Woodrow Wilson photo

Address at the City Coliseum in Sioux Falls, South Dakota

September 08, 1919

Gov. Norbeck, my fellow citizens, I must admit that every time I face a great audience of my fellow countrymen on this trip I am filled with a feeling of peculiar solemnity, because I believe, my fellow countrymen, that we have come to one of the turning points in the history of the world, and what I as an American covet for this great country is that, as on other great occasions when mankind's fortunes hung in a nice poise and balance, America may have the distinction to lead the way.

In order to enable you to realize some part of what is in my thought to-night, I am going to ask you to turn your thought back to the tragedy through which we have just passed. A little incident as we came along in the train to-day brought very close home to me the things that have been happening. A very quiet lady came up with a little crowd at a way station to shake hands with me, and she had no sooner taken my hand than she turned away and burst into tears. I asked a neighbor what was the matter, and he said she had meant to speak to me of her son who was dead in France, but that the words would not come from her lips. All over this country, my fellow citizens, there are women who have given up their sons, wives who have given up their husbands, young women who have given up their sweethearts, to die on the other side of the sea for a great cause which was not the peculiar cause of America but the cause of mankind and of civilization itself. I love to repeat what the people on the other side of the water said about those boys of ours. They told us that they did not look like any of the other soldiers, that they did not seem to be merely soldiers, that they seemed to be crusaders, that there was something in their eyes that they had never seen in the eyes of any other army, and I was reminded of what I had so often seen on former journeys across the seas: Going over in the steerage, bright-eyed men who had been permeated with the atmosphere of free America; coming back, among the immigrants coming from the old countries, dull-eyed men, tired- looking men, discouraged-looking men. They were all of them going both ways, men who had come from across the sea, but going out ?they were going with the look of America in their eyes to visit the old people at home; coming back they had the fatigue of Europe in their eyes and had not yet got the feeling that penetrates every American, that there is a great future, that a man can handle his own fortunes, that it is his right to have his place in the world, and that no man that he does not choose is his master. And that is what these people saw in the eyes of the American boys who carried their arms across the sea. There was America in every one of those lively eyes, and America was not looking merely at the fields of France, was not merely seeking to defeat Germany; she was seeking to defeat everything that Germany's action represented, and to see to it that there never happened such a thing again.

I want to remind you, my fellow countrymen, that that war was not an accident. That war did not just happen. There was not some sudden occasion which brought on a conflagration. On the contrary, Germany had been preparing for that war for generations. Germany had been preparing every resource, perfecting every skill, developing every invention, which would enable her to master the European world; and, after mastering the European world, to dominate the rest of the world. Everybody had been looking on. Everybody had known. For example, it was known in every war office in Europe, and in the War Department at Washington, that the Germans not only had a vast supply of great field guns but that they had ammunition enough for every one of those guns to exhaust the gun. Yet we were all living in a fool's paradise. We thought Germany meant what she said—that she was armed for defense; and that she never would use that great store of force against the rest of her fellow men. Why, my friends, it was foreordained the minute Germany conceived these purposes that she should do the thing which she did in 1914. That assassination of the Austrian Crown Prince in Serbia was not what started the war. They were ready to start it and merely made that an occasion and an excuse. Before they started it, Serbia had yielded to practically every demand they made of her, and they would not let the rest of the world know that Serbia had yielded, because they did not want to miss the occasion to start the war. They were afraid that other nations would prepare. They were afraid that they had given too much indication of what they were going to do and they did not want to wait. What immediately happened, when the other foreign offices of Europe learned of what was going on, was that from every other foreign office, so far as I have been able to learn, messages went to Berlin instructing their representatives to suggest to the German Government that the other Governments be informed and that an opportunity be obtained for a discussion, so as to see if war could not be avoided. And Germany did not dare discuss her purpose for 24 hours.

