,4°, «5> ^ ' . . "bv* n>v» > ^ » ^ V v7^ % A o- *< ^q* .V 5 ^ *•»«' <^> 4 o #++. Harris & Ewing WOODROW WILSON WAR ADDRESSES OF WOODROW WILSON WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY ARTHUR ROY LEONARD, M.A. HEAD OF DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY AND ECONOMICS HIGH SCHOOL OF COMMERCE, COLUMBUS, OHIO GINN AND COMPANY BOSTON • NEW YORK • CHICAGO • LONDON ATLANTA • DALLAS • COLUMBUS • SAN FRANCISCO (L*Aj* % COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY ARTHUR ROY LEONARD ' ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 218.4 .IW5 ^h RPR 29 ISIS tCfte gtftettaeum £regg GINN AND COMPANY • PRO- PRIETORS • BOSTON • U.S.A. ©CU494787-/ PREFACE There are three reasons why the study of President Wilson's war addresses may wisely be included in the course of study of every secondary school in America. The first is their intrinsic literary merit. President Wilson has a happy faculty for expressing his thoughts in remarkably clear and forceful English. His feelings, however provocative the occasion, never obscure his thought. His terse, clear-cut, cool-headed manner of stating facts is worthy of careful study by America's young people, whose thinking, as a rule, is not characterized by these qualities. A second reason for the study of President Wilson's addresses is their timeliness. Fortunately the day is passed when America's teachers were afraid to intro- duce the writings of living Americans into the curric- ulum as literature. Because young people will be more interested in the addresses of President Wilson than in Burke's " Speech on Conciliation," for example, is certainly not a reason for refusing to study them. The third reason may best be indicated by a quota- tion from the President's letter of August 23, 19 17, to school officers : The war is bringing to the minds of our people a new appreciation of the problems of national life, and a deeper understanding of the meaning and aims of democracy. Matters which heretofore have seemed commonplace and iii PREFACE trivial are seen in a truer light. The urgent demand for the production and proper distribution of food and other national resources has made us aware of the close dependence of individual on individual and nation on nation. The effort to keep up social and industrial organizations in spite of the withdrawal of men for the army has revealed the extent to which modern life has become complex and specialized. These and other lessons of the war must be learned quickly if we are intelligently and successfully to defend our institutions. When the war is over, we must apply the wis- dom which we have acquired in purging and ennobling the life of the world. In these vital tasks of acquiring a broader view of human possibilities the common school must have a large part. I urge that teachers and other school officers increase mate- rially the time and attention devoted to instruction bearing directly on the problems of community and national life. Such a plea is no way foreign to the spirit of American public education or of existing practices. Nor is it a plea for a temporary enlargement of the school program appro- priate merely to the period of the war. It is a plea for a realization in public education of the new emphasis which the war has given to the ideals of democracy and to the broader conceptions of national life. It is the belief of the editor that a study of the President's discussion of the aim and purpose of the war will do more than any other equal amount of study to bring to our young people a realization of the real meaning of the democracy for which we are trying to make the world safe. Clear, cogent thinking is vastly more important as an element of patriotism than flag-waving and cheering, though these latter have their place, iv PREFACE The work of editing these addresses has been a real pleasure. The length of the Introduction is due to an effort to make the setting of the addresses clear to young people who perhaps were not in high school when the war began. The notes are brief, because it has seemed better to let the President speak for himself. The aim of the teacher should be to help the pupil to grasp the real thought of the addresses, to appreciate their clear-cut conciseness, and to arouse a thoughtful, earnest love for the land that fights for no selfish ends. It may be added that President Wilson has ex- pressly authorized the editor to use these addresses in this manner. ARTHUR R. LEONARD Columbus, Ohio CONTENTS PAGE Introduction ........ ix Woodrow Wilson ix His Literary Work ....... xi How the Great War Began xii Progress of the War xxi The United States and the War . . . . xxvi Some Important Dates xxxii Permanent Peace 3 Address to United States Senate, January 22, 191 7 Diplomatic Relations Broken 13 Address to Congress, February 3, 191 7 Armed Neutrality 19 Address to Congress, February 26, 191 7 Second Inaugural Address, March 5, 19 17 . . 26 At War with Germany 32 Address to Congress, April 2, 19 17 The Declaration of War 46 What We Are Fighting For 47 Message to the Provisional Government of Russia, May 26, 191 7 The Flag We Follow 51 Speech on June 14, 191 7 The Reply to the Pope's Proposal for Peace, August 27, 1917 61 The American People Must Stand Together . . 66 Address to Federation of Labor, November 12, 191 7 vii CONTENTS PAGE No Peace with Autocracy 77 Message to Congress, December 4, 191 7 The Program of Peace 92 Address to Congress, January 8, 1918 The Four Principles of Peace 102 Address to Congress, February n, 19 iS Notes 113 vm INTRODUCTION WOODROW WILSON: A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Woodrow Wilson, the twenty-eighth president of the United States, was born at Staunton, Virginia, on Decem- ber 28, 1856, of Scotch-Irish ancestry. His grandfather, James Wilson, came to Philadelphia from Ireland in 1807 and became the publisher of a chain of newspapers. His wife was Anne Adams, an Ulster girl. Woodrow Wilson's father, Reverend Joseph Ruggles Wilson, was the young- est son of James Wilson, and was born in Steubenville, Ohio. He married Janet Woodrow, of Chillicothe, Ohio, daughter of Reverend Thomas Woodrow, a Scotch Presby- terian minister. In 1855 Reverend Joseph Wilson became pastor of a Presbyterian church in Staunton, Virginia, and here Thomas Woodrow Wilson was born. The Wilson family removed to Augusta, Georgia, before Woodrow was two years old. Thus his childhood was spent in the South during the Civil War. His first teacher was a Confederate veteran who had returned from four years of soldiering. In 1870 the family moved to Co- lumbia, South Carolina, where Woodrow attended a local academy. At the age of seventeen he entered David- son College, North Carolina, where he remained less than a year, because of ill health. In 1875 he entered Princeton College and graduated in 1879. H e was noted in his college days for his debating and literary ability and was editor of the Princetonian. In 1881 he graduated in law from the University of Virginia, and practiced law for a ix INTRODUCTION year in Atlanta, Georgia. Then he entered Johns Hop- kins University for post-graduate work in political science. He received the degree of Ph.D. in 1886, his thesis on " Congressional Government " being at once accepted as authoritative. For three years (1 885-1 888) Mr. Wilson taught at Bryn Mawr College, going then to Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, for two years (1888- 1890). He was called to Princeton in 1890 as Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Economy. In 1902 he was made president of Princeton University, his term of office being noted for many important reforms, all of which were in the direction of the democratization of the institution. In 1 9 10 Mr. Wilson was urged to become a candidate for governor of New Jersey. He was elected as a Democrat in a state which had been Republican for sixteen years. As governor of New Jersey he was able to put into opera- tion many reforms which his long study of political phi- losophy had convinced him were wise. Among these were a direct-primary law and a corrupt-practices act which have since met with general acceptance in our political system. A law creating a public-utilities commission and establishing stringent control over corporations has generally been regarded a most salutary reform in dealing with the difficult matter of relationship be- tween the state and the corporations. Mr. Wilson's suc- cess in bringing about these reforms was so marked that he soon became a leading candidate for the presidency. At the Democratic National Convention in Baltimore in 191 2 Mr. Wilson was nominated on the forty-sixth ballot. A split in the Republican party that year made his election in November almost inevitable. Mr. Wilson received 435 electoral votes out of 531. As president, Mr. Wilson has acted along the same lines of progressive and constructive statesmanship which made x INTRODUCTION him so successful as president of Princeton and governor of New Jersey. He was reelected in November, 1916, for a second term. HIS LITERARY WORK The most remarkable and significant accomplishment of Woodrow Wilson's undergraduate college days was an article on "Cabinet Government in the United States," published in the International Review for August, 1879. The article is marked by a breadth of knowledge, range of vision, and independence of thought rarely found in a young man of twenty- three. The Princeton University library has an incomplete bibliography of the published writings and addresses of Woodrow Wilson. This list shows seventy-five titles for the twenty-five years between 1875 and 1900. The following list includes some of the most important of his books and magazine articles : Congressional Government, A Study of American Politics. 1885. The State : Elements of History and Practical Politics. 1889. Division and Reunion. 1893. An Old Master and Other Political Essays. 1893. Mere Literature. 1896. History of the American People (5 vols.). 1901. Constitutional Government in the United States. 