Address at the Stadium in Balboa Park in San Diego, California

Mr. Mayor, my fellow countrymen, as you know, I have come from Washington on a very serious errand, indeed, and I need not tell you with what a thrill the sight of this great body of my fellow citizens fills my heart, because I believe that one of the most important verdicts of history has now to be rendered by the great people of the United States. I believe that this is a choice from which we can not turn back. Whether it be the choice of honor or of dishonor, it will be a final choice that we shall make in this great hour of our, history.

One of the most unexpected things that I have found on my journey is that the people of the United States have not been informed as to the real character and scope and contents of the great treaty of peace with Germany. Whether by omission or by intention, they have been directed in all of the speeches that I have read to certain points of the treaty which are incidental, and not central, and their attention has been drawn away from the real meaning of this great human document. For that, my fellow citizens, is just what it is. It not only concludes a peace with Germany and imposes upon Germany the proper penalties for the outrage she attempted upon 'mankind, but it also concludes the peace in the spirit in which the war was undertaken b}^ the nations opposed to Germany. The challenge of war was accepted by them not with the purpose* of crushing the German people but with the purpose of putting an end once and for all to such plots against the free governments of the world as had been conceived on Wilhelmstrasse, in Berlin, unknown to the people' of Germany, unconceived by them, advised by little groups of men who had the military power to carry out private ambitions.

We went into this war not only to see that autocratic power of that, sort never threatened the world again but we went into it for even larger purposes than that. Other autocratic powers may spring up, but there is only one soil in which they can spring up, and that is the wrongs done to free peoples of the world. The heart and center of this treaty is that it sets at liberty people all over Europe and in Asia who had hitherto been enslaved by powers which were not their rightful sovereigns and masters. So long as wrongs like that exist in the world, you can not bring permanent peace to the world. I go further than that. So long as wrongs of that sort exist, you ought not to bring permanent peace to the world, because those wrongs ought to be righted, and enslaved peoples ought to be free to right them. For my part, I will not take any part in composing difficulties that ought not to be composed, and a difficulty between an enslaved people and its autocratic rulers ought not to be composed. We in America have stood from the day of our birth for the emancipation of people throughout the world who were living unwillingly under governments which were not of their own choice. The thing which we have held more sacred than any other is that all just government rests upon the consent of the governed, and all over the world that principle has been disregarded, that principle has been flouted by the strong, and only the weak have suffered. The heart and center of this treaty is the principle adopted not only in this treaty but put into effect also in the treaty with Austria, in the treaty with Hungary, in the treaty with Bulgaria, in the treaty with Turkey, that every great territory in the world belongs to the people who are living on it, and that it is not the privilege of any authority anywhere—certainly not the privilege of the peace conference at Paris— to impose upon those peoples any government which they accept unwillingly and not of their own choice.

Nations that never before saw the gleam of hope have been liberated by this great document. Pitiful Poland, divided up as spoils among half a dozen nations, is by this document united and set free. Similarly, in the treaty with Austria, the Austrian power is taken off of every people over whom it had no right to reign. You know that the great populations of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which lay between Austria and the Balkan Peninsula, were unjustly under the power of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and it was in a city of Bosnia that the Crown Prince of Austria was assassinated—Bosnia which was under the power of Austria. Though Bosnia was part of Austrian territory, Austria had the audacity to hold Serbia, an outside neighbor, responsible for an act of assassination on Austrian territory, the Austrian Government choosing to believe that certain societies with which it connected the assassin, societies active in Serbia, had planned and executed the assassination. So the world was deluged in blood, and 7,400,000 men lie dead—not to speak of the pitiful wounded, not to speak of the blinded, not to speak of those with distracted brain, not to speak of all the pitiful, shattered nerves of millions of men all over the word—because of an insurgent feeling in a great population which was ruled over by rulers not of their own choice. The peace conference at Paris knew that it would not go to the root of this matter unless it destroyed power of that kind. This treaty sets those great peoples free.

