ENGLISH READINGS FOR SCHOOLS

 "The virtue of books is the perfecting of reason, which is indeed the happiness of man. "

 _Richard De Bury. _

 "On bokès for to rede I me delyte. "

 _Chaucer. _

English Readings for Schools

GENERAL EDITOR

WILBUR LUCIUS CROSS

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN YALE UNIVERSITY

[Illustration: Woodrow Wilson]

PRESIDENT WILSON'S ADDRESSES

EDITED BY

GEORGE MCLEAN HARPER

PROFESSOR IN PRINCETON UNIVERSITY; AUTHOR OF "MASTERS OF FRENCHLITERATURE, " "LIFE OF SAINTE-BEUVE, " AND "WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, HIS LIFE, WORKS, AND INFLUENCE"

NEW YORKHENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

Copyright 1918, BY HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

CONTENTS

Introduction

First Inaugural AddressFirst Address to CongressAddress on the Banking SystemAddress at GettysburgAddress on Mexican AffairsUnderstanding AmericaAddress before the Southern Commercial CongressThe State of the UnionTrusts and MonopoliesPanama Canal TollsThe Tampico IncidentIn the Firmament of MemoryMemorial Day Address at ArlingtonClosing a ChapterAnnapolis Commencement AddressThe Meaning of LibertyAmerican NeutralityAppeal for Additional RevenueThe Opinion of the WorldThe Power of Christian Young MenAnnual Address to CongressA MessageAddress before the United States Chamber of CommerceTo Naturalized CitizensAddress at MilwaukeeThe Submarine QuestionAmerican PrinciplesThe Demands of Railway EmployeesSpeech of AcceptanceLincoln's BeginningsThe Triumph of Women's SuffrageThe Terms of PeaceMeeting Germany's ChallengeRequest for AuthoritySecond Inaugural AddressThe Call to WarTo the CountryThe German PlotReply to the PopeLabor must be FreeThe Call for War with Austria-HungaryGovernment Administration of RailwaysThe Conditions of PeaceForce to the Utmost

INTRODUCTION

These addresses of President Woodrow Wilson represent only the mostrecent phase of his intellectual activity. They are almost entirelyconcerned with political affairs, and more specifically with definingAmericanism. It will not be forgotten, however, that the life of Mr. Wilson as President of the United States is but a short period comparedwith the whole of his public career as professor of jurisprudence, history, and politics, as President of Princeton University, as Governorof New Jersey, as an orator, and as a writer of many books. 

Surprise has been expressed that a man, after reaching the age of fifty, should be able to step from the "quiet" life of a teacher and authorinto the resounding regions of politics; but Mr. Wilson's life as ascholar, professor, and author was not at all quiet in the sense ofbeing easy or untouched with exciting chances and changes, and, in thesecond place, he carried into politics the steadying ideals and themethodical habits of his former occupation. 

As these addresses themselves prove, he has retained something of theteacher's interest in showing the relation between specific instancesand the general forms of thought or action of which they are a part. Notfact alone, but principle, is what he seeks to discover to hisaudiences. In the addresses made in 1913 it is apparent that his maineffort was to fasten attention upon the principles of internationaljustice and good will and to restrain the impulses of those Americanswho were inclined to hasty action with reference to Mexico. From thebeginning of the Great War to a point not much earlier than our ownentrance into the struggle, he counselled neutrality and inaction, withwhat motives one must judge from his statements and from events. Only afew speeches belonging to this period have been included in the presentcollection. When it became practically certain that war between theUnited States and Germany was inevitable, there came into his utterancesa new temper and a more direct kind of eloquence. With scarcely anexception, this collection includes every one of his addresses madebetween August, 1916, and February, 1918. 

Some of the addresses are state papers, read to Congress, and werecarefully composed. Others, delivered in various places, appear to havebeen more or less extemporaneous. All are full of their author'spolitical philosophy, and many of them contain expressions of hisopinions on general subjects, such as personal character and conduct. 

In order more fully to appreciate the weight of experience and thematurity of reflection which give value to his words, it will be worthwhile to consider Mr. Wilson's entire career as a scholar and man ofletters, paying particular attention to the growth of his politicalideals and to the qualities of his style. 

To be a literary artist, a writer must possess a constructiveimagination. He must be a man of feeling and have the gift of impartingto others some share of his own emotions. On almost every page ofPresident Wilson's writings, as in almost all his policies, whethereducational or political, is stamped the evidence of shaping, visionarypower. Those of us who have known him many years remember well that inhis daily thought and speech he habitually proceeded by this same poeticmethod, first growing warm with an idea and then by analogy and figurekindling a sympathetic heat in his hearers. 

The subjects that may excite an artist's imagination are infinitelynumerous and belong to every variety of conceivable life. A Coleridge ora Renan will make literature out of polemical theology; a Huxley willwrite on the physical basis of life with emotion and in such a way as toinfect others with his own feelings; a Macaulay or a Froude will givewhat color he please to the story of a nation and compel all but themost wary readers to see as through his eyes. We are too much accustomedto reserve the title of literary artist for the creator of fiction, whether in prose or in verse. Mr. Wilson is no less truly an artistbecause the vision that fires his imagination, the vision he has spenthis life in making clear to himself and others and is now striving torealize in action, is a political conception. He has seen it in terms oflife, as a thing that grows, that speaks, that has faced dangers, thatis full of promise, that has charm, that is fit to stir a man's bloodand demand a world's devotion; no wonder he has warmed to it, no wonderhe has clothed it in the richest garments of diction and rhythm andfigure. 

There are small artists and great artists. Granted an equal portion ofimagination and an equal command of verbal resources, and still therewill be this difference. It is an affair of more or less intellectualdepth and more or less character. If character were the only one ofthese two things to be considered in the case of Mr. Wilson's writings, one might with little or no hesitation predict that the best of themwould long remain classics. They are full of character, of a high andfine character. They have a tone peculiar to themselves, like a man'svoice, which is one of the most unmistakable properties of a man. Itwould be no reflection on an author to say that his point of view infundamental matters had changed in the course of thirty or forty years;but the truth is that with reference to his great political ideal Mr. Wilson's point of view has not widely changed. The scope of his surveyhas been enlarged, he has filled up the intervening space with athousand observations, he sees his object with a more penetrating andcommanding eye; but it is the same object that drew to itself hisyouthful gaze, and has had its part in making him

 "The generous spirit, who, when brought Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought Upon the plan that pleased his boyish thought. "

The world, in time, will judge of the amount of knowledge and the degreeof purely intellectual force that Mr. Wilson has applied in his field ofstudy. A contemporary cannot well pronounce such a judgment, especiallyif the province be not his own. 

In the small space at my disposal I shall try, first, to say what Ithink is the political conception or idea upon which Mr. Wilson haslooked so steadily and with so deep emotion that he has made of it apoetical subject. And then I shall venture to distinguish thoseprocesses of imagination, that artistic method, which we call style, bywhich he has elucidated its meaning for his readers so as to win for ittheir intelligent and moved regard. The inquiry will take into accounthis earliest book, _Congressional Government_, published in 1885, _Division and Reunion_, 1893, _An Old Master and Other PoliticalEssays_, 1893, _Mere Literature and Other Essays_, 1896, _GeorgeWashington_, 1897, _The State_, written 1889, rewritten 1898, _A Historyof the American People_, 1902, _Constitutional Government in the UnitedStates_, 1908, and a volume, issued very recently in England, containingsome of the President's statements on the war and entitled _America andFreedom_. 

Like a strong current through these works runs the doctrine that in agood government the law-making power should be also the administeringpower and should bear full and specific responsibility; safeguardsagainst ill-considered action being provided in two directions, by thepeople on the one hand, and on the other hand by law and custom, theselatter being considered historically, as an organic growth. He finds theelements and essentials of this doctrine in our Constitution, thoughsomewhat obscured by the old "literary" theory of checks and balances. He finds it more fully acknowledged in the British Constitution. Hefinds it originating in our English race, enunciated at Runnymede, developing by a slow but natural growth in English history, sanctionedin the Petition of Right, the Revolution of 1688, and the Declaration ofRights, achieved for us in our own Revolution, and illustrated by theimplied powers of Congress and the more directly exercised powers of theHouse of Commons. It is a corollary of this doctrine that the Presidentof the United States, to whom in the veto and in his peculiar relationsto the Senate our Constitution gives a very real legislative function, should associate himself closely with Congress, not merely as one whomay annul but also as one who initiates policies and helps to translatethem into laws. In his _Congressional Government_, begun when he was astudent in Princeton and finished before he was twenty-eight years old, Mr. Wilson clearly indicates his dissatisfaction with the traditionwhich would set the executive apart from the legislative power as acheck against it and not a coöperating element; and it is a remarkableproof of the man's integrity and persistent personality that one of hisfirst acts as President was to go before the Congress as if he were itsagent. 

If any proof of his democracy were required, one might point to hisrather surprising statement, which he has repeated more than once, thatthe chief value of Congressional debate is to arouse and inform publicopinion. He regards the will of the people as the real source ofgovernmental policy. Yet he is very impatient of those theories of therights of man which found favor in France in the eighteenth century andhave been the mainspring of democratic movements on the Continent ofEurope. He regards political liberty, as we know it in this country, asa peculiar possession of the English race to which, in all that concernsjurisprudence, we Americans belong. 

The other safeguard against arbitrary action by the combinedlegislative-administrative power is, he declares, national respect forthe spirit of those general legal conceptions which, through manycenturies, have been making themselves part and parcel of our racialinstinct. He perceives that the British Constitution, though unwritten, is as effective as ours and commands obedience fully as much as ours, and that both appeal to a certain ingrained legal sense, common to allthe English-speaking peoples. These peoples do not really haverevolutions. What we call the American Revolution was only thereaffirming of principles which were as precious in the eyes of mostEnglishmen as they were in the eyes of Washington, Hamilton, andMadison, but which had been for a time and owing to peculiarcircumstances, neglected or contravened. Political development in thisfamily of nations does not, he maintains, proceed by revolution, but byevolution. On all these points his _Constitutional Government in theUnited States_ is only a richer and more mature statement andillustration of the ideas expressed in his _Congressional Government_. The main thesis of his _George Washington_ is that the great Virginianand first American was the truest Englishman of his time, a modernHampden or Eliot, a Burke in action. Again and again he pays respect toChief Justice Marshall, who represented, in our early history, theconception of law as something in its breadth and majesty older and moresacred than the decrees of any particular legislature, and yet capableof being so interpreted as to accommodate itself to progress. Mr. Wilsonhas from the beginning been an admiring student of Burke. And if Burkehas been his study, Bagehot has been his schoolmaster. The choice ofbook and teacher is significant. _Mere Literature_ shows how Mr. Wilsonrevered them in 1896; his public life proves that he learned theirlessons well. In _An Old Master and Other Essays_, he had already bornewitness to the genius of Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill, who, ascompared with Continental writers, illustrate in the field of economicsthe Anglo-Saxon spirit of respect for customs that have grown by organicprocesses. 

Mr. Wilson's _Division and Reunion_ is an admirable treatment of aquestion upon which a Southerner might have been expected to write as aSoutherner. He has discussed it as an American. His well-known text-book_The State_, which has been revised and frequently reprinted, discussesthe chief theories of the origin of government, describes theadministrative systems of Greece and Rome and of the great nations ofmedieval and modern Europe and of the United States, and treats indetail of the functions and objects of government, with specialreference to law and its workings. His _History of the American People_, though it contains many passages of insight and has the charm that comesfrom intense appreciation of details, is too diffuse and repetitious. Agreat history should be a combination of a chronicle and a treatise; itshould be a record of facts and at the same time a philosophicalexposition of an idea. Mr. Wilson's five-volume work is insufficient asa chronicle and too long for an essay. Yet an essay it really is. Moreover, unless I myself am blinded by prejudice, it makes too much ofthe errors committed by our government in the reconstruction periodafter the Civil War. On the whole, with all their faults, theadministrations of Grant and Hayes accomplished a task of enormousdifficulty, with remarkably little impatience and intemperance. Thedisadvantage of having been written originally under pressure in monthlyinstalments, for a periodical, is clearly visible in the _History_. There is a too constant effort to catch the eye with picturesquedescription. Nevertheless, in this book, as in the others, Mr. Wilsonevokes in his readers a noble image of that government, constitutional, traditional, democratic, self-developing, which, from the days of hisyouth, aroused in him a poetic enthusiasm. 

And now for the way his imagination works and clothes itself inlanguage. The quality of his mind is poetic, and his style is highlyfigurative. There have been very few professors, lecturing on abstrusesubjects, such as economics, jurisprudence, and politics, who have daredto give so free a rein to an instinct frankly artistic. In the earlydays of his career, Mr. Wilson was invited to follow two courses whichwere supposed to be inconsistent with each other. The so-called"scientific" method, much admired at that time even when applied tosubjects in which philosophic insight or a sense for beauty are theproper guides, was being urged upon the rising generation of scholars. Perhaps the Johns Hopkins University was the center of this impulse inAmerica; at least it was thought to be, though the source was almostwholly German. If he had had to be a dry-as-dust in order to be a writeron politics and history, Mr. Wilson would have preferred to turn hisattention to biography and literary criticism. But he promptly resolvedto disregard the warnings of pedants and to be a man of letters_though_ a professor of history and politics. I well remember theirritation, sometimes amused and sometimes angry, with which he used tospeak of those who were persuaded that scholarship was in some waycontaminated by the touch of imagination or philosophy. He at leastwould run the risk. And so he set himself to work cultivating the gracesof style no less assiduously than the exactness of science. There is adistinct filiation in his diction, by which, from Stevenson to Lamb andfrom Lamb to Sir Thomas Browne, one can trace it back to the quaint oldprose writers of the seventeenth century. I remember his calling myattention, in 1890, or thereabouts, to the delightful stylisticqualities of those worthies. Many of his colors are from theirink-horns, in which the pigments were of deep and varied hues. When heis sententious and didactic he seems to have caught something ofEmerson's manner. And indeed there is in all his writings a flavor ofoptimism and a slightly dogmatic, even when thoroughly gentle andpersuasive, tone which he has in common with the New England sage. 

But in spite of all these resemblances to older authors, Mr. Wilsongives proof in his style of a masterful independence. He is constantlydetermined to think for himself, to get to the bottom of his subject, and finally to express the matter in terms of his own personality. Especially is this evident in his early works, where he strugglesmanfully to be himself, even in the choice of words and phrases, weighing and analyzing the most current idioms and often making in themsome thoughtful alteration the better to express his exact meaning. Hisliterary training appears to have been almost wholly English. There arefew traces in his writings of any classical reading or of any first-handacquaintance with French, German, or Italian authors. And indeed in thesubstance of his thought I wonder if he is sufficiently hospitable toforeign ideas, especially to the vast body of comment on the FrenchRevolution. I imagine few Continental authorities would agree with himin his comparatively low estimate of the importance of that greatmovement, which he seems to regard with almost unmitigated disapproval. 

In Mr. Wilson's addresses and public letters concerning the War here-affirms his principles and applies them with high confidence to thefateful problems of this time. His tone has become vastly deeper andsounder since he made his great decision, and from his Speech toCongress, on February 3, 1917, to his recent Baltimore appeal, it hasrung true to every good impulse in the hearts of our people. His letterto the Pope is in every way his master-piece, in style, in temper, andin power of thought. He has led his country to the place it ought tooccupy, by the side of that other English democracy whose institutions, ideals, and destiny are almost identical with our own, as he hasdemonstrated in the writings of half a lifetime. Let us hope there wasprophetic virtue in a passage of his _Constitutional Government_, where, speaking of the relation between our several States and the Union thatbinds them together, he says they "may yet afford the world itself themodel of federation and liberty it may in God's providence come toseek. "

No one can rise from a perusal of the great mass of Mr. Wilson'swritings without an almost oppressive sense of his unremitting andstrenuous industry. From his senior year in college to the present dayhe has borne the anxieties and responsibilities of authorship. The workhas been done with extreme conscientiousness in regard to accuracy andclearness of thinking and with sedulous care for justness and beauty ofexpression. It might well crown a life with honor. And when we rememberthe thousands of his college lectures and the hundreds of hismiscellaneous addresses which have found no record in print, when werecall the labors of university administration which crowded upon him inmiddle life, when we consider the spectacle of his calm, prompt, orderly, and energetic performance of public duty in these latter years, our admiration for the literary artist is enhanced by our profoundrespect for the man. [A]

[A] A considerable part of this Introduction appeared originally as anarticle in _The Princeton Alumni Weekly_. 

PRESIDENT WILSON'S ADDRESSES

FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS

[Delivered at the Capitol, in Washington, March 4, 1913. ]

There has been a change of government. It began two years ago, when theHouse of Representatives became Democratic by a decisive majority. Ithas now been completed. The Senate about to assemble will also beDemocratic. The offices of President and Vice-President have been putinto the hands of Democrats. What does the change mean? That is thequestion that is uppermost in our minds to-day. That is the question Iam going to try to answer, in order, if I may, to interpret theoccasion. 

It means much more than the mere success of a party. The success of aparty means little except when the Nation is using that party for alarge and definite purpose. No one can mistake the purpose for which theNation now seeks to use the Democratic Party. It seeks to use it tointerpret a change in its own plans and point of view. Some old thingswith which we had grown familiar, and which had begun to creep into thevery habit of our thought and of our lives, have altered their aspect aswe have latterly looked critically upon them, with fresh, awakened eyes;have dropped their disguises and shown themselves alien and sinister. Some new things, as we look frankly upon them, willing to comprehendtheir real character, have come to assume the aspect of things longbelieved in and familiar, stuff of our own convictions. We have beenrefreshed by a new insight into our own life. 

We see that in many things that life is very great. It is incomparablygreat in its material aspects, in its body of wealth, in the diversityand sweep of its energy, in the industries which have been conceivedand built up by the genius of individual men and the limitlessenterprise of groups of men. It is great, also, very great, in its moralforce. Nowhere else in the world have noble men and women exhibited inmore striking forms the beauty and the energy of sympathy andhelpfulness and counsel in their efforts to rectify wrong, alleviatesuffering, and set the weak in the way of strength and hope. We havebuilt up, moreover, a great system of government, which has stoodthrough a long age as in many respects a model for those who seek to setliberty upon foundations that will endure against fortuitous change, against storm and accident. Our life contains every great thing, andcontains it in rich abundance. 

But the evil has come with the good, and much fine gold has beencorroded. With riches has come inexcusable waste. We have squandered agreat part of what we might have used, and have not stopped to conservethe exceeding bounty of nature, without which our genius for enterprisewould have been worthless and impotent, scorning to be careful, shamefully prodigal as well as admirably efficient. We have been proudof our industrial achievements, but we have not hitherto stoppedthoughtfully enough to count the human cost, the cost of lives snuffedout, of energies overtaxed and broken, the fearful physical andspiritual cost to the men and women and children upon whom the deadweight and burden of it all has fallen pitilessly the years through. Thegroans and agony of it all had not yet reached our ears, the solemn, moving undertone of our life, coming up out of the mines and factoriesand out of every home where the struggle had its intimate and familiarseat. With the great Government went many deep secret things which wetoo long delayed to look into and scrutinize with candid, fearlesseyes. The great Government we loved has too often been made use of forprivate and selfish purposes, and those who used it had forgotten thepeople. 

At last a vision has been vouchsafed us of our life as a whole. We seethe bad with the good, the debased and decadent with the sound andvital. With this vision we approach new affairs. Our duty is to cleanse, to reconsider, to restore, to correct the evil without impairing thegood, to purify and humanize every process of our common life withoutweakening or sentimentalizing it. There has been something crude andheartless and unfeeling in our haste to succeed and be great. Ourthought has been "Let every man look out for himself, let everygeneration look out for itself, " while we reared giant machinery whichmade it impossible that any but those who stood at the levers of controlshould have a chance to look out for themselves. We had not forgottenour morals. We remembered well enough that we had set up a policy whichwas meant to serve the humblest as well as the most powerful, with aneye single to the standards of justice and fair play, and remembered itwith pride. But we were very heedless and in a hurry to be great. 

We have come now to the sober second thought. The scales of heedlessnesshave fallen from our eyes. We have made up our minds to square everyprocess of our national life again with the standards we so proudly setup at the beginning and have always carried at our hearts. Our work is awork of restoration. 

We have itemized with some degree of particularity the things that oughtto be altered and here are some of the chief items: A tariff which cutsus off from our proper part in the commerce of the world, violates thejust principles of taxation, and makes the Government a facileinstrument in the hands of private interests; a banking and currencysystem based upon the necessity of the Government to sell its bondsfifty years ago and perfectly adapted to concentrating cash andrestricting credits; an industrial system which, take it on all itssides, financial as well as administrative, holds capital in leadingstrings, restricts the liberties and limits the opportunities of labor, and exploits without renewing or conserving the natural resources of thecountry; a body of agricultural activities never yet given theefficiency of great business undertakings or served as it should bethrough the instrumentality of science taken directly to the farm, orafforded the facilities of credit best suited to its practical needs;watercourses undeveloped, waste places unreclaimed, forests untended, fast disappearing without plan or prospect of renewal, unregarded wasteheaps at every mine. We have studied, as perhaps no other nation has, the most effective means of production, but we have not studied cost oreconomy as we should, either as organizers of industry, as statesmen, oras individuals. 

Nor have we studied and perfected the means by which government may beput at the service of humanity, in safeguarding the health of theNation, the health of its men and its women and its children, as well astheir rights in the struggle for existence. This is no sentimental duty. The firm basis of government is justice, not pity. These are matters ofjustice. There can be no equality of opportunity, the first essential ofjustice in the body politic, if men and women and children be notshielded in their lives, their very vitality, from the consequences ofgreat industrial and social processes which they cannot alter, control, or singly cope with. Society must see to it that it does not itselfcrush or weaken or damage its own constituent parts. The first duty oflaw is to keep sound the society it serves. Sanitary laws, pure-foodlaws, and laws determining conditions of labor which individuals arepowerless to determine for themselves are intimate parts of the verybusiness of justice and legal efficiency. 

These are some of the things we ought to do, and not leave the othersundone, the old-fashioned, never-to-be-neglected, fundamentalsafeguarding of property and of individual right. This is the highenterprise of the new day: To lift everything that concerns our life asa Nation to the light that shines from the hearthfire of every man'sconscience and vision of the right. It is inconceivable that we shoulddo this as partisans; it is inconceivable we should do it in ignoranceof the facts as they are or in blind haste. We shall restore, notdestroy. We shall deal with our economic system as it is and as it maybe modified, not as it might be if we had a clean sheet of paper towrite upon; and step by step we shall make it what it should be, in thespirit of those who question their own wisdom and seek counsel andknowledge, not shallow self-satisfaction or the excitement of excursionswhither they cannot tell. Justice, and only justice, shall always be ourmotto. 

And yet it will be no cool process of mere science. The Nation has beendeeply stirred, stirred by a solemn passion, stirred by the knowledge ofwrong, of ideals lost, of government too often debauched and made aninstrument of evil. The feelings with which we face this new age ofright and opportunity sweep across our heartstrings like some air out ofGod's own presence, where justice and mercy are reconciled and the judgeand the brother are one. We know our task to be no mere task of politicsbut a task which shall search us through and through, whether we be ableto understand our time and the need of our people, whether we be indeedtheir spokesmen and interpreters, whether we have the pure heart tocomprehend and the rectified will to choose our high course of action. 

This is not a day of triumph; it is a day of dedication. Here muster, not the forces of party, but the forces of humanity. Men's hearts waitupon us; men's lives hang in the balance; men's hopes call upon us tosay what we will do. Who shall live up to the great trust? Who daresfail to try? I summon all honest men, all patriotic, all forward-lookingmen, to my side. God helping me, I will not fail them, if they will butcounsel and sustain me!

FIRST ADDRESS TO CONGRESS

[Delivered at a joint session of the two Houses of Congress, at thebeginning of the first session of the Sixty-third Congress, April 8, 1913. ]

MR. SPEAKER, MR. PRESIDENT, GENTLEMEN OF THE CONGRESS:

I am very glad indeed to have this opportunity to address the two Housesdirectly and to verify for myself the impression that the President ofthe United States is a person, not a mere department of the Governmenthailing Congress from some isolated island of jealous power, sendingmessages, not speaking naturally and with his own voice--that he is ahuman being trying to coöperate with other human beings in a commonservice. After this pleasant experience I shall feel quite normal in allour dealings with one another. [B]

I have called the Congress together in extraordinary session because aduty was laid upon the party now in power at the recent elections whichit ought to perform promptly, in order that the burden carried by thepeople under existing law may be lightened as soon as possible and inorder, also, that the business interests of the country may not be kepttoo long in suspense as to what the fiscal changes are to be to whichthey will be required to adjust themselves. It is clear to the wholecountry that the tariff duties must be altered. They must be changed tomeet the radical alteration in the conditions of our economic life whichthe country has witnessed within the last generation. While the wholeface and method of our industrial and commercial life were being changedbeyond recognition the tariff schedules have remained what they werebefore the change began, or have moved in the direction they were givenwhen no large circumstance of our industrial development was what it isto-day. Our task is to square them with the actual facts. The soonerthat is done the sooner we shall escape from suffering from the factsand the sooner our men of business will be free to thrive by the law ofnature (the nature of free business) instead of by the law oflegislation and artificial arrangement. 

We have seen tariff legislation wander very far afield in our day--veryfar indeed from the field in which our prosperity might have had anormal growth and stimulation. No one who looks the facts squarely inthe face or knows anything that lies beneath the surface of action canfail to perceive the principles upon which recent tariff legislation hasbeen based. We long ago passed beyond the modest notion of "protecting"the industries of the country and moved boldly forward to the idea thatthey were entitled to the direct patronage of the Government. For a longtime--a time so long that the men now active in public policy hardlyremember the conditions that preceded it--we have sought in our tariffschedules to give each group of manufacturers or producers what theythemselves thought that they needed in order to maintain a practicallyexclusive market as against the rest of the world. Consciously orunconsciously, we have built up a set of privileges and exemptions fromcompetition behind which it was easy by any, even the crudest, forms ofcombination to organize monopoly; until at last nothing is normal, nothing is obliged to stand the tests of efficiency and economy, in ourworld of big business, but everything thrives by concerted arrangement. Only new principles of action will save us from a final hardcrystallization of monopoly and a complete loss of the influences thatquicken enterprise and keep independent energy alive. 

It is plain what those principles must be. We must abolish everythingthat bears even the semblance of privilege or of any kind of artificialadvantage, and put our business men and producers under the stimulationof a constant necessity to be efficient, economical, and enterprising, masters of competitive supremacy, better workers and merchants than anyin the world. Aside from the duties laid upon articles which we do not, and probably cannot, produce, therefore, and the duties laid uponluxuries and merely for the sake of the revenues they yield, the objectof the tariff duties henceforth laid must be effective competition, thewhetting of American wits by contest with the wits of the rest of theworld. 

It would be unwise to move toward this end headlong, with recklesshaste, or with strokes that cut at the very roots of what has grown upamongst us by long process and at our own invitation. It does not altera thing to upset it and break it and deprive it of a chance to change. It destroys it. We must make changes in our fiscal laws, in our fiscalsystem, whose object is development, a more free and wholesomedevelopment, not revolution or upset or confusion. We must build uptrade, especially foreign trade. We need the outlet and the enlargedfield of energy more than we ever did before. We must build up industryas well, and must adopt freedom in the place of artificial stimulationonly so far as it will build, not pull down. In dealing with the tariffthe method by which this may be done will be a matter of judgment, exercised item by item. To some not accustomed to the excitements andresponsibilities of greater freedom our methods may in some respectsand at some points seem heroic, but remedies may be heroic and yet beremedies. It is our business to make sure that they are genuineremedies. Our object is clear. If our motive is above just challenge andonly an occasional error of judgment is chargeable against us, we shallbe fortunate. 

We are called upon to render the country a great service in more mattersthan one. Our responsibility should be met and our methods should bethorough, as thorough as moderate and well considered, based upon thefacts as they are, and not worked out as if we were beginners. We are todeal with the facts of our own day, with the facts of no other, and tomake laws which square with those facts. It is best, indeed it isnecessary, to begin with the tariff. I will urge nothing upon you now atthe opening of your session which can obscure that first object ordivert our energies from that clearly defined duty. At a later time Imay take the liberty of calling your attention to reforms which shouldpress close upon the heels of the tariff changes, if not accompany them, of which the chief is the reform of our banking and currency laws; butjust now I refrain. For the present, I put these matters on one side andthink only of this one thing--of the changes in our fiscal system whichmay best serve to open once more the free channels of prosperity to agreat people whom we would serve to the utmost and throughout both rankand file. 

I thank you for your courtesy. 

[B] It had been the practice of our Presidents to send their Messages toCongress and not to read them in person. 

ADDRESS ON THE BANKING SYSTEM

[Delivered at a joint session of the two Houses of Congress, June 23, 1913. ]

MR. SPEAKER, MR. PRESIDENT, GENTLEMEN OF THE CONGRESS:

It is under the compulsion of what seems to me a clear and imperativeduty that I have a second time this session sought the privilege ofaddressing you in person. I know, of course, that the heated season ofthe year is upon us, that work in these chambers and in the committeerooms is likely to become a burden as the season lengthens, and thatevery consideration of personal convenience and personal comfort, perhaps, in the cases of some of us, considerations of personal healtheven, dictate an early conclusion of the deliberations of the session;but there are occasions of public duty when these things which touch usprivately seem very small, when the work to be done is so pressing andso fraught with big consequence that we know that we are not at libertyto weigh against it any point of personal sacrifice. We are now in thepresence of such an occasion. It is absolutely imperative that we shouldgive the business men of this country a banking and currency system bymeans of which they can make use of the freedom of enterprise and ofindividual initiative which we are about to bestow upon them. 

We are about to set them free; we must not leave them without the toolsof action when they are free. We are about to set them free by removingthe trammels of the protective tariff. Ever since the Civil War theyhave waited for this emancipation and for the free opportunities itwill bring with it. It has been reserved for us to give it to them. Somefell in love, indeed, with the slothful security of their dependenceupon the Government; some took advantage of the shelter of the nurseryto set up a mimic mastery of their own within its walls. Now both thetonic and the discipline of liberty and maturity are to ensue. Therewill be some readjustments of purpose and point of view. There willfollow a period of expansion and new enterprise, freshly conceived. Itis for us to determine now whether it shall be rapid and facile and ofeasy accomplishment. This it cannot be unless the resourceful businessmen who are to deal with the new circumstances are to have at hand andready for use the instrumentalities and conveniences of free enterprisewhich independent men need when acting on their own initiative. 

It is not enough to strike the shackles from business. The duty ofstatesmanship is not negative merely. It is constructive also. We mustshow that we understand what business needs and that we know how tosupply it. No man, however casual and superficial his observation of theconditions now prevailing in the country, can fail to see that one ofthe chief things business needs now, and will need increasingly as itgains in scope and vigor in the years immediately ahead of us, is theproper means by which readily to vitalize its credit, corporate andindividual, and its originative brains. What will it profit us to befree if we are not to have the best and most accessibleinstrumentalities of commerce and enterprise? What will it profit us tobe quit of one kind of monopoly if we are to remain in the grip ofanother and more effective kind? How are we to gain and keep theconfidence of the business community unless we show that we know howboth to aid and to protect it? What shall we say if we make freshenterprise necessary and also make it very difficult by leaving all elseexcept the tariff just as we found it? The tyrannies of business, bigand little, lie within the field of credit. We know that. Shall we notact upon the knowledge? Do we not know how to act upon it? If a mancannot make his assets available at pleasure, his assets of capacity andcharacter and resource, what satisfaction is it to him to seeopportunity beckoning to him on every hand, when others have the keys ofcredit in their pockets and treat them as all but their own privatepossession? It is perfectly clear that it is our duty to supply the newbanking and currency system the country needs, and it will need itimmediately more than it has ever needed it before. 

The only question is, When shall we supply it--now, or later, after thedemands shall have become reproaches that we were so dull and so slow?Shall we hasten to change the tariff laws and then be laggards aboutmaking it possible and easy for the country to take advantage of thechange? There can be only one answer to that question. We must act now, at whatever sacrifice to ourselves. It is a duty which the circumstancesforbid us to postpone. I should be recreant to my deepest convictions ofpublic obligation did I not press it upon you with solemn and urgentinsistence. 

The principles upon which we should act are also clear. The country hassought and seen its path in this matter within the last few years--seesit more clearly now than it ever saw it before--much more clearly thanwhen the last legislative proposals on the subject were made. We musthave a currency, not rigid as now, but readily, elastically responsiveto sound credit, the expanding and contracting credits of everydaytransactions, the normal ebb and flow of personal and corporatedealings. Our banking laws must mobilize reserves; must not permit theconcentration anywhere in a few hands of the monetary resources of thecountry or their use for speculative purposes in such volume as tohinder or impede or stand in the way of other more legitimate, morefruitful uses. And the control of the system of banking and of issuewhich our new laws are to set up must be public, not private, must bevested in the Government itself, so that the banks may be theinstruments, not the masters, of business and of individual enterpriseand initiative. 

The committees of the Congress to which legislation of this character isreferred have devoted careful and dispassionate study to the means ofaccomplishing these objects. They have honored me by consulting me. Theyare ready to suggest action. I have come to you, as the head of theGovernment and the responsible leader of the party in power, to urgeaction now, while there is time to serve the country deliberately and aswe should, in a clear air of common counsel. I appeal to you with a deepconviction of duty. I believe that you share this conviction. Itherefore appeal to you with confidence. I am at your service withoutreserve to play my part in any way you may call upon me to play it inthis great enterprise of exigent reform which it will dignify anddistinguish us to perform and discredit us to neglect. 

ADDRESS AT GETTYSBURG

[Delivered in the presence of Union and Confederate veterans, on theoccasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the battle, July 4, 1913. ]

FRIENDS AND FELLOW CITIZENS:

I need not tell you what the Battle of Gettysburg meant. These gallantmen in blue and gray sit all about us here. [C] Many of them met uponthis ground in grim and deadly struggle. Upon these famous fields andhillsides their comrades died about them. In their presence it were animpertinence to discourse upon how the battle went, how it ended, whatit signified! But fifty years have gone by since then, and I crave theprivilege of speaking to you for a few minutes of what those fifty yearshave meant. 

What _have_ they meant? They have meant peace and union and vigor, andthe maturity and might of a great nation. How wholesome and healing thepeace has been! We have found one another again as brothers and comradesin arms, enemies no longer, generous friends rather, our battles longpast, the quarrel forgotten--except that we shall not forget thesplendid valor, the manly devotion of the men then arrayed against oneanother, now grasping hands and smiling into each other's eyes. Howcomplete the union has become and how dear to all of us, howunquestioned, how benign and majestic, as State after State has beenadded to this our great family of free men! How handsome the vigor, thematurity, the might of the great Nation we love with undivided hearts;how full of large and confident promise that a life will be wrought outthat will crown its strength with gracious justice and with a happywelfare that will touch all alike with deep contentment! We are debtorsto those fifty crowded years; they have made us heirs to a mightyheritage. 

But do we deem the Nation complete and finished? These venerable mencrowding here to this famous field have set us a great example ofdevotion and utter sacrifice. They were willing to die that the peoplemight live. But their task is done. Their day is turned into evening. They look to us to perfect what they established. Their work is handedon to us, to be done in another way, but not in another spirit. Our dayis not over; it is upon us in full tide. 

Have affairs paused? Does the Nation stand still? Is what the fiftyyears have wrought since those days of battle finished, rounded out, andcompleted? Here is a great people, great with every force that has everbeaten in the lifeblood of mankind. And it is secure. There is no onewithin its borders, there is no power among the nations of the earth, tomake it afraid. But has it yet squared itself with its own greatstandards set up at its birth, when it made that first noble, naïveappeal to the moral judgment of mankind to take notice that a governmenthad now at last been established which was to serve men, not masters? Itis secure in everything except the satisfaction that its life is right, adjusted to the uttermost to the standards of righteousness andhumanity. The days of sacrifice and cleansing are not closed. We haveharder things to do than were done in the heroic days of war, becauseharder to see clearly, requiring more vision, more calm balance ofjudgment, a more candid searching of the very springs of right. 

Look around you upon the field of Gettysburg! Picture the array, thefierce heats and agony of battle, column hurled against column, batterybellowing to battery! Valor? Yes! Greater no man shall see in war; andself-sacrifice, and loss to the uttermost; the high recklessness ofexalted devotion which does not count the cost. We are made by thesetragic, epic things to know what it costs to make a nation--the bloodand sacrifice of multitudes of unknown men lifted to a great stature inthe view of all generations by knowing no limit to their manlywillingness to serve. In armies thus marshaled from the ranks of freemen you will see, as it were, a nation embattled, the leaders and theled, and may know, if you will, how little except in form its actiondiffers in days of peace from its action in days of war. 

May we break camp now and be at ease? Are the forces that fight for theNation dispersed, disbanded, gone to their homes forgetful of the commoncause? Are our forces disorganized, without constituted leaders and themight of men consciously united because we contend, not with armies, butwith principalities and powers and wickedness in high places? Are wecontent to lie still? Does our union mean sympathy, our peacecontentment, our vigor right action, our maturity self-comprehension anda clear confidence in choosing what we shall do? War fitted us foraction, and action never ceases. 

I have been chosen the leader of the Nation. I cannot justify the choiceby any qualities of my own, but so it has come about, and here I stand. Whom do I command? The ghostly hosts who fought upon these battlefieldslong ago and are gone? These gallant gentlemen stricken in years whosefighting days, are over, their glory won? What are the orders for them, and who rallies them? I have in my mind another host, whom these setfree of civil strife in order that they might work out in days of peaceand settled order the life of a great Nation. That host is the peoplethemselves, the great and the small, without class or difference of kindor race or origin; and undivided in interest, if we have but the visionto guide and direct them and order their lives aright in what we do. Ourconstitutions are their articles of enlistment. The orders of the dayare the laws upon our statute books. What we strive for is theirfreedom, their right to lift themselves from day to day and behold thethings they have hoped for, and so make way for still better days forthose whom they love who are to come after them. The recruits are thelittle children crowding in. The quartermaster's stores are in the minesand forests and fields, in the shops and factories. Every day somethingmust be done to push the campaign forward; and it must be done by planand with an eye to some great destiny. 

How shall we hold such thoughts in our hearts and not be moved? I wouldnot have you live even to-day wholly in the past, but would wish tostand with you in the light that streams upon us now out of that greatday gone by. Here is the nation God has builded by our hands. What shallwe do with it? Who stands ready to act again and always in the spirit ofthis day of reunion and hope and patriotic fervor? The day of ourcountry's life has but broadened into morning. Do not put uniforms by. Put the harness of the present on. Lift your eyes to the great tracts oflife yet to be conquered in the interest of righteous peace, of thatprosperity which lies in a people's hearts and outlasts all wars anderrors of men. Come, let us be comrades and soldiers yet to serve ourfellow-men in quiet counsel, where the blare of trumpets is neitherheard nor heeded and where the things are done which make blessed thenations of the world in peace and righteousness and love. 

[C] The speech was made from a rostrum in the National Cemetery, on thebattlefield. 

ADDRESS ON MEXICAN AFFAIRS

[Delivered at a joint session of the two Houses of Congress, August 27, 1913. ]

GENTLEMEN OF THE CONGRESS:

It is clearly my duty to lay before you, very fully and withoutreservation, the facts concerning our present relations with theRepublic of Mexico. The deplorable posture of affairs in Mexico I neednot describe, [D] but I deem it my duty to speak very frankly of whatthis Government has done and should seek to do in fulfillment of itsobligation to Mexico herself, as a friend and neighbor, and to Americancitizens whose lives and vital interests are daily affected by thedistressing conditions which now obtain beyond our southern border. 

Those conditions touch us very nearly. Not merely because they lie atour very doors. That of course makes us more vividly and more constantlyconscious of them, and every instinct of neighborly interest andsympathy is aroused and quickened by them; but that is only one elementin the determination of our duty. We are glad to call ourselves thefriends of Mexico, and we shall, I hope, have many an occasion, inhappier times as well as in these days of trouble and confusion, to showthat our friendship is genuine and disinterested, capable of sacrificeand every generous manifestation. The peace, prosperity, andcontentment of Mexico mean more, much more, to us than merely anenlarged field for our commerce and enterprise. They mean an enlargementof the field of self-government and the realization of the hopes andrights of a nation with whose best aspirations, so long suppressed anddisappointed, we deeply sympathize. We shall yet prove to the Mexicanpeople that we know how to serve them without first thinking how weshall serve ourselves. 

But we are not the only friends of Mexico. The whole world desires herpeace and progress; and the whole world is interested as never before. Mexico lies at last where all the world looks on. Central America isabout to be touched by the great routes of the world's trade andintercourse running free from ocean to ocean at the Isthmus. The futurehas much in store for Mexico, as for all the States of Central America;but the best gifts can come to her only if she be ready and free toreceive them and to enjoy them honorably. America in particular--Americanorth and south and upon both continents--waits upon the development ofMexico; and that development can be sound and lasting only if it be theproduct of a genuine freedom, a just and ordered government founded uponlaw. Only so can it be peaceful or fruitful of the benefits of peace. Mexico has a great and enviable future before her, if only she chooseand attain the paths of honest constitutional government. 

The present circumstances of the Republic, I deeply regret to say, donot seem to promise even the foundations of such a peace. We have waitedmany months, months full of peril and anxiety, for the conditions thereto improve, and they have not improved. They have grown worse, rather. The territory in some sort controlled by the provisional authorities atMexico City has grown smaller, not larger. The prospect of thepacification of the country, even by arms, has seemed to grow more andmore remote; and its pacification by the authorities at the capital isevidently impossible by any other means than force. Difficulties moreand more entangle those who claim to constitute the legitimategovernment of the Republic. They have not made good their claim in fact. Their successes in the field have proved only temporary. War anddisorder, devastation and confusion, seem to threaten to become thesettled fortune of the distracted country. As friends we could wait nolonger for a solution which every week seemed further away. It was ourduty at least to volunteer our good offices--to offer to assist, if wemight, in effecting some arrangement which would bring relief and peaceand set up a universally acknowledged political authority there. 

Accordingly, I took the liberty of sending the Hon. John Lind, formerlygovernor of Minnesota, as my personal spokesman and representative, tothe City of Mexico, with _the following instructions_:

 Press very earnestly upon the attention of those who are now exercising authority or wielding influence in Mexico the following considerations and advice:

 The Government of the United States does not feel at liberty any longer to stand inactively by while it becomes daily more and more evident that no real progress is being made towards the establishment of a government at the City of Mexico which the country will obey and respect. 

 The Government of the United States does not stand in the same case with the other great Governments of the world in respect of what is happening or what is likely to happen in Mexico. We offer our good offices, not only because of our genuine desire to play the part of a friend, but also because we are expected by the powers of the world to act as Mexico's nearest friend. 

 We wish to act in these circumstances in the spirit of the most earnest and disinterested friendship. It is our purpose in whatever we do or propose in this perplexing and distressing situation not only to pay the most scrupulous regard to the sovereignty and independence of Mexico--that we take as a matter of course to which we are bound by every obligation of right and honor--but also to give every possible evidence that we act in the interest of Mexico alone, and not in the interest of any person or body of persons who may have personal or property claims in Mexico which they may feel that they have the right to press. We are seeking to counsel Mexico for her own good and in the interest of her own peace, and not for any other purpose whatever. The Government of the United States would deem itself discredited if it had any selfish or ulterior purpose in transactions where the peace, happiness, and prosperity of a whole people are involved. It is acting as its friendship for Mexico, not as any selfish interest, dictates. 

 The present situation in Mexico is incompatible with the fulfillment of international obligations on the part of Mexico, with the civilized development of Mexico herself, and with the maintenance of tolerable political and economic conditions in Central America. It is upon no common occasion, therefore, that the United States offers her counsel and assistance. All America cries out for a settlement. 

 A satisfactory settlement seems to us to be conditioned on--

 (_a_) An immediate cessation of fighting throughout Mexico, a definite armistice solemnly entered into and scrupulously observed;

 (_b_) Security given for an early and free election in which all will agree to take part;

 (_c_) The consent of Gen. Huerta to bind himself not to be a candidate for election as President of the Republic at this election; and

 (_d_) The agreement of all parties to abide by the results of the election and coöperate in the most loyal way in organizing and supporting the new administration. 

 The Government of the United States will be glad to play any part in this settlement or in its carrying out which it can play honorably and consistently with international right. It pledges itself to recognize and in every way possible and proper to assist the administration chosen and set up in Mexico in the way and on the conditions suggested. 

 Taking all the existing conditions into consideration, the Government of the United States can conceive of no reasons sufficient to justify those who are now attempting to shape the policy or exercise the authority of Mexico in declining the offices of friendship thus offered. Can Mexico give the civilized world a satisfactory reason for rejecting our good offices? If Mexico can suggest any better way in which to show our friendship, serve the people of Mexico, and meet our international obligations, we are more than willing to consider the suggestion. 

Mr. Lind executed his delicate and difficult mission with singular tact, firmness, and good judgment, and made clear to the authorities at theCity of Mexico not only the purpose of his visit but also the spirit inwhich it had been undertaken. But the proposals he submitted wererejected, in a note the full text of which I take the liberty of layingbefore you. 

I am led to believe that they were rejected partly because theauthorities at Mexico City had been grossly misinformed and misled upontwo points. They did not realize the spirit of the American people inthis matter, their earnest friendliness and yet sober determination thatsome just solution be found for the Mexican difficulties; and they didnot believe that the present administration spoke, through Mr. Lind, forthe people of the United States. The effect of this unfortunatemisunderstanding on their part is to leave them singularly isolated andwithout friends who can effectually aid them. So long as themisunderstanding continues we can only await the time of their awakeningto a realization of the actual facts. We cannot thrust our good officesupon them. The situation must be given a little more time to work itselfout in the new circumstances; and I believe that only a little whilewill be necessary. For the circumstances are new. The rejection of ourfriendship makes them new and will inevitably bring its own alterationsin the whole aspect of affairs. The actual situation of the authoritiesat Mexico City will presently be revealed. 

Meanwhile, what is it our duty to do? Clearly, everything that we domust be rooted in patience and done with calm and disinteresteddeliberation. Impatience on our part would be childish, and would befraught with every risk of wrong and folly. We can afford to exercisethe self-restraint of a really great nation which realizes its ownstrength and scorns to misuse it. It was our duty to offer our activeassistance. It is now our duty to show what true neutrality will do toenable the people of Mexico to set their affairs in order again and waitfor a further opportunity to offer our friendly counsels. The door isnot closed against the resumption, either upon the initiative of Mexicoor upon our own, of the effort to bring order out of the confusion byfriendly coöperative action, should fortunate occasion offer. 

While we wait the contest of the rival forces will undoubtedly for alittle while be sharper than ever, just because it will be plain that anend must be made of the existing situation, and that very promptly; andwith the increased activity of the contending factions will come, it isto be feared, increased danger to the non-combatants in Mexico as wellas to those actually in the field of battle. The position of outsidersis always particularly trying and full of hazard where there is civilstrife and a whole country is upset. We should earnestly urge allAmericans to leave Mexico at once, and should assist them to get away inevery way possible--not because we would mean to slacken in the leastour efforts to safeguard their lives and their interests, but because itis imperative that they should take no unnecessary risks when it isphysically possible for them to leave the country. We should let everyone who assumes to exercise authority in any part of Mexico know in themost unequivocal way that we shall vigilantly watch the fortunes ofthose Americans who cannot get away, and shall hold those responsiblefor their sufferings and losses to a definite reckoning. That can be andwill be made plain beyond the possibility of a misunderstanding. 

For the rest, I deem it my duty to exercise the authority conferred uponme by the law of March 14, 1912, to see to it that neither side to thestruggle now going on in Mexico receive any assistance from this sidethe border. I shall follow the best practice of nations in the matter ofneutrality by forbidding the exportation of arms or munitions of war ofany kind from the United States to any part of the Republic of Mexico--apolicy suggested by several interesting precedents and certainlydictated by many manifest considerations of practical expediency. Wecannot in the circumstances be the partisans of either party to thecontest that now distracts Mexico, or constitute ourselves the virtualumpire between them. 

I am happy to say that several of the great Governments of the worldhave given this Government their generous moral support in urging uponthe provisional authorities at the City of Mexico the acceptance of ourproffered good offices in the spirit in which they were made. We havenot acted in this matter under the ordinary principles of internationalobligation. All the world expects us in such circumstances to act asMexico's nearest friend and intimate adviser. This is our immemorialrelation towards her. There is nowhere any serious question that we havethe moral right in the case or that we are acting in the interest of afair settlement and of good government, not for the promotion of someselfish interest of our own. If further motive were necessary than ourown good will towards a sister Republic and our own deep concern to seepeace and order prevail in Central America, this consent of mankind towhat we are attempting, this attitude of the great nations of the worldtowards what we may attempt in dealing with this distressed people atour doors, should make us feel the more solemnly bound to go to theutmost length of patience and forbearance in this painful and anxiousbusiness. The steady pressure of moral force will before many days breakthe barriers of pride and prejudice down, and we shall triumph asMexico's friends sooner than we could triumph as her enemies--and howmuch more handsomely, with how much higher and finer satisfactions ofconscience and of honor!

[D] General Victoriano Huerta had, on Feb. 18, deposed President Madero, and had been, on the 20th, elected President by the Mexican Congress. Three days later Madero was assassinated while in the custody of the newgovernment. An army calling themselves Constitutionalists under GeneralVilla, defeated the Mexican Federal forces in May. On August 20, Huertadeclined the proposal of the United States government that he shouldcease to be a candidate for the Presidency. 