1908. Mr. Cleveland as President. Atlantic Monthly, March, 1897. The Makers of the Nation. Atlantic Monthly, July, 1897. On Being Human. Atlantic Monthly, September, 1897. A Lawyer with a Style. Atlantic Monthly, September, 1898. Reconstruction of the Southern States. Atlantic Monthly, January, 1901. Politics, 1857-1907. Atlantic Monthly, November, 1907. The States and the Federal Government. North American Review, May, 1908. INTRODUCTION Woodrow Wilson's style is marked by vivacity and incisiveness, and at times possesses considerable literary charm. Mr. Wilson is an independent thinker, of re- markable breadth of vision, and his discussions of political and historical questions are always clear and convincing. He makes few false motions, uses no superfluous words, but like a master workman makes all his strokes tell. An- other noteworthy quality of Woodrow Wilson, the writer, is the measured judgment and calm detachment with which he treats of subjects which ordinarily rouse men's passion to the boiling point. An early example of this characteristic is his essay on "Mr. Cleveland as Presi- dent" written before the end of Mr. Cleveland's second term. His war addresses are marked by the same cool judgment, the same clear independent thinking, the same range of vision, and the same incisive style which are characteristic of his earlier literary productions. One is never at a loss for his meaning : his words ring like steel on flint ; his judgment is never swayed by passion. HOW THE GREAT WAR BEGAN Underlying Causes. The murder of Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, on June 28, 1914, set in motion a train of events which culmi- nated in the terrible catastrophe of a great world war. It was clear, however, to everyone familiar with history that this crime was not the real cause of the tremendous struggle which many of the statesmen of Europe had ex- pected and feared for years. The underlying causes of this great world war reach far back into the past and cannot easily be reduced to simple statements. A thor- ough knowledge of the important political and economic forces which have shaped the history of Europe for a xii INTRODUCTION century past would be needed for a full appreciation of these causes. Of all this network of clashing interests and antagonisms, there are three causes which seem to have contributed most largely toward bringing about the war. These are (i) the clashing of national interests and ideals in Europe; (2) the maintenance of a system of secret military alliances ; and (3) the economic rivalry of the nations of Europe. National Antagonisms. The history of Europe since the downfall of Napoleon has centered around two movements : the growth of democracy and the realization of national ideals. Here we must distinguish clearly between the ambitions of Rulers in Europe and the national ideals and desires of the various groups of People having a com- mon language and tradition. Italy achieved independ- ence and unity between 1859 and 1870; German unity was accomplished between 1864 and 1871. The success of these two nationalist movements aroused other nation- alities likewise to aspire to national unity and greatness. But there remained at the close of the nineteenth century a number of situations which clearly violated the prin- ciple of national sovereignty. The completion of German unity in 1 87 1 had been accomplished by the forcible annex- ation of Alsace and Lorraine, two provinces inhabited largely by persons of French blood and language. This was an ever-present challenge to the French to attempt to regain these lost provinces. The Italians had a griev- ance against Austria because certain strips of territory inhabited by Italians remained in Austrian hands. Po- land since the eighteenth century had been divided be- tween Prussia, Russia, and Austria. Austria-Hungary herself presented the nationalist problem in its most acute form. The Hapsburg dynasty, with its capital at Vienna, rules over a great number of countries and xiii INTRODUCTION provinces inhabited by many races speaking not less than ten distinct languages. One of its greatest difficulties has been to reconcile the interests of the German popula- tion of Austria proper with those of the Hungarians on the one hand and of the various Slavic peoples — Bohe- mians, Poles, Croats, Serbs, etc. — on the other. In 1867 the Empire was divided into two practically independent countries : Austria, dominated by the German element, and Hungary, where the Hungarians are the rulers. This arrangement has been bitterly resented by the Slavs in the Empire because it has kept them in an inferior political position. The Austrian authorities, realizing that the triumph of nationalism would mean the disappearance of the Empire and its parceling out among the surrounding nations, have been fearful of all nationalist movements, — especially that of the southern Slavs. One of these groups, the Serbs, has been particularly active. Part of the Serbs lived in the provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which, since 1908, have been a part of Austria. Others lived in the kingdoms of Serbia and Mon- tenegro, still others in Turkey in Europe. The ambition of the Pan-Serbian movement was to unite all these peo- ple of the Serbian race under one government — Greater Serbia. This Pan-Serbian movement was closely identi- fied with the assassination of the Crown Prince of Austria. The fear of Austria that the movement might succeed was an important motive in causing her to declare war on Serbia on July 28, 1914. Military Alliances. Bismarck, whose policy of "blood and iron" had brought about the German Empire, believed in a system of firm alliances as a guiding principle of states- manship. In an effort to isolate France, he strove to unite Russia, Germany, and Austria-Hungary in a defensive alliance (1872). Russia withdrew from this alliance in xiv INTRODUCTION 1878 because of differences with Austria-Hungary. Later (1882) Italy joined with the Central Powers to form the Triple Alliance. This organization of the states of Cen- tral Europe into a strong military alliance was an invi- tation to the other states of Europe to create an opposing alliance in order to maintain the balance of power. France and Russia, drawn together by common distrust of Ger- many, formed a Dual Alliance in 1891. Later, in 1904, Great Britain, aroused by the threatening naval policy of Germany, abandoned her policy of isolation and made an agreement with France, and later another with Russia, thus forming what is generally known as the Triple En- tente. The existence of these two rival military groups created a situation whereby every political or diplomatic disturbance brought on a crisis. The first of these crises came in 1905 in a dispute over Morocco. Germany, after the downfall of Bismarck in 1 89 1, had abandoned his policy of opposition to colonial expansion and was looking about for such stray bits of undeveloped land as had not already been appropriated by France and Great Britain. Germany had to choose be- tween two courses. Either she must accept the results of her late entrance into the field as a colonial power, or she must challenge the longer-established world powers and try to create for herself a "place in the sun." She chose the latter course. On March 21, 1905, the German Emperor, while on a voyage to Constantinople, stopped at Tangier and encouraged the Sultan of Morocco to reject the scheme for reform which had been proposed by France. Russia was in the midst of the political upheaval which accompanied the Russo-Japanese War and in no shape to aid France. So France was forced to submit to Ger- many's terms with reference to Morocco. A second Mo- roccan crisis occurred in 191 1. France made disorders in xv INTRODUCTION Morocco an occasion for penetrating into the interior, and Germany sent a gunboat to Agadir in Morocco as if with hostile intent. Matters came very close to war, but were settled by a considerable cession of Congo territory by France to Germany. Another phase of Germany's policy of expansion was the Drang nach Osten. 1 This policy contemplated the creation, in conjunction with Austria-Hungary, of a great economic sphere of influence extending through the Balkans to Constantinople and thence through Turkey to the Persian Gulf. So the German Emperor cultivated the friend- ship of the Sultan of Turkey; German officers trained the Turkish forces ; German engineers and German capi- talists began to develop Turkish resources. The whole scheme was crystallized into a plan for a Berlin-to-Bagdad railroad, which was in process of construction when war broke out in 1914. Following the revolution of 1908 in Turkey, Austria-Hungary, in furthering this eastward expansion, took the opportunity to annex Bosnia and Herzegovina. Russia protested against this violation of the Treaty of Berlin (1878) ; but Germany stood by her ally, and Russia, unready for war, was compelled to submit. For the neighboring state of Serbia this annexation was a serious blow. The annexed provinces were peopled with Slavs, and the Serbians had cherished the ambition of uniting with them and Montenegro in a new Slavonic state, Greater Serbia. Moreover, Serbia was now appar- ently shut off from the sea for all time to come, and so would be dependent for a market for her farm produce on Austria-Hungary. This would keep Serbia a weak and somewhat dependent state, which was what Austria 1 Drang nach Osten, a German phrase meaning " push toward the east." xvi INTRODUCTION wanted. In the Balkan War of 1912-1913, however, Serbia burst her boundaries to the south and gained con- siderable territory. But her ambition to secure a sea- port on the Adriatic was blocked by her ancient enemy on the north. The Serbians were bitterly angry at this frustration of their plans by Austria. Nevertheless, Serbia gained considerable territory and greatly increased her power and influence by the Balkan War. It was Turkey, the friend of Germany, and Bulgaria, the friend of Austria-Hungary, that were defeated and lost prestige. That Germany appreciated the serious blow which had been dealt Teutonic influence in the Balkans was indicated by the passage in 19 13 of a new army bill appropriating over $250,000,000 to increase Germany's standing army to a peace footing of over 700,000 and a war footing of nearly 10,000,000. Then it was the turn of France to be alarmed. She lengthened the term of compulsory military service from two years to three. Russia and Austria made similar moves, none of them completed in 19 14. Economic Causes. Some people have declared that the present war is a dispute over pigs, meaning that Serbia's market for her principal product was under the control of Austria-Hungary. This is a very much exaggerated way of saying what many economists believe, that this war, like many others, has been produced chiefly by economic causes, and is, in essence, a struggle for markets. The Industrial Revolution, which introduced the factory sys- tem into England in the eighteenth century, had helped make Great Britain the leading commercial nation of the world. The effects of the Industrial Revolution were not felt in Germany until after 1880, since which time Ger- man industries have made marvelous progress, and goods "made in Germany" have appeared in every market. xvii INTRODUCTION Great Britain, and Germany thus