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Show WILSON READY TO BATIIIFOR LEAGUE PRESIDENT APPEALS TO NATION TO ACCEPT COVENANT WITHOUT WITH-OUT ALTERATION. Issues Address to the American People on the Occasion of the Signing of the Peace Treaty in Which He Urges Acceptance of League. 'Washington. President Wilson, in an address to the American people on the occasion of the signing of the peace treaty, made a pleu for ihe acceptance ac-ceptance of the treaty and the covenant cove-nant of the league of nations-without change or reservation. His message, given out here by Secretary Tumulty, said : "My Fellow Country men : The treaty of peace has been signed. If it is ratified and acted upon in full and sincere sin-cere execution of its terms it will furnish the charter for a new order of affairs in the world. It is a severe treaty in the duties and penalties it imposed upon Germany, but it is severe only because great wrongs done by Germany are to be righted and repaired; re-paired; it imposes nothing Unit Germany Ger-many cannot do : and she can regain her rightful standing in the world by the prompt and honorable fulfillment of its terms. "And it is much more than a treaty of peace with Germany. It liberates great peoples who have never before been able to find the way to liberty. It ends, once and for all, an old and intolerable order under which sinull groups or selfish men could use the peoples of great empires to serve their ambition for power and domination. It associates the free governments of the world in a league in which they are pledged to use their united power to maintain peace by maintaining right and justice. It. makes international law a reality, supported by imperative sanctions. "It does away with the right of conquest and rejects the policy of annexation an-nexation and substitutes a new order which backward nations populations which have not yet come to political consciousness and peoples who are ready for independence, but not yet quite prepared to dispense with protection pro-tection and guidance shall no more be subjected lo t lie domination and exploitation ex-ploitation of a stronger nation, but shall he put under the friendly direction direc-tion and afforded the helpful assistance assist-ance of governments which undertake 1 to be responsible to the opinion of mankind in the execution of their task by accepting the direction of the league of nations. "It recognizes the inalienable rights of nationality; the rights of minorities and the sanctity of religious belief and practice. It lays the basis for conventions conven-tions which shall free the commercial intercourse of the world from unjust and vexatious restrictions, and for every sort of international co-operation that will servo to cleanse Ihe life of the world and facilitate its common action in beneficent service of every kind. It furnishes guarantees such as were never given or even contemplated for the fair treatment of all who labor at the daily tasks of the world. "It is for this reason that I have spoken of it as a great charter for a new order of affairs. There is ground here for deep satisfaction, universal reassurance and confident hope. |