at this moment an immense responsibility rests with the American public. They have come into the war, and their action in the war has been of profound importance. Their service to mankind is a great page in their history. But those services will only be half accomplished if, now that the war is over, they do not take their share in the even greater and more responsible labors of the peace. Speaking, as I have a right to speak, as representative of the British Government, I say that what is going on in America at this moment is, in my opinion, at least as important for the success of our labors as what is going on in Paris, and that the New World ought to play at least as important a part in the future international organization as the old historical countries of Europe and the Middle East.

As to when we are going to bring our great task to a successful issue, seven weeks is a short space of time in which

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to make even the smallest complete portion of so great a structure. All we may claim to have done is to have laid deep the foundations of our work. Even those seven weeks would have been without any useful result if it had not been that in the various countries of Europe an immense amount of work has been done in regard to the League of Nations; and as regards frontiers and political questions, which enables us to set to work, not on an wholly unsurveyed and unknown country, but furnished with a considerable amount of knowledge and guidance for the great task on which we are engaged. I think that before another seven weeks have passed something great and something substantial will have been actually accomplished, and that, in addition to that, we shall be able to see before us some prospect of a complete solution - I do not say a perfect solution, but a complete solution-of the colossal task.

GERMANY'S voluntary disarmament has not softened our enemies but merely given them the possibility of obtaining further concessions from us by the repeated threat of renewing hostilities. Of late, they have made the attempt to settle by this means questions which undoubtedly belong to the objects of the conclusion of peace, and which they aim at settling one-sidedly to our disadvantage by pressure of arms, whereas, according to the principles of peace on which we have agreed, they were to

be solved on the basis of justice and reciprocity. I have repudiated this attempt, and will in future repudiate similar attempts. They can do violence to us, but they cannot compel us to recognize violence as justice. We expected a speedy peace because the armistice conditions only had sense if they were maintained for a short period. We are in process of dissolving the whole of our previous armed forces and of replacing our old peace army, which we can well use in the East, by a new Republican

force. In spite of this, the conditions of the armistice are intensified from month to month. If our enemies consider they must punish us, then they are serving revenge instead of justice, and are killing the spirit in which, on their own declaration, peace should be concluded. Germany has taken the consequences of her defeat upon herself, and is determined to observe the conditions which she has agreed with her enemies. These conditions signify a complete renunciation of the political aims of former Germany and a recognition of the truth which one of the great men of Weimar expressed in the words, "The history of the world is the judgment of the world.' We decline our enemies as judges because of their prejudice. We can inwardly submit not to the claims of the conqueror but only to the judgment of the unbiased. Therefore, I will not allow myself to be driven away from the points of the Wilson peace programme as recognized by both sides. To this belongs first the compulsory submission of our differences with other States to international arbitration and renunciation of an armament which would permit us to attack a neighbor by force of arms. We are prepared for both limitations of our sovereignty, if our previous enemies and our future neighbors submit to the same limitation.

We recognize that the position which Germany took up on these two fundamental questions at The Hague Conferences was historically guilty, and for the guilt our whole people now has to pay. But this acknowledgment by no means includes the admission that, as our enemies assert, the German people is alone guilty for the world war, and that it has conducted the war with a barbarism which is peculiar to it. We have to complain of long-considered war plans of our enemies and of grievous brutalities in their conduct of war, and

are prepared to allow unbiased men who have the confidence of all belligerents to judge the guilt for the war and during the war. Therefore, we hold fast to the Wilson principles that no costs are to be paid to the conqueror and no territory is to be ceded by the vanquished.

We are bound and prepared to make good the damage which has resulted from our attack to the civil population in the territories occupied by us, but if we again build up what has been destroyed in those territories, we wish to do that by our own free work. We protest against our prisoners of war being made to do such labor as slaves and against the state of war being prolonged in order to give a legal excuse for this forced labor. Our enemies have to thank for their victory to an overwhelming extent not the military but the economic conduct of the war. From this it follows that the peace must be not merely a political, but also essentially an economic peace. President Wilson rightly described the principle of economic freedom and equality as the main condition of a just and permanent peace.