became dangerous com- mercial rivals. Germany's Drang nach Osten was inter- preted as an effort to secure some or all of the rich trade with India. Germany's increasing navy was undoubtedly intended to dispute Great Britain's supremacy on the seas and help German merchants secure wider markets. Like- wise, the hostility between Russia and Germany may be partly explained by the conflict of economic development. Russia, seriously needing more seaports to develop her re- sources, has long coveted Constantinople, whose control or possession was also a keystone in Germany's eastward expansion. In pursuance of her policy Russia has played the godmother to the various Balkan states and could hardly be indifferent to their humiliation or extinction. What has been said ought to make it clear that the European situation in 19 14 was a hair-trigger situa- tion, which needed only a slight disturbance to produce tremendous effects. Outbreak of the War. The hostility of the Serbs against Austria because of her annexation of Bosnia and Herze- govina in 1908 and her attitude toward Serbian expansion in 1912-1913, has been noted. In spite of this hostil- ity toward everything Austrian, on June 28, 1914, the Austrian Crown Prince and Princess made a visit to Sara- jevo, the capital of Bosnia. While riding through the streets of this city they were both slain by the bullets of a young Austrian Serb, who was an enthusiastic supporter of the Pan-Serbian ideals. This murder of the Austrian Crown Prince was interpreted in Austria-Hungary as a part of the Pan-Serbian movement, which aimed at the inclusion of Bosnia and Herzegovina in a Greater Serbia. In what followed, two motives actuated the Austrian rulers: (1) Serbia, much stronger as a result of the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913, lay in the path of the Drang nach Osten xviii INTRODUCTION ambition ; (2) the success of the Pan-Serbian movement might encourage other racial groups to seek independence and completely disrupt the Empire. Some have said that Austria's choice thus lay between a civil war and a foreign war. Austrian investigators " satisfied " themselves that the murder at Sarajevo had been planned in Belgrade with the knowledge and connivance of high Serbian officials. Wherefore, on July 23, 1914, Austria presented to Serbia an ultimatum, couched in the most vigorous language and demanding compliance within forty-eight hours. It was the sort of ultimatum which no nation presents to an equal unless it desires war; presented to a smaller nation like Serbia it could mean only war or the reduction of the smaller state to the position of a dependent vassal. Realizing that another crisis had arisen, the statesmen of Great Britain, France, and Russia strove first to secure an extension of time. It is a striking fact that all three of these countries were confronted by serious internal difficulties. Great Britain was threatened with civil war in Ireland over Home Rule ; Petrograd was involved in a great strike ; in France a government scandal had called from the Minister of War a declaration that the army was in a deplorable state of unpreparedness. Austria flatly refused any extension of time, and the British and Russian ministers persuaded Serbia to make as great a concession as possible. The Serbian reply was presented just two minutes before the expiration of the time limit. It yielded practically everything which Austria had demanded, so much so that the Russian minister declared that the crisis was over. The demand that Austrian officials should be allowed to sit in Serbian courts at the hearings was not yielded, but even this question Serbia offered to submit to the Hague Court for arbitration. Austria professed to find the answer xix INTRODUCTION unsatisfactory and on July 28 declared war on Serbia. In the meantime the Russian ambassador in Vienna had stated that "any action taken by Austria to humiliate Serbia could not leave Russia indifferent." Austria's action in declaring war, then, is explicable on only two grounds : either she was convinced that Russia was bluff- ing and would back down, or else Austria was prepared deliberately to bring on a general European war. Germany and Russia. Throughout all these negotia- tions Germany had backed Austria fully, refusing to make any move which might have helped in preserving the peace. Now Russia began to mobilize her armies. It became plain that the only hope for peace was to secure some agreement between Russia and Austria. Many efforts to this end were put forth, and on July 31 Austria finally agreed to discuss with Russia the terms of the ultimatum to Serbia. This slim chance of preventing a break at the eleventh hour was immediately nullified by an ultimatum delivered by Germany to Russia at midnight on July 31, demanding that Russia should cease military preparations and begin to demobilize her armies within twelve hours. Russia made no reply ; and at 5 p. m. on August 1 Germany declared war on Russia. This action necessarily involved war also on France, for France could hardly refuse to aid her ally. Germany and Belgium. In 1839 Great Britain, France, Austria, Russia, and Prussia joined in guaranteeing the in- dependence and perpetual neutrality of Belgium. Treaties between Great Britain and France and between Great Britain and Prussia, signed just before the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, pledged Great Britain to aid in defending the neutrality of Belgium if either belligerent violated it. In July, 1914, when war again became imminent, Great Britain tried to secure a renewal of this agreement of 1870. xx INTRODUCTION France expressed a willingness to make such an agreement ; but the German Government refused to agree to respect the neutrality of Belgium, and two days later, on August 2, demanded the right of passage through Belgian territory. Belgium returned a flat refusal and was invaded on August 4. Later, the same day, Great Britain declared war on Germany. That the German authorities realized the seriousness of this step is evidenced by the efforts of Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg and of the Kaiser to condone what each frankly admitted was a breach of inter- national law and a wrong, insisting, however, that military necessity demanded it. Von Bethmann-Hollweg added " Necessity knows no law." PROGRESS OF THE WAR The Invasion of France. The plan of campaign of the German general staff was for Austria together with a small number of German troops to hold the Russians in check while Germany crushed France, the two then uniting for a later campaign against Russia. Following this plan, the German armies, by a surprise thrust through Belgium in August, 1914, sought to paralyze the French armies. The German advance through Belgium was much slower than had been anticipated on account of the stiff fight put up by the little Belgian army. So it was August 24 before the frontier between France and Belgium was crossed. This delay gave the French time to rearrange their armies, and the surprise element was lost. General Joffre, who took command of the French armies on August 20, out- maneuvered the German field officers and, aided by the British, defeated the Germans in the great battle of the Marne, September 6-10, 1914. The Germans had nearly reached Paris, but now they retreated for some xxi INTRODUCTION miles and dug themselves in. Severe fighting raged throughout Flanders, but neither side was able to break through, and the conflict in the West settled down into the type of trench warfare which is the characteristic feature of this war. The battle of the Marne bids fair to be regarded as the decisive battle of the war. It was here that the plans of the German staff were definitely defeated. Paris was saved, and France was not crushed. The War in the East. In the meantime on the Eastern front the Russian armies had mobilized much more rapidly than had been believed possible. As early as August 17 they invaded East Prussia and soon threatened the fortress of Konigsberg. But a skillful maneuver by the Ger- man general, von Hindenburg, around the Mazurian Lakes and a German victory at Tannenberg nearly succeeded in crushing the Russian armies in East Prussia. Other Russian armies had invaded Austrian Galicia, taken Lem- berg, and practically routed the Austrian armies sent to hold the frontier. Indeed, one of the contributing causes of the defeat of the Germans at the Marne was the neces- sity, at the critical moment, of sending eastward to stay the Russians several divisions from the armies opposing the French and British. The Eastern campaign of 1914 ended with Russia in possession of a considerable part of Austrian Galicia, and Germany in possession of a fair slice of Russian Poland. During the winter of 1914-1915 the Russians pushed gradually forward into the passes of the Carpathians. In the spring of 191 5 they launched a great drive which carried them over the mountains into Hungary and won them the great fortress of Przemysl in western Galicia (March, 191 5). Then a failure in the supply of ammunition caused a sudden reversal, and the summer of 191 5 saw the Rus- sians retreating rapidly, while place after place — Warsaw, xxii INTRODUCTION Brest-Litovsk, Vilna, and many others — fell into the hands of the Germans and Austrians, led by von Hinden- burg. By September, 191 5, the Teutonic Allies held prac- tically a straight line from Riga to the Rumanian frontier. Italy and the War. Italy, it will be remembered, was bound by the terms of the Triple Alliance to assist Ger- many and Austria-Hungary in case they should be at- tacked by other nations. Italy refused to aid her allies in August, 1 9 14, on the ground that Germany and Austria- Hungary were waging an aggressive instead of a defensive war. During the winter of 1914-1915 belligerent Italian patriots had warmly advocated their country's entrance into the war as an enemy of Austria-Hungary, hoping thus' to win the territory still held by Austria and inhabited by Italians. Austria offered various concessions in an effort to secure peace, but on May 23, 191 5, Italy declared war and undertook an invasion of Austria. This invasion, due to the mountainous character of the country and other handicaps, in over two years won very little territory for the Italians, and all of these gains were lost in the latter part of 1917. Conquest of Serbia. After two Austro-Hungarian at- tempts to invade Serbia had failed in August and Decem- ber, 1914, a new Austro-German invasion was undertaken in October, 191 5, under the direction of the German general, von Mackensen. Belgrade was captured October 8, and a few days later, October 14, Bulgaria declared war and invaded Serbia from the