SUPPLEMENT 
 
 TO 
 
 1270 Broadwaiyr, New York 
 
 Edited by Stanley W. Finch 
 
 Vol. l 
 
 NEW YORK, MARCH, 1919 
 
 No. 2 
 
 Two Sections 
 
 Section 2 
 
 FULL TEXT 
 
 OF THE 
 
 CONSTITUTION 
 
 OF 
 
 v 
 
 THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS 
 
 ALSO 
 
 President Wilson’s Addresses 
 
 at Paris, Boston, and New York 
 
 Section Two of The World’s Welfare Magazine for March 
 
 Copyrighted 1919, by General Welfare League 1270 Broadway, New York. 
 
STANLEY W. FINCH, 
 
 Editor of The World's Welfare Magazine. 
 
 Organizer and Late Chief of the Secret Service of the Department of Justice. 
 
t’ 
 
 n>. 3 y /. 1 
 
 L . 
 
 V 
 
 Supplement to 
 
 The World’s Welfare Magazine 
 
 For March, 1919 
 
 THE CONSTITUTION 
 OF THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS 
 
 As read by 
 
 President Wilson before the Peace Conference at Paris, France, 
 
 February 14, 1919. 
 
 Preamble 
 
 In order to promote international cooperation and to secure 
 international peace and security by the acceptance of obligations 
 not to resort to war, by the prescription of open, just and honor¬ 
 able relations between nations, by the firm establishment of the 
 understandings of international law as the actual rule of conduct 
 among governments and by the maintenance of justice and a 
 scrupulous respect for all treaty obligations in the dealings of 
 organized peoples with one another, the Powers signatory to this 
 covenant adopt this constitution of the League of Nations : 
 
 ARTICLE I. 
 
 The action of the high contracting parties under the 
 terms of this covenant shall be effected through the instru¬ 
 mentality of a meeting of a body of delegates representing 
 the high contracting parties, of meetings at more frequent 
 intervals of an executive council and of a permanent inter¬ 
 national secretariat to be established at the seat of the 
 league. 
 
 ARTICLE II. 
 
 Meetings of the body of delegates shall be held at stated 
 intervals and from time to time as occasion may require for 
 the purpose of dealing with matters within the sphere of 
 action of the league. Meetings of the body of delegates 
 shall be held at the seat of the league or at such other places 
 as may be found convenient, and shall consist of repre¬ 
 sentatives of the high contracting parties. Each of the high 
 contracting parties shall have one vote, but may have not 
 more than three representatives. 
 
 ARTICLE III. 
 
 The executive council shall consist of representatives 
 of the United States of America, the British Empire, France, 
 Italy and Japan, together with representatives of four other 
 States, members of the league. The selection of these four 
 States shall be made by the body of delegates on such prin¬ 
 ciples and in such manner as they think fit. Pending the 
 appointment of these representatives of other States rep¬ 
 resentatives of (blank left for names) shall be members of 
 the executive council. 
 
 Meetings of the council shall be held from time to time 
 as occasion may be required and at least once a year, at 
 whatever place may be decided on, or, failing any such de¬ 
 cision, at the seat of the league, and any matter within the 
 sphere of action of the league or affecting the peace of the 
 world may be dealt with at such meetings. 
 
 Invitations shall be sent to any Power to attend a meet¬ 
 ing of the council at which such matters directly affecting 
 its interests are to be discussed, and no decision taken at 
 any meeting will be binding on such Powers unless so 
 invited. 
 
 ARTICLE IV. 
 
 All matters of procedure at meetings of the body of dele¬ 
 gates or the executive council, including the appointment of 
 committees to investigate particular matters, shall be regu¬ 
 lated by the body of delegates or the executive council, 
 and may be decided by a majority of the States represented 
 at the meeting. 
 
 The first meeting of the body of delegates and of the 
 executive council shall be summoned by the President of 
 the United States of America. 
 
 ARTICLE V. 
 
 The permanent secretariat of the league shall be estab¬ 
 lished at-, which shall constitute the seat of the league. 
 
 The secretariat shall comprise such secretaries and staff 
 as may be required, under the general direction and control 
 of a secretary-general of the league, who shall be chosen 
 by the executive council; the secretariat shall be appointed 
 by the secretary-general subject to confirmation by the ex¬ 
 ecutive council. 
 
 The secretary-general shall act in that capacity at all 
 meetings of the body of delegates or of the executive 
 council. 
 
 The expenses of the secretariat shall be borne by the 
 States members of the league in accordance with the ap¬ 
 portionment of the expenses of the international bureau 
 of the Universal Postal Union. 
 
 ARTICLE VI. 
 
 Representatives of the high contracting parties and 
 officials of the league when engaged in the business of the 
 league shall enjoy diplomatic privileges and immunities, 
 and the buildings occupied by the league or its officials or 
 by representatives attending its meetings shall enjoy the 
 benefits of extraterritoriality. 
 
 ARTICLE VII. 
 
 Admission to the league of States not signatories to the 
 covenant and not named in the protocol hereto as States 
 to be invited to adhere to the covenant requires the assent of 
 not less than two-thirds of the States represented in the 
 body of delegates, and shall be limited to fully self-govern¬ 
 ing countries, including dominions and colonies. 
 
4 
 
 THE WORLD’S WELFARE 
 
 No state shall be admitted to the league unless it is able 
 to give effective guarantees of its sincere intention to ob¬ 
 serve its international obligations and unless it shall con¬ 
 form to such principles as may be prescribed by the league 
 in regard to its naval and military forces and armaments. 
 
 ARTICLE VIII. 
 
 The high contracting parties recognize the principle that 
 the maintenance of peace will require the reduction of na¬ 
 tional armaments to the lowest point consistent with national 
 safety and the enforcement by common action of interna¬ 
 tional obligations, having special regard to the geographical 
 situation and circumstances of each State, and the executive^ 
 council shall formulate plans for effecting such reduction. 
 
 The executive council shall also determine for the consid¬ 
 eration and action of the several governments what military 
 equipment and armament is fair and reasonable in propor¬ 
 tion to the scale of forces laid down in the programme of 
 disarmament, and these limits, when adopted, shall not be 
 exceeded without the permission of the executive council. 
 
 The high contracting parties agree that the manufac¬ 
 ture by private enterprise of munitions and implements of 
 war lends itself to grave objections, and direct the execu¬ 
 tive council to advise how the evil effects attendant upon 
 •uch manufacture can be prevented, due regard being had 
 to the necessities of those countries which are not able to 
 manufacture for themselves the munitions and implements 
 of war necessary for their safety. 
 
 The high contracting parties undertake in no way to con¬ 
 ceal from each other the conditions of such of their in¬ 
 dustries as are capable of being adapted to warlike purposes 
 or the scale of their armaments, and agree that there shall be 
 full and frank interchange of information as to their mili¬ 
 tary and naval programmes. 
 
 ARTICLE IX. 
 
 A permanent commission shall be constituted to advise 
 the league on the execution of the provisions of Article 
 VIII, and on military and naval questions generally. 
 
 ARTICLE X. 
 
 The high contracting parties shall undertake to respect 
 and preserve as against external aggression the territorial 
 integrity and existing political independence of all States 
 members of the league. In case of any such aggression or 
 in case of any threat or danger of such aggression the ex¬ 
 ecutive council shall advise upon the means by which the 
 obligation shall be fulfilled. 
 
 ARTICLE XI. 
 
 Any war or threat of war, whether immediately affecting 
 any of the high contracting parties or not, is hereby de¬ 
 clared a matter of concern to the league and the high con¬ 
 tracting parties reserve the right to take any action that 
 may be deemed wise and effectual to safeguard the peace 
 of nations. 
 
 It is hereby also declared and agreed to be the friendly 
 right of each of the high contracting parties to draw the at¬ 
 tention of the body of delegates or of the executive council 
 to any circumstance affecting international intercourse 
 which threatens to disturb international peace or the good 
 understanding between nations upon which peace depends. 
 
 ARTICLE XII. 
 
 The high contracting parties agree that should disputes 
 arise between them which cannot be adjusted by the ordinary 
 processes of diplomacy they will in no case resort to war 
 without previously submitting the questions and matters 
 involved either to arbitration or to inquiry by the executive 
 council and until three months after the award by the ar¬ 
 bitrators, or a recommendation by the executive council, 
 and that they will not even then resort to war as against a 
 
 member of the league which complies with the award of 
 the arbitrators or the recommendation of the executive 
 council. 
 
 In any case under this article the award of the arbitra¬ 
 tors shall be made within a reasonable time, and the recom¬ 
 mendation of the executive council shall be made within six 
 months after the submission of the dispute. 
 
 ARTICLE XIII. 
 
 The high contracting parties agree that whenever any 
 dispute or difficulty shall arise between them which they 
 recognize to be suitable for submission to arbitration and 
 which cannot be satisfactorily settled by diplomacy they 
 will submit the whole matter to arbitration. For this pur¬ 
 pose the court of arbitration to which the case is referred 
 shall be the court agreed on by the parties or stipulated in 
 any convention existing between them. The high contract¬ 
 ing parties agree that they will carry out in full good faith 
 any award that may be rendered. In the event of any fail¬ 
 ure to carry out the award the executive council shall pro¬ 
 pose what steps can best be taken to give effect thereto. 
 