We may, therefore, assume that the decisions of the Paris Economic Conference of 1916 will be dropped. It is clear that even a merely temporary differentiation of Germany in the sphere of trade and commerce would be unacceptable for us. A people like the German people cannot be treated as a second-class people. A period of quarantine cannot be imposed upon it before its entry into the League of Nations, as one prevents a ship from entering the harbor because of the danger of plague. If we submit to just conditions of peace, and give that security for their fulfillment which a reasonable opponent (Vertragsgegner) can demand, there is no ground for denying us the most favored nation treatment. Thirdly, we also have to

change our views (umlernen) in the sphere of trade policy. We have not always been guided by the truth that even in the relations of peoples the proverb holds good, 'Give, if you wish to take.' That is certainly partly due to the one-sided bureaucratic staffing of our diplomatic service. By bureaucratic means the economic relations of the peoples, which have been deeply shaken by the war, cannot be restored. Therefore, it is my plan to appoint experienced practical men more than formerly to the Diplomatic Service. I have already made a beginning. I trust that our economic service abroad will in future use the freedom of trade which a peace of right must bring us in a manner equally removed from risky extravagance and bureaucratic narrowness. By this means we shall first remove from our path the hostility of other peoples to Germany's trade methods, which had a great share in preparing the atmosphere for the war. But freedom of trade presupposes freedom of the seas. Therefore, the point of the Wilson programme which speaks of the freedom of the seas is one of the most important for Germany. Herein we are less concerned with the rules of naval warfare. We do not now want to speak of new wars, but rather of the peaceful use of sea routes, seacoasts, and harbors. But there is no clearness yet as to this principal point of the future peace. Last autumn the Entente reserved its approval, and the condition which it imposed upon Germany in connection with the promise to supply food and with the prolongation of the armistice give rise to a fear that it intends to rob Germany of the whole of her merchant fleet. But if one intends to compel Germany to enter the League of Nations without a merchant fleet, that would be a violent obstruction of her economic development. Such an attempt is bound to be accompanied by

violent agitations which will be a perpetual menace to general peace. Germany can no more enter the League of Nations without colonies than she can without a merchant fleet. According to Wilson's programme there should be a free, generous, and absolutely equitable settlement of colonial questions. In the sense of this programme we expect the return of our colonial possessions which have been taken from us partly by breach of international treaties and partly on threadbare pretexts. We are prepared to negotiate over the cession of this or that colony, but only as legal

possessors.

On the other hand, we must be prepared to lose valuable portions of Imperial territory. This applies principally to Alsace-Lorraine, the recovery of which was the fruit of our victory and the symbol of German unity. You know that President Wilson put forward the demand that the injustice which Germany did in 1871 by the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine should be repaired. From the standpoint of the new international morality, according to which populations must not be moved about like pawns in the game of the powers, it would be unjust to dis pose of Alsatians and Lorrainers without their consent, without even respecting the language frontiers. I will not here refer to the former injustice which was done to the German people. I accept Wilson's standpoint because it is a matter of the right of the present population of Alsace-Lorraine. Violence is done to this right if the French occupation authorities now treat the country as one that has been finally conquered, and drive out or imprison all elements in which they see an obstacle to their imperialist plan, and if they violate the natural claim of the people to its own language by enforced Gallicization.

The Peace Conference has not yet

put its seal on the destiny of AlsaceLorraine. It is still in point of law the territory of the Empire. That fact empowers us to support the right of the Alsace-Lorrainers that their voice should be heard when their destiny is decided. Whether they prefer to be French departments or a German free State; whether they prefer autonomy or complete independence, Germany will not believe that the new Europe is based on justice until the clause in the treaty which fixes the future of the country is strengthened by the solemn approbation of the whole population. The French plan of incorporation of the Prussian Saar territory or the Bavarian Palatinate in Alsace-Lorraine is an imperialistic oppression which must be just as sharply condemned as the former intentions of German Chauvinists with regard to the Briey-Longwy basin. The French are concerned with the coal treasures of the Saar basin just as the German Imperialists were with the coal of Briey. If such reasons are to prevail at the peace negotiations, then let every hope be given up of raising international relations to a higher plane. Certainly France has a political interest in every weakening of Germany. As long as both great nations regard themselves as hereditary enemies and stand opposed to each other armed to the teeth, it will be the task of the Peace Conference to create guaranties which will make such a condition of things senseless. Only let them not try to find the guaranties in separating from Imperial territory parts of it which belong to its vital members. You know what ideas are being spread with suspicious zeal in Rhineland and Westphalia with France and Belgium as their source the establishment of an independent Republic which will soon fall under French control when the French and Belgian frontiers have been pushed forward into German

territory. With great cleverness these tendencies make use of centrifugal forces which have been liberated by the excessive centralization of the whole of our economic life in the war organizations of the capital, and lately by certain Berlin phenomena accompanying the revolution. Thus, true Germans and eloquent supporters of the Imperial idea become victims of a dangerous error against which I must warn them most emphatically in the interest of German foreign policy. I must address the same warning to certain circles in the South, among whom the cry 'Away from Berlin!' finds an echo which is to some degree intelligible, but is not less deplorable.

