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Caption: War Publications - WWI Compilation 1923 - Article 7
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rious struggle for national supremacy would ated, ruined, utterly effaced perhaps,—and pen as so inevitably a result of the conflict powers L the o ders and an "alas! alas! Such is life. Such an And then the conduct of the Central Powers became such that even those Americans who did not appreciate or care for a moral role among the nations for the Great Republic saw themselves constrained to force action in order to defend our national independence, nay, our national existence. Even then the issue might have been narrowed and might have been formulated as a selfish one, affecting ourselves alone or the particular desires of national units, such as the securing to Italy of the territory it desired at the expense of Austria, or the giving to Russia of the right to determine the eastern boundaries of Germany, while to France and England should be given a similar privilege as to the western boundaries, and the assignment to England of the German Colonies—a kind of dispute in which the American people could have little personal interest except so far as it safeguarded or threatened our power or security* With one noble and sweeping gesture President Wilson wiped out all these items on the slate of world division and organization and wrote down as our goal the safeguarding of human liberty throughout the earth: to all people—not merely to ourselves— to the small as well as to the great—to the weak as to the strong— assurance program to which we may all subscribe, for which may all toil and suffer and sacrifice and, if need be, liberty is the foundation all human progress Now the great thing which President Wilson has done is to make this program of his the program of the United States, the program of the Allies,—nay, the program of the world; for even the Central Powers have been compelled to adopt the same slogan —even the Kaiser is emphasizing that he has gone into Russia not for his own sake but to free its people. We have not been misled, » » 3
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