“Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the power and spirit of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures which pursue either at the expense of the other are compelled to stand aside--cities will never rest from their evils, no--nor the human race, as I believe.”--PLATO.
Four days before the official declaration of war on Germany by the Government of the United States, President Wilson made a speech before the American Congress which contained the following passage:[43] “We shall fight ... for Democracy ... for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free.” A few months later the same spokesman of a free people declared:[44] “They (men everywhere) insist ... that no nation or people shall be robbed or punished because the irresponsible rulers of a single country have themselves done deep and abominable wrong.... The wrongs ... committed in this war ... cannot and _must_ not be righted by the commission of similar wrongs against Germany and her allies.” Later still, when the victory of Democracy had become certain, a forecast of the terms of peace was given by the same authoritative voice:[45] “In four years of conflict the whole world has been drawn in, and the common will of mankind has been substituted for the particular purposes of individual States. The issues must now be settled by no compromise or adjustment, but definitely and once for all. There must be a full acceptance of the principle that the interest of the weakest is as sacred as the interest of the strongest. That is what we mean when we speak of a permanent peace.”
These and a number of similar utterances had produced a deep effect throughout the world. The ruling classes in Europe professed to regard them as merely propaganda, and not to be taken seriously, but they could not escape the uneasy consciousness that their own methods in the past were being arraigned before an unpleasantly public court of justice. Moderate opinion in all countries was disposed to welcome these bold statements of democratic principles as furnishing a convenient bridge to a more advanced stage in political evolution, views which would have been condemned as sentimental, and even anarchic, in a humbler social reformer, on the lips of a President were considered as a statesman’s recognition of the logic of hard facts. The masses thought they were the “plain people,” for whom and to whom the President had spoken, and in their hearts had risen a great hope.