There is much sentimentality in the Fourteen Points of Wilson's peace program. As far as we are concerned the question of Alsace-Lorraine is one that we cannot discuss and it cannot even be raised at any international conference. The territorial integrity of Turkey must be maintained. The Reich Chancellor has declared that we do not seek the annexation of Belgium. However, the Flemish movement is working for independence. The Reich Government should make it its task to support this movement. With regard to the question of self-determination... it must be remembered that there is no political education in Lithuania and that from seventy to eighty per cent of the population there is illiterate.... [<nowiki/>Poland does] not need freedom.

Germany...deliberately appealed to the arbitrament of the sword. Now, when she is beginning to learn that the world is not a sheep to be butchered, but that it has both the means and the will to defend itself, she talks about a “League of Nations”. Had she achieved world power, would our fate have differed from that of Russia or Rumania? Would she then have talked about a League of Nations?

I come to the last and the greatest guarantee of all—that is, the League of Nations. ... [This] great and hopeful experiment is only rendered possible by the other conditions. ... Without disarmament, without the indication which this War has given that the nations of the world are determined at all costs to enforce respect for treaties, the League of Nations would be just like other Conventions in the past—something that would be blown away by the first gust of war or of any fierce dispute between the nations. It is this War, it is the Treaty that concludes this War, which will make the League of Nations possible. ... There are many things the world has realised and is prepared to take into account and to provide against. This League of Nations is an attempt to do it by some less barbarous methods than war. Let us try it. I beg this country to try it seriously, and to try it in earnest. It is due to mankind that we should try it. Anything except the horror of the last four and a half years!

We... would nevertheless make it clear that entirely independent political structures are impossible here [in the Baltic].... They cannot lead an isolated existence between the colossi of West and East. We hope that they will seek and find this support with us. The German occupation will have to continue for a long time, lest the anarchy we have just been combating should arise again. We shall have to safeguard the position of the Germans, a position consistent with their economic and cultural achievements.... Herr Scheiddemann, said that we have made ourselves new enemies in the world through our push in the East.... Had we continued the negotiations, we should still be sitting with Herr Trotski in Brest-Litovsk. As it is, the advance has brought us peace in a few days and I think we should recognise this and not delude ourselves, particularly as regards the East, that if by resolutions made here in the Reichstag or through our Government's acceptance of the entirely welcome initiative of His Holiness the Pope, we had agreed to a peace without indemnities and annexations, we should have had peace in the East. In view of our situation as a whole, I should regard a fresh peace offer as an evil. My chief objection is against the detachment of the Belgian question from the whole complex of the question of peace. It is precisely if Belgium is not to be annexed that Belgium is the best dead pledge we hold, notably as regards England. The restoration of Belgium before we conclude peace with England seems to me an utter political and diplomatic impossibility.... There is a great difference between the first set of terms at Brest-Litovsk and the ultimatum that we have now presented, and the blame for this change rests with those who refused to come to an agreement with Germany and who, consequently, must now feel her power. We are just as free to choose between understanding and the exploitation of victory in the case of the West, and I hope that these eight or fourteen days that have elapsed between the first set of peace terms in Brest-Litovsk and the second set, may also have an educational effect in that direction.

Take Article 12 of this Covenant: "The Members of the League"—which means the nations of the earth—"agree that if there should arise between them any dispute likely to lead to a rupture, they will submit the matter either to arbitration or to inquiry." ... Supposing that had been in existence in 1914, it would have been difficult for Germany and Austria to have gone to War. They could not have done it, and, if they had, America would have been in on the first day, not three years afterwards, which would have...made all the difference. You could not have had the War in 1914 had the League of Nations been in existence. With this machinery I am not going to say you will never have war. Man is a savage animal. ... If it avert one war, the League of Nations will have justified itself. If you let one generation pass without the blood of millions being spilt, and without the agony which fills so many homes, the League of Nations will have been justified. I beg no one to sneer at the League of Nations. Let us try it. I believe it will succeed in stopping something. It may not stop everything. The world has gone from war to war, until at last we have despaired of stopping it. But society with all its organisations has not stopped every crime. What it does is that it makes crime difficult or unsuccessful, and that is what the League of Nations will do. Therefore I look to it with hope and with confidence.

The great difficulty of all schemes for leagues of nations and the like has been to find an effective sanction against nations determined to break the peace. I will not now discuss at length the difficulties of joint armed action, but every one who has studied the question knows they are very great. It may be, however, that a league of nations, properly furnished with machinery to enforce the financial, commercial, and economic isolation of any nation determined to force its will upon the world by mere violence, would be a real safeguard for the peace of the world. In any case that is a subject that may well be studied by those sincerely anxious to put an end to the present system of International anarchy.

The future liberties of Europe depend upon regulating disputes between nations by justice and law; and upon maintaining the sanctity of treaties, and thus making peace secure. That is the policy for which the League of Nations was created to be the instrument. If it does not prevail, then there will be renewed competition in armaments; nations ruining themselves by expensive preparations for new war, which will make their ruin complete. The result will be wars or more revolutions, probably both; and that in no very long time. No nation, not even France herself, will escape the catastrophe.

My own position is somewhere in between. I am not sure that the economic arguments for an early step toward real union are very compelling. I have deep feelings, however, about the political necessity of creating in Western Europe an international framework which would bridge national sovereignties to such a degree as to give a different aspect to the German question by providing a home for the German people other than the national home and thus lifting German horizons beyond those national limits with which the Germans have shown themselves so incapable of coping.

[N]othing short of a world state will be really effective in preventing war. As long as you rely for security on a number of national armaments you will have the difficulty as to who shall bell the cat in case of need, while you will have general staffs in all countries planning future wars. I want us to come out boldly for a real long-range policy which will envisage the abolition of the conception of the individual sovereign state... A united navy to police the seas of the world could be attained and would incidentally bring enormous pressure to bear on Japan. The next thing would be an international air force and an international air service... The basis of such a move would have to be a frank recognition that all states must surrender a large degree of sovereignty and that the Peace Treaties must be revised. On this basis one must then proceed to build up a world structure politically and economically... This may sound very visionary but I am convinced that unless we see the world we want it is vain to try to build a permanent habitation for Peace and that temporary structures will catch fire very soon if we wait any longer.

Is Germany prepared not only to evacuate Belgium, not only to make full reparation for the colossal mischief and damage which have accompanied her devastating occupation of the country, and her practical enslavement, so far as she can carry it out, of large portions of the population...but to restore to Belgium not the pretence of liberty, but complete and unfettered and absolute independence?

In the ranks of Labour there would be no faltering until victory was won and German and Japanese aggression had been utterly defeated. But they had reached a stage when they could look beyond war to peace. In all our parties there was a firm resolve to build up a world system of security that would prevent our fellow men and women again being subjected to the horror of war. The lesson of the war of 1914–18 was...only half learnt. The idea of the League of Nations was right, but it was not put into practice. This time we must see to it that an international order is established in the world with the power and the will, and not merely the desire, to prevent war breaking out again.