I am seeking only to face realities and to face them without soft
concealments. Victory would mean peace forced upon the loser,
a victor's terms imposed upon the vanquished. It would be accepted
in humiliation, under duress, at an intolerable sacrifice, and would
leave a sting, a resentment, a bitter memory, upon which terms of
peace would rest, not permanently, but only as upon quicksand.

Only a peace between equals can last; only a peace the very principle
of which is equality and a common participation in a common benefit.
The right state of mind, the right feeling between nations, is as
necessary for a lasting peace as is the just settlement of questions
of territory or of racial and national allegiance.


MUST EQUALIZE RIGHTS OF NATIONS

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 and
small, between those that are powerful and those that are weak.

Right must be based upon the common strength, not upon 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. Mankind is looking
now for freedom of life, not for equipoises of power.