The essential thing, as the President saw it, in order to "make the world safe for democracy" was to give permanency to the peace which would be negotiated at the conclusion of the war.

A union of the nations for the purpose of preventing wars of aggression and conquest seemed to him the most practical, if not the only, way of accomplishing this supreme object, and he urged it with earnestness and eloquence in his public addresses relating to the bases of peace.
There was much to be said in favor of the President's point of view.
Unquestionably the American people as a whole supported him in the belief that there ought to be some international agreement, association, or concord which would lessen the possibility of future wars.

An international organization to remove in a measure the immediate causes of war, to provide means for the peaceable settlement of disputes between nations, and to draw the governments into closer friendship appealed to the general desire of the peoples of America and Europe.

The four years and more of horror and agony through which mankind had passed must be made impossible of repetition, and there seemed no other way than to form an international union devoted to the maintenance of peace by composing, as far as possible, controversies which might ripen into war.
For many years prior to 1914 an organization devoted to the prevention of international wars had been discussed by those who gave thought to warfare of the nations and who realized in a measure the precarious state of international peace.

The Hague Conventions of 1899 and of 1907 had been negotiated with that object, and it was only because of the improper aspirations and hidden designs of certain powers, which were represented at those great historic conferences, that the measures adopted were not more expressive of the common desire of mankind and more effective in securing the object sought.