the submarine
controversy. Until the spring of 1916 he had restricted his aims to the
championship of neutral and human rights in time of war. But now he began
to demand something more far-reaching, namely a system that would prevent
unjust war altogether and would protect the rights of all peoples in time
of peace. He insisted, in this same speech of the 27th of May, before the
League to Enforce Peace at Washington, "First that every people has a
right to choose the sovereignty under which they shall live.... Second,
that the small states of the world have a right to enjoy the same respect
for their sovereignty and for their territorial integrity that great and
powerful nations expect and insist upon. And, third, that the world has a
right to be free from every disturbance of its peace that has its origin
in aggression and disregard of the rights of peoples and nations." These
words sum up the gist of his international aims during the three following
years. His later speeches are merely refinement of details.

In order that these ends might be secured it was necessary that some
international system be inaugurated other than that which had permitted
the selfishness of the great powers to produce war in the past. In his
search for a concrete mechanism to realize his ideals and secure them
from violation, Wilson seized upon the essential principles of the
League to Enforce Peace, of which William Howard Taft was president. The
basis of permanent peace, Wilson insisted, could be found only by
substituting international cooeperation in place of conflict, through a
mobilization of the public opinion of the world against international
lawbreakers: "an universal association of the nations to maintain the
inviolate security of the highway of the seas for the common and
unhindered use of all the nations of the world, and to prevent any war
begun either contrary to treaty covenants or without warning and full
submission of the causes to the opinion of the world--