 ARTICLE XIV. 
 
 The executive council shall formulate plans for the es¬ 
 tablishment of a permanent court of international justice 
 and this court shall, when established, be competent to hear 
 and determine any matter which the parties recognize as 
 suitable for submission to it for arbitration under the fore¬ 
 going article. 
 
 ARTICLE XV. 
 
 If there should arise between States’ members of the 
 league,any dispute likely to lead to rupture, which is not sub¬ 
 mitted to arbitration as above, the high contracting parties 
 agree that they will refer the matter to the executive council; 
 either party to the dispute may give notice of the existence 
 of the dispute to the Secretary-General, who will make all 
 necessary arrangements for a full investigation and con¬ 
 sideration thereof. For this purpose the parties agree to 
 communicate to the Secretary-General as promptly as pos¬ 
 sible statements of their case with all the relevant facts and 
 papers, and the executive council may forthwith direct the 
 publication thereof. Where the efforts of the council lead 
 to the settlement of the dispute a statement shall be pub¬ 
 lished indicating the nature of the dispute and that of set¬ 
 tlement, together with such explanations as may be appro¬ 
 priate. 
 
 If the dispute has not been settled a report by the coun¬ 
 cil shall be published, setting forth with all necessary facts 
 and explanations the recommendation which the council 
 thinks just and proper for the settlement of the dispute. If 
 the report is unanimously agreed to by the members of the 
 council other than the parties to the dispute the high con¬ 
 tracting parties agree that they will not go to war with any 
 party which complies with the recommendations and that, if 
 any party shall refuse so to comply, the council shall pro¬ 
 pose measures necessary to give effect to the recommenda¬ 
 tions. 
 
 If no such unanimous report can be made it shall be the 
 duty of the majority and the privilege of the minority to 
 issue statements indicating what they believe to be the 
 facts and containing the reasons which they consider to 
 be just and proper. 
 
 The executive council may in any case under this article 
 refer the dispute to the body of delegates. The dispute 
 shall be so referred at the request of either party to the 
 dispute, provided that such request must be made within 
 fourteen days after the submission of the dispute. In a 
 case referred to the body of delegates all the provisions of 
 this article and of Article XII, relating to the action and 
 powers of the executive council shall apply to the action 
 and powers of the body of delegates. 
 
 \ 
 
THE WORLD’S WELFARE 
 
 5 
 
 \ 
 
 ARTICLE XVI. 
 
 Should any of the high contracting parties break or dis¬ 
 regard its covenants under Article XII, it shall thereby 
 ipso facto be deemed to have committed an act of war 
 against all the other members of the league, which hereby 
 undertakes immediately to subject it to the severance of 
 all trade or financial relations, the prohibition of all inter¬ 
 course between their nations and the nationals of the cov¬ 
 enant breaking State, and the prevention of all financial, 
 commercial or personal intercourse between the nationals 
 of the covenant breaking State and the nationals of any 
 other State, whether a member of the league or not. 
 
 It shall be the duty of the executive council in such 
 case to recommend what effective military or naval force 
 the members of the league shall severally contribute to the 
 armed forces to be used to protect the covenants of the 
 league. 
 
 The high contracting parties agree further that they 
 will mutually support one another in the financial and 
 economic measures which may be taken under this article in 
 order to minimize the loss and inconvenience resulting from 
 the above measures and that they will mutually support one 
 another in resisting any special measures aimed at one of 
 their number by the covenant breaking State, and that they 
 will afford passage through their territory to the forces 
 of any of the high contracting parties who are cooperating 
 to protect the covenants of the league. 
 
 ARTICLE XVII. 
 
 In the event of disputes between one State member of 
 the league and another State which is not a member of the 
 league, or between States not members of the league, 
 the high contracting parties agree that the State or 
 States not members of the league shall be invited to accept 
 the obligations of membership in the league for the purposes 
 of such dispute upon such conditions as the executive coun¬ 
 cil may deem just, and upon acceptance of any such invita¬ 
 tion the above provisions shall be applied with such modi¬ 
 fications as may be deemed necessary by the league. 
 
 Upon such invitation being given the executive council 
 shall immediately institute an inquiry into the circumstances 
 and merits of the dispute and recommend such action as 
 may seem best and most effectual in the circumstances. 
 
 In the event of a Power so invited refusing to accept the 
 obligations of membership in the league for the purposes 
 of the league which in the case of a State member of the 
 league would constitute a breach of Article XII, the pro¬ 
 visions of Article XVI, shall be applicable as against the 
 state taking such action. 
 
 If both parties to the dispute when so invited refuse to 
 accept the obligations of membership in the league for the 
 purpose of such dispute the executive council may take such 
 action and make such recommendations as will prevent 
 hostilities and will result in the settlement of the dispute. 
 
 ARTICLE XVIII. 
 
 The high contracting parties agree that the league shall 
 be intrusted with general supervision of the trade in arms 
 and ammunition with the countries in which the control 
 of this traffic is necessary in the common interest. 
 
 ARTICLE XIX. 
 
 To those colonies and territories which as a consequence 
 of the late war have ceased to be under the sovereignty of 
 the States which formerly governed them and which are in¬ 
 habited by peoples not yet able to stand by themselves un¬ 
 der the strenuous conditions of the modern world there 
 should be applied the principle that the well being and 
 development of such peoples form a sacred trust of civili¬ 
 zation, and that securities for the performance of this trust 
 should be embodied in the constitution of the league. 
 
 The best method of giving practical effect to this prin¬ 
 ciple is that the tutelage of such peoples should be in¬ 
 trusted to advanced nations who by reason of their re¬ 
 sources, their experience or their geographical position can 
 best undertake this responsibility, and that this tutelage 
 should be exercised by them as mandatories on behalf of 
 the league. 
 
 The character of the mandate must differ according to 
 
 [ the stage of the development of the people, the geographical 
 situation of the territory, its economic conditions and other 
 bimilar circumstances. 
 
 Certain communities formerly belonging to the Turkish 
 Empire have reached the stage of development where their 
 existence as independent nations can be provisionally recog¬ 
 nized subject to the rendering of administrative advice and 
 assistance by a mandatory Power until such time as they are 
 able to stand alone. The wishes of these communities must 
 be a principal consideration in the selection of the manda¬ 
 tory Power. 
 
 Other peoples, especially those of central Africa, are at 
 such a stage that the mandatory must be responsible for the 
 administration of the territory subject to conditions which 
 will guarantee freedom of conscience or religion, subject only 
 to the maintenance of public order and morals, the prohibi¬ 
 tion of abuses such as the slave trade, the arms traffic and the 
 liquor traffic, and the prevention of the establishment of 
 fortifications or military and naval bases and of military 
 training of the natives for other than police purposes and 
 the defence of territory, and will also secure equal oppor¬ 
 tunities for the trade and commerce of other members of 
 the league. 
 
 There are territories such as southwest Africa and cer¬ 
 tain of the South Pacific isles which, owing to the sparse¬ 
 ness of their populations or their small size or their remote¬ 
 ness from the centers of civilization or their geographical 
 contiguity to the mandatory State, and other circumstances, 
 can be best administered under the laws of the mandatory 
 State as integral portions thereof, subject to the safeguards 
 above mentioned in the interests of the indigenous popu¬ 
 lation. 
 
 In every case of mandate the mandatory State shall ren¬ 
 der to the league an annual report in reference to the terri¬ 
 tory committed to its charge. 
 
 The degree of authority, control or administration to be 
 exercised by the mandatory State shall, if not previously 
 agreed upon by the high contracting parties in each case, 
 be explicitly defined by the executive council in a special 
 act or charter. 
 
 The high contracting parties further agree to establish 
 at the seat of the league a mandatory commission to receive 
 and examine the annual reports of the mandatory powers, 
 and to assist the league in insuring the observance of the 
 terms of all mandates. 
 
 ARTICLE XX. 
 
 The high contracting parties will endeavor to secure 
 and maintain fair and humane conditions of labor for men, 
 women and children both in their own countries and in all 
 countries to which their commercial and industrial rela¬ 
 tions extend, and to that end agree to establish as part of 
 the organization of the league a permanent bureau of labor. 
 
 ARTICLE XXI. 
 
 The high contracting parties agree that provision shall 
 be made through the instrumentality of the league to se¬ 
 cure and maintain freedom of transit and equitable treat¬ 
 ment for the commerce of all States members of the league, 
 having in mind, among other things, special arrangements 
 with regard to the necessities of the regions devastated 
 during the war of 1914-1918. 
 
 « 
 
6 
 
 THE WORLD’S WELFARE 
 
 ARTICLE XXII. 
 
 The high contracting parties agree to place under the 
 control of the league all international bureaus already es¬ 
 tablished by general treaties if the parties to such treaties con¬ 
 sent. Futhermore they agree that all such international 
 bureaus to be constituted in future shall be placed under 
 control of the league. 
 
