and aggrandizement is gone by; so is also the day of secret
covenants entered into in the interest of particular governments and
likely at some unlooked-for moment to upset the peace of the world. It
is this happy fact, now clear to the view of every public man whose
thoughts do not still linger in an age that is dead and gone, which
makes it possible for every nation whose purposes are consistent with
justice and the peace of the world to avow now or at any other time the
objects it has in view.

We entered this war because violations of right had occurred which
touched us to the quick and made the life of our own people impossible
unless they were corrected and the world secured once for all against
their recurrence. What we demand in this war, therefore, is nothing
peculiar to ourselves. It is that the world be made fit and safe to live
in; and particularly that it be made safe for every peace-loving nation
which, like our own, wishes to live its own life, determine its own
institutions, be assured of justice and fair dealing by the other
peoples of the world as against force and selfish aggression. All the
peoples of the world are in effect partners in this interest, and for
our own part we see very clearly that unless justice be done to others
it will not be done to us. The program of the world's peace, therefore,
is our program; and that program, the only possible program, as we see
it, is this:

I. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall
be no private international understandings of any kind, but diplomacy
shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.

II. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial
waters, alike in peace and in war, except as the seas may be closed in
whole or in part by international action for the enforcement of
international covenants.

III. The removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the
establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations
consenting to the peace and associating themselves for its maintenance.

IV. Adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will be
reduced to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety.

V. A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all
colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in
determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the
populations concerned must have equal weight with