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RV 45 & Liveright, edited by Albert Bushnell Hart.)

But there were other indications that while Mr. Wilson was friendly, he was at that time not quite ready, after all, to come out for the dismemberment of Austria-Hungary. One of these was the address of the President to Congress in joint session, December 4, 1917, recommending that that body extend the state of war to include Austria-Hungary. In this speech the President said:

The peace we make must deliver the once fair lands and happy peoples of Belgium and northern France from the Prussian conquest and the Prussian menace, but it must also deliver the peoples of Austria-Hungary, the peoples of the Balkans, and the peoples of Turkey, alike in Europe and in Asia, from the impudent and alien dominion of the Prussian military and commercial autocracy.

But Mr. Wilson also declared:

We owe it, however, to ourselves to say that we do not wish in any way to impair or to rearrange the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It is no affair of ours what they do with their own life, either industrially or politically. We do not purpose or desire to dictate to them in any way. We only desire to see that their affairs are left in their own hands, in all matters, great or small. (Addresses and Messages of Woodrow Wilson, Boni & Liveright, edited by Albert Bushnell Hart.)