But it does not stop with that. In the heart of the treaty you will find a new charter for those who labor-—men, women, and children all over the world. The heart of the world is depressed, my fellow citizens, the heart of the world is uneasy. The heart of the world is a little despairful of its future, because the economic arrangements of the world have not been just, and the people who are having unjust conditions imposed upon them are, of course, not content to live under them. When the whole world is at unrest you may be sure that there is some real cause for the unrest. It is not whimsical. Men do not disturb the foundations of their lives just to satisfy a sudden impulse. All these troubles, whatever shape they may take, whether the action taken is just or unjust, have their root in age-long wrongs which ought to be, must be, and will be righted, and this great treaty makes a beginning in that great enterprise of humanity. It provides an arrangement for recurrent and periodic international conferences, the main and sole object of which will be to improve the conditions of labor, to safeguard the lives and the health of women and children who work and whose lives would otherwise be impaired or whose health rendered subject to all the inroads of disease. The heart of humanity beats in this document. It is not a statesman's arrangement. It is a liberation of the peoples and of the humane forces of the world, and yet I never hear the slightest intimation of any of these great features in the speeches of the gentlemen who are opposing this treaty. They never tell you what is really in this treaty. If they did your enthusiasm would sweep them off their feet. If they did they would know that it was an audacity which they had better not risk to impair the peace and the humane conditions of mankind.

At the very front and heart of the treaty is the part which is most criticized, namely, the great covenant for a league of nations. This treaty could not be executed without such a powerful instrumentality. Unless all the right-thinking nations of the world are going to concert their purpose and their power, this treaty is not worth the paper that it is written on, because it is a treaty where peace rests upon the right of the weak, and only the power of the strong can maintain the right of the weak. If we as a nation indeed mean what we have always said, that we are the champions of human right, now is the time when we shall be brought to the test, the acid test, as to whether we mean what we said or not. I am not saying that because I have the least doubt as to the verdict. I am just as sure of it as if it had been rendered already. I know this great people among whom I was born and bred and whom I have had the signal honor to serve, whose mouthpiece it has been my privilege to be on both sides of the water, and I know that I am speaking their conscience, when I speak in the name of my own conscience that that is the duty of America and that it will be assumed and performed. You have been led to believe that the covenant of the league of nations is in some sense a private invention. It is not always said of whom, and I need not mention who is suspected. It is supposed that out of some sort of personal ambition or party intention an authorship, an origination is sought. My fellow countrymen, I wish that I could claim the great distinction of having invented this great idea, but it is a great idea which has been growing in the minds of all generous men for several generations. Several generations? Why, it has been the dream of the friends of humanity through all the ages, and now for the first time a great body of practical statesmen, immersed in the business of individual nations, gets together and realizes the dream of honest men. I wish that I could claim some originative part in so great an enterprise, but I can not. I was the spokesman in this matter, so far as I was influential at all, of all sorts and kinds of Americans and of all parties and factions in America. I would be ashamed, my fellow countrymen, if I treated a matter of this sort with a single thought of so small a matter as the national elections of 1920. If anybody discusses this question on the basis of party advantage, I repudiate him as a fellow American. And in order to validate what I have said, I want to make one or two quotations from representatives of a party to which I do not belong. The first I shall make from a man who has for a long time been a member of the United States Senate. In May, 1916, just about two years after the Great War began, this Senator, at a banquet at which I was myself present, uttered the following sentences: "I know, and no one I think can know better than one who has served long in the Senate, which is charged with an important share of the ratification and confirmation of all treaties, no one can, I think, feel more deeply than I do the difficulties which confront us in the work which this league—that is, the great association extending throughout the country known as the League to Enforce Peace— undertakes, but the difficulties can not be overcome unless we try to overcome them. I believe much can be done. Probably it will be impossible to stop all wars, but it certainly will be possible to stop some wars, and thus diminish their number. The way in which this problem is to be worked out must be left to this league and to those who are giving this great subject the study which it deserves. I know the obstacles. I know how quickly we shall be met with the statement that this is a dangerous question which you are putting into your agreement, that no nation can submit to the judgment of other nations, and we must be careful at the beginning not to attempt too much. I know the difficulties which arise when we speak of anything which seems to involve an alliance, but I do not believe that when Washington warned us against entangling alliances he meant for one moment that we should not join with the other civilized nations of the world if a method could be found to diminish war and encourage peace.

"It was a year ago," he continues, "in delivering the chancellor's address at Union College, I made an argument on this theory, that if we were to promote international peace at the close of the present terrible war, if we were to restore international law as it must be restored, we must find some way in which the united forces of the nations could be put behind the cause of peace and law. I said then that my hearers might think that I was picturing a Utopia, but it is in the search for Utopias that great discoveries have been made. Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. This league certainly has the highest of all aims for the benefit of humanity, and because the pathway is sown with difficulties is no reason that we should turn from it."