southwest. The Serbian armies were thus caught between the two attacks and were speedily overcome. Aid which had been promised by Great Britain and France arrived too late. By the end of November the whole of Serbia had been conquered and overrun. The next two months saw the conquest of Montenegro. xxiii INTRODUCTION Turkey and the War. After Turkey entered the war in October, 1914, the Russians and British undertook several invasions. The most spectacular of these was the attempt of the British in February, 191 5, to force the Dardanelles and open the route to the Black Sea and South Russia. It was a brilliant conception, and its success would prob- ably have eliminated Turkey from the war and made possible the shipment of munitions and other supplies to Russia by the Black Sea route. The attack was badly managed, however, and in spite of brilliant righting by the Australian and New Zealand troops, ended in total failure. A Russian invasion of Turkish Armenia precipitated a general massacre of the Armenians by the Turks. The Russians gained some territory in this region. British invasions of the Euphrates valley and of Palestine, while they have gained some territory for the British, have thus far had no important effects on the war. Rumania and the War. Rumania entered the war in August, 191 6, believing the time was ripe to win the Transylvanian region which she had long coveted. The 3,000,000 Rumanians who form the largest part of the population of Transylvania have been systematically deprived of rights by their Magyar rulers, and Rumania desired to liberate them from this oppression. Some early successes for her armies carried her invasion of Austria-Hungary as far as Hermannstadt. It was freely predicted that the utter exhaustion of the Teutonic Allies was at hand. Soon, however, Rumania was attacked from the south by Bulgaria, and on the north by fresh German and Austrian armies. Her defense collapsed ; the promised Russian aid did not arrive; and before the end of 191 6 nearly the whole of Rumania was in the hands of her enemies. Early in 19 18, after the collapse of Russia, she was forced to sign a very humiliating peace treaty, xxiv INTRODUCTION Verdun. Since September, 19 14, all the terrific fighting on the Franco-Belgian line has resulted in gains which are measured in yards instead of miles. The most tremendous of these battles was fought before Verdun from February to June, 1 91 6. The German Crown Prince sacrificed enormous numbers of men and used vast quantities of ammunition in a sustained effort to break through the French lines at Verdun. His early attacks met with some success, but the French general, Petain, soon organized a brilliant defense. The French held Verdun, their lines were not broken; and since June, 1916, they have gradually won back all the territory lost in this battle. The Situation in 1917. By this time all the outlying possessions of the Germans had been taken by the British, French, and Japanese ; the British navy had kept the Ger- man navy bottled up in the Baltic, and not a German vessel, except submarines, attempted to sail the seas. The war had become trench warfare in all sections, and the year 191 7 saw no important changes of territory. A tremendous effort launched by the British and French against the Germans along the Somme late in 19 16 forced the Germans early in 191 7 to abandon considerable terri- tory in France and to retreat to previously prepared posi- tions. Later in the season a "big push" in the vicinity of Ypres forced the Germans to yield more territory to the British. In the summer of 191 7 the Italians gained territory on the Isonzo front ; but a tremendous Austro-German drive in the late autumn forced the Italians to aban- don all their gains, and the invaders nearly won Ven- ice. Elsewhere the fighting resulted in only minor changes of territory. The greatest change in the European situation in 191 7 was brought about by the revolution in Russia in March. INTRODUCTION It had become plain that many of the high Russian officials, through treachery or greed for private profits, were block- ing every effort to make Russia efficient, and some, at least, were plotting with Germany to arrange a separate peace. In March a revolution overthrew the Czar and his German-plotting advisers. The Duma assumed con- trol of Russian affairs, and Russia entered the ranks of democratic nations. After the revolution in Russia her armies began to weaken. The Germans took Riga in September, 191 7, meeting with relatively slight resistance. In November, Kerensky, leader of the Socialist Labor party and prime minister since July, 1917, was forced to flee from Petro- grad, and the reins of government were seized by Le- nine and Trotzky, leaders of the ultra-radical Socialist party, generally called the Bolsheviki. This new gov- ernment undertook to make peace with Germany and Austria, with disastrous results for Russia. THE UNITED STATES AND THE WAR The Proclamation of Neutrality. The first effect of the outbreak of the Great War in August, 1914, upon the people of the United States was one of utter amazement and stupefaction at the collapse of European civilization. On August 18 President Wilson issued a proclamation of neutrality. Early in the war, however, the United States found the position of a neutral a trying one. The situa- tion was similar in many respects to that in Napoleon's day. The same vexing problems of neutral trade, of con- traband, and of blockade once more arose. The United States had more than one occasion to protest against what seemed to be unwarranted interference with American trade by the British — an interference which the British xxvi INTRODUCTION justified on the grounds that the German Government had seized all the food supplies in the Empire, making all food products contraband, and that much of our trade with Germany's neighbors was actually rinding its way into Germany, thus running the British blockade by indirection. The Submarine Warfare and the War Zone. Trade difficulties speedily sank into comparative insignificance, however, on account of the much more serious problem presented by the use of submarines. On February 4, 191 5, Germany declared the waters around the British Isles to be a war zone, within which zone it proposed to sink all enemy ships, whether armed or unarmed, and with utter disregard for the lives of passengers. On May 7 the world was horrified by the sinking of the unarmed Lusi- tania by a German submarine with a loss of 1152 lives, of whom 114 were known to be American citizens. Presi- dent Wilson immediately dispatched a note to the German Government expressing the concern and amazement of the United States at such wanton destruction of the lives of noncombatants. A long series of notes followed, Presi- dent Wilson trying by every means to avoid an open clash with Germany. At length, on May 4, 19 16, he secured a qualified pledge that the German Government would not sink merchant vessels "without warning and without saving human life unless the ship attempts to escape or offers resistance." Ruthless Submarine Warfare. Following the Sussex pledge, just referred to, a certain degree of restraint was observed by German submarine commanders for a period of nine months, though often the precautions taken were very meager and haphazard. On January 31, 191 7, the German Chancellor announced Germany's purpose to put aside all restraints of law and of humanity and use its xxvii INTRODUCTION submarines to sink every vessel that sought to approach the ports of Great Britain and Ireland or the western coasts of Europe or any of the ports controlled by the enemies of Germany within the Mediterranean. Said the German Chancellor on this occasion: "When the most ruthless methods are considered the best calculated to lead us to victory and to a swift victory, they must be employed. That moment has now arrived." The new policy swept every restriction aside. Vessels of every description, what- ever their flag, their character, their cargo, their destina- tion, their errand, were ruthlessly sent to the bottom with- out warning and without thought of help or mercy for those on board. Even hospital ships and ships carrying relief to the sorely bereaved people of Belgium, ships to which Germany had guaranteed safe passage, were sunk with the same reckless disregard of compassion or of principle. The German ambassador to Argentina even advised that certain Argentine vessels be sunk without leaving a trace. In all, before April, 191 7, 686 neutral vessels had been sunk by German submarines, and 226 American citizens had been the victims of Germany's submarine warfare. Said President Wilson : " Property can be paid for ; the lives of peaceful and innocent people cannot be paid for. The present German submarine warfare is a warfare against mankind." Position of the United States. The Government and people of the United States had been amazed at the viola- tion of Belgian neutrality ; they had been horrified by the sinking of the Lusitania; they had listened unbelievingly to the tales of German cruelty to women and children in conquered territory ; they had been dumfounded at the effrontery of the German Government's replies to President Wilson's many notes. Now they were roused to action. It was plain that the most sacred rights of our nation and xxviii INTRODUCTION our people were being ignored and violated. In March it was revealed that the German Government, in January, 191 7, before there were any indications of hostile action on our part, had tried to induce Mexico and Japan to join in a war against us. German money was being spent freely to influence public and congressional opinion. It was plain that the peril was nearer than we had dreamed. The very existence of democratic governments was threatened by the Prussian autocracy. The course of the German Government became in fact nothing less than war against the United States, and on April 2 President Wilson asked Congress to declare that a state of war with Ger- many existed. Congress acted with surprising unanimity, and on April 6 the momentous resolution was formally passed. The New Purpose in the War. Whatever may have been the motives of the nations in beginning the Great War, the Russian revolution and the entrance of the United States into the struggle have given it a new purpose. It has become a war of Democracy against Autocracy, a war to determine whether the ideals of America or the ideals of Prussia are to rule the world. Contrast these two standards. Von Bethmann-Hollweg when addressing the Reichstag, August 4, 1914, spoke thus : We are now in a state of necessity, and necessity knows no law. Our troops have occupied (neutral) Luxemburg and perhaps already