The steady aim of this Nation, as of all enlightened nations, should be to strive to bring ever nearer the day when there shall prevail throughout the world the peace of justice.

There are kinds of peace which are highly undesirable, which are in the long run as destructive as any war.

Tyrants and oppressors have many times made a wilderness and called it peace.

The peace of tyrannous terror, the peace of craven weakness, the peace of injustice, all these should be shunned as we shun unrighteous war.

The goal to set before us as a nation, the goal which should be set before all mankind, is the attainment of the peace of justice, of the peace which comes when each nation is not merely safe-guarded in its own rights, but scrupulously…

Generally peace tells for righteousness; but if there is conflict between the two, then our fealty is due-first to the cause of righteousness.

Unrighteous wars are common, and unrighteous peace is rare; but both should be shunned.

The right of freedom and the responsibility for the exercise of that right can not be divorced.

One of our great poets has well and finely said that freedom is not a gift that tarries long in the hands of cowards.

Neither does it tarry long in the hands of those too slothful, too dishonest, or too unintelligent to exercise it.

It is our duty to remember that a nation has no more right to do injustice to another nation, strong or weak, than an individual has to do injustice to another individual; that the same moral law applies in one case as in the other.

But we must also remember that it is as much the duty of the Nation to guard its own rights and its own interests as it is the duty of the individual so to do.

There is as yet no judicial way of enforcing a right in international law.

When one nation wrongs another or wrongs many others, there is no tribunal before which the wrongdoer can be brought.

Either it is necessary supinely to acquiesce in the wrong, and thus put a premium upon brutality and aggression, or else it is necessary for the aggrieved nation valiantly to stand up for its rights.

If the great civilized nations of the present day should completely disarm, the result would mean an immediate recrudescence of barbarism in one form or another.

A great free people owes it to itself and to all mankind not to sink into helplessness before the powers of evil.

All that this country desires is to see the neighboring countries stable, orderly, and prosperous.

Any country whose people conduct themselves well can count upon our hearty friendship.

If a nation shows that it knows how to act with reasonable efficiency and decency in social and political matters, if it keeps order and pays its obligations, it need fear no interference from the United States.

They have great natural riches, and if within their borders the reign of law and justice obtains, prosperity is sure to come to them.

While they thus obey the primary laws of civilized society they may rest assured that they will be treated by us in a spirit of cordial and helpful sympathy.

Ordinarily it is very much wiser and more useful for us to concern ourselves with striving for our own moral and material betterment here at home than to concern ourselves with trying to better the condition of things in other nations.

Nevertheless there are occasional crimes committed on so vast a scale and of such peculiar horror as to make us doubt whether it is not our manifest duty to endeavor at least to show our disapproval of the deed and our sympathy with those…

There must be no effort made to remove the mote from our brother's eye if we refuse to remove the beam from our own.