The quotation is from the Hon. Henry Cabot Lodge. I read another quotation from one of the most energetic, practical, and distinguished leaders of the Republican Party, uttered in an article published in the New York Times in October, 1919:

"The one permanent move for obtaining peace which has yet been suggested with any reasonable chance of obtaining its object" is by an agreement among the great powers, in which each should pledge itself not only to abide by the decisions of a common tribunal, but to back with force the decision of that common tribunal. The great civilized nations of the world which do possess force, actual or immediately potential, should combine by solemn agreement in a great world league for the peace of righteousness." A very worthy utterance by Theodore Roosevelt. I am glad to align myself with such utterances as those. I subscribe to every word of them. And here in concrete form is the fulfillment of the plan which they advocate. We can not in reason, we can not as lovers of liberty, we can not as supporters of right turn away from it.

What are those who advise us to turn away from it afraid of? In the first place, they are afraid that it impairs in some way that long traditional policy of the United States which was embodied in the Monroe doctrine, but how they can fear that I can not conceive, for the document expressly says in words which I am now quoting that nothing in this covenant shall be held to affect the validity of the Monroe doctrine. The phrase was inserted under my own eye, at the suggestion—not of the phrase but the principle—of the Foreign Relations Committees of both Houses of Congress. I think I am justified in dismissing all fear that the Monroe doctrine is in the least impaired. And what is the Monroe doctrine? It is that no outside power shall attempt to impose its will in any form upon the Western Hemisphere, and that if it does the United States, acting upon its own initiative and alone, if it chooses, can resist and will resist the attempt. Could anything leave the United States freer as a champion of the independence of the Western Hemisphere than this world acknowledgment of the validity and potency of the Monroe doctrine?

They are afraid that the league will in some way deal with our domestic affairs. The covenant expressly says that it will have no right to deal with the domestic affairs of any member of the league, and I can not imagine anything more definite or satisfactory than that. There is no ambiguity about any part of this covenant, for the matter of that, but there is certainly no ambiguity about the statement concerning domestic affairs, for it is provided that if any matter brought before the council is found to be a matter which, under international law, lies within the exclusive jurisdiction of the State making the claim, the council shall dismiss consideration of it and shall not even make a report about it. And the subjects which are giving these gentlemen the most concern are agreed by all students of international law to be domestic questions; for example, immigration, naturalization, the tariff—these are the subjects most frequently spoken of. No one of those can be dealt with by the league of nations, so far as the sovereignty of the United States is concerned. We have a perfectly clear field there, as we have in regard to the Monroe doctrine.

It is feared that our delegates will be outvoted, because I am constantly hearing it said that the British Empire has six votes and we have one. I am perfectly content to have only one when the one counts six, and that is exactly the arrangement under the league. Let us examine that matter a little more particularly. Besides the vote of Great Britain herself, the other five votes are the votes of Canada, of South Africa, of Australia, of New Zealand, and of India. We ourselves were champions and advocates of giving a vote to Panama, of giving a vote to Cuba—both of them under the direction and protectorate of the United States—and if a vote was given to Panama and to Cuba, could it reasonably be denied to the great Dominion of Canada? Could it be denied to that stout Republic in South Africa, that is now living under a nation which did, indeed, overcome it at one time, but which did not dare retain its government in its hands, but turned it over to the very men whom it had fought? Could we deny it to Australia, that independent little Republic in the Pacific, which has led the world in so many liberal reforms? Could it be denied New Zealand? Could we deny it to the hundreds of millions who live in India? But, having given these six votes, what are the facts? For you have been misled with regard to them. The league can take no active steps without the unanimous vote of all the nations represented on the council, added to a vote of the majority in the ?assembly itself. These six votes are in the assembly, not in the council. The assembly is not a voting body, except upon a limited number of questions, and whenever those questions are questions of action, the affirmative vote of every nation represented on the council is indispensable, and the United States is represented on the council. The six votes that you hear about can do nothing in the way of action without the consent of the United States. There are two matters in which the assembly can act, but I do not think we will be jealous of those. A majority of the assembly can admit new members into the league. A majority of the assembly can advise a member of the league to reconsider any treaty which in the opinion of the assembly of the league is apt to conflict with the operation of the league itself, but that is advice which can be disregarded, which has no validity of action in it, which has no compulsion of law in it. With the single exception of admitting new members to the league, there is no energy in the six votes which is not offset by the energy in the one vote of the United States, and I am more satisfied to be one and count six than to be six and count only six. This thing that has been talked about is a delusion. The United States is not easily frightened, and I dare say it is least easily frightened by things that are not true.