have entered Belgian territory. Gentlemen, this is a breach of international law. The wrong — I speak openly — the wrong we hereby commit we will try to make good as soon as our military aims have been attained. He who is menaced as we are, and is fighting for his highest possession, can only consider how he is to hack his way through. xxix INTRODUCTION Frederick the Great, the arch-prophet of Prussianism, speaking in 1 740, gave the keynote to all his successors : The question of right is an affair of ministers. ... It is time to consider it in secret, for the orders to my troops have been given. And again, relative to the seizure of Silesia from Austria, Take what you can ; you are never wrong unless you are obliged to give back. The Emperor's advice and admonition of July 27, 1900, to the German troops, just before they left to take part in the suppression of the Boxer Rebellion in China : As soon as you come to blows with the enemy he will be beaten. No mercy will be shown!. No prisoners will be taken! As the Huns, under King Attila, made a name for themselves, which is still mighty in traditions and legends, may the name of German be so fixed in China by your deeds that no Chinese shall ever again dare even to look at a German askance. . . . Open the way for Kultur once for all. Against this set the words of the first president of the young American republic, speaking at a time when the nation was so weak that surely any kind of shifts could have been justified on the score of necessity. Said George Washington in his first inaugural address (1789) : The foundation of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality, and the pre- eminence of free government be exemplified by all the attri- butes which can win the affections of its citizens and command the respect of the world. Or again, in his farewell address (1796) : Observe good faith and justice toward all nations; culti- vate peace and harmony with all. ... It will be worthy of a INTRODUCTION free, enlightened, and, at no distant period, a great nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence. Breathing the same spirit of justice and mercy are the words of Lincoln spoken when the nation was in the midst of Civil War. His second inaugural closes thus : With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphans, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations. The United States enters this war in the same spirit which actuated its founders and its greatest leaders. Our purpose in the war was clearly set forth by President Wil- son in his message to Congress on April 2 : We are accepting this challenge of hostile purpose because we know that in such a Government, following such methods, we can never have a friend; and that in the presence of its organized power, always lying in wait to accomplish we know not what purpose, there can be no assured security for the demo- cratic Governments of the world. We are now about to accept the gauge of battle with this natural foe to liberty, and shall, if necessary, spend the whole force of the nation to check and nullify its pretensions and its power. We are glad, now that we see the facts with no veil of false pre- tense about them, to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its peoples, the German peoples included; for the rights of nations great and small and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and of obedience. The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no mate- rial compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We INTRODUCTION are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of nations can make them. Just because we fight without rancor and without selfish objects, seeking nothing for ourselves but what we shall wish to share with all free peoples, we shall, I feel confident, conduct our operations as belligerents without passion and ourselves observe with proud punctilio the principles of right and of fair play we profess to be fighting for. SOME IMPORTANT DATES July 28, 1914 : Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia. August 1, 1914 : Germany declares war on Russia. August 3, 1 9 14 : Germany declares war on France. August 4, 1914 (a.m.) : Germany invades Belgium. August 4, 1914 (p. m.) : Great Britain declares war on Germany. August 6, 1 9 14 : Austria-Hungary declares war on Russia. August 8, 1 9 14 : Montenegro declares war on Austria-Hungary. August 23, 1914: Japan declares war on Germany. October 29, 1914: Turkey attacks Russia. May 23, 191 5 : Italy declares war on Austria-Hungary. October 14, 1915 : Bulgaria declares war on Serbia. August 28, 1916 : Rumania declares war on Austria-Hungary. April 6, 1917 : United States declares war on Germany. December 7, 1917: United States declares war on Austria- Hungary. xxxn WAR ADDRESSES OF WOODROW WILSON PERMANENT PEACE Address to the United States Senate, January 22, 191 7 Gentlemen of the Senate: On the 1 8th of December last I addressed an identic note to the Governments of the nations now at war, requesting them to state, more definitely than they had yet been stated by either group of belligerents, the terms upon which they would deem it possible to make peace. I spoke on behalf of humanity and of the rights of all neutral nations like our own, many of whose most vital interests the war puts in constant jeopardy. The Central Powers united in a reply which stated merely that they were ready to meet their antagonists in conference to discuss terms of peace. The Entente Powers have replied much more definitely, and have stated, in general terms, indeed, but with sufficient definiteness to imply details, the arrangements, guaranties, and acts of reparation which they deem to be the indispensable conditions of a satisfactory settlement. We are that much nearer a definite discussion of the peace which shall end the present war. We are that much nearer the discussion of the international concept which must hereafter hold the world at peace. In 3 WAR ADDRESSES OF WOODROW WILSON every discussion of the peace that must end this war it is taken for granted that that peace must be fol- lowed by some definite concert of power, which will make it virtually impossible that any such catas- trophe should ever overwhelm us again. Every lover of mankind, every sane and thoughtful man, must take that for granted. I have sought this opportunity to address you because I thought that I owed it to you, as the council asso- ciated with me * in the final determination of our in- ternational obligations, to disclose to you without reserve the thought and purpose that have been taking form in my mind in regard to the duty of our Govern- ment in those days to come when it will be necessary to lay afresh and upon a new plan the foundations of peace among the nations. It is inconceivable that the people of the United States should play no part in that great enterprise. To take part in such a service will be the opportunity for which they have sought to prepare themselves by the very principles and purposes of their polity and the approved practices of their Government, ever since the days when they set up a new nation in the high and honorable hope that it might in all that it was and did show mankind the way to liberty. They cannot, in honor, withhold the service to which they are now about to be challenged. They do not wish to withhold it. But they owe it to themselves and to the other nations of the world to state the conditions under which they will feel free to render it. That service is nothing less than this : to add their authority and their power to the authority and force 4 PERMANENT PEACE of other nations to guarantee peace and justice through- out the world. Such a settlement cannot now be long postponed. It is right that before it comes this Government should frankly formulate the conditions upon which it would feel justified in asking our people to approve its formal and solemn adherence to a league for 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 a just regard for the opinion of mankind to say that, so far as our participation in guarantees of future peace is concerned, it makes a great 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 terms which will create a peace that is worth guaranteeing and pre- serving, a peace that will win the approval of man- kind, not merely a peace that will serve the several interests and immediate aims of the nations engaged. We shall have no voice in determining what those terms shall be, 2 but we shall, I feel sure, have a voice in determining whether they shall be made lasting or not by the guarantees of a universal covenant, and our judgment upon what is fundamental and essential as a condition precedent to permanency should be spoken now, not afterward, when it may be too late. No covenant of cooperative peace that does not include the peoples of the New World can suffice to keep the future safe against war, and yet there is only one sort of peace that the peoples of America could join in guaranteeing. 5 WAR ADDRESSES OF WOODROW WILSON The elements of that peace must be elements that engage the confidence and satisfy the principles of the American Governments, elements consistent with their political faith and the practical conviction which the peoples of America have once for all embraced and undertaken to defend. I do not mean to say that any American Government would throw any obstacle in the way of any terms of peace the Governments now at war might agree upon, or seek to upset them when made, whatever they might be. I only take it for granted that mere terms of peace between the belligerents will not satisfy even the belligerents themselves. Mere agreements may not make peace secure. It will be absolutely neces- sary that a force 3 be created as a guarantor of the permanency of the settlement so much greater than the force of any nation now engaged or any alliance hitherto formed or projected, that no nation, no probable combination of nations, could face or with- stand it. If the peace presently to be made is to endure, it must be a peace made secure by the organ- ized major force of mankind. The terms of the immediate peace agreed upon will determine whether it is a peace for which such a guarantee can be secured. The question upon which the whole future peace and policy of the world de- pends is this : Is the present war a struggle for a just and secure peace or only for a new balance of power ? 