UNDERSTANDING AMERICA

[Delivered at Philadelphia, Pa. , on the occasion of the rededication ofCongress Hall, Oct. 25, 1913. The United States Congress met in thishall till 1800. Here Washington was inaugurated the second time, andhere he made his farewell address to the American people. Here JohnAdams took the oath of office when he succeeded Washington. The hall, after being long disused, was now restored and reopened. Before Mr. Wilson spoke, Mr. Frank Miles Day, representing the committee ofarchitects, had referred to the "delightful silence, order, gravity, andpersonal dignity of manner" observed by the Senators of the firstCongress, and had said, "They all appeared every morning full powdered, and dressed, as age or fancy might suggest, in the richest material. "]

YOUR HONOR, MR. CHAIRMAN, LADIES, AND GENTLEMEN:

No American could stand in this place to-day and think of thecircumstances which we are come together to celebrate without being mostprofoundly stirred. There has come over me since I sat down here a senseof deep solemnity, because it has seemed to me that I saw ghostscrowding--a great assemblage of spirits, no longer visible, but whoseinfluence we still feel as we feel the molding power of history itself. The men who sat in this hall, to whom we now look back with a touch ofdeep sentiment, were men of flesh and blood, face to face with extremelydifficult problems. The population of the United States then was hardlythree times the present population of the city of Philadelphia, and yetthat was a Nation as this is a Nation, and the men who spoke for it weresetting their hands to a work which was to last, not only that theirpeople might be happy, but that an example might be lifted up for theinstruction of the rest of the world. 

I like to read the quaint old accounts such as Mr. Day has read to usthis afternoon. Strangers came then to America to see what the youngpeople that had sprung up here were like, and they found men in counselwho knew how to construct governments. They found men deliberating herewho had none of the appearance of novices, none of the hesitation of menwho did not know whether the work they were doing was going to last ornot; men who addressed themselves to a problem of construction asfamiliarly as we attempt to carry out the traditions of a Governmentestablished these 137 years. 

I feel to-day the compulsion of these men, the compulsion of exampleswhich were set up in this place. And of what do their examples remindus? They remind us not merely of public service but of public serviceshot through with principle and honor. They were not histrionic men. They did not say--

 Look upon us as upon those who shall hereafter be illustrious. 

They said:

 Look upon us who are doing the first free work of constitutional liberty in the world, and who must do it in soberness and truth, or it will not last. 

Politics, ladies and gentlemen, is made up in just about equal parts ofcomprehension and sympathy. No man ought to go into politics who doesnot comprehend the task that he is going to attack. He may comprehend itso completely that it daunts him, that he doubts whether his own spiritis stout enough and his own mind able enough to attempt its greatundertakings, but unless he comprehend it he ought not to enter it. After he has comprehended it, there should come into his mind thoseprofound impulses of sympathy which connect him with the rest ofmankind, for politics is a business of interpretation, and no men arefit for it who do not see and seek more than their own advantage andinterest. 

We have stumbled upon many unhappy circumstances in the hundred yearsthat have gone by since the event that we are celebrating. Almost all ofthem have come from self-centered men, men who saw in their own interestthe interest of the country, and who did not have vision enough to readit in wider terms, in the universal terms of equity and justice and therights of mankind. I hear a great many people at Fourth of Julycelebrations laud the Declaration of Independence who in between Julysshiver at the plain language of our bills of rights. The Declaration ofIndependence was, indeed, the first audible breath of liberty, but thesubstance of liberty is written in such documents as the declaration ofrights attached, for example, to the first constitution of Virginia, which was a model for the similar documents read elsewhere into ourgreat fundamental charters. That document speaks in very plain terms. The men of that generation did not hesitate to say that every people hasa right to choose its own forms of government--not once, but as often asit pleases--and to accommodate those forms of government to its existinginterests and circumstances. Not only to establish but to alter is thefundamental principle of self-government. 

We are just as much under compulsion to study the particularcircumstances of our own day as the gentlemen were who sat in this halland set us precedents, not of what to do but of how to do it. Libertyinheres in the circumstances of the day. Human happiness consists in thelife which human beings are leading at the time that they live. I canfeed my memory as happily upon the circumstances of the revolutionaryand constitutional period as you can, but I cannot feed all my purposeswith them in Washington now. Every day problems arise which wear somenew phase and aspect, and I must fall back, if I would serve myconscience, upon those things which are fundamental rather than uponthose things which are superficial, and ask myself this question, Howare you going to assist in some small part to give the American peopleand, by example, the peoples of the world more liberty, more happiness, more substantial prosperity; and how are you going to make thatprosperity a common heritage instead of a selfish possession? I camehere to-day partly in order to feed my own spirit. I did not come incompliment. When I was asked to come I knew immediately upon theutterance of the invitation that I had to come, that to be absent wouldbe as if I refused to drink once more at the original fountains ofinspiration for our own Government. 

The men of the day which we now celebrate had a very great advantageover us, ladies and gentlemen, in this one particular: Life was simplein America then. All men shared the same circumstances in almost equaldegree. We think of Washington, for example, as an aristocrat, as a manseparated by training, separated by family and neighborhood tradition, from the ordinary people of the rank and file of the country. Have youforgotten the personal history of George Washington? Do you not knowthat he struggled as poor boys now struggle for a meager and imperfecteducation; that he worked at his surveyor's tasks in the lonely forests;that he knew all the roughness, all the hardships, all the adventure, all the variety of the common life of that day; and that if he stood alittle stiffly in this place, if he looked a little aloof, it wasbecause life had dealt hardly with him? All his sinews had beenstiffened by the rough work of making America. He was a man of thepeople, whose touch had been with them since the day he saw the lightfirst in the old Dominion of Virginia. And the men who came after him, men, some of whom had drunk deep at the sources of philosophy and ofstudy, were, nevertheless, also men who on this side of the water knewno complicated life but the simple life of primitive neighborhoods. Ourtask is very much more difficult. That sympathy which alone interpretspublic duty is more difficult for a public man to acquire now than itwas then, because we live in the midst of circumstances and conditionsinfinitely complex. 

No man can boast that he understands America. No man can boast that hehas lived the life of America, as almost every man who sat in this hallin those days could boast. No man can pretend that except by commoncounsel he can gather into his consciousness what the varied life ofthis people is. The duty that we have to keep open eyes and open heartsand accessible understandings is a very much more difficult duty toperform than it was in their day. Yet how much more important that itshould be performed, for fear we make infinite and irreparable blunders. The city of Washington is in some respects self-contained, and it iseasy there to forget what the rest of the United States is thinkingabout. I count it a fortunate circumstance that almost all the windowsof the White House and its offices open upon unoccupied spaces thatstretch to the banks of the Potomac and then out into Virginia and on tothe heavens themselves, and that as I sit there I can constantly forgetWashington and remember the United States. Not that I would intimatethat all of the United States lies south of Washington, but there is aserious thing back of my thought. If you think too much about beingreëlected, it is very difficult to be worth reëlecting. You are so aptto forget that the comparatively small number of persons, numerous asthey seem to be when they swarm, who come to Washington to ask forthings, do not constitute an important proportion of the population ofthe country, that it is constantly necessary to come away fromWashington and renew one's contact with the people who do not swarmthere, who do not ask for anything, but who do trust you without theirpersonal counsel to do your duty. Unless a man gets these contacts hegrows weaker and weaker. He needs them as Hercules needed the touch ofmother earth. If you lift him up too high or he lifts himself too high, he loses the contact and therefore loses the inspiration. 

I love to think of those plain men, however far from plain their dresssometimes was, who assembled in this hall. One is startled to think ofthe variety of costume and color which would now occur if we were letloose upon the fashions of that age. Men's lack of taste is largelyconcealed now by the limitations of fashion. Yet these men, whosometimes dressed like the peacock, were, nevertheless, of the ordinaryflight of their time. They were birds of a feather; they were birds comefrom a very simple breeding; they were much in the open heaven. Theywere beginning, when there was so little to distract their attention, toshow that they could live upon fundamental principles of government. Wetalk those principles, but we have not time to absorb them. We have nottime to let them into our blood, and thence have them translated intothe plain mandates of action. 

The very smallness of this room, the very simplicity of it all, all thesuggestions which come from its restoration, are reassuringthings--things which it becomes a man to realize. Therefore my themehere to-day, my only thought, is a very simple one. Do not let us goback to the annals of those sessions of Congress to find out what to do, because we live in another age and the circumstances are absolutelydifferent; but let us be men of that kind; let us feel at every turnthe compulsions of principle and of honor which thy felt; let us freeour vision from temporary circumstances and look abroad at the horizonand take into our lungs the great air of freedom which has blown throughthis country and stolen across the seas and blessed people everywhere;and, looking east and west and north and south, let us remind ourselvesthat we are the custodians, in some degree, of the principles which havemade men free and governments just. 

ADDRESS BEFORE THE SOUTHERN COMMERCIAL CONGRESS

[Delivered at Mobile, Alabama, October 27, 1913. ]

YOUR EXCELLENCY, MR. CHAIRMAN:

It is with unaffected pleasure that I find myself here to-day. I oncebefore had the pleasure, in another southern city, of addressing theSouthern Commercial Congress. I then spoke of what the future seemed tohold in store for this region, which so many of us love and toward thefuture of which we all look forward with so much confidence and hope. But another theme directed me here this time. I do not need to speak ofthe South. She has, perhaps, acquired the gift of speaking for herself. I come because I want to speak of our present and prospective relationswith our neighbors to the south. I deemed it a public duty, as well as apersonal pleasure, to be here to express for myself and for theGovernment I represent the welcome we all feel to those who representthe Latin-American States. 

The future, ladies and gentlemen, is going to be very different for thishemisphere from the past. These States lying to the south of us, whichhave always been our neighbors, will now be drawn closer to us byinnumerable ties, and, I hope, chief of all by the tie of a commonunderstanding of each other. Interest does not tie nations together; itsometimes separates them. But sympathy and understanding does unitethem, and I believe that by the new route that is just about to beopened, while we physically cut two continents asunder, we spirituallyunite them. It is a spiritual union which we seek. 

I wonder if you realize, I wonder if your imaginations have been filledwith the significance of the tides of commerce. Your Governor alluded invery fit and striking terms to the voyage of Columbus, but Columbus tookhis voyage under compulsion of circumstances. Constantinople had beencaptured by the Turks, and all the routes of trade with the East hadbeen suddenly closed. If there was not a way across the Atlantic to openthose routes again, they were closed forever; and Columbus set out notto discover America, for he did not know that it existed, but todiscover the eastern shores of Asia. He set sail for Cathay and stumbledupon America. With that change in the outlook of the world, whathappened? England, that had been at the back of Europe with an unknownsea behind her, found that all things had turned as if upon a pivot andshe was at the front of Europe; and since then all the tides of energyand enterprise that have issued out of Europe have seemed to be turnedwestward across the Atlantic. But you will notice that they have turnedwestward chiefly north of the Equator, and that it is the northern halfof the globe that has seemed to be filled with the media of intercourseand of sympathy and of common understanding. 

Do you not see now what is about to happen? These great tides which havebeen running along parallels of latitude will now swing southwardathwart parallels of latitude, and that opening gate at the Isthmus ofPanama will open the world to a commerce that she has not known before, a commerce of intelligence, of thought, and sympathy between North andSouth. The Latin-American States which, to their disadvantage, have beenoff the main lines will now be on the main lines. I feel that thesegentlemen honoring us with their presence to-day will presently findthat some part, at any rate, of the center of gravity of the world hasshifted. Do you realize that New York, for example, will be nearer thewestern coast of South America than she is now to the eastern coast ofSouth America? Do you realize that a line drawn northward parallel withthe greater part of the western coast of South America will run onlyabout one hundred and fifty miles west of New York? The great bulk ofSouth America, if you will look at your globes (not at your Mercator'sprojection), lies eastward of the continent of North America. You willrealize that when you realize that the canal will run southeast, notsouthwest, and that when you get into the Pacific you will be farthereast then you were when you left the Gulf of Mexico. These things aresignificant, therefore, of this, that we are closing one chapter in thehistory of the world and are opening another of great, unimaginablesignificance. 

There is one peculiarity about the history of the Latin-American Stateswhich I am sure they are keenly aware of. You hear of "concessions" toforeign capitalists in Latin America. You do not hear of concessions toforeign capitalists in the United States. They are not grantedconcessions. They are invited to make investments. The work is ours, though they are welcome to invest in it. We do not ask them to supplythe capital and do the work. It is an invitation, not a privilege; andStates that are obliged, because their territory does not lie within themain field of modern enterprise and action, to grant concessions are inthis condition, that foreign interests are apt to dominate theirdomestic affairs, a condition of affairs always dangerous and apt tobecome intolerable. What these States are going to see, therefore, is anemancipation from the subordination, which has been inevitable, toforeign enterprise and an assertion of the splendid character which, inspite of these difficulties, they have again and again been able todemonstrate. The dignity, the courage, the self-possession, theself-respect of the Latin-American States, their achievements in theface of all these adverse circumstances, deserve nothing but theadmiration and applause of the world. They have had harder bargainsdriven with them in the matter of loans than any other peoples in theworld. Interest has been exacted of them that was not exacted of anybodyelse, because the risk was said to be greater; and then securities weretaken that destroyed the risk--an admirable arrangement for those whowere forcing the terms! I rejoice in nothing so much as in the prospectthat they will now be emancipated from these conditions; and we ought tobe the first to take part in assisting in that emancipation. I thinksome of these gentlemen have already had occasion to bear witness thatthe Department of State in recent months has tried to serve them in thatwise. In the future they will draw closer and closer to us because ofcircumstances of which I wish to speak with moderation and, I hope, without indiscretion. 

We must prove ourselves their friends and champions upon terms ofequality and honor. You cannot be friends upon any other terms than uponthe terms of equality. You cannot be friends at all except upon theterms of honor. We must show ourselves friends by comprehending theirinterest whether it squares with our own interest or not. It is a veryperilous thing to determine the foreign policy of a nation in the termsof material interest. It not only is unfair to those with whom you aredealing, but it is degrading as regards your own actions. 

Comprehension must be the soil in which shall grow all the fruits offriendship, and there is a reason and a compulsion lying behind all thiswhich is dearer than anything else to the thoughtful men of America. Imean the development of constitutional liberty in the world. Humanrights, national integrity, and opportunity as against materialinterests--that, ladies and gentlemen, is the issue which we now have toface. I want to take this occasion to say that the United States willnever again seek one additional foot of territory by conquest. She willdevote herself to showing that she knows how to make honorable andfruitful use of the territory she has, and she must regard it as one ofthe duties of friendship to see that from no quarter are materialinterests made superior to human liberty and national opportunity. I saythis, not with a single thought that anyone will gainsay it, but merelyto fix in our consciousness what our real relationship with the rest ofAmerica is. It is the relationship of a family of mankind devoted to thedevelopment of true constitutional liberty. We know that that is thesoil out of which the best enterprise springs. We know that this is acause which we are making in common with our neighbors, because we havehad to make it for ourselves. 

Reference has been made here to-day to some of the national problemswhich confront us as a nation. What is at the heart of all our nationalproblems? It is that we have seen the hand of material interestsometimes about to close upon our dearest rights and possessions. Wehave seen material interests threaten constitutional freedom in theUnited States. Therefore we will now know how to sympathize with thosein the rest of America who have to contend with such powers, not onlywithin their borders but from outside their borders also. 

I know what the response of the thought and heart of America will be tothe program I have outlined, because America was created to realize aprogram like that. This is not America because it is rich. This is notAmerica because it has set up for a great population greatopportunities of material prosperity. America is a name which sounds inthe ears of men everywhere as a synonym with individual opportunitybecause a synonym of individual liberty. I would rather belong to a poornation that was free than to a rich nation that had ceased to be in lovewith liberty. But we shall not be poor if we love liberty, because thenation that loves liberty truly sets every man free to do his best andbe his best, and that means the release of all the splendid energies ofa great people who think for themselves. A nation of employees cannot befree any more than a nation of employers can be. 

In emphasizing the points which must unite us in sympathy and inspiritual interest with the Latin-American peoples we are onlyemphasizing the points of our own life, and we should prove ourselvesuntrue to our own traditions if we proved ourselves untrue friends tothem. Do not think, therefore, gentlemen, that the questions of the dayare mere questions of policy and diplomacy. They are shot through withthe principles of life. We dare not turn from the principle thatmorality and not expediency is the thing that must guide us and that wewill never condone iniquity because it is most convenient to do so. Itseems to me that this is a day of infinite hope, of confidence in afuture greater than the past has been, for I am fain to believe that inspite of all the things that we wish to correct the nineteenth centurythat now lies behind us has brought us a long stage toward the timewhen, slowly ascending the tedious climb that leads to the finaluplands, we shall get our ultimate view of the duties of mankind. Wehave breasted a considerable part of that climb and shall presently--itmay be in a generation or two--come out upon those great heights wherethere shines unobstructed the light of the justice of God. 

THE STATE OF THE UNION

[Address delivered at a joint session of the two Houses of Congress, December 2, 1913. ]

MR. SPEAKER, MR. PRESIDENT, GENTLEMEN OF THE CONGRESS:

In pursuance of my constitutional duty to "give to the Congressinformation of the state of the Union, " I take the liberty of addressingyou on several matters which ought, as it seems to me, particularly toengage the attention of your honorable bodies, as of all who study thewelfare and progress of the Nation. 

I shall ask your indulgence if I venture to depart in some degree fromthe usual custom of setting before you in formal review the many matterswhich have engaged the attention and called for the action of theseveral departments of the Government or which look to them for earlytreatment in the future, because the list is long, very long, and wouldsuffer in the abbreviation to which I should have to subject it. I shallsubmit to you the reports of the heads of the several departments, inwhich these subjects are set forth in careful detail, and beg that theymay receive the thoughtful attention of your committees and of allMembers of the Congress who may have the leisure to study them. Theirobvious importance, as constituting the very substance of the businessof the Government, makes comment and emphasis on my part unnecessary. 

The country, I am thankful to say, is at peace with all the world, andmany happy manifestations multiply about us of a growing cordiality andsense of community of interest among the nations, foreshadowing an ageof settled peace and good will. More and more readily each decade do thenations manifest their willingness to bind themselves by solemn treatyto the processes of peace, the processes of frankness and fairconcession. So far the United States has stood at the front of suchnegotiations. She will, I earnestly hope and confidently believe, givefresh proof of her sincere adherence to the cause of internationalfriendship by ratifying the several treaties of arbitration awaitingrenewal by the Senate. In addition to these, it has been the privilegeof the Department of State to gain the assent, in principle, of no lessthan thirty-one nations, representing four-fifths of the population ofthe world, to the negotiation of treaties by which it shall be agreedthat whenever differences of interest or of policy arise which cannot beresolved by the ordinary processes of diplomacy they shall be publiclyanalyzed, discussed, and reported upon by a tribunal chosen by theparties before either nation determines its course of action. 

There is only one possible standard by which to determine controversiesbetween the United States and other nations, and that is compounded ofthese two elements: Our own honor and our obligations to the peace ofthe world. A test so compounded ought easily to be made to govern boththe establishment of new treaty obligations and the interpretation ofthose already assumed. 

There is but one cloud upon our horizon. That has shown itself to thesouth of us, and hangs over Mexico. There can be no certain prospect ofpeace in America until Gen. Huerta has surrendered his usurped authorityin Mexico; until it is understood on all hands, indeed, that suchpretended governments will not be countenanced or dealt with by theGovernment of the United States. We are the friends of constitutionalgovernment in America; we are more than its friends, we are itschampions; because in no other way can our neighbors, to whom we wouldwish in every way to make proof of our friendship, work out their owndevelopment in peace and liberty. Mexico has no Government. The attemptto maintain one at the City of Mexico has broken down, and a meremilitary despotism has been set up which has hardly more than thesemblance of national authority. It originated in the usurpation ofVictoriano Huerta, who, after a brief attempt to play the part ofconstitutional President, has at last cast aside even the pretense oflegal right and declared himself dictator. As a consequence, a conditionof affairs now exists in Mexico which has made it doubtful whether eventhe most elementary and fundamental rights either of her own people orof the citizens of other countries resident within her territory canlong be successfully safeguarded, and which threatens, if longcontinued, to imperil the interests of peace, order, and tolerable lifein the lands immediately to the south of us. Even if the usurper hadsucceeded in his purposes, in despite of the constitution of theRepublic and the rights of its people, he would have set up nothing buta precarious and hateful power, which could have lasted but a littlewhile, and whose eventual downfall would have left the country in a moredeplorable condition than ever. But he has not succeeded. He hasforfeited the respect and the moral support even of those who were atone time willing to see him succeed. Little by little he has beencompletely isolated. By a little every day his power and prestige arecrumbling and the collapse is not far away. We shall not, I believe, beobliged to alter our policy of watchful waiting. And then, when the endcomes, we shall hope to see constitutional order restored in distressedMexico by the concert and energy of such of her leaders as prefer theliberty of their people to their own ambitions. 

I turn to matters of domestic concern. You already have underconsideration a bill for the reform of our system of banking andcurrency, for which the country waits with impatience, as for somethingfundamental to its whole business life and necessary to set credit freefrom arbitrary and artificial restraints. I need not say how earnestly Ihope for its early enactment into law. I take leave to beg that thewhole energy and attention of the Senate be concentrated upon it tillthe matter is successfully disposed of. And yet I feel that the requestis not needed--that the Members of that great House need no urging inthis service to the country. 

I present to you, in addition, the urgent necessity that specialprovision be made also for facilitating the credits needed by thefarmers of the country. The pending currency bill does the farmers agreat service. It puts them upon an equal footing with other businessmen and masters of enterprise, as it should; and upon its passage theywill find themselves quit of many of the difficulties which now hamperthem in the field of credit. The farmers, of course, ask and should begiven no special privilege, such as extending to them the credit of theGovernment itself. What they need and should obtain is legislation whichwill make their own abundant and substantial credit resources availableas a foundation for joint, concerted local action in their own behalf ingetting the capital they must use. It is to this we should now addressourselves. 

It has, singularly enough, come to pass that we have allowed theindustry of our farms to lag behind the other activities of the countryin its development. I need not stop to tell you how fundamental to thelife of the Nation is the production of its food. Our thoughts mayordinarily be concentrated upon the cities and the hives of industry, upon the cries of the crowded market place and the clangor of thefactory, but it is from the quiet interspaces of the open valleys andthe free hillsides that we draw the sources of life and of prosperity, from the farm and the ranch, from the forest and the mine. Without theseevery street would be silent, every office deserted, every factoryfallen into disrepair. And yet the farmer does not stand upon the samefooting with the forester and the miner in the market of credit. He isthe servant of the seasons. Nature determines how long he must wait forhis crops, and will not be hurried in her processes. He may give hisnote, but the season of its maturity depends upon the season when hiscrop matures, lies at the gates of the market where his products aresold. And the security he gives is of a character not known in thebroker's office or as familiarly as it might be on the counter of thebanker. 

The Agricultural Department of the Government is seeking to assist asnever before to make farming an efficient business, of wide coöperativeeffort, in quick touch with the markets for food-stuffs. The farmers andthe Government will henceforth work together as real partners in thisfield, where we now begin to see our way very clearly and where manyintelligent plans are already being put into execution. The Treasury ofthe United States has, by a timely and well-considered distribution ofits deposits, facilitated the moving of the crops in the present seasonand prevented the scarcity of available funds too often experienced atsuch times. But we must not allow ourselves to depend upon extraordinaryexpedients. We must add the means by which the farmer may make hiscredit constantly and easily available and command when he will thecapital by which to support and expand his business. We lag behind manyother great countries of the modern world in attempting to do this. Systems of rural credit have been studied and developed on the otherside of the water while we left our farmers to shift for themselves inthe ordinary money market. You have but to look about you in any ruraldistrict to see the result, the handicap and embarrassment which havebeen put upon those who produce our food. 

Conscious of this backwardness and neglect on our part, the Congressrecently authorized the creation of a special commission to study thevarious systems of rural credit which have been put into operation inEurope, and this commission is already prepared to report. Its reportought to make it easier for us to determine what methods will be bestsuited to our own farmers. I hope and believe that the committees of theSenate and House will address themselves selves to this matter with themost fruitful results, and I believe that the studies and recentlyformed plans of the Department of Agriculture may be made to serve themvery greatly in their work of framing appropriate and adequatelegislation. It would be indiscreet and presumptuous in anyone todogmatize upon so great and many-sided a question, but I feel confidentthat common counsel will produce the results we must all desire. 

Turn from the farm to the world of business which centers in the cityand in the factory, and I think that all thoughtful observers will agreethat the immediate service we owe the business communities of thecountry is to prevent private monopoly more effectually than it has yetbeen prevented. I think it will be easily agreed that we should let theSherman antitrust law stand, unaltered, as it is, with its debatableground about it, but that we should as much as possible reduce the areaof that debatable ground by further and more explicit legislation; andshould also supplement that great act by legislation which will notonly clarify it but also facilitate its administration and make itfairer to all concerned. No doubt we shall all wish, and the countrywill expect, this to be the central subject of our deliberations duringthe present session; but it is a subject so many-sided and so deservingof careful and discriminating discussion that I shall take the libertyof addressing you upon it in a special message at a later date thanthis. It is of capital importance that the business men of this countryshould be relieved of all uncertainties of law with regard to theirenterprises and investments and a clear path indicated which they cantravel without anxiety. It is as important that they should be relievedof embarrassment and set free to prosper as that private monopoly shouldbe destroyed. The ways of action should be thrown wide open. 

I turn to a subject which I hope can be handled promptly and withoutserious controversy of any kind. I mean the method of selecting nomineesfor the Presidency of the United States. I feel confident that I do notmisinterpret the wishes or the expectations of the country when I urgethe prompt enactment of legislation which will provide for primaryelections throughout the country at which the voters of the severalparties may choose their nominees for the Presidency without theintervention of nominating conventions. I venture the suggestion thatthis legislation should provide for the retention of party conventions, but only for the purpose of declaring and accepting the verdict of theprimaries and formulating the platforms of the parties; and I suggestthat these conventions should consist not of delegates chosen for thissingle purpose, but of the nominees for Congress, the nominees forvacant seats in the Senate of the United States, the Senators whoseterms have not yet closed, the national committees, and the candidatesfor the Presidency themselves, in order that platforms may be framed bythose responsible to the people for carrying them into effect. 

These are all matters of vital domestic concern, and besides them, outside the charmed circle of our own national life in which ouraffections command us, as well as our consciences, there stand out ourobligations toward our territories over sea. Here we are trustees. PortoRico, Hawaii, the Philippines, are ours, indeed, but not ours to do whatwe please with. Such territories, once regarded as mere possessions, areno longer to be selfishly exploited; they are part of the domain ofpublic conscience and of serviceable and enlightened statesmanship. Wemust administer them for the people who live in them and with the samesense of responsibility to them as toward our own people in our domesticaffairs. No doubt we shall successfully enough bind Porto Rico and theHawaiian Islands to ourselves by ties of justice and interest andaffection, but the performance of our duty toward the Philippines is amore difficult and debatable matter. We can satisfy the obligations ofgenerous justice toward the people of Porto Rico by giving them theample and familiar rights and privileges accorded our own citizens inour own territories and our obligations toward the people of Hawaii byperfecting the provisions for self-government already granted them, butin the Philippines we must go further. We must hold steadily in viewtheir ultimate independence, and we must move toward the time of thatindependence as steadily as the way can be cleared and the foundationsthoughtfully and permanently laid. 

Acting under the authority conferred upon the President by Congress, Ihave already accorded the people of the islands a majority in bothhouses of their legislative body by appointing five instead of fournative citizens to the membership of the commission. I believe that inthis way we shall make proof of their capacity in counsel and theirsense of responsibility in the exercise of political power, and that thesuccess of this step will be sure to clear our view for the steps whichare to follow. Step by step we should extend and perfect the system ofself-government in the islands, making test of them and modifying themas experience discloses their successes and their failures; that weshould more and more put under the control of the native citizens of thearchipelago the essential instruments of their life, their localinstrumentalities of government, their schools, all the common interestsof their communities, and so by counsel and experience set up agovernment which all the world will see to be suitable to a people whoseaffairs are under their own control. At last, I hope and believe, we arebeginning to gain the confidence of the Filipino peoples. By theircounsel and experience, rather than by our own, we shall learn how bestto serve them and how soon it will be possible and wise to withdraw oursupervision. Let us once find the path and set out with firm andconfident tread upon it and we shall not wander from it or linger uponit. 

A duty faces us with regard to Alaska which seems to me very pressingand very imperative; perhaps I should say a double duty, for it concernsboth the political and the material development of the Territory. Thepeople of Alaska should be given the full Territorial form ofgovernment, and Alaska, as a storehouse, should be unlocked. One key toit is a system of railways. These the Government should itself build andadminister, and the ports and terminals it should itself control in theinterest of all who wish to use them for the service and development ofthe country and its people. 

But the construction of railways is only the first step; is onlythrusting in the key to the storehouse and throwing back the lock andopening the door. How the tempting resources of the country are to beexploited is another matter, to which I shall take the liberty of fromtime to time calling your attention, for it is a policy which must beworked out by well-considered stages, not upon theory, but upon lines ofpractical expediency. It is part of our general problem of conservation. We have a freer hand in working out the problem in Alaska than in theStates of the Union; and yet the principle and object are the same, wherever we touch it. We must use the resources of the country, not lockthem up. There need be no conflict or jealousy as between State andFederal authorities, for there can be no essential difference of purposebetween them. The resources in question must be used, but not destroyedor wasted; used, but not monopolized upon any narrow idea of individualrights as against the abiding interests of communities. That a policycan be worked out by conference and concession which will release theseresources and yet not jeopard or dissipate them, I for one have nodoubt; and it can be done on lines of regulation which need be no lessacceptable to the people and governments of the States concerned than tothe people and Government of the Nation at large, whose heritage theseresources are. We must bend our counsels to this end. A common purposeought to make agreement easy. 

Three or four matters of special importance and significance I beg thatyou will permit me to mention in closing. 

Our Bureau of Mines ought to be equipped and empowered to render evenmore effectual service than it renders now in improving the conditionsof mine labor and making the mines more economically productive as wellas more safe. This is an all-important part of the work ofconservation; and the conservation of human life and energy lies evennearer to our interest than the preservation from waste of our materialresources. 

We owe it, in mere justice to the railway employees of the country, toprovide for them a fair and effective employers' liability act; and alaw that we can stand by in this matter will be no less to the advantageof those who administer the railroads of the country than to theadvantage of those whom they employ. The experience of a large number ofthe States abundantly proves that. 

We ought to devote ourselves to meeting pressing demands of plainjustice like this as earnestly as to the accomplishment of political andeconomic reforms. Social justice comes first. Law is the machinery forits realization and is vital only as it expresses and embodies it. 

An international congress for the discussion of all questions thataffect safety at sea is now sitting in London at the suggestion of ourown Government. So soon as the conclusions of that congress can belearned and considered we ought to address ourselves, among otherthings, to the prompt alleviation of the very unsafe, unjust, andburdensome conditions which now surround the employment of sailors andrender it extremely difficult to obtain the services of spirited andcompetent men such as every ship needs if it is to be safely handled andbrought to port. 

May I not express the very real pleasure I have experienced incoöperating with this Congress and sharing with it the labors of commonservice to which it has devoted itself so unreservedly during the pastseven months of uncomplaining concentration upon the business oflegislation? Surely it is a proper and pertinent part of my report on"the state of the Union" to express my admiration for the diligence, thegood temper, and the full comprehension of public duty which has alreadybeen manifested by both the Houses; and I hope that it may not bedeemed an impertinent intrusion of myself into the picture if I say withhow much and how constant satisfaction I have availed myself of theprivilege of putting my time and energy at their disposal alike incounsel and in action. 

TRUSTS AND MONOPOLIES

[Address delivered at a joint session of the two Houses of Congress, January 20, 1914. ]

GENTLEMEN OF THE CONGRESS:

In my report "on the state of the Union, " which I had the privilege ofreading to you on the 2d of December last, I ventured to reserve fordiscussion at a later date the subject of additional legislationregarding the very difficult and intricate matter of trusts andmonopolies. The time now seems opportune to turn to that great question;not only because the currency legislation, which absorbed your attentionand the attention of the country in December, is now disposed of, butalso because opinion seems to be clearing about us with singularrapidity in this other great field of action. In the matter of thecurrency it cleared suddenly and very happily after the much-debated Actwas passed; in respect of the monopolies which have multiplied about usand in regard to the various means by which they have been organized andmaintained it seems to be coming to a clear and all but universalagreement in anticipation of our action, as if by way of preparation, making the way easier to see and easier to set out upon with confidenceand without confusion of counsel. 

Legislation has its atmosphere like everything else, and the atmosphereof accommodation and mutual understanding which we now breathe with somuch refreshment is matter of sincere congratulation. It ought to makeour task very much less difficult and embarrassing than it would havebeen had we been obliged to continue to act amidst the atmosphere ofsuspicion and antagonism which has so long made it impossible toapproach such questions with dispassionate fairness. Constructivelegislation, when successful, is always the embodiment of convincingexperience, and of the mature public opinion which finally springs outof that experience. Legislation is a business of interpretation, not oforigination; and it is now plain what the opinion is to which we mustgive effect in this matter. It is not recent or hasty opinion. Itsprings out of the experience of a whole generation. It has clarifieditself by long contest, and those who for a long time battled with itand sought to change it are now frankly and honorably yielding to it andseeking to conform their actions to it. 

The great business men who organized and financed monopoly and those whoadministered it in actual everyday transactions have year after year, until now, either denied its existence or justified it as necessary forthe effective maintenance and development of the vast business processesof the country in the modern circumstances of trade and manufacture andfinance; but all the while opinion has made head against them. Theaverage business man is convinced that the ways of liberty are also theways of peace and the ways of success as well; and at last the mastersof business on the great scale have begun to yield their preference andpurpose, perhaps their judgment also, in honorable surrender. 

What we are purposing to do, therefore, is, happily, not to hamper orinterfere with business as enlightened business men prefer to do it, orin any sense to put it under the ban. The antagonism between businessand government is over. We are now about to give expression to the bestbusiness judgment of America, to what we know to be the businessconscience and honor of the land. The Government and business men areready to meet each other half-way in a common effort to square businessmethods with both public opinion and the law. The best informed men ofthe business world condemn the methods and processes and consequences ofmonopoly as we condemn them; and the instinctive judgment of the vastmajority of business men everywhere goes with them. We shall now betheir spokesmen. That is the strength of our position and the sureprophecy of what will ensue when our reasonable work is done. 

When serious contest ends, when men unite in opinion and purpose, thosewho are to change their ways of business joining with those who ask forthe change, it is possible to effect it in the way in which prudent andthoughtful and patriotic men would wish to see it brought about with asfew, as slight, as easy and simple business readjustments as possible inthe circumstances, nothing essential disturbed, nothing torn up by theroots, no parts rent asunder which can be left in wholesome combination. Fortunately, no measures of sweeping or novel change are necessary. Itwill be understood that our object is _not_ to unsettle business oranywhere seriously to break its established courses athwart. On thecontrary, we desire the laws we are now about to pass to be the bulwarksand safeguards of industry against the forces that have disturbed it. What we have to do can be done in a new spirit, in thoughtfulmoderation, without revolution of any untoward kind. 

We are all agreed that "private monopoly is indefensible andintolerable, " and our program is founded upon that conviction. It willbe a comprehensive but not a radical or unacceptable program and theseare its items, the changes which opinion deliberately sanctions and forwhich business waits:

It waits with acquiescence, in the first place, for laws which willeffectually prohibit and prevent such interlockings of the _personnel_of the directorates of great corporations--banks and railroads, industrial, commercial, and public service bodies--as in effect resultin making those who borrow and those who lend practically one and thesame, those who sell and those who buy but the same persons trading withone another under different names and in different combinations, andthose who affect to compete in fact partners and masters of some wholefield of business. Sufficient time should be allowed, of course, inwhich to effect these changes of organization without inconvenience orconfusion. 

Such a prohibition will work much more than a mere negative good bycorrecting the serious evils which have arisen because, for example, themen who have been the directing spirits of the great investment bankshave usurped the place which belongs to independent industrialmanagement working in its own behoof. It will bring new men, newenergies, a new spirit of initiative, new blood, into the management ofour great business enterprises. It will open the field of industrialdevelopment and origination to scores of men who have been obliged toserve when their abilities entitled them to direct. It will immenselyhearten the young men coming on and will greatly enrich the businessactivities of the whole country. 

In the second place, business men as well as those who direct publicaffairs now recognize, and recognize with painful clearness, the greatharm and injustice which has been done to many, if not all, of the greatrailroad systems of the country by the way in which they have beenfinanced and their own distinctive interests subordinated to theinterests of the men who financed them and of other business enterpriseswhich those men wished to promote. The country is ready, therefore, toaccept, and accept with relief as well as approval, a law which willconfer upon the Interstate Commerce Commission the power to superintendand regulate the financial operations by which the railroads arehenceforth to be supplied with the money they need for their properdevelopment to meet the rapidly growing requirements of the country forincreased and improved facilities of transportation. We cannot postponeaction in this matter without leaving the railroads exposed to manyserious handicaps and hazards; and the prosperity of the railroads andthe prosperity of the country are inseparably connected. Upon thisquestion those who are chiefly responsible for the actual management andoperation of the railroads have spoken very plainly and very earnestly, with a purpose we ought to be quick to accept. It will be one step, anda very important one, toward the necessary separation of the business ofproduction from the business of transportation. 

The business of the country awaits also, has long awaited and hassuffered because it could not obtain, further and more explicitlegislative definition of the policy and meaning of the existingantitrust law. Nothing hampers business like uncertainty. Nothing dauntsor discourages it like the necessity to take chances, to run the risk offalling under the condemnation of the law before it can make sure justwhat the law is. Surely we are sufficiently familiar with the actualprocesses and methods of monopoly and of the many hurtful restraints oftrade to make definition possible, at any rate up to the limits of whatexperience has disclosed. These practices, being now abundantlydisclosed, can be explicitly and item by item forbidden by statute insuch terms as will practically eliminate uncertainty, the law itself andthe penalty being made equally plain. 

And the business men of the country desire something more than that themenace of legal process in these matters be made explicit andintelligible. They desire the advice, the definite guidance andinformation which can be supplied by an administrative body, aninterstate trade commission. 

The opinion of the country would instantly approve of such a commission. It would not wish to see it empowered to make terms with monopoly or inany sort to assume control of business, as if the Government made itselfresponsible. It demands such a commission only as an indispensableinstrument of information and publicity, as a clearing house for thefacts by which both the public mind and the managers of great businessundertakings should be guided, and as an instrumentality for doingjustice to business where the processes of the courts or the naturalforces of correction outside the courts are inadequate to adjust theremedy to the wrong in a way that will meet all the equities andcircumstances of the case. 

Producing industries, for example, which have passed the point up towhich combination may be consistent with the public interest and thefreedom of trade, cannot always be dissected into their component unitsas readily as railroad companies or similar organizations can be. Theirdissolution by ordinary legal process may oftentimes involve financialconsequences likely to overwhelm the security market and bring upon itbreakdown and confusion. There ought to be an administrative commissioncapable of directing and shaping such corrective processes, not only inaid of the courts but also by independent suggestion, if necessary. 

Inasmuch as our object and the spirit of our action in these matters isto meet business half-way in its processes of self-correction anddisturb its legitimate course as little as possible, we ought to see toit, and the judgment of practical and sagacious men of affairseverywhere would applaud us if we did see to it, that penalties andpunishments should fall, not upon business itself, to its confusion andinterruption, but upon the individuals who use the instrumentalities ofbusiness to do things which public policy and sound business practicecondemn. Every act of business is done at the command or upon theinitiative of some ascertainable person or group of persons. Theseshould be held individually responsible and the punishment should fallupon them, not upon the business organization of which they make illegaluse. It should be one of the main objects of our legislation to divestsuch persons of their corporate cloak and deal with them as with thosewho do not represent their corporations, but merely by deliberateintention break the law. Business men the country through would, I amsure, applaud us if we were to take effectual steps to see that theofficers and directors of great business bodies were prevented frombringing them and the business of the country into disrepute and danger. 

Other questions remain which will need very thoughtful and practicaltreatment. Enterprises, in these modern days of great individualfortunes, are oftentimes interlocked, not by being under the control ofthe same directors, but by the fact that the greater part of theircorporate stock is owned by a single person or group of persons who arein some way ultimately related in interest. We are agreed, I take it, that holding _companies_ should be prohibited, but what of thecontrolling private ownership of individuals or actually coöperativegroups of individuals? Shall the private owners of capital stock besuffered to be themselves in effect holding companies? We do not wish, Isuppose, to forbid the purchase of stocks by any person who pleases tobuy them in such quantities as he can afford, or in any way arbitrarilyto limit the sale of stocks to bona fide purchasers. Shall we requirethe owners of stock, when their voting power in several companies whichought to be independent of one another would constitute actual control, to make election in which of them they will exercise their right tovote? This question I venture for your consideration. 

There is another matter in which imperative considerations of justiceand fair play suggest thoughtful remedial action. Not only do many ofthe combinations effected or sought to be effected in the industrialworld work an injustice upon the public in general; they also directlyand seriously injure the individuals who are put out of business in oneunfair way or another by the many dislodging and exterminating forces ofcombination. I hope that we shall agree in giving private individualswho claim to have been injured by these processes the right to foundtheir suits for redress upon the facts and judgments proved and enteredin suits by the Government where the Government has upon its owninitiative sued the combinations complained of and won its suit, andthat the statute of limitations shall be suffered to run against suchlitigants only from the date of the conclusion of the Government'saction. It is not fair that the private litigant should be obliged toset up and establish again the facts which the Government has proved. Hecannot afford, he has not the power, to make use of such processes ofinquiry as the Government has command of. Thus shall individual justicebe done while the processes of business are rectified and squared withthe general conscience. 

I have laid the case before you, no doubt as it lies in your own mind, as it lies in the thought of the country. What must every candid man sayof the suggestions I have laid before you, of the plain obligations ofwhich I have reminded you? That these are new things for which thecountry is not prepared? No; but that they are old things, now familiar, and must of course be undertaken if we are to square our laws with thethought and desire of the country. Until these things are done, conscientious business men the country over will be unsatisfied. Theyare in these things our mentors and colleagues. We are now about towrite the additional articles of our constitution of peace, the peacethat is honor and freedom and prosperity. 

PANAMA CANAL TOLLS

[Address delivered at a joint session of the two Houses of Congress, March 5, 1914. ]

GENTLEMEN OF THE CONGRESS:

I have come to you upon an errand which can be very briefly performed, but I beg that you will not measure its importance by the number ofsentences in which I state it. No communication I have addressed to theCongress carried with it graver or more far-reaching implications as tothe interest of the country, and I come now to speak upon a matter withregard to which I am charged in a peculiar degree, by the Constitutionitself, with personal responsibility. 

I have come to ask you for the repeal of that provision of the PanamaCanal Act of August 24, 1912, which exempts vessels engaged in thecoastwise trade of the United States from payment of tolls, and to urgeupon you the justice, the wisdom, and the large policy of such a repealwith the utmost earnestness of which I am capable. 

In my own judgment, very fully considered and maturely formed, thatexemption constitutes a mistaken economic policy from every point ofview, and is, moreover, in plain contravention of the treaty with GreatBritain concerning the canal concluded on November 18, 1901. But I havenot come to urge upon you my personal views. I have come to state to youa fact and a situation. Whatever may be our own differences of opinionconcerning this much debated measure, its meaning is not debated outsidethe United States. Everywhere else the language of the treaty is givenbut one interpretation, and that interpretation precludes the exemptionI am asking you to repeal. We consented to the treaty; its language weaccepted, if we did not originate it; and we are too big, too powerful, too self-respecting a nation to interpret with a too strained or refinedreading the words of our own promises just because we have power enoughto give us leave to read them as we please. The large thing to do is theonly thing we can afford to do, a voluntary withdrawal from a positioneverywhere questioned and misunderstood. We ought to reverse our actionwithout raising the question whether we were right or wrong, and so oncemore deserve our reputation for generosity and for the redemption ofevery obligation without quibble or hesitation. 

I ask this of you in support of the foreign policy of theadministration. I shall not know how to deal with other matters of evengreater delicacy and nearer consequence if you do not grant it to me inungrudging measure. 

THE TAMPICO INCIDENT

[Address delivered at a joint session of the two Houses of Congress, April 20, 1914. ]

GENTLEMEN OF THE CONGRESS:

It is my duty to call your attention to a situation which has arisen inour dealings with General Victoriano Huerta at Mexico City which callsfor action, and to ask your advice and coöperation in acting upon it. Onthe 9th of April a paymaster of the U. S. S. _Dolphin_ landed at theIturbide Bridge landing at Tampico with a whaleboat and boat's crew totake off certain supplies needed by his ship, and while engaged inloading the boat was arrested by an officer and squad of men of the armyof General Huerta. Neither the paymaster nor anyone of the boat's crewwas armed. Two of the men were in the boat when the arrest took placeand were obliged to leave it and submit to be taken into custody, notwithstanding the fact that the boat carried, both at her bow and ather stern, the flag of the United States. The officer who made thearrest was proceeding up one of the streets of the town with hisprisoners when met by an officer of higher authority, who ordered him toreturn to the landing and await orders; and within an hour and a halffrom the time of the arrest orders were received from the commander ofthe Huertista forces at Tampico for the release of the paymaster and hismen. The release was followed by apologies from the commander and laterby an expression of regret by General Huerta himself. General Huertaurged that martial law obtained at the time at Tampico; that orders hadbeen issued that no one should be allowed to land at the IturbideBridge; and that our sailors had no right to land there. Our navalcommanders at the port had not been notified of any such prohibition;and, even if they had been, the only justifiable course open to thelocal authorities would have been to request the paymaster and his crewto withdraw and to lodge a protest with the commanding officer of thefleet. Admiral Mayo regarded the arrest as so serious an affront that hewas not satisfied with the apologies offered, but demanded that the flagof the United States be saluted with special ceremony by the militarycommander of the port. 

The incident cannot be regarded as a trivial one, especially as two ofthe men arrested were taken from the boat itself--that is to say, fromthe territory of the United States--but had it stood by itself it mighthave been attributed to the ignorance or arrogance of a single officer. Unfortunately, it was not an isolated case. A series of incidents haverecently occurred which cannot but create the impression that therepresentatives of General Huerta were willing to go out of their way toshow disregard for the dignity and rights of this Government and feltperfectly safe in doing what they pleased, making free to show in manyways their irritation and contempt. A few days after the incident atTampico an orderly from the U. S. S. _Minnesota_ was arrested at Vera Cruzwhile ashore in uniform to obtain the ship's mail, and was for a timethrown into jail. An official dispatch from this Government to itsembassy at Mexico City was withheld by the authorities of thetelegraphic service until peremptorily demanded by our chargé d'affairesin person. So far as I can learn, such wrongs and annoyances have beensuffered to occur only against representatives of the United States. Ihave heard of no complaints from other Governments of similar treatment. Subsequent explanations and formal apologies did not and could notalter the popular impression, which it is possible it had been theobject of the Huertista authorities to create, that the Government ofthe United States was being singled out, and might be singled out withimpunity, for slights and affronts in retaliation for its refusal torecognize the pretensions of General Huerta to be regarded as theconstitutional provisional President of the Republic of Mexico. 

The manifest danger of such a situation was that such offenses mightgrow from bad to worse until something happened of so gross andintolerable a sort as to lead directly and inevitably to armed conflict. It was necessary that the apologies of General Huerta and hisrepresentatives should go much further, that they should be such as toattract the attention of the whole population to their significance, andsuch as to impress upon General Huerta himself the necessity of seeingto it that no further occasion for explanations and professed regretsshould arise. I, therefore, felt it my duty to sustain Admiral Mayo inthe whole of his demand and to insist that the flag of the United Statesshould be saluted in such a way as to indicate a new spirit and attitudeon the part of the Huertistas. 

Such a salute General Huerta has refused, and I have come to ask yourapproval and support in the course I now purpose to pursue. 

This Government can, I earnestly hope, in no circumstances be forcedinto war with the people of Mexico. Mexico is torn by civil strife. Ifwe are to accept the tests of its own constitution, it has nogovernment. General Huerta has set his power up in the City of Mexico, such as it is, without right and by methods for which there can be nojustification. Only part of the country is under his control. If armedconflict should unhappily come as a result of his attitude of personalresentment toward this Government, we should be fighting only GeneralHuerta and those who adhere to him and give him their support, and ourobject would be only to restore to the people of the distracted Republicthe opportunity to set up again their own laws and their own government. 

But I earnestly hope that war is not now in question. I believe that Ispeak for the American people when I say that we do not desire tocontrol in any degree the affairs of our sister Republic. Our feelingfor the people of Mexico is one of deep and genuine friendship, andeverything that we have so far done or refrained from doing hasproceeded from our desire to help them, not to hinder or embarrass them. We would not wish even to exercise the good offices of friendshipwithout their welcome and consent. The people of Mexico are entitled tosettle their own domestic affairs in their own way, and we sincerelydesire to respect their right. The present situation need have none ofthe grave implications of interference if we deal with it promptly, firmly, and wisely. 

No doubt I could do what is necessary in the circumstances to enforcerespect for our Government without recourse to the Congress, and yet notexceed my constitutional powers as President; but I do not wish to actin a matter possibly of so grave consequence except in close conferenceand coöperation with both the Senate and House. I, therefore, come toask your approval that I should use the armed forces of the UnitedStates in such ways and to such an extent as may be necessary to obtainfrom General Huerta and his adherents the fullest recognition of therights and dignity of the United States, even amidst the distressingconditions now unhappily obtaining in Mexico. 

There can in what we do be no thought of aggression or of selfishaggrandizement. We seek to maintain the dignity and authority of theUnited States only because we wish always to keep our great influenceunimpaired for the uses of liberty, both in the United States andwherever else it may be employed for the benefit of mankind. 

