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[The trouble with Senators who oppose the League of Nations]
The trouble with Senators who oppose the League of Nations is
that they are thinking of the days that are gone and gone forever.
The conquering empires of the world have been wiped out. The fall
of Russia and Germany and Austria-Hungary removed from the world
the last representatives of the conquering spirit and of autocratic
power. The world is now democratic. Senators should cease to turn
their eyes to the past and should turn them to the future, and see
what we have before us.
The spirit of democracy has come into its own. We have come
into a new world. We are about to organize the democracies of the
earth to establish law and order among the nations. And we can do
it now for the first time in the history of the world. We need
take in no despots. We need take into consideration no conquering
empire. That day has gone, and we have come into a new era. The
senators should realize it. Let them grasp the fact that the
spirit of the age is to end conquest. That the spirit of the age
is to have the people rule. That the spirit of the age is that
government shall be content to serve their own people and not to
despoil others. Let them see the New World as it is, and the new
spirit which inspires it. Let them appreciate the fact that
humanity is not willing to sacrifice itself further, that men and
women demand of their government that as the fruit of this terrible
war an agreement shall be entered into for the preservation of
world peace in the future. If senators will turn from the past
towards the future, they will behold a new heaven and a new earth,
not a millennium perhaps, but a world in which the affairs of
nations are to be administered in justice and reason and humanity.
A world in which the chief affair of government shall be peace and
development and progress. A world in which man shall attain its
highest destiny and happiness. This was impossible in the days of
tyrants and autocrats and conquerors, but it is possible in the new
age of liberty, statesmanship, and philanthropy.
The late war cost seven million lives, and millions more of
cripples. It has destroyed hundreds of towns, it has widowed
millions of wives, it has brought in its train the inevitable
consequences of war, pestilence, and famine. One of the war
diseases alone has cost this country over three hundred thousand
lives of the civilian population. It has let loose and inflamed
the passions and lusts of man, and crushed and humiliated millions
of women. Massacre, torture, and assassinations have accompanied
it. Law and order have been overthrown. Bolshevism and anarchy
have been profligated. The confidence of men in government has
been shaken. It will never be restored until governments devise
some way to end war. The League of Nations is that way.
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