4 If it be only a struggle for a new balance of power, who will guarantee, who can guarantee, the stable equilibrium of the new arrangement? Only a tranquil Europe 6 PERMANENT PEACE can be a stable Europe. There must be not only a balance of power, but a community of power; not organized rivalries, but an organized common peace. Fortunately, we have received very explicit assur- ances on this point. The statesmen of both of the groups of nations now arrayed against one another have said, in terms that could not be misinterpreted, that it was no part of the purpose they had in mind to crush their antagonists. But the implications of these assurances may not be equally clear to all, may not be the same on both sides of the water. I think it will be serviceable if I attempt to set forth what we understand them to be. They imply first of all that it must be a peace with- out victory. 5 It is not pleasant to say this. I beg that I may be permitted to put my own interpreta- tion upon it and that it may be understood that no other interpretation was in my thought. I am seek- ing only to face realities and to face them without soft concealments. Victory would mean peace forced upon the loser, a victor's terms imposed upon the vanquished. It would be accepted in humiliation, under duress, at an intolerable sacrifice, and would leave a sting, a resentment, a bitter memory, upon which terms of peace would rest, not permanently, but only as upon quicksand. Only a peace between equals can last ; only a peace the very principle of which is equality and a common participation in a common benefit. The right is as necessary for a lasting peace as is the just settlement of vexed questions of territory or of racial and national allegiance. 7 WAR ADDRESSES OF WOODROW WILSON The equality of nations, upon which peace must be founded, if it is to last, must be an equality of rights ; the guarantees exchanged must neither recognize nor imply a difference between big nations and small, between those that are powerful and those that are weak. Right must be based upon the common strength, not upon the individual strength, of the nations upon whose concert peace will depend. Equality of territory, of resources, there, of course, cannot be ; nor any other sort of equality not gained in the ordinary peaceful and legitimate development of the peoples themselves. But no one asks or ex- pects anything more than an equality of rights. Mankind is looking now for freedom of life, not for equipoises of power. And there is a deeper thing involved than even equality of rights among organized nations. No peace can last, or ought to last, which does not recog- nize and accept the principle that Governments derive all their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that no right anywhere exists to hand peoples about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were property. 6 I take it for granted, for instance, if I may venture upon a single example, that statesmen everywhere are agreed that there should be a united, independent, and autonomous Poland, and that henceforth inviola- ble security of life, of worship, and of industrial and social development should be guaranteed to all peoples who have lived hitherto under the power of governments devoted to a faith and purpose hostile to their own. 8 PERMANENT PEACE I speak of this not because of any desire to exalt an abstract political principle which has always been held very dear by those who have sought to build up liberty in America, but for the same reason that I have spoken of the other conditions of peace, which seem to me clearly indispensable — because I wish frankly to uncover realities. Any peace that does not recognize and accept this principle will inevitably be upset. It will not rest upon the affections or the convictions of mankind. The ferment of spirit of whole populations will fight subtly and constantly against it, and all the world will sympathize. The world can be at peace only if its life is stable, and there can be no stability where the will is in rebellion, where there is not tranquillity of spirit and a sense of justice, of freedom, and of right. So far as practicable, moreover, every great people now struggling toward a full development of its re- sources and of its powers should be assured a direct outlet to the great highways of the sea. Where this cannot be done by the cession of territory, it can no doubt be done by the neutralization of direct rights of way under the general guarantee which will assure peace itself. With a right comity of arrangement no nation need be shut away from free access to the open paths of the world's commerce. 7 And the paths of the sea must alike in law and in fact be free. The freedom of the seas is the sine qua non of peace, equality, and cooperation. No doubt a somewhat radical reconsideration of many of the rules of international practice hitherto sought, to be estab- lished may be necessary in order to make the seas 9 WAR ADDRESSES OF WOODROW WILSON indeed free and common in practically all circum- stances for the use of mankind, but the motive for such changes is convincing and compelling. There can be no trust or intimacy between the peoples of the world without them. The free, constant, unthreatened intercourse of nations is an essential part of the process of peace and of development. It need not be difficult to define or to secure the freedom of the seas if the Govern- ments of the world sincerely desire to come to an agreement concerning it. It is a problem closely connected with the limita- tion of naval armaments and the cooperation of the navies of the world in keeping the seas at once free and safe. And the question of limiting naval armaments opens the wider and perhaps more difficult question of the limitation of armies and of all programs of military preparation. Difficult and delicate as these questions are, they must be faced with the utmost candor and decided in a spirit of real accommodation if peace is to come with healing in its wings and come to stay. Peace cannot be had without concession and sacri- fice. There can be no sense of safety and equality among the nations if great preponderating armies are henceforth to continue here and there to be built up and maintained. The statesmen of the world must plan for peace, and nations must adjust and accom- modate their policy to it as they have planned for war and made ready for pitiless contest and rivalry. The question of armaments, whether on land or sea, is the most immediately and intensely practical 10 PERMANENT PEACE question connected with the future fortunes of nations and of mankind. I have spoken upon these great matters without reserve, and with the utmost explicitness because it has seemed to me to be necessary if the world's yearn- ing desire for peace was anywhere to find free voice and utterance. Perhaps I am the only person in high authority among all the peoples of the world who is at liberty to speak and hold nothing back. 8 I am speak- ing as an individual, and yet I am speaking also, of course, as the responsible head of a great Govern- ment, and I feel confident that I have said what the people of the United States would wish me to say. 9 May I not add that I hope and believe that I am, in effect, speaking for liberals and friends of humanity in every nation and of every program of liberty? I would fain believe that I am speaking for the silent mass of mankind everywhere who have as yet had no place or opportunity to speak their real hearts out concerning the death and ruin they see to have come already upon the persons and the homes they hold most dear. And in holding out the expectation that the people and the Government of the United States will join the other civilized nations of the world in guarantee- ing the permanence of peace upon such terms as I have named, I speak with the greater boldness and confidence because it is clear to every man who can think that there is in this promise no breach in either our traditions or our policy as a nation, but a ful- filment rather of all that we have professed or striven for. ii WAR ADDRESSES OF WOODROW WILSON I am proposing, as it were, that the nations should with one accord adopt the doctrine of President Monroe as the doctrine of the world : That no nation should seek to extend its policy over any other nation or people, but that every people should be left free to determine its own policy, its own way of develop- ment, unhindered, unthreatened, unafraid, the little along with the great and powerful. I am proposing that all nations henceforth avoid entangling alliances which would draw them into com- petition of power, catch them in a net of intrigue and selfish rivalry, and disturb their own affairs with in- fluences intruded from without. 10 There is no en- tangling alliance in a concert of power. When all unite to act in the same sense and with the same pur- pose, all act in the common interest and are free to live their own lives under a common protection. I am proposing government by the consent of the governed ; that freedom of the seas which in inter- national conference after conference u representatives of the United States have urged with the eloquence of those who are the convinced disciples of liberty ; and that moderation of armaments which makes of armies and navies a power for order merely, not an instru- ment of aggression or of selfish violence. These are American principles, American policies. We can stand for no others. And they are also the principles and policies of forward-looking men and women everywhere, of every modern nation, of every enlightened community. They are the principles of mankind and must prevail. 12 DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS BROKEN Address to Congress, February 3, 1917 Gentlemen of the Congress : The Imperial German Government on the 31st day of January announced to this Government and to the Governments of the other neutral nations that on and after the 1st day of February, the present month, it would adopt a policy with regard to the use of submarines against all shipping seeking to pass through certain designated areas of the high seas, to which it is clearly my duty to call your attention. Let me remind the Congress that on the 18th of April last, in view of the sinking on the 24th of March, of the cross-channel steamship Sussex l by a German submarine without summons or warning, and the consequent loss of lives of several citizens of the United States who were passengers aboard her, this Government addressed a note to the Imperial Ger- man Government, in which it made the following declaration : If it is still the purpose of the Imperial German Govern- ment to prosecute relentless and indiscriminate warfare against vessels of commerce by the use of submarines without regard to what the Government of the United States must consider the sacred and indisputable rules of international law and the universally recognized dictates 13 WAR ADDRESSES OF WOODROW WILSON of humanity, the Government of the United States is at last forced to the conclusion that there is but one course it can pursue. 