these countries in the government of their own lands, until they too
become free and equal members of the world league. Neither France nor
Italy nor Britain nor America has ever tampered with the shipping of
other countries except in time of war, and the trade of the British
Empire has been impartially open to all the world. The extra-national
"possessions," the so-called "subject nations" in the Empires of
Britain, France, Italy, and Japan, are, in fact, possessions held in
trust against the day when the League of Free Nations will inherit for
mankind.

Is it to be union by conquest or is it to be union by league? For any
sort of man except the German the question is, Will you be a free
citizen or will you be an underling to the German imperialism? For the
German now the question is a far graver and more tragic one. For him it
is this: "You belong to a people not now increasing very rapidly, a
numerous people, but not so numerous as some of the great peoples of the
world, a people very highly trained, very well drilled and well armed,
perhaps as well trained and drilled and equipped as ever it will be. The
collapse of Russian imperialism has made you safe if now you can get
peace, and you _can_ get a peace now that will neither destroy you nor
humiliate you nor open up the prospect of fresh wars. The Allies offer
you such a peace. To accept it, we must warn you plainly, means refusing
to go on with the manifest intentions of your present rulers, which are
to launch you and your children and your children's children upon a
career of struggle for war predominance, which may no doubt inflict
untold deprivations and miseries upon the rest of mankind, but whose end
in the long run, for Germany and things German, can be only Judgment and
Death."

In such terms as these the Oceanic Allies could now state their war-will