Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, The Lansing Papers, 1914–1920, Volume I

763.72/3261½

Memorandum by President Wilson¹⁵

undated

Bases of Peace

I

Mutual guarantee of political independence,—absolute in all domestic matters, limited in external affairs only by the rights of other nations.

II

Mutual guarantee of territorial integrity.

Note. The application of this guarantee to the territorial arrangements made by the terms of the peace by which the present war is ended would, of course, necessarily depend upon the character of those arrangements, that is, their reasonableness and natural prospect of permanency; and would depend, so far as the participation of the United States is concerned, upon whether they were in conformity with the general principles of right and comity set forth in the address of the President to the Senate on the twenty-second of January last.¹⁶

III

Mutual guarantee against such economic warfare as would in effect constitute an effort to throttle the industrial life of a nation or shut it off from equal opportunities of trade with the rest of the world.

Note. This would, of course, not apply to any laws of any individual state which were meant merely for the regulation and development of its own industries or for the mere safeguarding of its own resources from misuse or exhaustion, but only to such legislation and such governmental action as could be shown to be intended to operate outside territorial limits and intended to injure particular rivals or groups of rivals.

IV

Limitation of armaments, whether on land or sea, to the necessities of internal order and the probable demands of cooperation in making good the foregoing guarantees.

[Note.] Provided the nations which take part in this covenant may be safely regarded as representing the major force of mankind.

General Note: It is suggested that it would not be necessary to set up at the outset any permanent tribunal or administrative agency, but only an Office of correspondence through which all matters of information could be cleared up, correspondence translated by experts (scholars), and mutual explanations and suggestions interchanged. It would in all likelihood be best to await the developments and suggestions of experience before attempting to set up any common instrumentality of international action.

15. This paper bears the notation: “Handed me by Prest Feby 7, 1917 RL.”
16. Foreign Relations, 1917, supp. 1, p. 24.