 ARTICLE XXIII. 
 
 The high contracting parties agree that every treaty or 
 international engagement entered into hereafter by any" 
 State, member of the league, shall be forthwith registered 
 with the secretary-general and as soon as possible published 
 by him, and that no such treaty or international engage¬ 
 ment shall be binding until so registered. 
 
 ARTICLE XXIV. 
 
 It shall be the right of the body of delegates from time 
 to time to advise the reconsideration by States, members 
 of the league, of treaties which have become inapplicable, 
 
 and of international conditions, of which the continuance 
 may endanger the peace of the world. 
 
 ARTICLE XXV. 
 
 The high contracting parties severally agree that the 
 present covenant is accepted as abrogating all obligations 
 inter se which are inconsistent with the terms thereof, and 
 solemnly engage that they will not hereafter enter into any 
 engagements inconsistent with the terms thereof. In case 
 any of the Powers signatory hereto or subsequently ad¬ 
 mitted to the league shall, before becoming a party to this 
 covenant, have undertaken any obligations which are incon¬ 
 sistent with the terms of this covenant, it shall be the duty 
 of such Power to take immediate steps to procure its re¬ 
 lease from such obligations. 
 
 ARTICLE XXVI. 
 
 Amendments to this covenant will take effect when rati¬ 
 fied by the States whose representatives compose the ex¬ 
 ecutive council and by three-fourths of the States whose 
 representatives compose the body of delegates. 
 
 President Wilson’s Address at Paris 
 
 On February 14, 1919, Before the Peace Conference, at the Reading 
 of the Constitution of the League of Nations 
 
 “Mr. Chairman: I have the honor, and assume it a very 
 great privilege, of reporting in the name of the commission 
 constituted by this conference on the formulation of a plan 
 for the League of Nations. I am happy to say that it is a 
 unanimous report, a unanimous report from the representa¬ 
 tives of fourteen nations—the United States, Great Britain, 
 France, Italy, Japan, Belgium, Brazil, China, Czechoslova¬ 
 kia, Greece, Poland, Portugal, Rumania, and Serbia. 
 
 “I think it will be serviceable and interesting if I, with 
 your permission, read the document, as the only report we 
 have to make.” 
 
 President Wilson then read the draft. When he reached 
 Article XV, and had read through the second paragraph, the 
 President paused and said: 
 
 “I pause to point out that a misconception might arise 
 in connection with one of the sentences I have just read— 
 ‘If any party shall refuse to comply, the Council shall pro¬ 
 pose measures necessary to give effect to the recommenda¬ 
 tions.’ 
 
 “A case in point, a purely hypothetical case, is this: Sup¬ 
 pose there is in the possession of a particular power a piece 
 of territory, or some other substantial thing in dispute, to 
 which it is claimed that it is not entitled. Suppose that the 
 matter is submitted to the Executive Council for recom¬ 
 mendation as to the settlement of the dispute, diplomacy 
 having failed, and suppose that the decision is in favor of 
 the party which claims the subject matter of dispute, as 
 against the party which has the subject matter in dispute. 
 
 “Then, if the party in possession of the subject matter 
 in dispute merely sits still and does nothing, it has accepted 
 the decision of the Council in the sense that it makes no 
 resistance, but something must be done to see that it sur¬ 
 renders the subject matter in dispute. 
 
 “In such a case, the only case contemplated, it is pro¬ 
 vided that the Executive Council may then consider what 
 steps will be necessary to oblige the party against whom 
 judgment has been given to comply with the decisions of 
 the Council.” 
 
 CITES A CASE FOR USE OF FORCE. 
 
 After having read Article XIX, President Wilson also 
 stopped and said: 
 
 “Let me say that before being embodied in this docu¬ 
 ment this was the subject matter of a very careful discus¬ 
 sion by representatives of the five greater parties, and that 
 their unanimous conclusion is the matter embodied in this 
 article.” 
 
 After having read the entire document, President Wilson 
 continued as follows: 
 
 “It gives me pleasure to add to this formal reading of 
 the result of our labors that the character of the discussion 
 which occurred at the sittings of the commission was not 
 only of the most constructive but of the most encouraging 
 sort. It was obvious throughout our discussions that, al¬ 
 though there were subjects upon which there were individ¬ 
 ual differences of judgment with regard to the method by 
 which our objects should be obtained, there was practically 
 at no point any serious differences of opinion or motive as 
 to the objects which we were seeking. 
 
 “Indeed, while these debates were not made the oppor¬ 
 tunity for the expression of enthusiasm and sentiment, I 
 think the other members of the commission will agree with 
 me that there was an undertone of high respect and of en¬ 
 thusiasm for the thing we were trying to do, which was 
 heartening throughout every meeting, because we felt that in 
 a way this conference did intrust unto us the expression of 
 one of its highest and most important purposes, to see to 
 it that the concord of the world in the future with regard 
 to the objects of justice should not be subject to doubt or 
 uncertainty, that the co-operation of the great body of na¬ 
 tions should be assured in the maintenance of peace upon 
 terms of honor and of international obligations. 
 
 “The compulsion of that task was constantly upon us, 
 and at no point was there shown the slightest desire to do 
 anything but suggest the best means to accomplish that 
 great object. There is very great significance, therefore, 
 in the fact that the result was reached unanimously. 
 
 i 
 
7 
 
 THE WORLD 
 
 UNION OF WILLS THAT CANNOT BE RESISTED. 
 
 “Fourteen nations were represented, among them all of 
 those powers which for convenience we have called the 
 great powers, and among the rest a representation of the 
 greatest variety of circumstances and interests. So that I 
 think we are justified in saying that the significance of the 
 result, therefore, has the deepest of all meanings, the union 
 of wills in a common purpose, a union of wills which can¬ 
 not be resisted, and which, I dare say, no nation will run 
 the risk of attempting to resist. 
 
 “Now as to the character of the document. While it 
 has consumed some time to read this document, I think 
 you will see at once that it is very simple, and in nothing so 
 simple as in the structure which it suggests for a League 
 of Nations—a body of delegates, an Executive Council, and 
 a permanent secretariat. 
 
 “When it came to the question of determining the char¬ 
 acter of the representation in the body of delegates, we were 
 all aware of a feeling which is current throughout the 
 world. Inasmuch as I am stating it in the presence of 
 the official representatives of the various Governments here 
 present, including myself, I may say that there is a universal 
 feeling that the world cannot rest satisfied with merely 
 official guidance. There has reached us through many chan¬ 
 nels the feeling that if the deliberating body of the League 
 of Nations was merely to be a body of officials represent¬ 
 ing the various Governments, the peoples of the world 
 would not be sure that some of the mistakes which pre¬ 
 occupied officials had admittedly made might not be re¬ 
 peated. 
 
 “It was impossible to conceive a method or an assembly 
 so large and various as to be really representative of the 
 great body of the peoples of the world, because as I roughly 
 reckon it, we represent, as we sit around this table, more 
 than twelve hundred million people. You cannot have a 
 representative assembly of twelve hundred million people, 
 but if you leave it to each Government to have, if it pleases, 
 one or two or three representatives, though only with a 
 single vote, it may vary its representation from time to 
 time, not only, but it may [originate] the choice of its 
 several representatives. [Wireless here unintelligible.] 
 
 “Therefore, we thought that this was a proper and a 
 very prudent concession to the practically universal opinion 
 of plain men everywhere that they wanted the door left 
 open to a variety of representation, instead of being con¬ 
 fined to a single official body with which they could or 
 might not find themselves in sympathy. 
 
 PROVISION FOR DISCUSSION. 
 
 “And you will notice that this body has unlimited rights 
 of discussion—I mean of discussion of anything that falls 
 within the field of international relations—and that it is 
 especially agreed that war or international misunderstand¬ 
 ings, or anything that may lead to friction or trouble, is 
 everybody’s business, because it may affect the peace of 
 the world. 
 
 “And in order to safeguard the popular power so far 
 as we could of this representative body, it is provided, you 
 will notice, that when a subject is submitted, it is not to 
 arbitration, but to discussion by the Executive Council. It 
 can, upon the initiative of either of the parties to the dis¬ 
 pute, be drawn out of the Executive Council into the larger 
 forum of the general body of delegates, because through 
 this instrument we are depending primarily and chiefly upon 
 one great force, and this is the moral force of the public 
 opinion of the world—the pleasing and clarifying and com¬ 
 pelling influences of publicity, so that intrigues can no 
 longer have their coverts, so that designs that are sinister 
 can at any time be drawn into the open, so that those things 
 that are destroyed by the light may be promptly destroyed 
 by the overwhelming light of the universal expression of 
 the condemnation of the world. 
 
 ’ S WELFARE 
 
 “Armed force is in the background in this program, but 
 it is in the background, and if the moral force of the world 
 will not suffice, the physical force of the world shall. But 
 that is the last resort, because this is intended as a consti¬ 
 tution of peace, not as a league of war. 
 