I have brought back from Europe with me, my fellow citizens, a treaty in which Germany is disarmed and in which all the other nations of the world agree never to go to war without first of all having done one or other of two things, either having submitted the question in dispute to arbitration, in which case they will abide by the verdict, or, if they do not care to submit it to arbitration, having submitted it to discussion by the league of nations; that they will allow six months for the discussion; that they will publish all the facts to all the world; and that not until three months after the expiration of the six will they go to war. There is a period of nine months of cooling off, and Germany did not dare cool off for nine days! If Germany had dreamed that anything like the greater part of the world would combine against her, she never would have begun the war, and she did not dare to let the opinion of mankind crystallize against her by the discussion of the purposes which she had in mind. What I want to point out to you to-night is that we are making a fundamental choice. You have either got to have the old system, of which Germany was the perfect flower, or you have got to have a new system. You can not have a new system unless you provide a substitute, an adequate substitute, for the old, and when certain of our fellow citizens take the position that we do not want to go into any combination at all but want to take care of ourselves, all I have to say to them is that that is exactly the German position.

Germany through the mouth of her Emperor—Germany through the mouths of her orators—Germany through the pens of her writers of all sorts—said, "Here we stand, ready to take care of ourselves. We will not enter into any combination. We are armed for self-defense and no nation dares interfere with our rights." That, it appears, is the American program in the eyes of some gentlemen; and I want to tell you that within the last two weeks the pro-German element in this country has lifted its head again. It is again heartened. It again has air in its lungs. It again says, "Ah, now we see a chance when America and Germany will stand outside this league and take care of themselves." Not take care of themselves as partners, I do not mean to intimate that, but where America will play the same role that Germany plays, under that old order which brought us through that agony of bloody sweat, that great agony in which the whole world seemed to be caught in the throes of a crisis, when for a long time we did not know whether civilization itself was going to survive or not. And do not believe, my fellow countrymen, that civilization is saved now. There were passions let loose upon the field of the world by that war which have not grown quiet yet, which will not grow quiet for a long time, and every element of disorder, every element of chaos, is hoping that there may be no steadying hand from a council of nations to hold the order of the world steady until we can make the final arrangements of justice and of peace. The treaty of peace with Germany is very much more than a treaty of peace with Germany. The German part of it takes a good many words, because there are a great many technical details to be arranged, but that is not the heart of the treaty. The heart of the treaty is that it undoes the injustice that Germany did; that it not only undoes the injustice that Germany did but it organizes the world to see that such injustice will in the future be impossible.

And not forgetting, but remembering with intense sympathy the toiling mass of mankind, the conference at Paris wrote into the heart of that treaty a great charter of labor. I think that those of us who live in this happy land can have little conception of the conditions of labor in some of the European countries up to the period of the outbreak of this war, and one of the things that that treaty proposes to do is to organize the opinion of all nations to assist in the betterment and the release of the great forces of labor throughout the world. It is a laboring man's treaty in the sense that it is the average man's treaty. Why, my fellow citizens, the thing that happened at Paris was absolutely and literally unprecedented. There never was a gathering of the leading statesmen of the world before who did not sit down to divide the spoils, to make the arrangements the most advantageous that they could devise for their own strong and powerful governments. Yet this gathering of statesmen sat themselves down to do something which a friend of mine the other day very aptly described as establishing the land titles of the world, because the principle underlying the treaty was that every land belonged to the native stock that lived in it, and that nobody had the right to dictate either the form of government or the control of territory to those people who were born and bred and had their lives and happiness to make there. The principle that nobody has the right to impose the sovereignty of any alien government on anybody was for the first time recognized in the counsels of international deliberation. In this league of nations covenant, which some men ask you to examine in a spot here and there with a magnifying glass, there lies at the heart of it this great principle, nobody has the right to take any territory any more.