2 Unless the Imperial Government should now immediately declare and effect an abandonment of its present methods of submarine warfare against passenger- and freight-carrying vessels, the Government of the United States can have no choice but to sever diplomatic relations with the German Empire altogether. In reply to this declaration the Imperial German Government gave this Government the following assurance : The German Government is prepared to do its utmost to confine the operations of war for the rest of its duration to the fighting forces of the belligerents, thereby also insuring the freedom of the seas, a principle upon which the German Government believes itself now, as before, to be in agreement with the Government of the United States. The German Government, guided by this idea, notifies the Government of the United States that the German naval forces have received the following orders : In ac- cordance with the general principles of visit and search and destruction of merchant vessels recognized by international law, such vessels, both within and without the area de- clared a naval war zone, shall not be sunk without warning and without saving human lives, unless these ships attempt to escape or offer resistance. 3 But [it added], neutrals cannot expect that Germany, forced to fight for her existence, shall, for the sake of neu- tral interest, restrict the use of an effective weapon if her enemy is permitted to continue to apply at will methods of warfare violating the rules of international law. Such a demand would be incompatible with the character of 14 DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS BROKEN neutrality, and the German Government is convinced that the Government of the United States does not think of making such a demand, knowing that the Government of the United States has repeatedly declared that it is deter- mined to restore the principle of the freedom of the seas, from whatever quarter it has been violated. To this the Government of the United States replied on the 8th of May, accepting, of course, the assur- ance given, but adding : The Government of the United States feels it necessary to state that it takes it for granted that the Imperial German Government does not intend to imply that the maintenance of its newly announced policy is in any way contingent upon the course or result of diplomatic nego- tiations between the Government of the United States and any other belligerent Government, notwithstanding the fact that certain passages in the Imperial Government's note of the 4th inst. might appear to be susceptible of that construction. In order, however, to avoid any misunder- standing, the Government of the United States notifies the Imperial Government that it cannot for a moment entertain, much less discuss, a suggestion that respect by German naval authorities for the rights of citizens of the United States upon the high seas should in any way or in the slightest degree be made contingent upon the conduct of any other Government affecting the rights of neutrals and noncombatants. Responsibility in such matters is single, not joint ; absolute, not relative. To this note of the 8th of May the Imperial Ger- man Government made no reply. 4 On the 31st of January, the Wednesday of the present week, the German Ambassador handed 15 WAR ADDRESSES OF WOODROW WILSON to the Secretary of State, along with a formal note, a memorandum which contained the following statement : The Imperial Government, therefore, does not doubt that the Government of the United States will understand the situation thus forced upon Germany by the Entente Allies' brutal methods of war and by their determination to destroy the Central Powers, 5 and that the Government of the United States will further realize that the now openly disclosed intention of the Entente Allies gives back to Germany the freedom of action which she reserved in her note addressed to the Government of the United States on May 4th, 19 16. Under these circumstances, Germany will meet the illegal measures of her enemies by forcibly preventing, after Feb. 1st, 191 7, in a zone around Great Britain, France, Italy, and in the Eastern Mediterranean, all navi- gation, that of neutrals included, from and to England and from and to France, 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 deliberately withdraws the solemn assurance given in the Imperial Government's note of the 4th of May, 191 6, this Government has no alternative consistent with the dignity and honor of the United States but to take the course, which, in its note on the 18th of April, 191 6, it announced that it would take in the event that the German Govern- ment did not declare and effect an abandonment of the methods of submarine warfare which it was then em- ploying and to which it now purposes again to resort. 16 DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS BROKEN I have therefore directed the Secretary of State to announce to his Excellency the German Ambassador that all diplomatic relations between the United States and the German Empire are severed and that the American Ambassador to Berlin will immediately be withdrawn ; and, in accordance with this decision, to hand to his Excellency his passports. Notwithstanding this unexpected action of the German Government, this sudden and deplorable re- nunciation of its assurances, given this Government at one of the most critical moments of tension in the relations of the two Governments, I refuse to believe that it is the intention of the German authorities to do in fact what they have warned us they will feel at liberty to do. I cannot bring myself to believe that they will indeed pay no regard to the ancient friendship between their people and our own or to the solemn obligations which have been exchanged between them, and destroy American ships and take the lives of American citizens in the willful prose- cution of the ruthless naval program they have announced their intention to adopt. Only actual overt acts on their part can make me believe it even now. 6 If this inveterate confidence on my part in the sobriety and prudent foresight of their purpose should unhappily prove unfounded; if American ships and American lives should in fact be sacrificed by their naval commanders in heedless contravention of the just and reasonable understandings of international law and the obvious dictates of humanity, I shall take the liberty of coming again before the Congress 17 WAR ADDRESSES OF WOODROW WILSON to ask that authority be given me to use any means that may be necessary for the protection of our sea- men and our people in the prosecution of their peace- ful and legitimate errands on the high seas. I can do nothing less. I take it for granted that all neutral Governments will take the same course. We do not desire any hostile conflict with the Im- perial German Government. We are the sincere friends of the German people, and earnestly desire to remain at peace with the Government that speaks for them. We shall not believe that they are hostile to us unless and until we are obliged to believe it ; and we purpose nothing more than the reasonable defense of the undoubted rights of our people. We wish to serve no selfish ends. We seek merely to stand true alike in thought and in action to the immemorial principles of our people, which I have sought to ex- press in my address to the Senate only two weeks ago — seek merely to vindicate our right to liberty and justice and an unmolested life. These are the bases of peace, not war. God grant that we may not be challenged to defend them by acts of willful injustice on the part of the Government of Germany ! 18 ARMED NEUTRALITY Address to Congress, February 26, 191 7 Gentlemen of the Congress : I have again asked the privilege of addressing you because we are moving through critical times during which it seems to me to be my duty to keep in close touch with the houses of Congress, so that neither counsel nor action shall run at cross purposes between us. On the 3d of February I officially informed you of the sudden and unexpected action of the Imperial German Government in declaring its intention to disregard the promises it had made to this Govern- ment in April last and undertake immediate sub- marine operations against all commerce, whether of belligerents or of neutrals, that should seek to approach Great Britain and Ireland, the Atlantic coasts of Europe or the harbors of the eastern Mediterranean, and to conduct these operations without regard to the established restrictions of international practice, without regard to any considerations of humanity, even, which might interfere with their object. That policy was forthwith put into practice. It has now been in active execution for nearly four weeks. 19 WAR ADDRESSES OF WOODROW WILSON Its practical results are not yet fully disclosed. The commerce of other neutral nations is suffering severely, but not, perhaps, very much more severely than it was already suffering before the ist of February, when the new policy of the Imperial Government was put into operation. We have asked the cooperation of the other neutral Governments to prevent these depredations, but so far none of them has thought it wise to join us in any common course of action. Our own commerce has suffered, is suffering, rather in apprehension than in fact, rather because so many of our ships are timidly keeping to their home ports than 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 foodstuffs con- signed to a London firm, was essentially like the case of the Frye, 1 in which, it will be recalled, the German Government admitted its liability for damages, and the lives of the crew, as in the case of the Frye, were safeguarded with reasonable care. The case of the Law, which was carrying lemon box staves to Palermo, disclosed a ruthlessness of method which deserves grave condemnation, but was accompanied by no circumstances which might not have been expected at any time in connection with the use of the sub- marine against merchantmen as the German Govern- ment has used it. In sum, therefore, the situation we find ourselves in with regard to the actual conduct of the German submarine warfare against commerce and its effects upon our own ships and people is substantially the 20 ARMED NEUTRALITY same that it was when I addressed you on the 3d of February, except for the tying up of our shipping in our own ports because of the unwillingness of our shipowners to risk their vessels at sea without insur- ance or adequate protection, and the very serious congestion of our commerce which has resulted, a congestion which is growing rapidly more and more serious every day. This in itself might presently accomplish, in effect, what the new German sub- marine orders were meant to accomplish, so far as we are concerned. We can only say, therefore, that the overt act which I have ventured to hope the German com- manders would in fact avoid has not occurred. But while this is happily true, it must be admitted that there have been certain additional indications and expressions of purpose on the part of the German press and the German authorities which have increased rather than lessened the impression that, if our ships and our people are spared, it will be because of fortunate circumstances or because the commanders of the German submarines which they may happen to encounter exercise an unexpected discretion and re- straint rather than because of the instructions under which those commanders are acting. It would be foolish to deny that the situation is fraught with the gravest possibilities and dangers. No thoughtful man can fail to see that the necessity 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 neutral nation. It would be most imprudent to be unprepared. 