 “The simplicity of the document seems to me to be one 
 of its chief virtues, because, speaking for myself, I was un¬ 
 able to see the variety of circumstances with which this 
 (League would have to deal. I was unable, therefore, to 
 j-lan all the machinery that might be necessary to meet the 
 differing and unexpected contingencies. Therefore, I should 
 say of this document that it is not a straitjacket, but a 
 vehicle of life. 
 
 A LIVING THING IS BORN. 
 
 “A living thing is born, and we must see to it what 
 clothes we put on it. It is not a vehicle of power, but a 
 vehicle in which power may be varied at the discretion 
 of those who exercise it and in accordance with the chang¬ 
 ing circumstances of the time. And yet, while it is elastic, 
 while it is general in its terms, it is definite in the one 
 thing that we were called upon to make definite. It is a 
 definite guarantee of peace. It is a definite guarantee by 
 word against aggression. It is a definite guarantee against 
 the things \Vhich have just come near bringing the whole 
 structure of civilization into ruin. 
 
 “Its purposes do not for a moment lie vague. Its pur¬ 
 poses are declared, and its powers are unmistakable. It is 
 not in contemplation that this should be merely a league to 
 secure the peace of the world. It is a league which can 
 be used for co-operation in any international matter. That 
 is the significance of the provision introduced concerning 
 labor. There are many ameliorations of labor conditions 
 which can be effected by conference and discussion. I an¬ 
 ticipate that there will be a very great usefulness in the 
 Bureau of Labor which it is contemplated shall be set up 
 by the League. Men and women and children who work 
 have been in the background through long ages, and some¬ 
 times seemed to be forgotten, while Governments have had 
 their watchful and suspicious eyes upon the manoeuvres 
 of one another, while the thought of statesmen has been 
 about structural action and the larger transactions of com¬ 
 merce and finance. 
 
 “Now, if I may believe the picture which I see, there 
 comes into the foreground the great body of the laboring 
 people of the world, the men and women and children upon 
 whom the great burden of sustaining the world must from 
 day to day fall, whether we wish it to do so or not, people 
 who go to bed tired and wake up without the stimulation of 
 lively hope. These people will be drawn into the field of 
 international consultation and help, and will be among 
 the wards of the combined Governments of the world. 
 There is, I take leave to say, a very great step in advance 
 in the mere conception of that. 
 
 “Then, as you will notice, there is an imperative article 
 concerning the publicity of all international agreements. 
 Henceforth no member of the League can claim any agree¬ 
 ment valid which it has not registered with the Secretary- 
 General, in whose office, of course, it will be subject to the 
 examination of anybody representing a member of the 
 League. And the duty is laid upon the Secretary-General 
 to publish every document of that sort at the earliest pos¬ 
 sible time. 
 
 “I suppose most persons who have not been conversant 
 with the business of foreign affairs do not realize how 
 many hundreds of these agreements are made in a single 
 year, and how difficult it might be to publish the more un¬ 
 important of them immediately, how uninteresting it would 
 be to most of the world to publish them immediately, but 
 even they must be published just as soon as it is possible 
 for the Secretary-General to publish them. 
 
8 
 
 THE WORLD’S WELFARE 
 
 PROTECTION OF THE HELPLESS. 
 
 “Then there is a feature about this covenant which, to 
 my mind, is one of the greatest and most satisfactory ad¬ 
 vances that has been made. We are done with annexations 
 of helpless peoples, meant in some instances by some pow¬ 
 ers to be used merely for exploitation. We recognize in 
 the most solemn manner that the helpless and undeveloped 
 peoples of the world, being in that condition, put an obli¬ 
 gation upon us to look after their interests primarily be¬ 
 fore we use them for our interests, and that in all cases 
 of this sort hereafter it shall be the duty of the Leagued 
 to see that the nations who are assigned as the tutors and 
 advisers and directors of these peoples shall look to their 
 interests and their development before they look to the in¬ 
 terests and desires of the mandatory nation itself. 
 
 “There has been no greater advance than this, gentlemen. 
 If you look back upon the history of the world you will see 
 how helpless peoples have too often been a prey to powers 
 that had no conscience in the matter. It has been one of 
 the many distressing revelations of recent years that the 
 great power which has just been, happily, defeated, put in¬ 
 tolerable burdens and injustices upon the helpless people 
 of some of the colonies which it annexed to itself, that its 
 interest was rather their extermination than their develop¬ 
 ment, that the desire was to possess their land for Euro¬ 
 pean purposes and not to enjoy their confidence in order 
 that mankind might be lifted in these places to the next 
 higher level. 
 
 “Now, the world, expressing its conscience in law, says 
 there is an end of that, that our consciences shall be settled 
 to this thing. States will be picked out which have already 
 shown that they can exercise a conscience in this matter, 
 and under their tutelage the helpless peoples of the world 
 will come into a new light and into a new hope. 
 
 A PRACTICAL DOCUMENT. 
 
 “So I think I can say of this document that it is at one 
 and the same time a practical document and a human docu¬ 
 
 ment. There is a pulse of sympathy in it. There is a com¬ 
 pulsion of conscience throughout it. It is practical, and 
 yet it is intended to purify, to rectify, to elevate. And I 
 want to say that so far as my observation instructs me, 
 this is in one sense a belated document. I believe that the 
 conscience of the world has long been prepared to express 
 itself in some such way. We are not just now discovering 
 our sympathy for these people and our interest in them. 
 We are simply expressing it, for it has long been felt, and 
 in the administration of the affairs of more than one of the 
 great States represented here—so far as I know, all of the 
 great States that are represented here—that humane im¬ 
 pulse has already expressed itself in their dealings with 
 their colonies, whose peoples were yet at a low stage of 
 civilization. 
 
 “We have had many instances of colonies lifted into the 
 sphere of complete self-government. This is not the dis¬ 
 covery of a principle. It is the universal application of a 
 principle. It is the agreement of the great nations which 
 have tried to live by these standards in their separate ad¬ 
 ministrations to unite in seeing that their common force and 
 their common thought and intelligence are lent to this great 
 and humane enterprise. I think it is an occasion, therefore, 
 for the most profound satisfaction that this humane de¬ 
 cision should have been reached in a matter for which the 
 world has long been waiting and until a very recent period 
 thought that it was still too early to hope. 
 
 “Many terrible things have come out of this war, gen¬ 
 tlemen, but some very beautiful things have come out of it. 
 Wrong has been defeated, but the rest of the world has 
 been more conscious than it ever was before of the majority 
 of right. People that were suspicious of one another can 
 now live as friends and comrades in a single family, and 
 desire to do so. The miasma of distrust, of intrigue, is 
 cleared away. Men are looking eye to eye and saying, 
 ‘We are brothers and have a common purpose. We did not 
 realize it before, but now we do realize it, and this is our 
 covenant of friendship.’ ” • 
 
 President Wilson's Address at Boston 
 
 On February 24, 1919, on the Subject of the Constitution 
 of the League of Nations 
 
 Governor Coolidge, Mr. Mayor, Fellow Citizens: I won¬ 
 der if you are half as glad to see me as I am to see you. It 
 warms my heart to see a great body of my fellow citizens 
 again, because in some respects during the recent months I 
 have been very lonely indeed without your comradeship and 
 counsel, and I tried at every step of the work which fell 
 to me to recall what I was sure would be your counsel with 
 regard to the great matters which were under considera¬ 
 tion. 
 
 I do not want you to think that I have not been ap¬ 
 preciative of the extraordinarily generous reception which 
 was given to me on the other side. In saying that it makes 
 me very happy to get home again I do not mean to say that 
 I was not very deeply touched by the cries that came from 
 the great crowds on the other side. But I want to say to 
 you in all honesty that I felt them to be a call of greeting 
 to you rather than to me. 
 
 I did not feel that the greeting was personal. I had in 
 my heart the overcrowning pride of being your representa¬ 
 tive and of receiving the plaudits of men everywhere who 
 felt that your hearts beat with theirs in the cause of liberty. 
 
 There was no mistaking the tone in the voices of those 
 great crowds. It was not a tone of mere greeting; it was 
 not a tone of mere generous welcome; it was the calling 
 of comrade to comrade, the cries that come from men who 
 say “We have waited for this day when the friends of liberty 
 should come across the sea and shake hands with us, to see 
 that a new world was constructed upon a new basis and 
 foundation of justice and right.” 
 
 TRUSTED THROUGHOUT WORLD. 
 
 I can’t tell you the inspiration that came from the senti¬ 
 ments that come out of those simple voices of the crowd, 
 and the proudest thing I have to report to you is that this 
 great country of ours is trusted throughout the world. 
 
 I have not come to report the proceedings or the results 
 of the proceedings of the Peace Conference; that would 
 be premature. I can say that I have received very happy 
 impressions from this conference; the impression that while 
 there are many differences of judgment, while there are 
 some divergences of object, there is nevertheless a common 
 spirit and a common realization of the necessity of setting 
 up new standards of right in the world. 
 
