475^ ^^ INTERNATIONAL AND CONSTITUTIONAL LAW 1 77 



the world that America fights " for the rights of nations 

 great and small and the privilege of men everywhere to 

 choose their way of life and obedience." On February ii, 

 1918, he said in Congress: 



Peoples and provinces are not to be bartered about from sover- 

 eignty to sovereignty as if they were mere chattels and pawns in the 

 game. . . . Peoples may now be dominated and governed only by 

 their own consent. Self-determination is not a mere phrase. It is 

 an imperative principle of action, which statesmen will henceforth 

 ignore at their peril. We cannot have general peace for the asking 

 nor by the arrangements of a peace conference. It cannot be 

 pieced together out of individual understandings between powerful 

 states. 



In his speech on the 4th of July, 1918, he repeats : 



The settlement of every question, whether of territory, of sover- 

 eignty, of economic arrangement, or of political relationship, upon 

 the basis of the free acceptance of that settlement by the people 

 immediately concerned, and not upon the basis of the material in- 

 terest or advantage of any other nation or people which may desire 

 a different settlement for the sake of its own exterior influence or 

 mastery. 



Similar professions have been made by the leading states- 

 men of Britain, France, and Italy. Thus Winston Churchill, 

 as First Lord of the Admiralty, declared on September 11, 

 1914: "Let us, whatever we do, fight for and work towards 

 great and sound principles for the European system. And 

 the first of those principles ... is the principle of nation- 

 ality. . . ."^^ Sir Edward Grey stated on March 22, 191 5, 

 while he was still Minister of Foreign Affairs, that " we 

 wish the nations of Europe to be free to live their own in- 

 dependent lives, working out their own forms of govern- 

 ment for themselves, and their own national developments, 

 whether they be great nations or small states, in full 

 liberty."" On September 26, 191 7, Asquith emphasized 

 that the final settlement must not ignore " the principles of 

 right" and set at defiance "the historic traditions, aspira- 

 tions, and liberties of the peoples afTected."" Lloyd George 



" Comments by the German Delegation on the Conditions of 

 Peace, First part, II, 5. 

 '" The New York Times Current History, vol. ii, p. 283. 

 1^ Ibid., vol. vii, part i, p. 292. 



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