"If I were to state what seems to me the central idea of this treaty, it would be this: It is almost a discovery in international conventions that nations do not consist  p329 of their governments, but consist of their people. That is a rudimentary idea. It seems to us in America to go without saying, but it was never the leading idea in any other international congress that I ever heard of; that is to say, any international congress made up of the representatives of governments. They were always thinking of national policy, of national advantage, of the rivalries of trade, of the advantages of territorial conquest. There is nothing of that in this treaty. You will notice that even the territories which are taken away from Germany, like her colonies, are not given to anybody."

"You have heard a great deal about Article X of the Covenant of the League of Nations. Article X speaks  p330 the conscience of world. Article X is the article which goes to the heart of this whole bad business, for that article says, that the members of this league (that is intended to be all the great nations of the world) engage to respect and to preserve against all external aggression the territorial integrity and political independence of the nations concerned. That promise is necessary in order to prevent this sort of war from recurring, and we are absolutely discredited if we fought this war and then neglect the essential safeguard against it. You have heard it said, my fellow citizens, that we are robbed of some degree of our sovereign, independent choice by articles of that sort. Every man who makes a choice to respect the rights of his neighbors deprive himself of absolute sovereignty, but he does it by promising never to do wrong, and I can not for one see anything that troubles me of any inherent right that I ought to retain when I promise that I will do right, when I promise that I will respect the thing which, being disregarded and violated, brought on a war in which millions of men lost their lives, in which the civilization of mankind was in the balance, in which there was the most outrageous exhibition ever witnessed in the history of mankind of the rapacity and disregard for right of a great armed people.

"We engage in the first sentence of Article X to respect and preserve from external aggression the territorial integrity and the existing political independence not only of the other member States, but of all States, and if any member of the League of Nations disregards that promise, then what happens? The council of the league advises what should be done to enforce respect for the covenant on the part of the nation  p331 attempting to violate it, and there is no compulsion upon us to take that advice except the compulsion of our good conscience and judgment. It is perfectly evident that if, in the judgment of the people of the United States the council adjudged wrong and that this was not a case for the use of force, there would be no necessity on the part of the Congress of the United States to vote the use of force. But there could be no advice of the council on any such subject without a unanimous vote, and the unanimous vote includes our own, and if we accepted the advice we would be accepting our own advice. For I need not tell you that the representatives of the Government of the United States would not vote without instructions from their Government at home, and that what we united in advising we could be certain that the American people would desire to do. There is in that covenant not only not a surrender of the independent judgment of the Government of the United States, but an expression of it, because that independent judgment would have to join with the judgment of the rest.

"But when is that judgment going to be expressed, my fellow citizens? Only after it is evident that every other resource has failed, and I want to call your attention to the central machinery of the League of Nations. If any member of that League, or any nation not a member, refuses to submit the question at issue either to arbitration or to discussion by the council, there ensues automatically by the engagements of this covenant an absolute economic boycott. There will be no trade with that nation by any member of the League. There will be no interchange of communication by post or telegraph. There will be no travel to or from that nation. Its borders will be closed. No citizen of any other State  p332 will be allowed to enter it, and no one of its citizens will be allowed to leave it. It will be hermetically sealed by the united action of the most powerful nations in the world. And if this economic boycott bears with unequal weight, the members of the League agree to support one another and to relieve one another in any exceptional disadvantages that may arise out of it."

"It was very embarrassing, my fellow citizens, when you thought you were approaching an ideal solution of a particular question to find that some of your principal colleagues had given the whole thing away. And that leads me to speak just in passing of what has given a great many people natural distress. I mean Shantung settlement, the settlement with regard to a portion of the Province of Shantung in China. Great Britain and, subsequently, France, as everybody now knows, in order to make it more certain that Japan would come into the war and so assist to clear the Pacific of the German fleets, had promised that any rights that Germany had in China should, in the case of the victory of the Allies, pass to  p333 Japan. There was no qualification in the promise. She was to get exactly what Germany had, and so the only thing that was possible was to induce Japan to promise — and I want to say in fairness, for it would not be fair if I did not say it, that Japan did very handsomely make the promise which was requested of her — that she would retain in Shantung none of the sovereign rights which Germany had enjoyed there, but would return the sovereignty without qualification to China and retain in Shantung Province only what other nationalities had already had elsewhere, economic rights with regard to the development and administration of the railway and of certain mines which had become attached to the railway. That is her promise, and personally I have not the slightest doubt that she will fulfill that promise. She can not fulfill it right now because the thing does not go into operation until three months after the treaty is ratified, so that we must not be too impatient about it. But she will fulfill that promise. [Japan's promise was kept.]

"Suppose that we said that we would not assent. England and France must assent, and if we are going to get Shantung Province back for China and these gentlemen do not want to engage in foreign wars, how are they going to get it back? Their idea of not getting into trouble seems to be to stand for the largest number of unworkable propositions. It is all very well to talk about standing by China, but how are you standing by China when you withdraw from the only arrangement by which China can be assisted? If you are China's friend, then do not go into the council where you can act as China's friend! If you are China's friend, then put her in a position where even the concessions which have been made need not be carried out! If you are China's  p334 friend, scuttle and run! That is not the kind of American I am."