nations under institutions of her own choosing; and, more than a welcome, assistance also of every kind that she may need and may herself desire. The treatment accorded Russia by her sister nations in the months to come will be the acid test of their good will, of their comprehension of her needs as distinguished from their own interests, and of their intelligent and unselfish sympathy.

VII. Belgium, the whole world will agree, must be evacuated and restored without any attempt to limit the sovereignty which she enjoys in common with all other free nations. No other single act will serve as this will serve to restore confidence among the nations in the laws which they have themselves set and determined for the government of their relations with one another. Without this healing act the whole structure and validity of international law is forever impaired.

VIII. All French territory should be freed and the invaded portions restored; and the wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which has unsettled the peace of the world for nearly fifty years, should be righted, in order that peace may once more be made secure in the interest of all.

IX. A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearly recognizable lines of nationality. X. The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to see safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the freest opportunity of autonomous development.

XI. Roumania, Serbia, and Montenegro should be evacuated; occupied territories restored; Serbia accorded free and secure access to the sea; and the relations of the several Balkan states to one another determined by friendly counsel along historically established lines of

allegiance and nationality; and international guaranties of the political and economic independence and territorial integrity of the several Balkan states should be entered into.

XII. The Turkish portions of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development, and the Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a free passage to the ships and commerce of all nations under international guaranties.

XIII. An independent Polish state should be erected which should include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenant.

XIV. A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guaranties of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small States alike.

In regard to these essential rectifications of wrong and assertions of right we feel ourselves to be intimate partners of all the Governments and peoples associated together against the imperialists. We cannot be separated in interest or divided in purpose. We stand together until the end.

For such arrangements and covenants we are willing to fight and to continue to fight until they are achieved; but only because we wish the right to prevail and desire a just and stable peace such as can be secured only by removing the chief provocations to war, which this pro

gram does remove. We have no jealousy of German greatness and there is nothing in this program that impairs it. We grudge her no achievement or distinction of learning or of pacific enterprise such as have made her record very bright and very enviable. We do not wish to injure her or to block in any way her legitimate influence or power. We do not wish to fight her either with arms or with hostile arrangements of trade, if she is willing to associate herself with us and the other peace-loving nations of the world in covenants of justice and law and fair dealing. We wish her only to accept a place of equality among the peoples of the world - the new world in which we now live - instead of a place of mastery.

Neither do we presume to suggest to her any alteration or modification of her institutions. But it is necessary, we must frankly say, and necessary as a preliminary to any intelligent dealings with her on our part, that we should know whom her spokesmen speak for when they speak to us, whether for the Reichstag majority or for the military party and the men whose creed is imperial domination.

We have spoken now, surely, in terms too concrete to admit of any further doubt or question. An evident principle runs through the whole program I have outlined. It is the principle of justice to all peoples and nationalities, and their right to live on equal terms of liberty and safety with one another, whether they be strong or weak. Unless this principle be made its foundation, no part of the structure of international justice can stand. The people of the United States could act upon no other principle; and to the vindication of this principle they are ready to devote their lives, their honor, and everything that they possess. The moral climax of

this, the culminating and final war for human liberty, has come, and they are ready to put their own strength, their own highest purpose, their own integrity, and devotion to the test.

FREEDOM AGAINST THE WILL TO POWER 1

WILLIAM E. BORAH (1865

And when we reflect further on some of the issues which are involved in the war, we are again led to understand how conclusively this is a contest between the two systems of government, two civilizations. We ought to get away, if we can, from the idea that it is a conflict over national lines in Europe; that it is a question of the redistribution of territory in Europe; that it is a question of securing compensation for injuries which have been done

us;

and understand that, whatever the cause was in the beginning, we have now arrived at a point where it is distinctly a conflict between two systems of government, between peoples and nations, and that one or the other will have to go down.

In other words, Mr. President, whatever may have been our opinion in the beginning of the war, both sides realize now that this is not only a war between great nations, involving the interests of all their citizens, but that it is distinctly a war between systems of government, and it is so recognized.

Mr. President, the German historian, Professor Meyer, in a book written since the beginning of the war, in which

1 From a speech made in the United States Senate, March 18, 1918, by Mr. Borah as Senator from Idaho.

he sums up the issues involved, or rather the issue, because it all resolves itself into one, uses this language:

"The truth of the whole matter undoubtedly is that the time has arrived when two distinct forms of State organization must face each other in a life-and-death struggle."

That is undoubtedly the understanding and belief of those who are responsible for this war. It is coming to be the understanding and belief of those who have had the war forced upon them. We have finally put aside the tragedy at the Bosnian capital and the wrongs inflicted upon Belgium as the moving causes of the war. They were but the prologue to the imperial theme. We now see and understand clearly and unmistakably the cause at all times lying back of these things. Upon the one hand is Magna Charta,1 the Bill of Rights,2 the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, and the principles of human liberty which they embody and preserve. Upon the other hand is that peculiar form of State organization which, in the language of the Emperor, rests alone upon the strength of the army and whose highest creed finds expression in the words of one of its greatest advocates, that war is a part of the eternal order instituted by God. We go back to Runnymede, where fearless men wrenched from the hands of power habeas corpus and the trial by jury.

1 The great charter won by the Barons of England from King John at Runnymede, June 15, 1215. It is the legal basis of English liberty and thus of American also, securing a legal procedure for all acts of government against its citizens.

2 An Act of Parliament in 1689, confirming and re-defining the rights guaranteed in the Magna Charta. The first six amendments to the American Constitution are often called "The American Bill of Rights."