PRESIDENT POINCARÉ AT THE OPENING OF
THE PARIS PEACE CONFERENCE
(January 18, 1919)
Gentlemen: France greets and thanks you for having chosen as the seat of your labours the city which for more than four years the enemy has made his principal military objective and which the valour of the allied armies has victoriously defended against unceasingly renewed offensives.
Permit me to see in your decision the homage of all the nations that you represent toward a country which more than any other has endured the sufferings of war, of which entire provinces have been transformed into a vast battle-field and have been systematically laid waste by the invader, and which has paid the human tribute in death. France has borne these enormous sacrifices although she had not the slightest responsibility for the frightful catastrophe which has overwhelmed the universe, and at the moment when the cycle of horror is ending, all the powers whose delegates are assembled here may acquit themselves of any share in the crime which has resulted in such an unprecedented disaster. What gives you the authority to establish a peace of justice is the fact that none of the peoples of whom you are the delegates has had any part in the injustice. Humanity can place confidence in you because you are not among those who have outraged the rights of humanity.
There is no need for further information or for special inquiries into the origin of the drama which has just shaken the world. The truth, bathed in blood, has already escaped from the Imperial archives. The premeditated character of the trap is to-day clearly proved.
In the hope of conquering, first, the hegemony of Europe, and next, the mastery of the world, the Central Empires, bound together by a secret plot, found the most abominable of pretexts for trying to crush Serbia and force their way to the East. At the same time they disowned the most solemn undertakings in order to crush Belgium and force their way into the heart of France.
These are the two unforgettable outrages which opened the way to aggression. The combined efforts of Great Britain, France, and Russia were exerted against that man-made arrogance.
Your nations entered the war successively, but came one and all to the help of threatened right. Like Germany, Great Britain had guaranteed the independence of Belgium. Germany sought to crush Belgium. Great Britain and France both swore to save her. Thus from the very beginning of hostilities there came into conflict the two ideas which for fifty months were to struggle for the domination of the world—the idea of sovereign force, which accepts neither control nor check, and the idea of justice, which depends on the sword only to prevent or repress the abuse of strength.
Faithfully supported by her dominions and colonies, Great Britain decided that she could not remain aloof from a struggle in which the fate of every country was involved. She has made, and her dominions and colonies have made with her, prodigious efforts to prevent the war from ending in a triumph for the spirit of conquest and destruction of right.