It is also feared that causes in which we are interested will be defeated. Well, the United States is interested in a great many causes, for the very interesting and compelling reason that the United States is made up out of all the civilized peoples of the world. There is not a national cause, my fellow citizens, which has not quickened the heartbeat of men in America. There is not a national cause which men in America do not understand, because they come of the same blood, they come of the same traditions, they recollect through long tradition the wrongs of their peoples, the hopes of their peoples, the passions of their peoples, and everywhere in America there are kinsmen to stand up and speak words of sympathy for great causes. For the first time in the history of the world, the league of nations presents a forum, a world forum, where any one of these ambitions or aspirations can be brought to the consideration of mankind. Never before has this been possible. Never before has there been a jury of mankind to which nations could take their causes, whether they were weak or strong. You have heard a great deal about article 10 of the covenant. Very well, after you have read it suppose you read article 11. Article 11 provides that it shall be the friendly right of any member of the league, big or little, strong or weak, to call attention to anything, anywhere, which is likely to disturb the peace of the world or the good understanding between nations upon which the peace of the world depends. When anybody of kin to us in America is done wrong by any foreign government, it is likely to disturb the good understanding between nations upon which the peace of the world depends, and thus any one of the causes represented in the hearts of the American people can be brought to the attention of the whole world. One of the most effective means of winning a good cause is to bring it before that great jury. A bad cause will fare ill, but a good cause is bound to be triumphant in such a forum. Until this, international law made it an unfriendly act for any nation to call attention to any matter which did not immediately affect its own fortunes and its own right. I am amazed that so many men do not see the extraordinary change which this will bring in the transaction of human affairs. I am amazed that they do not see that now, for the first time, not selfish national policy but the general judgment of the world as to right is going to determine the fortunes of peoples, whether they be weak or whether they be strong, and I myself glory in the provisions of article 11 more than I glory in any other part of the covenant, for it draws all men together in a single friendly court, where they may discuss their own affairs and determine the issues of justice—just exactly what was desired in the hearts of the men from whom I have read extracts of opinion.

But what disturbs me, perhaps the only thing that disturbs me, my fellow countrymen, about the form which the opposition to the league is taking is this: Certain reservations, as they are called, are proposed which in effect—I am not now stopping to form an opinion as to whether that is the intention or not; I have no right to judge the intention of a man who has not stated what his intention is—which in effect amount to this, that the United States is unwilling to assume the same obligations under the covenant of the league that are assumed by the other members of the league; that the United States wants to disclaim any part in the responsibility which the other members of the league are assuming. I want to say with all the emphasis of which I am capable that that is unworthy of the honor of the United States. The principle of justice, the principle of right, the principle of international amity is this, that there is not only an imaginary but a real equality of standing and right among all the sovereign peoples of the world. I do not care to defend the rights of a people if I must regard them as my inferiors, if I must do so with condescension, if I must do so because I am strong and they are weak. You know the men, and the women, too, I dare say, who are respectful only to those whom they regard as their social equals or their industrial equals and of whom they are more or less afraid, who will not exercise the same amenities and the same consideration for those whom they deem beneath them. Such people do not belong in democratic society, for one thing, and, for another, their whole point of view is perverted; they are incapable of justice, because the foundation of justice is that the weakest has the same rights as the strongest. I must admit, my fellow citizens, and you can not deny— and I admit it with a certain profound regret not only but with a touch of shame—that while that is the theory of democratic institutions it is not always the practice. The weak do not always fare as well as the strong, the poor do not always get the same advantage of justice that the rich get; but that is due to the passions and imperfections of human nature. The foundation of the law, the glory of the law, is that the weakest is equal to the strongest in matter of right and privilege, and the goal to which we are constantly though stumblingly and with mistakes striving to go forward is the goal of actual equality, of actual justice, upon the basis of equality of rights, and unless you are going to establish the society of nations upon the actual foundation of equality, unless the United States is going to assume the same responsibility and just as much responsibility as the other nations of the world we ought not to commit the mockery of going into the arrangement at all.

