Newton D. Baker

“ And it will date, I think, from this great war, when men realize, perhaps for the first time in a fundamental way, that the waste in conflict is an unrecoverable waste—that the upkeep of enormous armies is too great a burden to bear—and that the real happiness of mankind is based upon those peaceful pursuits which aim to make available the great resources of the world. ”

“ Mountains unscaled by human feet, descended by Italian engineers with cable-ways running up them from valleys which seemed bottomless, and carrying up CANNONS, men, and munitions until these white-fingered, up-pointing mountains were really, each of them, converted into fortress sentinels guarding Italy and guarding freedom as well, by day and by night. ”

“ When the reconstruction of the world takes place, and a finer and better civilization has been worked out, when the human race puts its shoulders to the wheels of industry and begins to spread abroad the incalculably valuable discoveries of science, I can imagine that a new history of the world will begin to be written. ”

“ The question of this hour therefore is not whether a classically phrased and inerrant document has been drawn, but whether the fairest hope of men shall be realized. If we have but the goodness and the faith necessary to make any league of nations work, we can make this one work. The people will furnish the faith, if the statesmen will but stand aside. ”

“ Nobody knows what the world is going to be like when this war is over. No imagination is able to picture the sort of civilization the world will have after this conflict. But we do know that when this war is over, the rehabilitation of a stricken if not paralyzed civilization is going to be a long, drawn out, and uphill task, and that there will be need on every hand for trained minds—for trained and schooled men. ”

“ And our whole history of more than one hundred years justifies the statement that our people are wedded and devoted to the idea of international justice as the rule upon which nations shall live together in peace and amity upon the earth. ”

“ There would have been gained the priceless moment of meditation which would have enabled the heady currents of racial and national passion to be allayed. Today there would be in all in the devastated countries of the world that calm progress which a continuation of peaceful civilization ensures. ”

“ The four horsemen of the apocalypse rode abroad in the world, taking their toll among the fairest and best of the children of men, only because their was no bridle, no League of Nations to restrain their wild and destructive force. ”

“ That is the spirit of the people and the armies in Europe. It is the spirit of America, and we shall be blessed in the victory we are to win by the sacrifices which will have purified us as they will have glorified our cause. ”