You will see what our situation was: The Austrian Empire, for example, had gone to pieces, and here we were with the pieces on the table. The Austrian treaty is not yet completed, but it is being made on the same principle as the German, and will serve as an illustration. In the old days they would have compacted it between armies. They did not do that this time. They said, "This piece belongs to the Poles and to nobody else. This piece belongs to the Bohemians and to nobody else. This piece belongs to Roumania, though she never could have got it for herself; we are going to turn it over to her, though other people want it. This piece belongs to the Slavs, who live in the northern Balkans—the Jugo-Slavs as we have come to know them to be—and they shall have what belongs to them." When we turned to the property of Germany, which she had. been habitually misgoverning—I mean the German colonies, particularly the colonies in Africa—there were many nations who would like to have had those rich, undeveloped portions of the world; but none of them got them. We adopted the principle of trusteeship. We said, "We will put you in charge of this, that, and the other piece of territory, and you will make an annual report to us. We will deprive you of your trusteeship whenever you administer it in a way which is not approved by our judgment, and we will put upon you this primary limitation, that you shall do nothing that is to the detriment of the people who live in that territory. You shall not enforce labor on it, and you shall apply the same principles of humanity to the work of their women and children that you apply at home. You shall not allow the illicit trade in drugs and in liquors. You shall not allow men who want to make money out of powder and shot to sell arms and ammunition to those who can use them to their own disadvantage. You shall not make those people fight in your armies. The country is theirs, and you must remember that and treat it as theirs." There is no more annexation. There is no more land grabbing. There is no more extension of sovereignty. It is an absolute reversal of history, an absolute revolution in the way in which international affairs are treated; and it is all in the covenant of the league of nations.

The old system was, Be ready, and we can be ready. I have heard gentlemen say, "America can take care of herself." Yes, she can take care of herself. Every man would have to train to arms. We would have to have a great standing army. We would have to have accumulations of military material such as Germany used to have. We would enjoy the luxuries of taxes even higher than we pay now. We could accumulate our force, and then our force would have to be directed by some kind of sufficiently vigorous central power. You would have a military government in spirit if not in form. No use having a fighting nation if there is not somebody to swing it! If you do not want your President to be a representative of the civil purposes of this country, you can turn him into merely a commander in chief, ready to fight the world. But if you did nobody would recognize America in those strange and altered circumstances. All the world would stand at amaze and say, "Has America forgotten everything that she ever professed?" The picture is one that every American repudiates; and I challenge any man who has that purpose at the back of his thought to avow it. If he comes and tells you that America must stand alone and take care of herself, ask him how it is going to be done, and he will not dare tell you, because you would show him the door and say, "We do not know any such American."

Yet we can not do without force. You can not establish land titles, as I have expressed it, and not maintain them. Suppose that the land titles of South Dakota were disturbed. Suppose the farm lines were moved, say, 10 feet. You know what would happen. Along every fence line you would see farmers perching with guns on their knees. The only reason they are not perching now is that there are land deeds deposited in a particular place, and the whole majesty and force and judicial system of the State of South Dakota are behind the titles. Very well, we have got to do something like that internationally. You can not set up Poland, whom all the world through centuries has pitied and sympathized with, as the owner of her property and not have somebody take care that her title deeds are respected. You can not establish freedom, my fellow citizens, without force, and the only force you can substitute for an armed mankind is the concerted force of the combined action of mankind through the instrumentality of all the enlightened Governments of the world. This is the only conceivable system that you can substitute for the old order of things which brought the calamity of this war upon us and would assuredly bring the calamity of another war upon us. Your choice is between the league of nations and Germanism. I have told you what I mean by Germanism—taking care of yourselves, being armed and ready, having a chip on your shoulder, thinking of nothing but your own rights and never thinking of the rights of anybody else, thinking that you were put into this world to see that American might was asserted and forgetting that American might ought never to be used against the weak, ought never to be used in an unjust cause, ought never to be used for aggression; ought to be used with the heart of humanity beating behind it.