THE WORLD’S WELFARE 
 
 9 
 
 Because the men who are in conference in Paris realize 
 as keenly as any American can realize that they are not the 
 masters of their people; that they are the servants of their 
 people and that the spirit of their people has awakened to 
 a new purpose and a new conception of their power to 
 realize that purpose, and that no man dare go home from 
 that conference and report anything less noble than was ex¬ 
 pected of it. 
 
 The conference seems to you to go slowly; from day to 
 day in Paris it seems to go slowly; but I wonder if you 
 realize the complexity of the task which it has undertaken. 
 It seems as if the settlements of this war affect, and affect 
 directly, every great, and I sometimes think every small, 
 nation in the world, and no one decision can prudently 
 be made which is not properly linked in with the great 
 series of other decisions which must accompany it, and 
 it must be reckoned in with the final result if the real qual¬ 
 ity and character of that result is to be properly judged. 
 
 HEARING THE WHOLE CASE. 
 
 What we are doing is to hear the whole case; hear it 
 from the mouths of the men most interested; hear it from 
 those who are officially commissioned to state it; hear the 
 rival claims; hear the claims that affect new nationalities, 
 that affect new areas of the world, that affect new commer¬ 
 cial and economic connections that have been established 
 by the great world war through which we have gone. And 
 I have been struck by the moderateness of those who have 
 represented national claims. 
 
 I can testify that I have nowhere seen the gleam of 
 passion. I have seen earnestness, I have seen tears come 
 to the eyes of men who plead for downtrodden people whom 
 they were privileged to speak for; but they were not the 
 tears of anguish, they were the tears of ardent hope. 
 
 And I don’t see how any man can fail to have been sub¬ 
 dued by these pleas, subdued to this feeling, that he was not 
 there to assert an individual judgment of his own but to try 
 to assist the case of humanity. 
 
 And in the midst of it all every interest seeks out first 
 of all, when it reaches Paris, the representatives of the 
 United States. Why? Because, and I think I am stating 
 the most wonderful fact in history—because there is no 
 nation in Europe that suspects the motives of the United 
 States. 
 
 Was there ever so wonderful a thing seen before? Was 
 there ever so moving a thing? Was there ever any fact 
 that so bound the nation that had won that esteem forever 
 to deserve it? 
 
 I would not have you understand that the great men who 
 represent the other nations there in conference are dis- 
 esteemed by those who know them. Quite the contrary. But 
 you understand that the nations of Europe have again and 
 again clashed with one another in competitive interest. It 
 is impossible for men to forget those sharp issues that were 
 drawn between them in times past. 
 
 It is impossible for men to believe that all ambitions 
 have all of a sudden been foregone. They remember ter¬ 
 ritory that was coveted; they remember rights that it was 
 attempted to extort; they remember political ambitions 
 which it was attempted to realize, and, while they believe 
 that men have come into a different temper they cannot for¬ 
 get these things, and so they do not resort to one another 
 for a dispassionate view of the matters in controversy. 
 They resort to that nation which has won the enviable dis¬ 
 tinction of being regarded as the friend of mankind. 
 
 Whenever it is desired to send a small force of soldiers 
 to occupy a piece of territory where it is thought nobody 
 else will be welcome they ask for American soldiers, and 
 where other soldiers would be looked upon with suspicion 
 and perhaps met with resistance the American soldier is 
 welcomed with acclaim. 
 
 I have had so many grounds for pride on the other side 
 of the water that I am very thankful that they are not 
 grounds for personal pride, but for national pride. If they 
 were grounds for personal pride I’d be the most stuck up 
 man in the world, and it has been an infinite pleasure to 
 me to see those gallant soldiers of ours, of whom the Con¬ 
 stitution of the United States made me the proud com¬ 
 mander. 
 
 You may be proud of the Twenty-sixth Division, but I 
 commanded the Twenty-sixth Division, and see what they 
 cbd under my direction, and everybody praises the Amer¬ 
 ican soldier with the feeling that in praising him he is sub¬ 
 tracting from the credit of no one else. 
 
 EUROPE’S BELIEF IN AMERICA. 
 
 I have been searching for the fundamental fact that 
 converted Europe to believe in us. Before this war Europe 
 did not believe in us as she does now. She did not believe 
 in us throughout the first three years of the war. She seems 
 really to have believed that we were holding off because 
 we thought we could make more by staying out than by 
 going in. And all of a sudden, in a short eighteen months, 
 the whole verdict is reversed. 
 
 There can be but one explanation for it. They saw 
 what we did—that without making a single claim we put all 
 our men and all our means at the disposal of those who were 
 fighting for their homes, in the first instance, but for a 
 cause, the cause of human rights and justice, and that we 
 went in not to support their national claims but to support 
 the great cause which they held in common. 
 
 And when they saw that America not only held ideals 
 but acted ideals they were converted to America and became 
 firm partisans of those ideals. 
 
 I met a group of scholars when I was in Paris—some 
 gentlemen from one of the Greek universities who had come 
 to see me, and in whose presence, or rather in the pres¬ 
 ence of whose traditions of learning, I felt very young 
 indeed. I told them that I had one of the delightful re¬ 
 venges that sometimes come to a man. All my life I had 
 heard men speak with a sort of condescension of ideals 
 and of idealists, and particularly those separated, enclois- 
 tered persons whom they choose to term academic, who 
 were in the habit of uttering ideals in the free atmosphere 
 when they clash with nobody in particular. 
 
 PRESIDENT’S SWEET REVENGE. 
 
 And I said I have had this sweet revenge. Speaking 
 with perfect frankness in the name of the people of the 
 United States I have uttered as the objects of this great 
 war ideals, and nothing but ideals, and the war has been 
 won by that inspiration. Men were fighting with tense 
 muscle and lowered head until they came to realize those 
 things, feeling they were fighting for their lives and their 
 country, and when these accents of what it was all about 
 reached them from America they lifted their heads, they 
 raised their eyes to heaven, when they saw men in khaki 
 coming across the sea in the spirit of crusaders, and they 
 found that these were strange men, reckless of danger 
 not only, but reckless because they seemed to see some¬ 
 thing that made that danger worth while. 
 
 Men have testified to me in Europe that our men were 
 possessed by something that they could only call a re¬ 
 ligious fervor. They were not like any of the other sol¬ 
 diers. They had a vision, they had a dream, and they were 
 fighting in the dream, and fighting in the dream they turned 
 the whole tide of battle and it never came back. 
 
 One of our American humorists, meeting the criticism 
 that American soldiers were not trained long enough, said: 
 “It takes only half as long to train an American soldier as 
 any other, because you only have to train him one way and 
 he did only go one way, and he never came back until he 
 could do it when he pleased.” 
 
10 
 
 THE WORLD’S WELFARE 
 
 CONFIDENCE IMPOSES BURDEN. 
 
 And now do you realize that this confidence we have 
 established throughout the world imposes a burden upon 
 us—if you choose to call it a burden. It is one of those 
 burdens which any nation ought to be proud to carry. Any 
 man who resists the present tides that run in the world will 
 find himself thrown upon a shore so high and barren that 
 it will seem as if he had been separated from his human 
 kind forever. 
 
 The Europe that I left the other day was full of something 
 that it had never felt fill its heart so full before. It was 
 full of hope. The Europe of the second year of the war, 
 the Europe of the third year of the war was sink¬ 
 ing to a sort of stubborn desperation. They did 
 not see any great thing to be achieved even when the war 
 should be won. They hoped there would be some salvage; 
 they hoped that they could clear their territories of invading 
 armies they hoped they could set up their homes and start 
 their industries afresh, but they thought it would simply 
 be the resumption of the old life that Europe had led—led 
 in fear, led in anxiety, led in constant suspicious watchful¬ 
 ness. They never dreamed that it would be a Europe of 
 settled peace and of justified hope. 
 
 BUOYED UP WITH HOPE. 
 
 And now these ideals have wrought this new magic, 
 that all the peoples of Europe are buoyed up and confident 
 in the spirit of hope, because they believe that we are at the 
 eve of a new age in the world when nations will understand 
 one another, when nations will support one another in every 
 just cause, when nations will unite every moral and every 
 political strength to see that the right shall prevail. 
 
 If America were at this juncture to fail the world, what 
 would come of it? I do not mean any disrespect to any other 
 great people when I say that America is the hope of the 
 world; and if she does not justify that hope the results are 
 unthinkable. Men will be thrown back upon the bitterness 
 of disappointment not only but the bitterness of despair. 
 
 All nations will be set up as hostile camps again; the men 
 at the peace conference will go home with their heads upon 
 their breasts, knowing that they have failed—for they were 
 bidden not to come home from there until they did some¬ 
 thing more than sign a treaty of peace. 
 
 Suppose we sign the treaty of peace and that it is the 
 most satisfactory treaty of peace that the confusing ele¬ 
 ments of the modern world will afford and go home and 
 think about our labors, we will know that we have left writ¬ 
 ten upon the historic table at Versailles, upon which 
 Vergennes and Benjamin Franklin wrote their names, noth¬ 
 ing but a modern scrap of paper; no nations united to de¬ 
 fend it, no great forces combined to make it good, no as¬ 
 surance given to the downtrodden and fearful people of the 
 world that they shall be safe. Any man who thinks that 
 America will take part in giving the world any such rebuff 
 and disappointment as that does not know America. 
 
