You can imagine, I dare say, the sentiments and the purpose with which the representatives of the United States support this great project for a League of Nations. We regard it as the keynote of the whole, which expressed our purposes and ideals in the war and which the asso- 5 ciated nations have accepted as the basis of a settlement.

If we return to the United States without having made every effort in our power to realize this program, we should return to meet the merited scorn of our fellow-citizens. For they are a body that constitute a great democracy. 10 They expect their leaders to speak; their representatives to be their servants.

We have no choice but to obey their mandate. But it is with the greatest enthusiasm and pleasure that we accept that mandate. And because this is the keynote 15 of the whole fabric, we have pledged our every purpose to it, as we have to every item of the fabric. We would not dare abate a single item of the program which constitutes our instructions; we would not dare to compromise upon any matter as the champion of this thing this peace of the world, this attitude of justice, this principle that we are the masters of no peoples, but are here to see that every people in the world shall choose its own masters and govern its own destinies, not as we wish, but as they wish.

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We are here to see, in short, that the very foundations of this war are swept away. Those foundations were the private choice of a small coterie of civil rulers and military staffs. Those foundations were the aggression of great powers upon the small. Those foundations were 30 the holding together of empires of unwilling subjects by the duress of arms. Those foundations were the power

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of small bodies of men to wield their will and use mankind as pawns in a game. And nothing less than the emancipation of the world from these things will accomplish peace.

You can see that the representatives of the United States are, therefore, never put to the embarrassment of choosing a way of expediency, because they have had laid down before them the unalterable lines of principles. And, thank God, these lines have been accepted as the 10 lines of settlements by all the high-minded men who have had to do with the beginning of this great business.

I hope, Mr. Chairman, when it is known, as I feel confident it will be known, that we have adopted the principle of the League of Nations and mean to work 15 out that principle in effective action, we shall by that single thing have lifted a great part of the load of anxiety from the hearts of men everywhere.

We stand in a peculiar cause. As I go about the streets here I see everywhere the American uniform. Those men 20 came into the war after we had uttered our purpose. They came as crusaders, not merely to win a war, but to win a cause. And I am responsible to them, for it falls to me to formulate the purpose for which I asked them to fight, and I, like them, must be a crusader for 25 these things, whatever it costs and whatever it may be necessary to do, in honor, to accomplish the object for which they fought.

I have been glad to find from day to day that there is no question of our standing alone in this matter, for 30 there are champions of this cause upon every hand. I

am merely avowing this in order that you may understand why, perhaps, it fell to us, who are disengaged

from the politics of this great continent and of the Orient, to suggest that this was the keystone of the arch, and why it occurred to the generous mind of your President to call upon me to open this debate. It is not because we alone represent this idea, but because it is our privilege 5 to associate ourselves with you in representing it.

I have only tried in what I have said to give you the fountains of the enthusiasm which is within us for this thing, for those fountains spring, it seems to me, from all the ancient wrongs and sympathies of mankind, and 10 the very pulse of the world seems to beat to the fullest in this enterprise.

NOTES

GEORGE WASHINGTON

GEORGE WASHINGTON was born on February 22, 1732, at Bridges Creek, Westmoreland County, Virginia, in the homestead of his father, Augustine Washington, beside the wide waters of the lower Potomac River. His ancestor, John Washington, had come from England to America in 1656. The family shared in the prosperous life and growth of Virginia; and, when Washington was born, his father owned more than five thousand acres of land, and was acquiring wealth in the directing of mining and commerce. The father died in 1743, leaving to his eldest son the best part of the estates, including Hunting Creek, afterward named by the heir Mt. Vernon; and to the other surviving son of his first marriage the lands about Bridges Creek. George Washington, then but eleven years of age, was left to the care of his mother, the second wife, Mary Washington. He had the prospect, when he should become of age, of the farm, where he then lived with his mother and the younger children in Stafford County, across the Rappahannock from Fredericksburg. It was a high-spirited, vigorous, resourceful stock from which Washington was descended.

His school life was not such as it would have been, if his father had lived to a greater age. The sexton, Hobby,