Our own
fortunes as a nation are involved, whether we would have it so or not.

And yet we are not the less Americans on that account. We shall be the
more American if we but remain true to the principles in which we have
been bred. They are not the principles of a province or of a single
continent. We have known and boasted all along that they were the
principles of a liberated mankind. These, therefore, are the things we
shall stand for, whether in war or in peace:

That all nations are equally interested in the peace of the world and
in the political stability of free peoples, and equally responsible for
their maintenance;

That the essential principle of peace is the actual equality of nations
in all matters of right or privilege;

That peace cannot securely or justly rest upon an armed balance of
power;

That governments derive all their just powers from the consent of the
governed and that no other powers should be supported by the common
thought, purpose, or power of the family of nations.

That the seas should be equally free and safe for the use of all
peoples, under rules set up by common agreement and consent, and that,
so far as practicable, they should be accessible to all upon equal
terms;

That national armaments should be limited to the necessities of national
order and domestic safety;

That the community of interest and of power upon which peace must
henceforth depend imposes upon each nation the duty of seeing to it that
all influences proceeding from its own citizens meant to encourage or
assist revolution in other states should be sternly and effectually
suppressed and prevented.

I need not argue these principles to you, my fellow-countrymen: they are
your own, part and parcel of your own thinking and your own motive in
affairs. They spring up native amongst us. Upon this as a platform of
purpose and of action we can stand together.

And it is imperative that we should stand together. We are being forged
into a new unity amidst the fires that now blaze throughout the world.
In their ardent heat we shall, in God's providence, let us hope, be
purged of faction and division, purified of the errant humors of party
and of private interest, and shall stand forth in the days to come with
a new dignity of national pride and spirit. Let each man see to it that
the dedication is in his own heart, the high purpose of the Nation in
his own mind, ruler of his own will and desire.

I stand here a