"Defense of League of Nations"
Pueblo, Co, September 26, 1919
Woodrow Wilson

Mr. Chairman and Fellow Countrymen:

It is with a great deal of genuine pleasure that I find myself in Pueblo...  I have crossed the continent this time of the homogeneity of this great people to whom we belong.  They come from many stocks, but they are all of one kind.  They come from many origins, but they are all shot through with the same principles, and desire the same righteous and honest things.  I have received a more inspiring impression this time of the public opinion of the United States than it was ever my privilege to receive before.
But there have been unpleasant impressions as well as pleasant impressions, my fellow citizens, as I have crossed the continent.  I have perceived more and more that men have been busy creating an absolutely false impression of what the treaty of peace and the Covenant of the League of Nations contain and mean.  Therefore, in order to clear away the mists, in order to remove the impressions, in order to check the falsehoods that have clustered around this great subject, I want to tell you a few very simple things about the treaty and the Covenant.

Do not think of this treaty of peace as merely a settlement with Germany.  It is that.  It is a very severe settlement with Germany, but there is not anything in it that she did not earn...  It is not merely a settlement with Germany; it is a readjustment of those great injustices which underlie the whole structure of European and Asiatic society.  This is only the first of several treaties.  They are all constructed upon the same plan.  The Austrian treaty follows the same lines.  The treaty with Hungary follows the same lines.  The treaty with Bulgaria follows the same lines.  The treaty with Turkey, when it is formulated, will follow the same lines.  What are those lines? They are based upon the purpose to see that every government dealt with in this great settlement is put in the hands of the people, and taken out of the hands of coteries and of sovereigns who had no right to rule over the people.  It is a people's treaty, that accomplishes by a great sweep of practical justice the liberation of men who never could have liberated themselves, and the power of the most powerful nations has been devoted not to their aggrandizement but to the liberation of people whom they could have put under their control if they had chosen to do so.

At the front of this great treaty is put the Covenant of the League of Nations.  It will also be at the front of the Austrian treaty and the Hungarian treaty and the Bulgarian treaty and the treaty with Turkey.  Every one of them will contain the Covenant of the League of Nations, because you cannot work any of them without the Covenant of the League of Nations.  Unless you get the united, concerted purpose and power of the great Governments of the world behind this settlement, it will fall down like a house of cards.  There is only one power to put behind the liberation of mankind, and that is the power of mankind.  It is the power of the united moral forces of the world, and in the Covenant of the League of Nations the moral forces of the world are mobilized.  For what purpose? Reflect, my fellow citizens, that the membership of this great League is going to include all the great fighting nations of the world, as well as the weak ones.  It is not for the present going to include Germany, but for the time being Germany is not a great fighting country.  All the nations that have power that can be mobilized are going to be members of this League, including the United States.  And what do they unite for? They enter into a solemn promise to one another that they will never use their power against one another for aggression; that they never will impair the territorial integrity of a neighbor; that they never will interfere with the political independence of a neighbor; that they will abide by the principle that great populations are entitled to determine their own destiny, and that they will not interfere with that destiny; and that no matter what differences arise amongst them, they will never resort to war without first having done one or other of two things--either submitted the matter of controversy to arbitration, in which case they agree to abide by the result without question, or submitted it to the consideration of the council of the League of Nations, laying before that council all the documents, all the facts, agreeing that the council can publish the documents and the facts to the whole world, agreeing that there shall be six months allowed for the mature consideration of those facts by the council, and agreeing that at the expiration of the six months, even if they are not then ready to accept the advice of the council with regard to the settlement of the dispute, they will still not go to war for another three months.  In other words, they consent, no matter what happens, to submit every matter of difference between them to the judgment of mankind, and just so certainly as they do that, my fellow citizens, war will be in the far background, war will be pushed out of that foreground of terror in which it has kept the world for generation after generation, and men will know that there will be a calm time of deliberate counsel.  The most dangerous thing for a bad cause is to expose it to the opinion of the world.  The most certain way that you can prove that a man is mistaken is by letting all his neighbors know what he thinks, by letting all his neighbors discuss what he thinks, and if he is in the wrong you will notice that he will stay at home, he will not walk on the street.  He will be afraid of the eyes of his neighbors.  He will be afraid of their judgment of his character.  He will know that his cause is lost unless he can sustain it by the arguments of right and of justice.  The same law that applies to individuals applies to nations.