IN THE FIRMAMENT OF MEMORY

[Address at the Services in Memory of those who lost their lives at VeraCruz, Mexico, delivered at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, May 11, 1914. Theroster, of fifteen sailors and four marines, was presented by theSecretary of the Navy, Mr. Daniels. ]

MR. SECRETARY:

I know that the feelings which characterize all who stand about me andthe whole Nation at this hour are not feelings which can be suitablyexpressed in terms of attempted oratory or eloquence. They are thingstoo deep for ordinary speech. For my own part, I have a singular mixtureof feelings. The feeling that is uppermost is one of profound grief thatthese lads should have had to go to their death; and yet there is mixedwith that grief a profound pride that they should have gone as they did, and, if I may say it out of my heart, a touch of envy of those who werepermitted so quietly, so nobly, to do their duty. Have you thought ofit, men? Here is the roster of the Navy--the list of the men, officersand enlisted men and marines--and suddenly there swim nineteen stars outof the list--men who have suddenly been lifted into a firmament ofmemory where we shall always see their names shine, not because theycalled upon us to admire them, but because they served us, withoutasking any questions and in the performance of a duty which is laid uponus as well as upon them. 

Duty is not an uncommon thing, gentlemen. Men are performing it in theordinary walks of life all around us all the time, and they are makinggreat sacrifices to perform it. What gives men like these peculiardistinction is not merely that they did their duty, but that their dutyhad nothing to do with them or their own personal and peculiarinterests. They did not give their lives for themselves. They gave theirlives for us, because we called upon them as a Nation to perform anunexpected duty. That is the way in which men grow distinguished, andthat is the only way, by serving somebody else than themselves. And whatgreater thing could you serve than a Nation such as this we love and areproud of? Are you sorry for these lads? Are you sorry for the way theywill be remembered? Does it not quicken your pulses to think of the listof them? I hope to God none of you may join the list, but if you do youwill join an immortal company. 

So, while we are profoundly sorrowful, and while there goes out of ourhearts a very deep and affectionate sympathy for the friends andrelatives of these lads who for the rest of their lives shall mournthem, though with a touch of pride, we know why we do not go away fromthis occasion cast down, but with our heads lifted and our eyes on thefuture of this country, with absolute confidence of how it will beworked out. Not only upon the mere vague future of this country, butupon the immediate future. We have gone down to Mexico to serve mankindif we can find out the way. We do not want to fight the Mexicans. Wewant to serve the Mexicans if we can, because we know how we would liketo be free, and how we would like to be served if there were friendsstanding by in such case ready to serve us. A war of aggression is not awar in which it is a proud thing to die, but a war of service is a thingin which it is a proud thing to die. 

Notice how truly these men were of our blood. I mean of our Americanblood, which is not drawn from any one country, which is not drawn fromany one stock, which is not drawn from any one language of the modernworld; but free men everywhere have sent their sons and their brothersand their daughters to this country in order to make that greatcompounded Nation which consists of all the sturdy elements and of allthe best elements of the whole globe. I listened again to this list ofthe dead with a profound interest because of the mixture of the names, for the names bear the marks of the several national stocks from whichthese men came. But they are not Irishmen or Germans or Frenchmen orHebrews or Italians any more. They were not when they went to Vera Cruz;they were Americans, every one of them, and with no difference in theirAmericanism because of the stock from which they came. They were in apeculiar sense of our blood, and they proved it by showing that theywere of our spirit--that no matter what their derivation, no matterwhere their people came from, they thought and wished and did the thingsthat were American; and the flag under which they served was a flag inwhich all the blood of mankind is united to make a free Nation. 

War, gentlemen, is only a sort of dramatic representation, a sort ofdramatic symbol, of a thousand forms of duty. I never went into battle;I never was under fire; but I fancy that there are some things just ashard to do as to go under fire. I fancy that it is just as hard to doyour duty when men are sneering at you as when they are shooting at you. When they shoot at you, they can only take your natural life; when theysneer at you, they can wound your living heart, and men who are braveenough, steadfast enough, steady in their principles enough, to go abouttheir duty with regard to their fellow-men, no matter whether there arehisses or cheers, men who can do what Rudyard Kipling in one of hispoems wrote, "Meet with triumph and disaster and treat those twoimpostors just the same, " are men for a nation to be proud of. Morallyspeaking, disaster and triumph are impostors. The cheers of the momentare not what a man ought to think about, but the verdict of hisconscience and of the consciences of mankind. 

When I look at you, I feel as if I also and we all were enlisted men. Not enlisted in your particular branch of the service, but enlisted toserve the country, no matter what may come, even though we may sacrificeour lives in the arduous endeavor. We are expected to put the utmostenergy of every power that we have into the service of our fellow-men, never sparing ourselves, not condescending to think of what is going tohappen to ourselves, but ready, if need be, to go to the utter length ofcomplete self-sacrifice. 

As I stand and look at you to-day and think of these spirits that havegone from us, I know that the road is clearer for the future. These boyshave shown us the way, and it is easier to walk on it because they havegone before and shown us how. May God grant to all of us that vision ofpatriotic service which here in solemnity and grief and pride is bornein upon our hearts and consciences!

MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS

[Delivered at the National Cemetery, Arlington, Va. , May 30, 1914. ]

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:

I have not come here to-day with a prepared address. The committee incharge of the exercises of the day have graciously excused me on thegrounds of public obligations from preparing such an address, but I willnot deny myself the privilege of joining with you in an expression ofgratitude and admiration for the men who perished for the sake of theUnion. They do not need our praise. They do not need that our admirationshould sustain them. There is no immortality that is safer than theirs. We come not for their sakes but for our own, in order that we may drinkat the same springs of inspiration from which they themselves selvesdrank. 

A peculiar privilege came to the men who fought for the Union. There isno other civil war in history, ladies and gentlemen, the stings of whichwere removed before the men who did the fighting passed from the stageof life. So that we owe these men something more than a legalreëstablishment of the Union. We owe them the spiritual reëstablishmentof the Union as well; for they not only reunited States, they reunitedthe spirits of men. That is their unique achievement, unexampledanywhere else in the annals of mankind, that the very men whom theyovercame in battle join in praise and gratitude that the Union wassaved. There is something peculiarly beautiful and peculiarly touchingabout that. Whenever a man who is still trying to devote himself to theservice of the Nation comes into a presence like this, or into a placelike this, his spirit must be peculiarly moved. A mandate is laid uponhim which seems to speak from the very graves themselves. Those whoserve this Nation, whether in peace or in war, should serve it withoutthought of themselves. I can never speak in praise of war, ladies andgentlemen; you would not desire me to do so. But there is this peculiardistinction belonging to the soldier, that he goes into an enterpriseout of which he himself cannot get anything at all. He is givingeverything that he hath, even his life, in order that others may live, not in order that he himself may obtain gain and prosperity. And just sosoon as the tasks of peace are performed in the same spirit ofself-sacrifice and devotion, peace societies will not be necessary. Thevery organization and spirit of society will be a guaranty of peace. 

Therefore this peculiar thing comes about, that we can stand here andpraise the memory of these soldiers in the interest of peace. They setus the example of self-sacrifice, which if followed in peace will makeit unnecessary that men should follow war any more. 

We are reputed to be somewhat careless in our discrimination betweenwords in the use of the English language, and yet it is interesting tonote that there are some words about which we are very careful. Webestow the adjective "great" somewhat indiscriminately. A man who hasmade conquest of his fellow-men for his own gain may display such geniusin war, such uncommon qualities of organization and leadership that wemay call him "great, " but there is a word which we reserve for men ofanother kind and about which we are very careful; that is the word"noble. " We never call a man "noble" who serves only himself; and if youwill look about through all the nations of the world upon the statuesthat men have erected--upon the inscribed tablets where they havewished to keep alive the memory of the citizens whom they desire most tohonor--you will find that almost without exception they have erected thestatue to those who had a splendid surplus of energy and devotion tospend upon their fellow-men. Nobility exists in America without patent. We have no House of Lords, but we have a house of fame to which weelevate those who are the noble men of our race, who, forgetful ofthemselves, study and serve the public interest, who have the courage toface any number and any kind of adversary, to speak what in their heartsthey believe to be the truth. 

We admire physical courage, but we admire above all things else moralcourage. I believe that soldiers will bear me out in saying that bothcome in time of battle. I take it that the moral courage comes in goinginto the battle, and the physical courage in staying in. There arebattles which are just as hard to go into and just as hard to stay in asthe battles of arms, and if the man will but stay and think never ofhimself there will come a time of grateful recollection when men willspeak of him not only with admiration but with that which goes deeper, with affection and with reverence. 

So that this flag calls upon us daily for service, and the more quietand self-denying the service the greater the glory of the flag. We arededicated to freedom, and that freedom means the freedom of the humanspirit. All free spirits ought to congregate on an occasion like this todo homage to the greatness of America as illustrated by the greatness ofher sons. 

It has been a privilege, ladies and gentlemen, to come and say thesesimple words, which I am sure are merely putting your thought intolanguage. I thank you for the opportunity to lay this little wreath ofmine upon these consecrated graves. 

CLOSING A CHAPTER

[Address in which President Wilson accepted the Monument in Memory ofthe Confederate Dead, at Arlington National Cemetery, June 4, 1914. ]. 

MR. CHAIRMAN, MRS. MCLAURIN STEVENS, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:

I assure you that I am profoundly aware of the solemn significance ofthe thing that has now taken place. The Daughters of the Confederacyhave presented a memorial of their dead to the Government of the UnitedStates. I hope that you have noted the history of the conception of thisidea. It was suggested by a President of the United States who hadhimself been a distinguished officer in the Union Army. It wasauthorized by an act of Congress of the United States. The corner-stoneof the monument was laid by a President of the United States elevated tohis position by the votes of the party which had chiefly prided itselfupon sustaining the war for the Union, and who, while Secretary of War, had himself given authority to erect it. And, now, it has fallen to mylot to accept in the name of the great Government, which I am privilegedfor the time to represent, this emblem of a reunited people. I am not somuch happy as proud to participate in this capacity on such anoccasion, --proud that I should represent such a people. Am I mistaken, ladies and gentlemen, in supposing that nothing of this sort could haveoccurred in anything but a democracy? The people of a democracy are notrelated to their rulers as subjects are related to a government. Theyare themselves the sovereign authority, and as they are neighbors ofeach other, quickened by the same influences and moved by the samemotives, they can understand each other. They are shot through with someof the deepest and profoundest instincts of human sympathy. They choosetheir governments; they select their rulers; they live their own life, and they will not have that life disturbed and discolored by fraternalmisunderstandings. I know that a reuniting of spirits like this can takeplace more quickly in our time than in any other because men are nowunited by an easier transmission of those influences which make up thefoundations of peace and of mutual understanding, but no process canwork these effects unless there is a conducting medium. The conductingmedium in this instance is the united heart of a great people. I am notgoing to detain you by trying to repeat any of the eloquent thoughtswhich have moved us this afternoon, for I rejoice in the simplicity ofthe task which is assigned to me. My privilege is this, ladies andgentlemen: To declare this chapter in the history of the United Statesclosed and ended, and I bid you turn with me with your faces to thefuture, quickened by the memories of the past, but with nothing to dowith the contests of the past, knowing, as we have shed our blood uponopposite sides, we now face and admire one another. I do not know howmany years ago it was that the _Century Dictionary_ was published, but Iremember one day in the _Century Cyclopedia of Names_ I had occasion toturn to the name of Robert E. Lee, and I found him there in that bookpublished in New York City simply described as a great American general. The generosity of our judgments did not begin to-day. The generosity ofour judgment was made up soon after this great struggle was over. Mencame and sat together again in the Congress and united in all theefforts of peace and of government, and our solemn duty is to see thateach one of us is in his own consciousness and in his own conduct areplica of this great reunited people. It is our duty and our privilegeto be like the country we represent and, speaking no word of malice, noword of criticism even, stand shoulder to shoulder to lift the burdensof mankind in the future and show the paths of freedom to all theworld. 

ANNAPOLIS COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS

[Delivered before the Graduating Class of the United States NavalAcademy, Annapolis, Maryland, June 5, 1914. ]

MR. SUPERINTENDENT, YOUNG GENTLEMEN, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:

During the greater part of my life I have been associated with youngmen, and on occasions it seems to me without number have faced bodies ofyoungsters going out to take part in the activities of the world, but Ihave a consciousness of a different significance in this occasion fromthat which I have felt on other similar occasions. When I have faced thegraduating classes at universities I have felt that I was facing a greatconjecture. They were going out into all sorts of pursuits and withevery degree of preparation for the particular thing they were expectingto do; some without any preparation at all, for they did not know whatthey expected to do. But in facing you I am facing men who are trainedfor a special thing. You know what you are going to do, and you areunder the eye of the whole Nation in doing it. For you, gentlemen, areto be part of the power of the Government of the United States. There isa very deep and solemn significance in that fact, and I am sure thatevery one of you feels it. The moral is perfectly obvious. Be ready andfit for anything that you have to do. And keep ready and fit. Do notgrow slack. Do not suppose that your education is over because you havereceived your diplomas from the academy. Your education has just begun. Moreover, you are to have a very peculiar privilege which not many ofyour predecessors have had. You are yourselves going to becometeachers. You are going to teach those 50, 000 fellow-countrymen of yourswho are the enlisted men of the Navy. You are going to make them fitterto obey your orders and to serve the country. You are going to make themfitter to see what the orders mean in their outlook upon life and uponthe service; and that is a great privilege, for out of you is going theenergy and intelligence which are going to quicken the whole body of theUnited States Navy. 

I congratulate you upon that prospect, but I want to ask you not to getthe professional point of view. I would ask it of you if you werelawyers; I would ask it of you if you were merchants; I would ask it ofyou whatever you expected to be. Do not get the professional point ofview. There is nothing narrower or more unserviceable than theprofessional point of view, to have the attitude toward life that itcenters in your profession. It does not. Your profession is only one ofthe many activities which are meant to keep the world straight, and tokeep the energy in its blood and in its muscle. We are all of us in thisworld, as I understand it, to set forward the affairs of the wholeworld, though we play a special part in that great function. The Navygoes all over the world, and I think it is to be congratulated uponhaving that sort of illustration of what the world is and what itcontains; and inasmuch as you are going all over the world you ought tobe the better able to see the relation that your country bears to therest of the world. 

It ought to be one of your thoughts all the time that you are sampleAmericans--not merely sample Navy men, not merely sample soldiers, butsample Americans--and that you have the point of view of America withregard to her Navy and her Army; that she is using them as theinstruments of civilization, not as the instruments of aggression. Theidea of America is to serve humanity, and every time you let the Starsand Stripes free to the wind you ought to realize that that is in itselfa message that you are on an errand which other navies have sometimestunes forgotten; not an errand of conquest, but an errand of service. Ialways have the same thought when I look at the flag of the UnitedStates, for I know something of the history of the struggle of mankindfor liberty. When I look at that flag it seems to me as if the whitestripes were strips of parchment upon which are written the rights ofman, and the red stripes the streams of blood by which those rights havebeen made good. Then in the little blue firmament in the corner haveswung out the stars of the States of the American Union. So it is, as itwere, a sort of floating charter that has come down to us fromRunnymede, when men said, "We will not have masters; we will be apeople, and we will seek our own liberty. "

You are not serving a government, gentlemen; you are serving a people. For we who for the time being constitute the Government are merelyinstruments for a little while in the hands of a great Nation whichchooses whom it will to carry out its decrees and who invariably rejectsthe man who forgets the ideals which it intended him to serve. So that Ihope that wherever you go you will have a generous, comprehending loveof the people you come into contact with, and will come back and tellus, if you can, what service the United States can render to theremotest parts of the world; tell us where you see men suffering; tellus where you think advice will lift them up; tell us where you thinkthat the counsel of statesmen may better the fortunes of unfortunatemen; always having it in mind that you are champions of what is rightand fair all 'round for the public welfare, no matter where you are, andthat it is that you are ready to fight for and not merely on the dropof a hat or upon some slight punctilio, but that you are champions ofyour fellow-men, particularly of that great body one hundred millionstrong whom you represent in the United States. 

What do you think is the most lasting impression that those boys down atVera Cruz are going to leave? They have had to use some force--I prayGod it may not be necessary for them to use any more--but do you thinkthat the way they fought is going to be the most lasting impression?Have men not fought ever since the world began? Is there anything new inusing force? The new things in the world are the things that aredivorced from force. The things that show the moral compulsions of thehuman conscience, those are the things by which we have been building upcivilization, not by force. And the lasting impression that those boysare going to leave is this, that they exercise self-control; that theyare ready and diligent to make the place where they went fitter to livein than they found it; that they regarded other people's rights; thatthey did not strut and bluster, but went quietly, like self-respectinggentlemen, about their legitimate work. And the people of Vera Cruz, whofeared the Americans and despised the Americans, are going to get a verydifferent taste in their mouths about the whole thing when the boys ofthe Navy and the Army come away. Is that not something to be proud of, that you know how to use force like men of conscience and likegentlemen, serving your fellow-men and not trying to overcome them? Likethat gallant gentleman who has so long borne the heats and perplexitiesand distresses of the situation in Vera Cruz--Admiral Fletcher. Imention him, because his service there has been longer and so much ofthe early perplexities fell upon him. I have been in almost dailycommunication with Admiral Fletcher, and I have tested his temper. Ihave tested his discretion. I know that he is a man with a touch ofstatesmanship about him, and he has grown bigger in my eye each day as Ihave read his dispatches, for he has sought always to serve the thing hewas trying to do in the temper that we all recognize and love to believeis typically American. 

I challenge you youngsters to go out with these conceptions, knowingthat you are part of the Government and force of the United States andthat men will judge us by you. I am not afraid of the verdict. I cannotlook in your faces and doubt what it will be, but I want you to takethese great engines of force out onto the seas like adventurers enlistedfor the elevation of the spirit of the human race. For that is the onlydistinction that America has. Other nations have been strong, othernations have piled wealth as high as the sky, but they have come intodisgrace because they used their force and their wealth for theoppression of mankind and their own aggrandizement; and America will notbring glory to herself, but disgrace, by following the beaten paths ofhistory. We must strike out upon new paths, and we must count upon yougentlemen to be the explorers who will carry this spirit and spread thismessage all over the seas and in every port of the civilized world. 

You see, therefore, why I said that when I faced you I felt there was aspecial significance. I am not present on an occasion when you are aboutto scatter on various errands. You are all going on the same errand, andI like to feel bound with you in one common organization for the gloryof America. And her glory goes deeper than all the tinsel, goes deeperthan the sound of guns and the clash of sabers; it goes down to the veryfoundations of those things that have made the spirit of men free andhappy and content. 

THE MEANING OF LIBERTY

[Address at Independence Hall, Philadelphia, July 4, 1914. ]

MR. CHAIRMAN AND FELLOW-CITIZENS:

We are assembled to celebrate the one hundred and thirty-eighthanniversary of the birth of the United States. I suppose that we canmore vividly realize the circumstances of that birth standing on thishistoric spot than it would be possible to realize them anywhere else. The Declaration of Independence was written in Philadelphia; it wasadopted in this historic building by which we stand. I have just had theprivilege of sitting in the chair of the great man who presided over thedeliberations of those who gave the declaration to the world. My handrests at this moment upon the table upon which the declaration wassigned. We can feel that we are almost in the visible and tangiblepresence of a great historic transaction. 

Have you ever read the Declaration of Independence or attended withclose comprehension to the real character of it when you have heard itread? If you have, you will know that it is not a Fourth of Julyoration. The Declaration of Independence was a document preliminary towar. It was a vital piece of practical business, not a piece ofrhetoric; and if you will pass beyond those preliminary passages whichwe are accustomed to quote about the rights of men and read into theheart of the document you will see that it is very express and detailed, that it consists of a series of definite specifications concerningactual public business of the day. Not the business of our day, for thematter with which it deals is past, but the business of that firstrevolution by which the Nation was set up, the business of 1776. Itsgeneral statements, its general declarations cannot mean anything to usunless we append to it a similar specific body of particulars as to whatwe consider the essential business of our own day. 

Liberty does not consist, my fellow-citizens, in mere generaldeclarations of the rights of man. It consists in the translation ofthose declarations into definite action. Therefore, standing here wherethe declaration was adopted, reading its businesslike sentences, weought to ask ourselves what there is in it for us. There is nothing init for us unless we can translate it into the terms of our ownconditions and of our own lives. We must reduce it to what the lawyerscall a bill of particulars. It contains a bill of particulars, but thebill of particulars of 1776. If we would keep it alive, we must fill itwith a bill of particulars of the year 1914. 

The task to which we have constantly to readdress ourselves is the taskof proving that we are worthy of the men who drew this great declarationand know what they would have done in our circumstances. Patriotismconsists in some very practical things--practical in that they belong tothe life of every day, that they wear no extraordinary distinction aboutthem, that they are connected with commonplace duty. The way to bepatriotic in America is not only to love America but to love the dutythat lies nearest to our hand and know that in performing it we areserving our country. There are some gentlemen in Washington, forexample, at this very moment who are showing themselves very patrioticin a way which does not attract wide attention but seems to belong tomere everyday obligations. The Members of the House and Senate who stayin hot Washington to maintain a quorum of the Houses and transact theall-important business of the Nation are doing an act of patriotism. Ihonor them for it, and I am glad to stay there and stick by them untilthe work is done. 

It is patriotic, also, to learn what the facts of our national life areand to face them with candor. I have heard a great many facts statedabout the present business condition of this country, for example--agreat many allegations of fact, at any rate, but the allegations do nottally with one another. And yet I know that truth always matches withtruth and when I find some insisting that everything is going wrong andothers insisting that everything is going right, and when I know from awide observation of the general circumstances of the country taken as awhole that things are going extremely well, I wonder what those who arecrying out that things are wrong are trying to do. Are they trying toserve the country, or are they trying to serve something smaller thanthe country? Are they trying to put hope into the hearts of the men whowork and toil every day, or are they trying to plant discouragement anddespair in those hearts? And why do they cry that everything is wrongand yet do nothing to set it right? If they love America and anything iswrong amongst us, it is their business to put their hand with ours tothe task of setting it right. When the facts are known and acknowledged, the duty of all patriotic men is to accept them in candor and to addressthemselves hopefully and confidently to the common counsel which isnecessary to act upon them wisely and in universal concert. 

I have had some experiences in the last fourteen months which have notbeen entirely reassuring. It was universally admitted, for example, myfellow-citizens, that the banking system of this country neededreorganization. We set the best minds that we could find to the task ofdiscovering the best method of reorganization. But we met with hardlyanything but criticism from the bankers of the country; we met withhardly anything but resistance from the majority of those at least whospoke at all concerning the matter. And yet so soon as that act waspassed there was a universal chorus of applause, and the very men whohad opposed the measure joined in that applause. If it was wrong the daybefore it was passed, why was it right the day after it was passed?Where had been the candor of criticism not only, but the concert ofcounsel which makes legislative action vigorous and safe and successful?

It is not patriotic to concert measures against one another; it ispatriotic to concert measures for one another. 

In one sense the Declaration of Independence has lost its significance. It has lost its significance as a declaration of national independence. Nobody outside of America believed when it was uttered that we couldmake good our independence; now nobody anywhere would dare to doubt thatwe are independent and can maintain our independence. As a declarationof independence, therefore, it is a mere historic document. Ourindependence is a fact so stupendous that it can be measured only by thesize and energy and variety and wealth and power of one of the greatestnations in the world. But it is one thing to be independent and it isanother thing to know what to do with your independence. It is one thingto come to your majority and another thing to know what you are going todo with your life and your energies; and one of the most seriousquestions for sober-minded men to address themselves to in the UnitedStates is this: What are we going to do with the influence and power ofthis great Nation? Are we going to play the old role of using that powerfor our aggrandizement and material benefit only? You know what that maymean. It may upon occasion mean that we shall use it to make thepeoples of other nations suffer in the way in which we said it wasintolerable to suffer when we uttered our Declaration of Independence. 

The Department of State at Washington is constantly called upon to backup the commercial enterprises and the industrial enterprises of theUnited States in foreign countries, and it at one time went so far inthat direction that all its diplomacy came to be designated as "dollardiplomacy. " It was called upon to support every man who wanted to earnanything anywhere if he was an American. But there ought to be a limitto that. There is no man who is more interested than I am in carryingthe enterprise of American business men to every quarter of the globe. Iwas interested in it long before I was suspected of being a politician. I have been preaching it year after year as the great thing that lay inthe future for the United States, to show her wit and skill andenterprise and influence in every country in the world. But observe thelimit to all that which is laid upon us perhaps more than upon any othernation in the world. We set this Nation up, at any rate we professed toset it up, to vindicate the rights of men. We did not name anydifferences between one race and another. We did not set up any barriersagainst any particular people. We opened our gates to all the world andsaid, "Let all men who wish to be free come to us and they will bewelcome. " We said, "This independence of ours is not a selfish thing forour own exclusive private use. It is for everybody to whom we can findthe means of extending it. " We cannot with that oath taken in our youth, we cannot with that great ideal set before us when we were a youngpeople and numbered only a scant 3, 000, 000, take upon ourselves, nowthat we are 100, 000, 000 strong, any other conception of duty than wethen entertained. If American enterprise in foreign countries, particularly in those foreign countries which are not strong enough toresist us, takes the shape of imposing upon and exploiting the mass ofthe people of that country it ought to be checked and not encouraged. Iam willing to get anything for an American that money and enterprise canobtain except the suppression of the rights of other men. I will nothelp any man buy a power which he ought not to exercise over hisfellow-beings. 

You know, my fellow-countrymen, what a big question there is in Mexico. Eighty-five per cent of the Mexican people have never been allowed tohave any genuine participation in their own Government or to exerciseany substantial rights with regard to the very land they live upon. Allthe rights that men most desire have been exercised by the other fifteenper cent. Do you suppose that that circumstance is not sometimes in mythought? I know that the American people have a heart that will beatjust as strong for those millions in Mexico as it will beat, or hasbeaten, for any other millions elsewhere in the world, and that whenonce they conceive what is at stake in Mexico they will know what oughtto be done in Mexico. I hear a great deal said about the loss ofproperty in Mexico and the loss of the lives of foreigners, and Ideplore these things with all my heart. Undoubtedly, upon the conclusionof the present disturbed conditions in Mexico those who have beenunjustly deprived of their property or in any wise unjustly put uponought to be compensated. Men's individual rights have no doubt beeninvaded, and the invasion of those rights has been attended by manydeplorable circumstances which ought sometime, in the proper way, to beaccounted for. But back of it all is the struggle of a people to comeinto its own, and while we look upon the incidents in the foregroundlet us not forget the great tragic reality in the background whichtowers above the whole picture. 

A patriotic American is a man who is not niggardly and selfish in thethings that he enjoys that make for human liberty and the rights of man. He wants to share them with the whole world, and he is never so proud ofthe great flag under which he lives as when it comes to mean to otherpeople as well as to himself a symbol of hope and liberty. I would beashamed of this flag if it ever did anything outside America that wewould not permit it to do inside of America. 

The world is becoming more complicated every day, my fellow-citizens. Noman ought to be foolish enough to think that he understands it all. And, therefore, I am glad that there are some simple things in the world. Oneof the simple things is principle. Honesty is a perfectly simple thing. It is hard for me to believe that in most circumstances when a man has achoice of ways he does not know which is the right way and which is thewrong way. No man who has chosen the wrong way ought even to come intoIndependence Square; it is holy ground which he ought not to tread upon. He ought not to come where immortal voices have uttered the greatsentences of such a document as this Declaration of Independence uponwhich rests the liberty of a whole nation. 

And so I say that it is patriotic sometimes to prefer the honor of thecountry to its material interest. Would you rather be deemed by all thenations of the world incapable of keeping your treaty obligations inorder that you might have free tolls for American ships? The treatyunder which we gave up that right may have been a mistaken treaty, butthere was no mistake about its meaning. 

When I have made a promise as a man I try to keep it, and I know of noother rule permissible to a nation. The most distinguished nation inthe world is the nation that can and will keep its promises even to itsown hurt. And I want to say parenthetically that I do not think anybodywas hurt. I cannot be enthusiastic for subsidies to a monopoly, but letthose who are enthusiastic for subsidies ask themselves whether theyprefer subsidies to unsullied honor. 

The most patriotic man, ladies and gentlemen, is sometimes the man whogoes in the direction that he thinks right even when he sees half theworld against him. It is the dictate of patriotism to sacrifice yourselfif you think that that is the path of honor and of duty. Do not blameothers if they do not agree with you. Do not die with bitterness in yourheart because you did not convince the rest of the world, but die happybecause you believe that you tried to serve your country by not sellingyour soul. Those were grim days, the days of 1776. Those gentlemen didnot attach their names to the Declaration of Independence on this tableexpecting a holiday on the next day, and that 4th of July was not itselfa holiday. They attached their signatures to that significant documentknowing that if they failed it was certain that every one of them wouldhang for the failure. They were committing treason in the interest ofthe liberty of 3, 000, 000 people in America. All the rest of the worldwas against them and smiled with cynical incredulity at the audaciousundertaking. Do you think that if they could see this great Nation nowthey would regret anything that they then did to draw the gaze of ahostile world upon them? Every idea must be started by somebody, and itis a lonely thing to start anything. Yet if it is in you, you must startit if you have a man's blood in you and if you love the country that youprofess to be working for. 

I am sometimes very much interested when I see gentlemen supposing thatpopularity is the way to success in America. The way to success in thisgreat country, with its fair judgments, is to show that you are notafraid of anybody except God and his final verdict. If I did not believethat, I would not believe in democracy. If I did not believe that, Iwould not believe that people can govern themselves. If I did notbelieve that the moral judgment would be the last judgment, the finaljudgment, in the minds of men as well as the tribunal of God, I couldnot believe in popular government. But I do believe these things, and, therefore, I earnestly believe in the democracy not only of America butof every awakened people that wishes and intends to govern and controlits own affairs. 

It is very inspiring, my friends, to come to this that may be called theoriginal fountain of independence and liberty in American and here drinkdraughts of patriotic feeling which seem to renew the very blood inone's veins. Down in Washington sometimes when the days are hot and thebusiness presses intolerably and there are so many things to do that itdoes not seem possible to do anything in the way it ought to be done, itis always possible to lift one's thought above the task of the momentand, as it were, to realize that great thing of which we are all parts, the great body of American feeling and American principle. No man coulddo the work that has to be done in Washington if he allowed himself tobe separated from that body of principle. He must make himself feel thathe is a part of the people of the United States, that he is trying tothink not only for them, but with them, and then he cannot feel lonely. He not only cannot feel lonely but he cannot feel afraid of anything. 

My dream is that as the years go on and the world knows more and more ofAmerica it will also drink at these fountains of youth and renewal; thatit also will turn to America for those moral inspirations which lie atthe basis of all freedom; that the world will never fear America unlessit feels that it is engaged in some enterprise which is inconsistentwith the rights of humanity; and that America will come into the fulllight of the day when all shall know that she puts human rights aboveall other rights and that her flag is the flag not only of America butof humanity. 

What other great people has devoted itself to this exalted ideal? Towhat other nation in the world can all eyes look for an instant sympathythat thrills the whole body politic when men anywhere are fighting fortheir rights? I do not know that there will ever be a declaration ofindependence and of grievances for mankind, but I believe that if anysuch document is ever drawn it will be drawn in the spirit of theAmerican Declaration of Independence, and that America has lifted highthe light which will shine unto all generations and guide the feet ofmankind to the goal of justice and liberty and peace. 

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

[An appeal to the citizens of the Republic, requesting their assistancein maintaining a state of neutrality during the European War, August 20, 1914. ]

MY FELLOW-COUNTRYMEN:

I suppose that every thoughtful man in America has asked himself, duringthese last troubled weeks, what influence the European war may exertupon the United States, and I take the liberty of addressing a few wordsto you in order to point out that it is entirely within our own choicewhat its effects upon us will be and to urge very earnestly upon you thesort of speech and conduct which will best safeguard the Nation againstdistress and disaster. 

The effect of the war upon the United States will depend upon whatAmerican citizens say and do. Every man who really loves America willact and speak in the true spirit of neutrality, which is the spirit ofimpartiality and fairness and friendliness to all concerned. The spiritof the Nation in this critical matter will be determined largely by whatindividuals and society and those gathered in public meetings do andsay, upon what newspapers and magazines contain, upon what ministersutter in their pulpits, and men proclaim as their opinions on thestreet. 

The people of the United States are drawn from many nations, and chieflyfrom the nations now at war. It is natural and inevitable that thereshould be the utmost variety of sympathy and desire among them withregard to the issues and circumstances of the conflict. Some will wishone nation, others another, to succeed in the momentous struggle. Itwill be easy to excite passion and difficult to allay it. Thoseresponsible for exciting it will assume a heavy responsibility, responsibility for no less a thing than that the people of the UnitedStates, whose love of their country and whose loyalty to its Governmentshould unite them as Americans all, bound in honor and affection tothink first of her and her interests, may be divided in camps of hostileopinion, hot against each other, involved in the war itself in impulseand opinion if not in action. 

Such divisions among us would be fatal to our peace of mind and mightseriously stand in the way of the proper performance of our duty as theone great nation at peace, the one people holding itself ready to play apart of impartial mediation and speak the counsels of peace andaccommodation, not as a partisan, but as a friend. 

I venture, therefore, my fellow countrymen, to speak a solemn word ofwarning to you against that deepest, most subtle, most essential breachof neutrality which may spring out of partisanship, out of passionatelytaking sides. The United States must be neutral in fact as well as inname during these days that are to try men's souls. We must be impartialin thought as well as in action, must put a curb upon our sentiments aswell as upon every transaction that might be construed as a preferenceof one party to the struggle before another. 

My thought is of America. I am speaking, I feel sure, the earnest wishand purpose of every thoughtful American that this great country ofours, which is, of course, the first in our thoughts and in our hearts, should show herself in this time of peculiar trial a Nation fit beyondothers to exhibit the fine poise of undisturbed judgment, the dignity ofself-control, the efficiency of dispassionate action; a Nation thatneither sits in judgment upon others nor is disturbed in her owncounsels and which keeps herself fit and free to do what is honest anddisinterested and truly serviceable for the peace of the world. 

Shall we not resolve to put upon ourselves the restraints which willbring to our people the happiness and the great and lasting influencefor peace we covet for them?

APPEAL FOR ADDITIONAL REVENUE

[Address delivered at a joint session of the two Houses of Congress, September 4, 1914. ]

GENTLEMEN OF THE CONGRESS:

I come to you to-day to discharge a duty which I wish with all my heartI might have been spared; but it is a very clear duty, and therefore Iperform it without hesitation or apology. I come to ask very earnestlythat additional revenue be provided for the Government. 

During the month of August there was, as compared with the correspondingmonth of last year, a falling off of $10, 629, 538 in the revenuescollected from customs. A continuation of this decrease in the sameproportion throughout the current fiscal year would probably mean a lossof customs revenues of from sixty to one hundred millions. I need nottell you to what this falling off is due. It is due, in chief part, notto the reductions recently made in the customs duties, but to the greatdecrease in importations; and that is due to the extraordinary extent ofthe industrial area affected by the present war in Europe. Conditionshave arisen which no man foresaw; they affect the whole world ofcommerce and economic production; and they must be faced and dealt with. 

It would be very unwise to postpone dealing with them. Delay in such amatter and in the particular circumstances in which we now findourselves as a nation might involve consequences of the mostembarrassing and deplorable sort, for which I, for one, would not careto be responsible. It would be very dangerous in the presentcircumstances to create a moment's doubt as to the strength andsufficiency of the Treasury of the United States, its ability toassist, to steady, and sustain the financial operations of the country'sbusiness. If the Treasury is known, or even thought, to be weak, wherewill be our peace of mind? The whole industrial activity of the countrywould be chilled and demoralized. Just now the peculiarly difficultfinancial problems of the moment are being successfully dealt with, withgreat self-possession and good sense and very sound judgment; but theyare only in process of being worked out. If the process of solution isto be completed, no one must be given reason to doubt the solidity andadequacy of the Treasury of the Government which stands behind the wholemethod by which our difficulties are being met and handled. 

The Treasury itself could get along for a considerable period, no doubt, without immediate resort to new sources of taxation. But at what cost tothe business of the community? Approximately $75, 000, 000, a large partof the present Treasury balance, is now on deposit with national banksdistributed throughout the country. It is deposited, of course, on call. I need not point out to you what the probable consequences ofinconvenience and distress and confusion would be if the diminishingincome of the Treasury should make it necessary rapidly to withdrawthese deposits. And yet without additional revenue that plainly mightbecome necessary, and the time when it became necessary could not becontrolled or determined by the convenience of the business of thecountry. It would have to be determined by the operations andnecessities of the Treasury itself. Such risks are not necessary andought not to be run. We cannot too scrupulously or carefully safeguard afinancial situation which is at best, while war continues in Europe, difficult and abnormal. Hesitation and delay are the worst forms of badpolicy under such conditions. 

And we ought not to borrow. We ought to resort to taxation, however wemay regret the necessity of putting additional temporary burdens on ourpeople. To sell bonds would be to make a most untimely and unjustifiabledemand on the money market; untimely, because this is manifestly not thetime to withdraw working capital from other uses to pay the Government'sbills; unjustifiable, because unnecessary. The country is able to payany just and reasonable taxes without distress. And to every other formof borrowing, whether for long periods or, for short, there is the sameobjection. These are not the circumstances, this is at this particularmoment and in this particular exigency not the market, to borrow largesums of money. What we are seeking is to ease and assist every financialtransaction, not to add a single additional embarrassment to thesituation. The people of this country are both intelligent andprofoundly patriotic. They are ready to meet the present conditions inthe right way and to support the Government with generous self-denial. They know and understand, and will be intolerant only of those who dodgeresponsibility or are not frank with them. 

The occasion is not of our own making. We had no part in making it. Butit is here. It affects us as directly and palpably almost as if we wereparticipants in the circumstances which gave rise to it. We must acceptthe inevitable with calm judgment and unruffled spirits, like menaccustomed to deal with the unexpected, habituated to take care ofthemselves, masters of their own affairs and their own fortunes. Weshall pay the bill, though we did not deliberately incur it. 

In order to meet every demand upon the Treasury without delay orperadventure and in order to keep the Treasury strong, unquestionablystrong, and strong throughout the present anxieties, I respectfullyurge that an additional revenue of $100, 000, 000 be raised throughinternal taxes devised in your wisdom to meet the emergency. The onlysuggestion I take the liberty of making is that such sources of revenuebe chosen as will begin to yield at once and yield with a certain andconstant flow. 

I cannot close without expressing the confidence with which I approach aCongress, with regard to this or any other matter, which has shown sountiring a devotion to public duty, which has responded to the needs ofthe Nation throughout a long season despite inevitable fatigue andpersonal sacrifice, and so large a proportion of whose Members havedevoted their whole time and energy to the business of the country. 

THE OPINION OF THE WORLD

[Address before the American Bar Association, in Continental Hall, October 20, 1914. ]

MR. PRESIDENT, GENTLEMEN OF THE AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION:

I am very deeply gratified by the greeting that your president has givenme and by your response to it. My only strength lies in your confidence. 

We stand now in a peculiar case. Our first thought, I suppose, aslawyers, is of international law, of those bonds of right and principlewhich draw the nations together and hold the community of the world tosome standards of action. We know that we see in international law, asit were, the moral processes by which law itself came into existence. Iknow that as a lawyer I have myself at times felt that there was no realcomparison between the law of a nation and the law of nations, becausethe latter lacked the sanction that gave the former strength andvalidity. And yet, if you look into the matter more closely, you willfind that the two have the same foundations, and that those foundationsare more evident and conspicuous in our day than they have ever beenbefore. 

The opinion of the world is the mistress of the world; and the processesof international law are the slow processes by which opinion works itswill. What impresses me is the constant thought that that is thetribunal at the bar of which we all sit. I would call your attention, incidentally, to the circumstance that it does not observe the ordinaryrules of evidence; which has sometimes suggested to me that the ordinaryrules of evidence had shown some signs of growing antique. Everything, rumor included, is heard in this court, and the standard of judgment isnot so much the character of the testimony as the character of thewitness. The motives are disclosed, the purposes are conjectured, andthat opinion is finally accepted which seems to be, not the best foundedin law, perhaps, but the best founded in integrity of character and ofmorals. That is the process which is slowly working its will upon theworld; and what we should be watchful of is not so much jealousinterests as sound principles of action. The disinterested course isalways the biggest course to pursue not only, but it is in the long runthe most profitable course to pursue. If you can establish yourcharacter, you can establish your credit. 

What I wanted to suggest to this association, in bidding them veryhearty welcome to the city, is whether we sufficiently apply these sameideas to the body of municipal law which we seek to administer. Citations seem to play so much larger a role now than principle. Therewas a time when the thoughtful eye of the judge rested upon the changesof social circumstances and almost palpably saw the law arise out ofhuman life. Have we got to a time when the only way to change law is bystatute? The changing of law by statute seems to me like mending agarment with a patch, whereas law should grow by the life that is in it, not by the life that is outside of it. 

I once said to a lawyer with whom I was discussing some question ofprecedent, and in whose presence I was venturing to doubt the rationalvalidity, at any rate, of the particular precedents he cited, "Afterall, isn't our object justice?" And he said, "God forbid! We should bevery much confused if we made that our standard. Our standard is to findout what the rule has been and how the rule that has been applies to thecase that is. " I should hate to think that the law was based entirelyupon "has beens. " I should hate to think that the law did not derive itsimpulse from looking forward rather than from looking backward, or, rather, that it did not derive its instruction from looking about andseeing what the circumstances of man actually are and what the impulsesof justice necessarily are. 

Understand me, gentlemen, I am not venturing in this presence to impeachthe law. For the present, by the force of circumstances, I am in partthe embodiment of the law, and it would be very awkward to disavowmyself. But I do wish to make this intimation, that in this time ofworld change, in this time when we are going to find out just how, inwhat particulars, and to what extent the real facts of human life andthe real moral judgments of mankind prevail, it is worth while lookinginside our municipal law and seeing whether the judgments of the law aremade square with the moral judgments of mankind. For I believe that weare custodians, not of commands, but of a spirit. We are custodians ofthe spirit of righteousness, of the spirit of equal-handed justice, ofthe spirit of hope which believes in the perfectibility of the law withthe perfectibility of human life itself. 

Public life, like private life, would be very dull and dry if it werenot for this belief in the essential beauty of the human spirit and thebelief that the human spirit could be translated into action and intoordinance. Not entire. You cannot go any faster than you can advance theaverage moral judgments of the mass, but you can go at least as fast asthat, and you can see to it that you do not lag behind the average moraljudgments of the mass. I have in my life dealt with all sorts andconditions of men, and I have found that the flame of moral judgmentburned just as bright in the man of humble life and limited experienceas in the scholar and the man of affairs. And I would like his voicealways to be heard, not as a witness, not as speaking in his own case, but as if he were the voice of men in general, in our courts of justice, as well as the voice of the lawyers, remembering what the law has been. My hope is that, being stirred to the depths by the extraordinarycircumstances of the time in which we live, we may recover from thosedepths something of a renewal of that vision of the law with which menmay be supposed to have started out in the old days of the oracles, whocommuned with the intimations of divinity. 

THE POWER OF CHRISTIAN YOUNG MEN

[Address at the Young Men's Christian Association's Celebration, Pittsburgh, October 24, 1914. ]

MR. PRESIDENT, MR. PORTER, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:

I feel almost as if I were a truant, being away from Washington to-day, but I thought that perhaps if I were absent the Congress would have themore leisure to adjourn. I do not ordinarily open my office atWashington on Saturday. Being a schoolmaster, I am accustomed to aSaturday holiday, and I thought I could not better spend a holiday thanby showing at least something of the true direction of my affections;for by long association with the men who have worked for thisorganization I can say that it has enlisted my deep affection. 

I am interested in it for various reasons. First of all, because it isan association of young men. I have had a good deal to do with young menin my time, and I have formed an impression of them which I believe tobe contrary to the general impression. They are generally thought to bearch radicals. As a matter of fact, they are the most conservativepeople I have ever dealt with. Go to a college community and try tochange the least custom of that little world and find how theconservatives will rush at you. Moreover, young men are embarrassed byhaving inherited their fathers' opinions. I have often said that the useof a university is to make young gentlemen as unlike their fathers aspossible. I do not say that with the least disrespect for the fathers;but every man who is old enough to have a son in college is old enoughto have become very seriously immersed in some particular business andis almost certain to have caught the point of view of that particularbusiness. And it is very useful to his son to be taken out of thatnarrow circle, conducted to some high place where he may see the generalmap of the world and of the interests of mankind, and there shown howbig the world is and how much of it his father may happen to haveforgotten. It would be worth while for men, middle-aged and old, todetach themselves more frequently from the things that command theirdaily attention and to think of the sweeping tides of humanity. 

Therefore I am interested in this association, because it is intended tobring young men together before any crust has formed over them, beforethey have been hardened to any particular occupation, before they havecaught an inveterate point of view; while they still have a searchlightthat they can swing and see what it reveals of all the circumstances ofthe hidden world. 

I am the more interested in it because it is an association of young menwho are Christians. I wonder if we attach sufficient importance toChristianity as a mere instrumentality in the life of mankind. For one, I am not fond of thinking of Christianity as the means of saving_individual_ souls. I have always been very impatient of processes andinstitutions which said that their purpose was to put every man in theway of developing his character. My advice is: Do not think about yourcharacter. If you will think about what you ought to do for otherpeople, your character will take care of itself. Character is aby-product, and any man who devotes himself to its cultivation in hisown case will become a selfish prig. The only way your powers can becomegreat is by exerting them outside the circle of your own narrow, special, selfish interests. And that is the reason of Christianity. Christ came into the world to save others, not to save himself; and noman is a true Christian who does not think constantly of how he can lifthis brother, how he can assist his friend, how he can enlighten mankind, how he can make virtue the rule of conduct in the circle in which helives. An association merely of young men might be an association thathad its energies put forth in every direction, but an association ofChristian young men is an association meant to put its shoulders underthe world and lift it, so that other men may feel that they havecompanions in bearing the weight and heat of the day; that other men mayknow that there are those who care for them, who would go into places ofdifficulty and danger to rescue them, who regard themselves as theirbrother's keeper. 

And, then, I am glad that it is an association. Every word of its titlemeans an element of strength. Young men are strong. Christian young menare the strongest kind of young men, and when they associate themselvestogether they have the incomparable strength of organization. The YoungMen's Christian Association once excited, perhaps it is not too much tosay, the hostility of the organized churches of the Christian world, because the movement looked as if it were so non-sectarian, as if itwere so outside the ecclesiastical field, that perhaps it was an effortto draw young men away from the churches and to substitute thisorganization for the great bodies of Christian people who joinedthemselves in the Christian denominations. But after a while it appearedthat it was a great instrumentality that belonged to all the churches;that it was a common instrument for sending the light of Christianityout into the world in its most practical form, drawing young men whowere strangers into places where they could have companionship thatstimulated them and suggestions that kept them straight and occupationsthat amused them without vicious practice; and then, by surroundingthemselves with an atmosphere of purity and of simplicity of life, catchsomething of a glimpse of the great ideal which Christ lifted when Hewas elevated upon the cross. 

I remember hearing a very wise man say once, a man grown old in theservice of a great church, that he had never taught his son religiondogmatically at any time; that he and the boy's mother had agreed thatif the atmosphere of that home did not make a Christian of the boy, nothing that they could say would make a Christian of him. They knewthat Christianity was catching, and if they did not have it, it wouldnot be communicated. If they did have it, it would penetrate while theboy slept, almost; while he was unconscious of the sweet influences thatwere about him, while he reckoned nothing of instruction, but merelybreathed into his lungs the wholesome air of a Christian home. That isthe principle of the Young Men's Christian Association--to make a placewhere the atmosphere makes great ideals contagious. That is the reasonthat I said, though I had forgotten that I said it, what is quoted onthe outer page of the program--that you can test a modern community bythe degree of its interest in its Young Men's Christian Association. Youcan test whether it knows what road it wants to travel or not. You cantest whether it is deeply interested in the spiritual and essentialprosperity of its rising generation. I know of no test that can be moreconclusively put to a community than that. 

I want to suggest to the young men of this association that it is theduty of young men not only to combine for the things that are good, butto combine in a militant spirit. There is a fine passage in one ofMilton's prose writings which I am sorry to say I cannot quote, but themeaning of which I can give you, and it is worth hearing. [E] He saysthat he has no patience with a cloistered virtue that does not go outand seek its adversary. Ah, how tired I am of the men who are merely onthe defensive, who hedge themselves in, who perhaps enlarge the hedgeenough to include their little family circle and ward off all the evilinfluences of the world from that loved and hallowed group. How tired Iam of the men whose virtue is selfish because it is merelyself-protective! And how much I wish that men by the hundred thousandmight volunteer to go out and seek an adversary and subdue him!

I have had the fortune to take part in affairs of a considerable varietyof sorts, and I have tried to hate as few persons as possible, but thereis an exquisite combination of contempt and hate that I have for aparticular kind of person, and that is the moral coward. I wish we couldgive all our cowards a perpetual vacation. Let them go off and sit onthe side lines and see us play the game; and put them off the field ifthey interfere with the game. They do nothing but harm, and they do itby that most subtle and fatal thing of all, that of taking the momentumand the spirit and the forward dash out of things. A man who is virtuousand a coward has no marketable virtue about him. The virtue, I repeat, which is merely self-defensive is not serviceable even, I suspect, tohimself. For how a man can swallow and not taste bad when he is a cowardand thinking only of himself I cannot imagine. 

Be militant! Be an organization that is going to do things! If you canfind older men who will give you countenance and acceptable leadership, follow them; but if you cannot, organize separately and dispense withthem. There are only two sorts of men worth associating with whensomething is to be done. Those are young men and men who never grow old. Now, if you find men who have grown old, about whom the crust hashardened, whose hinges are stiff, whose minds always have their eye overthe shoulder thinking of things as they _were_ done, do not haveanything to do with them. It would not be Christian to exclude them fromyour organization, but merely use them to pad the roll. If you can findolder men who will lead you acceptably and keep you in countenance, I ambound as an older man to advise you to follow them. But suit yourselves. Do not follow people that stand still. Just remind them that this is nota statical proposition; it is a movement, and if they cannot get a moveon them they are not serviceable. 

