proposing an international organization based on that idea would be
far worse.

On January 22, 1917, the President in an address to the Senate had made
the following declaration:

"The equality of nations upon which peace must be founded if it is to
last must be an equality of rights; the guarantees exchanged must
neither recognize nor imply a difference between big nations or
small, between those that are powerful and those that are weak. Right
must be based upon the common strength, not the individual strength,
of the nations upon whose concert peace will depend. Equality of
territory or of resources there of course cannot be; nor any other
sort of equality not gained in the ordinary peaceful and legitimate
development of the peoples themselves. But no one asks or expects
anything more than an equality of rights."

In view of this sound declaration of principle it seemed hardly possible
that the President, after careful consideration of the consequences of
his plan of a guaranty requiring force to make it practical, would not
perceive the fundamental error of creating a primacy of the
Great Powers.

It was in order to prevent, if possible, the United States from becoming
sponsor for an undemocratic principle that I determined to lay my
partial plan of organization before the President at the earliest moment
that I believed it would receive consideration.

To my letter of December 23 with its enclosed memoranda I never received
a reply or even an acknowledgment. It is true that the day following its