President Wilson's Foreign Policy

among nations and their governments that are observed among the individual citizens of civilized states.

This standard which he set for others he has exacted of the United States; and to public opinion, which he asserts to be the greatest of forces, both he and the nation whereof he is the chief executive, have bowed. Thus, President Wilson urged the Congress to repeal the provision of the Panama Canal Act of August 24, 1912, exempting vessels engaged in the coastwise trade of the United States from the payment of tolls, on the ground that the exemption of American vessels-for it is only American vessels that can engage in the coastwise trade of the United States-if not contrary in fact to the provisions of the Hay-Pauncefote treaty of November 18, 1901, between the United States and Great Britain, came nevertheless in conflict with the public opinion of the world and was inconsistent with the provisions of that treaty and therefore with the plighted word of the United States. In his address to the Congress on March 5, 1914, he said:

Whatever may be our own differences of opinion concerning this much debated measure, its meaning is not debated outside the United States. Everywhere else the language of the treaty is given but one interpretation, and that interpretation precludes the exemption I am asking you to repeal. We consented to the treaty; its language we accepted, if we did not originate it; and we are too big, too powerful, too self-respecting a nation to interpret with a too strained or refined reading the words of our own promises just because we have power enough to give us leave to read them as we please. The large thing to do is the only thing we can afford to do, a voluntary withdrawal from a position everywhere questioned and misunderstood. We ought to reverse our action without raising the question whether we were right or wrong, and so once more deserve our reputation for generosity and for the redemption of every obligation without quibble or hesitation.

It will be observed that, in this statement of the case, a strained or even a defensible interpretation was not to be made in order to profit the United States, for morality and justice go hand in hand. acquisition at the expense of morality and of justice and the possessions of nations are not to be seized by physical force, any more than the property of the individual is to be taken by the strong hand. This conception, axiomatic with President Wilson, has been repeatedly stated by him in his public addresses, and never more solemnly than in his address of April 2, 1917, to the Congress, advocating the war with Germany:

We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of nations can make them.

Planting himself squarely upon the foundations of right, international as well as national, advocating for nations the standard of justice prevailing among individuals, disclaiming any acquisitions for his country which the law, even of his own country, as interpreted by the public opinion of mankind, did not permit, President Wilson might well say, as he did in his address of June 30, 1916, before the Press Club in the City of New York:

So, gentlemen, I am willing, no matter what my personal fortunes may be, to play for the verdict of mankind.

JAMES BROWN SCOTT.

WASHINGTON, D. C.

January 11, 1918.

PRESIDENT WILSON'S FOREIGN POLICY

MESSAGES, ADDRESSES, PAPERS