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Show PRESIDENT URGES PHCE LEAGUE QUESTION PUT UP SQUARELY TO THE COUNTRY IN AN ADDRESS BEFORE THE SENATE. Says Lasting Peace in Europe Can Not Come Through Victory and America Must Join Concert of Power. Washington. Whether the United States shall enter a world peace league and, as many contend, thereby there-by abandon its traditional policy of isolation and no entangling alliances, were laid squarely before congress and the country on January 22 by President Wilson, in a personal address ad-dress to the senate. For the first time in more than a hundred years, a president of the United States appeared in the senate chamber to discuss the nation's foreign for-eign relations after the manner of Washington, Adams and Madison. The chief points of the president's address were: That a lasting peace in Europe can not be a peace of victory for either side. That peace must be followed by a definite concert of power to assure the world that no catastrophe of war shall overwhelm it again. That in such a concert of power the United States cannot withhold its participation to guarantee peace and justice throughout the world. That before a peace Is made the United States government should frankly formulate the conditions upon which it would feel Justified in asking ask-ing the American people for their formal for-mal and solemn adherence. "It is clear to every man who thinks," the president told the sen ate, that there is in this promise no breach in either our tradition or our policy as a nation, but a fulfillment rather of all that we have professed or striven for. "1 am proposing, as It were, that the nations should, with one accord, adopt the doctrine of President Monroe Mon-roe as the doctrine of the world; that no nation should seek to extend its policy over any other nation or people, peo-ple, but that every people should be left free to determine its own policy, its own way of development, unhindered, unhind-ered, unthrealened, unafraid, the little lit-tle along with the great and powerful. power-ful. "I am proposing that all nations henceforth avoid entangling alliances which would draw them into competitions compe-titions of power, catch them in a net of intrigue and selfish rivalry, and disturb their own affairs with intlu-ence intlu-ence intruded from without. There Is no entangling alliance in a concert of power. When all unite to act in the same sense and with the same purpose, pur-pose, all act in the common interest and are free to live their own lives under a common protection. "I am proposing government by the consent of the governed; that freedom free-dom of the Beas, which In international interna-tional conference after conference representatives rep-resentatives of the United States have urged with the eloquence of those who are convinced disciples of liberty, and that moderation of armaments arma-ments which makes of armies ana navies a power for order merely, not an instrument of aggression or of selfish violence. "These are American principles, American policies. We could stand for no others. And they also are the principles and policies of forward looking men and women everywhere of every modern nation, of every enlightened en-lightened community. They are the principles of mankind and must pre-vxil." |