Life, gentlemen--the life of society, the life of the world--hasconstantly to be fed from the bottom. It has to be fed by those greatsources of strength which are constantly rising in new generations. Redblood has to be pumped into it. New fiber has to be supplied. That isthe reason I have always said that I believed in popular institutions. If you can guess beforehand whom your rulers are going to be, you canguess with a very great certainty that most of them will not be fit torule. The beauty of popular institutions is that you do not know wherethe man is going to come from, and you do not care so he is the rightman. You do not know whether he will come from the avenue or from thealley. You do not know whether he will come from the city or the farm. You do not know whether you will ever have heard that name before ornot. Therefore you do not limit at any point your supply of newstrength. You do not say it has got to come through the blood of aparticular family or through the processes of a particular training, orby anything except the native impulse and genius of the man himself. Thehumblest hovel, therefore, may produce you your greatest man. A veryhumble hovel did produce you one of your greatest men. That is theprocess of life, this constant surging up of the new strength ofunnamed, unrecognized, uncatalogued men who are just getting into therunning, who are just coming up from the masses of the unrecognizedmultitude. You do not know when you will see above the level masses ofthe crowd some great stature lifted head and shoulders above the rest, shouldering its way, not violently but gently, to the front and saying, "Here am I; follow me. " And his voice will be your voice, his thoughtwill be your thought, and you will follow him as if you were followingthe best things in yourselves. 

When I think of an association of Christian young men I wonder that ithas not already turned the world upside down. I wonder, not that it hasdone so much, for it has done a great deal, but that it has done solittle; and I can only conjecture that it does not realize its ownstrength. I can only imagine that it has not yet got its pace. I wish Icould believe, and I do believe, that at seventy it is just reaching itsmajority, and that from this time on a dream greater even than GeorgeWilliams[F] ever dreamed will be realized in the great accumulatingmomentum of Christian men throughout the world. For, gentlemen, this isan age in which the principles of men who utter public opinion dominatethe world. It makes no difference what is done for the time being. Afterthe struggle is over the jury will sit, and nobody can corrupt thatjury. 

At one time I tried to write history. I did not know enough to write it, but I knew from experience how hard it was to find an historian out, andI trusted I would not be found out. I used to have this comfortablethought as I saw men struggling in the public arena. I used to think tomyself, "This is all very well and very interesting. You probably assessyourself in such and such a way. Those who are your partisans assess youthus and so. Those who are your opponents urge a different verdict. Butit does not make very much difference, because after you are dead andgone some quiet historian will sit in a secluded room and tell mankindfor the rest of time just what to think about you, and his verdict, notthe verdict of your partisans and not the verdict of your opponents, will be the verdict of posterity. " I say that I used to say that tomyself. It very largely was not so. And yet it was true in this sense:If the historian really speaks the judgment of the succeedinggeneration, then he really speaks the judgment also of the generationsthat succeed it, and his assessment, made without the passion of thetime, made without partisan feeling in the matter--in othercircumstances, when the air is cool--is the judgment of mankind uponyour actions. 

Now, is it not very important that we who shall constitute a portion ofthe jury should get our best judgments to work and base them uponChristian forbearance and Christian principles, upon the idea that it isimpossible by sophistication to establish that a thing that is wrong isright? And yet, while we are going to judge with the absolute standardof righteousness, we are going to judge with Christian feeling, beingmen of a like sort ourselves, suffering the same temptations, having thesame weaknesses, knowing the same passions; and while we do notcondemn, we are going to seek to say and to live the truth. What I amhoping for is that these seventy years have just been a running start, and that now there will be a great rush of Christian principle upon thestrongholds of evil and of wrong in the world. Those strongholds are notas strong as they look. Almost every vicious man is afraid of society, and if you once open the door where he is, he will run. All you have todo is to fight, not with cannon but with light. 

May I illustrate it in this way? The Government of the United States hasjust succeeded in concluding a large number of treaties with the leadingnations of the world, the sum and substance of which is this, thatwhenever any trouble arises the light shall shine on it for a yearbefore anything is done; and my prediction is that after the light hasshone on it for a year it will not be necessary to do anything; thatafter we know what happened, then we will know who was right and who waswrong. I believe that light is the greatest sanitary influence in theworld. That, I suppose, is scientific commonplace, because if you wantto make a place wholesome the best instrument you can use is the sun; tolet his rays in, let him search out all the miasma that may lurk there. So with moral light: It is the most wholesome and rectifying, as well asthe most revealing, thing in the world, provided it be genuine morallight; not the light of inquisitiveness, not the light of the man wholikes to turn up ugly things, not the light of the man who disturbs whatis corrupt for the mere sake of the sensation that he creates bydisturbing it, but the moral light, the light of the man who disclosesit in order that all the sweet influences of the world may go in andmake it better. 

That, in my judgment, is what the Young Men's Christian Association cando. It can point out to its members the things that are wrong. It canguide the feet of those who are going astray; and when its members haverealized the power of the Christian principle, then they will not be menif they do not unite to see that the rest of the world experiences thesame emancipation and reaches the same happiness of release. 

I believe in the Young Men's Christian Association because I believe inthe progress of moral ideas in the world; and I do not know that I amsure of anything else. When you are after something and have formulatedit and have done the very best thing you know how to do you have got tobe sure for the time being that that is the thing to do. But you are afool if in the back of your head you do not know it is possible that youare mistaken. All that you can claim is that that is the thing as yousee it now and that you cannot stand still; that you must push forwardthe things that are right. It may turn out that you made mistakes, butwhat you do know is your direction, and you are sure you are moving inthat way. I was once a college reformer, until discouraged, and Iremember a classmate of mine saying, "Why, man, can't you let anythingalone?" I said, "I let everything alone that you can show me is notitself moving in the wrong direction, but I am not going to let thosethings alone that I see are going downhill"; and I borrowed thisillustration from an ingenious writer. He says, "If you have a post thatis painted white and want to keep it white, you cannot let it alone; andif anybody says to you, 'Why don't you let that post alone, ' you willsay, 'Because I want it to stay white, and therefore I have got to paintit at least every second year. '" There isn't anything in this world thatwill not change if you absolutely let it alone, and therefore you haveconstantly to be attending to it to see that it is being taken care ofin the right way and that, if it is part of the motive force of theworld, it is moving in the right direction. 

That means that eternal vigilance is the price, not only of liberty, butof a great many other things. It is the price of everything that isgood. It is the price of one's own soul. It is the price of the souls ofthe people you love; and when it comes down to the final reckoning youhave a standard that is immutable. What shall a man give in exchange forhis own soul? Will he sell that? Will he consent to see another man sellhis soul? Will he consent to see the conditions of his community suchthat men's souls are debauched and trodden underfoot in the mire? Whatshall he give in exchange for his own soul, or any other man's soul? Andsince the world, the world of affairs, the world of society, is nothingless and nothing more than all of us put together, it is a greatenterprise for the salvation of the soul in this world as well as in thenext. There is a text in Scripture that has always interested meprofoundly. It says godliness is profitable in this life as well as inthe life that is to come; and if you do not start it in this life, itwill not reach the life that is to come. Your measurements, yourdirections, your whole momentum, have to be established before you reachthe next world. This world is intended as the place in which we shallshow that we know how to grow in the stature of manliness and ofrighteousness. 

I have come here to bid Godspeed to the great work of the Young Men'sChristian Association. I love to think of the gathering force of suchthings as this in the generations to come. If a man had to measure theaccomplishments of society, the progress of reform, the speed of theworld's betterment, by the few little things that happened in his ownlife, by the trifling things that he can contribute to accomplish, hewould indeed feel that the cost was much greater than the result. But noman can look at the past of the history of this world without seeing avision of the future of the history of this world; and when you think ofthe accumulated moral forces that have made one age better than anotherage in the progress of mankind, then you can open your eyes to thevision. You can see that age by age, though with a blind struggle in thedust of the road, though often mistaking the path and losing its way inthe mire, mankind is yet--sometimes with bloody hands and batteredknees--nevertheless struggling step after step up the slow stages to theday when he shall live in the full light which shines upon the uplands, where all the light that illumines mankind shines direct from the faceof God. 

[E] In the _Areopagitica_: "I cannot praise a fugitive and cloisteredvirtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees heradversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is tobe run for, not without dust and heat. "

[F] Sir George Williams, 1821-1905, an English philanthropist, founderof the Young Men's Christian Association. 

ANNUAL ADDRESS TO CONGRESS

[Delivered at a joint session of the two Houses of Congress, December 8, 1914. ]

GENTLEMEN OF THE CONGRESS:

The session upon which you are now entering will be the closing sessionof the Sixty-third Congress, a Congress, I venture to say, which willlong be remembered for the great body of thoughtful and constructivework which it has done, in loyal response to the thought and needs ofthe country. I should like in this address to review the notable recordand try to make adequate assessment of it; but no doubt we stand toonear the work that has been done and are ourselves too much part of itto play the part of historians toward it. 

Our program of legislation with regard to the regulation of business isnow virtually complete. It has been put forth, as we intended, as awhole, and leaves no conjecture as to what is to follow. The road atlast lies clear and firm before business. It is a road which it cantravel without fear or embarrassment. It is the road to ungrudged, unclouded success. In it every honest man, every man who believes thatthe public interest is part of his own interest, may walk with perfectconfidence. 

Moreover, our thoughts are now more of the future than of the past. While we have worked at our tasks of peace the circumstances of thewhole age have been altered by war. What we have done for our own landand our own people we did with the best that was in us, whether ofcharacter or of intelligence, with sober enthusiasm and a confidence inthe principles upon which we were acting which sustained us at everystep of the difficult undertaking; but it is done. It has passed fromour hands. It is now an established part of the legislation of thecountry. Its usefulness, its effects will disclose themselves inexperience. What chiefly strikes us now, as we look about us duringthese closing days of a year which will be forever memorable in thehistory of the world, is that we face new tasks, have been facing themthese six months, must face them in the months to come, --face themwithout partisan feeling, like men who have forgotten everything but acommon duty and the fact that we are representatives of a great peoplewhose thought is not of us but of what America owes to herself and toall mankind in such circumstances as these upon which we look amazed andanxious. 

War has interrupted the means of trade not only but also the processesof production. In Europe it is destroying men and resources wholesaleand upon a scale unprecedented and appalling. There is reason to fearthat the time is near, if it be not already at hand, when several of thecountries of Europe will find it difficult to do for their people whatthey have hitherto been always easily able to do, --many essential andfundamental things. At any rate, they will need our help and ourmanifold services as they have never needed them before; and we shouldbe ready, more fit and ready than we have ever been. 

It is of equal consequence that the nations whom Europe has usuallysupplied with innumerable articles of manufacture and commerce of whichthey are in constant need and without which their economic developmenthalts and stands still can now get only a small part of what theyformerly imported and eagerly look to us to supply their all but emptymarkets. This is particularly true of our own neighbors, the States, great and small, of Central and South America. Their lines of trade havehitherto run chiefly athwart the seas, not to our ports but to theports of Great Britain and of the older continent of Europe. I do notstop to inquire why, or to make any comment on probable causes. Whatinterests us just now is not the explanation but the fact, and our dutyand opportunity in the presence of it. Here are markets which we mustsupply, and we must find the means of action. The United States, thisgreat people for whom we speak and act, should be ready, as neverbefore, to serve itself and to serve mankind; ready with its resources, its energies, its forces of production, and its means of distribution. 

It is a very practical matter, a matter of ways and means. We have theresources, but are we fully ready to use them? And, if we can make readywhat we have, have we the means at hand to distribute it? We are notfully ready; neither have we the means of distribution. We are willing, but we are not fully able. We have the wish to serve and to servegreatly, generously; but we are not prepared as we should be. We are notready to mobilize our resources at once. We are not prepared to use themimmediately and at their best, without delay and without waste. 

To speak plainly, we have grossly erred in the way in which we havestunted and hindered the development of our merchant marine. And now, when we need ships, we have not got them. We have year after yeardebated, without end or conclusion, the best policy to pursue withregard to the use of the ores and forests and water powers of ournational domain in the rich States of the West, when we should haveacted; and they are still locked up. The key is still turned upon them, the door shut fast at which thousands of vigorous men, full ofinitiative, knock clamorously for admittance. The water power of ournavigable streams outside the national domain also, even in the easternStates, where we have worked and planned for generations, is still notused as it might be, because we will and we won't; because the laws wehave made do not intelligently balance encouragement against restraint. We withhold by regulation. 

I have come to ask you to remedy and correct these mistakes andomissions, even at this short session of a Congress which wouldcertainly seem to have done all the work that could reasonably beexpected of it. The time and the circumstances are extraordinary, and somust our efforts be also. 

Fortunately, two great measures, finely conceived, the one to unlock, with proper safeguards, the resources of the national domain, the otherto encourage the use of the navigable waters outside that domain for thegeneration of power, have already passed the House of Representativesand are ready for immediate consideration and action by the Senate. Withthe deepest earnestness I urge their prompt passage. In them both weturn our backs upon hesitation and makeshift and formulate a genuinepolicy of use and conservation, in the best sense of those words. We owethe one measure not only to the people of that great western country forwhose free and systematic development, as it seems to me, ourlegislation has done so little, but also to the people of the Nation asa whole; and we as clearly owe the other in fulfillment of our repeatedpromises that the water power of the country should in fact as well asin name be put at the disposal of great industries which can makeeconomical and profitable use of it, the rights of the public beingadequately guarded the while, and monopoly in the use prevented. To havebegun such measures and not completed them would indeed mar the recordof this great Congress very seriously. I hope and confidently believethat they will be completed. 

And there is another great piece of legislation which awaits and shouldreceive the sanction of the Senate: I mean the bill which gives a largermeasure of self-government to the people of the Philippines. How better, in this time of anxious questioning and perplexed policy, could we showour confidence in the principles of liberty, as the source as well asthe expression of life, how better could we demonstrate our ownself-possession and steadfastness in the courses of justice anddisinterestedness than by thus going calmly forward to fulfill ourpromises to a dependent people, who will now look more anxiously thanever to see whether we have indeed the liberality, the unselfishness, the courage, the faith we have boasted and professed. I cannot believethat the Senate will let this great measure of constructive justiceawait the action of another Congress. Its passage would nobly crown therecord of these two years of memorable labor. 

But I think that you will agree with me that this does not complete thetoll of our duty. How are we to carry our goods to the empty markets ofwhich I have spoken if we have not the ships? How are we to build up agreat trade if we have not the certain and constant means oftransportation upon which all profitable and useful commerce depends?And how are we to get the ships if we wait for the trade to developwithout them? To correct the many mistakes by which we have discouragedand all but destroyed the merchant marine of the country, to retrace thesteps by which we have, it seems almost deliberately, withdrawn our flagfrom the seas, except where, here and there, a ship of war is biddencarry it or some wandering yacht displays it, would take a long time andinvolve many detailed items of legislation, and the trade which we oughtimmediately to handle would disappear or find other channels while wedebated the items. 

The case is not unlike that which confronted us when our own continentwas to be opened up to settlement and industry, and we needed long linesof railway, extended means of transportation prepared beforehand, ifdevelopment was not to lag intolerably and wait interminably. Welavishly subsidized the building of transcontinental railroads. We lookback upon that with regret now, because the subsidies led to manyscandals of which we are ashamed; but we know that the railroads had tobe built, and if we had it to do over again we should of course buildthem, but in another way. Therefore I propose another way of providingthe means of transportation, which must precede, not tardily follow, thedevelopment of our trade with our neighbor states of America. It mayseem a reversal of the natural order of things, but it is true, that theroutes of trade must be actually opened--by many ships and regularsailings and moderate charges--before streams of merchandise will flowfreely and profitably through them. 

Hence the pending shipping bill, discussed at the last session but asyet passed by neither House. In my judgment such legislation isimperatively needed and cannot wisely be postponed. The Government mustopen these gates of trade, and open them wide; open them before it isaltogether profitable to open them, or altogether reasonable to askprivate capital to open them at a venture. It is not a question of theGovernment monopolizing the field. It should take action to make itcertain that transportation at reasonable rates will be promptlyprovided, even where the carriage is not at first profitable; and then, when the carriage has become sufficiently profitable to attract andengage private capital, and engage it in abundance, the Government oughtto withdraw. I very earnestly hope that the Congress will be of thisopinion, and that both Houses will adopt this exceedingly importantbill. 

The great subject of rural credits still remains to be dealt with, andit is a matter of deep regret that the difficulties of the subject haveseemed to render it impossible to complete a bill for passage at thissession. But it cannot be perfected yet, and therefore there are noother constructive measures the necessity for which I will at this timecall your attention to; but I would be negligent of a very manifest dutywere I not to call the attention of the Senate to the fact that theproposed convention for safety at sea awaits its confirmation and thatthe limit fixed in the convention itself for its acceptance is the lastday of the present month. The conference in which this 15 conventionoriginated was called by the United States; the representatives of theUnited States played a very influential part indeed in framing theprovisions of the proposed convention; and those provisions are inthemselves for the most part admirable. It would hardly be consistentwith the part we have played in the whole matter to let it drop and goby the board as if forgotten and neglected. It was ratified in May lastby the German Government and in August by the Parliament of GreatBritain. It marks a most hopeful and decided advance in internationalcivilization. We should show our earnest good faith in a great matter byadding our own acceptance of it. 

There is another matter of which I must make special mention, if I am todischarge my conscience, lest it should escape your attention. It mayseem a very small thing. It affects only a single item of appropriation. But many human lives and many great enterprises hang upon it. It is thematter of making adequate provision for the survey and charting of ourcoasts. It is immediately pressing and exigent in connection with theimmense coast line of Alaska, a coast line greater than that of theUnited States themselves, though it is also very important indeed withregard to the older coasts of the continent. We cannot use our greatAlaskan domain, ships will not ply thither, if those coasts and theirmany hidden dangers are not thoroughly surveyed and charted. The work isincomplete at almost every point. Ships and lives have been lost inthreading what were supposed to be well-known main channels. We have notprovided adequate vessels or adequate machinery for the survey andcharting. We have used old vessels that were not big enough or strongenough and which were so nearly unseaworthy that our inspectors wouldnot have allowed private owners to send them to sea. This is a matterwhich, as I have said, seems small, but is in reality very great. Itsimportance has only to be looked into to be appreciated. 

Before I close may I say a few words upon two topics, much discussed outof doors, upon which it is highly important that our judgments should beclear, definite, and steadfast?

One of these is economy in government expenditures. The duty of economyis not debatable. It is manifest and imperative. In the appropriationswe pass we are spending the money of the great people whose servants weare, --not our own. We are trustees and responsible stewards in thespending. The only thing debatable and upon which we should be carefulto make our thought and purpose clear is the kind of economy demanded ofus. I assert with the greatest confidence that the people of the UnitedStates are not jealous of the amount their Government costs if they aresure that they get what they need and desire for the outlay, that themoney is being spent for objects of which they approve, and that it isbeing applied with good business sense and management. 

Governments grow, piecemeal, both in their tasks and in the means bywhich those tasks are to be performed, and very few Governments areorganized, I venture to say, as wise and experienced business men wouldorganize them if they had a clean sheet of paper to write upon. Certainly the Government of the United States is not. I think that it isgenerally agreed that there should be a systematic reorganization andreassembling of its parts so as to secure greater efficiency and effectconsiderable savings in expense. But the amount of money saved in thatway would, I believe, though no doubt considerable in itself, running, it may be, into the millions, be relatively small, --small, I mean, inproportion to the total necessary outlays of the Government. It would bethoroughly worth effecting, as every saving would, great or small. Ourduty is not altered by the scale of the saving. But my point is that thepeople of the United States do not wish to curtail the activities ofthis Government; they wish, rather, to enlarge them; and with everyenlargement, with the mere growth, indeed, of the country itself, theremust come, of course, the inevitable increase of expense. The sort ofeconomy we ought to practice may be effected, and ought to be effected, by a careful study and assessment of the tasks to be performed; and themoney spent ought to be made to yield the best possible returns inefficiency and achievement. And, like good stewards, we should soaccount for every dollar of our appropriations as to make it perfectlyevident what it was spent for and in what way it was spent. 

It is not expenditure but extravagance that we should fear beingcriticized for; not paying for the legitimate enterprises andundertakings of a great Government whose people command what it shoulddo, but adding what will benefit only a few or pouring money out forwhat need not have been undertaken at all or might have been postponedor better and more economically conceived and carried out. The Nation isnot niggardly; it is very generous. It will chide us only if we forgetfor whom we pay money out and whose money it is we pay. These are largeand general standards, but they are not very difficult of application toparticular cases. 

The other topic I shall take leave to mention goes deeper into theprinciples of our national life and policy. It is the subject ofnational defense. 

It cannot be discussed without first answering some very searchingquestions. It is said in some quarters that we are not prepared for war. What is meant by being prepared? Is it meant that we are not ready uponbrief notice to put a nation in the field, a nation of men trained toarms? Of course we are not ready to do that; and we shall never be intime of peace so long as we retain our present political principles andinstitutions. And what is it that it is suggested we should be preparedto do? To defend ourselves against attack? We have always found means todo that, and shall find them whenever it is necessary without callingour people away from their necessary tasks to render compulsory militaryservice in times of peace. 

Allow me to speak with great plainness and directness upon this greatmatter and to avow my convictions with deep earnestness. I have tried toknow what America is, what her people think, what they are, what theymost cherish and hold dear. I hope that some of their finer passions arein my own heart, --some of the great conceptions and desires which gavebirth to this Government and which have made the voice of this people avoice of peace and hope and liberty among the peoples of the world, andthat, speaking my own thoughts, I shall, at least in part, speak theirsalso, however faintly and inadequately, upon this vital matter. 

We are at peace with all the world. No one who speaks counsel based onfact or drawn from a just and candid interpretation of realities can saythat there is reason to fear that from any quarter our independence orthe integrity of our territory is threatened. Dread of the power of anyother nation we are incapable of. We are not jealous of rivalry in thefields of commerce or of any other peaceful achievement. We mean to liveour own lives as we will; but we mean also to let live. We are, indeed, a true friend to all the nations of the world, because we threaten none, covet the possessions of none, desire the overthrow of none. Ourfriendship can be accepted and is accepted without reservation, becauseit is offered in a spirit and for a purpose which no one need everquestion or suspect. Therein lies our greatness. We are the champions ofpeace and of concord. And we should be very jealous of this distinctionwhich we have sought to earn. Just now we should be particularly jealousof it, because it is our dearest present hope that this character andreputation may presently, in God's providence, bring us an opportunitysuch as has seldom been vouchsafed any nation, the opportunity tocounsel and obtain peace in the world and reconciliation and a healingsettlement of many a matter that has cooled and interrupted thefriendship of nations. This is the time above all others when we shouldwish and resolve to keep our strength by self-possession, our influenceby preserving our ancient principles of action. 

From the first we have had a clear and settled policy with regard tomilitary establishments. We never have had, and while we retain ourpresent principles and ideals we never shall have, a large standingarmy. If asked, Are you ready to defend yourselves? we reply, Mostassuredly, to the utmost; and yet we shall not turn America into amilitary camp. We will not ask our young men to spend the best years oftheir lives making soldiers of themselves. There is another sort ofenergy in us. It will know how to declare itself and make itselfeffective should occasion arise. And especially when half the world ison fire we shall be careful to make our moral insurance against thespread of the conflagration very definite and certain and adequateindeed. 

Let us remind ourselves, therefore, of the only thing we can do or willdo. We must depend in every time of national peril, in the future as inthe past, not upon a standing army, nor yet upon a reserve army, butupon a citizenry trained and accustomed to arms. It will be rightenough, right American policy, based upon our accustomed principles andpractices, to provide a system by which every citizen who will volunteerfor the training may be made familiar with the use of modern arms, therudiments or drill and maneuver, and the maintenance and sanitation ofcamps. We should encourage such training and make it a means ofdiscipline which our young men will learn to value. It is right that weshould provide it not only, but that we should make it as attractive aspossible, and so induce our young men to undergo it at such times asthey can command a little freedom and can seek the physical developmentthey need, for mere health's sake, if for nothing more. Every means bywhich such things can be stimulated is legitimate, and such a methodsmacks of true American ideas. It is right, too, that the National Guardof the States should be developed and strengthened by every means whichis not inconsistent with our obligations to our own people or with theestablished policy of our Government. And this, also, not because thetime or occasion specially calls for such measures, but because itshould be our constant policy to make these provisions for our nationalpeace and safety. 

More than this carries with it a reversal of the whole history andcharacter of our polity. More than this, proposed at this time, permitme to say, would mean merely that we had lost our self-possession, thatwe had been thrown off our balance by a war with which we have nothingto do, whose causes cannot touch us, whose very existence affords usopportunities of friendship and disinterested service which should makeus ashamed of any thought of hostility or fearful preparation fortrouble. This is assuredly the opportunity for which a people and agovernment like ours were raised up, the opportunity not only to speakbut actually to embody and exemplify the counsels of peace and amity andthe lasting concord which is based on justice and fair and generousdealing. 

A powerful navy we have always regarded as our proper and natural meansof defense; and it has always been of defense that we have thought, never of aggression or of conquest. But who shall tell us now what sortof a navy to build? We shall take leave to be strong upon the seas, inthe future as in the past; and there will be no thought of offense or ofprovocation in that. Our ships are our natural bulwarks. When will theexperts tell us just what kind we should construct--and when will theybe right for ten years together, if the relative efficiency of craft ofdifferent kinds and uses continues to change as we have seen it changeunder our very eyes in these last few months?

But I turn away from the subject. It is not new. There is no new need todiscuss it. We shall not alter our attitude toward it because someamongst us are nervous and excited. We shall easily and sensibly agreeupon a policy of defense. The question has not changed its aspectbecause the times are not normal. Our policy will not be for anoccasion. It will be conceived as a permanent and settled thing, whichwe will pursue at all seasons, without haste and after a fashionperfectly consistent with the peace of the world, the abiding friendshipof states, and the unhampered freedom of all with whom we deal. Letthere be no misconception. The country has been misinformed. We have notbeen negligent of national defense. We are not unmindful of the greatresponsibility resting upon us. We shall learn and profit by the lessonof every experience and every new circumstance; and what is needed willbe adequately done. 

I close, as I began, by reminding you of the great tasks and duties ofpeace which challenge our best powers and invite us to build what willlast, the tasks to which we can address ourselves now and at all timeswith free-hearted zest and with all the finest gifts of constructivewisdom we possess. To develop our life and our resources; to supply ourown people, and the people of the world as their need arises, from theabundant plenty of our fields and our marts of trade; to enrich thecommerce of our own States and of the world with the products of ourmines, our farms, and our factories, with the creations of our thoughtand the fruits of our character, --this is what will hold our attentionand our enthusiasm steadily, now and in the years to come, as we striveto show in our life as a nation what liberty and the inspirations of anemancipated spirit may do for men and for societies, for individuals, for states, and for mankind. 

A MESSAGE

[Returning to the House of Representatives without approval an act toregulate the immigration of aliens to and the residence of aliens in theUnited States. ]

TO THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:

It is with unaffected regret that I find myself constrained by clearconviction to return this bill (H. R. 6060, "An act to regulate theimmigration of aliens to and the residence of aliens in the UnitedStates") without my signature. Not only do I feel it to be a veryserious matter to exercise the power of veto in any case, because itinvolves opposing the single judgment of the President to the judgmentof a majority of both the Houses of the Congress, a step which no manwho realizes his own liability to error can take without greathesitation, but also because this particular bill is in so manyimportant respects admirable, well conceived, and desirable. Itsenactment into law would undoubtedly enhance the efficiency and improvethe methods of handling the important branch of the public service towhich it relates. But candor and a sense of duty with regard to theresponsibility so clearly imposed upon me by the Constitution in mattersof legislation leave me no choice but to dissent. 

In two particulars of vital consequence this bill embodies a radicaldeparture from the traditional and long-established policy of thiscountry, a policy in which our people have conceived the very characterof their Government to be expressed, the very mission and spirit of theNation in respect of its relations to the peoples of the world outsidetheir borders. It seeks to all but close entirely the gates of asylumwhich have always been open to those who could find nowhere else theright and opportunity of constitutional agitation for what theyconceived to be the natural and inalienable rights of men; and itexcludes those to whom the opportunities of elementary education havebeen denied, without regard to their character, their purposes, or theirnatural capacity. 

Restrictions like these, adopted earlier in our history as a Nation, would very materially have altered the course and cooled the humaneardors of our politics. The right of political asylum has brought tothis country many a man of noble character and elevated purpose who wasmarked as an outlaw in his own less fortunate land, and who has yetbecome an ornament to our citizenship and to our public councils. Thechildren and the compatriots of these illustrious Americans must standamazed to see the representatives of their Nation now resolved, in thefullness of our national strength and at the maturity of our greatinstitutions, to risk turning such men back from our shores without testof quality or purpose. It is difficult for me to believe that the fulleffect of this feature of the bill was realized when it was framed andadopted, and it is impossible for me to assent to it in the form inwhich it is here cast. 

The literacy test and the tests and restrictions which accompany itconstitute an even more radical change in the policy of the Nation. Hitherto we have generously kept our doors open to all who were notunfitted by reason of disease or incapacity for self-support or suchpersonal records and antecedents as were likely to make them a menace toour peace and order or to the wholesome and essential relationships oflife. In this bill it is proposed to turn away from tests of characterand of quality and impose tests which exclude and restrict; for the newtests here embodied are not tests of quality or of character or ofpersonal fitness, but tests of opportunity. Those who come seekingopportunity are not to be admitted unless they have already had one ofthe chief of the opportunities they seek, the opportunity of education. The object of such provisions is restriction, not selection. 

If the people of this country have made up their minds to limit thenumber of immigrants by arbitrary tests and so reverse the policy of allthe generations of Americans that have gone before them, it is theirright to do so. I am their servant and have no license to stand in theirway. But I do not believe that they have. I respectfully submit that noone can quote their mandate to that effect. Has any political party everavowed a policy of restriction in this fundamental matter, gone to thecountry on it, and been commissioned to control its legislation? Doesthis bill rest upon the conscious and universal assent and desire of theAmerican people? I doubt it. It is because I doubt it that I make boldto dissent from it. I am willing to abide by the verdict, but not untilit has been rendered. Let the platforms of parties speak out upon thispolicy and the people pronounce their wish. The matter is toofundamental to be settled otherwise. 

I have no pride of opinion in this question. I am not foolish enough toprofess to know the wishes and ideals of America better than the body ofher chosen representatives know them. I only want instruction directfrom those whose fortunes, with ours and all men's, are involved. 

WOODROW WILSON. 

THE WHITE HOUSE, _28 January, 1915_. 

ADDRESS BEFORE THE UNITED STATES CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

[Delivered in Washington, February 3, 1915. ]

MR. PRESIDENT, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:

I feel that it is hardly fair to you for me to come in in this casualfashion among a body of men who have been seriously discussing greatquestions, and it is hardly fair to me, because I come in cold, nothaving had the advantage of sharing the atmosphere of your deliberationsand catching the feeling of your conference. Moreover, I hardly knowjust how to express my interest in the things you are undertaking. Whena man stands outside an organization and speaks to it he is too apt tohave the tone of outside commendation, as who should say, "I woulddesire to pat you on the back and say 'Good boys; you are doing well!'"I would a great deal rather have you receive me as if for the time beingI were one of your own number. 

Because the longer I occupy the office that I now occupy the more Iregret any lines of separation; the more I deplore any feeling that oneset of men has one set of interests and another set of men another setof interests; the more I feel the solidarity of the Nation--theimpossibility of separating one interest from another withoutmisconceiving it; the necessity that we should all understand oneanother, in order that we may understand ourselves. 

There is an illustration which I have used a great many times. I willuse it again, because it is the most serviceable to my own mind. Weoften speak of a man who cannot find his way in some jungle or somedesert as having "lost himself. " Did you never reflect that that is theonly thing he has not lost? _He_ is _there_. He has lost the rest of theworld. He has no fixed point by which to steer. He does not know whichis north, which is south, which is east, which is west; and if he didknow, he is so confused that he would not know in which of thosedirections his goal lay. Therefore, following his heart, he walks in agreat circle from right to left and comes back to where he started--tohimself again. To my mind that is a picture of the world. If you havelost sight of other interests and do not know the relation of your owninterests to those other interests, then you do not understand your owninterests, and have lost yourself. What you want is orientation, relationship to the points of the compass; relationship to the otherpeople in the world; vital connections which you have for the time beingsevered. 

I am particularly glad to express my admiration for the kind oforganization which you have drawn together. I have attended banquets ofchambers of commerce in various parts of the country and have got theimpression at each of those banquets that there was only one city in thecountry. It has seemed to me that those associations were meant in orderto destroy men's perspective, in order to destroy their sense ofrelative proportions. Worst of all, if I may be permitted to say so, they were intended to boost something in particular. Boosting is a veryunhandsome thing. Advancing enterprise is a very handsome thing, but toexaggerate local merits in order to create disproportion in the generaldevelopment is not a particularly handsome thing or a particularlyintelligent thing. A city cannot grow on the face of a great state likea mushroom on that one spot. Its roots are throughout the state, andunless the state it is in, or the region it draws from, can itselfthrive and pulse with life as a whole, the city can have no healthygrowth. You forget the wide rootages of everything when you boost someparticular region. There are dangers which probably you all understandin the mere practice of advertisement. When a man begins to advertisehimself there are certain points that are somewhat exaggerated, and Ihave noticed that men who exaggerate most, most quickly lose any properconception of what their own proportions are. Therefore, these localcenters of enthusiasm may be local centers of mistake if they are notvery wisely guided and if they do not themselves realize their relationsto the other centers of enthusiasm and of advancement. 

The advantage about a Chamber of Commerce of the United States is thatthere is only one way to boost the United States, and that is by seeingto it that the conditions under which business is done throughout thewhole country are the best possible conditions. There cannot be anydisproportion about that. If you draw your sap and your vitality fromall quarters, then the more sap and vitality there is in you the morethere is in the commonwealth as a whole, and every time you lift at allyou lift the whole level of manufacturing and mercantile enterprise. Moreover, the advantage of it is that you cannot boost the United Statesin that way without understanding the United States. You learn a greatdeal. I agreed with a colleague of mine in the Cabinet the other daythat we had never attended in our lives before a school to compare withthat we were now attending for the purpose of gaining a liberaleducation. 

Of course, I learn a great many things that are not so, but theinteresting thing about that is this: Things that are not so do notmatch. If you hear enough of them, you see there is no pattern whatever;it is a crazy quilt. Whereas, the truth always matches, piece by piece, with other parts of the truth. No man can lie consistently, and hecannot lie about everything if he talks to you long. I would guaranteethat if enough liars talked to you, you would get the truth; because theparts that they did not invent would match one another, and the partsthat they did invent would _not_ match one another. Talk long enough, therefore, and see the connections clearly enough, and you can patchtogether the case as a whole. I had somewhat that experience aboutMexico, and that was about the only way in which I learned anything thatwas true about it. For there had been vivid imaginations and manyspecial interests which depicted things as they wished me to believethem to be. 

Seriously, the task of this body is to match all the facts of businessthroughout the country and to see the vast and consistent pattern of it. That is the reason I think you are to be congratulated upon the factthat you cannot do this thing without common counsel. There isn't anyman who knows enough to comprehend the United States. It is coöperativeeffort, necessarily. You cannot perform the functions of this Chamber ofCommerce without drawing in not only a vast number of men, but men, anda number of men, from every region and section of the country. Theminute this association falls into the hands, if it ever should, of menfrom a single section or men with a single set of interests most atheart, it will go to seed and die. Its strength must come from theuttermost parts of the land and must be compounded of brains andcomprehensions of every sort. It is a very noble and handsome picturefor the imagination, and I have asked myself before I came here to-day, what relation you could bear to the Government of the United States andwhat relation the Government could bear to you?

There are two aspects and activities of the Government with which youwill naturally come into most direct contact. The first is theGovernment's power of inquiry, systematic and disinterested inquiry, andits power of scientific assistance. You get an illustration of thelatter, for example, in the Department of Agriculture. Has it occurredto you, I wonder, that we are just upon the eve of a time when ourDepartment of Agriculture will be of infinite importance to the wholeworld? There is a shortage of food in the world now. That shortage willbe much more serious a few months from now than it is now. It isnecessary that we should plant a great deal more; it is necessary thatour lands should yield more per acre than they do now; it is necessarythat there should not be a plow or a spade idle in this country if theworld is to be fed. And the methods of our farmers must feed upon thescientific information to be derived from the State departments ofagriculture, and from that taproot of all, the United States Departmentof Agriculture. The object and use of that department is to inform menof the latest developments and disclosures of science with regard to allthe processes by which soils can be put to their proper use and theirfertility made the greatest possible. Similarly with the Bureau ofStandards. It is ready to supply those things by which you can setnorms, you can set bases, for all the scientific processes of business. 

I have a great admiration for the scientific parts of the Government ofthe United States, and it has amazed me that so few men have discoveredthem. Here in these departments are quiet men, trained to the highestdegree of skill, serving for a petty remuneration along lines that areinfinitely useful to mankind; and yet in some cases they waited to bediscovered until this Chamber of Commerce of the United States wasestablished. Coming to this city, officers of that association foundthat there were here things that were infinitely useful to them and withwhich the whole United States ought to be put into communication. 

The Government of the United States is very properly a greatinstrumentality of inquiry and information. One thing we are justbeginning to do that we ought to have done long ago: We ought long agoto have had our Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce. We ought longago to have sent the best eyes of the Government out into the world tosee where the opportunities and openings of American commerce andAmerican genius were to be found--men who were not sent out as thecommercial agents of any particular set of business men in the UnitedStates, but who were eyes for the whole business community. I have beenreading consular reports for twenty years. In what I came to regard asan evil day the Congressman from my district began to send me theconsular reports, and they ate up more and more of my time. They arevery interesting, but they are a good deal like what the old lady saidof the dictionary, that it was very interesting but a littledisconnected. You get a picture of the world as if a spotlight werebeing dotted about over the surface of it. Here you see a glimpse ofthis, and here you see a glimpse of that, and through the medium of someconsuls you do not see anything at all. Because the consul has to haveeyes and the consul has to know what he is looking for. A literaryfriend of mine said that he used to believe in the maxim that"everything comes to the man who waits, " but he discovered after awhileby practical experience that it needed an additional clause, "providedhe knows what he is waiting for. " Unless you know what you are lookingfor and have trained eyes to see it when it comes your way, it may passyou unnoticed. We are just beginning to do, systematically andscientifically, what we ought long ago to have done, to employ theGovernment of the United States to survey the world in order thatAmerican commerce might be guided. 

But there are other ways of using the Government of the United States, ways that have long been tried, though not always with conspicuoussuccess or fortunate results. You can use the Government of the UnitedStates by influencing its legislation. That has been a very activeindustry, but it has not always been managed in the interest of thewhole people. It is very instructive and useful for the Government ofthe United States to have such means as you are ready to supply forgetting a sort of consensus of opinion which proceeds from no particularquarter and originates with no particular interest. Information is thevery foundation of all right action in legislation. 

I remember once, a good many years ago, I was attending one of the localchambers of commerce of the United States at a time when everybody wascomplaining that Congress was interfering with business. If you haveheard that complaint recently and supposed that it was original with themen who made it, you have not lived as long as I have. It has been goingon ever since I can remember. The complaint came most vigorously frommen who were interested in large corporate development. I took theliberty to say to that body of men, whom I did not know, that I took itfor granted that there were a great many lawyers among them, and that itwas likely that the more prominent of those lawyers were the intimateadvisors of the corporations of that region. I said that I had met agreat many lawyers from whom the complaint had come most vigorously, notonly that there was too much legislation with regard to corporations, but that it was ignorant legislation. I said, "Now, the responsibilityis with you. If the legislation is mistaken, you are on the inside andknow where the mistakes are being made. You know not only the innocentand right things that your corporations are doing, but you know theother things, too. Knowing how they are done, you can be expert advisorsas to how the wrong things can be prevented. If, therefore, this thingis handled ignorantly, there is nobody to blame but yourselves. " If weon the outside cannot understand the thing and cannot get advice fromthe inside, then we will have to do it with the flat hand and not withthe touch of skill and discrimination. Isn't that true? Men on theinside of business know how business is conducted and they cannotcomplain if men on the outside make mistakes about business if they donot come from the inside and give the kind of advice which is necessary. 

The trouble has been that when they came in the past--for I think thething is changing very rapidly--they came with all their bristles out;they came on the defensive; they came to see, not what they couldaccomplish, but what they could prevent. They did not come to guide;they came to block. That is of no use whatever to the general bodypolitic. What has got to pervade us like a great motive power is that wecannot, and must not, separate our interests from one another, but mustpool our interests. A man who is trying to fight for his single hand isfighting against the community and not fighting with it. There are agreat many dreadful things about war, as nobody needs to be told in thisday of distress and of terror, but there is one thing about war whichhas a very splendid side, and that is the consciousness that a wholenation gets that they must all act as a unit for a common end. And whenpeace is as handsome as war there will be no war. When men, I mean, engage in the pursuits of peace in the same spirit of self-sacrifice andof conscious service of the community with which, at any rate, thecommon soldier engages in war, then shall there be wars no more. Youhave moved the vanguard for the United States in the purposes of thisassociation just a little nearer that ideal. That is the reason I amhere, because I believe it. 

There is a specific matter about which I, for one, want your advice. Letme say, if I may say it without disrespect, that I do not think you areprepared to give it right away. You will have to make some ratherextended inquiries before you are ready to give it. What I am thinkingof is competition in foreign markets as between the merchants ofdifferent nations. 

I speak of the subject with a certain degree of hesitation, because thething farthest from my thought is taking advantage of nations nowdisabled from playing their full part in that competition, and seeking asudden selfish advantage because they are for the time being disabled. Pray believe me that we ought to eliminate all that thought from ourminds and consider this matter as if we and the other nations now at warwere in the normal circumstances of commerce. 

There is a normal circumstance of commerce in which we are apparently ata disadvantage. Our anti-trust laws are thought by some to make itillegal for merchants in the United States to form combinations for thepurpose of strengthening themselves in taking advantage of theopportunities of foreign trade. That is a very serious matter for thisreason: There are some corporations, and some firms for all I know, whose business is great enough and whose resources are abundant enoughto enable them to establish selling agencies in foreign countries; toenable them to extend the long credits which in some cases are necessaryin order to keep the trade they desire; to enable them, in other words, to organize their business in foreign territory in a way which thesmaller man cannot afford to do. His business has not grown big enoughto permit him to establish selling agencies. The export commissionmerchant, perhaps, taxes him a little too highly to make that anavailable competitive means of conducting and extending his business. 

The question arises, therefore, how are the smaller merchants, how arethe younger and weaker corporations going to get a foothold as againstthe combinations which are permitted and even encouraged by foreigngovernments in this field of competition? There are governments which, as you know, distinctly encourage the formation of great combinations ineach particular field of commerce in order to maintain selling agenciesand to extend long credits, and to use and maintain the machinery whichis necessary for the extension of business; and American merchants feelthat they are at a very considerable disadvantage in contending againstthat. The matter has been many times brought to my attention, and I haveeach time suspended judgment. I want to be shown this: I want to beshown how such a combination can be made and conducted in a way whichwill not close it against the use of everybody who wants to use it. Acombination has a tendency to exclude new members. When a group of menget control of a good thing, they do not see any particular point inletting other people into the good thing. What I would like very much tobe shown, therefore, is a method of coöperation which is not a method ofcombination. Not that the two words are mutually exclusive, but we havecome to have a special meaning attached to the word "combination. " Mostof our combinations have a safety lock, and you have to know thecombination to get in. I want to know how these coöperative methods canbe adopted for the benefit of everybody who wants to use them, and I sayfrankly if I can be shown that, I am for them. If I cannot be shownthat, I am against them. I hasten to add that I hopefully expect I _can_be shown that. 

You, as I have just now intimated, probably cannot show it to meoffhand, but by the methods which you have the means of using youcertainly ought to be able to throw a vast deal of light on the subject. Because the minute you ask the small merchant, the small banker, thecountry man, how he looks upon these things and how he thinks they oughtto be arranged in order that he can use them, if he is like some of themen in country districts whom I know, he will turn out to have had agood deal of thought upon that subject and to be able to make some veryinteresting suggestions whose intelligence and comprehensiveness willsurprise some city gentlemen who think that only the cities understandthe business of the country. As a matter of fact, you do not have timeto think in a city. It takes time to think. You can get what you callopinions by contagion in a city and get them very quickly, but you donot always know where the germ came from. And you have no scientificlaboratory method by which to determine whether it is a good germ or abad germ. 

There are thinking spaces in this country, and some of the thinking doneis very solid thinking indeed, the thinking of the sort of men that weall love best, who think for themselves, who do not see things as theyare told to see them, but look at them and see them independently; who, if they are told they are white when they are black, plainly say thatthey are black--men with eyes and with a courage back of those eyes totell what they see. The country is full of those men. They have beensingularly reticent sometimes, singularly silent, but the country isfull of them. And what I rejoice in is that you have called them intothe ranks. For your methods are bound to be democratic in spite of you. I do not mean democratic with a big "D, " though I have a privateconviction that you cannot be democratic with a small "d" long withoutbecoming democratic with a big "D. " Still that is just betweenourselves. The point is that when we have a _consensus_ of opinion, whenwe have this common counsel, then the legislative processes of thisGovernment will be infinitely illuminated. 

I used to wonder when I was Governor of one of the States of this greatcountry where all the bills came from. Some of them had a very privatecomplexion. I found upon inquiry--it was easy to find--that practicallynine-tenths of the bills that were introduced had been handed to themembers who introduced them by some constituent of theirs, had beendrawn up by some lawyer whom they might or might not know, and wereintended to do something that would be beneficial to a particular set ofpersons. I do not mean, necessarily, beneficial in a way that would behurtful to the rest; they may have been perfectly honest, but they cameout of cubby-holes all over the State. They did not come out of publicplaces where men had got together and compared views. They were not theproducts of common counsel, but the products of private counsel, a verynecessary process if there is no other, but a process which it would bea very happy thing to dispense with if we could get another. And theonly other process is the process of common counsel. 

Some of the happiest experiences of my life have been like this. We hadonce when I was president of a university to revise the whole course ofstudy. [G] Courses of study are chronically in need of revision. Acommittee of, I believe, fourteen men was directed by the faculty of theuniversity to report a revised curriculum. Naturally, the men who hadthe most ideas on the subject were picked out and, naturally, each mancame with a very definite notion of the kind of revision he wanted, andone of the first discoveries we made was that no two of us wantedexactly the same revision. I went in there with all my war paint on toget the revision I wanted, and I dare say, though it was perhaps moreskillfully concealed, the other men had their war paint on, too. Wediscussed the matter for six months. The result was a report which noone of us had conceived or foreseen, but with which we were allabsolutely satisfied. There was not a man who had not learned in thatcommittee more than he had ever known before about the subject, and whohad not willingly revised his prepossessions; who was not proud to be aparticipant in a genuine piece of common counsel. I have had severalexperiences of that sort, and it has led me, whenever I confer, to holdmy particular opinion provisionally, as my contribution to go into thefinal result but not to dominate the final result. 

That is the ideal of a government like ours, and an interesting thing isthat if you only talk about an idea that will not work long enough, everybody will see perfectly plainly that it will not work; whereas, ifyou do not talk about it, and do not have a great many people talk aboutit, you are in danger of having the people who handle it think that itwill work. Many minds are necessary to compound a workable method oflife in a various and populous country; and as I think about the wholething and picture the purposes, the infinitely difficult and complexpurposes which we must conceive and carry out, not only does itminister to my own modesty, I hope, of opinion, but it also fills mewith a very great enthusiasm. It is a splendid thing to be part of agreat wide-awake Nation. It is a splendid thing to know that your ownstrength is infinitely multiplied by the strength of other men who lovethe country as you do. It is a splendid thing to feel that the wholesomeblood of a great country can be united in common purposes, and that byfrankly looking one another in the face and taking counsel with oneanother, prejudices will drop away, handsome understandings will arise, a universal spirit of service will be engendered, and that with thisincreased sense of community of purpose will come a vastly enhancedindividual power of achievement; for we will be lifted by the whole massof which we constitute a part. 

Have you never heard a great chorus of trained voices lift the voice ofthe prima donna as if it soared with easy grace above the wholemelodious sound? It does not seem to come from the single throat thatproduces it. It seems as if it were the perfect accent and crown of thegreat chorus. So it ought to be with the statesman. So it ought to bewith every man who tries to guide the counsels of a great nation. Heshould feel that his voice is lifted upon the chorus and that it is onlythe crown of the common theme. 

[G] This was at Princeton, in 1902 and 1903. 

TO NATURALIZED CITIZENS

[Address delivered at Convention Hall, Philadelphia, May 10, 1915. Theaudience included four thousand newly naturalized citizens. This speechattracted great attention because in it no reference was made to thesinking of the "Lusitania, " three days before. ]

MR. MAYOR, FELLOW-CITIZENS:

It warms my heart that you should give me such a reception; but it isnot of myself that I wish to think to-night, but of those who have justbecome citizens of the United States. 

This is the only country in the world which experiences this constantand repeated rebirth. Other countries depend upon the multiplication oftheir own native people. This country is constantly drinking strengthout of new sources by the voluntary association with it of great bodiesof strong men and forward-looking women out of other lands. And so bythe gift of the free will of independent people it is being constantlyrenewed from generation to generation by the same process by which itwas originally created. It is as if humanity had determined to see to itthat this great Nation, founded for the benefit of humanity, should notlack for the allegiance of the people of the world. 

You have just taken an oath of allegiance to the United States. Ofallegiance to whom? Of allegiance to no one, unless it be God--certainlynot of allegiance to those who temporarily represent this greatGovernment. You have taken an oath of allegiance to a great ideal, to agreat body of principles, to a great hope of the human race. You havesaid, "We are going to America not only to earn a living, not only toseek the things which it was more difficult to obtain where we wereborn, but to help forward the great enterprises of the human spirit--tolet men know that everywhere in the world there are men who will crossstrange oceans and go where a speech is spoken which is alien to them ifthey can but satisfy their quest for what their spirits crave; knowingthat whatever the speech there is but one longing and utterance of thehuman heart, and that is for liberty and justice. " And while you bringall countries with you, you come with a purpose of leaving all othercountries behind you--bringing what is best of their spirit, but notlooking over your shoulders and seeking to perpetuate what you intendedto leave behind in them. I certainly would not be one even to suggestthat a man cease to love the home of his birth and the nation of hisorigin--these things are very sacred and ought not to be put out of ourhearts--but it is one thing to love the place where you were born and itis another thing to dedicate yourself to the place to which you go. Youcannot dedicate yourself to America unless you become in every respectand with every purpose of your will thorough Americans. You cannotbecome thorough Americans if you think of yourselves in groups. Americadoes not consist of groups. A man who thinks of himself as belonging toa particular national group in America has not yet become an American, and the man who goes among you to trade upon your nationality is noworthy son to live under the Stars and Stripes. 

