I was rendered a little uneasy by what Mr. Lloyd George was quoted as having said the other day that the Americans have a great surprise in store for Germany. I don't know in what sense he meant that, but there is no surprise in store. I want you to know the sequence of resolves and of actions concerning our part in the war. Some time ago it was proposed to us that we, if I may use the expression feed our men into the French and English armies in any unit that might be ready— companies or regiments or brigades—and not wait to train and coordinate the larger units of our armies before putting them into action. My instinctive judgment in the face of that proposition was that the American people would feel a very much more ardent interest in the war if their men were fighting under their own flag and under their own general officers, but at that time, which was some months ago, I instructed General Pershing that he had full authority whenever any exigency that made such a thing necessary should occur to put the men in any units or in any numbers or in any way that was necessary— just as he is doing. What I wanted you to know was that that was not a new action, that General Pershing was fully instructed about that all along.
Then, similarly with regard to the impression that we are now going to rush troops to Europe. Of course, you cannot rush any faster than there is means of rushing and, what I have said recently is what I have said all along, that we are getting men over there just as fast as we can get them ready and as quickly as we can find the ships to transport them. We are doing that now and we have been doing it all along. Let me point out some of the circumstances: Our first programme was to send over ninety thousand men a month, but for several months we were sending over only thirty thousand—one third of the programme. Why? Not because we didn't have the men ready, not even because we didn't have the means of transportation, but because—and there is no criticism of the French Government involved in this—because the ports assigned to us for landing couldn't take care of the supplies we had to send over. We had to send materials and engineers, and workmen, even, over to build the docks and the piers that would be adequate to handle the number of men we sent over, because this was happening: We began with the ninety-thousand programme and the result was that cargo ships that we needed were lying in those ports for several weeks together without being unloaded, as there was no means of unloading them. It was bad economy and bad practice from every point of view to have those ships lying there during a period when they could have made two or three voyages. There is still this difficulty which I am afraid there is no means of overcoming rapidly, that the railroad communication between those ports and the front is inadequate to handle very large bodies of men. You may notice that General Pershing recommended that Christmas boxes should not be sent to the men. That sounded like a pretty hard piece of advice, but if you could go to those ports and see those Christmas boxes which are still there, you would know why he didn't want them sent. There was no means of getting them to the front. Vast accumulations of these gifts were piled up there with no means of storing them adequately even.
I just wanted to create for you this picture, that the channels have been inevitably choked. Now we believe that, inasmuch as the impediments on the other side are being largely removed, we can go ahead with the original programme and add to it in proportion as the British can spare us the tonnage, and they are going to spare us the tonnage for the purpose. And with the extra tonnage which the British are going to spare us we will send our men, not to France but to Great Britain, and from there they will go to the front through the channel ports. You see that makes a new line where the means of handling them are already established and where they are more abundant than they are at the French ports. Now, I want to say again that none of this involves the least criticism of the French authorities, because I think they have done their very best in every respect, but they couldn't make ports out of hand, they couldn't build new facilities suddenly, and their man power was being drawn on in very much larger proportion than our man power. Therefore, it was perfectly proper that we should send men over there and send materials to make the means of handling the troops and the cargoes more expeditiously.
I want you gentlemen to realize that there was no wave-like motion in this thing so far as our purpose and preparation are concerned. We have met with delays, of course, in production, some of which might have been avoided and ought to have been avoided, and which are being slowly corrected, but apart from that the motive power has been back of this thing all the time. It has been the means of action that has oscillated, it has been sometimes greater and sometimes less than was necessary for the programme.
I for my own part don't like the idea of having surprises. I would like the people to be surprised if we didn't do our duty, but not surprised that we did do it. Of course, I don't mean that Mr. Lloyd George meant that we would surprise everybody by doing our duty, but I don't just know how to interpret his idea of it, because I have said the same thing to the British representatives all along as I informally expressed it to Lord Reading, that we had been and always would be doing our damnedest, and there could not be a more definite American expression of purpose than that.
As to another matter (I am just giving you things to think about and not things to say, if you will be kind enough to take it that way). That speech I made on Saturday I hope was correctly understood. We are fighting, as I understand it, for justice to everybody and are ready to stop just as soon as justice to everybody is everybody's programme. I have the same opinion privately about, I will not say the policy, but the methods of the German Government that some gentlemen have who see red all the time, but that is not a proper part of my thought. My thought is that if the German Government insist that the thing shall be settled unjustly, that is to say by force, then of course we accept that and will settle it by force. Whenever we see sincere symptoms of their desire to settle it by justice, we will not only accept their suggestions but we will be glad and eager to accept them, as I said in my speech. I would be ashamed to use the knock-down and drag-out language; that is not the language of liberty, that is the language of braggadocio. For my part, I have no desire to march triumphantly into Berlin. If they oblige us to march triumphantly into Berlin, then we will do it if it takes twenty years. But the world will come to its senses some day, no matter how mad some parts of it may be now, and this is my feeling, that we ought when the thing is over to be able to look back upon a course which had no element in it which we need be ashamed of. So it is so difficult in any kind of a speech, this kind or any other, to express two things that seem to be going in opposite directions that I wasn't sure that I had succeeded in expressing them on Saturday—the sincere willingness to discuss peace whenever the proposals are themselves sincere and yet at the same time the determination never to discuss it until the basis laid down for the discussion is justice. By that I mean justice to everybody. Nobody has the right to get anything out of this war, because we are fighting for peace if we mean what we say, for permanent peace. No injustice furnishes a basis for permanent peace. If you leave a rankling sense of injustice anywhere, it will not only produce a running sore presently which will result in trouble and probably war, but it ought to produce war somewhere. The sore ought to run. It is not susceptible to being healed except by remedying the injustice. Therefore, I for my part wouldn't want to see a peace which was based upon compelling any people, great or small, to live under conditions which it didn't willingly accept.
If I were just a sheer Machiavelli and didn't have any heart but had brains, I would say: "If you mean what you say and are fighting for permanent peace, then there is only one way to get it, whether you like justice or not." It is the only conceivable intellectual basis for it, because this is not like the time, years ago, of the Congress of Vienna. Peoples were then not willing, but so speechless and unorganized and without the means of self-expression, that the governments could sit on their necks indefinitely. They didn't know how to prevent it. But they are wide awake now and nobody is going to sit comfortably on the neck of any people, big or little, and the more uncomfortable he is who tries it, the more I am personally pleased. So that I am in the position in my mind of trying to work out a purely scientific proposition: "What will stay put?"
A peace is not going to be permanent until that principle is accepted by everybody, that, given a political unit, every people has the right to determine its own life. That, gentlemen, is all I have to say to you, but it is the real inside of my mind, and it is the real key to the present foreign policy of the United States which for the time being is in my keeping. I hope it will be useful to you, as it is welcome to me to have this occasion of telling you what I really think and what I understand we are really doing.