Why We are at War | Page 4

alike in law and in fact be free. The
freedom of the seas is the sine qua non of peace, equality, and
cooperation.

No doubt a somewhat radical reconsideration of many of the rules of
international practice hitherto sought to be established may be
necessary in order to make the seas indeed free and common in
practically all circumstances for the use of mankind, but the motive for
such changes is convincing and compelling. There can be no trust or
intimacy between the peoples of the world without them.
The free, constant, unthreatened intercourse of nations is an essential
part of the process of peace and of development. It need not be difficult
to define or to secure the freedom of the seas if the Governments of the
world sincerely desire to come to an agreement concerning it.
REQUIRES LIMITATION OF ARMAMENTS
It is a problem closely connected with the limitation of naval
armaments and the cooperation of the navies of the world in keeping
the seas at once free and safe. And the question of limiting naval
armaments opens the wider and perhaps more difficult question of the
limitation of armies and of all programs of military preparation.
Difficult and delicate as these questions are. they must be faced with
the utmost candor and decided in a spirit of real accommodation if
peace is to come with healing in its wings and come to stay. Peace
cannot be had without concession and sacrifice. There can be no sense
of safety and equality among the nations if great preponderating armies
are henceforth to continue here and there to be built up and maintained.
The statesmen of the world must plan for peace, and nations must
adjust and accommodate their policy to it as they have planned for war
and made ready for pitiless contest and rivalry. The question of
armaments, whether on land or sea, is the most immediately and
intensely practical question connected with the future fortunes of
nations and of mankind.
I have spoken upon these great matters without reserve and with the
utmost explicitness because it has seemed to me to be necessary if the
world's yearning desire for peace was anywhere to find free voice and
utterance. Perhaps I am the only person in high authority among all the
peoples of the world who is at liberty to speak and hold nothing back.
I am speaking as an individual, and yet I am speaking also, of course,
as the responsible head of a great Government, and I feel confident that
I have said what the people of the United States would wish me to say.
May I not add that I hope and believe that I am in effect speaking for

liberals and friends of humanity in every nation and of every program
of liberty?
I would fain believe that I am speaking for the silent mass of mankind
everywhere who have as yet had no place or opportunity to speak their
real hearts out concerning the death and ruin they see to have come
already upon the persons and the homes they hold most dear.
SEES WORLD-WIDE MONROE DOCTRINE
And in holding out the expectation that the people and Government of
the United States will join the other civilized nations of the world in
guaranteeing the permanence of peace upon such terms as I have
named, I speak with the greater boldness and confidence because it is
clear to every man who can think that there is in this promise no breach
in either our traditions or our policy as a nation, but a fulfilment, rather,
of all that we have professed or striven for.
I am proposing, as it were, that the nations should with one accord
adopt the doctrine of President Monroe as the doctrine of the world;
that no nation should seek to extend its policy over any other nation or
people, but that every people should be left free to determine its own
policy, its own way of development, unhindered, unthreatened,
unafraid, the little along with the great and powerful.
I am proposing that all nations henceforth avoid entangling alliances
which would draw them into competitions of power, catch them in a
net of intrigue and selfish rivalry, and disturb their own affairs with
influences 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, 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 of the seas which in international conference after conference
representatives of the United States have urged with the eloquence of
those who are the convinced disciples of liberty; and that moderation