ing to the world, without discussion, without any of the deliberate
movements of counsel with which it would seem natural to approach so
stupendous a contest. It is probable that if it had been foreseen just
what would happen, just what alliances would be formed, just what forces
arrayed against one another, those who brought the great contest on
would have been glad to substitute conference for force. If we ourselves
had been afforded some opportunity to apprise the belligerents of the
attitude which it would be our duty to take, of the policies and
practices against which we would feel bound to use all our moral and
economic strength, and in certain circumstances even our physical
strength also, our own contribution to the counsel which might have
averted the struggle would have been considered worth weighing and
regarding.

And the lesson which the shock of being taken by surprise in a matter so
deeply vital to all the nations of the world has made poignantly clear
is, that the peace of the world must henceforth depend upon a new and
more wholesome diplomacy. Only when the great nations of the world have
reached some sort of agreement as to what they hold to be fundamental to
their common interest, and as to some feasible method of acting in
concert when any nation or group of nations seeks to disturb those
fundamental things, can we feel that civilization is at last in a way of
justifying its existence and claiming to be finally established. It is
clear that nations must in the future be governed by the same high code
of honor that we demand of individuals.

We must, indeed, in the very same breath with which we avow this
conviction admit that we have ourselves upon occasion in the past been
offenders against the law of diplomacy which we thus forecast; but our
conviction is not the less clear, but rather the more clear, on that
account. If this war has accomplished nothing else for the benefit of
the world, it has at least disclosed a great moral necessity and set
forward the thinking of the statesmen of the world by a whole age.
Repeated utterances of the leading statesmen of most of the great
nations now engaged in war have made it plain that their thought has
come to this, that the principle of public right must henceforth take
precedence over the individual interests of particular nations, and that
the nations of the world must in some way band themselves together to
see that that right prevails as against any