determination of our international obligations, to disclose to you
without reserve the thought and purpose that have been taking form in my
mind in regard to the duty of our Government in the days to come when it
will be necessary to lay afresh and upon a new plan the foundations of
peace among the nations.

It is inconceivable that the people of the United States should play no
part in that great enterprise. To take part in such a service will be
the opportunity for which they have sought to prepare themselves by the
very principles and purposes of their polity and the approved practices
of their Government ever since the days when they set up a new nation in
the high and honorable hope that it might in all that it was and did
show mankind the way to liberty. They cannot in honor withhold the
service to which they are now about to be challenged. They do not wish
to withhold it. But they owe it to themselves and to the other nations
of the world to state the conditions under which they will feel free to
render it.

That service is nothing less than this, to add their authority and their
power to the authority and force of other nations to guarantee peace and
justice throughout the world. Such a settlement cannot now be long
postponed. It is right that before it comes this Government should
frankly formulate the conditions upon which it would feel justified in
asking our people to approve its formal and solemn adherence to a League
for Peace. I am here to attempt to state those conditions.

The present war must first be ended; but we owe it to candor and to a
just regard for the opinion of mankind to say that, so far as our
participation in guarantees of future peace is concerned, it makes a
great deal of difference in what way and upon what terms it is ended.
The treaties and agreements which bring it to an end must embody terms
which will create a peace that is worth guaranteeing and preserving, a
peace that will win the approval of mankind, not merely a peace that
will serve the several interests and immediate aims of the nations
engaged. We shall have no voice in determining what those terms shall
be, but we shall, I feel sure, have a voice in determining whether they
shall be made lasting or not by the guarantees of a universal covenant;
and our judgment upon what is fundamental and essential as a condition
precedent to permanency should be spoken now, not afterwards when it may
be too late.

No covenant of coo