world. It is impossible to apply any standard
of justice so long as such forces are unchecked and undefeated as the
present masters of Germany command. Not until that has been done can
Right be set up as arbiter and peace-maker among the nations. But when
that has been done,--as, God willing, it assuredly will be,--we shall at
last be free to do an unprecedented thing, and this is the time to avow
our purpose to do it. We shall be free to base peace on generosity and
justice, to the exclusion of all selfish claims to advantage even on the
part of the victors.

Let there be no misunderstanding. Our present and immediate task is to
win the war, and nothing shall turn us aside from it until it is
accomplished. Every power and resource we possess, whether of men, of
money, or of materials, is being devoted and will continue to be devoted
to that purpose until it is achieved. Those who desire to bring peace
about before that purpose is achieved I counsel to carry their advice
elsewhere. We will not entertain it. We shall regard the war as won only
when the German people say to us, through properly accredited
representatives, that they are ready to agree to a settlement based upon
justice and the reparation of the wrongs their rulers have done. They
have done a wrong to Belgium which must be repaired. They have
established a power over other lands and peoples than their own,--over
the great Empire of Austria-Hungary, over hitherto free Balkan states,
over Turkey, and within Asia,--which must be relinquished.

Germany's success by skill, by industry, by knowledge, by enterprise we
did not grudge or oppose, but admired, rather. She had built up for
herself a real empire of trade and influence, secured by the peace of
the world. We were content to abide the rivalries of manufacture,
science, and commerce that were involved for us in her success and stand
or fall as we had or did not have the brains and the initiative to
surpass her. But at the moment when she had conspicuously won her
triumphs of peace she threw them away, to establish in their stead what
the world will no longer permit to be established, military and
political domination by arms, by which to oust where she could not excel
the rivals she most feared and hated. The peace we make must remedy that
wrong. It must deliver the once fair lands and happy peoples of Belgium
and northern France from the Prussian conquest and the Prussian menace,
but it must also deliver