Inquiry files

The Secretary of War ( Baker ) to Mr. Walter Lippmann

Dear Walter: Thank you for letting me see the copy of your letter to the President of the twenty-first.7 I thoroughly sympathize with the view you express, although I had not thought of it before. I am reaching the place, or have already reached it, where I feel that every energy must be combined to make Germany livable after the war. By that I mean livable to her own people as well as to the rest of the world. If a “victorious peace” were achieved by the Allies and the German people were condemned to intolerable domestic conditions of an economic kind they would be worse, maybe, than they were before, and yet access to the resources of civilization can be tolerated only upon assurances that can be relied upon that [Page 26] such resources will be used in the interest of civilization when they are supplied.

Cordially yours,

Newton D. Baker
  1. Not found in Inquiry files.