I will not join in claiming under the name of justice an unjust position of privilege for the country I love and honor. Neither am I afraid of responsibility. Neither will I scuttle. Neither will I be a little American. America, in her make-up, in her purposes, in her principles, is the biggest thing in the world, and she must measure up to the measure of the world. I will be no party in belittling her. I will be no party in saying that America is afraid of responsibilities which I know she can carry and in which in carrying I am sure she shall lead the world. Why, if we were to decline to go into this humane arrangement we would be declining the invitation which all the world extends to us to lead them in the enterprise of liberty and of justice. I, for one, will not decline that invitation. I, for one, believe more profoundly than in anything else human in the destiny of the United States. I believe that she has a spiritual energy in her which no other nation can contribute to the liberation of mankind, and I know that the heart of America is stronger than her business calculations. That is what the world found out when we went into the war. When we went into the war there was not a nation in the world that did not believe we were more interested in making money out of it than in serving the cause of liberty. And when we went in, in those few months the whole world stood at amaze and ended with an enthusiastic conversion. They now believe that America will stand by anybody that is fighting for justice and for right, and we shall not disappoint them.

The age is opening, my fellow citizens, upon a new scene. We are substituting in this covenant—and this is the main purpose of it— arbitration and discussion for war. Senator Lodge says if we can stop some wars it is worth while. If you want insurance against war, I take it you would rather have 10 per cent insurance than none; I take it that you would be delighted with 50 per cent insurance; and here I verily believe is 99 per cent insurance against war. Here are all the great fighting nations of the world, with the exception of Germany—because for the time being Germany is not a great fighting nation—solemnly covenant with one another that they will never go to war without first having either submitted the matter in dispute to arbitration and bound themselves to abide by the verdict, or, having submitted it to discussion by the council of the league of nations in which case they will lay all the facts arid documents by publication before the world, wait six months for the opinion of the council, and if they are dissatisfied with that opinion—for they are not bound by it—they will wait another three months before they go to wan There is a period of nine months of the process which is absolutely destructive of unrighteous causes—exposure to public opinion. When I find a man who in a public matter will not state his side of the case, and state it fully, I know that his side of the case is the losing side, that he dare not state it.

At the heart of most of our industrial difficulties, my fellow citizens, and most of you are witness to this, lies the unwillingness of men to get together, and talk it over. Half of the temper which now exists between those who perform labor and those who direct labor is due to the fact that those who direct labor will not talk differences over with the men whom they employ, and I am in every such instance convinced that they are wrong and dare not talk it over. Not only that, but every time the two sides do get together and talk it over they come out of the conference in a different temper from that with which they went in. There is nothing that softens the attitude of men like really, frankly laying their minds alongside of each other and their characters alongside of each other and making a fair and manly and open comparison. That is what all the great fighting nations of the world agree to with every matter of difference between them. They put it either before a jury by whom they are bound or before a jury which will publish all the facts to mankind and express a frank opinion regarding it.

You have here what the world must have, what America went into this war to obtain. You have here an estoppel of the brutal, sudden impulse of war. You have here a restraint upon the passions of ambitious nations. You here have a safeguard of the liberty of weak nations, and the world is at last ready to stand up and in calm counsel discuss the fortunes of men and women and children everywhere. Why, my fellow citizens, nothing brings a lump into my throat quicker on this journey I am taking than to see the thronging children that are everywhere the first, just out of childish curiosity and glee, no doubt, to crowd up to the train when it stops, because I know that if by any chance we should not win this great right for the league of nations it would be their death warrant. They belong to the generation which would then have to fight the final war, and in that final war there would not be merely seven and a half million men slain. The very existence of civilization would be in the balance, and I for one dare not face the responsibility of defeating the very purpose for which we sent our gallant men overseas. Every mother knows that her pride in the son that she lost is due to the fact, not that he helped to beat Germany, but that he helped to save the world. It was that light the other people saw in the eyes of the boys that went over there, that light as of men who see a distant horizon, that light as of men who have caught the gleam and inspiration of a great cause, and the armies of the United States seemed to those people on the other side of the sea like bodies of crusaders come out of a free nation to give freedom to their fellows, ready to sacrifice their lives for an idea, for an ideal, for the only thing that is worth living for, the spiritual purpose of redemption that rests in the hearts of mankind.