My urgent advice to you would be, not only always to think first ofAmerica, but always, also, to think first of humanity. You do not lovehumanity if you seek to divide humanity into jealous camps. Humanity canbe welded together only by love, by sympathy, by justice, not byjealousy and hatred. I am sorry for the man who seeks to make personalcapital out of the passions of his fellow-men. He has lost the touchand ideal of America, for America was created to unite mankind by thosepassions which lift and not by the passions which separate and debase. We came to America, either ourselves or in the persons of our ancestors, to better the ideals of men, to make them see finer things than they hadseen before, to get rid of the things that divide and to make sure ofthe things that unite. It was but an historical accident no doubt thatthis great country was called the "United States"; yet I am verythankful that it has that word "United" in its title, and the man whoseeks to divide man from man, group from group, interest from interestin this great Union is striking at its very heart. 

It is a very interesting circumstance to me, in thinking of those of youwho have just sworn allegiance to this great Government, that you weredrawn across the ocean by some beckoning finger of hope, by some belief, by some vision of a new kind of justice, by some expectation of a betterkind of life. No doubt you have been disappointed in some of us. Some ofus are very disappointing. No doubt you have found that justice in theUnited States goes only with a pure heart and a right purpose as it doeseverywhere else in the world. No doubt what you found here did not seemtouched for you, after all, with the complete beauty of the ideal whichyou had conceived beforehand. But remember this: If we had grown at allpoor in the ideal, you brought some of it with you. A man does not goout to seek the thing that is not in him. A man does not hope for thething that he does not believe in, and if some of us have forgotten whatAmerica believed in, you, at any rate, imported in your own hearts arenewal of the belief. That is the reason that I, for one, make youwelcome. If I have in any degree forgotten what America was intendedfor, I will thank God if you will remind me. I was born in America. Youdreamed dreams of what America was to be, and I hope you brought thedreams with you. No man that does not see visions will ever realize anyhigh hope or undertake any high enterprise. Just because you broughtdreams with you, America is more likely to realize dreams such as youbrought. You are enriching us if you came expecting us to be better thanwe are. 

See, my friends, what that means. It means that Americans must have aconsciousness different from the consciousness of every other nation inthe world. I am not saying this with even the slightest thought ofcriticism of other nations. You know how it is with a family. A familygets centered on itself if it is not careful and is less interested inthe neighbors than it is in its own members. So a nation that is notconstantly renewed out of new sources is apt to have the narrowness andprejudice of a family; whereas, America must have this consciousness, that on all sides it touches elbows and touches hearts with all thenations of mankind. The example of America must be a special example. The example of America must be the example not merely of peace becauseit will not fight, but of peace because peace is the healing andelevating influence of the world and strife is not. There is such athing as a man being too proud to fight. There is such a thing as anation being so right that it does not need to convince others by forcethat it is right. 

You have come into this great Nation voluntarily seeking something thatwe have to give, and all that we have to give is this: We cannot exemptyou from work. No man is exempt from work anywhere in the world. Wecannot exempt you from the strife and the heartbreaking burden of thestruggle of the day--that is common to mankind everywhere; we cannotexempt you from the loads that you must carry. We can only make themlight by the spirit in which they are carried. That is the spirit ofhope, it is the spirit of liberty, it is the spirit of justice. 

When I was asked, therefore, by the Mayor and the committee thataccompanied him to come up from Washington to meet this great company ofnewly admitted citizens, I could not decline the invitation. I ought notto be away from Washington, and yet I feel that it has renewed my spiritas an American to be here. In Washington men tell you so many thingsevery day that are not so, and I like to come and stand in the presenceof a great body of my fellow-citizens, whether they have beenfellow-citizens a long time or a short time, and drink, as it were, outof the common fountains with them and go back feeling what you have sogenerously given me--the sense of your support and of the livingvitality in your hearts of the great ideals which have made America thehope of the world. 

ADDRESS AT MILWAUKEE

[Between January 27 and February 3, 1916, President Wilson made a seriesof speeches in New York, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Chicago, DesMoines, Topeka, Kansas City, and St. Louis. The address made atMilwaukee, on January 31, has been chosen as representing the generaltenor and spirit of the whole series. ]

MR. CHAIRMAN AND FELLOW-CITIZENS:

I need not inquire whether the citizens of Milwaukee and Wisconsin areinterested in the subject of my errand. The presence of this great bodyin this vast hall sufficiently attests your interest, but I want at theoutset to remove a misapprehension that I fear may exist in your mind. There is no sudden crisis; nothing new has happened; I am not out uponthis errand because of any unexpected situation. I have come to conferwith you upon a matter upon which it would, in any circumstances, benecessary for us to confer when all the rest of the world is on fire andour own house is not fireproof. Everywhere the atmosphere of the worldis thrilling with the passion of a disturbance such as the world hasnever seen before, and it is wise, in the words just uttered by yourchairman, that we should see that our own house is set in order and thateverything is done to make certain that we shall not suffer by thegeneral conflagration. 

There were some dangers to which this Nation seemed at the outset of thewar to be exposed, which, I think I can say with confidence, are nowpassed and overcome. America has drawn her blood and her strength out ofalmost all the nations of the world. It is true of a great many of usthat there lies deep in our hearts the recollection of an origin whichis not American. We are aware that our roots, our traditions, run backinto other national soils. There are songs that stir us; there are somefar-away historical recollections which engage our affections and stirour memories. We cannot forget our forbears; we cannot altogether ignorethe fact of our essential blood relationship; and at the outset of thiswar it did look as if there were a division of domestic sentiment whichmight lead us to some errors of judgment and some errors of action; butI, for one, believe that that danger is passed. I never doubted that thedanger was exaggerated, because I had learned long ago, and many of youwill corroborate me by your experience, that it is not the men who aredoing the talking always who represent the real sentiments of theNation. I for my part always feel a serene confidence in waiting for thedeclaration of the principles and sentiments of the men who are notvociferous, do not go about seeking to make trouble, do their ownthinking, attend to their own business, and love their own country. 

I have at no time supposed that the men whose voices seemed to containthe threat of division amongst us were really uttering the sentimentseven of those whom they pretended to represent. I for my part have nojealousy of family sentiment. I have no jealousy of that deep affectionwhich runs back through long lineage. It would be a pity if we forgetthe fine things that our ancestors have done. But I also know the magicof America; I also know the great principles which thrill men in thesingular body politic to which we belong in the United States. I knowthe impulses which have drawn men to our shores. They have not comeidly; they have not come without conscious purpose to be free; they havenot come without voluntary desire to unite themselves with the greatnation on this side of the sea; and I know that whenever the test comesevery man's heart will be first for America. It was principle andaffection and ambition and hope that drew men to these shores, and theyare not going to forget the errand upon which they came and allowAmerica, the home of their refuge and hope, to suffer by anyforgetfulness on their part. And so the trouble makers have shot theirbolt, and it has been ineffectual. Some of them have been vociferous;all of them have been exceedingly irresponsible. Talk was cheap, andthat was all it cost them. They did not have to do anything. But youwill know without my telling you that the man whom for the time beingyou have charged with the duties of President of the United States musttalk with a deep sense of responsibility, and he must remember, aboveall things else, the fine traditions of his office which some men seemto have forgotten. There is no precedent in American history for anyaction of aggression on the part of the United States or for any actionwhich might mean that America is seeking to connect herself with thecontroversies on the other side of the water. Men who seek to provoke usto such action have forgotten the traditions of the United States, butit behooves those with whom you have entrusted office to remember thetraditions of the United States and to see to it that the actions of theGovernment are made to square with those traditions. 

But there are other dangers, my fellow-citizens, which are not past andwhich have not been overcome, and they are dangers which we cannotcontrol. We can control irresponsible talkers amidst ourselves. All wehave got to do is to encourage them to hire a hall and their folly willbe abundantly advertised by themselves. But we cannot in this simplefashion control the dangers that surround us now and have surrounded ussince this titanic struggle on the other side of the water began. I sayon the other side of the water; you will ask me, "On the other side ofwhich water, " for this great struggle has extended to all quarters ofthe globe. There is no continent outside, I was about to say, of thisWestern Hemisphere which is not touched with it, but I recollected as Ibegan the sentence that a part of our own continent was touched with it, because it involves our neighbors to the north in Canada. There is nopart of the world, except South America, to which the direct influencesof this struggle have not extended, so that now we are completelysurrounded by this tremendous disturbance and you must realize what thatinvolves. 

Our thoughts are concentrated upon our own affairs and our own relationsto the rest of the world, but the thoughts of the men who are engaged inthis struggle are concentrated upon the struggle itself, and there isdaily and hourly danger that they will feel themselves constrained to dothings which are absolutely inconsistent with the rights of the UnitedStates. They are not thinking of us. I am not criticising them for notthinking of us. I dare say if I were in their place neither would Ithink of us. They believe that they are struggling for the lives andhonor of their nations, and that if the United States puts its interestsin the path of this great struggle, she ought to know beforehand thatthere is danger of very serious misunderstanding and difficulty. So thatthe very uncalculating, unpremeditated, one might almost say accidental, course of affairs may touch us to the quick at any moment, and I wantyou to realize that, standing in the midst of these difficulties, I feelthat I am charged with a double duty of the utmost difficulty. In thefirst place, I know that you are depending upon me to keep this Nationout of the war. So far I have done so, and I pledge you my word that, God helping me, I will if it is possible. But you have laid another dutyupon me. You have bidden me to see it that nothing stains or impairsthe honor of the United States, and that is a matter not within mycontrol; that depends upon what others do, not upon what the Governmentof the United States does. Therefore there may at any moment come a timewhen I cannot preserve both the honor and the peace of the UnitedStates. Do not exact of me an impossible and contradictory thing, butstand ready and insistent that everybody who represents you should standready to provide the necessary means for maintaining the honor of theUnited States. 

I sometimes think that it is true that no people ever went to war withanother people. Governments have gone to war with one another. Peoples, so far as I remember, have not, and this is a government of the people, and this people is not going to choose war. But we are not dealing withpeople; we are dealing with Governments. We are dealing with Governmentsnow engaged in a great struggle, and therefore we do not know what a dayor an hour will bring forth. All that we know is the character of ourown duty. We do not want the question of peace and war, or the conductof war, entrusted too entirely to our Government. We want war, if itmust come, to be something that springs out of the sentiments andprinciples and actions of the people themselves; and it is on thataccount that I am counseling the Congress of the United States not totake the advice of those who recommend that we should have, and havevery soon, a great standing Army, but, on the contrary, to see to itthat the citizens of this country are so trained and that the militaryequipment is so sufficiently provided for them that when they choosethey can take up arms and defend themselves. 

The Constitution of the United States makes the President the Commanderin Chief of the Army and Navy of the Nation, but I do not want a bigArmy subject to my personal command. If danger comes, I want to turn toyou and the rest of my fellow-countrymen and say, "Men, are you ready?"and I know what the response will be. I know that there will spring upout of the body of the Nation a great host of free men, and I want thosemen not to be mere targets for shot and shell. I want them to knowsomething of the arms they have in their hands. I want them to knowsomething about how to guard against the diseases that creep into camps, where men are unaccustomed to live. I want them to know something ofwhat the orders mean that they will be under when they enlist under armsfor the Government of the United States. I want them to be men who cancomprehend and easily and intelligently step into the duty of nationaldefense. That is the reason that I am urging upon the Congress of theUnited States at any rate the beginnings of a system by which we maygive a very considerable body of our fellow-citizens the necessarytraining. 

I have not forgotten the great National Guard of this country, but inthis country of 100, 000, 000 people there are only 129, 000 men in theNational Guard; and the National Guard, fine as it is, is not subject tothe orders of the President of the United States. It is subject to theorders of the Governors of the several States, and the Constitutionitself says that the President has no right to withdraw them from theirStates even, except in the case of actual invasion of the soil of theUnited States. I want the Congress of the United States to do a greatdeal for the National Guard, but I do not see how the Congress of theUnited States can put the National Guard at the disposal of the nationalauthorities. Therefore it seems to me absolutely necessary that inaddition to the National Guard there should be a considerable body ofmen with some training in the military art who will have pledgedthemselves to come at the call of the Nation. 

I have been told by those who have a greater knack at guessingstatistics than I have that there are probably several million men inthe United States who, either in this country or in other countries fromwhich they have come to the United States, have received training inarms. It may be; I do not know, and I suspect that they do not either, but even if it be true, these men are not subject to the call of theFederal Government. They would have to be found; they would have to beinduced to enlist; they would have to be organized; their numbers areindefinite; and they would have to be equipped. Such are not thematerials which we need. We want to know who these men are and wherethey are and to have everything ready for them if they should come toour assistance. For we have now got down, not to the sentiment ofnational defense, but to the business of national defense. It is abusiness proposition and it must be treated as such. And there areabundant precedents for the proposals which have been made to theCongress. Even that arch-Democrat, Thomas Jefferson, believed that thereought to be compulsory military training for the adult men of theNation, because he believed, as every true believer in democracybelieves, that it is upon the voluntary action of the men of a greatNation like this that it must depend for its military force. 

There is another misapprehension that I want to remove from your minds:Do not think that I have come to talk to you about these things becauseI doubt whether they are going to be done or not. I do not doubt it fora moment, but I believe that when great things of this sort are going tobe done the people of this country are entitled to know just what isbeing proposed. As a friend of mine says, I am not arguing with you; Iam telling you. I am not trying to convert you to anything, because Iknow that in your hearts you are converted already, but I want you toknow the motives of what is proposed and the character of what isproposed, in order that we should have only one attitude and counselwith regard to this great matter. 

It is being very sedulously spread abroad in this country that theimpulse back of all this is the desire of men who make the materials ofwarfare to get money out of the Treasury of the United States. I wishthe people that say that could see meetings like this. Did you come herefor that purpose? Did you come here because you are interested to seesome of your fellow-citizens make money out of the present situation? Ofcourse you did not. I am ready to admit that probably the equipment ofthose men whom we are training will have to be bought from somebody, andI know that if the equipment is bought, it will have to be paid for; andI dare say somebody will make some money out of it. It is also true, ladies and gentlemen, that there are men now, a great many men, in thebelligerent countries who are growing rich out of the sale of thematerials needed by the armies of those countries. If the Governmentitself does not manufacture everything that an army needs, somebody hasgot to make money out of it, and I for my part have been urging theCongress of the United States to make the necessary preparations bywhich the Government can manufacture armor plate and munitions, so that, being in the business itself and having the ability to manufacture allit needs, if it is put upon a business basis, it can at any rate keepthe price that it pays within moderate and reasonable limits. TheGovernment of the United States is not going to be imposed upon byanybody, and you may rest assured, therefore, that while I believe youprefer that private capital and private initiative should bestirthemselves in these matters, it is also possible, and I assure you thatit is most likely, that the Government of the United States will haveadequate means of controlling this matter very thoroughly indeed. Thereneed be no fear on that side. Let nobody suppose that this is amoney-making agitation. I would for one be ashamed to be such a dupe asto be engaged in it if it had any suspicion of that about it, but I amnot as innocent as I look; and I believe that I can say for mycolleagues in Washington that they are just as watchful in such mattersas you would desire them to be. 

And there is another misapprehension that I do not wish you toentertain. Do not suppose that there is any new or sudden or recentinadequacy on the part of this Government in respect of preparation fornational defense. I have heard some gentlemen say that we had no coastdefenses worth talking about. Coast defenses are not nowadaysadvertised, you understand, and they are not visible to the naked eye, so that if you passed them and nothing exploded, you would not know theywere there. The coast defenses of the United States, while not numerousenough, are equipped in the most modern and efficient fashion. You aretold that there has been some sort of neglect about the Navy. There hasnot been any sort of neglect about the Navy. We have been slowlybuilding up a Navy which in quality is second to no navy in the world. The only thing it lacks is quantity. In size it is the fourth navy inthe world, though I have heard it said by some gentlemen in this veryregion that it was the second. In fighting force, though not in quality, it is reckoned by experts to be the fourth in rank in the world; and yetwhen I go on board those ships and see their equipment and talk withtheir officers I suspect that they could give an account of themselveswhich would raise them above the fourth class. It reminds me of thatvery quaint saying of the old darky preacher, "The Lord says unto Moses, come fourth, and he came fifth and lost the race. " But I think this Navywould not come fourth in the race, but higher. 

What we are proposing now is not the sudden creation of a Navy, for wehave a splendid Navy, but the definite working out of a program by whichwithin five years we shall bring the Navy to a fighting strength whichotherwise might have taken eight or ten years; along exactly the samelines of development that have been followed and followed diligently andintelligently for at least a decade past. There is no sudden panic, there is no sudden change of plan; all that has happened is that we nowsee that we ought more rapidly and more thoroughly than ever before todo the things which have always been characteristic of America. For shehas always been proud of her Navy and has always been addicted to theprinciple that her citizenship must do the fighting on land. We areworking out American principle a little faster, because American pulsesare beating a little faster, because the world is in a whirl, becausethere are incalculable elements of trouble abroad which we cannotcontrol or alter. I would be derelict to the duty which you have laidupon me if I did not tell you that it was absolutely necessary to carryout our principles in this matter now and at once. 

And yet all the time, my fellow-citizens, I believe that in these thingswe are merely interpreting the spirit of America. Who shall say what thespirit of America is? I have many times heard orators apostrophize thisbeautiful flag which is the emblem of the Nation. I have many timesheard orators and philosophers speak of the spirit which was resident inAmerica. I have always for my own part felt that it was an act ofaudacity to attempt to characterize anything of that kind, and when Ihave been outside of the country in foreign lands and have been asked ifthis, that, or the other was true of America I have habitually said, "Nothing stated in general terms is true of America, because it is themost variegated and varied and multiform land under the sun. " Yet I knowthat if you turn away from the physical aspects of the country, if youturn away from the variety of the strains of blood that make up ourgreat population, if you turn away from the great variations ofoccupation and of interest among our fellow-citizens, there is aspiritual unity in America. I know that there are some things which stirevery heart in America, no matter what the racial derivation or thelocal environment, and one of the things that stirs every American isthe love of individual liberty. We do not stand for occupations. We donot stand for material interests. We do not stand for any narrowconception even of political institutions; but we do stand for this, that we are banded together in America to see to it that no man shallserve any master who is not of his own choosing. And we have been veryliberal and generous about this idea. We have seen great peoples, forthe most part not of the same blood with ourselves, to the south of usbuild up polities in which this same idea pulsed and was regnant, thisidea of free institutions and individual liberty, and when we have seenhands reached across the water from older political polities tointerfere with the development of free institutions on the WesternHemisphere we have said: "No; we are the champions of the freedom ofpopular sovereignty wherever it displays or exercises itself throughoutboth Americas. " We are the champions of a particular sort of freedom, the sort of freedom which is the only foundation and guarantee ofpeace. 

Peace lies in the hearts of great industrial and agriculturalpopulations, and we have arranged a government on this side of the waterby which their preferences and their predilections and their interestsare the mainsprings of government itself. And so when we prepare fornational defense we prepare for national political integrity; we prepareto take care of the great ideals which gave birth to this Government; weare going back in spirit and in energy to those great first generationsin America, when men banded themselves together, though they were but ahandful upon a single coast of the Atlantic, to set up in the world thestandards which have ever since floated everywhere that Americansasserted the power of their Government. As I came along the line of therailway to-day, I was touched to observe that everywhere, upon everyrailway station, upon every house, where a flag could be procured, sometemporary standard had been raised from which there floated the starsand stripes. They seemed to have divined the errand upon which I hadcome, to remind you that we must subordinate every individual interestand every local interest to assert once more, if it should be necessaryto assert them, the great principles for which that flag stands. 

Do not deceive yourselves, ladies and gentlemen, as to where the colorsof that flag came from. Those lines of red are lines of blood, nobly andunselfishly shed by men who loved the liberty of their fellow-men morethan they loved their own lives and fortunes. God forbid that we shouldhave to use the blood of America to freshen the color of that flag; butif it should ever be necessary again to assert the majesty and integrityof those ancient and honorable principles, that flag will be coloredonce more, and in being colored will be glorified and purified. 

THE SUBMARINE QUESTION

[Address delivered at a joint session of the two Houses of Congress, April 19, 1916. ]

GENTLEMEN OF THE CONGRESS:

A situation has arisen in the foreign relations of the country of whichit is my plain duty to inform you very frankly. 

It will be recalled that in February, 1915, the Imperial GermanGovernment announced its intention to treat the waters surrounding GreatBritain and Ireland as embraced within the seat of war and to destroyall merchant ships owned by its enemies that might be found within anypart of that portion of the high seas, and that it warned all vessels, of neutral as well as of belligerent ownership, to keep out of thewaters it had thus proscribed or else enter them at their peril. TheGovernment of the United States earnestly protested. It took theposition that such a policy could not be pursued without the practicalcertainty of gross and palpable violations of the law of nations, particularly if submarine craft were to be employed as its instruments, inasmuch as the rules prescribed by that law, rules founded uponprinciples of humanity and established for the protection of the livesof non-combatants at sea, could not in the nature of the case beobserved by such vessels. It based its protest on the ground thatpersons of neutral nationality and vessels of neutral ownership would beexposed to extreme and intolerable risks, and that no right to close anypart of the high seas against their use or to expose them to such riskscould lawfully be asserted by any belligerent government. The law ofnations in these matters, upon which the Government of the United Statesbased its protest, is not of recent origin or founded upon merelyarbitrary principles set up by convention. It is based, on the contrary, upon manifest and imperative principles of humanity and has long beenestablished with the approval and by the express assent of all civilizednations. 

Notwithstanding the earnest protest of our Government, the ImperialGerman Government at once proceeded to carry out the policy it hadannounced. It expressed the hope that the dangers involved, at any ratethe dangers to neutral vessels, would be reduced to a minimum by theinstructions which it had issued to its submarine commanders, andassured the Government of the United States that it would take everypossible precaution both to respect the rights of neutrals and tosafeguard the lives of non-combatants. 

What has actually happened in the year which has since elapsed has shownthat those hopes were not justified, those assurances insusceptible ofbeing fulfilled. In pursuance of the policy of submarine warfare againstthe commerce of its adversaries, thus announced and entered upon by theImperial German Government in despite of the solemn protest of thisGovernment, the commanders of German undersea vessels have attackedmerchant ships with greater and greater activity, not only upon the highseas surrounding Great Britain and Ireland but wherever they couldencounter them, in a way that has grown more and more ruthless, more andmore indiscriminate as the months have gone by, less and less observantof restraints of any kind; and have delivered their attacks withoutcompunction against vessels of every nationality and bound upon everysort of errand. Vessels of neutral ownership, even vessels of neutralownership bound from neutral port to neutral port, have been destroyedalong with vessels of belligerent ownership in constantly increasingnumbers. Sometimes the merchantman attacked has been warned and summonedto surrender before being fired on or torpedoed; sometimes passengers orcrews have been vouchsafed the poor security of being allowed to take tothe ship's boats before she was sent to the bottom. But again and againno warning has been given, no escape even to the ship's boats allowed tothose on board. What this Government foresaw must happen has happened. Tragedy has followed tragedy on the seas in such fashion, with suchattendant circumstances, as to make it grossly evident that warfare ofsuch a sort, if warfare it be, cannot be carried on without the mostpalpable violation of the dictates alike of right and of humanity. Whatever the disposition and intention of the Imperial GermanGovernment, it has manifestly proved impossible for it to keep suchmethods of attack upon the commerce of its enemies within the bounds setby either the reason or the heart of mankind. 

In February of the present year the Imperial German Government informedthis Government and the other neutral governments of the world that ithad reason to believe that the Government of Great Britain had armed allmerchant vessels of British ownership and had given them secret ordersto attack any submarine of the enemy they might encounter upon the seas, and that the Imperial German Government felt justified in thecircumstances in treating all armed merchantmen of belligerent ownershipas auxiliary vessels of war, which it would have the right to destroywithout warning. The law of nations has long recognized the right ofmerchantmen to carry arms for protection and to use them to repelattack, though to use them, in such circumstances, at their own risk;but the Imperial German Government claimed the right to set theseunderstandings aside in circumstances which it deemed extraordinary. Even the terms in which it announced its purpose thus still further torelax the restraints it had previously professed its willingness anddesire to put upon the operations of its submarines carried the plainimplication that at least vessels which were not armed would still beexempt from destruction without warning and that personal safety wouldbe accorded their passengers and crews; but even that limitation, if itwas ever practicable to observe it, has in fact constituted no check atall upon the destruction of ships of every sort. 

Again and again the Imperial German Government has given this Governmentits solemn assurances that at least passenger ships would not be thusdealt with, and yet it has again and again permitted its underseacommanders to disregard those assurances with entire impunity. Greatliners like the _Lusitania_ and the _Arabic_ and mere ferryboats likethe _Sussex_ have been attacked without a moment's warning, sometimesbefore they had even become aware that they were in the presence of anarmed vessel of the enemy, and the lives of non-combatants, passengersand crew, have been sacrificed wholesale, in a manner which theGovernment of the United States cannot but regard as wanton and withoutthe slightest color of justification. No limit of any kind has in factbeen set to the indiscriminate pursuit and destruction of merchantmen ofall kinds and nationalities within the waters, constantly extending inarea, where these operations have been carried on; and the roll ofAmericans who have lost their lives on ships thus attacked and destroyedhas grown month by month until the ominous toll has mounted into thehundreds. 

One of the latest and most shocking instances of this method of warfarewas that of the destruction of the French cross-Channel steamer_Sussex_. It must stand forth, as the sinking of the steamer _Lusitania_did, as so singularly tragical and unjustifiable as to constitute atruly terrible example of the inhumanity of submarine warfare as thecommanders of German vessels have for the past twelvemonth beenconducting it. If this instance stood alone, some explanation, somedisavowal by the German Government, some evidence of criminal mistake orwilful disobedience on the part of the commander of the vessel thatfired the torpedo might be sought or entertained; but unhappily it doesnot stand alone. Recent events make the conclusion inevitable that it isonly one instance, even though it be one of the most extreme anddistressing instances, of the spirit and method of warfare which theImperial German Government has mistakenly adopted, and which from thefirst exposed that Government to the reproach of thrusting all neutralrights aside in pursuit of its immediate objects. 

The Government of the United States has been very patient. At everystage of this distressing experience of tragedy after tragedy in whichits own citizens were involved it has sought to be restrained from anyextreme course of action or of protest by a thoughtful consideration ofthe extraordinary circumstances of this unprecedented war, and actuatedin all that it said or did by the sentiments of genuine friendship whichthe people of the United States have always entertained and continue toentertain towards the German nation. It has of course accepted thesuccessive explanations and assurances of the Imperial German Governmentas given in entire sincerity and good faith, and has hoped, even againsthope, that it would prove to be possible for the German Government so toorder and control the acts of its naval commanders as to square itspolicy with the principles of humanity as embodied in the law ofnations. It has been willing to wait until the significance of the factsbecame absolutely unmistakable and susceptible of but oneinterpretation. 

That point has now unhappily been reached. The facts are susceptible ofbut one interpretation. The Imperial German Government has been unableto put any limits or restraints upon its warfare against either freightor passenger ships. It has therefore become painfully evident that theposition which this Government took at the very outset is inevitable, namely, that the use of submarines for the destruction of an enemy'scommerce is of necessity, because of the very character of the vesselsemployed and the very methods of attack which their employment of courseinvolves, incompatible with the principles of humanity, the longestablished and incontrovertible rights of neutrals, and the sacredimmunities of non-combatants. 

I have deemed it my duty, therefore, to say to the Imperial GermanGovernment that if it is still its purpose to prosecute relentless andindiscriminate warfare against vessels of commerce by the use ofsubmarines, notwithstanding the now demonstrated impossibility ofconducting that warfare in accordance with what the Government of theUnited States must consider the sacred and indisputable rules ofinternational law and the universally recognized dictates of humanity, the Government of the United States is at last forced to the conclusionthat there is but one course it can pursue; and that unless the ImperialGerman Government should now immediately declare and effect anabandonment of its present methods of warfare against passenger andfreight carrying vessels this Government can have no choice but to severdiplomatic relations with the Government of the German Empirealtogether. 

This decision I have arrived at with the keenest regret; the possibilityof the action contemplated I am sure all thoughtful Americans will lookforward to with unaffected reluctance. But we cannot forget that we arein some sort and by the force of circumstances the responsible spokesmenof the rights of humanity, and that we cannot remain silent while thoserights seem in process of being swept utterly away in the maelstrom ofthis terrible war. We owe it to a due regard for our own rights as anation, to our sense of duty as a representative of the rights ofneutrals the world over, and to a just conception of the rights ofmankind to take this stand now with the utmost solemnity and firmness. 

I have taken it, and taken it in the confidence that it will meet withyour approval and support. All sober-minded men must unite in hopingthat the Imperial German Government, which has in other circumstancesstood as the champion of all that we are now contending for in theinterest of humanity, may recognize the justice of our demands and meetthem in the spirit in which they are made. 

AMERICAN PRINCIPLES

[Address delivered at the First Annual Assemblage of the League toEnforce Peace, May 27, 1916. ]

When the invitation to be here to-night came to me, I was glad to acceptit, --not because it offered me an opportunity to discuss the program ofthe League, --that you will, I am sure, not expect of me, --but becausethe desire of the whole world now turns eagerly, more and more eagerly, towards the hope of peace, and there is just reason why we should takeour part in counsel upon this great theme. It is right that I, asspokesman of our Government, should attempt to give expression to what Ibelieve to be the thought and purpose of the people of the United Statesin this vital matter. 

This great war that broke so suddenly upon the world two years ago, andwhich has swept within its flame so great a part of the civilized world, has affected us very profoundly, and we are not only at liberty, it isperhaps our duty, to speak very frankly of it and of the great interestsof civilization which it affects. 

With its causes and its objects we are not concerned. The obscurefountains from which its stupendous flood has burst forth we are notinterested to search for or explore. But so great a flood, spread farand wide to every quarter of the globe, has of necessity engulfed many afair province of right that lies very near to us. Our own rights as aNation, the liberties, the privileges, and the property of our peoplehave been profoundly affected. We are not mere disconnected lookers-on. The longer the war lasts, the more deeply do we become concerned thatit should be brought to an end and the world be permitted to resume itsnormal life and course again. And when it does come to an end we shallbe as much concerned as the nations at war to see peace assume an aspectof permanence, give promise of days from which the anxiety ofuncertainty shall be lifted, bring some assurance that peace and warshall always hereafter be reckoned part of the common interest ofmankind. We are participants, whether we would or not, in the life ofthe world. The interests of all nations are our own also. We arepartners with the rest. What affects mankind is inevitably our affair aswell as the affair of the nations of Europe and of Asia. 

One observation on the causes of the present war we are at liberty tomake, and to make it may throw some light forward upon the future, aswell as backward upon the past. It is plain that this war could havecome only as it did, suddenly and out of secret counsels, withoutwarning to the world, without discussion, without any of the deliberatemovements of counsel with which it would seem natural to approach sostupendous a contest. It is probable that if it had been foreseen justwhat would happen, just what alliances would be formed, just what forcesarrayed against one another, those who brought the great contest onwould have been glad to substitute conference for force. If we ourselveshad been afforded some opportunity to apprise the belligerents of theattitude which it would be our duty to take, of the policies andpractices against which we would feel bound to use all our moral andeconomic strength, and in certain circumstances even our physicalstrength also, our own contribution to the counsel which might haveaverted the struggle would have been considered worth weighing andregarding. 

And the lesson which the shock of being taken by surprise in a matter sodeeply vital to all the nations of the world has made poignantly clearis, that the peace of the world must henceforth depend upon a new andmore wholesome diplomacy. Only when the great nations of the world havereached some sort of agreement as to what they hold to be fundamental totheir common interest, and as to some feasible method of acting inconcert when any nation or group of nations seeks to disturb thosefundamental things, can we feel that civilization is at last in a way ofjustifying its existence and claiming to be finally established. It isclear that nations must in the future be governed by the same high codeof honor that we demand of individuals. 

We must, indeed, in the very same breath with which we avow thisconviction admit that we have ourselves upon occasion in the past beenoffenders against the law of diplomacy which we thus forecast; but ourconviction is not the less clear, but rather the more clear, on thataccount. If this war has accomplished nothing else for the benefit ofthe world, it has at least disclosed a great moral necessity and setforward the thinking of the statesmen of the world by a whole age. Repeated utterances of the leading statesmen of most of the greatnations now engaged in war have made it plain that their thought hascome to this, that the principle of public right must henceforth takeprecedence over the individual interests of particular nations, and thatthe nations of the world must in some way band themselves together tosee that that right prevails as against any sort of selfish aggression;that henceforth alliance must not be set up against alliance, understanding against understanding, but that there must be a commonagreement for a common object, and that at the heart of that commonobject must lie the inviolable rights of peoples and of mankind. Thenations of the world have become each other's neighbors. It is to theirinterest that they should understand each other. In order that they mayunderstand each other, it is imperative that they should agree tocoöperate in a common cause, and that they should so act that theguiding principle of that common cause shall be even-handed andimpartial justice. 

This is undoubtedly the thought of America. This is what we ourselveswill say when there comes proper occasion to say it. In the dealings ofnations with one another arbitrary force must be rejected and we mustmove forward to the thought of the modern world, the thought of whichpeace is the very atmosphere. That thought constitutes a chief part ofthe passionate conviction of America. 

We believe these fundamental things: First, that every people has aright to choose the sovereignty under which they shall live. Like othernations, we have ourselves no doubt once and again offended against thatprinciple when for a little while controlled by selfish passion, as ourfranker historians have been honorable enough to admit; but it hasbecome more and more our rule of life and action. Second, that the smallstates of the world have a right to enjoy the same respect for theirsovereignty and for their territorial integrity that great and powerfulnations expect and insist upon. And, third, that the world has a rightto be free from every disturbance of its peace that has its origin inaggression and disregard of the rights of peoples and nations. 

So sincerely do we believe in these things that I am sure that I speakthe mind and wish of the people of America when I say that the UnitedStates is willing to become a partner in any feasible association ofnations formed in order to realize these objects and make them secureagainst violation. 

There is nothing that the United States wants for itself that any othernation has. We are willing, on the contrary, to limit ourselves alongwith them to a prescribed course of duty and respect for the rights ofothers which will check any selfish passion of our own, as it will checkany aggressive impulse of theirs. 

If it should ever be our privilege to suggest or initiate a movement forpeace among the nations now at war, I am sure that the people of theUnited States would wish their Government to move along these lines:First, such a settlement with regard to their own immediate interests asthe belligerents may agree upon. We have nothing material of any kind toask for ourselves, and are quite aware that we are in no sense or degreeparties to the present quarrel. Our interest is only in peace and itsfuture guarantees. Second, an universal association of the nations tomaintain the inviolate security of the highway of the seas for thecommon and unhindered use of all the nations of the world, and toprevent any war begun either contrary to treaty covenants or withoutwarning and full submission of the causes to the opinion of theworld, --a virtual guarantee of territorial integrity and politicalindependence. 

But I did not come here, let me repeat, to discuss a program. I cameonly to avow a creed and give expression to the confidence I feel thatthe world is even now upon the eve of a great consummation, when somecommon force will be brought into existence which shall safeguard rightas the first and most fundamental interest of all peoples and allgovernments, when coercion shall be summoned not to the service ofpolitical ambition or selfish hostility, but to the service of a commonorder, a common justice, and a common peace. God grant that the dawn ofthat day of frank dealing and of settled peace, concord, and coöperationmay be near at hand!

THE DEMANDS OF RAILWAY EMPLOYEES

[Address delivered at a joint session of the two Houses of Congress, August 29, 1916. ]

GENTLEMEN OF THE CONGRESS:

I have come to you to seek your assistance in dealing with a very gravesituation which has arisen out of the demand of the employees of therailroads engaged in freight train service that they be granted aneight-hour working day, safeguarded by payment for an hour and a half ofservice for every hour of work beyond the eight. 

The matter has been agitated for more than a year. The public has beenmade familiar with the demands of the men and the arguments urged infavor of them, and even more familiar with the objections of therailroads and their counter demand that certain privileges now enjoyedby their men and certain bases of payment worked out through many yearsof contest be reconsidered, especially in their relation to the adoptionof an eight-hour day. The matter came some three weeks ago to a finalissue and resulted in a complete deadlock between the parties. The meansprovided by law for the mediation of the controversy failed and themeans of arbitration for which the law provides were rejected. Therepresentatives of the railway executives proposed that the demands ofthe men be submitted in their entirety to arbitration, along withcertain questions of readjustment as to pay and conditions of employmentwhich seemed to them to be either closely associated with the demands orto call for reconsideration on their own merits; the men absolutelydeclined arbitration, especially if any of their established privilegeswere by that means to be drawn again in question. The law in the matterput no compulsion upon them. The four hundred thousand men from whom thedemands proceeded had voted to strike if their demands were refused; thestrike was imminent; it has since been set for the fourth of Septembernext. It affects the men who man the freight trains on practically everyrailway in the country. The freight service throughout the United Statesmust stand still until their places are filled, if, indeed, it shouldprove possible to fill them at all. Cities will be cut off from theirfood supplies, the whole commerce of the nation will be paralyzed, menof every sort and occupation will be thrown out of employment, countlessthousands will in all likelihood be brought, it may be, to the verypoint of starvation, and a tragical national calamity brought on, to beadded to the other distresses of the time, because no basis ofaccommodation or settlement has been found. 

Just so soon as it became evident that mediation under the existing lawhad failed and that arbitration had been rendered impossible by theattitude of the men, I considered it my duty to confer with therepresentatives of both the railways and the brotherhoods, and myselfoffer mediation, not as an arbitrator, but merely as spokesman of thenation, in the interest of justice, indeed, and as a friend of bothparties, but not as judge, only as the representative of one hundredmillions of men, women, and children who would pay the price, theincalculable price, of loss and suffering should these few men insistupon approaching and concluding the matters in controversy between themmerely as employers and employees, rather than as patriotic citizens ofthe United States looking before and after and accepting the largerresponsibility which the public would put upon them. 

It seemed to me, in considering the subject-matter of the controversy, that the whole spirit of the time and the preponderant evidence ofrecent economic experience spoke for the eight-hour day. It has beenadjudged by the thought and experience of recent years a thing uponwhich society is justified in insisting as in the interest of health, efficiency, contentment, and a general increase of economic vigor. Thewhole presumption of modern experience would, it seemed to me, be in itsfavor, whether there was arbitration or not, and the debatable points tosettle were those which arose out of the acceptance of the eight-hourday rather than those which affected its establishment. I, therefore, proposed that the eight-hour day be adopted by the railway managementsand put into practice for the present as a substitute for the existingten-hour basis of pay and service; that I should appoint, with thepermission of the Congress, a small commission to observe the results ofthe change, carefully studying the figures of the altered operatingcosts, not only, but also the conditions of labor under which the menworked and the operation of their existing agreements with therailroads, with instructions to report the facts as they found them tothe Congress at the earliest possible day, but without recommendation;and that, after the facts had been thus disclosed, an adjustment shouldin some orderly manner be sought of all the matters now left unadjustedbetween the railroad managers and the men. 

These proposals were exactly in line, it is interesting to note, withthe position taken by the Supreme Court of the United States whenappealed to to protect certain litigants from the financial losses whichthey confidently expected if they should submit to the regulation oftheir charges and of their methods of service by public legislation. TheCourt has held that it would not undertake to form a judgment uponforecasts, but could base its action only upon actual experience; thatit must be supplied with facts, not with calculations and opinions, however scientifically attempted. To undertake to arbitrate the questionof the adoption of an eight-hour day in the light of results merelyestimated and predicted would be to undertake an enterprise ofconjecture. No wise man could undertake it, or, if he did undertake it, could feel assured of his conclusions. 

I unhesitatingly offered the friendly services of the administration tothe railway managers to see to it that justice was done the railroads inthe outcome. I felt warranted in assuring them that no obstacle of lawwould be suffered to stand in the way of their increasing their revenuesto meet the expenses resulting from the change so far as the developmentof their business and of their administrative efficiency did not proveadequate to meet them. The public and the representatives of the public, I felt justified in assuring them, were disposed to nothing but justicein such cases and were willing to serve those who served them. 

The representatives of the brotherhoods accepted the plan; but therepresentatives of the railroads declined to accept it. In the face ofwhat I cannot but regard as the practical certainty that they will beultimately obliged to accept the eight-hour day by the concerted actionof organized labor, backed by the favorable judgment of society, therepresentatives of the railway management have felt justified indeclining a peaceful settlement which would engage all the forces ofjustice, public and private, on their side to take care of the event. They fear the hostile influence of shippers, who would be opposed to anincrease of freight rates (for which, however, of course, the publicitself would pay); they apparently feel no confidence that theInterstate Commerce Commission could withstand the objections that wouldbe made. They do not care to rely upon the friendly assurances of theCongress or the President. They have thought it best that they should beforced to yield, if they must yield, not by counsel, but by thesuffering of the country. While my conferences with them were inprogress, and when to all outward appearance those conferences had cometo a standstill, the representatives of the brotherhoods suddenly actedand set the strike for the fourth of September. 

The railway managers based their decision to reject my counsel in thismatter upon their conviction that they must at any cost to themselves orto the country stand firm for the principle of arbitration which the menhad rejected. I based my counsel upon the indisputable fact that therewas no means of obtaining arbitration. The law supplied none; earnestefforts at mediation had failed to influence the men in the least. Tostand firm for the principle of arbitration and yet not get arbitrationseemed to me futile, and something more than futile, because it involvedincalculable distress to the country and consequences in some respectsworse than those of war, and that in the midst of peace. 

I yield to no man in firm adherence, alike of conviction and of purpose, to the principle of arbitration in industrial disputes; but matters havecome to a sudden crisis in this particular dispute and the country hadbeen caught unprovided with any practicable means of enforcing thatconviction in practice (by whose fault we will not now stop to inquire). A situation had to be met whose elements and fixed conditions wereindisputable. The practical and patriotic course to pursue, as it seemedto me, was to secure immediate peace by conceding the one thing in thedemands of the men which society itself and any arbitrators whorepresented public sentiment were most likely to approve, andimmediately lay the foundations for securing arbitration with regard toeverything else involved. The event has confirmed that judgment. 

I was seeking to compose the present in order to safeguard the future;for I wished an atmosphere of peace and friendly coöperation in which totake counsel with the representatives of the nation with regard to thebest means for providing, so far as it might prove possible to provide, against the recurrence of such unhappy situations in the future, --thebest and most practicable means of securing calm and fair arbitration ofall industrial disputes in the days to come. This is assuredly the bestway of vindicating a principle, namely, having failed to make certain ofits observance in the present, to make certain of its observance in thefuture. 

But I could only propose. I could not govern the will of others who tookan entirely different view of the circumstances of the case, who evenrefused to admit the circumstances to be what they have turned out tobe. 

Having failed to bring the parties to this critical controversy to anaccommodation, therefore, I turn to you, deeming it clearly our duty aspublic servants to leave nothing undone that we can do to safeguard thelife and interests of the nation. In the spirit of such a purpose, Iearnestly recommend the following legislation:

First, immediate provision for the enlargement and administrativereorganization of the Interstate Commerce Commission along the linesembodied in the bill recently passed by the House of Representatives andnow awaiting action by the Senate; in order that the Commission may beenabled to deal with the many great and various duties now devolvingupon it with a promptness and thoroughness which are with its presentconstitution and means of action practically impossible. 

Second, the establishment of an eight-hour day as the legal basis alikeof work and of wages in the employment of all railway employees who areactually engaged in the work of operating trains in interstatetransportation. 

Third, the authorization of the appointment by the President of a smallbody of men to observe the actual results in experience of the adoptionof the eight-hour day in railway transportation alike for the men andfor the railroads; its effects in the matter of operating costs, in theapplication of the existing practices and agreements to the newconditions, and in all other practical aspects, with the provision thatthe investigators shall report their conclusions to the Congress at theearliest possible date, but without recommendation as to legislativeaction; in order that the public may learn from an unprejudiced sourcejust what actual developments have ensued. 

Fourth, explicit approval by the Congress of the consideration by theInterstate Commerce Commission of an increase of freight rates to meetsuch additional expenditures by the railroads as may have been renderednecessary by the adoption of the eight-hour day and which have not beenoffset by administrative readjustments and economies, should the factsdisclosed justify the increase. 

Fifth, an amendment of the existing federal statute which provides forthe mediation, conciliation, and arbitration of such controversies asthe present by adding to it a provision that in case the methods ofaccommodation now provided for should fail, a full public investigationof the merits of every such dispute shall be instituted and completedbefore a strike or lockout may lawfully be attempted. 

And, sixth, the lodgment in the hands of the Executive of the power, incase of military necessity, to take control of such portions and suchrolling stock of the railways of the country as may be required formilitary use and to operate them for military purposes, with authorityto draft into the military service of the United States such train crewsand administrative officials as the circumstances require for their safeand efficient use. 

This last suggestion I make because we cannot in any circumstancessuffer the nation to be hampered in the essential matter of nationaldefense. At the present moment circumstances render this dutyparticularly obvious. Almost the entire military force of the nation isstationed upon the Mexican border to guard our territory against hostileraids. It must be supplied, and steadily supplied, with whatever itneeds for its maintenance and efficiency. If it should be necessary forpurposes of national defense to transfer any portion of it upon shortnotice to some other part of the country, for reasons now unforeseen, ample means of transportation must be available, and available withoutdelay. The power conferred in this matter should be carefully andexplicitly limited to cases of military necessity, but in all such casesit should be clear and ample. 

There is one other thing we should do if we are true champions ofarbitration. We should make all arbitral awards judgments by record of acourt of law in order that their interpretation and enforcement may lie, not with one of the parties to the arbitration, but with an impartialand authoritative tribunal. 

These things I urge upon you, not in haste or merely as a means ofmeeting a present emergency, but as permanent and necessary additions tothe law of the land, suggested, indeed, by circumstances we had hopednever to see, but imperative as well as just, if such emergencies are tobe prevented in the future. I feel that no extended argument is neededto commend them to your favorable consideration. They demonstratethemselves. The time and the occasion only give emphasis to theirimportance. We need them now and we shall continue to need them. 

SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE

[On being offered the nomination for President by the Democratic Party. Delivered at Shadow Lawn, Sea Girt, N. J. , Saturday, September 2, 1916. ]

SENATOR JAMES, GENTLEMEN OF THE NOTIFICATION COMMITTEE, FELLOW-CITIZENS:

I cannot accept the leadership and responsibility which the NationalDemocratic Convention has again, in such generous fashion, asked me toaccept without first expressing my profound gratitude to the party forthe trust it reposes in me after four years of fiery trial in the midstof affairs of unprecedented difficulty, and the keen sense of addedresponsibility with which this honor fills (I had almost said burdens)me as I think of the great issues of national life and policy involvedin the present and immediate future conduct of our Government. I shallseek, as I have always sought, to justify the extraordinary confidencethus reposed in me by striving to purge my heart and purpose of everypersonal and of every misleading party motive and devoting every energyI have to the service of the nation as a whole, praying that I maycontinue to have the counsel and support of all forward-looking men atevery turn of the difficult business. 

For I do not doubt that the people of the United States will wish theDemocratic Party to continue in control of the Government. They are notin the habit of rejecting those who have actually served them for thosewho are making doubtful and conjectural promises of service. Least ofall are they likely to substitute those who promised to render themparticular services and proved false to that promise for those who haveactually rendered those very services. 

Boasting is always an empty business, which pleases nobody but theboaster, and I have no disposition to boast of what the Democratic Partyhas accomplished. It has merely done its duty. It has merely fulfilledits explicit promises. But there can be no violation of good taste incalling attention to the manner in which those promises have beencarried out or in adverting to the interesting fact that many of thethings accomplished were what the opposition party had again and againpromised to do but had left undone. Indeed that is manifestly part ofthe business of this year of reckoning and assessment. There is no meansof judging the future except by assessing the past. Constructive actionmust be weighed against destructive comment and reaction. The Democratseither have or have not understood the varied interests of the country. The test is contained in the record. 

What is that record? What were the Democrats called into power to do?What things had long waited to be done, and how did the Democrats dothem? It is a record of extraordinary length and variety, rich inelements of many kinds, but consistent in principle throughout andsusceptible of brief recital. 

The Republican Party was put out of power because of failure, practicalfailure and moral failure; because it had served special interests andnot the country at large; because, under the leadership of its preferredand established guides, of those who still make its choices, it had losttouch with the thoughts and the needs of the nation and was living in apast age and under a fixed illusion, the illusion of greatness. It hadframed tariff laws based upon a fear of foreign trade, a fundamentaldoubt as to American skill, enterprise, and capacity, and a very tenderregard for the profitable privileges of those who had gained control ofdomestic markets and domestic credits; and yet had enacted anti-trustlaws which hampered the very things they meant to foster, which werestiff and inelastic, and in part unintelligible. It had permitted thecountry throughout the long period of its control to stagger from onefinancial crisis to another under the operation of a national bankinglaw of its own framing which made stringency and panic certain and thecontrol of the larger business operations of the country by the bankersof a few reserve centers inevitable; had made as if it meant to reformthe law but had faint-heartedly failed in the attempt, because it couldnot bring itself to do the one thing necessary to make the reformgenuine and effectual, namely, break up the control of small groups ofbankers. It had been oblivious, or indifferent, to the fact that thefarmers, upon whom the country depends for its food and in the lastanalysis for its prosperity, were without standing in the matter ofcommercial credit, without the protection of standards in their markettransactions, and without systematic knowledge of the marketsthemselves; that the laborers of the country, the great army of men whoman the industries it was professing to father and promote, carriedtheir labor as a mere commodity to market, were subject to restraint bynovel and drastic process in the courts, were without assurance ofcompensation for industrial accidents, without federal assistance inaccommodating labor disputes, and without national aid or advice infinding the places and the industries in which their labor was mostneeded. The country had no national system of road construction anddevelopment. Little intelligent attention was paid to the army, and notenough to the navy. The other republics of America distrusted us, because they found that we thought first of the profits of Americaninvestors and only as an afterthought of impartial justice and helpfulfriendship. Its policy was provincial in all things; its purposes wereout of harmony with the temper and purpose of the people and the timelydevelopment of the nation's interests. 

