On the acceptance of these terms by Germany, America would undertake:
A. Not to furnish military or naval aid to Germany’s enemies in this war.
B. To become one of the guarantors of the integrity of Belgium.
C. In the event of the creation of new buffer States, to assist in the maintenance of their inviolability by refusing to allow American citizens to furnish their invader with supplies of any nature: by the application, that is, of the principle of differential neutrality above indicated.
D. To accord to German citizens in protectorates subject to American control, commercial access on equal terms with American citizens and to support by the differential neutrality already indicated the policy of the open door in all protectorates and non-self-governing territories. That is to say America would undertake not to furnish military or naval aid to any power or group of powers that refused to apply the principle of the open door in their protectorates, and to prohibit the export of supplies or munitions to such powers in their military operations.
E. To join, pari passu, with other powers in any arrangement for enforcing the submission of international disputes to enquiry.
Now whatever followed that announcement America and the world would gain. If Germany refused she would by that prove that she was still unchastened, not ready to surrender or modify her policy of world hegemony. America then knows that her fears are justified. She is definitely warned of a fact which sooner or later she will have to face if it is really a fact. And it is obviously far better that it should become patent to America (and the world) now, than later (after a possibly patched up peace). Indeed, on grounds simply of sheer national security America should attempt by some such means to establish now, when Germany is relatively helpless so far as damaging us is concerned, where she stands, what America faces. It would enable her to make her future policy definite and objective.
But suppose Germany, realizing at last that it is impossible to maintain a national policy which during the next generation or two will have to meet not only the opposition of the Western democracies of Europe and the potential forces of Russia, but all that North America might during the next generation develop into, accepts? What if the German government were pushed by the best elements of the German people to take the opportunity thus so publicly offered for putting themselves right with the world and starting afresh on a more workable basis?