But, you say, "We have heard that we might be at a disadvantage in the League of Nations." Well, whoever told you that either was deliberately falsifying or he had not read the Covenant of the League of Nations...  When you come to the heart of the Covenant, my fellow citizens, you will find it in Article X, and I am very much interested to know that the other things have been blown away like bubbles.  There is nothing in the other contentions with regard to the League of Nations, but there is something in Article X that you ought to realize and ought to accept or reject.  Article X is the heart of the whole matter.  What is Article X? I never am certain that I can from memory give a literal repetition of its language, but I am sure that I can give an exact interpretation of its meaning.  Article X provides that every member of the League covenants to respect and preserve the territorial integrity and existing political independence of every other member of the League as against external aggression...  Following Article X is Article XI, which makes it the right of any member of the League at any time to call attention to anything, anywhere, that is likely to disturb the peace of the world or the good understanding between nations upon which the peace of the world depends.  I want to give you an illustration of what that would mean.

You have heard a great deal--something that was true and a great deal that was false--about that provision of the treaty which hands over to Japan the rights which Germany enjoyed in the Province of Shantung in China.  In the first place, Germany did not enjoy any rights there that other nations had not already claimed.  For my part, my judgment, my moral judgment, is against the whole set of concessions.  They were all of them unjust to China, they ought never to have been exacted, they were all exacted by duress, from a great body of thoughtful and ancient and helpless people.  There never was any right in any of them.  Thank God, America never asked for any, never dreamed of asking for any.  But when Germany got this concession in 1898, the Government of the United States made no protest whatever.  That was not because the Government of the United States was not in the hands of high-minded and conscientious men.  It was.  William McKinley was President and John Hay was Secretary of State--as safe hands to leave the honor of the United States in as any that you can cite.  They made no protest because the state of international law at that time was that it was none of their business unless they could show that the interests of the United States were affected, and the only thing that they could show with regard to the interests of the United States was that Germany might close the doors of Shantung Province against the trade of the United States.  They, therefore, demanded, and obtained, promises that we could continue to sell merchandise in Shantung.  Immediately following that concession to Germany, there was a concession to Russia of the same sort, of Port Arthur, and Port Arthur was handed over subsequently to Japan...  Now, read Articles X and XI.  You will see that international law is revolutionized by putting morals into it.  Article X says that no member of the League, and that includes all these nations that have demanded these things unjustly of China, shall impair the territorial integrity or the political independence of any other member of the League.  China is going to be a member of the League.  Article XI says that any member of the League can call attention to anything that is likely to disturb the peace of the world or the good understanding between nations, and China is, for the first time in the history of mankind, afforded a standing before the jury of the world.  I, for my part, have a profound sympathy for China, and I am proud to have taken part in an arrangement which promises the protection of the world to the rights of China.  The whole atmosphere of the world is changed by a thing like that, my fellow citizens.  The whole international practice of the world is revolutionized.

Article X strikes at the taproot of war.  Article X is a statement that the very things that have always been sought in imperialistic wars are henceforth forgone by every ambitious nation in the world.  I would have felt very lonely, my fellow countrymen, and I would have felt very much disturbed if, sitting at the peace table in Paris, I had supposed that I was expounding my own ideas.  Whether you believe it or not, I know the relative size of my own ideas; I know how they stand related in bulk and proportion to the moral judgments of my fellow countrymen, and proposed nothing whatever at the peace table at Paris that I had not sufficiently certain knowledge embodied the moral judgment of the citizens of the United States...  What of our pledges to the men that lie dead in France? We said that they went over there not to prove the prowess of America or her readiness for another war, but to see to it that there never was such a war again.  It always seems to make it difficult for me to say anything, my fellow citizens, when I think of my clients in this case.  My clients are the children; my clients are the next generation.  They do not know what promises and bonds I undertook when I ordered the armies of the United States to the soil of France, but I know, and I intend to redeem my pledges to the children; they shall not be sent upon a similar errand.

