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.

The test, therefore, of every plan of peace is this: Is it based upon
the faith of all the peoples involved or merely upon the word of an
ambitious and intriguing government on the one hand and of a group of
free peoples on the other? This is a test which goes to the root of the
matter; and it is the test which must be applied.

The purposes of the United States in this war are known to the whole
world, to every people to whom the truth has been permitted to come.
They do not need to be stated again. We seek no material advantage of
any kind. We believe that the intolerable wrongs done in this war by
the furious and brutal power of the Imperial German Government ought to
be repaired, but not at the expense of the sovereignty of any
people--rather a vindication of the sovereignty both of those that are
weak and of those that are strong. Punitive damages, the dismemberment
of empires, the establishment of selfish and exclusive economic leagues,
we deem inexpedient and in the end worse than futile, no proper basis
for a peace of any kind, least of all for an enduring peace. That must
be based upon justice and fairness and the common rights of mankind.

We cannot take the word of the present rulers of Germany as a guaranty
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 guaranties treaties of settlement, agreements
for disarmament, covenants to set up arbitration in the place of force,
territorial adjustments, reconstitutions of small nations, if made with
the German Government, no man, no nation could now depend on. We must
await some new evidence of the purposes of the great peoples of the
central powers. God grant it may be given soon and in a way to restore
the confidence of all peoples everywhere in the faith of nations and the
possibility of a covenanted peace.

ROBERT LANSING,

_Secretary of State of the United States of America_.

LABOR MUST BE FREE

[Address to the American Federation of Labor Convention, Buffalo, New
York, November 12, 1917.]

MR. PRESIDENT, DELEGATES OF THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR, LADIES AND
GENTLEMEN:

I esteem it a great privilege