 INVITATION TO A TEST. 
 
 I invite him to test the sentiments of the nation. We 
 set this up to make men free and we did not confine our 
 conception and purpose to America, and now we will make 
 men free. If we did not do that the fame of America would 
 be gone and all her powers would be dissipated. She then 
 would have to keep her power for those narrow, selfish, 
 provincial purposes which seem so dear to some minds that 
 have no sweep beyond the nearest horizon. 
 
 I should welcome no sweeter challenge than that. I 
 have fighting blood in me, and it is sometimes a delight to 
 let it have scope, but if it is a challenge on this occasion 
 it will be an indulgence. Think of the picture, think of the 
 utter blackness that would fall on the world. America has 
 failed! America made a little essay at generosity and then 
 
 withdrew. America said: “We are your friends,” but it 
 was only for today, not for tomorrow. America said: 
 “Here is our power to vindicate right,” and then the next 
 day said: “Let right take care of itself and we will take 
 care of ourselves.” America said: “We set up a fight to 
 lead men along the paths of liberty, but we have lowered 
 it; it is intended only to light our own path.” We set up 
 a great ideal of liberty and then we said: “Liberty is a thing 
 that you must win for yourself. Do not call upon us,” and 
 think of the world that we would leave. Do you realize how 
 many new nations are going to be set up in the presence 
 of old and powerful nations in Europe and left there, if 
 left by us, without a disinterested friend? 
 
 POLAND AND ARMENIA. 
 
 Do you believe in the Polish cause, as I do? Are you 
 going to set up Poland, immature, inexperienced, as yet un¬ 
 organized, and leave her with a circle of armies around her? 
 Do you believe in the aspiration of the Czecho-Slovaks 
 and the Jugo-Slavs as I do? Do you know how many Pow¬ 
 ers would be quick to pounce upon them if there were not 
 the guarantees of the world behind their liberty? 
 
 Have you thought of the sufferings of Armenia? You 
 poured out your money to help succor the Armenians after 
 they suffered; now set your strength so that they shall 
 never suffer again. 
 
 The arrangements of the present peace cannot stand a 
 generation unless they are guaranteed by the united forces 
 of the civilized world. And if we do not guarantee them 
 cannot you not see the picture? Your hearts have in¬ 
 structed you where the burden of this war fell. It did not 
 fall upon the national treasuries, it did not fall upon the 
 instruments of administration, it did not fall upon the re¬ 
 sources of the nation. It fell upon the victims’ homes 
 everywhere, where women were toiling in hope that their 
 men would come back. 
 
 When I think of the homes upon which dull despair 
 would settle were this great hope disappointed, I should 
 wish for my part never to have had America play any part 
 whatever in this attempt to emancipate the world. But I 
 talk as if there were any question. I have no more doubt 
 of the verdict of America in this matter than I have doubt 
 of the blood that is in me. 
 
 NO STOPPING SHORT OF GOAL. 
 
 And so, my fellow citizens, I have come back to report 
 progress, and I do not believe that the progress is going to 
 stop short of the goal. The nations of the world have set 
 their heads now to do a great thing, and they are not go¬ 
 ing to slacken their purpose. And when I speak of the na¬ 
 tions of the world I do not speak of the governments of the 
 world. I speak of the peoples who constitute the nations of 
 the world. They are in the saddle, and they are going to see 
 to it that if their present governments do not do their will 
 some other governments shall, and the secret is out and 
 the present governments know it. 
 
 There is a great deal of harmony to be got out of com¬ 
 mon knowledge. There is a great deal of sympathy to be 
 got of living in the same atmosphere and except for the 
 differences of languages, which puzzled my American ear 
 very sadly, I could have believed I was at home in France 
 or in Italy or in England when I was on the streets, when 
 I was in the presence of the crowds, when I was in great 
 halls where men were gathered together irrespective of 
 class. 
 
 I did not feel quite as much at home there as I do here, 
 but I felt that now, at any rate, after this storm of war had 
 cleared the air, men were seeing eye to eye everywhere and 
 that these were the kind of folks who would understand 
 what the kind of folks at home would understand and that 
 they were thinking the same things. 
 
11 
 
 THE WORLD’S WELFARE 
 
 I feel about you as I am reminded of a story of that 
 excellent witness and good artist, Oliver Herford, who 
 one day, sitting at luncheon at his club was slapped vig¬ 
 orously on the back by a man whom he did not know very 
 well. He said: “Oliver, old boy, how are you?” He looked 
 at him rather coldly. He said, “I don’t know your name, 
 I don’t know your face, but your manners are very fa¬ 
 miliar.” And I must say that your manners are very 
 familiar, and let me add, very delightful. 
 
 FORCE OF AN IDEA. 
 
 It is a great comfort for one thing to realize that you 
 all understand the language I am speaking. A friend of 
 mine said that to talk through an interpreter was like wit¬ 
 nessing the compound fracture of an idea. But the beauty 
 of it is that, whatever the impediments of the channel of 
 communication the idea is the same, that it gets registered, 
 
 and it gets registered in responsive hearts and receptive 
 purposes. 
 
 I have come back for a strenuous attempt to transact 
 business for a little while in America but I have really come 
 back to say to you, in all soberness and honesty, that I 
 have been trying my best to speak your thoughts. 
 
 When I sample myself I think I find that I am a typical 
 American, and if I sample deep enough and get down to 
 what is probably the true stuff of a man, then I have hope 
 that it is part of the stuff that is like the other fellow’s at 
 htjme. 
 
 I And, therefore, probing deep in my heart and trying to 
 sJe the things that are right without regard to the things 
 tMat may be debated as expedient, I feel that I am inter¬ 
 preting the purpose and the thought of America; and in 
 loving America I find I have joined the great majority of 
 my fellowmen throughout the world. 
 
 President Wilson’s Address at New York 
 
 On March 4, 1919, in Further Explanation of 
 the League of Nations 
 
 My Fellow-Citizens: I accept the intimation of the air 
 just played; I will not come back “till it’s over, over there.” 
 And yet I pray God, in the interests of peace and of the 
 world, that that may be soon. 
 
 The first thing that I am going to tell the people on the 
 other side of the water is that an overwhelming majority of 
 the American people is in favor of the League of Nations. 
 
 I know that that is true; I have had unmistakable intima¬ 
 tions of it from all parts of the country, and the voice 
 rings true in every case. I account myself fortunate to 
 speak here under the unusual circumstances of this evening. 
 
 I am happy to associate myself with Mr. Taft in this great 
 cause. He has displayed an elevation of view and a de¬ 
 votion to public duty which is beyond praise. 
 
 And I am the more happy because this means that this is 
 not a party issue. No party has the right to appropriate 
 this issue, and no party will in the long run dare oppose it. 
 
 We have listened to so clear and admirable an exposition 
 of many of the main features of the proposed covenant of 
 the League of Nations that it is perhaps not necessary for 
 me to discuss in any particular way the contents of the 
 document. I will seek rather to give you its setting. I 
 do not know when I have been more impressed than by 
 the conferences of the commission set up by the Con¬ 
 ference of Peace to draw up a covenant for the League 
 of Nations. The representatives of fourteen nations sat 
 around that board—not young men, not men inexperienced 
 in the affairs of their own countries, not men inexperienced 
 in the politics of the world; and the inspiring influence of 
 every meeting was the concurrence of purpose on the part 
 of all those men to come to an agreement and an effective 
 working agreement with regard to this League of the civ¬ 
 ilized world. 
 
 There was a conviction in the whole impulse; there was 
 conviction of more than one sort; there was the conviction 
 that this thing ought to be done, and there was also the con¬ 
 viction that not a man there would venture to go home and 
 say that he had not tried to do it. 
 
 NEED TO WATCH INTRIGUE. 
 
 Mr. Taft has set the picture for you of what a failure 
 of this great purpose would mean. We have been hearing 
 
 for all these weary months that this agony of war has lasted 
 of the sinister purpose of the Central Empires, and we 
 have made maps of the course that they meant their con¬ 
 quests to take. Where did the lines of that map lie, of 
 that central line that we used to call from Bremen to 
 Bagdad? They lay through these very regions to which 
 Mr. Taft has called your attention, but they lay then 
 through a united empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, 
 whose integrity Germany was bound to respect, as her ally 
 lay in the path of that line of conquest; the Turkish Em¬ 
 pire, whose interests she professed to make her 
 own, lay in the direct path that she intended to tread. And 
 now what has happened? The Austro-Hungarian Empire 
 has gone to pieces and the Turkish Empire has disappeared, 
 and the nations that effected that great result—for it was a 
 result of liberation—are now responsible as the trustees of 
 the assets of those great nations. You not only would have 
 weak nations lying in this path, but you would have nations 
 in which that old poisonous seed of intrigue could be 
 planted with the certainty that the crop would be abundant; 
 and one of the things that the League of Nations is intended 
 to watch is the course of intrigue. Intrigue cannot stand 
 publicity, and if the League of Nations were nothing but a 
 great debating society it would kill intrigue. 
 
