Peace settlement

“ Henceforth it will be impossible for our rulers to shirk those difficulties. They will have to give us something more tangible than mere vague and solemn abstractions, than mere rhetorical phrases and catchwords: they will have to depend on the support of public opinion. The peace settlement will have to be made by the nations themselves, and not by a few diplomats. ”

“ No territory should be transferred from one nation to another against the will of the inhabitants, nor should any readjustments be made which might breed fresh wars. National boundaries should coincide as far as possible with national sentiment. No terms of settlement should be regarded as satisfactory if they impose upon any nation such harsh and humiliating terms of peace as would be inconsistent with its independence, self-respect, or well-being. ”

“ For the main business of the settlement, if it is to have any serious business at all, must be the establishment of a Hegemony of Peace, as desired by all who are really capable of high civilization, and formulated by me in the daily Press in a vain attempt to avert this mischief whilst it was brewing. ”

“ There has been no great sacrifice on either side; but I value the settlement for this reason, not because I attach much importance to the square miles of desert with which we have been dealing—and which probably after ten generations of mankind will not yield the slightest value to any human being—but because it indicates on both sides that spirit which in the two Governments is consistent with continued peace.' That, in my judgment is the spirit in which two great Powers should always be prepared to act in international disagreements. ”

“ Great tracts of cultivated land were constantly being laid waste; what was to be done with the vanquished dwellers thereon? In that rough and ready system of waging war, it was centuries too soon for trying any of our modern methods of treaties of peace or diplomatic settlement. The hostile inhabitants of a conquered state had to be exterminated or to be rendered harmless. ”

“ The settlement of every question, whether of territory, of sovereignty, of economic arrangement, or of political relationship, upon the basis of the free acceptance of that settlement by the people immediately concerned, and not upon the basis of material interest or advantage of any other nation or people which may desire a different settlement, for the sake of its own exterior influence or mastery. ”

“ After the war the two nations will have to live peaceably side by side once more, and repair so far as possible the wreckage to which this gigantic struggle has reduced their political, social, and commercial intercourse. Any peace settlement will be good only so far as it avoids placing obstacles in the path of so difficult an achievement. ”

“ The nations engaged, at least the chief of them, are fixed irrevocably in their determination that peace, when it comes, shall be no temporary patching up of hostilities and arranging of indemnities, but a solid, lasting settlement, which shall, as far as possible, place another vast European war out of the range of practical politics. ”

“ Which being now, by God’s blessing, finished,—we think we have as much right to demand, and desire to see, a happy Settlement, as we have to our money and “to” the other common interests of Soldiers which we have insisted upon. We find also the ingenuous and honest People, in almost all parts of the Kingdom where we come, full of the sense of ruin and misery if the Army should be disbanded before the Peace of the Kingdom, and those other things before mentioned. have a full and perfect Settlement. ”

“ The peace settlements which are now to be agreed upon are of transcendent importance both to us and to the rest of the world, and I know of no business or interest which should take precedence of them. The gallant men of our armed forces on land and sea have consciously fought for the ideals which they knew to be the ideals of their country ”

“ But a discussion of future arrangements destined to insure an enduring peace presupposes a satisfactory settlement of the actual conflict; the Allies have as profound a desire as the Government of the United States to terminate as soon as possible a war for which the Central Empires are responsible and which inflicts such cruel sufferings upon humanity. ”

“ However, it may be said that the German people unanimously desire a settlement which will guarantee a lasting peace and which will prevent further wars. Moreover, the wish is general that, when it is time for peace negotiations, not only professional diplomats, but also representatives of the various professions and industries shall be consulted. Just as war is an affair of the whole people, so, in its conclusion, the voice of the whole people should have due weight. ”

“ The territorial claims of the various nations cannot be permanently settled at the Peace Congress, for history knows no permanent settlements. The settlement made may come up for revision. Unsatisfactory settlements often lead to war. Therefore the representatives of the Powers should avoid not only injustice, but even the appearance of injustice and of unfairness. ”

“ Men opposed to war would be able to urge its injustice, to ask whether, after all, the object is worth the sacrifice, and they would get a hearing from their fellow citizens which they cannot get after war begins. The mere delay, the interval for consideration, would be an immense gain for the prospect of a peaceful settlement.
Most people who have been thinking seriously about the maintenance of peace are tending to the opinion that a sanction of some kind is needed to enforce the observance of treaties and of agreements for arbitration. ”

“ Every power and resource we possess, whether of men, of money, or of materials, is being devoted and will continue to be devoted to that purpose until it is achieved. Those who desire to bring peace about before that purpose is achieved I counsel to carry their advice elsewhere. We will not entertain it. We shall regard the war as won only when the German people say to us, through properly accredited representatives, that they are ready to agree to a settlement based upon justice and reparation of the wrongs their rulers have done. ”

“ Although everybody admitted that the liquidation of the world conflict followed by a return to normal conditions was the one thing that pressed for settlement, so intent were the plenipotentiaries on preventing wars among unborn generations that they continued to overlook the pressing needs of their contemporaries. ”

“ The essential point is to secure, if possible, a friendly settlement of the dispute; the actual methods to be employed are of small importance. It is imperative that nothing should in any way hamper the Council's work in the interests of peace. ”

“ The Charter of the United Nations expresses the noblest aspirations of man: abjuration of force in the settlement of disputes between states; the assurance of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion; the safeguarding of international peace and security. ”

