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regard to rifles and naval guns, as considered by it, may be studied by the governments, with the object of coming to an agreement respecting the employment of new types and calibers.

4. The conference expresses the wish that the governments, taking into consideration the proposals made at the conference, may examine the possibility of an agreement as to the limitation of armed forces by land and sea, and of war budgets.

5. The conference expresses the wish that the proposal, which contemplates the declaration of the inviolability of private property in naval warfare, may be referred to a subsequent conference for consideration.

6. The conference expresses the wish that the proposal to settle the question of the bombardment of ports, towns, and villages by a naval force may be referred to a subsequent conference for consideration.

The last five wishes were voted unanimously, saving some abstentions.

In faith of which, the plenipotentiaries have signed the present act and have affixed their seals thereto.

Done at The Hague, July 29, 1899, in one copy only, which shall be deposited in the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, and of which copies, duly certified, shall be delivered to all the powers represented at the conference.

30. ROOSEVELT'S INAUGURAL ADDRESS, 1905 1

THE theme of President Roosevelt's brief inaugural address, delivered at Washington, March 4, 1905, was America's responsibilities as a free, self-governing nation.

ROOSEVELT'S INAUGURAL ADDRESS, 1905

My Fellow Citizens

I. No people on earth have more cause to be thankful than ours, and this is said reverently, in no spirit of boastfulness in our own strength, but with gratitude to the Giver of Good, who has blessed us with the conditions which have enabled us to achieve so large a measure of well-being and of happiness. To us as a people it has been granted to lay the foundations of our national life in a new continent. We are the heirs of the ages, and yet we have had to pay few of the penalties which in old countries are exacted by the dead hand of a bygone civilization. We have not been obliged to fight for our existence against any alien race; and yet our life has called for the vigor and effort without which the manlier and hardier virtues wither away. Under such conditions it would be our own fault if we failed; and the success which we have had in the past, the success which we confidently believe the future will bring, should cause in us no feeling of vainglory, but rather a deep and abiding realization of all which life has offered us; a full acknowledgment of the responsibility which is ours; and a fixed determination to show that under a free government a mighty people can thrive best, alike as regards the things of the body and the things of the soul.

II. Much has been given to us, and much will rightfully be expected from us. We have duties to others and duties to ourselves; and we can shirk neither. We have become a great nation, forced by the fact of its greatness into relations with the other nations of the earth; and we must behave as beseems a people with such responsibilities. Toward all other nations, large and small, our attitude must be one of cordial and sincere friendship. We must show, not only in our words, but in our deeds, that we are earnestly desirous of securing 1 Congressional Record, vol. xl, part i, pp. 2-3. Washington, 1906.

their good-will by acting toward them in a spirit of just and generous recognition of all their rights. But justice and generosity in a nation, as in an individual, count most when shown, not by the weak, but by the strong. While ever careful to refrain from wronging others, we must be no less insistent that we are not wronged ourselves. We wish peace; but we wish the peace of justice, the peace of righteousness. We wish it because we think it is right and not because we are afraid. No weak nation that acts manfully and justly should ever have cause to fear us, and no strong power should ever be able to single us out as a subject for insolent aggression.

III. Our relations with the other powers of the world are important; but still more important are our relations among ourselves. Such growth in wealth, in population, and in power as this nation has seen during the century and a quarter of its national life is inevitably accompanied by a like growth in the problems which are ever before every nation that rises to greatness. Power invariably means both responsibility and danger. Our forefathers faced certain perils which we have outgrown. We now face other perils, the very existence of which it was impossible that they should foresee. Modern life is both complex and intense, and the tremendous changes wrought by the extraordinary industrial development of the last half-century are felt in every fiber of our social and political being. Never before have men tried so vast and formidable an experiment as that of administering the affairs of a continent under the form of a democratic republic. The conditions which have told for our marvelous material well-being, which have developed to a very high degree our energy, self-reliance, and individual initiative, have also brought the care and anxiety inseparable from the accumulation of great wealth in industrial centers. Upon the success of our experiment much depends; not only as regards our own welfare, but as regards the welfare of mankind. If we fail, the cause of free self-government throughout the world will rock to its foundations; and therefore our responsibility is heavy, to ourselves, to the world as it is to-day, and to the generations yet unborn. There is no good reason why we should fear the future, but there is every reason why we should face it seriously, neither hiding from ourselves the gravity of the problems before us nor fearing to approach these problems with the unbending, unflinching purpose to solve them aright.

IV. Yet, after all, though the problems are new, though the tasks set before us differ from the tasks set before our fathers who founded

and preserved this republic, the spirit in which these tasks must be undertaken and these problems faced, if our duty is to be well done, remains essentially unchanged. We know that self-government is difficult. We know that no people needs such high traits of character as that people which seeks to govern its affairs aright through the freely expressed will of the freemen who compose it. But we have faith that we shall not prove false to the memories of the men of the mighty past. They did their work, they left us the splendid heritage we now enjoy. We in our turn have an assured confidence that we shall be able to leave this heritage unwasted and enlarged to our children and our children's children. To do so we must show, not merely in great crises, but in the everyday affairs of life, the qualities of practical intelligence, of courage, of hardihood and endurance, and above all the power of devotion to a lofty ideal, which made great the men who founded this republic in the days of Washington, which made great the men who preserved this republic in the days of Abraham Lincoln.

31. WILSON'S FOURTEEN POINTS, 1918 1

1

THE issues at stake in the World War became clearer as the struggle proceeded. When, on August 1, 1917, Pope Benedict XV proposed that the belligerent countries negotiate with one another on the basis of conditions existing before 1914 the status quo ante-President Wilson answered, for both the United States and the Allies, that no acceptable terms could be arranged with the autocratic and irresponsible Hohenzollern government. On December 2, 1917, the Bolshevist envoys at Brest-Litovsk brought forward their own proposals for ending the war through a congress of delegates chosen by the parliament of each country. Then on January 5, 1918, Mr. Lloyd George, in a speech before the Trade Union Conference at London, set forth more specifically than ever before the war aims of the Allies. Permanent peace could not come, the British premier declared, until three conditions were fulfilled: first, the sanctity of treaties must be reëstablished; second, territorial settlements must be based on the right of self-determination of nationalities, or the consent of the governed; and third, some international organization must be created to limit the burden of armaments and diminish the probability of future conflicts. This speech was followed on January 8 by President Wilson's address to Congress, with its Fourteen Points of a program for a just and lasting settlement. While the President spoke only for the United States, his statements, with some reservations, were accepted in Great Britain, France, and Italy as embodying the purposes of the Allies in the World War.

WILSON'S FOURTEEN POINTS, 1918

The program of the world's peace, therefore, is our program, and that program, the only possible program, as we see it, is this:

1 Congressional Record, vol. Ivi, part i, p. 691. Washington, 1918.

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