Let there be no misunderstanding.  Our present and immediate task is to win the war and nothing shall turn us aside from it until it is accomplished.  Every power and resource we possess, whether of men, of money, or of materials, is being devoted and will continue to be devoted to that purpose until it is achieved.  Those who desire to bring peace about before that purpose is achieved I counsel to carry their advice elsewhere.  We will not entertain it.  We shall regard the war as won only when the German people say to us, through properly accredited representatives, that they are ready to agree to a settlement based upon justice and reparation of the wrongs their rulers have done.  They have done a wrong to Belgium which must be repaired.  They have established a power over other lands and peoples than their own—­over the great empire of Austria-Hungary, over hitherto free Balkan states, over Turkey and within Asia-which must be relinquished.

Germany’s success by skill, by industry, by knowledge, by enterprise we did not grudge or oppose, but admired, rather.  She had built up for herself a real empire of trade and influence, secured by the peace of the world.  We were content to abide by the rivalries of manufacture, science and commerce that were involved for us in her success, and stand or fall as we had or did not have the brains and the initiative to surpass her.  But at the moment when she had conspicuously won her triumphs of peace she threw them away, to establish in their stead what the world will no longer permit to be established, military and political domination by arms, by which to oust where she could not excel the rivals she most feared and hated.  The peace we make must remedy that wrong.  It must deliver the once fair lands and happy peoples of Belgium and Northern France from the Prussian conquest and the Prussian menace, but it must deliver also the peoples of Austria-Hungary, the peoples of the Balkans and the peoples of Turkey, alike in Europe and Asia, from the impudent and alien dominion of the Prussian military and commercial autocracy.

We owe it, however, to ourselves, to say that we do not wish in any way to impair or to rearrange the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  It is no affair of ours what they do with their own life, either industrially or politically.  We do not purpose or desire to dictate to them in any way.  We only desire to see that their affairs are left in their own hands, in all matters, great or small.  We shall hope to secure for the peoples of the Balkan peninsula and for the people of the Turkish Empire the right and opportunity to make their own lives safe, their own fortunes secure against oppression or injustice and from the dictation of foreign courts or parties.

And our attitude and purpose with regard to Germany herself are of a like kind.  We intend no wrong against the German Empire, no interference with her internal affairs.  We should deem either the one or the other absolutely unjustifiable, absolutely contrary to the principles we have professed to live by and to hold most sacred throughout our life as a nation.