Addresses of President Wilson Author:Woodrow Wilson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: est English that the English dictionary affords, not to qualify it—to accept it as it is. I have been a student of the English language all my life and I do not ... more »see a single obscure sentence in the whole document. Some gentlemen either have not read it or do not understand the English language; but. fortunately, on the right-hand page it is printed in English and on the left-hand page it is printed in French. Now, if they do not understand English, I hope they will get a French dictionary and dig -out the meaning on that side. The French is a very precise language, more precise than the English language, I am told. I am not on a speaking acquaintance with it, but I am told that it is the most precise language in Europe, and that any given phrase in French always means the same thing. That can not be said of English. In order to satisfy themselves, I hope these gentlemen will master the French version and then be reassured that there are no lurking monsters in that document; that there are no sinister purposes ; that everything is said in the frankest way. For example, they have been very much worried at the phrase that nothing in the document shall be taken as impairing in any way the validity of such regional understandings as the Monroe doctrine. They say, " Why put in ' such regional understandings as ' ? What other understandings are there? Have you got something up your sleeve? Is there going to be a Monroe doctrine in Asia? Is there going to be a Monroe doctrine in China ? " Why, my fellow citizens, the phrase was writen in perfect innocence. The men that I was associated with said, " It is not wise to put a specific thing that belongs only to one nation in a document like this. We do not know of any other regional understanding like it; we never heard of any other; we ne...« less