Though the reconstitution of the Main as the dividing line may perhaps for the moment promise advantages, which during the war an underground propaganda of our enemies tried to make the population believe in, yet as a permanency such a separation would assuredly lead to the destruction of the constitutional and economic independence of the separated parts. The German people is a living unit above all State frontiers, even above the frontiers in the old Empire. A united Empire is its natural form of existence. We do not think of making Swiss or Dutch subjects into Germans. From the Scandinavian nations we annex only the Sagas of their forefathers and the poets of the present. But until the collapse of the Roman Empire the history of Germany and of our Austrian brothers was united. We sat together in the Pauluskirche and the appeal to arms which accomplished the kleindeutsch instead of the grossdeutsch idea appeared to the best among us as a fratricidal one. In coming together again now after all the non-German nationalities of the Hapsburg Monarchy have denounced their friendship, we know that we are making a belated correction of a mistake

in the founding of the Empire, which the Peace Conference will assuredly not refuse to sanction. Now already the German N. A. and I., as the director of German foreign policy, may protest against the wrong done to GermanAustria by its former comrades in the Empire. The new Czecho-Slovak State violates the law to which it owes its own birth, by not only trying to force under its sway by force of arms the Germans of Bohemia and Moravia, but also by claiming territory to the southeast which is inhabited by Germans. The new State desires to subdue to its rule, in order to satisfy its impulse for economic expansion, Austrian Silesia, districts in Lower Austria, and German colonies in the Austro-Hungarian frontier districts. It even threatens to stretch out its hands over territory of the German Empire. Serious protest must be made against such outrages. Calm negotiations could be carried on as to the economic necessities of the Czecho-Slovak State, which arise from its separation from the sea. The new Germany has the same vital interest in the welfare of its adolescent neighbor as the latter has in Germany's economic soundness.

We are, therefore, determined to enforce the right of nationality all round in favor of our German brothers, but we also intend to recognize that right where it is disadvantageous to our position (Machtstellung). That applies above all to the Poles. We have declared ourselves ready to allow all districts of our Empire which are beyond question colonized by Poles to be incorporated with the Polish State. We will keep that promise. What districts fall under the 13th Point of Wilson's programme is the subject of controversy. An impartial tribunal may decide on it, but until it is decided these districts belong to the Empire. No one except the Prussian State and the Gov

ernment of the Empire is empowered to exercise sovereign rights in them. The Polish Nationalists, with their passionate propaganda, did not wish to wait for the decision of the Peace Conference, but rose with violence against German and Prussian officials in order to come to the peace negotiations with as much property in their hands as possible. Thus they carry the horrors of war afresh into the German East, which is simultaneously threatened by the greater danger of Bolshevist Imperialism. Thus they prevent us from protecting the eastern provinces of Prussia effectively against the common enemy. These facts must be sufficient to make it clear to every politician that the first task is to call the Prussian Poles to order and make them stop their campaign of violence. They can no longer justify themselves on grounds of necessary defense, for the new German Government has repealed the oppressive special laws and was ready to meet the Poles on the question of the selection of officials. In spite of that the Poles represent us as the aggressors and the Entente undertakes to forbid the use of force in our own country against the Poles. The Imperial Government has refused such an assumption and has demanded the removal of all armed Polish units from the present territory of the Empire. The German Government will extend full sympathy toward any other form of action by which the Allied and Associated Powers desire to restore order in the Polish districts.

We are bound by the armistice treaty to allow the passage of enemy commissions for this purpose from the Baltic to Congress-Poland, and will in every way facilitate and support the passage of the commissions which have been notified to us. Our own interest demands that the atmosphere of hate which at present poisons GermanPolish relations shall be replaced before