Sometimes people call me an idealist. Well, that is the way I know I am an American. America, my fellow citizens—I do not say it in disparagement of any other great people—America is the only idealistic Nation in the world. When I speak practical judgments about business affairs, I can only guess whether I am speaking the voice of America or not, but when I speak the ideal purposes of history I know that I am speaking the voice of America, because I have saturated myself since I was a boy in the records of that spirit, and everywhere in them there is this authentic tone of the love of justice and the service of humanity. If by any mysterious influence of error America should not take the leading part in this new enterprise of concerted power, the world would experience one of those reversals of sentiment, one of those penetrating chills of reaction, which would lead to a universal cynicism, for if America goes back upon mankind, mankind has no other place to turn. It is the hope of nations all over the world that America will do this great thing. Yet I find some gentlemen so nervous about doing right that their eyes rest very uneasily on the first article of the covenant of the league of nations, and they say "That says that we can get out after two years' notice, if we have fulfilled all our international obligations at that time. Now, we want to make it perfectly clear that we will get out when we want to." You can not make it perfectly clear in the way they want it, unless you make it perfectly clear at the outset that you want to get out. You can not choose the seat by the door and keep fumbling with the knob without creating the impression that you are going to get out in a minute; that you do not like the company you are in; that you do not like the job; that you are by constitution and disposition a scuttler! If America goes into this thing, she is going to stay in, and she is going to stay in in order to see that justice is done. She can see to it, because if you read this covenant of the league you will find that, America being one of the members of the council of the league, nothing material can be done under that league without a unanimous vote of the council. America can determine what action is going to be taken. No action that is against her policy or against her will can be taken, unless her judgment is rendered in some case where she is one of the disputants, but, my fellow citizens, if she is one of the disputants, she is in trouble anyhow. If the war that they are trying to avert is her war, then I do not see that she is any more benefited by being out of the league than in it. On the contrary, if she is in the league, she has at least the good offices of other friendly States to see that some accommodation is reached.

And she is doing exactly what she has done already. Some gentlemen forget that we already have nearly 80 treaties with the leading nations of the world. Yes; and to do the very thing that is in this covenant, only we agree to take 12 months to discuss everything, whereas the league gives 9 months. The American choice would be 12. We promise not to fight without first talking. I want to call a great many here witness to this circumstance, for I am sure by looking at you that you know something about it. What is the certain way to have difficulty between capital and labor? It is to refuse to sit down in the same room and talk it over. I can not understand why one man or set of men should refuse to discuss claims or grievances with another set of men, unless they know to begin with that they are wrong. I am very averse from discussing anything when I know I have got the wrong end, but when I think I have got either the right end or as good an end as the other fellow, then I am perfectly willing to discuss it. There is an old saying accredited to a rather cynical politician of what I hope I may regard as the older school, who said to his son, "John, do not bother your head about lies; they will take care of themselves; but if you ever hear me denying anything, you may be sure it is so." The only thing we are afraid of, the only thing we dodge, is the truth. If we see facts coming our way, it is just as well to get out of the way. Always take this attitude, my friends, toward facts; Always try to see them coming first, so that they will not catch you at unawares. So with all matters, grading up from the smallest to the greatest. Human beings can get together by discussion, and it is the business of civilization to get together by discussion and not by fighting. That is civilization. The only reason this country is civilized is because we do not let two men who have a difference fight one another. We say, "Wait a minute; we have arranged for that. Just around the corner there you will find a courthouse. On certain days the court is sitting. Go and state the matter to those men, and neither before nor after the decision shall you touch one another." That is civilization. You have got the ordered processes of consultation and discussion. You have got to act by rule, and justice consists in applying the same rule to everybody, not one rule to the rich man and another to the poor; not one rule to the employer and another to the employee, but the same rule to the strong and to the weak.