 It is one of the agreements of this covenant that it is the 
 friendly right of every nation a member of the League to 
 call attention to anything that it thinks will disturb the 
 peace of the world, no matter where that thing is occurring. 
 There is no subject that may touch the peace of the world 
 which is exempt from inquiry and discussion, and I think 
 everybody here present will agree with me that Germany 
 would never have gone to war if she had permitted the 
 world to discuss the aggression upon Serbia for a single 
 week. The British Foreign Office suggested, it pleaded, 
 that there might be a day or two delay so that the repre¬ 
 sentatives of the nations of Europe could get together and 
 discuss the possibilities of a settlement. Germany did not 
 dare permit a day’s discussion. You know what happened. 
 So soon as the world realized that an outlaw was at large, 
 the nations began one by one to draw together against her. 
 We know for a certainty that if Germany had thought for 
 a moment that Great Britain would go in with France and 
 
12 
 
 THE WORLD’S WELFARE 
 
 with Russia she never would have undertaken the enter¬ 
 prise, and the League of Nations is meant as a notice to all 
 outlaw nations that not only Great Britain, but the United 
 States and the rest of the world will go in to stop enter¬ 
 prises of that sort. And so the League of Nations is noth¬ 
 ing more nor less than the covenant that the world will al¬ 
 ways maintain the standards which it has now vindicated 
 by some of the most precious blood ever spilled. 
 
 The liberated peoples of the Austro-Hungarian Em¬ 
 pire and of the Turkish Empire call out to us for this thing. 
 It has not arisen in the council of statesmen. Europe is a 
 bit sick at heart at this very moment, because it sees that 
 statesmen have had no vision, and that the only vision has 
 been the vision of the people. Those who suffer see. Tho;e 
 against whom wrong is wrought know how desirable is the 
 right and the righteous. The nations that have long been 
 under the heel of the Austrian, that have long cowered be¬ 
 fore the German, that have long suffered the indescribable 
 agonies of being governed by the Turk, have called out to 
 the world, generation after generation, for justice, for 
 liberation, for succor; and no Cabinet in the world has 
 heard them. Private organizations, pitying hearts, philan¬ 
 thropic men and women have poured out their treasure in 
 order to relieve these sufferings; but no nation has said to 
 the nations responsible, “You must stop; this thing is 
 intolerable, and we will not permit it.” And the vision has 
 been with the people. My friends, I wish you would reflect 
 upon this proposition; the vision as to what is necessary for 
 great reforms has seldom come from the top in the nations 
 of the world. It has come from the need and the aspiration 
 and the self-assertion of great bodies of men who meant to 
 be free. And I can explain some of the criticisms which 
 have been leveled against this great enterprise only by the 
 supposition that the men who utter the criticisms have 
 never felt the great pulse of the heart of the world. 
 
 AMAZED AT IGNORANCE OF OPPONENTS. 
 
 And I am amazed—not alarmed, but amazed—that there 
 should be in some quarters such a comprehensive ignorance 
 of the state of the world. These gentlemen do not know 
 what the mind of men is just now. Everybody else does. 
 I do not know where they have been closeted, I do not 
 know by what influence they have been blinded; but I do 
 know that they have been separated from the general cur¬ 
 rents of the thought of mankind. 
 
 And I want to utter this solemn warning, not in the way 
 of a threat; the forces of the world do not threaten, they 
 operate. The great tides of the world do not give notice 
 that they are going to rise and run; they rise in their maj¬ 
 esty and overwhelming might, and those who stand in the 
 way are overwhelmed. Now the heart of the world is 
 awake, and the heart of the world must be satisfied. Do 
 not let yourselves suppose for a moment that the uneasiness 
 in the populations of Europe is due entirely to economic 
 causes or economic motives; something very much deeper 
 underlies it all than that. They see that their Governments 
 have never been able to defend them against intrigue or ag¬ 
 gression, and that there is no force of foresight or of 
 prudence in any modern Cabinet to stop war. And therefore 
 they say, “There must be some fundamental cause for 
 this,” and the fundamental cause they are beginning to per¬ 
 ceive to be that nations have stood singly or in little jealous 
 groups against each other, fostering prejudice, increasing 
 the danger of war rather than concerting measures to pre¬ 
 vent it; and that if there is right in the world, if there is 
 justice in the world, there is no reason why nations should 
 be divided in the support of justice. 
 
 They are therefore saying if you really believe that there 
 is a right, if you really believe that wars ought to be 
 stopped, stop thinking about the rival interests of nations, 
 and think about men and women and children throughout 
 
 the world. Nations are not made to afford distinction to 
 their rulers by way of success in the manoeuvres of politics; 
 nations are meant, if they are meant for anything, to make 
 the men and women and children in them secure and happy 
 and prosperous, and no nation has the right to set up its 
 special interests against the interests and benefits of man¬ 
 kind, least of all this great nation which we love. It was 
 set up for the benefit of mankind; it was set up to illustrate 
 the highest ideals and to achieve the highest aspirations of 
 men who wanted to be free; and the world—the world of 
 today—believes that and counts on us, and would be thrown 
 back into the blackness of despair if we deserted it. 
 
 I have tried once and again, my fellow-citizens, to say 
 to little circles of friends or to larger bodies what seems 
 to be the real hope of the peoples of Europe, and I tell you 
 frankly I have not been able to do so because when the 
 thought tries to crowd itself into speech the profound 
 emotion of the thing is too much; speech will not carry. I 
 have felt the tragedy of the hope of those suffering peoples. 
 
 It is tragedy because it is a hope which cannot be real¬ 
 ized in its perfection, and yet I have felt besides its trag¬ 
 edy, its compulsion—its compulsion upon every living man 
 to exercise every influence that he has to the utmost to see 
 that as little as possible of that hope is disappointed, be¬ 
 cause if men cannot now, after this agony of bloody sweat, 
 come to their self-possession and see how to regulate the 
 affairs of the world, we will sink back into a period of 
 struggle in which there will be no hope, and, therefore, no 
 mercy. There can be no mercy where there is no hope, for 
 why should you spare another if you yourself expect to 
 perish? Why should you be pitiful if you can get no 
 pity? Why should you be just if, upon every hand, you are 
 put upon? 
 
 CRITICS IGNORE SOLDIERS’ SPIRIT. 
 
 There is another thing which I think the critics of this 
 covenant have not observed. They not only have not ob¬ 
 served the temper of the world, but they have not even ob¬ 
 served the temper of those splendid boys in khaki that they 
 sent across the seas. I have had the proud consciousness of 
 the reflected glory of those boys, because the Constitution 
 made me their Commander-in-Chief, and they have taught 
 me some lessons. When we went into the war, we went 
 into it on the basis of declarations which it was my privi¬ 
 lege to utter, because I believed them to be an interpreta¬ 
 tion of the purpose and thought of the people of the United 
 States. And those boys went over there with the feeling 
 that they were sacredly bound to the realization of those 
 ideals; that they were not only going over there to beat 
 Germany; they were not going over there merely with re¬ 
 sentment in their hearts against a particular outlaw nation; 
 but that they were crossing those three thousand miles of 
 sea in order to show to Europe that the United States, when 
 it became necessary, would go anywhere where the rights 
 of mankind were threatened. They would not sit still in 
 the trenches. They would not be restrained by the pru¬ 
 dence of experienced continental commanders. They thought 
 they had come over there to do a particular thing, and they 
 were going to do it and do it at once. And just as 
 soon as that rush of spirit as well as rush of body came in 
 contact with the lines of the enemy, they began to break, 
 and they continued to break until the end. They continued 
 to break, my fellow-citizens, not merely because of the 
 physical force of those lusty youngsters, but because of the 
 irresistible spiritual force of the armies of the United 
 States. It was that they felt. It was that that awed them. 
 It was that that made them feel, if these youngsters ever got 
 a foothold, they could never be dislodged, and that therefore 
 every foot of ground that they won was permanently won 
 for the liberty of mankind. / 
 
THE WORLD’S WELFARE 
 
 13 
 
 And do you suppose that having felt that crusading spirit 
 of these youngsters, who went over there not to glorify 
 America but to serve their fellow men, I am going to per¬ 
 mit myself for one moment to slacken in my effort to be 
 worthy of them and of their cause? What I said at the 
 opening I said with a deeper meaning than perhaps you 
 have caught; I do mean not to come back until it’s over 
 over there, and it must not be over until the nations of the 
 world are assured of the permanency of peace. 
 