Again and again, my fellow citizens, mothers who lost their sons in France have come to me and, taking my hand, have shed tears upon it not only, but they have added, "God bless you, Mr. President!" Why, my fellow citizens, should they pray God to bless me? I advised the Congress of the United States to create the situation that led to the death of their sons.  I ordered their sons overseas.  I consented to their sons being put in the most difficult parts of the battle line, where death was certain, as in the impenetrable difficulties of the forest of Argonne.  Why should they weep upon my hand and call down the blessings of God upon me? Because they believe that their boys died for something that vastly transcends any of the immediate and palpable objects of the war.  They believe, and they rightly believe, that their sons saved the liberty of the world.  They believe that wrapped up with the liberty of the world is the continuous protection of that liberty by the concerted powers of all civilized people.  They believe that this sacrifice was made in order that other sons should not be called upon for a similar gift--the gift of life, the gift of all that died--and if we did not see this thing through, if we fulfilled the dearest present wish of Germany, and now dissociated ourselves from those alongside whom we fought in the war, would not something of the halo go away from the gun over the mantelpiece, or the sword? Would not the old uniform lose something of its significance? These men were crusaders.  They were not going forth to prove the might of the United States.  They were going forth to prove the might of justice and right, and all the world accepted them as crusaders, and their transcendent achievement has made all the world believe in America as it believes in no other nation organized in the modern world.

There seems to me to stand between us and the rejection or qualification of this treaty the serried ranks of those boys in khaki, not only these boys who came home, but those dear ghosts that still deploy upon the fields of France.

My friends, on last Decoration Day, I went to a beautiful hillside near Paris where was located the cemetery of Suresnes, a cemetery given over to the burial of the American dead.  Behind me on the slopes was rank upon rank of living American soldiers, and lying before me upon the levels of the plain was rank upon rank of departed American soldiers.  Right by the side of the stand where I spoke there was a little group of French women who had adopted those graves, had made themselves mothers of those dear ghosts by putting flowers every day upon those graves, taking them as their own sons, their own beloved, because they had died in the same cause--France was free and the world was free because America had come! I wish some men in public life who are now opposing the settlement for which these men died could visit such a spot as that.  I wish that the thought that comes out of those graves could penetrate their consciousness.  I wish that they could feel the moral obligation that rests upon us not to go back on those boys, but to see the thing through, to see it through to the end and make good their redemption of the world.  For nothing less depends upon this decision, nothing less than the liberation and salvation of the world.

You will say, "Is the League an absolute guarantee against war?" No; I do not know any absolute guarantee against the errors of human judgment or the violence of human passion, but I tell you this: With a cooling space of nine months for human passion, not much of it will keep hot.

I had a couple of friends who were in the habit of losing their tempers, and when they lost their tempers they were in the habit of using very unparliamentary language.  Some of their friends induced them to make a promise that they never would swear inside the town limits.  When the impulse next came upon them, they took a streetcar to go out of town to swear, and by the time they got out of town, they did not want to swear.  They came back convinced that they were just what they were, a couple of unspeakable fools, and the habit of getting angry and of swearing suffered great inroads upon it by that experience.

Now, illustrating the great by the small, that is true of the passions of nations.  It is true of the passions of men however you combine them.  Give them space to cool off.  I ask you this: If it is not an absolute insurance against war, do you want no insurance at all? Do you want nothing? Do you want not only no probability that war will not recur, but the probability that it will recur? The arrangements of justice do not stand of themselves, my fellow citizens.  The arrangements of this treaty are just, but they need the support of the combined power of the great nations of the world.  And they will have that support.  Now that the mists of this great question have cleared away, I believe that men will see the truth, eye to eye and face to face.  There is one thing that the American people always rise to and extend their hand to, and that is the truth of justice, and of liberty, and of peace.  We have accepted that truth and we are going to be led by it, and it is going to lead us, and through us the world, out into pastures of quietness and peace such as the world never dreamed of before.