So things stood when the Democratic Party came into power. How do theystand now? Alike in the domestic field and in the wide field of thecommerce of the world, American business and life and industry have beenset free to move as they never moved before. 

The tariff has been revised, not on the principle of repelling foreigntrade, but upon the principle of encouraging it, upon something like afooting of equality with our own in respect of the terms of competition, and a Tariff Board has been created whose function it will be to keepthe relations of American with foreign business and industry underconstant observation, for the guidance alike of our business men and ofour Congress. American energies are now directed towards the markets ofthe world. 

The laws against trusts have been clarified by definition, with a viewto making it plain that they were not directed against big business butonly against unfair business and the pretense of competition where therewas none; and a Trade Commission has been created with powers ofguidance and accommodation which have relieved business men of unfoundedfears and set them upon the road of hopeful and confident enterprise. 

By the Federal Reserve Act the supply of currency at the disposal ofactive business has been rendered elastic, taking its volume, not from afixed body of investment securities, but from the liquid assets of dailytrade; and these assets are assessed and accepted, not by distant groupsof bankers in control of unavailable reserves, but by bankers at themany centers of local exchange who are in touch with local conditionseverywhere. 

Effective measures have been taken for the re-creation of an Americanmerchant marine and the revival of the American carrying tradeindispensable to our emancipation from the control which foreigners haveso long exercised over the opportunities, the routes, and the methods ofour commerce with other countries. 

The Interstate Commerce Commission is about to be reorganized to enableit to perform its great and important functions more promptly and moreefficiently. We have created, extended and improved the service of theparcels post. 

So much we have done for business. What other party has understood thetask so well or executed it so intelligently and energetically? Whatother party has attempted it at all? The Republican leaders, apparently, know of no means of assisting business but "protection. " How tostimulate it and put it upon a new footing of energy and enterprise theyhave not suggested. 

For the farmers of the country we have virtually created commercialcredit, by means of the Federal Reserve Act and the Rural Credits Act. They now have the standing of other business men in the money market. Wehave successfully regulated speculation in "futures" and establishedstandards in the marketing of grains. By an intelligent Warehouse Act wehave assisted to make the standard crops available as never before bothfor systematic marketing and as a security for loans from the banks. Wehave greatly added to the work of neighborhood demonstration on the farmitself of improved methods of cultivation, and, through the intelligentextension of the functions of the Department of Agriculture, have madeit possible for the farmer to learn systematically where his bestmarkets are and how to get at them. 

The workingmen of America have been given a veritable emancipation, bythe legal recognition of a man's labor as part of his life, and not amere marketable commodity; by exempting labor organizations fromprocesses of the courts which treated their members like fractionalparts of mobs and not like accessible and responsible individuals; byreleasing our seamen from involuntary servitude; by making adequateprovision for compensation for industrial accidents; by providingsuitable machinery for mediation and conciliation in industrialdisputes; and by putting the Federal Department of Labor at the disposalof the workingman when in search of work. 

We have effected the emancipation of the children of the country byreleasing them from hurtful labor. We have instituted a system ofnational aid in the building of highroads such as the country has beenfeeling after for a century. We have sought to equalize taxation bymeans of an equitable income tax. We have taken the steps that ought tohave been taken at the outset to open up the resources of Alaska. Wehave provided for national defense upon a scale never before seriouslyproposed upon the responsibility of an entire political party. We havedriven the tariff lobby from cover and obliged it to substitute solidargument for private influence. 

This extraordinary recital must sound like a platform, a list ofsanguine promises; but it is not. It is a record of promises made fouryears ago and now actually redeemed in constructive legislation. 

These things must profoundly disturb the thoughts and confound the plansof those who have made themselves believe that the Democratic Partyneither understood nor was ready to assist the business of the countryin the great enterprises which it is its evident and inevitable destinyto undertake and carry through. The breaking up of the lobby mustespecially disconcert them: for it was through the lobby that theysought and were sure they had found the heart of things. The game ofprivilege can be played successfully by no other means. 

This record must equally astonish those who feared that the DemocraticParty had not opened its heart to comprehend the demands of socialjustice. We have in four years come very near to carrying out theplatform of the Progressive Party as well as our own; for we also areprogressives. 

There is one circumstance connected with this program which ought to bevery plainly stated. It was resisted at every step by the interestswhich the Republican Party had catered to and fostered at the expense ofthe country, and these same interests are now earnestly praying for areaction which will save their privileges, --for the restoration of theirsworn friends to power before it is too late to recover what they havelost. They fought with particular desperation and infiniteresourcefulness the reform of the banking and currency system, knowingthat to be the citadel of their control; and most anxiously are theyhoping and planning for the amendment of the Federal Reserve Act by theconcentration of control in a single bank which the old familiar groupof bankers can keep under their eye and direction. But while the "bigmen" who used to write the tariffs and command the assistance of theTreasury have been hostile, --all but a few with vision, --the averagebusiness man knows that he has been delivered, and that the fear thatwas once every day in his heart, that the men who controlled credit anddirected enterprise from the committee rooms of Congress would crushhim, is there no more, and will not return, --unless the party thatconsulted only the "big men" should return to power, --the party ofmasterly inactivity and cunning resourcefulness in standing pat toresist change. 

The Republican Party is just the party that _cannot_ meet the newconditions of a new age. It does not know the way and it does not wishnew conditions. It tried to break away from the old leaders and couldnot. They still select its candidates and dictate its policy, stillresist change, still hanker after the old conditions, still know nomethods of encouraging business but the old methods. When it changes itsleaders and its purposes and brings its ideas up to date it will havethe right to ask the American people to give it power again; but notuntil then. A new age, an age of revolutionary change, needs newpurposes and new ideas. 

In foreign affairs we have been guided by principles clearly conceivedand consistently lived up to. Perhaps they have not been fullycomprehended because they have hitherto governed international affairsonly in theory, not in practice. They are simple, obvious, easilystated, and fundamental to American ideals. 

We have been neutral not only because it was the fixed and traditionalpolicy of the United States to stand aloof from the politics of Europeand because we had had no part either of action or of policy in theinfluences which brought on the present war, but also because it wasmanifestly our duty to prevent, if it were possible, the indefiniteextension of the fires of hate and desolation kindled by that terribleconflict and seek to serve mankind by reserving cur strength and ourresources for the anxious and difficult days of restoration and healingwhich must follow, when peace will have to build its house anew. 

The rights of our own citizens of course became involved: that wasinevitable. Where they did this was our guiding principle: that propertyrights can be vindicated by claims for damages and no modern nation candecline to arbitrate such claims; but the fundamental rights of humanitycannot be. The loss of life is irreparable. Neither can directviolations of a nation's sovereignty await vindication in suits fordamages. The nation that violates these essential rights must expect tobe checked and called to account by direct challenge and resistance. Itat once makes the quarrel in part our own. These are plain principlesand we have never lost sight of them or departed from them, whatever thestress or the perplexity of circumstance or the provocation to hastyresentment. The record is clear and consistent throughout and standsdistinct and definite for anyone to judge who wishes to know the truthabout it. 

The seas were not broad enough to keep the infection of the conflict outof our own politics. The passions and intrigues of certain active groupsand combinations of men amongst us who were born under foreign flagsinjected the poison of disloyalty into our own most critical affairs, laid violent hands upon many of our industries, and subjected us to theshame of divisions of sentiment and purpose in which America wascontemned and forgotten. It is part of the business of this year ofreckoning and settlement to speak plainly and act with unmistakablepurpose in rebuke of these things, in order that they may be foreverhereafter impossible. I am the candidate of a party, but I am above allthings else an American citizen. I neither seek the favor nor fear thedispleasure of that small alien element amongst us which puts loyalty toany foreign power before loyalty to the United States. 

While Europe was at war our own continent, one of our own neighbors, wasshaken by revolution. In that matter, too, principle was plain and itwas imperative that we should live up to it if we were to deserve thetrust of any real partisan of the right as free men see it. We haveprofessed to believe, and we do believe, that the people of small andweak states have the right to expect to be dealt with exactly as thepeople of big and powerful states would be. We have acted upon thatprinciple in dealing with the people of Mexico. 

Our recent pursuit of bandits into Mexican territory was no violation ofthat principle. We ventured to enter Mexican territory only becausethere were no military forces in Mexico that could protect our borderfrom hostile attack and our own people from violence, and we havecommitted there no single act of hostility or interference even with thesovereign authority of the Republic of Mexico herself. It was a plaincase of the violation of our own sovereignty which could not wait to bevindicated by damages and for which there was no other remedy. Theauthorities of Mexico were powerless to prevent it. 

Many serious wrongs against the property, many irreparable wrongsagainst the persons of Americans have been committed within theterritory of Mexico herself during this confused revolution, wrongswhich could not be effectually checked so long as there was noconstituted power in Mexico which was in a position to check them. Wecould not act directly in that matter ourselves without denying Mexicansthe right to any revolution at all which disturbed us and making theemancipation of her own people await our own interest and convenience. 

For it is their emancipation that they are seeking, --blindly, it may be, and as yet ineffectually, but with profound and passionate purpose andwithin their unquestionable right, apply what true American principleyou will, --any principle that an American would publicly avow. Thepeople of Mexico have not been suffered to own their own country ordirect their own institutions. Outsiders, men out of other nations andwith interests too often alien to their own, have dictated what theirprivileges and opportunities should be and who should control theirland, their lives, and their resources, --some of them Americans, pressing for things they could never have got in their own country. TheMexican people are entitled to attempt their liberty from suchinfluences; and so long as I have anything to do with the action of ourgreat Government I shall do everything in my power to prevent anyonestanding in their way. I know that this is hard for some persons tounderstand; but it is not hard for the plain people of the United Statesto understand. It is hard doctrine only for those who wish to getsomething for themselves out of Mexico. There are men, and noble women, too, not a few, of our own people, thank God! whose fortunes areinvested in great properties in Mexico who yet see the case with truevision and assess its issues with true American feeling. The rest can beleft for the present out of the reckoning until this enslaved people hashad its day of struggle towards the light. I have heard no one who wasfree from such influences propose interference by the United States withthe internal affairs of Mexico. Certainly no friend of the Mexicanpeople has proposed it. 

The people of the United States are capable of great sympathies and anoble pity in dealing with problems of this kind. As their spokesman andrepresentative, I have tried to act in the spirit they would wish meshow. The people of Mexico are striving for the rights that arefundamental to life and happiness, --15, 000, 000 oppressed men, overburdened women, and pitiful children in virtual bondage in their ownhome of fertile lands and inexhaustible treasure! Some of the leaders ofthe revolution may often have been mistaken and violent and selfish, butthe revolution itself was inevitable and is right. The unspeakableHuerta betrayed the very comrades he served, traitorously overthrew thegovernment of which he was a trusted part, impudently spoke for the veryforces that had driven his people to the rebellion with which he hadpretended to sympathize. The men who overcame him and drove him outrepresent at least the fierce passion of reconstruction which lies atthe very heart of liberty; and so long as they represent, howeverimperfectly, such a struggle for deliverance, I am ready to serve theirends when I can. So long as the power of recognition rests with me theGovernment of the United States will refuse to extend the hand ofwelcome to any one who obtains power in a sister republic by treacheryand violence. No permanency can be given the affairs of any republic bya title based upon intrigue and assassination. I declared that to be thepolicy of this Administration within three weeks after I assumed thepresidency. I here again vow it. I am more interested in the fortunes ofoppressed men and pitiful women and children than in any property rightswhatever. Mistakes I have no doubt made in this perplexing business, butnot in purpose or object. 

More is involved than the immediate destinies of Mexico and therelations of the United States with a distressed and distracted people. All America looks on. Test is now being made of us whether we be sincerelovers of popular liberty or not and are indeed to be trusted to respectnational sovereignty among our weaker neighbors. We have undertakenthese many years to play big brother to the republics of thishemisphere. This is the day of our test whether we mean, or have evermeant, to play that part for our own benefit wholly or also for theirs. Upon the outcome of that test (its outcome in their minds, not in ours)depends every relationship of the United States with Latin America, whether in politics or in commerce and enterprise. These are greatissues and lie at the heart of the gravest tasks of the future, tasksboth economic and political and very intimately inwrought with many ofthe most vital of the new issues of the politics of the world. Therepublics of America have in the last three years been drawing togetherin a new spirit of accommodation, mutual understanding, and cordialcoöperation. Much of the politics of the world in the years to come willdepend upon their relationships with one another. It is a barren andprovincial statesmanship that loses sight of such things!

The future, the immediate future, will bring us squarely face to facewith many great and exacting problems which will search us through andthrough whether we be able and ready to play the part in the world thatwe mean to play. It will not bring us into their presence slowly, gently, with ceremonious introduction, but suddenly and at once, themoment the war in Europe is over. They will be new problems, most ofthem; many will be old problems in a new setting and with new elementswhich we have never dealt with or reckoned the force and meaning ofbefore. They will require for their solution new thinking, fresh courageand resourcefulness, and in some matters radical reconsiderations ofpolicy. We must be ready to mobilize our resources alike of brains andof materials. 

It is not a future to be afraid of. It is, rather, a future to stimulateand excite us to the display of the best powers that are in us. We mayenter it with confidence when we are sure that we understand it, --and wehave provided ourselves already with the means of understanding it. 

Look first at what it will be necessary that the nations of the worldshould do to make the days to come tolerable and fit to live and workin; and then look at our part in what is to follow and our own duty ofpreparation. For we must be prepared both in resources and in policy. 

There must be a just and settled peace, and we here in America mustcontribute the full force of our enthusiasm and of our authority as anation to the organization of that peace upon world-wide foundationsthat cannot easily be shaken. No nation should be forced to take sidesin any quarrel in which its own honor and integrity and the fortunes ofits own people are not involved; but no nation can any longer remainneutral as against any wilful disturbance of the peace of the world. Theeffects of war can no longer be confined to the areas of battle. Nonation stands wholly apart in interest when the life and interests ofall nations are thrown into confusion and peril. If hopeful and generousenterprise is to be renewed, if the healing and helpful arts of life areindeed to be revived when peace comes again, a new atmosphere of justiceand friendship must be generated by means the world has never triedbefore. The nations of the world must unite in joint guarantees thatwhatever is done to disturb the whole world's life must first be testedin the court of the whole world's opinion before it is attempted. 

These are the new foundations the world must build for itself, and wemust play our part in the reconstruction, generously and without toomuch thought of our separate interests. We must make ourselves ready toplay it intelligently, vigorously, and well. 

One of the contributions we must make to the world's peace is this: Wemust see to it that the people in our insular possessions are treated intheir own lands as we would treat them here, and make the rule of theUnited States mean the same thing everywhere, --the same justice, thesame consideration for the essential rights of men. 

Besides contributing our ungrudging moral and practical support to theestablishment of peace throughout the world we must actively andintelligently prepare ourselves to do our full service in the trade andindustry which are to sustain and develop the life of the nations in thedays to come. 

We have already been provident in this great matter and suppliedourselves with the instrumentalities of prompt adjustment. We havecreated, in the Federal Trade Commission, a means of inquiry and ofaccommodation in the field of commerce which ought both to coördinatethe enterprises of our traders and manufacturers and to remove thebarriers of misunderstanding and of a too technical interpretation ofthe law. In the new Tariff Commission we have added anotherinstrumentality of observation and adjustment which promises to beimmediately serviceable. The Trade Commission substitutes counsel andaccommodation for the harsher processes of legal restraint, and theTariff Commission ought to substitute facts for prejudices and theories. Our exporters have for some time had the advantage of working in the newlight thrown upon foreign markets and opportunities of trade by theintelligent inquiries and activities of the Bureau of Foreign andDomestic Commerce which the Democratic Congress so wisely created in1912. The Tariff Commission completes the machinery by which we shall beenabled to open up our legislative policy to the facts as they develop. 

We can no longer indulge our traditional provincialism. We are to play aleading part in the world drama whether we wish it or not. We shalllend, not borrow; act for ourselves, not imitate or follow; organize andinitiate, not peep about merely to see where we may get in. 

We have already formulated and agreed upon a policy of law which willexplicitly remove the ban now supposed to rest upon coöperation amongstour exporters in seeking and securing their proper place in the marketsof the world. The field will be free, the instrumentalities at hand. Itwill only remain for the masters of enterprise amongst us to act inenergetic concert, and for the Government of the United States to insistupon the maintenance throughout the world of those conditions offairness and of even-handed justice in the commercial dealings of thenations with one another upon which, after all, in the last analysis, the peace and ordered life of the world must ultimately depend. 

At home also we must see to it that the men who plan and develop anddirect our business enterprises shall enjoy definite and settledconditions of law, a policy accommodated to the freest progress. We haveset the just and necessary limits. We have put all kinds of unfaircompetition under the ban and penalty of the law. We have barredmonopoly. These fatal and ugly things being excluded, we must nowquicken action and facilitate enterprise by every just means within ourchoice. There will be peace in the business world, and, with peace, revived confidence and life. 

We ought both to husband and to develop our natural resources, ourmines, our forests, our water power. I wish we could have made moreprogress than we have made in this vital matter; and I call once more, with the deepest earnestness and solicitude, upon the advocates of acareful and provident conservation, on the one hand, and the advocatesof a free and inviting field for private capital, on the other, to gettogether in a spirit of genuine accommodation and agreement and set thisgreat policy forward at once. 

We must hearten and quicken the spirit and efficiency of laborthroughout our whole industrial system by everywhere and in alloccupations doing justice to the laborer, not only by paying a livingwage but also by making all the conditions that surround labor what theyought to be. And we must do more than justice. We must safeguard lifeand promote health and safety in every occupation in which they arethreatened or imperilled. That is more than justice, and better, becauseit is humanity and economy. 

We must coördinate the railway systems of the country for national use, and must facilitate and promote their development with a view to thatcoördination and to their better adaptation as a whole to the life andtrade and defense of the nation. The life and industry of the countrycan be free and unhampered only if these arteries are open, efficient, and complete. 

Thus shall we stand ready to meet the future as circumstance andinternational policy effect their unfolding, whether the changes comeslowly or come fast and without preface. 

I have not spoken explicitly, Gentlemen, of the platform adopted at St. Louis; but it has been implicit in all that I have said. I have soughtto interpret its spirit and meaning. The people of the United States donot need to be assured now that that platform is a definite pledge, apractical program. We have proved to them that our promises are made tobe kept. 

We hold very definite ideals. We believe that the energy and initiativeof our people have been too narrowly coached and superintended; thatthey should be set free, as we have set them free, to dispersethemselves throughout the nation; that they should not be concentratedin the hands of a few powerful guides and guardians, as our opponentshave again and again, in effect if not in purpose, sought to concentratethem. We believe, moreover, --who that looks about him now withcomprehending eye can fail to believe?--that the day of LittleAmericanism, with its narrow horizons, when methods of "protection" andindustrial nursing were the chief study of our provincial statesmen, arepast and gone and that a day of enterprise has at last dawned for theUnited States whose field is the wide world. 

We hope to see the stimulus of that new day draw all America, therepublics of both continents, on to a new life and energy and initiativein the great affairs of peace. We are Americans for Big America, andrejoice to look forward to the days in which America shall strive tostir the world without irritating it or drawing it on to newantagonisms, when the nations with which we deal shall at last come tosee upon what deep foundations of humanity and justice our passion forpeace rests, and when all mankind shall look upon our great people witha new sentiment of admiration, friendly rivalry and real affection, asupon a people who, though keen to succeed, seeks always to be at oncegenerous and just and to whom humanity is dearer than profit or selfishpower. 

Upon this record and in the faith of this purpose we go to the country. 

LINCOLN'S BEGINNINGS

[Address delivered September 4, 1916, on the acceptance of a deed ofgift to the Nation, by the Lincoln Farm Association, of the LincolnBirthplace Farm, at Hodgenville, Kentucky. ]

No more significant memorial could have been presented to the nationthan this. It expresses so much of what is singular and noteworthy inthe history of the country; it suggests so many of the things that weprize most highly in our life and in our system of government. Howeloquent this little house within this shrine is of the vigor ofdemocracy! There is nowhere in the land any home so remote, so humble, that it may not contain the power of mind and heart and conscience towhich nations yield and history submits its processes. Nature pays notribute to aristocracy, subscribes to no creed of caste, renders fealtyto no monarch or master of any name or kind. Genius is no snob. It doesnot run after titles or seek by preference the high circles of society. It affects humble company as well as great. It pays no special tributeto universities or learned societies or conventional standards ofgreatness, but serenely chooses its own comrades, its own haunts, itsown cradle even, and its own life of adventure and of training. Here isproof of it. This little hut was the cradle of one of the great sons ofmen, a man of singular, delightful, vital genius who presently emergedupon the great stage of the nation's history, gaunt, shy, ungainly, butdominant and majestic, a natural ruler of men, himself inevitably thecentral figure of the great plot. No man can explain this, but every mancan see how it demonstrates the vigor of democracy, where every door isopen, in every hamlet and countryside, in city and wilderness alike, for the ruler to emerge when he will and claim his leadership in thefree life. Such are the authentic proofs of the validity and vitality ofdemocracy. 

Here, no less, hides the mystery of democracy. Who shall guess thissecret of nature and providence and a free polity? Whatever the vigorand vitality of the stock from which he sprang, its mere vigor andsoundness do not explain where this man got his great heart that seemedto comprehend all mankind in its catholic and benignant sympathy, themind that sat enthroned behind those brooding, melancholy eyes, whosevision swept many an horizon which those about him dreamed not of, --thatmind that comprehended what it had never seen, and understood thelanguage of affairs with the ready ease of one to the manner born, --orthat nature which seemed in its varied richness to be the familiar ofmen of every way of life. This is the sacred mystery of democracy, thatits richest fruits spring up out of soils which no man has prepared andin circumstances amidst which they are the least expected. This is aplace alike of mystery and of reassurance. 

It is likely that in a society ordered otherwise than our own Lincolncould not have found himself or the path of fame and power upon which hewalked serenely to his death. In this place it is right that we shouldremind ourselves of the solid and striking facts upon which our faith indemocracy is founded. Many another man besides Lincoln has served thenation in its highest places of counsel and of action whose origins wereas humble as his. Though the greatest example of the universal energy, richness, stimulation, and force of democracy, he is only one exampleamong many. The permeating and all-pervasive virtue of the freedom whichchallenges us in America to make the most of every gift and power wepossess every page of our history serves to emphasize and illustrate. Standing here in this place, it seems almost the whole of the stirringstory. 

Here Lincoln had his beginnings. Here the end and consummation of thatgreat life seem remote and a bit incredible. And yet there was no breakanywhere between beginning and end, no lack of natural sequenceanywhere. Nothing really incredible happened. Lincoln was unaffectedlyas much at home in the White House as he was here. Do you share with methe feeling, I wonder, that he was permanently at home nowhere? It seemsto me that in the case of a man, --I would rather say of a spirit, --likeLincoln the question _where_ he was is of little significance, that itis always _what_ he was that really arrests our thought and takes holdof our imagination. It is the spirit always that is sovereign. Lincoln, like the rest of us, was put through the discipline of the world, --avery rough and exacting discipline for him, an indispensable disciplinefor every man who would know what he is about in the midst of theworld's affairs; but his spirit got only its schooling there. It did notderive its character or its vision from the experiences which brought itto its full revelation. The test of every American must always be, notwhere he is, but what he is. That, also, is of the essence of democracy, and is the moral of which this place is most gravely expressive. 

We would like to think of men like Lincoln and Washington as typicalAmericans, but no man can be typical who is so unusual as these greatmen were. It was typical of American life that it should produce suchmen with supreme indifference as to the manner in which it producedthem, and as readily here in this hut as amidst the little circle ofcultivated gentlemen to whom Virginia owed so much in leadership andexample. And Lincoln and Washington were typical Americans in the usethey made of their genius. But there will be few such men at best, andwe will not look into the mystery of how and why they come. We will onlykeep the door open for them always, and a hearty welcome, --after we haverecognized them. 

I have read many biographies of Lincoln; I have sought out with thegreatest interest the many intimate stories that are told of him, thenarratives of nearby friends, the sketches at close quarters, in whichthose who had the privilege of being associated with him have tried todepict for us the very man himself "in his habit as he lived;" but Ihave nowhere found a real intimate of Lincoln's. I nowhere get theimpression in any narrative or reminiscence that the writer had in factpenetrated to the heart of his mystery, or that any man could penetrateto the heart of it. That brooding spirit had no real familiars. I getthe impression that it never spoke out in complete self-revelation, andthat it could not reveal itself completely to anyone. It was a verylonely spirit that looked out from underneath those shaggy brows andcomprehended men without fully communing with them, as if, in spite ofall its genial efforts at comradeship, it dwelt apart, saw its visionsof duty where no man looked on. There is a very holy and very terribleisolation for the conscience of every man who seeks to read the destinyin affairs for others as well as for himself, for a nation as well asfor individuals. That privacy no man can intrude upon. That lonelysearch of the spirit for the right perhaps no man can assist. Thisstrange child of the cabin kept company with invisible things, was borninto no intimacy but that of its own silently assembling and deployingthoughts. 

I have come here to-day, not to utter a eulogy on Lincoln; he stands inneed of none, but to endeavor to interpret the meaning of this gift tothe nation of the place of his birth and origin. Is not this an altarupon which we may forever keep alive the vestal fire of democracy asupon a shrine at which some of the deepest and most sacred hopes ofmankind may from age to age be rekindled? For these hopes mustconstantly be rekindled, and only those who live can rekindle them. Theonly stuff that can retain the life-giving heat is the stuff of livinghearts. And the hopes of mankind cannot be kept alive by words merely, by constitutions and doctrines of right and codes of liberty. The objectof democracy is to transmute these into the life and action of society, the self-denial and self-sacrifice of heroic men and women willing tomake their lives an embodiment of right and service and enlightenedpurpose. The commands of democracy are as imperative as its privilegesand opportunities are wide and generous. Its compulsion is upon us. Itwill be great and lift a great light for the guidance of the nationsonly if we are great and carry that light high for the guidance of ourown feet. We are not worthy to stand here unless we ourselves be in deedand in truth real democrats and servants of mankind, ready to give ourvery lives for the freedom and justice and spiritual exaltation of thegreat nation which shelters and nurtures us. 

THE TRIUMPH OF WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE

[Address at the Suffrage Convention, Atlantic City, New Jersey, September 8, 1916. ]

MADAM PRESIDENT, LADIES OF THE ASSOCIATION:

I have found it a real privilege to be here to-night and to listen tothe addresses which you have heard. Though you may not all of youbelieve it, I would a great deal rather hear somebody else speak thanspeak myself; but I should feel that I was omitting a duty if I did notaddress you to-night and say some of the things that have been in mythought as I realized the approach of this evening and the duty thatwould fall upon me. 

The astonishing thing about the movement which you represent is, notthat it has grown so slowly, but that it has grown so rapidly. No doubtfor those who have been a long time in the struggle, like your honoredpresident, it seems a long and arduous path that has been trodden, butwhen you think of the cumulating force of this movement in recentdecades, you must agree with me that it is one of the most astonishingtides in modern history. Two generations ago, no doubt Madam Presidentwill agree with me in saying, it was a handful of women who werefighting this cause. Now it is a great multitude of women who arefighting it. 

And there are some interesting historical connections which I would liketo attempt to point out to you. One of the most striking facts about thehistory of the United States is that at the outset it was a lawyers'history. Almost all of the questions to which America addressed itself, say a hundred years ago, were legal questions, were questions ofmethod, not questions of what you were going to do with your Government, but questions of how you were going to constitute your Government, --howyou were going to balance the powers of the States and the FederalGovernment, how you were going to balance the claims of property againstthe processes of liberty, how you were going to make your governments upso as to balance the parts against each other so that the legislaturewould check the executive, and the executive the legislature, and thecourts both of them put together. The whole conception of governmentwhen the United States became a Nation was a mechanical conception ofgovernment, and the mechanical conception of government which underlayit was the Newtonian theory of the universe. If you pick up theFederalist, some parts of it read like a treatise on astronomy insteadof a treatise on government. They speak of the centrifugal and thecentripetal forces, and locate the President somewhere in a rotatingsystem. The whole thing is a calculation of power and an adjustment ofparts. There was a time when nobody but a lawyer could know enough torun the Government of the United States, and a distinguished Englishpublicist once remarked, speaking of the complexity of the AmericanGovernment, that it was no proof of the excellence of the AmericanConstitution that it had been successfully operated, because theAmericans could run any constitution. But there have been a great manytechnical difficulties in running it. 

And then something happened. A great question arose in this countrywhich, though complicated with legal elements, was at bottom a humanquestion, and nothing but a question of humanity. That was the slaveryquestion. And is it not significant that it was then, and then for thefirst time, that women became prominent in politics in America? Not manywomen; those prominent in that day were so few that you can name themover in a brief catalogue, but, nevertheless, they then began to play apart in writing, not only, but in public speech, which was a very novelpart for women to play in America. After the Civil War had settled someof what seemed to be the most difficult legal questions of our system, the life of the Nation began not only to unfold, but to accumulate. Lifein the United States was a comparatively simple matter at the time ofthe Civil War. There was none of that underground struggle which is nowso manifest to those who look only a little way beneath the surface. Stories such as Dr. Davis has told to-night were uncommon in thosesimpler days. The pressure of low wages, the agony of obscure andunremunerated toil, did not exist in America in anything like the sameproportions that they exist now. And as our life has unfolded andaccumulated, as the contacts of it have become hot, as the populationshave assembled in the cities, and the cool spaces of the country havebeen supplanted by the feverish urban areas, the whole nature of ourpolitical questions has been altered. They have ceased to be legalquestions. They have more and more become social questions, questionswith regard to the relations of human beings to one another, --not merelytheir legal relations, but their moral and spiritual relations to oneanother. This has been most characteristic of American life in the lastfew decades, and as these questions have assumed greater and greaterprominence, the movement which this association represents has gatheredcumulative force. So that, if anybody asks himself, "What does thisgathering force mean, " if he knows anything about the history of thecountry, he knows that it means something that has not only come tostay, but has come with conquering power. 

I get a little impatient sometimes about the discussion of the channelsand methods by which it is to prevail. It is going to prevail, and thatis a very superficial and ignorant view of it which attributes it tomere social unrest. It is not merely because the women are discontented. It is because the women have seen visions of duty, and that is somethingwhich we not only cannot resist, but, if we be true Americans, we do notwish to resist. America took its origin in visions of the human spirit, in aspirations for the deepest sort of liberty of the mind and of theheart, and as visions of that sort come up to the sight of those who arespiritually minded in America, America comes more and more into herbirthright and into the perfection of her development. 

So that what we have to realize in dealing with forces of this sort isthat we are dealing with the substance of life itself. I have felt as Isat here to-night the wholesome contagion of the occasion. Almost everyother time that I ever visited Atlantic City, I came to fight somebody. I hardly know how to conduct myself when I have not come to fightagainst anybody, but with somebody. I have come to suggest, among otherthings, that when the forces of nature are steadily working and the tideis rising to meet the moon, you need not be afraid that it will not cometo its flood. We feel the tide; we rejoice in the strength of it; and weshall not quarrel in the long run as to the method of it. Because, whenyou are working with masses of men and organized bodies of opinion, youhave got to carry the organized body along. The whole art and practiceof government consists not in moving individuals, but in moving masses. It is all very well to run ahead and beckon, but, after all, you havegot to wait for the body to follow. I have not come to ask you to bepatient, because you have been, but I have come to congratulate you thatthere was a force behind you that will beyond any peradventure betriumphant, and for which you can afford a little while to wait. 

THE TERMS OF PEACE

[Address to the Senate of the United States, delivered January 22, 1917. ]

GENTLEMEN OF THE SENATE:

On the eighteenth of December last I addressed an identic note to thegovernments of the nations now at war requesting them to state, moredefinitely than they had yet been stated by either group ofbelligerents, the terms upon which they would deem it possible to makepeace. I spoke on behalf of humanity and of the rights of all neutralnations like our own, many of whose most vital interests the war puts inconstant jeopardy. The Central Powers united in a reply which statedmerely that they were ready to meet their antagonists in conference todiscuss terms of peace. The Entente Powers have replied much moredefinitely and have stated, in general terms, indeed, but withsufficient definiteness to imply details, the arrangements, guarantees, and acts of reparation which they deem to be the indispensableconditions of a satisfactory settlement. We are that much nearer adefinite discussion of the peace which shall end the present war. We arethat much nearer the discussion of the international concert which mustthereafter hold the world at peace. In every discussion of the peacethat must end this war it is taken for granted that that peace must befollowed by some definite concert of power which will make it virtuallyimpossible that any such catastrophe should ever overwhelm us again. Every lover of mankind, every sane and thoughtful man must take that forgranted. 

I have sought this opportunity to address you because I thought that Iowed it to you, as the council associated with me in the finaldetermination of our international obligations, to disclose to youwithout reserve the thought and purpose that have been taking form in mymind in regard to the duty of our Government in the days to come when itwill be necessary to lay afresh and upon a new plan the foundations ofpeace among the nations. 

It is inconceivable that the people of the United States should play nopart in that great enterprise. To take part in such a service will bethe opportunity for which they have sought to prepare themselves by thevery principles and purposes of their polity and the approved practicesof their Government ever since the days when they set up a new nation inthe high and honorable hope that it might in all that it was and didshow mankind the way to liberty. They cannot in honor withhold theservice to which they are now about to be challenged. They do not wishto withhold it. But they owe it to themselves and to the other nationsof the world to state the conditions under which they will feel free torender it. 

That service is nothing less than this, to add their authority and theirpower to the authority and force of other nations to guarantee peace andjustice throughout the world. Such a settlement cannot now be longpostponed. It is right that before it comes this Government shouldfrankly formulate the conditions upon which it would feel justified inasking our people to approve its formal and solemn adherence to a Leaguefor Peace. I am here to attempt to state those conditions. 

The present war must first be ended; but we owe it to candor and to ajust regard for the opinion of mankind to say that, so far as ourparticipation in guarantees of future peace is concerned, it makes agreat deal of difference in what way and upon what terms it is ended. The treaties and agreements which bring it to an end must embody termswhich will create a peace that is worth guaranteeing and preserving, apeace that will win the approval of mankind, not merely a peace thatwill serve the several interests and immediate aims of the nationsengaged. We shall have no voice in determining what those terms shallbe, but we shall, I feel sure, have a voice in determining whether theyshall be made lasting or not by the guarantees of a universal covenant;and our judgment upon what is fundamental and essential as a conditionprecedent to permanency should be spoken now, not afterwards when it maybe too late. 

No covenant of coöperative peace that does not include the peoples ofthe New World can suffice to keep the future safe against war; and yetthere is only one sort of peace that the peoples of America could joinin guaranteeing. The elements of that peace must be elements that engagethe confidence and satisfy the principles of the American governments, elements consistent with their political faith and with the practicalconvictions which the peoples of America have once for all embraced andundertaken to defend. 

I do not mean to say that any American government would throw anyobstacle in the way of any terms of peace the governments now at warmight agree upon, or seek to upset them when made, whatever they mightbe. I only take it for granted that mere terms of peace between thebelligerents will not satisfy even the belligerents themselves. Mereagreements may not make peace secure. It will be absolutely necessarythat a force be created as a guarantor of the permanency of thesettlement so much greater than the force of any nation now engaged orany alliance hitherto formed or projected that no nation, no probablecombination of nations could face or withstand it. If the peacepresently to be made is to endure, it must be a peace made secure by theorganized major force of mankind. 

The terms of the immediate peace agreed upon will determine whether itis a peace for which such a guarantee can be secured. The question uponwhich the whole future peace and policy of the world depends is this: Isthe present war a struggle for a just and secure peace, or only for anew balance of power? If it be only a struggle for a new balance ofpower, who will guarantee, who can guarantee, the stable equilibrium ofthe new arrangement? Only a tranquil Europe can be a stable Europe. There must be, not a balance of power, but a community of power; notorganized rivalries, but an organized common peace. 

Fortunately we have received very explicit assurances on this point. Thestatesmen of both of the groups of nations now arrayed against oneanother have said, in terms that could not be misinterpreted, that itwas no part of the purpose they had in mind to crush their antagonists. But the implications of these assurances may not be equally clear toall, --may not be the same on both sides of the water. I think it will beserviceable if I attempt to set forth what we understand them to be. 

They imply, first of all, that it must be a peace without victory. It isnot pleasant to say this. I beg that I may be permitted to put my owninterpretation upon it and that it may be understood that no otherinterpretation was in my thought. I am seeking only to face realitiesand to face them without soft concealments. Victory would mean peaceforced upon the loser, a victor's terms imposed upon the vanquished. Itwould be accepted in humiliation, under duress, at an intolerablesacrifice, and would leave a sting, a resentment, a bitter memory uponwhich terms of peace would rest, not permanently, but only as uponquicksand. Only a peace between equals can last. Only a peace the veryprinciple of which is equality and a common participation in a commonbenefit. The right state of mind, the right feeling between nations, isas necessary for a lasting peace as is the just settlement of vexedquestions of territory or of racial and national allegiance. 

The equality of nations upon which peace must be founded if it is tolast must be an equality of rights; the guarantees exchanged mustneither recognize nor imply a difference between big nations and small, between those that are powerful and those that are weak. Right must bebased upon the common strength, not upon the individual strength, of thenations upon whose concert peace will depend. Equality of territory orof resources there of course cannot be; nor any other sort of equalitynot gained in the ordinary peaceful and legitimate development of thepeoples themselves. But no one asks or expects anything more than anequality of rights. Mankind is looking now for freedom of life, not forequipoises of power. 

And there is a deeper thing involved than even equality of right amongorganized nations. No peace can last, or ought to last, which does notrecognize and accept the principle that governments derive all theirjust powers from the consent of the governed, and that no right anywhereexists to hand peoples about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if theywere property. I take it for granted, for instance, if I may ventureupon a single example, that statesmen everywhere are agreed that thereshould be a united, independent, and autonomous Poland, and thathenceforth inviolable security of life, of worship, and of industrialand social development should be guaranteed to all peoples who havelived hitherto under the power of governments devoted to a faith andpurpose hostile to their own. 

I speak of this, not because of any desire to exalt an abstractpolitical principle which has always been held very dear by those whohave sought to build up liberty in America, but for the same reason thatI have spoken of the other conditions of peace which seem to me clearlyindispensable, --because I wish frankly to uncover realities. Any peacewhich does not recognize and accept this principle will inevitably beupset. It will not rest upon the affections or the convictions ofmankind. The ferment of spirit of whole populations will fight subtlyand constantly against it, and all the world will sympathize. The worldcan be at peace only if its life is stable, and there can be nostability where the will is in rebellion, where there is nottranquillity of spirit and a sense of justice, of freedom, and of right. 

So far as practicable, moreover, every great people now strugglingtowards a full development of its resources and of its powers should beassured a direct outlet to the great highways of the sea. Where thiscannot be done by the cession of territory, it can no doubt be done bythe neutralization of direct rights of way under the general guaranteewhich will assure the peace itself. With a right comity of arrangementno nation need be shut away from free access to the open paths of theworld's commerce. 

And the paths of the sea must alike in law and in fact be free. Thefreedom of the seas is the _sine qua non_ of peace, equality, andcoöperation. No doubt a somewhat radical reconsideration of many of therules of international practice hitherto thought to be established maybe necessary in order to make the seas indeed free and common inpractically all circumstances for the use of mankind, but the motive forsuch changes is convincing and compelling. There can be no trust orintimacy between the peoples of the world without them. The free, constant, unthreatened intercourse of nations is an essential part ofthe process of peace and of development. It need not be difficult eitherto define or to secure the freedom of the seas if the governments of theworld sincerely desire to come to an agreement concerning it. 

It is a problem closely connected with the limitation of naval armamentsand the coöperation of the navies of the world in keeping the seas atonce free and safe. And the question of limiting naval armaments opensthe wider and perhaps more difficult question of the limitation ofarmies and of all programs of military preparation. Difficult anddelicate as these questions are, they must be faced with the utmostcandor and decided in a spirit of real accommodation if peace is to comewith healing in its wings, and come to stay. Peace cannot be had withoutconcession and sacrifice. There can be no sense of safety and equalityamong the nations if great preponderating armaments are henceforth tocontinue here and there to be built up and maintained. The statesmen ofthe world must plan for peace and nations must adjust and accommodatetheir policy to it as they have planned for war and made ready forpitiless contest and rivalry. The question of armaments, whether on landor sea, is the most immediately and intensely practical questionconnected with the future fortunes of nations and of mankind. 

I have spoken upon these great matters without reserve and with theutmost explicitness because it has seemed to me to be necessary if theworld's yearning desire for peace was anywhere to find free voice andutterance. Perhaps I am the only person in high authority amongst allthe peoples of the world who is at liberty to speak and hold nothingback. I am speaking as an individual, and yet I am speaking also, ofcourse, as the responsible head of a great government, and I feelconfident that I have said what the people of the United States wouldwish me to say. May I not add that I hope and believe that I am ineffect speaking for liberals and friends of humanity in every nation andof every program of liberty? I would fain believe that I am speaking forthe silent mass of mankind everywhere who have as yet had no place oropportunity to speak their real hearts out concerning the death and ruinthey see to have come already upon the persons and the homes they holdmost dear. 

And in holding out the expectation that the people and Government of theUnited States will join the other civilized nations of the world inguaranteeing the permanence of peace upon such terms as I have named Ispeak with the greater boldness and confidence because it is clear toevery man who can think that there is in this promise no breach ineither our traditions or our policy as a nation, but a fulfilment, rather, of all that we have professed or striven for. 

I am proposing, as it were, that the nations should with one accordadopt the doctrine of President Monroe as the doctrine of the world:that no nation should seek to extend its polity over any other nation orpeople, but that every people should be left free to determine its ownpolity, its own way of development, unhindered, unthreatened, unafraid, the little along with the great and powerful. 

I am proposing that all nations henceforth avoid entangling allianceswhich would draw them into competitions of power, catch them in a net ofintrigue and selfish rivalry, and disturb their own affairs withinfluences intruded from without. There is no entangling alliance in aconcert of power. When all unite to act in the same sense and with thesame purpose all act in the common interest and are free to live theirown lives under a common protection. 

I am proposing government by the consent of the governed; that freedomof the seas which in international conference after conferencerepresentatives of the United States have urged with the eloquence ofthose who are the convinced disciples of liberty; and that moderation ofarmaments which makes of armies and navies a power for order merely, notan instrument of aggression or of selfish violence. 

These are American principles, American policies. We could stand for noothers. And they are also the principles and policies of forward lookingmen and women everywhere, of every modern nation, of every enlightenedcommunity. They are the principles of mankind and must prevail. 

MEETING GERMANY'S CHALLENGE

[Address delivered at a joint session of the two Houses of Congress, February 3, 1917. ]

GENTLEMEN OF THE CONGRESS:

The Imperial German Government on the thirty-first of January announcedto this Government and to the governments of the other neutral nationsthat on and after the first day of February, the present month, it wouldadopt a policy with regard to the use of submarines against all shippingseeking to pass through certain designated areas of the high seas towhich it is clearly my duty to call your attention. 

Let me remind the Congress that on the eighteenth of April last, in viewof the sinking on the twenty-fourth of March of the cross-Channelpassenger steamer _Sussex_ by a German submarine, without summons orwarning, and the consequent loss of the lives of several citizens of theUnited States who were passengers aboard her, this Government addresseda note to the Imperial German Government in which it made the followingdeclaration:

"If it is still the purpose of the Imperial Government to prosecuterelentless and indiscriminate warfare against vessels of commerce by theuse of submarines without regard to what the Government of the UnitedStates must consider the sacred and indisputable rules of internationallaw and the universally recognized dictates of humanity, the Governmentof the United States is at last forced to the conclusion that there isbut one course it can pursue. Unless the Imperial Government should nowimmediately declare and effect an abandonment of its present methods ofsubmarine warfare against passenger and freight-carrying vessels, theGovernment of the United States can have no choice but to severdiplomatic relations with the German Empire altogether. "

In reply to this declaration the Imperial German Government gave thisGovernment the following assurance:

"The German Government is prepared to do its utmost to confine theoperations of war for the rest of its duration to the fighting forces ofthe belligerents, thereby also insuring the freedom of the seas, aprinciple upon which the German Government believes, now as before, tobe in agreement with the Government of the United States. 

"The German Government, guided by this idea, notifies the Government ofthe United States that the German naval forces have received thefollowing orders: In accordance with the general principles of visit andsearch and destruction of merchant vessels recognized by internationallaw, such vessels, both within and without the area declared as navalwar zone, shall not be sunk without warning and without saving humanlives, unless these ships attempt to escape or offer resistance. 

"But, " it added, "neutrals cannot expect that Germany, forced to fightfor her existence, shall, for the sake of neutral interest, restrict theuse of an effective weapon if her enemy is permitted to continue toapply at will methods of warfare violating the rules of internationallaw. Such a demand would be incompatible with the character ofneutrality, and the German Government is convinced that the Governmentof the United States does not think of making such a demand, knowingthat the Government of the United States has repeatedly declared that itis determined to restore the principle of the freedom of the seas, fromwhatever quarter it has been violated. "

To this the Government of the United States replied on the eighth ofMay, accepting, of course, the assurances given, but adding, "The Government of the United States feels it necessary to state that ittakes it for granted that the Imperial German Government does not intendto imply that the maintenance of its newly announced policy is in anyway contingent upon the course or result of diplomatic negotiationsbetween the Government of the United States and any other belligerentGovernment, notwithstanding the fact that certain passages in theImperial Government's note of the fourth instant might appear to besusceptible of that construction. In order, however, to avoid anypossible misunderstanding, the Government of the United States notifiesthe Imperial Government that it cannot for a moment entertain, much lessdiscuss, a suggestion that respect by German naval authorities for therights of citizens of the United States upon the high seas should in anyway or in the slightest degree be made contingent upon the conduct ofany other Government affecting the rights of neutrals andnon-combatants. Responsibility in such matters is single, not joint;absolute, not relative. "

To this note of the eighth of May the Imperial German Government made noreply. 

On the thirty-first of January, the Wednesday of the present week, theGerman Ambassador handed to the Secretary of State, along with a formalnote, a memorandum which contains the following statement:

"The Imperial Government, therefore, does not doubt that the Governmentof the United States will understand the situation thus forced uponGermany by the Entente-Allies' brutal methods of war and by theirdetermination to destroy the Central Powers, and that the Government ofthe United States will further realize that the now openly disclosedintentions of the Entente-Allies give back to Germany the freedom ofaction which she reserved in her note addressed to the Government of theUnited States on May 4, 1916. 

"Under these circumstances Germany will meet the illegal measures of herenemies by forcibly preventing after February 1, 1917, in a zone aroundGreat Britain, France, Italy, and in the Eastern Mediterranean allnavigation, that of neutrals included, from and to England and from andto France, etc. , etc. All ships met within the zone will be sunk. "

I think that you will agree with me that, in view of this declaration, which suddenly and without prior intimation of any kind deliberatelywithdraws the solemn assurance given in the Imperial Government's noteof the fourth of May, 1916, this Government has no alternativeconsistent with the dignity and honor of the United States but to takethe course which, in its note of the eighteenth of April, 1916, itannounced that it would take in the event that the German Government didnot declare and effect an abandonment of the methods of submarinewarfare which it was then employing and to which it now purposes againto resort. 

I have, therefore, directed the Secretary of State to announce to HisExcellency the German Ambassador that all diplomatic relations betweenthe United States and the German Empire are severed, and that theAmerican Ambassador at Berlin will immediately be withdrawn; and, inaccordance with this decision, to hand to His Excellency his passports. 

Notwithstanding this unexpected action of the German Government, thissudden and deeply deplorable renunciation of its assurances, given thisGovernment at one of the most critical moments of tension in therelations of the two governments, I refuse to believe that it is theintention of the German authorities to do in fact what they have warnedus they will feel at liberty to do. I cannot bring myself to believethat they will indeed pay no regard to the ancient friendship betweentheir people and our own or to the solemn obligations which have beenexchanged between them and destroy American ships and take the lives ofAmerican citizens in the willful prosecution of the ruthless navalprogram they have announced their intention to adopt. Only actual overtacts on their part can make me believe it even now. 

If this inveterate confidence on my part in the sobriety and prudentforesight of their purpose should unhappily prove unfounded; if Americanships and American lives should in fact be sacrificed by their navalcommanders in heedless contravention of the just and reasonableunderstandings of international law and the obvious dictates ofhumanity, I shall take the liberty of coming again before the Congress, to ask that authority be given me to use any means that may be necessaryfor the protection of our seamen and our people in the prosecution oftheir peaceful and legitimate errands on the high seas. I can do nothingless. I take it for granted that all neutral governments will take thesame course. 

We do not desire any hostile conflict with the Imperial GermanGovernment. We are the sincere friends of the German people andearnestly desire to remain at peace with the Government which speaks forthem. We shall not believe that they are hostile to us unless and untilwe are obliged to believe it; and we purpose nothing more than thereasonable defense of the undoubted rights of our people. We wish toserve no selfish ends. We seek merely to stand true alike in thought andin action to the immemorial principles of our people which I sought toexpress in my address to the Senate only two weeks ago, --seek merely tovindicate our right to liberty and justice and an unmolested life. Theseare the bases of peace, not war. God grant we may not be challenged todefend them by acts of wilful injustice on the part of the Government ofGermany!

