His Challenge

Title

His Challenge

Creator

Unknown

Identifier

WWP16221

Date

1920 March 15

Description

An editorial clipping on the League of Nations and the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles.

Source

Cary T. Grayson Papers, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library, Staunton, Virginia

Language

English

Text

HIS CHALLENGE
_________

WOODROW WILSON is himself again. All doubt as to his powers are removed by his letter to Senator Hitchcock. By the same token all doubts as to the correctness of his attitude on Article X are likewise removed. No statement that has come out of the White House has been more powerful or more convincing.

If we should weaken Article X “it would mark us as desiring to return to the old world of jealous rivalry and misunderstandings from which our gallant soldiers have rescued us,” says Mr. Wilson. This we know from what we see going on in Europe. The militarist party has gained control of the government in France, and rivalries and jealousies are already beginning to appear between France and England. Both are annexing territory and both seeking to gain new advantages in the balance of power.

Mr. Wilson continues:

Militaristic ambitions and imperialistic policies are by no means dead, even in the councils of nations whom we most trust and with whom we most desire to be associated in the tasks of peace. Throughout the sessions of the conference at Paris, it was evident that a militaristic party under the most influential leadership was seeking to gain ascendancy  in the councils of France. There were defeated then, but are in control now. *** For my own part I am as intolerant of imperialistic designs on the part of other nations as I was of such designs on the part of Germany. The choice is between two ideals: On the one hand, the id - of democracty, which represents the right of free peoples everywhere to govern themselves, and on the other hand, the ideal of imperialism, which seeks to dominate by force and unjust power, an ideal which is by no means dead and whcih is earnestly held in many quarters still.

Italy demanded Fiume. That was imperialism. The council of premiers was ready to grant her demand. President Wilson protested, and he was supported in that protest by the most influential British press. Thus, on Italy, on France and even on Great Britain, the real victory of the war, the moral victory over Germany, was lost. Tempted by their sudden power, a power finally gained through American arms and sacrifices, they all set out on a career of aggrandizement as soon as America, through the inaction of the United States senate, dropped out of the councils. All that the president says is thus proven true. Imperialism is not dead. He goes on to say:

Every imperialistic influence in Europe was hostile to the embodiment of Article X in the covenant, and its defeat would mark complete consummation of their efforts to nullify the treaty. I hold the doctrine of Article X to be the essence of Americanism. We cannot repudiate it of weaken it without repudiating our own principles. The imperialist wants no League of Nations, but if, in response to the universal cry of the masses everywhere, there is to be one, he is interested to secure one suited to his own purposes, one that will permit him to continue the historic game of pawns and peoples--the juggling of provinces, the old balances of power and the inevitable wars attendant upon these things. The reservation proposed (to Article X) would perpetuate the old order. Does anyone really want to see the old game played again?

The old game drew America into a devastating war. We spent $26,000,000 and sacrificed 100,000 lives in the struggle. We inherited from it a legacy of social discontent. We are paying heavy taxes on the war debt now, and we shall be paying them still at the end of a generation. If, after all this cost in lives and treasure, we are to gain nothing but the military decision, if the mad rivalries of Europe are still to go on when, with our great moral leadership, it would be so easy for us to stop them, then the war was futile and we fought it in vain. Not only must we admit that we failed to gather the full fruits of the victory but we must go forward in preparedness and militaristic expenditures to be ready for that other war into which we shall be drawn, as we were in this, in spite of ourselves. Mr. Wilson continues:

Arcle X represents renunciation by Great Britain and Japan, which, before the war had begun to find so many interests in common in the Pacific: by France, by Italy, by all the great fighting powers of the world, of the old pretensions of political conquest and territorial aggrandizement. It is a new doctrine in the world's affairs, and must be recognized or there is no more secure basis for the peace which the world so longingly desires and so desperately needs. If Article X is not adopted and acted upon the governments which reject it will, I think, be guilty of bad faith to their people whom they induced to make the infinite sacrifices of the war with the pledge that they would be fighting to redeem the world from the old order of force and aggression.

The president’s letter is a challenge by the plain people of the world to the potentates, profiteers, parasites, militarists and imperialists, who have for centuries framed a peace that led to new wars. It is the voice of the masses of mankind appealing to Christendom for a new kind of peace in which militarism will die and justice prevail.

Original Format

Article

Files

http://resources.presidentwilson.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/D01760C.pdf

Citation

Unknown, “His Challenge,” 1920 March 15, WWP16221, Cary T. Grayson Papers, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum, Staunton, Virginia.