“ At all events, one may rejoice in the fact that, in spite of the risks involved, the Peace Conference had the courage to carry through a Polish-German settlement based on principle and not upon expediency or selfish convenience, a settlement which, in Mr. ”

“ This is more especially true when there is just and reasonable alternative to the proposed settlement, which will lay the foundations of a peaceful future for this great continent; and should certainly allow of the highest development of each of these two peoples without one being subject to another. ”

“ And now, with all this in our minds, let us turn to consider the vexed question of the settlement after the war. There lies before the Western world the greatest of all choices, the choice between destruction and salvation. But that choice does not depend merely on the issue of the war. It depends upon what is done or left undone by the co-operation of all when the war does at last stop. ”

“ The united Presidents prepare for war for years, spring an insulting ultimatum upon us, invade our unfortunate Colonies, solemnly annex all the portions invaded, and then, when at last driven back, propose a peace which shall secure for them the whole point originally at issue. ”

“ It remains for you to consider the consequences of adopting hostile measures. A bad name to the colony, a stop to emigration, and a depreciated property, are but minor evils. An exterminating war, the flames of which, spreading with increasing fury among the surrounding tribes as the settlement extends itself, must be the consequence. An exterminating war over a continent as large as Europe, and abounding with tribes unknown and innumerable! ”

“ The great nations which associated themselves to destroy it had now definitely united in the common purpose to set up such a peace as will satisfy the longing of the whole world for disinterested justice, embodied in settlements which are based upon something much better and much more lasting than selfish competitive interests of powerful states. ”

“ The sharper definition of national boundaries, the extension of European civilization and control to the backward countries of the world, and the growth of a few vast political systems which begin to overshadow the earth, all tend to reduce the occasions for war, to simplify the problem of maintaining international peace. ”

“ Not once, but again and again, we have laid our whole thought and purpose before the world, not in general terms only, but each time with sufficient definition to make it clear what sort of definitive terms of settlement must necessarily spring out of them. ”

“ It is inevitable that a settlement made in a conference of belligerents alone will be shortsighted, harsh, limited by merely incidental necessities, and obsessed by the idea of hostilities and rivalries continuing perennially; it will be a trading of advantages for subsequent attacks. It will be a settlement altogether different in effect as well as in spirit from a world settlement made primarily to establish a new phase in the history of mankind. ”

“ It is necessary before everything to promulgate at once a decree transmitting the land to the peasants’ Land Committees, and to adopt an energetic course of action abroad in proposing to the Allies to proclaim their peace-terms and to begin peace-parleys ”

“ The Allied governments have accepted the bases of peace which I outlined to the Congress on the 8th of January last, as the Central Empires also have, and very reasonably desire my personal counsel in their interpretation and application, and it is highly desirable that I should give it, in order that the sincere desire of our government to contribute without selfish purpose of any kind to settlements that will be of common benefit to all the nations concerned may be made fully manifest. ”

“ Owing to the paucity of population on the ill-defined and remote interior frontiers, many of these questions did not become urgent until the latter part of the nineteenth century, when the increasing seriousness of political interests, the steadying influences of material growth, and the pressure of outside opinion favoured peaceful settlement, usually by means of arbitration. ”

“ It is the utter impossibility of peace, in a territory made by nature a geographical unity, inhabited by a people, or peoples, of one lineage, one language, bound together in historical reminiscences, yet divided into petty sovereign States too small for any respectable nationalities themselves, and yet preventing any beneficent nationality as a whole. ”

“ But a measure of more permanent and certain advantage would be the enforcement of those restrictions on the trade between neutrals and the enemies' colonies which were formerly maintained by Great Britain, and from the relaxation of which the enemies' colonies obtain indirectly, during war, all the advantages of peace. ”

“ It is peace sought in the spirit of peace, and laid in principles purely pacific. I propose, by removing the ground of the difference, and by restoring the former unsuspecting confidence of the Colonies in the mother country, to give permanent satisfaction to your people; and, far from a scheme of ruling by discord, to reconcile them to each other in the same act, and by the bond of the very same interest, which reconciles them to British government.
My idea is nothing more. Refined policy ever has been the parent of confusion, and ever will be so long as the world endures. ”

“ War still exists, not only when actual hostilities are going on, but in the whole temper of international affairs—continuing enmity, continuing armaments, unending waste of human effort. Thus, for one thing, the entire Near Eastern situation remains unsettled.135 As an expert on this troubled region has said: “The principle of settlement as revealed by these treaties is fundamentally wrong. ”

“ But the mutual dependence which the mutual necessities of the war produced convinced many of the propriety of a common government—a government which should be adequate to a time of peace and to a condition of war—a government which should guard each State from civil commotion and protect its citizens and commerce in every part of the world. It is evident that the free surrender of jurisdiction would have left the colonies to many years of separate existence, and controversies which might have passed into open hostility. ”

“ And thus, when small, separated communities exist in a state of chronic warfare which forbids advance, the first step to their civilization is the advent of some conquering tribe or nation that unites these smaller communities into a larger one, in which internal peace is preserved. Where this power of peaceable association is broken up, either by external assaults or internal dissensions, the advance ceases and retrogression begins. ”

“ To continue this war in order to permit the strong and rich nations to divide among themselves the weak and conquered nationalities is considered by the Government the greatest possible crime against humanity; and the Government solemnly proclaims its decision to sign a treaty of peace which will put an end to this war upon the above conditions, equally fair for all nationalities without exception. ”