REQUEST FOR AUTHORITY

[Address delivered at a joint session of the two Houses of Congress, February 26, 1917. ]

GENTLEMEN OF THE CONGRESS:

I have again asked the privilege of addressing you because we are movingthrough critical times during which it seems to me to be my duty to keepin close touch with the Houses of Congress, so that neither counsel noraction shall run at cross purposes between us. 

On the third of February I officially informed you of the sudden andunexpected action of the Imperial German Government in declaring itsintention to disregard the promises it had made to this Government inApril last and undertake immediate submarine operations against allcommerce, whether of belligerents or of neutrals, that should seek toapproach Great Britain and Ireland, the Atlantic coasts of Europe, orthe harbors of the eastern Mediterranean, and to conduct thoseoperations without regard to the established restrictions ofinternational practice, without regard to any considerations of humanityeven which might interfere with their object. That policy was forthwithput into practice. It has now been in active execution for nearly fourweeks. 

Its practical results are not yet fully disclosed. The commerce of otherneutral nations is suffering severely, but not, perhaps, very much moreseverely than it was already suffering before the first of February, when the new policy of the Imperial Government was put into operation. We have asked the coöperation of the other neutral governments toprevent these depredations, but so far none of them has thought it wiseto join us in any common course of action. Our own commerce hassuffered, is suffering, rather in apprehension than in fact, ratherbecause so many of our ships are timidly keeping to their home portsthan because American ships have been sunk. 

Two American vessels have been sunk, the _Housatonic_ and the _Lyman M. Law_. The case of the _Housatonic, _ which was carrying food-stuffsconsigned to a London firm, was essentially like the case of the _Fry_, in which, it will be recalled, the German Government admitted itsliability for damages, and the lives of the crew, as in the case of the_Fry_, were safeguarded with reasonable care. The case of the _Law_, which was carrying lemon-box staves to Palermo, disclosed a ruthlessnessof method which deserves grave condemnation, but was accompanied by nocircumstances which might not have been expected at any time inconnection with the use of the submarine against merchantmen as theGerman Government has used it. 

In sum, therefore, the situation we find ourselves in with regard to theactual conduct of the German submarine warfare against commerce and itseffects upon our own ships and people is substantially the same that itwas when I addressed you on the third of February, except for the tyingup of our shipping in our own ports because of the unwillingness of ourshipowners to risk their vessels at sea without insurance or adequateprotection, and the very serious congestion of our commerce which hasresulted, a congestion which is growing rapidly more and more seriousevery day. This in itself might presently accomplish, in effect, whatthe new German submarine orders were meant to accomplish, so far as weare concerned. We can only say, therefore, that the overt act which Ihave ventured to hope the German commanders would in fact avoid has notoccurred. 

But, while this is happily true, it must be admitted that there havebeen certain additional indications and expressions of purpose on thepart of the German press and the German authorities which have increasedrather than lessened the impression that, if our ships and our peopleare spared, it will be because of fortunate circumstances or because thecommanders of the German submarines which they may happen to encounterexercise an unexpected discretion and restraint rather than because ofthe instructions under which those commanders are acting. It would befoolish to deny that the situation is fraught with the gravestpossibilities and dangers. No thoughtful man can fail to see that thenecessity for definite action may come at any time, if we are in fact, and not in word merely, to defend our elementary rights as a neutralnation. It would be most imprudent to be unprepared. 

I cannot in such circumstances be unmindful of the fact that theexpiration of the term of the present Congress is immediately at hand, by constitutional limitation; and that it would in all likelihoodrequire an unusual length of time to assemble and organize the Congresswhich is to succeed it. I feel that I ought, in view of that fact, toobtain from you full and immediate assurance of the authority which Imay need at any moment to exercise. No doubt I already possess thatauthority without special warrant of law, by the plain implication of myconstitutional duties and powers; but I prefer, in the presentcircumstances, not to act upon general implication. I wish to feel thatthe authority and the power of the Congress are behind me in whatever itmay become necessary for me to do. We are jointly the servants of thepeople and must act together and in their spirit, so far as we candivine and interpret it. 

No one doubts what it is our duty to do. We must defend our commerceand the lives of our people in the midst of the present tryingcircumstances, with discretion but with clear and steadfast purpose. Only the method and the extent remain to be chosen, upon the occasion, if occasion should indeed arise. Since it has unhappily provedimpossible to safeguard our neutral rights by diplomatic means againstthe unwarranted infringements they are suffering at the hands ofGermany, there may be no recourse but to _armed_ neutrality, which weshall know how to maintain and for which there is abundant Americanprecedent. 

It is devoutly to be hoped that it will not be necessary to put armedforce anywhere into action. The American people do not desire it, andour desire is not different from theirs. I am sure that they willunderstand the spirit in which I am now acting, the purpose I holdnearest my heart and would wish to exhibit in everything I do. I amanxious that the people of the nations at war also should understand andnot mistrust us. I hope that I need give no further proofs andassurances than I have already given throughout nearly three years ofanxious patience that I am the friend of peace and mean to preserve itfor America so long as I am able. I am not now proposing orcontemplating war or any steps that need lead to it. I merely requestthat you will accord me by your own vote and definite bestowal the meansand the authority to safeguard in practice the right of a great peoplewho are at peace and who are desirous of exercising none but the rightsof peace to follow the pursuits of peace in quietness and goodwill, --rights recognized time out of mind by all the civilized nationsof the world. No course of my choosing or of theirs will lead to war. War can come only by the wilful acts and aggressions of others. 

You will understand why I can make no definite proposals or forecastsof action now and must ask for your supporting authority in the mostgeneral terms. The form in which action may become necessary cannot yetbe foreseen. I believe that the people will be willing to trust me toact with restraint, with prudence, and in the true spirit of amity andgood faith that they have themselves displayed throughout these tryingmonths; and it is in that belief that I request that you will authorizeme to supply our merchant ships with defensive arms, should that becomenecessary, and with the means of using them, and to employ any otherinstrumentalities or methods that may be necessary and adequate toprotect our ships and our people in their legitimate and peacefulpursuits on the seas. I request also that you will grant me at the sametime, along with the powers I ask, a sufficient credit to enable me toprovide adequate means of protection where they are lacking, includingadequate insurance against the present war risks. 

I have spoken of our commerce and of the legitimate errands of ourpeople on the seas, but you will not be misled as to my main thought, the thought that lies beneath these phrases and gives them dignity andweight. It is not of material interests merely that we are thinking. Itis, rather, of fundamental human rights, chief of all the right of lifeitself. I am thinking, not only of the rights of Americans to go andcome about their proper business by way of the sea, but also ofsomething much deeper, much more fundamental than that. I am thinking ofthose rights of humanity without which there is no civilization. Mytheme is of those great principles of compassion and of protection whichmankind has sought to throw about human lives, the lives ofnon-combatants, the lives of men who are peacefully at work keeping theindustrial processes of the world quick and vital, the lives of womenand children and of those who supply the labor which ministers to theirsustenance. We are speaking of no selfish material rights but of rightswhich our hearts support and whose foundation is that righteous passionfor justice upon which all law, all structures alike of family, ofstate, and of mankind must rest, as upon the ultimate base of ourexistence and our liberty. I cannot imagine any man with Americanprinciples at his heart hesitating to defend these things. 

SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS

[Washington, March 4, 1917. ]

MY FELLOW-CITIZENS:

The four years which have elapsed since last I stood in this place havebeen crowded with counsel and action of the most vital interest andconsequence. Perhaps no equal period in our history has been so fruitfulof important reforms in our economic and industrial life or so full ofsignificant changes in the spirit and purpose of our political action. We have sought very thoughtfully to set our house in order, correct thegrosser errors and abuses of our industrial life, liberate and quickenthe processes of our national genius and energy, and lift our politicsto a broader view of the people's essential interests. It is a record ofsingular variety and singular distinction. But I shall not attempt toreview it. It speaks for itself and will be of increasing influence asthe years go by. This is not the time for retrospect. It is time, rather, to speak our thoughts and purposes concerning the present andthe immediate future. 

Although we have centered counsel and action with such unusualconcentration and success upon the great problems of domesticlegislation to which we addressed ourselves four years ago, othermatters have more and more forced themselves upon our attention, matterslying outside our own life as a nation and over which we had no control, but which, despite our wish to keep free of them, have drawn us more andmore irresistibly into their own current and influence. 

It has been impossible to avoid them. They have affected the life ofthe whole world. They have shaken men everywhere with a passion and anapprehension they never knew before. It has been hard to preserve calmcounsel while the thought of our own people swayed this way and thatunder their influence. We are a composite and cosmopolitan people. Weare of the blood of all the nations that are at war. The currents of ourthoughts as well as the currents of our trade run quick at all seasonsback and forth between us and them. The war inevitably set its mark fromthe first alike upon our minds, our industries, our commerce, ourpolitics, and our social action. To be indifferent to it or independentof it was out of the question. 

And yet all the while we have been conscious that we were not part ofit. In that consciousness, despite many divisions, we have drawn closertogether. We have been deeply wronged upon the seas, but we have notwished to wrong or injure in return; have retained throughout theconsciousness of standing in some sort apart, intent upon an interestthat transcended the immediate issues of the war itself. As some of theinjuries done us have become intolerable we have still been clear thatwe wished nothing for ourselves that we were not ready to demand for allmankind, --fair dealing, justice, the freedom to live and be at easeagainst organized wrong. 

It is in this spirit and with this thought that we have grown more andmore aware, more and more certain that the part we wished to play wasthe part of those who mean to vindicate and fortify peace. We have beenobliged to arm ourselves to make good our claim to a certain minimum ofright and of freedom of action. We stand firm in armed neutrality sinceit seems that in no other way we can demonstrate what it is we insistupon and cannot forego. We may even be drawn on, by circumstances, notby our own purpose or desire, to a more active assertion of our rightsas we see them and a more immediate association with the great struggleitself. But nothing will alter our thought or our purpose. They are tooclear to be obscured. They are too deeply rooted in the principles ofour national life to be altered. We desire neither conquest noradvantage. We wish nothing that can be had only at the cost of anotherpeople. We have always professed unselfish purpose and we covet theopportunity to prove that our professions are sincere. 

There are many things still to do at home, to clarify our own politicsand give new vitality to the industrial processes of our own life, andwe shall do them as time and opportunity serve; but we realize that thegreatest things that remain to be done must be done with the whole worldfor stage and in coöperation with the wide, and universal forces ofmankind, and we are making our spirits ready for those things. They willfollow in the immediate wake of the war itself and will set civilizationup again. We are provincials no longer. The tragical events of thethirty months of vital turmoil through which we have just passed havemade us citizens of the world. There can be no turning back. Our ownfortunes as a nation are involved, whether we would have it so or not. 

And yet we are not the less Americans on that account. We shall be themore American if we but remain true to the principles in which we havebeen bred. They are not the principles of a province or of a singlecontinent. We have known and boasted all along that they were theprinciples of a liberated mankind. These, therefore, are the things weshall stand for, whether in war or in peace:

That all nations are equally interested in the peace of the world andin the political stability of free peoples, and equally responsible fortheir maintenance;

That the essential principle of peace is the actual equality of nationsin all matters of right or privilege;

That peace cannot securely or justly rest upon an armed balance ofpower;

That governments derive all their just powers from the consent of thegoverned and that no other powers should be supported by the commonthought, purpose, or power of the family of nations. 

That the seas should be equally free and safe for the use of allpeoples, under rules set up by common agreement and consent, and that, so far as practicable, they should be accessible to all upon equalterms;

That national armaments should be limited to the necessities of nationalorder and domestic safety;

That the community of interest and of power upon which peace musthenceforth depend imposes upon each nation the duty of seeing to it thatall influences proceeding from its own citizens meant to encourage orassist revolution in other states should be sternly and effectuallysuppressed and prevented. 

I need not argue these principles to you, my fellow-countrymen: they areyour own, part and parcel of your own thinking and your own motive inaffairs. They spring up native amongst us. Upon this as a platform ofpurpose and of action we can stand together. 

And it is imperative that we should stand together. We are being forgedinto a new unity amidst the fires that now blaze throughout the world. In their ardent heat we shall, in God's providence, let us hope, bepurged of faction and division, purified of the errant humors of partyand of private interest, and shall stand forth in the days to come witha new dignity of national pride and spirit. Let each man see to it thatthe dedication is in his own heart, the high purpose of the Nation inhis own mind, ruler of his own will and desire. 

I stand here and have taken the high and solemn oath to which you havebeen audience because the people of the United States have chosen me forthis august delegation of power and have by their gracious judgmentnamed me their leader in affairs. I know now what the task means. Irealize to the full the responsibility which it involves. I pray God Imay be given the wisdom and the prudence to do my duty in the truespirit of this great people. I am their servant and can succeed only asthey sustain and guide me by their confidence and their counsel. Thething I shall count upon, the thing without which neither counsel noraction will avail, is the unity of America, --an America united infeeling, in purpose, and in its vision of duty, of opportunity, and ofservice. We are to beware of all men who would turn the tasks and thenecessities of the Nation to their own private profit or use them forthe building up of private power; beware that no faction or disloyalintrigue break the harmony or embarrass the spirit of our people; bewarethat our Government be kept pure and incorrupt in all its parts. Unitedalike in the conception of our duty and in the high resolve to performit in the face of all men, let us dedicate ourselves to the great taskto which we must now set our hand. For myself I beg your tolerance, yourcountenance, and your united aid. The shadows that now lie dark upon ourpath will soon be dispelled and we shall walk with the light all aboutus if we be but true to ourselves, --to ourselves as we have wished to beknown in the counsels of the world and in the thought of all those wholove liberty and justice and the right exalted. 

THE CALL TO WAR

[Address delivered at a joint session of the two Houses of Congress, April 2, 1917. ]

GENTLEMEN OF THE CONGRESS:

I have called the Congress into extraordinary session because there areserious, very serious, choices of policy to be made, and madeimmediately, which it was neither right nor constitutionally permissiblethat I should assume the responsibility of making. 

On the third of February last I officially laid before you theextraordinary announcement of the Imperial German Government that on andafter the first day of February it was its purpose to put aside allrestraints of law or of humanity and use its submarines to sink everyvessel that sought to approach either the ports of Great Britain andIreland or the western coasts of Europe or any of the ports controlledby the enemies of Germany within the Mediterranean. That had seemed tobe the object of the German submarine warfare earlier in the war, butsince April of last year the Imperial Government had somewhat restrainedthe commanders of its undersea craft in conformity with its promise thengiven to us that passenger boats should not be sunk and that due warningwould be given to all other vessels which its submarines might seek todestroy, when no resistance was offered or escape attempted, and caretaken that their crews were given at least a fair chance to save theirlives in their open boats. The precautions taken were meager andhaphazard enough, as was proved in distressing instance after instancein the progress of the cruel and unmanly business, but a certain degreeof restraint was observed. The new policy has swept every restrictionaside. Vessels of every kind, whatever their flag, their character, their cargo, their destination, their errand, have been ruthlessly sentto the bottom without warning and without thought of help or mercy forthose on board, the vessels of friendly neutrals along with those ofbelligerents. Even hospital ships and ships carrying relief to thesorely bereaved and stricken people of Belgium, though the latter wereprovided with safe conduct through the proscribed areas by the GermanGovernment itself and were distinguished by unmistakable marks ofidentity, have been sunk with the same reckless lack of compassion or ofprinciple. 

I was for a little while unable to believe that such things would infact be done by any government that had hitherto subscribed to thehumane practices of civilized nations. International law had its originin the attempt to set up some law which would be respected and observedupon the seas, where no nation had right of dominion and where lay thefree highways of the world. By painful stage after stage has that lawbeen built up, with meager enough results, indeed, after all wasaccomplished that could be accomplished, but always with a clear view, at least, of what the heart and conscience of mankind demanded. Thisminimum of right the German Government has swept aside under the plea ofretaliation and necessity and because it had no weapons which it coulduse at sea except these which it is impossible to employ as it isemploying them without throwing to the winds all scruples of humanity orof respect for the understandings that were supposed to underlie theintercourse of the world. I am not now thinking of the loss of propertyinvolved, immense and serious as that is, but only of the wanton andwholesale destruction of the lives of non-combatants, men, women, andchildren, engaged in pursuits which have always, even in the darkestperiods of modern history, been deemed innocent and legitimate. Propertycan be paid for; the lives of peaceful and innocent people cannot be. The present German submarine warfare against commerce is a warfareagainst mankind. 

It is a war against all nations. American ships have been sunk, Americanlives taken, in ways which it has stirred us very deeply to learn of, but the ships and people of other neutral and friendly nations have beensunk and overwhelmed in the waters in the same way. There has been nodiscrimination. The challenge is to all mankind. Each nation must decidefor itself how it will meet it. The choice we make for ourselves must bemade with a moderation of counsel and a temperateness of judgmentbefitting our character and our motives as a nation. We must put excitedfeeling away. Our motive will not be revenge or the victorious assertionof the physical might of the nation, but only the vindication of right, of human right, of which we are only a single champion. 

When I addressed the Congress on the twenty-sixth of February last Ithought that it would suffice to assert our neutral rights with arms, our right to use the seas against unlawful interference, our right tokeep our people safe against unlawful violence. But armed neutrality, itnow appears, is impracticable. Because submarines are in effect outlawswhen used as the German submarines have been used against merchantshipping, it is impossible to defend ships against their attacks as thelaw of nations has assumed that merchantmen would defend themselvesagainst privateers or cruisers, visible craft giving chase upon the opensea. It is common prudence in such circumstances, grim, necessityindeed, to endeavor to destroy them before they have shown their ownintention. They must be dealt with upon sight, if dealt with at all. The German Government denies the right of neutrals to use arms at allwithin the areas of the sea which it has proscribed, even in the defenseof rights which no modern publicist has ever before questioned theirright to defend. The intimation is conveyed that the armed guards whichwe have placed on our merchant ships will be treated as beyond the paleof law and subject to be dealt with as pirates would be. Armedneutrality is ineffectual enough at best; in such circumstances and inthe face of such pretensions it is worse than ineffectual: it is likelyonly to produce what it was meant to prevent; it is practically certainto draw us into the war without either the rights or the effectivenessof belligerents. There is one choice we cannot make, we are incapable ofmaking: we will not choose the path of submission and suffer the mostsacred rights of our nation and our people to be ignored or violated. The wrongs against which we now array ourselves are no common wrongs;they cut to the very roots of human life. 

With a profound sense of the solemn and even tragical character of thestep I am taking and of the grave responsibilities which it involves, but in unhesitating obedience to what I deem my constitutional duty, Iadvise that the Congress declare the recent course of the ImperialGerman Government to be in fact nothing less than war against thegovernment and people of the United States; that it formally accept thestatus of belligerent which has thus been thrust upon it; and that ittake immediate steps not only to put the country in a more thoroughstate of defense but also to exert all its power and employ all itsresources to bring the Government of the German Empire to terms and endthe war. 

What this will involve is clear. It will involve the utmost practicablecoöperation in counsel and action with the governments now at war withGermany, and, as incident to that, the extension to those governments ofthe most liberal financial credits, in order that our resources may sofar as possible be added to theirs. It will involve the organization andmobilization of all the material resources of the country to supply thematerials of war and serve the incidental needs of the nation in themost abundant and yet the most economical and efficient way possible. Itwill involve the immediate full equipment of the navy in all respectsbut particularly in supplying it with the best means of dealing with theenemy's submarines. It will involve the immediate addition to the armedforces of the United States already provided for by law in case of warat least 500, 000 men, who should, in my opinion, be chosen upon theprinciple of universal liability to service, and also the authorizationof subsequent additional increments of equal force so soon as they maybe needed and can be handled in training. It will involve also, ofcourse, the granting of adequate credits to the Government, sustained, Ihope, so far as they can equitably be sustained by the presentgeneration, by well conceived taxation. 

I say sustained so far as may be equitable by taxation because it seemsto me that it would be most unwise to base the credits which will now benecessary entirely on money borrowed. It is our duty, I mostrespectfully urge, to protect our people so far as we may against thevery serious hardships and evils which would be likely to arise out ofthe inflation which would be produced by vast loans. 

In carrying out the measures by which these things are to beaccomplished we should keep constantly in mind the wisdom of interferingas little as possible in our own preparation and in the equipment ofour own military forces with the duty, --for it will be a very practicalduty, --of supplying the nations already at war with Germany with thematerials which they can obtain only from us or by our assistance. Theyare in the field and we should help them in every way to be effectivethere. 

I shall take the liberty of suggesting, through the several executivedepartments of the Government, for the consideration of your committees, measures for the accomplishment of the several objects I have mentioned. I hope that it will be your pleasure to deal with them as having beenframed after very careful thought by the branch of the Government uponwhich the responsibility of conducting the war and safeguarding thenation will most directly fall. 

While we do these things, these deeply momentous things, let us be veryclear, and make very clear to all the world what our motives and ourobjects are. My own thought has not been driven from its habitual andnormal course by the unhappy events of the last two months, and I do notbelieve that the thought of the nation has been altered or clouded bythem. I have exactly the same things in mind now that I had in mind whenI addressed the Senate on the twenty-second of January last; the samethat I had in mind when I addressed the Congress on the third ofFebruary and on the twenty-sixth of February. Our object now, as then, is to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the life of theworld as against selfish, and autocratic power and to set up amongst thereally free and self-governed peoples of the world such a concert ofpurpose and of action as will henceforth ensure the observance of thoseprinciples. Neutrality is no longer feasible or desirable where thepeace of the world is involved and the freedom of its peoples, and themenace to that peace and freedom lies in the existence of autocraticgovernments backed by organized force which is controlled wholly bytheir will, not by the will of their people. We have seen the last ofneutrality in such circumstances. We are at the beginning of an age inwhich it will be insisted that the same standards of conduct and ofresponsibility for wrong done shall be observed among nations and theirgovernments that are observed among the individual citizens of civilizedstates. 

We have no quarrel with the German people. We have no feeling towardsthem but one of sympathy and friendship. It was not upon their impulsethat their government acted in entering this war. It was not with theirprevious knowledge or approval. It was a war determined upon as warsused to be determined upon in the old, unhappy days when peoples werenowhere consulted by their rulers and wars were provoked and waged inthe interest of dynasties or of little groups of ambitious men who wereaccustomed to use their fellow-men as pawns and tools. Self-governednations do not fill their neighbor states with spies or set the courseof intrigue to bring about some critical posture of affairs which willgive them an opportunity to strike and make conquest. Such designs canbe successfully worked out only under cover and where no one has theright to ask questions. Cunningly contrived plans of deception oraggression, carried, it may be, from generation to generation, can beworked out and kept from the light only within the privacy of courts orbehind the carefully guarded confidences of a narrow and privilegedclass. They are happily impossible where public opinion commands andinsists upon full information concerning all the nation's affairs. 

A steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained except by apartnership of democratic nations. No autocratic government could betrusted to keep faith within it or observe its covenants. It must be aleague of honor, a partnership of opinion. Intrigue would eat its vitalsaway; the plottings of inner circles who could plan what they would andrender account to no one would be a corruption seated at its very heart. Only free peoples can hold their purpose and their honor steady to acommon end and prefer the interests of mankind to any narrow interest oftheir own. 

Does not every American feel that assurance has been added to our hopefor the future peace of the world by the wonderful and heartening thingsthat have been happening within the last few weeks in Russia? Russia wasknown by those who knew it best to have been always in fact democraticat heart, in all the vital habits of her thought, in all the intimaterelationships of her people that spoke their natural instinct, theirhabitual attitude towards life. The autocracy that crowned the summit ofher political structure, long as it had stood and terrible as was thereality of its power, was not in fact Russian in origin, character, orpurpose; and now it has been shaken off and the great, generous Russianpeople have been added in all their naïve majesty and might to theforces that are fighting for freedom in the world, for justice, and forpeace. Here is a fit partner for a League of Honor. 

One of the things that has served to convince us that the Prussianautocracy was not and could never be our friend is that from the veryoutset of the present war it has filled our unsuspecting communities andeven our offices of government with spies and set criminal intrigueseverywhere afoot against our national unity of counsel, our peace withinand without, our industries and our commerce. Indeed it is now evidentthat its spies were here even before the war began; and it is unhappilynot a matter of conjecture but a fact proved in our courts of justicethat the intrigues which have more than once come perilously near todisturbing the peace and dislocating the industries of the country havebeen carried on at the instigation, with the support, and even under thepersonal direction of official agents of the Imperial Governmentaccredited to the Government of the United States. Even in checkingthese things and trying to extirpate them we have sought to put the mostgenerous interpretation possible upon them because we knew that theirsource lay, not in any hostile feeling or purpose of the German peopletowards us (who were, no doubt as ignorant of them as we ourselveswere), but only in the selfish designs of a Government that did what itpleased and told its people nothing. But they have played their part inserving to convince us at last that that Government entertains no realfriendship for us and means to act against our peace and security at itsconvenience. That it means to stir up enemies against us at our verydoors the intercepted note to the German Minister at Mexico City iseloquent evidence. 

We are accepting this challenge of hostile purpose because we know thatin such a government, following such methods, we can never have afriend; and that in the presence of its organized power, always lying inwait to accomplish we know not what purpose, there can be no assuredsecurity for the democratic governments of the world. We are now aboutto accept gauge of battle with this natural foe to liberty and shall, ifnecessary, spend the whole force of the nation to check and nullify itspretensions and its power. We are glad, now that we see the facts withno veil of false pretense about them, to fight thus for the ultimatepeace of the world and for the liberation of its peoples, the Germanpeoples included: for the rights of nations great and small and theprivilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and ofobedience. The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must beplanted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have noselfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek noindemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrificeswe shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights ofmankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made assecure as the faith and the freedom of nations can make them. 

Just because we fight without rancor and without selfish object, seekingnothing for ourselves but what we shall wish to share with all freepeoples, we shall, I feel confident, conduct our operations asbelligerents without passion and ourselves observe with proud punctiliothe principles of right and of fair play we profess to be fighting for. 

I have said nothing of the governments allied with the ImperialGovernment of Germany because they have not made war upon us orchallenged us to defend our right and our honor. The Austro-HungarianGovernment has, indeed, avowed its unqualified endorsement andacceptance of the reckless and lawless submarine warfare adopted nowwithout disguise by the Imperial German Government, and it has thereforenot been possible for this Government to receive Count Tarnowski, theAmbassador recently accredited to this Government by the Imperial andRoyal Government of Austria-Hungary; but that Government has notactually engaged in warfare against citizens of the United States on theseas, and I take the liberty, for the present at least, of postponing adiscussion of our relations with the authorities at Vienna. We enterthis war only where we are clearly forced into it because there are noother means of defending our rights. 

It will be all the easier for us to conduct ourselves as belligerents ina high spirit of right and fairness because we act without animus, notin enmity towards a people or with the desire to bring any injury ordisadvantage upon them, but only in armed opposition to an irresponsiblegovernment which has thrown aside all considerations of humanity and ofright and is running amuck. We are, let me say again, the sincerefriends of the German people, and shall desire nothing so much as theearly reëstablishment of intimate relations of mutual advantage betweenus, --however hard it may be for them, for the time being, to believethat this is spoken from our hearts. We have borne with their presentgovernment through all these bitter months because of thatfriendship, --exercising a patience and forbearance which would otherwisehave been impossible. We shall, happily, still have an opportunity toprove that friendship in our daily attitude and actions towards themillions of men and women of German birth and native sympathy who liveamongst us and share our life, and we shall be proud to prove it towardsall who are in fact loyal to their neighbors and to the Government inthe hour of test. They are, most of them, as true and loyal Americans asif they had never known any other fealty or allegiance. They will beprompt to stand with us in rebuking and restraining the few who may beof a different mind and purpose. If there should be disloyalty, it willbe dealt with with a firm hand of stern repression; but, if it lifts itshead at all, it will lift it only here and there and without countenanceexcept from a lawless and malignant few. 

It is a distressing and oppressive duty, Gentlemen of the Congress, which I have performed in thus addressing you. There are, it may be, many months of fiery trial and sacrifice ahead of us. It is a fearfulthing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the mostterrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to bein the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we shallfight for the things which we have always carried nearest ourhearts, --for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authorityto have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and libertiesof small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert offree peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make theworld itself at last free. To such a task we can dedicate our lives andour fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, withthe pride of those who know that the day has come when America isprivileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gaveher birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured. Godhelping her, she can do no other. 

TO THE COUNTRY

[President Wilson's Address to his Fellow-Countrymen, April 16, 1917. ]

MY FELLOW-COUNTRYMEN:

The entrance of our own beloved country into the grim and terrible warfor democracy and human rights which has shaken the world creates somany problems of national life and action which call for immediateconsideration and settlement that I hope you will permit me to addressto you a few words of earnest counsel and appeal with regard to them. 

We are rapidly putting our navy upon an effective war footing and areabout to create and equip a great army, but these are the simplest partsof the great task to which we have addressed ourselves. There is not asingle selfish element, so far as I can see, in the cause we arefighting for. We are fighting for what we believe and wish to be therights of mankind and for the future peace and security of the world. Todo this great thing worthily and successfully we must devote ourselvesto the service without regard to profit or material advantage and withan energy and intelligence that will rise to the level of the enterpriseitself. We must realize to the full how great the task is and how manythings, how many kinds and elements of capacity and service andself-sacrifice, it involves. 

These, then, are the things we must do, and do well, besidesfighting, --the things without which mere fighting would be fruitless:

We must supply abundant food for ourselves and for our armies and ourseamen not only, but also for a large part of the nations with whom wehave now made common cause, in whose support and by whose sides we shallbe fighting. 

We must supply ships by the hundreds out of our shipyards to carry tothe other side of the sea, submarines or no submarines, what will everyday be needed there, and abundant materials out of our fields and ourmines and our factories with which not only to clothe and equip our ownforces on land and sea but also to clothe and support our people forwhom the gallant fellows under arms can no longer work, to help clotheand equip the armies with which we are coöperating in Europe, and tokeep the looms and manufactories there in raw material; coal to keep thefires going in ships at sea and in the furnaces of hundreds of factoriesacross the sea; steel out of which to make arms and ammunition both hereand there; rails for worn-out railways back of the fighting fronts;locomotives and rolling stock to take the place of those every day goingto pieces; mules, horses, cattle for labor and for military service;everything with which the people of England and France and Italy andRussia have usually supplied themselves but cannot now afford the men, the materials, or the machinery to make. 

It is evident to every thinking man that our industries, on the farms, in the shipyards, in the mines, in the factories, must be made moreprolific and more efficient than ever and that they must be moreeconomically managed and better adapted to the particular requirementsof our task than they have been; and what I want to say is that the menand the women who devote their thought and their energy to these thingswill be serving the country and conducting the fight for peace andfreedom just as truly and just as effectively as the men on thebattlefield or in the trenches. The industrial forces of the country, men and women alike, will be a great national, a great international, Service Army, --a notable and honored host engaged in the service of thenation and the world, the efficient friends and saviors of free meneverywhere. Thousands, nay, hundreds of thousands, of men otherwiseliable to military service will of right and of necessity be excusedfrom that service and assigned to the fundamental, sustaining work ofthe fields and factories and mines, and they will be as much part of thegreat patriotic forces of the nation as the men under fire. 

I take the liberty, therefore, of addressing this word to the farmers ofthe country and to all who work on the farms: The supreme need of ourown nation and of the nations with which we are coöperating is anabundance of supplies, and especially of food-stuffs. The importance ofan adequate food supply, especially for the present year, issuperlative. Without abundant food, alike for the armies and the peoplesnow at war, the whole great enterprise upon which we have embarked willbreak down and fail. The world's food reserves are low. Not only duringthe present emergency but for some time after peace shall have come bothour own people and a large proportion of the people of Europe must relyupon the harvests in America. Upon the farmers of this country, therefore, in large measure, rests the fate of the war and the fate ofthe nations. May the nation not count upon them to omit no step thatwill increase the production of their land or that will bring about themost effectual coöperation in the sale and distribution of theirproducts? The time is short. It is of the most imperative importancethat everything possible be done and done immediately to make sure oflarge harvests. I call upon young men and old alike and upon theable-bodied boys of the land to accept and act upon this duty--to turnin hosts to the farms and make certain that no pains and no labor islacking in this great matter. 

I particularly appeal to the farmers of the South to plant abundantfood-stuffs as well as cotton. They can show their patriotism in nobetter or more convincing way than by resisting the great temptation ofthe present price of cotton and helping, helping upon a great scale, tofeed the nation and the peoples everywhere who are fighting for theirliberties and for our own. The variety of their crops will be thevisible measure of their comprehension of their national duty. 

The Government of the United States and the governments of the severalStates stand ready to coöperate. They will do everything possible toassist farmers in securing an adequate supply of seed, an adequate forceof laborers when they are most needed, at harvest time, and the means ofexpediting shipments of fertilizers and farm machinery, as well as ofthe crops themselves when harvested. The course of trade shall be asunhampered as it is possible to make it and there shall be nounwarranted manipulation of the nation's food supply by those who handleit on its way to the consumer. This is our opportunity to demonstratethe efficiency of a great Democracy and we shall not fall short of it!

This let me say to the middlemen of every sort, whether they arehandling our food-stuffs or our raw materials of manufacture or theproducts of our mills and factories: The eyes of the country will beespecially upon you. This is your opportunity for signal service, efficient and disinterested. The country expects you, as it expects allothers, to forego unusual profits, to organize and expedite shipments ofsupplies of every kind, but especially of food, with an eye to theservice you are rendering and in the spirit of those who enlist in theranks, for their people, not for themselves. I shall confidently expectyou to deserve and win the confidence of people of every sort andstation. 

To the men who run the railways of the country, whether they be managersor operative employees, let me say that the railways are the arteries ofthe nation's life and that upon them rests the immense responsibility ofseeing to it that those arteries suffer no obstruction of any kind, noinefficiency or slackened power. To the merchant let me suggest themotto, "Small profits and quick service"; and to the shipbuilder thethought that the life of the war depends upon him. The food and the warsupplies must be carried across the seas no matter how many ships aresent to the bottom. The places of those that go down must be suppliedand supplied at once. To the miner let me say that he stands where thefarmer does: the work of the world waits on him. If he slackens orfails, armies and statesmen are helpless. He also is enlisted in thegreat Service Army. The manufacturer does not need to be told, I hope, that the nation looks to him to speed and perfect every process; and Iwant only to remind his employees that their service is absolutelyindispensable and is counted on by every man who loves the country andits liberties. 

Let me suggest, also, that everyone who creates or cultivates a gardenhelps, and helps greatly, to solve the problem of the feeding of thenations; and that every housewife who practices strict economy putsherself in the ranks of those who serve the nation. This is the time forAmerica to correct her unpardonable fault of wastefulness andextravagance. Let every man and every woman assume the duty of careful, provident use and expenditure as a public duty, as a dictate ofpatriotism which no one can now expect ever to be excused or forgivenfor ignoring. 

In the hope that this statement of the needs of the nation and of theworld in this hour of supreme crisis may stimulate those to whom itcomes and remind all who need reminder of the solemn duties of a timesuch as the world has never seen before, I beg that all editors andpublishers everywhere will give as prominent publication and as widecirculation as possible to this appeal. I venture to suggest, also, toall advertising agencies that they would perhaps render a verysubstantial and timely service to the country if they would give itwidespread repetition. And I hope that clergymen will not think thetheme of it an unworthy or inappropriate subject of comment and homilyfrom their pulpits. 

The supreme test of the nation has come. We must all speak, act, andserve together!

WOODROW WILSON. 

THE GERMAN PLOT

[Speech in Washington Monument Grounds, June 14, 1917. ]

We know now clearly, as we knew before we ourselves were engaged in theWar, that we are not enemies of the German people, and they are not ourenemies. They did not originate, or desire, this hideous war, or wishthat we should be drawn into it, and we are vaguely conscious that weare fighting their cause, as they will some day see it themselves, aswell as our own. They themselves are in the grip of the same sinisterpower that has stretched its ugly talons out and drawn blood from us. 

The War was begun by the military masters of Germany, who have provedthemselves to be also the masters of Austria-Hungary. These men neverregarded nations as peoples of men, women, and children of like bloodand frame as themselves, for whom Governments existed and in whomGovernments had their life. They regarded them merely as serviceableorganizations, which they could, either by force or intrigue, bend orcorrupt to their own purpose. They regarded the smaller States, particularly, and those peoples, who could be overwhelmed by force, astheir natural tools and instruments of domination. 

Their purpose had long been avowed. The statesmen of other nations, towhom that purpose was incredible, paid little attention, and regardedwhat the German professors expounded in their class-rooms and the Germanwriters set forth to the world as the goal of German policy as ratherthe dream of minds detached from practical affairs and the preposterousprivate conceptions of Germany's destiny than the actual plans ofresponsible rulers. But the rulers of Germany knew all the while whatconcrete plans, what well-advanced intrigue, lay at the back of whatprofessors and writers were saying, and were glad to go forwardunmolested, filling the thrones of the Balkan States with Germanprinces, putting German officers at the service of Turkey, developingplans of sedition and rebellion in India and Egypt, and setting theirfires in Persia. 

The demands made by Austria upon Serbia were a mere single step in theplan which compassed Europe and Asia from Berlin to Bagdad. They hopedthat these demands might not arouse Europe, but they meant to pressthem, whether they did or not. For they thought themselves ready for thefinal issue of arms. Their plan was to throw a belt of German militarypower and political control across the very center of Europe and beyondthe Mediterranean into the heart of Asia, and Austria-Hungary was to beas much their tool and pawn as Serbia, Bulgaria, Turkey, or theponderous States of the East. Austria-Hungary, indeed, was to become apart of the Central German Empire, absorbed and dominated by the sameforces and influences that originally cemented the German Statesthemselves. 

The dream had its heart at Berlin. It could have had its heart nowhereelse. It rejected entirely the idea of the solidarity of race. Thechoice of peoples played no part at all in the contemplated bindingtogether of the racial and political units, which could keep togetheronly by force. And they actually carried the greater part of thatamazing plan into execution. 

Look how things stand. Austria, at their mercy, has acted, not upon itsown initiative or upon the choice of its own people, but at Berlin'sdictation ever since the War began. Its people now desire peace, butthey cannot have it until leave is granted from Berlin. The so-calledCentral Powers are, in fact, but a single Power. Serbia is at its mercyshould its hand be but for a moment freed; Bulgaria consented to itswill; Rumania is overrun by the Turkish armies, which the Germanstrained into serving Germany, and the guns of the German warships lyingin the harbor at Constantinople remind the Turkish statesmen every daythat they have no choice but to take their orders from Berlin. 

From Hamburg to the Persian Gulf the net is spread. Is it not easy tounderstand the eagerness for peace that has been manifested by Berlinever since the snare was set and sprung? "Peace, peace, peace" has beenthe talk of her Foreign Office for a year or more, not peace upon herown initiative, but upon the initiative of the nations over which shenow deems herself to hold the advantage. A little of the talk has beenpublic, but most of it has been private, through all sorts of channels. It has come to me in all sorts of guises, but never with the termsdisclosed which the German Government would be willing to accept. 

That Government has other valuable pawns in its hands besides those Ihave mentioned. It still holds a valuable part of France, though with aslowly relaxing grasp, and practically the whole of Belgium. Its armiespress close on Russia and overrun Poland. It cannot go farther--it darenot go back. It wishes to close its bargain before it is too late and ithas little left to offer for the pound of flesh it will demand. Themilitary masters under whom Germany is bleeding see very clearly to whatpoint fate has brought them: if they fall back or are forced back aninch, their power abroad and at home will fall to pieces. It is theirpower at home of which they are thinking now more than of their powerabroad. It is that power which is trembling under their very feet. 

Deep fear has entered their hearts. They have but one chance toperpetuate their military power, or even their controlling politicalinfluence. If they can secure peace now, with the immense advantagestill in their hands, they will have justified themselves before theGerman people. They will have gained by force what they promised to gainby it--an immense expansion of German power and an immense enlargementof German industrial and commercial opportunities. Their prestige willbe secure, and with their prestige their political power. 

If they fail, their people will thrust them aside. A Governmentaccountable to the people themselves will be set up in Germany, as hasbeen the case in England, the United States, and France--in all greatcountries of modern times except Germany. If they succeed they are safe, and Germany and the world are undone. If they fail, Germany is saved andthe world will be at peace. If they succeed, America will fall withinthe menace, and we, and all the rest of the world, must remain armed, asthey will remain, and must make ready for the next step in theiraggression. If they fail, the world may unite for peace and Germany maybe of the union. 

Do you not now understand the new intrigue for peace, and why themasters of Germany do not hesitate to use any agency that promises toeffect their purpose, the deceit of nations? Their present particularaim is to deceive all those who, throughout the world, stand for therights of peoples and the self-government of nations, for they see whatimmense strength the forces of justice and liberalism are gathering outof this war. They are employing Liberals in their enterprises. Let themonce succeed, and these men, now their tools, will be ground to powderbeneath the weight of the great military Empire; the Revolutionists ofRussia will be cut off from all succour and the coöperation of WesternEurope, and a counter-revolution will be fostered and supported; Germanyherself will lose her chance of freedom, and all Europe will arm for thenext final struggle. 

The sinister intrigue is being no less actively conducted in thiscountry than in Russia and in every country of Europe into which theagents and dupes of the Imperial German Government can get access. ThatGovernment has many spokesmen here, in places both high and low. Theyhave learned discretion; they keep within the law. It is opinion theyutter now, not sedition. They proclaim the liberal purposes of theirmasters, and they declare that this is a foreign war, which can touchAmerica with no danger either to her lands or institutions. They setEngland at the center of the stage, and talk of her ambition to asserther economic dominion throughout the world. They appeal to our ancienttradition of isolation, and seek to undermine the Government with falseprofessions of loyalty to its principles. 

But they will make no headway. Falsehood betrays them in every accent. These facts are patent to all the world, and nowhere more plainly thanin the United States, where we are accustomed to deal with facts, notsophistries; and the great fact that stands out above all the rest isthat this is a peoples' war for freedom, justice and self-governmentamong all the nations of the world, a war to make the world safe for thepeoples who live upon it, the German people included, and that with usrests the choice to break through all these hypocrisies, the patentcheats and masks of brute force, and help set the world free, or elsestand aside and let it be dominated through sheer weight of arms and thearbitrary choices of the self-constituted masters by the nation whichcan maintain the biggest armies, the most irresistible armaments, apower to which the world has afforded no parallel, in the face of whichpolitical freedom must wither and perish. 

For us there was but one choice. We have made it, and woe be to thatman, or that group of men, that seeks to stand in our way in this day ofhigh resolution, when every principle we hold dearest is to bevindicated and made secure for the salvation of the nation. We are readyto plead at the bar of history, and our flag shall wear a new luster. Once more we shall make good with our lives and fortunes the great faithto which we are born, and a new glory shall shine in the face of ourpeople. 

REPLY TO THE POPE

[This important and eloquent document, though signed by the Secretary ofState, was of course authorized by the President, and indeed bearsinternal marks of being his own composition. The Pope had made a pleafor peace, which was by our government deemed premature. ]

AUGUST 27, 1917. 

TO HIS HOLINESS BENEDICTUS XV, POPE:

In acknowledgment of the communication of Your Holiness to thebelligerent peoples, dated August 1, 1917, the President of the UnitedStates requests me to transmit the following reply:

Every heart that has not been blinded and hardened by this terrible warmust be touched by this moving appeal of His Holiness the Pope, mustfeel the dignity and force of the humane and generous motives whichprompted it, and must fervently wish that we might take the path ofpeace he so persuasively points out. But it would be folly to take it ifit does not in fact lead to the goal he proposes. Our response must bebased upon the stern facts and upon nothing else. It is not a merecessation of arms he desires; it is a stable and enduring peace. Thisagony must not be gone through with again, and it must be a matter ofvery sober judgment that will insure us against it. 

His Holiness in substance proposes that we return to the status quo antebellum, and that then there be a general condonation, disarmament, and aconcert of nations based upon an acceptance of the principle ofarbitration; that by a similar concert freedom of the seas beestablished; and that the territorial claims of France and Italy, theperplexing problems of the Balkan States, and the restitution of Polandbe left to such conciliatory adjustments as may be possible in the newtemper of such a peace, due regard being paid to the aspirations of thepeoples whose political fortunes and affiliations will be involved. 

It is manifest that no part of this program can be successfully carriedout unless the restitution of the status quo ante furnishes a firm andsatisfactory basis for it. The object of this war is to deliver the freepeoples of the world from the menace and the actual power of a vastmilitary establishment controlled by an irresponsible government which, having secretly planned to dominate the world, proceeded to carry theplan out without regard either to the sacred obligations of treaty orthe long-established practices and long-cherished principles ofinternational action and honor; which chose its own time for the war;delivered its blow fiercely and suddenly; stopped at no barrier eitherof law or of mercy; swept a whole continent within the tide ofblood--not the blood of soldiers only, but the blood of innocent womenand children also and of the helpless poor; and now stands balked butnot defeated, the enemy of four-fifths of the world. This power is notthe German people. It is the ruthless master of the German people. It isno business of ours how that great people came under its control orsubmitted with temporary zest to the domination of its purpose; but itis our business to see to it that the history of the rest of the worldis no longer left to its handling. 

To deal with such a power by way of peace upon the plan proposed by HisHoliness the Pope would, so far as we can see, involve a recuperation ofits strength and a renewal of its policy; would make it necessary tocreate a permanent hostile combination of nations against the Germanpeople who are its instruments; and would result in abandoning thenewborn Russia to the intrigue, the manifold subtle interference, andthe certain counter-revolution which would be attempted by all themalign influences to which the German Government has of late accustomedthe world. Can peace be based upon a restitution of its power or uponany word of honor it could pledge in a treaty of settlement andaccommodation?

Responsible statesmen must now everywhere see, if they never saw before, that no peace can rest securely upon political or economic restrictionsmeant to benefit some nations and cripple or embarrass others, uponvindictive action of any sort, or any kind of revenge or deliberateinjury. The American people have suffered intolerable wrongs at thehands of the Imperial German Government, but they desire no reprisalupon the German people who have themselves suffered all things in thiswar which they did not choose. They believe that peace should rest uponthe rights of peoples, not the rights of Governments--the rights ofpeoples great or small, weak or powerful--their equal right to freedomand security and self-government and to a participation upon fair termsin the economic opportunities of the world, the German people of courseincluded if they will accept equality and not seek domination. 

The test, therefore, of every plan of peace is this: Is it based uponthe faith of all the peoples involved or merely upon the word of anambitious and intriguing government on the one hand and of a group offree peoples on the other? This is a test which goes to the root of thematter; and it is the test which must be applied. 

The purposes of the United States in this war are known to the wholeworld, to every people to whom the truth has been permitted to come. They do not need to be stated again. We seek no material advantage ofany kind. We believe that the intolerable wrongs done in this war bythe furious and brutal power of the Imperial German Government ought tobe repaired, but not at the expense of the sovereignty of anypeople--rather a vindication of the sovereignty both of those that areweak and of those that are strong. Punitive damages, the dismembermentof empires, the establishment of selfish and exclusive economic leagues, we deem inexpedient and in the end worse than futile, no proper basisfor a peace of any kind, least of all for an enduring peace. That mustbe based upon justice and fairness and the common rights of mankind. 

We cannot take the word of the present rulers of Germany as a guarantyof anything that is to endure, unless explicitly supported by suchconclusive evidence of the will and purpose of the German peoplethemselves as the other peoples of the world would be justified inaccepting. Without such guaranties treaties of settlement, agreementsfor disarmament, covenants to set up arbitration in the place of force, territorial adjustments, reconstitutions of small nations, if made withthe German Government, no man, no nation could now depend on. We mustawait some new evidence of the purposes of the great peoples of thecentral powers. God grant it may be given soon and in a way to restorethe confidence of all peoples everywhere in the faith of nations and thepossibility of a covenanted peace. 

ROBERT LANSING, _Secretary of State of the United States of America_. 

LABOR MUST BE FREE

[Address to the American Federation of Labor Convention, Buffalo, NewYork, November 12, 1917. ]

MR. PRESIDENT, DELEGATES OF THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR, LADIES ANDGENTLEMEN:

I esteem it a great privilege and a real honor to be thus admitted toyour public counsels. When your executive committee paid me thecompliment of inviting me here I gladly accepted the invitation becauseit seems to me that this, above all other times in our history, is thetime for common counsel, for the drawing together not only of theenergies but of the minds of the Nation. I thought that it was a welcomeopportunity for disclosing to you some of the thoughts that have beengathering in my mind during these last momentous months. 

CRITICAL TIME IN HISTORY

I am introduced to you as the President of the United States, and yet Iwould be pleased if you would put the thought of the office into thebackground and regard me as one of your fellow-citizens who has comehere to speak, not the words of authority, but the words of counsel; thewords which men should speak to one another who wish to be frank in amoment more critical perhaps than the history of the world has ever yetknown; a moment when it is every man's duty to forget himself, to forgethis own interests, to fill himself with the nobility of a great nationaland world conception, and act upon a new platform elevated above theordinary affairs of life and lifted to where men have views of the longdestiny of mankind. 

I think that in order to realize just what this moment of counsel is itis very desirable that we should remind ourselves just how this war cameabout and just what it is for. You can explain most wars very simply, but the explanation of this is not so simple. Its roots run deep intoall the obscure soils of history, and in my view this is the lastdecisive issue between the old principle of power and the new principleof freedom. 

WAR STARTED BY GERMANY

The war was started by Germany. Her authorities deny that they startedit, but I am willing to let the statement I have just made await theverdict of history. And the thing that needs to be explained is whyGermany started the war. Remember what the position of Germany in theworld was--as enviable a position as any nation has ever occupied. Thewhole world stood at admiration of her wonderful intellectual andmaterial achievements. All the intellectual men of the world went toschool to her. As a university man I have been surrounded by men trainedin Germany, men who had resorted to Germany because nowhere else couldthey get such thorough and searching training, particularly in theprinciples of science and the principles that underlie modern materialachievement. Her men of science had made her industries perhaps the mostcompetent industries of the world, and the label "Made in Germany" was aguarantee of good workmanship and of sound material. She had access toall the markets of the world, and every other nation who traded in thosemarkets feared Germany because of her effective and almost irresistiblecompetition. She had a "place in the sun. "

GERMANY'S INDUSTRIAL GROWTH

Why was she not satisfied? What more did she want? There was nothing inthe world of peace that she did not already have and have in abundance. We boast of the extraordinary pace of American advancement. We show withpride the statistics of the increase of our industries and of thepopulation of our cities. Well, those statistics did not match therecent statistics of Germany. Her old cities took on youth and grewfaster than any American cities ever grew. Her old industries openedtheir eyes and saw a new world and went out for its conquest. And yetthe authorities of Germany were not satisfied. 