 Gentlemen on this side of the water would be very much 
 profited by getting into communication with some gentlemen 
 on the other side of the water. We sometimes think, my 
 fellow citizens, that the experienced statesmen of the Euro¬ 
 pean nations are an unusually hard-headed set of men, by 
 which we generally mean, although we do not admit it, 
 that they are a bit cynical, that they say “This is a very 
 practical world,” by which you always mean that it is not 
 an ideal world; that they do not believe that things can be 
 settled upon an ideal basis. Well, I never came into inti¬ 
 mate contact with them before, but if they used to be that 
 way, they are not that way now. They have been subdued, 
 if that was once their temper, by the awful significance of 
 recent events and the awful importance of what is to en¬ 
 sue; and there is not one of them with whom I have come 
 in contact who does not feel that he cannot in conscience 
 return to his people from Paris unless he has done his ut¬ 
 most to do something more than attach his name to a treaty 
 of peace. Every man in that Conference knows that the 
 treaty of peace in itself will be inoperative, as Mr. Taft 
 has said, without this constant support and energy of a 
 great organization such as is supplied by the League of 
 Nations. 
 
 And men who when I first went over there were skeptical 
 of the possibility of forming a League of Nations admitted 
 that if we could but form it it would be an invaluable in¬ 
 strumentality through which to secure the operation of the 
 various parts of the treaty; and when that treaty comes 
 back, gentlemen on this side will find the covenant not 
 only in it, but so many threads of the treaty tied to the 
 covenant that you cannot dissect the covenant from the 
 treaty without destroying the whole vital structure. The 
 structure of peace will not be vital without the League of 
 Nations, and no man is going to bring back a cadaver with 
 him. 
 
 PUZZLED BY SOME CRITICISMS. 
 
 I must say that I have been puzzled by some of the criti¬ 
 cisms—not by the criticisms themselves; I can understand 
 them perfectly, even when there was no foundation for 
 them; but by the fact of the criticism. I cannot imagine 
 how these gentlemen can live and not live in the atmos¬ 
 phere of the world. I cannot imagine how they can live and 
 not be in contact with the events of their times, and I par¬ 
 ticularly cannot imagine how they can be Americans and 
 set up a doctrine of careful selfishness, thought out to the 
 last detail. I have heard no counsel of generosity in their 
 criticism. I have heard no constructive suggestion. I have 
 heard nothing except “will it not be dangerous to us to help 
 the world?” It would be fatal to us not to help it. 
 
 From being what I will venture to call the most famous 
 and the most powerful nation in the world we would of a 
 sudden have become the most contemptible. So, I did not 
 need to be told, as I have been told, that the people of the 
 United States would support this covenant. I am an Amer¬ 
 ican and I knew they would. What a sweet revenge it is 
 upon the world. They laughed at us once, they thought 
 we did not mean our professions of principle. They thought 
 so until April of 1917. It was hardly credible to them that 
 we would do more than send a few men over and go through 
 the forms of helping, and when they saw multitudes hasten¬ 
 ing across the sea, and saw what those multitudes were 
 eager to do when they got to the other side, they stood at 
 
 amaze and said: “The thing is real, this nation is the friend 
 of mankind as it said it was.” The enthusiasm, the hope, 
 the trust, the confidence in the future bred by that change 
 of view are indescribable. Take an individual American 
 and you may often find him selfish, and confined to his 
 special interests; but take the American in the mass and 
 he is willing to die for an idea. The sweet revenge, there¬ 
 fore, is this, that we believed in righteousness, and now we 
 are ready to make the supreme sacrifice for it, the supreme 
 sacrifice of throwing in our fortunes with the fortunes of 
 men everywhere. Mr. Taft was speaking of Washington’s 
 utterance about entangling alliances, and if he will permit 
 mje to say so, he put the exactly right interpretation upon 
 What Washington said, the interpretation that is inevitable 
 if you read what he said, as most of these gentlemen do 
 not. And the thing that he longed for was just what we are 
 now about to supply; an arrangement which will disentangle 
 all the alliances in the world. 
 
 SEES ALL ALLIANCES DISENTANGLED. 
 
 Nothing entangles, nothing enmeshes a man except a 
 selfish combination with somebody else. Nothing entangles 
 a nation, hampers it, binds it, except to enter into a combi¬ 
 nation with some other nation against the other nations of 
 the world. And this great disentanglement of all alliances 
 is now to be accomplished by this covenant, because one 
 of the covenants is that no nation shall enter into any re¬ 
 lationship with another nation inconsistent with the coven¬ 
 ants of the League of Nations. Nations promise not to 
 have alliances. Nations promise not to make combinations 
 against each other. Nations agree that there shall be but 
 one combination, and that is the combination of all against 
 the wrongdoer. 
 
 And so I am going back to my task on the other side with 
 renewed vigor. I had not forgotten what the spirit of the 
 American people is, but I have been immensely refreshed 
 by coming in contact with it again. I did not know how 
 good home felt until I got here. 
 
 The only place a man can feel at home is where noth¬ 
 ing has to be explained to him. Nothing has to be ex¬ 
 plained to me in America, least of all the sentiment of the 
 American people. I mean about great fundamental things 
 like this. There are many differences of judgment as to 
 policy—and perfectly legitimate—sometimes profound dif¬ 
 ferences of judgment; but those are not differences of sen¬ 
 timent, those are not differences of purpose, those are not 
 differences of ideals. And the advantage of not having to 
 have anything explained to you is that you recognize a 
 wrong explanation when you hear it. 
 
 In a certain rather abandoned part of the frontier at one 
 time it was said they found a man who told the truth; he 
 was not found telling it, but he could tell it when he heard 
 it. And I think I am in that situation with regard to some 
 of the criticisms I have heard. They do not make any 
 impression on me, because I know there is no medium that 
 will transmit them, that the sentiment of the country is 
 proof against such narrowness and such selfishness as that. 
 I commend these gentlemen to communion with their fellow- 
 citizens. 
 
 CONFIDENT OF THE FUTURE 
 
 What are we to say, then, as to the future? I think, my 
 fellow citizens, that we can look forward to it with great 
 confidence. I have heard cheering news since I came to 
 this side of the water about the progress that is being 
 made in Paris toward the discussion and clarification of a 
 great many difficult matters and I believe that settlements 
 will begin to be made rather rapidly from this time on at 
 those conferences. But what I believe, what I know as 
 well as believe, is this: That the men engaged in those con¬ 
 ferences are gathering heart as they go, not losing it; that 
 
 i 
 
14 
 
 THE WORLD 
 
 they are finding community of purpose and community of 
 ideal to an extent that perhaps they did not expect; and 
 that amidst all the inter-play of influence—because it is in¬ 
 finitely complicated—amidst all the inter-play of influence, 
 there is a forward movement which is running toward the 
 right. Men have at last perceived that the only permanent 
 thing in the world is the right, and that a wrong settlement 
 is bound to be a temporary settlement—bound to be a tem¬ 
 porary settlement for the very best reason of all, that it 
 ought to be a temporary settlement, and the spirits of men 
 will rebel against it, and the spirits of men are now in the 
 saddle. 
 
 When I was in Italy a little limping group of wounded 
 Italian soldiers sought an interview with me. I could not 
 conjecture what it was they were going to say to me, and 
 with the greatest simplicity, with a touching simplicity, 
 they presented me with a petition in favor of the League 
 of Nations. Their wounded limbs, their impaired vitality 
 were the only argument they brought with them. It was a 
 simple request that I lend all the influence that I might 
 happen to have to relieve future generations of the sacri¬ 
 fices that they had been obliged to make. That appeal has 
 remained in my mind as I have ridden along the streets in 
 European capitals and heard cries of the crowd, cries for 
 
 ’ S WELFARE 
 
 the League of Nations, from lips of people who, I venture 
 to say, had no particular notion of how it was to be done, 
 who were not ready to propose a plan for a League of Na¬ 
 tions, but whose hearts said that something by way of a 
 combination of all men everywhere must come out of this. 
 As we drove along country roads weak old women would 
 come out and hold flowers up to us. Why should they hold 
 flowers up to strangers from across the Atlantic? Only be¬ 
 cause they believed that we were the messengers of friend¬ 
 ship and of hope, and these flowers were their humble offer¬ 
 ings of gratitude that friends from so great a distance 
 should have brought them so great a hope. 
 
 It is inconceivable that we should disappoint them, and 
 we shall not. The day will come when men in America will 
 look back with swelling hearts and rising pride that they 
 should have been privileged to make the sacrifice which it 
 was necessary to make in order to combine their might and 
 their moral power with the cause of justice for men of 
 every kind everywhere. 
 
 God give us the strength and vision to do it wisely! 
 God give us the privilege of knowing that we did it without 
 counting the cost and because we were true Americans, 
 lovers of liberty and of the right! 
 
 / 
 
THE WORLD’S WELFARE 
 
 15 
 
 The World’s Welfare Magazine 
 
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 The World’s Welfare 
 
 A NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE 
 
 EDITED BY STANLEY W. FINCH. 
 
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 ^ also subsequently 
 
 U. S. Special Commissioner for the Suppression of the 
 
 White Slave Traffic 
 
 Mr. Finch is particularly well fitted for this 
 editorial work because of his vast experience as a 
 Government official, economic investigator, lawyer, 
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 years of careful study of social, industrial, and public 
 welfare work. 
 
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