That is exactly what is attempted in this treaty. I can not understand the psychology of men who are resisting it! I can not understand what they are afraid of, unless it is that they know physical force and do not understand moral force. Moral force is a great deal more powerful than physical. Govern the sentiments of mankind and you govern mankind. Govern their fears, govern their hopes, determine their fortunes, get them together in concerted masses, and the whole thing sways like a team. Once get them suspecting one another, once get them antagonizing one another, and society itself goes to pieces. We are trying to make a society instead of a set of barbarians out of the governments of the world. I sometimes think, when I wake in the night, of all the wakeful nights that anxious fathers and mothers and friends have spent during those weary years of this awful war, and I seem to hear the cry, the inarticulate cry of mothers all over the world, millions of them on the other side of the sea and thousands of them on this side of the sea, "In God's name, give us the sensible and hopeful and peaceful processes of right and of justice!"

America can stay out, but I want to call you to witness that the peace of the world can not be established without America. America is necessary to the peace of the world. And reverse the proposition: The peace and good will of the world are necessary to America. Disappoint the world, center its suspicion upon you, make it feel that you are hot and jealous rivals of the other nations, and do you think you are going to do as much business with them as you would otherwise do? I do not like to put the thing on that plane, my fellow countrymen, but if you want to talk business, I can talk business. If you want to put it on the low plane of how much money you can make, you can make more money out of friendly traders than out of hostile traders. You can make more money out of men who trust you than out of men who fear you. You can bring about a state of mind where by every device possible foreign markets will be closed to you, and men will say, "No; the wheat of America tastes bitter; we will eat the wheat of Argentina; we will eat the wheat of Australia, for that is the wheat of friendship, and this is the wheat of antagonism. We do not want to wear clothes made out of American cotton; we are going to buy just as much cotton from India as we can. We are going to develop new cotton fields. America is up to something; we do not know just what, and we are going to shut and lock every door we can against her." You can get the world in that temper. Do you think that would be profitable? Do you think there is money in that? But I am not going to dwell upon that side of it. I am just as sure of what you are thinking as I am of what I am thinking. We are not thinking of money. We would rather retain the reputation of America than have all the money in the world. I am not ready to die for money, and neither are you, but you are ready and I am ready to die for America.

A friend of mine made a very poignant remark to me one day. He said: "Did you ever see a family that hung its son's yardstick or ledger or spade up over the mantelpiece?" But how many of you have seen the lad's rifle, his musket, hung up! Well, why? A musket is a barbarous thing. The spade and the yardstick and the ledger are the symbols of peace and of steady business; why not hang them up? Because they do not represent self-sacrifice. They do not glorify you. They do not dignify you in the same sense that the musket does, because when you took that musket at the call of your country you risked everything and knew you could not get anything. The most that you could do was to come back alive, but after you came back alive there was a halo about you. That boy was in France! That boy served his country and served a great cause! That boy risked everything to see that the weak peoples of the world were redeemed from intolerable tyranny! Here comes—ah, how I wish I were going to be in Washington on the 17th—here comes, do you not hear it, the tread of the First Division; those men, along with their comrades, to whom the eyes of all Europe turn! All Europe took heart when they saw that brilliant flag unfurled on French soil.

Did you ever hear that thrilling song that is being sung so much now of the blind Frenchman wishing to know if the Americans had come, bidding his son watch at the window. "Look, my lad, what are they carrying? What are the colors? Are they red stripes upon a field of white? Is there a piece of heaven in the corner? Is that piece of heaven full of stars? Ah, the Americans have come! Thank God, the Americans have come!" That is what we have at our hearts, my fellow citizens, and we hang the musket up, or the sword, over the mantelpiece. And if the lad is gone and dead, we share the spirit of a noble lady, who said to me, without the glimmer of a tear in her eye: "I have had the honor of losing a son upon the fields of France. I have had the honor, not the pain. I have had the distinction of losing a son of mine upon the field of honor." It is that field of honor that we are going to redeem. We are not going to redeem it with blood any more, but we are going to make out of the counsels of the people of the world counsels of peace and of justice and of honor.

Woodrow Wilson, Address at the City Coliseum in Sioux Falls, South Dakota Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/317859

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