You have one part of the answer to the question why she was notsatisfied in her methods of competition. There is no important industryin Germany upon which the Government has not laid its hands, to directit and, when necessity arose, control it; and you have only to ask anyman whom you meet who is familiar with the conditions that prevailedbefore the war in the matter of national competition to find out themethods of competition which the German manufacturers and exporters usedunder the patronage and support of the Government of Germany. You willfind that they were the same sorts of competition that we have tried toprevent by law within our own borders. If they could not sell theirgoods cheaper than we could sell ours at a profit to themselves theycould get a subsidy from the Government which made it possible to sellthem cheaper anyhow, and the conditions of competition were thuscontrolled in large measure by the German Government itself. 

BERLIN-BAGDAD RAILWAY

But that did not satisfy the German Government. All the while there waslying behind its thought and in its dreams of the future a politicalcontrol which would enable it in the long run to dominate the labor andthe industry of the world. They were not content with success bysuperior achievement; they wanted success by authority. I suppose veryfew of you have thought much about the Berlin-to-Bagdad Railway. TheBerlin-Bagdad Railway was constructed in order to run the threat offorce down the flank of the industrial undertakings of half a dozenother countries; so that when German competition came in it would not beresisted too far, because there was always the possibility of gettingGerman armies into the heart of that country quicker than any otherarmies could be got there. 

Look at the map of Europe now! Germany is thrusting upon us again andagain the discussion of peace talks, --about what? Talks about Belgium;talks about northern France; talks about Alsace-Lorraine. Well, thoseare deeply interesting subjects to us and to them, but they are not theheart of the matter. Take the map and look at it. Germany has absolutecontrol of Austria-Hungary, practical control of the Balkan States, control of Turkey, control of Asia Minor. I saw a map in which the wholething was printed in appropriate black the other day, and the blackstretched all the way from Hamburg to Bagdad--the bulk of German powerinserted into the heart of the world. If she can keep that, she has keptall that her dreams contemplated when the war began. If she can keepthat, her power can disturb the world as long as she keeps it, alwaysprovided, for I feel bound to put this proviso in--always provided thepresent influences that control the German Government continue tocontrol it. I believe that the spirit of freedom can get into the heartsof Germans and find as fine a welcome there as it can find in any otherhearts, but the spirit of freedom does not suit the plans of thePan-Germans. Power cannot be used with concentrated force against freepeoples if it is used by free people. 

PEACE RUMORS

You know how many intimations come to us from one of the central powersthat it is more anxious for peace than the chief central power, and youknow that it means that the people in that central power know that ifthe war ends as it stands they will in effect themselves be vassals ofGermany, notwithstanding that their populations are compounded of allthe peoples of that part of the world, and notwithstanding the fact thatthey do not wish in their pride and proper spirit of nationality to beso absorbed and dominated. Germany is determined that the politicalpower of the world shall belong to her. There have been such ambitionsbefore. They have been in part realized, but never before have thoseambitions been based upon so exact and precise and scientific a plan ofdomination. 

May I not say that it is amazing to me that any group of persons shouldbe so ill-informed as to suppose, as some groups in Russia apparentlysuppose, that any reforms planned in the interest of the people can livein the presence of a Germany powerful enough to undermine or overthrowthem by intrigue or force? Any body of free men that compounds with thepresent German Government is compounding for its own destruction. Butthat is not the whole of the story. Any man in America or anywhere elsethat supposes that the free industry and enterprise of the world cancontinue if the Pan-German plan is achieved and German power fastenedupon the world is as fatuous as the dreamers in Russia. What I amopposed to is not the feeling of the pacifists, but their stupidity. Myheart is with them, but my mind has a contempt for them. I want peace, but I know how to get it, and they do not. 

COLONEL HOUSE'S MISSION

You will notice that I sent a friend of mine, Colonel House, to Europe, who is as great a lover of peace as any man in the world; but I didn'tsend him on a peace mission yet. I sent him to take part in a conferenceas to how the war was to be won, and he knows, as I know, that that isthe way to get peace, if you want it for more than a few minutes. 

All of this is a preface to the conference that I have referred to withregard to what we are going to do. If we are true friends of freedom, our own or anybody else's, we will see that the power of this countryand the productivity of this country is raised to its absolute maximum, and that absolutely nobody is allowed to stand in the way of it. When Isay that nobody is allowed to stand in the way I do not mean that theyshall be prevented by the power of the Government but by the power ofthe American spirit. Our duty, if we are to do this great thing and showAmerica to be what we believe her to be--the greatest hope and energy ofthe world--is to stand together night and day until the job is finished. 

LABOR MUST BE FREE

While we are fighting for freedom we must see, among other things, thatlabor is free; and that means a number of interesting things. It meansnot only that we must do what we have declared our purpose to do, seethat the conditions of labor are not rendered more onerous by the war, but also that we shall see to it that the instrumentalities by which theconditions of labor are improved are not blocked or checked. That wemust do. That has been the matter about which I have taken pleasure inconferring from time to time with your president, Mr. Gompers; and if Imay be permitted to do so, I want to express my admiration of hispatriotic courage, his large vision, and his statesmanlike sense of whathas to be done. I like to lay my mind alongside of a mind that knows howto pull in harness. The horses that kick over the traces will have to beput in corral. 

Now, to stand together means that nobody must interrupt the processes ofour energy if the interruption can possibly be avoided without theabsolute invasion of freedom. To put it concretely, that means this:Nobody has a right to stop the processes of labor until all the methodsof conciliation and settlement have been exhausted. And I might as wellsay right here that I am not talking to you alone. You sometimes stopthe courses of labor, but there are others who do the same, and Ibelieve I am speaking from my own experience not only, but from theexperience of others when I say that you are reasonable in a largernumber of cases than the capitalists. I am not saying these things tothem personally yet, because I have not had a chance, but they have tobe said, not in any spirit of criticism, but in order to clear theatmosphere and come down to business. Everybody on both sides has nowgot to transact business, and a settlement is never impossible when bothsides want to do the square and right thing. 

SETTLEMENT HARD TO AVOID

Moreover, a settlement is always hard to avoid when the parties can bebrought face to face. I can differ from a man much more radically whenhe is not in the room than I can when he is in the room, because thenthe awkward thing is he can come back at me and answer what I say. It isalways dangerous for a man to have the floor entirely to himself. Therefore, we must insist in every instance that the parties come intoeach other's presence and there discuss the issues between them, and notseparately in places which have no communication with each other. Ialways like to remind myself of a delightful saying of an Englishman ofthe past generation, Charles Lamb. He stuttered a little bit, and oncewhen he was with a group of friends he spoke very harshly of some manwho was not present. One of his friends said: "Why, Charles, I didn'tknow that you knew so and so. " "O-o-oh, " he said, "I-I d-d-don't; I-Ican't h-h-h hate a m-m-man I-I know. " There is a great deal of humannature, of very pleasant human nature, in the saying. It is hard to hatea man you know. I may admit, parenthetically, that there are somepoliticians whose methods I do not at all believe in, but they are jollygood fellows, and if they only would not talk the wrong kind of politicsto me, I would love to be with them. 

NO SYMPATHY WITH MOB SPIRIT

So it is all along the line, in serious matters and things less serious. We are all of the same clay and spirit, and we can get together if wedesire to get together. Therefore, my counsel to you is this: Let usshow ourselves Americans by showing that we do not want to go off inseparate camps or groups by ourselves, but that we want to coöperatewith all other classes and all other groups in the common enterprisewhich is to release the spirits of the world from bondage. I would bewilling to set that up as the final test of an American. That is themeaning of democracy. I have been very much distressed, myfellow-citizens, by some of the things that have happened recently. Themob spirit is displaying itself here and there in this country. I haveno sympathy with what some men are saying, but I have no sympathy withthe men who take their punishment into their own hands; and I want tosay to every man who does join such a mob that I do not recognize him asworthy of the free institutions of the United States. There are someorganizations in this country whose object is anarchy and thedestruction of law, but I would not meet their efforts by making myselfpartner in destroying the law. I despise and hate their purposes as muchas any man, but I respect the ancient processes of justice; and I wouldbe too proud not to see them done justice, however wrong they are. 

MUST OBEY COMMON COUNSEL

So I want to utter my earnest protest against any manifestation of thespirit of lawlessness anywhere or in any cause. Why, gentlemen, lookwhat it means. We claim to be the greatest democratic people in theworld, and democracy means first of all that we can govern ourselves. Ifour men have not self-control, then they are not capable of that greatthing which we call democratic government. A man who takes the law intohis own hands is not the right man to coöperate in any formation ordevelopment of law and institutions, and some of the processes by whichthe struggle between capital and labor is carried on are processes thatcome very near to taking the law into your own hands. I do not mean fora moment to compare them with what I have just been speaking of, but Iwant you to see that they are mere gradations in this manifestation ofthe unwillingness to coöperate, and that the fundamental lesson of thewhole situation is that we must not only take common counsel, but thatwe must yield to and obey common counsel. Not all of theinstrumentalities for this are at hand. I am hopeful that in the verynear future new instrumentalities may be organized by which we can seeto it that various things that are now going on ought not to go on. There are various processes of the dilution of labor and the unnecessarysubstitution of labor and the bidding in distant markets and unfairlyupsetting the whole competition of labor which ought not to go on. Imean now on the part of employers, and we must interject someinstrumentality of coöperation by which the fair thing will be done allaround. I am hopeful that some such instrumentalities may be devised, but whether they are or not, we must use those that we have and uponevery occasion where it is necessary have such an instrumentalityoriginated upon that occasion. 

So, my fellow-citizens, the reason I came away from Washington is that Isometimes get lonely down there. So many people come to Washington whoknow things that are not so, and so few people who know anything aboutwhat the people of the United States are thinking about. I have to comeaway and get reminded of the rest of the country. I have to come awayand talk to men who are up against the real thing, and say to them, "Iam with you if you are with me. " And the only test of being with me isnot to think about me personally at all, but merely to think of me asthe expression for the time being of the power and dignity and hope ofthe United States. 

THE CALL FOR WAR WITH AUSTRIA-HUNGARY

[Address delivered at a joint session of the two Houses of Congress, December 4, 1917. ]

GENTLEMEN OF THE CONGRESS:

Eight months have elapsed since I last had the honor of addressing you. They have been months crowded with events of immense and gravesignificance for us. I shall not undertake to retail or even tosummarize those events. The practical particulars of the part we haveplayed in them will be laid before you in the reports of the ExecutiveDepartments. I shall discuss only our present outlook upon these vastaffairs, our present duties, and the immediate means of accomplishingthe objects we shall hold always in view. 

I shall not go back to debate the causes of the war. The intolerablewrongs done and planned against us by the sinister masters of Germanyhave long since become too grossly obvious and odious to every trueAmerican to need to be rehearsed. But I shall ask you to consider againand with a very grave scrutiny our objectives and the measures by whichwe mean to attain them; for the purpose of discussion here in this placeis action, and our action must move straight towards definite ends. Ourobject is, of course, to win the war; and we shall not slacken or sufferourselves to be diverted until it is won. But it is worth while askingand answering the question, When shall we consider the war won?

From one point of view it is not necessary to broach this fundamentalmatter. I do not doubt that the American people know what the war isabout and what sort of an outcome they will regard as a realization oftheir purpose in it. As a nation we are united in spirit and intention. I pay little heed to those who tell me otherwise. I hear the voices ofdissent, --who does not? I hear the criticism and the clamor of thenoisily thoughtless and troublesome. I also see men here and there flingthemselves in impotent disloyalty against the calm, indomitable power ofthe nation. I hear men debate peace who understand neither its naturenot the way in which we may attain it with uplifted eyes and unbrokenspirits. But I know that none of these speaks for the nation. They donot touch the heart of anything. They may safely be left to strut theiruneasy hour and be forgotten. 

But from another point of view I believe that it is necessary to sayplainly what we here at the seat of action consider the war to be forand what part we mean to play in the settlement of its searching issues. We are the spokesmen of the American people and they have a right toknow whether their purpose is ours. They desire peace by the overcomingof evil, by the defeat once for all of the sinister forces thatinterrupt peace and render it impossible, and they wish to know howclosely our thought runs with theirs and what action we propose. Theyare impatient with those who desire peace by any sort ofcompromise, --deeply and indignantly impatient, --but they will be equallyimpatient with us if we do not make it plain to them what our objectivesare and what we are planning for in seeking to make conquest of peace byarms. 

I believe that I speak for them when I say two things: First, that thisintolerable Thing of which the masters of Germany have shown us the uglyface, this menace of combined intrigue and force which we now see soclearly as the German power, a Thing without conscience or honor orcapacity for covenanted peace, must be crushed and, if it be notutterly brought to an end, at least shut out from the friendlyintercourse of the nations; and, second, that when this Thing and itspower are indeed defeated and the time comes that we can discusspeace, --when the German people have spokesmen whose word we can believeand when those spokesmen are ready in the name of their people to acceptthe common judgment of the nations as to what shall henceforth be thebases of law and of covenant for the life of the world, --we shall bewilling and glad to pay the full price for peace, and pay itungrudgingly. We know what that price will be. It will be full, impartial justice, --justice done at every point and to every nation thatthe final settlement must affect, our enemies as well as our friends. 

You catch, with me, the voices of humanity that are in the air. Theygrow daily more audible, more articulate, more persuasive, and they comefrom the hearts of men everywhere. They insist that the war shall notend in vindictive action of any kind; that no nation or people shall berobbed or punished because the irresponsible rulers of a single countryhave themselves done deep and abominable wrong. It is this thought thathas been expressed in the formula "No annexations, no contributions, nopunitive indemnities. " Just because this crude formula expresses theinstinctive judgment as to right of plain men everywhere it has beenmade diligent use of by the masters of German intrigue to lead thepeople of Russia astray--and the people of every other country theiragents could reach, in order that a premature peace might be broughtabout before autocracy has been taught its final and convincing lesson, and the people of the world put in control of their own destinies. 

But the fact that a wrong use has been made of a just idea is no reasonwhy a right use should not be made of it. It ought to be brought underthe patronage of its real friends. Let it be said again that autocracymust first be shown the utter futility of its claims to power orleadership in the modern world. It is impossible to apply any standardof justice so long as such forces are unchecked and undefeated as thepresent masters of Germany command. Not until that has been done canRight be set up as arbiter and peace-maker among the nations. But whenthat has been done, --as, God willing, it assuredly will be, --we shall atlast be free to do an unprecedented thing, and this is the time to avowour purpose to do it. We shall be free to base peace on generosity andjustice, to the exclusion of all selfish claims to advantage even on thepart of the victors. 

Let there be no misunderstanding. Our present and immediate task is towin the war, and nothing shall turn us aside from it until it isaccomplished. Every power and resource we possess, whether of men, ofmoney, or of materials, is being devoted and will continue to be devotedto that purpose until it is achieved. Those who desire to bring peaceabout before that purpose is achieved I counsel to carry their adviceelsewhere. We will not entertain it. We shall regard the war as won onlywhen the German people say to us, through properly accreditedrepresentatives, that they are ready to agree to a settlement based uponjustice and the reparation of the wrongs their rulers have done. Theyhave done a wrong to Belgium which must be repaired. They haveestablished a power over other lands and peoples than their own, --overthe great Empire of Austria-Hungary, over hitherto free Balkan states, over Turkey, and within Asia, --which must be relinquished. 

Germany's success by skill, by industry, by knowledge, by enterprise wedid not grudge or oppose, but admired, rather. She had built up forherself a real empire of trade and influence, secured by the peace ofthe world. We were content to abide the rivalries of manufacture, science, and commerce that were involved for us in her success and standor fall as we had or did not have the brains and the initiative tosurpass her. But at the moment when she had conspicuously won hertriumphs of peace she threw them away, to establish in their stead whatthe world will no longer permit to be established, military andpolitical domination by arms, by which to oust where she could not excelthe rivals she most feared and hated. The peace we make must remedy thatwrong. It must deliver the once fair lands and happy peoples of Belgiumand northern France from the Prussian conquest and the Prussian menace, but it must also deliver the peoples of Austria-Hungary, the peoples ofthe Balkans, and the peoples of Turkey, alike in Europe and in Asia, from the impudent and alien dominion of the Prussian military andcommercial autocracy. 

We owe it, however, to ourselves to say that we do not wish in any wayto impair or to rearrange the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It is no affairof ours what they do with their own life, either industrially orpolitically. 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, inall matters, great or small. We shall hope to secure for the peoples ofthe Balkan peninsula and for the people of the Turkish Empire the rightand opportunity to make their own lives safe, their own fortunes secureagainst oppression or injustice and from the dictation of foreign courtsor parties. 

And our attitude and purpose with regard to Germany herself are of alike kind. We intend no wrong against the German Empire, no interferencewith her internal affairs. We should deem either the one or the otherabsolutely unjustifiable, absolutely contrary to the principles we haveprofessed to live by and to hold most sacred throughout our life as anation. 

The people of Germany are being told by the men whom they now permit todeceive them and to act as their masters that they are fighting for thevery life and existence of their Empire, a war of desperate self-defenseagainst deliberate aggression. Nothing could be more grossly or wantonlyfalse, and we must seek by the utmost openness and candor as to our realaims to convince them of its falseness. We are in fact fighting fortheir emancipation from fear, along with our own, --from the fear as wellas from the fact of unjust attack by neighbors or rivals or schemersafter world empire. No one is threatening the existence or theindependence or the peaceful enterprise of the German Empire. 

The worst that can happen to the detriment of the German people is this, that if they should still, after the war is over, continue to be obligedto live under ambitious and intriguing masters interested to disturb thepeace of the world, men or classes of men whom the other peoples of theworld could not trust, it might be impossible to admit them to thepartnership of nations which must henceforth guarantee the world'speace. That partnership must be a partnership of peoples, not a merepartnership of governments. It might be impossible, also, in suchuntoward circumstances, to admit Germany to the free economicintercourse which must inevitably spring out of the other partnershipsof a real peace. But there would be no aggression in that; and such asituation, inevitable because of distrust, would in the very nature ofthings sooner or later cure itself, by processes which would assuredlyset in. 

The wrongs, the very deep wrongs, committed in this war will have to berighted. That of course. But they cannot and must not be righted by thecommission of similar wrongs against Germany and her allies. The worldwill not permit the commission of similar wrongs as a means ofreparation and settlement. Statesmen must by this time have learned thatthe opinion of the world is everywhere wide awake and fully comprehendsthe issues involved. No representative of any self-governed nation willdare disregard it by attempting any such covenants of selfishness andcompromise as were entered into at the Congress of Vienna. The thoughtof the plain people here and everywhere throughout the world, the peoplewho enjoy no privilege and have very simple and unsophisticatedstandards of right and wrong, is the air all governments must henceforthbreathe if they would live. It is in the full disclosing light of thatthought that all policies must be conceived and executed in this middayhour of the world's life. German rulers have been able to upset thepeace of the world only because the German people were not sufferedunder their tutelage to share the comradeship of the other peoples ofthe world either in thought or in purpose. They were allowed to have noopinion of their own which might be set up as a rule of conduct forthose who exercised authority over them. But the congress that concludesthis war will feel the full strength of the tides that run now in thehearts and consciences of free men everywhere. Its conclusions will runwith those tides. 

All these things have been true from the very beginning of thisstupendous war; and I cannot help thinking that if they had been madeplain at the very outset the sympathy and enthusiasm of the Russianpeople might have been once for all enlisted on the side of the Allies, suspicion and distrust swept away, and a real and lasting union ofpurpose effected. Had they believed these things at the very moment oftheir revolution and had they been confirmed in that belief since, thesad reverses which have recently marked the progress of their affairstowards an ordered and stable government of free men might have beenavoided. The Russian people have been poisoned by the very samefalsehoods that have kept the German people in the dark, and the poisonhas been administered by the very same hands. The only possible antidoteis the truth. It cannot be uttered too plainly or too often. 

From every point of view, therefore, it has seemed to be my duty tospeak these declarations of purpose, to add these specificinterpretations to what I took the liberty of saying to the Senate inJanuary. Our entrance into the war has not altered our attitude towardsthe settlement that must come when it is over. When I said in Januarythat the nations of the world were entitled not only to free pathwaysupon the sea but also to assured and unmolested access to those pathwaysI was thinking, and I am thinking now, not of the smaller and weakernations alone, which need our countenance and support, but also of thegreat and powerful nations, and of our present enemies as well as ourpresent associates in the war. I was thinking, and am thinking now, ofAustria herself, among the rest, as well as of Serbia and of Poland. Justice and equality of rights can be had only at a great price. We areseeking permanent, not temporary, foundations for the peace of the worldand must seek them candidly and fearlessly. As always, the right willprove to be the expedient. 

What shall we do, then, to push this great war of freedom and justice toits righteous conclusion? We must clear away with a thorough hand allimpediments to success and we must make every adjustment of law thatwill facilitate the full and free use of our whole capacity and forceas a fighting unit. 

One very embarrassing obstacle that stands in our way is that we are atwar with Germany but not with her allies. I therefore very earnestlyrecommend that the Congress immediately declare the United States in astate of war with Austria-Hungary. Does it seem strange to you that thisshould be the conclusion of the argument I have just addressed to you?It is not. It is in fact the inevitable logic of what I have said. Austria-Hungary is for the time being not her own mistress but simplythe vassal of the German Government. We must face the facts as they areand act upon them without sentiment in this stern business. Thegovernment of Austria-Hungary is not acting upon its own initiative orin response to the wishes and feelings of its own peoples but as theinstrument of another nation. We must meet its force with our own andregard the Central Powers as but one. The war can be successfullyconducted in no other way. The same logic would lead also to adeclaration of war against Turkey and Bulgaria. They also are the toolsof Germany. But they are mere tools and do not yet stand in the directpath of our necessary action. We shall go wherever the necessities ofthis war carry us, but it seems to me that we should go only whereimmediate and practical considerations lead us and not heed any others. 

The financial and military measures which must be adopted will suggestthemselves as the war and its undertakings develop, but I will take theliberty of proposing to you certain other acts of legislation which seemto me to be needed for the support of the war and for the release of ourwhole force and energy. 

It will be necessary to extend in certain particulars the legislationof the last session with regard to alien enemies; and also necessary, Ibelieve, to create a very definite and particular control over theentrance and departure of all persons into and from the United States. 

Legislation should be enacted defining as a criminal offense everywilful violation of the presidential proclamations relating to alienenemies promulgated under section 4067 of the Revised Statutes andproviding appropriate punishments; and women as well as men should beincluded under the terms of the acts placing restraints upon alienenemies. It is likely that as time goes on many alien enemies will bewilling to be fed and housed at the expense of the Government in thedetention camps and it would be the purpose of the legislation I havesuggested to confine offenders among them in penitentiaries and othersimilar institutions where they could be made to work as other criminalsdo. 

Recent experience has convinced me that the Congress must go further inauthorizing the Government to set limits to prices. The law of supplyand demand, I am sorry to say, has been replaced by the law ofunrestrained selfishness. While we have eliminated profiteering inseveral branches of industry it still runs impudently rampant in others. The farmers, for example, complain with a great deal of justice that, while the regulation of food prices restricts their incomes, norestraints are placed upon the prices of most of the things they mustthemselves purchase; and similar inequities obtain on all sides. 

It is imperatively necessary that the consideration of the full use ofthe water power of the country and also the consideration of thesystematic and yet economical development of such of the naturalresources of the country as are still under the control of the federalgovernment should be immediately resumed and affirmatively andconstructively dealt with at the earliest possible moment. The pressingneed of such legislation is daily becoming more obvious. 

The legislation proposed at the last session with regard to regulatedcombinations among our exporters, in order to provide for our foreigntrade a more effective organization and method of coöperation, ought byall means to be completed at this session. 

And I beg that the members of the House of Representatives will permitme to express the opinion that it will be impossible to deal in any buta very wasteful and extravagant fashion with the enormous appropriationsof the public moneys which must continue to be made, if the war is to beproperly sustained, unless the House will consent to return to itsformer practice of initiating and preparing all appropriation billsthrough a single committee, in order that responsibility may becentered, expenditures standardized and made uniform, and waste andduplication as much as possible avoided. 

Additional legislation may also become necessary before the presentCongress again adjourns in order to effect the most efficientcoördination and operation of the railway and other transportationsystems of the country; but to that I shall, if circumstances shoulddemand, call the attention of the Congress upon another occasion. 

If I have overlooked anything that ought to be done for the moreeffective conduct of the war, your own counsels will supply theomission. What I am perfectly clear about is that in the present sessionof the Congress our whole attention and energy should be concentrated onthe vigorous, rapid, and successful prosecution of the great task ofwinning the war. 

We can do this with all the greater zeal and enthusiasm because we knowthat for us this is a war of high principle, debased by no selfishambition of conquest or spoliation; because we know, and all the worldknows, that we have been forced into it to save the very institutions welive under from corruption and destruction. The purposes of the CentralPowers strike straight at the very heart of everything we believe in;their methods of warfare outrage every principle of humanity and ofknightly honor; their intrigue has corrupted the very thought and spiritof many of our people; their sinister and secret diplomacy has sought totake our very territory away from us and disrupt the Union of theStates. Our safety would be at an end, our honor forever sullied andbrought into contempt were we to permit their triumph. They are strikingat the very existence of democracy and liberty. 

It is because it is for us a war of high, disinterested purpose, inwhich all the free peoples of the world are banded together for thevindication of right, a war for the preservation of our nation and ofall that it has held dear of principle and of purpose, that we feelourselves doubly constrained to propose for its outcome only that whichis righteous and of irreproachable intention, for our foes as well asfor our friends. The cause being just and holy, the settlement must beof like motive and quality. For this we can fight, but for nothing lessnoble or less worthy of our traditions. For this cause we entered thewar and for this cause will we battle until the last gun is fired. 

I have spoken plainly because this seems to me the time when it is mostnecessary to speak plainly, in order that all the world may know thateven in the heat and ardor of the struggle and when our whole thought isof carrying the war through to its end we have not forgotten any idealor principle for which the name of America has been held in honor amongthe nations and for which it has been our glory to contend in the greatgenerations that went before us. A supreme moment of history has come. The eyes of the people have been opened and they see. The hand of God islaid upon the nations. He will show them favor, I devoutly believe, onlyif they rise to the clear heights of His own justice and mercy. 

GOVERNMENT ADMINISTRATION OF RAILWAYS

[Address delivered at a joint session of the two Houses of Congress, January 4, 1918. ]

GENTLEMEN OF THE CONGRESS:

I have asked the privilege of addressing you in order to report to youthat on the twenty-eighth of December last, during the recess of theCongress, acting through the Secretary of War and under the authorityconferred upon me by the Act of Congress approved August 29, 1916, Itook possession and assumed control of the railway lines of the countryand the systems of water transportation under their control. This stepseemed to be imperatively necessary in the interest of the publicwelfare, in the presence of the great tasks of war with which we are nowdealing. As our own experience develops difficulties and makes it clearwhat they are, I have deemed it my duty to remove those difficultieswherever I have the legal power to do so. To assume control of the vastrailway systems of the country is, I realize, a very greatresponsibility, but to fail to do so in the existing circumstances wouldhave been a much greater. I assumed the less responsibility rather thanthe weightier. 

I am sure that I am speaking the mind of all thoughtful Americans when Isay that it is our duty as the representatives of the nation to doeverything that it is necessary to do to secure the completemobilization of the whole resources of America by as rapid and effectivemeans as can be found. Transportation supplies all the arteries of, mobilization. Unless it be under a single and unified direction, thewhole process of the nation's action is embarrassed. 

It was in the true spirit of America, and it was right, that we shouldfirst try to effect the necessary unification under the voluntary actionof those who were in charge of the great railway properties; and we didtry it. The directors of the railways responded to the need promptly andgenerously. The group of railway executives who were charged with thetask of actual coördination and general direction performed theirdifficult duties with patriotic zeal and marked ability, as was to havebeen expected, and did, I believe, everything that it was possible forthem to do in the circumstances. If I have taken the task out of theirhands, it has not been because of any dereliction or failure on theirpart but only because there were some things which the Government can doand private management cannot. We shall continue to value most highlythe advice and assistance of these gentlemen and I am sure we shall notfind them withholding it. 

It had become unmistakably plain that only under governmentadministration can the entire equipment of the several systems oftransportation be fully and unreservedly thrown into a common servicewithout injurious discrimination against particular properties. Onlyunder government administration can an absolutely unrestricted andunembarrassed common use be made of all tracks, terminals, terminalfacilities and equipment of every kind. Only under that authority cannew terminals be constructed and developed without regard to therequirements or limitations of particular roads. But under governmentadministration all these things will be possible, --not instantly, but asfast as practical difficulties, which cannot be merely conjured away, give way before the new management. 

The common administration will be carried out with as little disturbanceof the present operating organizations and personnel of the railways aspossible. Nothing will be altered or disturbed which it is not necessaryto disturb. We are serving the public interest and safeguarding thepublic safety, but we are also regardful of the interest of those bywhom these great properties are owned and glad to avail ourselves of theexperience and trained ability of those who have been managing them. Itis necessary that the transportation of troops and of war materials, offood and of fuel, and of everything that is necessary for the fullmobilization of the energies and resources of the country, should befirst considered, but it is clearly in the public interest also that theordinary activities and the normal industrial and commercial life of thecountry should be interfered with and dislocated as little as possible, and the public may rest assured that the interest and convenience of theprivate shipper will be as carefully served and safeguarded as it ispossible to serve and safeguard it in the present extraordinarycircumstances. 

While the present authority of the Executive suffices for all purposesof administration, and while of course all private interests must forthe present give way to the public necessity, it is, I am sure you willagree with me, right and necessary that the owners and creditors of therailways, the holders of their stocks and bonds, should receive from theGovernment an unqualified guarantee that their properties will bemaintained throughout the period of federal control in as good repairand as complete equipment as at present, and that the several roads willreceive under federal management such compensation as is equitable andjust alike to their owners and to the general public. I would suggestthe average net railway operating income of the three years ending June30, 1917. I earnestly recommend that these guarantees be given byappropriate legislation, and given as promptly as circumstances permit. 

I need not point out the essential justice of such guarantees and theirgreat influence and significance as elements in the present financialand industrial situation of the country. Indeed, one of the strongarguments for assuming control of the railroads at this time is thefinancial argument. It is necessary that the values of railwaysecurities should be justly and fairly protected and that the largefinancial operations every year necessary in connection with themaintenance, operation and development of the roads should, during theperiod of the war, be wisely related to the financial operations of theGovernment. Our first duty is, of course, to conserve the commoninterest and the common safety and to make certain that nothing standsin the way of the successful prosecution of the great war for libertyand justice, but it is also an obligation of public conscience and ofpublic honor that the private interests we disturb should be kept safefrom unjust injury, and it is of the utmost consequence to theGovernment itself that all great financial operations should bestabilized and coördinated with the financial operations of theGovernment. No borrowing should run athwart the borrowings of thefederal treasury, and no fundamental industrial values should anywherebe unnecessarily impaired. In the hands of many thousands of smallinvestors in the country, as well as in national banks, in insurancecompanies, in savings banks, in trust companies, in financial agenciesof every kind, railway securities, the sum total of which runs up tosome ten or eleven thousand millions, constitute a vital part of thestructure of credit, and the unquestioned solidity of that structuremust be maintained. 

The Secretary of War and I easily agreed that, in view of the manycomplex interests which must be safeguarded and harmonized, as well asbecause of his exceptional experience and ability in this new field ofgovernmental action, the Honorable William G. McAdoo was the right manto assume direct administrative control of this new executive task. Atour request, he consented to assume the authority and duties oforganizer and Director General of the new Railway Administration. He hasassumed those duties and his work is in active progress. 

It is probably too much to expect that even under the unified railwayadministration which will now be possible sufficient economies can beeffected in the operation of the railways to make it possible to add totheir equipment and extend their operative facilities as much as thepresent extraordinary demands upon their use will render desirablewithout resorting to the national treasury for the funds. If it is notpossible, it will, of course, be necessary to resort to the Congress forgrants of money for that purpose. The Secretary of the Treasury willadvise with your committees with regard to this very practical aspect ofthe matter. For the present, I suggest only the guarantees I haveindicated and such appropriations as are necessary at the outset of thistask. I take the liberty of expressing the hope that the Congress maygrant these promptly and ungrudgingly. We are dealing with great mattersand will, I am sure, deal with them greatly. 

THE CONDITIONS OF PEACE

[Address delivered at a joint session of the two Houses of Congress, January 8, 1918. ]

GENTLEMEN OF THE CONGRESS:

Once more, as repeatedly before, the spokesmen of the Central Empireshave indicated their desire to discuss the objects of the war and thepossible bases of a general peace. Parleys have been in progress atBrest-Litovsk between Russian representatives and representatives of theCentral Powers to which the attention of all the belligerents has beeninvited for the purpose of ascertaining whether it may be possible toextend these parleys into a general conference with regard to terms ofpeace and settlement. The Russian representatives presented not only aperfectly definite statement of the principles upon which they would bewilling to conclude peace but also an equally definite program of theconcrete application of those principles. The representatives of theCentral Powers, on their part, presented an outline of settlement which, if much less definite, seemed susceptible of liberal interpretationuntil their specific program of practical terms was added. That programproposed no concessions at all either to the sovereignty of Russia or tothe preferences of the populations with whose fortunes it dealt, butmeant, in a word, that the Central Empires were to keep every foot ofterritory their armed forces had occupied, --every province, every city, every point of vantage, --as a permanent addition to their territoriesand their power. It is a reasonable conjecture that the generalprinciples of settlement which they at first suggested originated withthe more liberal statesmen of Germany and Austria, the men who havebegun to feel the force of their own peoples' thought and purpose, whilethe concrete terms of actual settlement came from the military leaderswho have no thought but to keep what they have got. The negotiationshave been broken off. The Russian representatives were sincere and inearnest. They cannot entertain such proposals of conquest anddomination. 

The whole incident is full of significance. It is also full ofperplexity. With whom are the Russian representatives dealing? For whomare the representatives of the Central Empires speaking? Are theyspeaking for the majorities of their respective parliaments or for theminority parties, that military and imperialistic minority which has sofar dominated their whole policy and controlled the affairs of Turkeyand of the Balkan states which have felt obliged to become theirassociates in this war? The Russian representatives have insisted, veryjustly, very wisely, and in the true spirit of modern democracy, thatthe conferences they have been holding with the Teutonic and Turkishstatesmen should be held within open, not closed, doors, and all theworld has been audience, as was desired. To whom have we been listening, then? To those who speak the spirit and intention of the Resolutions ofthe German Reichstag of the ninth of July last, the spirit and intentionof the liberal leaders and parties of Germany, or to those who resistand defy that spirit and intention and insist upon conquest andsubjugation? Or are we listening, in fact, to both, unreconciled and inopen and hopeless contradiction? These are very serious and pregnantquestions. Upon the answer to them depends the peace of the world. 

But, whatever the results of the parleys at Brest-Litovsk, whatever theconfusions of counsel and of purpose in the utterances of the spokesmenof the Central Empires, they have again attempted to acquaint the worldwith their objects in the war and have again challenged theiradversaries to say what their objects are and what sort of settlementthey would deem just and satisfactory. There is no good reason why thatchallenge should not be responded to, and responded to with the utmostcandor. We did not wait for it. Not once, but again and again, we havelaid our whole thought and purpose before the world, not in generalterms only, but each time with sufficient definition to make it clearwhat sort of definitive terms of settlement must necessarily spring outof them. Within the last week Mr. Lloyd George has spoken with admirablecandor and in admirable spirit for the people and Government of GreatBritain. There is no confusion of counsel among the adversaries of theCentral Powers, no uncertainty of principle, no vagueness of detail. Theonly secrecy of counsel, the only lack of fearless frankness, the onlyfailure to make definite statement of the objects of the war, lies withGermany and her Allies. The issues of life and death hang upon thesedefinitions. No statesman who has the least conception of hisresponsibility ought for a moment to permit himself to continue thistragical and appalling outpouring of blood and treasure unless he issure beyond a peradventure that the objects of the vital sacrifice arepart and parcel of the very life of society and that the people for whomhe speaks think them right and imperative as he does. 

There is, moreover, a voice calling for these definitions of principleand of purpose which is, it seems to me, more thrilling and morecompelling than any of the many moving voices with which the troubledair of the world is filled. It is the voice of the Russian people. Theyare prostrate and all but helpless, it would seem, before the grim powerof Germany, which has hitherto known no relenting and no pity. Theirpower, apparently, is shattered. And yet their soul is not subservient. They will not yield either in principle or in action. Their conceptionof what is right, of what it is humane and honorable for them to accept, has been stated with a frankness, a largeness of view, a generosity ofspirit, and a universal human sympathy which must challenge theadmiration of every friend of mankind; and they have refused to compoundtheir ideals or desert others that they themselves may be safe. Theycall to us to say what it is that we desire, in what, if in anything, our purpose and our spirit differ from theirs; and I believe that thepeople of the United States would wish me to respond, with uttersimplicity and frankness. Whether their present leaders believe it ornot, it is our heartfelt desire and hope that some way may be openedwhereby we may be privileged to assist the people of Russia to attaintheir utmost hope of liberty and ordered peace. 

It will be our wish and purpose that the processes of peace, when theyare begun, shall be absolutely open and that they shall involve andpermit henceforth no secret understandings of any kind. The day ofconquest and aggrandizement is gone by; so is also the day of secretcovenants entered into in the interest of particular governments andlikely at some unlooked-for moment to upset the peace of the world. Itis this happy fact, now clear to the view of every public man whosethoughts do not still linger in an age that is dead and gone, whichmakes it possible for every nation whose purposes are consistent withjustice and the peace of the world to avow now or at any other time theobjects it has in view. 

We entered this war because violations of right had occurred whichtouched us to the quick and made the life of our own people impossibleunless they were corrected and the world secured once for all againsttheir recurrence. What we demand in this war, therefore, is nothingpeculiar to ourselves. It is that the world be made fit and safe to livein; and particularly that it be made safe for every peace-loving nationwhich, like our own, wishes to live its own life, determine its owninstitutions, be assured of justice and fair dealing by the otherpeoples of the world as against force and selfish aggression. All thepeoples of the world are in effect partners in this interest, and forour own part we see very clearly that unless justice be done to othersit will not be done to us. The program of the world's peace, therefore, is our program; and that program, the only possible program, as we seeit, is this:

I. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shallbe no private international understandings of any kind, but diplomacyshall proceed always frankly and in the public view. 

II. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorialwaters, alike in peace and in war, except as the seas may be closed inwhole or in part by international action for the enforcement ofinternational covenants. 

III. The removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and theestablishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nationsconsenting to the peace and associating themselves for its maintenance. 

IV. Adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will bereduced to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety. 

V. A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of allcolonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that indetermining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of thepopulations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claimsof the government whose title is to be determined. 

VI. The evacuation of all Russian territory and such a settlement of allquestions affecting Russia as will secure the best and freestcoöperation of the other nations of the world in obtaining for her anunhampered and unembarrassed opportunity for the independentdetermination of her own political development and national policy andassure her of a sincere welcome into the society of free nations underinstitutions of her own choosing; and, more than a welcome, assistancealso of every kind that she may need and may herself desire. Thetreatment accorded Russia by her sister nations in the months to comewill be the acid test of their good will, of their comprehension of herneeds as distinguished from their own interests, and of theirintelligent and unselfish sympathy. 

VII. Belgium, the whole world will agree, must be evacuated andrestored, without any attempt to limit the sovereignty which she enjoysin common with all other free nations. No other single act will serve asthis will serve to restore confidence among the nations in the lawswhich they have themselves set and determined for the government oftheir relations with one another. Without this healing act the wholestructure and validity of international law is forever impaired. 

VIII. All French territory should be freed and the invaded portionsrestored, and the wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matterof Alsace-Lorraine, which has unsettled the peace of the world fornearly fifty years, should be righted, in order that peace may once morebe made secure in the interest of all. 

IX. A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected alongclearly recognizable lines of nationality. 

X. The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wishto see safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the freestopportunity of autonomous development. 

XI. Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro should be evacuated; occupiedterritories restored; Serbia accorded free and secure access to the sea;and the relations of the several Balkan states to one another determinedby friendly counsel along historically established lines of allegianceand nationality; and international guarantees of the political andeconomic independence and territorial integrity of the several Balkanstates should be entered into. 

XII. The Turkish portions of the present Ottoman Empire should beassured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are nowunder Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life andan absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development and theDardanelles should be permanently opened as a free passage to the shipsand commerce of all nations under international guarantees. 

XIII. An independent Polish state should be erected which should includethe territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, whichshould be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whosepolitical and economic independence and territorial integrity should beguaranteed by international covenant. 

XIV. A general association of nations must be formed under specificcovenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of politicalindependence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike. 

In regard to these essential rectifications of wrong and assertions ofright we feel ourselves to be intimate partners of all the governmentsand peoples associated together against the Imperialists. We cannot beseparated in interest or divided in purpose. We stand together until theend. 

For such arrangements and covenants we are willing to fight and tocontinue to fight until they are achieved; but only because we wish theright to prevail and desire a just and stable peace such as can besecured only by removing the chief provocations to war, which thisprogram does remove. We have no jealousy of German greatness, and thereis nothing in this program that impairs it. We grudge her no achievementor distinction of learning or of pacific enterprise such as have madeher record very bright and very enviable. We do not wish to injure heror to block in any way her legitimate influence or power. We do not wishto fight her either with arms or with hostile arrangements of trade ifshe is willing to associate herself with us and the other peace-lovingnations of the world in covenants of justice and law and fair dealing. We wish her only to accept a place of equality among the peoples of theworld, --the new world in which we now live, --instead of a place ofmastery. 

Neither do we presume to suggest to her any alteration or modificationof her institutions. But it is necessary, we must frankly say, andnecessary as a preliminary to any intelligent dealings with her on ourpart, that we should know whom her spokesmen speak for when they speakto us, whether for the Reichstag majority or for the military party andthe men whose creed is imperial domination. 

We have spoken now, surely, in terms too concrete to admit of anyfurther doubt or question. An evident principle runs through the wholeprogram I have outlined. It is the principle of justice to all peoplesand nationalities, and their right to live on equal terms of liberty andsafety with one another, whether they be strong or weak. Unless thisprinciple be made its foundation no part of the structure ofinternational justice can stand. The people of the United States couldact upon no other principle; and to the vindication of this principlethey are ready to devote their lives, their honor, and everything thatthey possess. The moral climax of this the culminating and final war forhuman liberty has come, and they are ready to put their own strength, their own highest purpose, their own integrity and devotion to the test. 

FORCE TO THE UTMOST

[Speech at the Opening of the Third Liberty Loan Campaign, delivered inthe Fifth Regiment Armory, Baltimore, April 6, 1918. ]

FELLOW-CITIZENS:

This is the anniversary of our acceptance of Germany's challenge tofight for our right to live and be free, and for the sacred rights offreemen everywhere. The nation is awake. There is no need to call to it. We know what the war must cost, our utmost sacrifice, the lives of ourfittest men, and, if need be, all that we possess. 

The loan we are met to discuss is one of the least parts of what we arecalled upon to give and to do, though in itself imperative. The peopleof the whole country are alive to the necessity of it, and are ready tolend to the utmost, even where it involves a sharp skimping and dailysacrifice to lend out of meagre earnings. They will look withreprobation and contempt upon those who can and will not, upon those whodemand a higher rate of interest, upon those who think of it as a merecommercial transaction. I have not come, therefore, to urge the loan. Ihave come only to give you, if I can, a more vivid conception of what itis for. 

The reasons for this great war, the reason why it had to come, the needto fight it through, and the issues that hang upon its outcome, are moreclearly disclosed now than ever before. It is easy to see just what thisparticular loan means, because the cause we are fighting for stands moresharply revealed than at any previous crisis of the momentous struggle. The man who knows least can now see plainly how the cause of justicestands, and what is the imperishable thing he is asked to invest in. Menin America may be more sure than they ever were before that the cause istheir own, and that, if it should be lost, their own great nation'splace and mission in the world would be lost with it. 

I call you to witness, my fellow-countrymen, that at no stage of thisterrible business have I judged the purposes of Germany intemperately. Ishould be ashamed in the presence of affairs so grave, so fraught withthe destinies of mankind throughout all the world, to speak withtruculence, to use the weak language of hatred or vindictive purpose. Wemust judge as we would be judged. I have sought to learn the objectsGermany has in this war from the mouths of her own spokesmen, and todeal as frankly with them as I wished them to deal with me. I have laidbare our own ideals, our own purposes, without reserve or doubtfulphrase, and have asked them to say as plainly what it is that they seek. 

We have ourselves proposed no injustice, no aggression. We are ready, whenever the final reckoning is made, to be just to the German people, deal fairly with the German power, as with all others. There can be nodifference between peoples in the final judgment, if it is indeed to bea righteous judgment. To propose anything but justice, even-handed anddispassionate justice, to Germany at any time, whatever the outcome ofthe war, would be to renounce and dishonor our own cause, for we asknothing that we are not willing to accord. 

It has been with this thought that I have sought to learn from those whospoke for Germany whether it was justice or dominion and the executionof their own will upon the other nations of the world that the Germanleaders were seeking. They have answered--answered in unmistakableterms. They have avowed that it was not justice, but dominion and theunhindered execution of their own will. The avowal has not come fromGermany's statesmen. It has come from her military leaders, who are herreal rulers. Her statesmen have said that they wished peace, and wereready to discuss its terms whenever their opponents were willing to sitdown at the conference table with them. Her present Chancellor hassaid--in indefinite and uncertain terms, indeed, and in phrases thatoften seem to deny their own meaning, but with as much plainness as hethought prudent--that he believed that peace should be based upon theprinciples which we had declared would be our own in the finalsettlement. 

At Brest-Litovsk her civilian delegates spoke in similar terms;professed their desire to conclude a fair peace and accord to thepeoples with whose fortunes they were dealing the right to choose theirown allegiances. But action accompanied and followed the profession. Their military masters, the men who act for Germany and exhibit herpurpose in execution, proclaimed a very different conclusion. We can notmistake what they have done--in Russia, in Finland, in the Ukraine, inRumania. The real test of their justice and fair play has come. Fromthis we may judge the rest. 

They are enjoying in Russia a cheap triumph in which no brave or gallantnation can long take pride. A great people, helpless by their own act, lies for the time at their mercy. Their fair professions are forgotten. They nowhere set up justice, but everywhere impose their power andexploit everything for their own use and aggrandizement, and the peoplesof conquered provinces are invited to be free under their dominion!

Are we not justified in believing that they would do the same things attheir western front if they were not there face to face with armieswhom even their countless divisions cannot overcome? If, when they havefelt their check to be final, they should propose favorable andequitable terms with regard to Belgium and France and Italy, could theyblame us if we concluded that they did so only to assure themselves of afree hand in Russia and the East?

Their purpose is, undoubtedly, to make all the Slavic peoples, all thefree and ambitious nations of the Baltic Peninsula, all the lands thatTurkey has dominated and misruled, subject to their will and ambition, and build upon that dominion an empire of force upon which they fancythat they can then erect an empire of gain and commercial supremacy--anempire as hostile to the Americas as to the Europe which it willoverawe--an empire which will ultimately master Persia, India, and thepeoples of the Far East. 

In such a program our ideals, the ideals of justice and humanity andliberty, the principle of the free self-determination of nations, uponwhich all the modern world insists, can play no part. They are rejectedfor the ideals of power, for the principle that the strong must rule theweak, that trade must follow the flag, whether those to whom it is takenwelcome it or not, that the peoples of the world are to be made subjectto the patronage and overlordship of those who have the power to enforceit. 

That program once carried out, America and all who care or dare to standwith her must arm and prepare themselves to contest the mastery of theworld--a mastery in which the rights of common men, the rights of womenand of all who are weak, must for the time being be trodden underfootand disregarded and the old, age-long struggle for freedom and rightbegin again at its beginning. Everything that America has lived for andloved and grown great to vindicate and bring to a glorious realizationwill have fallen in utter ruin and the gates of mercy once morepitilessly shut upon mankind!

The thing is preposterous and impossible; and yet is not that what thewhole course and action of the German armies has meant wherever theyhave moved? I do not wish, even in this moment of utter disillusionment, to judge harshly or unrighteously. I judge only what the German armshave accomplished with unpitying thoroughness throughout every fairregion they have touched. 

What, then are we to do? For myself, I am ready, ready still, ready evennow, to discuss a fair and just and honest peace at any time that it issincerely purposed--a peace in which the strong and the weak shall farealike. But the answer, when I proposed such a peace, came from theGerman commanders in Russia and I cannot mistake the meaning of theanswer. 

I accept the challenge. I know that you accept it. All the world shallknow that you accept it. It shall appear in the utter sacrifice andself-forgetfulness with which we shall give all that we love and allthat we have to redeem the world and make it fit for free men likeourselves to live in. This now is the meaning of all that we do. Leteverything that we say, my fellow-countrymen, everything that wehenceforth plan and accomplish, ring true to this response till themajesty and might of our concerted power shall fill the thought andutterly defeat the force of those who flout and misprize what we honorand hold dear. 

Germany has once more said that force, and force alone, shall decidewhether justice and peace shall reign in the affairs of men, whetherright as America conceives it or dominion as she conceives it shalldetermine the destinies of mankind. There is, therefore, but oneresponse possible from us: Force, force to the utmost, force withoutstint or limit, the righteous and triumphant force which shall makeright the law of the world and cast every selfish dominion down in thedust. 

ENGLISH READINGS FOR SCHOOLS

 "Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man. "

 _Bacon. _

 "'Tis the good reader that makes the good book. "

 _Emerson. _