21 WAR ADDRESSES OF WOODROW WILSON I cannot in such circumstances be unmindful of the fact that the expiration of the term of the present Congress is immediately at hand, by constitutional limitation ; and that it would in all likelihood require an unusual length of time to assemble and organize the Congress which is to succeed it. I feel that I ought, in view of the fact, to obtain from you full and imme- diate assurance of the authority which I may need at any moment to exercise. No doubt I already possess that authority without special warrant of law, by the plain implication of my constitutional duties and powers ; but I prefer, in the present circumstances, not to act upon general implication. I wish to feel that the authority and the power of the Congress are behind me in whatever it may become necessary for me to do. We are jointly the servants of the people and must act together and in their spirit, so far as we can divine and interpret it. 2 No one doubts what it is our duty to do. We must defend our commerce and the lives of our people in the midst of the present trying circumstances, with discretion but with clear and steadfast purpose. 3 Only the method and the extent remain to be chosen, upon the occasion, if occasion should indeed arise. Since it has unhappily proved impossible to safeguard our neutral right by diplomatic means against the unwar- ranted infringements they are suffering at the hands of Germany, there may be no recourse but to armed neutrality, which we shall know how to maintain and for which there is abundant American precedent. It is devoutly to be hoped that it will not be neces- sary to put armed force anywhere into action. The 22 ARMED NEUTRALITY American people do not desire it and our desire is not different from theirs. I am sure that they will under- stand the spirit in which I am now acting, the purpose I hold nearest my heart and would wish to exhibit in everything I do. I am anxious that the people of the nations at war also should understand and not mistrust us. I hope that I need give no further proofs and assurances than I have already given throughout nearly three years of anxious patience that I am the friend of peace and mean to preserve it for America so long as I am able. I am not now proposing or contemplating war or any steps that need lead to it. I merely request that you will accord me by your own vote and definite bestowal the means and the authority to safeguard in practice the right of a great people who are at peace and who are desirous of exercising none but the rights of peace to follow the pursuits of peace in quietness and good will — rights recognized time out of mind by all the civilized nations of the world. No course of my choosing or of theirs will lead to war. War can come only by the willful acts and aggressions of others. You will understand why I can make no definite proposals or forecasts of action now, and must ask for your supporting authority in the most general terms. The form in which action may become neces- sary cannot yet be foreseen. I believe that the people will be willing to trust me to act with restraint, with prudence, and in the true spirit of amity and good faith that they have themselves displayed throughout these trying months, and it is in that belief that I request that you will authorize me to supply 23 WAR ADDRESSES OF WOODROW WILSON our merchant ships with defensive arms should that become necessary, and with the means of using them, and to employ any other instrumentalities or methods that may be necessary and adequate to protect our ships and our people in their legitimate and peaceful pursuits on the seas. I request also that you will grant me, at the same time, along with the powers I ask, a sufficient credit to enable me to provide adequate means of protection where they are lacking, including adequate insurance against the present war risks. I have spoken of our commerce and of the legitimate errands of our people 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 and weight. It is not of material interest merely that we are thinking. It is, rather, of fundamental human rights, chief of all the right of life itself. I am think- ing not only of the rights of Americans to go and come about their proper business by way of the sea, but also of something much deeper, much more funda- mental than that. I am thinking of those rights of humanity without which there is no civilization. 4 My theme is of those great principles of compassion and of protection which mankind has sought to throw about human lives, the lives of noncombatants, the lives of men who are peacefully at work keeping the industrial processes of the world quick and vital, the lives of women and children and of those who supply the labor which ministers to their sustenance. We are speaking of no selfish material rights, but of rights which our hearts support and whose foundation 24 ARMED NEUTRALITY is that righteous passion for justice upon which all law, all structures alike of family, of state, and of mankind, must rest, as upon the ultimate base of our existence and our liberty. I cannot imagine any man with American principles at his heart hesitating to defend these things. 25 SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS Delivered at the Inaugural Exercises held on March 5, 191 7 My Fellow Citizens : The four years which have elapsed since last I stood in this place have been crowded with counsel and action of the most vital interest and consequence. Perhaps no equal period in our history has been so fruitful of important reforms in our economic and industrial life or so full of significant changes in the spirit and purpose of our political action. We have sought very thoughtfully to set our house in order, correct the grosser errors and abuses of our industrial life, liberate and quicken the processes of our national genius and energy, and lift our politics to a broader view of the people's essential interests. It is a record of singular variety and singular distinction. 1 But I shall not attempt to review it. It speaks for itself and will be of increasing influence as the years go by. This is not the time for retrospect. It is time, rather, to speak our thoughts and purposes concerning the present and the immediate future. Although we have centered counsel and action with such unusual concentration and success upon the great problems of domestic legislation to which we addressed 26 SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS ourselves four years ago, other matters have more and more forced themselves upon our attention, matters lying 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 and more irresistibly into their own current and influence. It has been impossible to avoid them. They have affected the life of the whole world. They have shaken men everywhere with a passion and an apprehension they never knew before. It has been hard to preserve calm counsel while the thought of our own people swayed this way and that under their influence. We are a composite and cosmopolitan people. 2 We are of the blood of all the nations that are at war. The currents of our thoughts as well as the currents of our trade run quick at all seasons back and forth between us and them. The war inevitably set its mark from the first alike upon our minds, our industries, our commerce, our politics, and our social action. To be indifferent to it or independent of it was out of the question. And yet all the while we have been conscious that we were not part of it. In that consciousness, despite many divisions, we have drawn closer together. We have been deeply wronged upon the seas, but we have not wished to wrong or injure in return ; have retained throughout the consciousness of standing in some sort apart, intent upon an interest that transcended the immediate issues of the war itself. As some of the injuries done us have become intolerable we have still been clear that we wished nothing for our- selves that we were not ready to demand for all 27 WAR ADDRESSES OF WOODROW WILSON mankind — fair dealing, justice, the freedom to live and be at ease against organized wrong. It is in this spirit and with this thought that we have grown more and more aware, more and more certain that the part we wished to play was the part of those who mean to vindicate and fortify peace. We have been obliged to arm ourselves to make good our claim to a certain minimum of right and of freedom of action. We stand firm in armed neutrality, since it seems that in no other way can we demonstrate what it is we insist upon and cannot forego. We may even be drawn on, by circumstances, not by our own purpose and desire, to a more active assertion of our rights as we see them and a more immediate association with the great struggle itself. But noth- ing will alter our thought or our purpose. They are too clear to be obscured. They are too deeply rooted in the principles of our national life to be altered. We desire neither conquest nor advantage. 3 We wish nothing that can be had only at the cost of another people. We have always professed unselfish purpose and we covet the opportunity to prove that our professions are sincere. There are many things still to do at home to clarify our own politics and give new vitality to the industrial processes of our own life, and we shall do them as time and opportunity serve ; but we realize that the greatest things that remain to be done must be done with the whole world for stage and in cooperation with the wide and universal forces of mankind, and we are making our spirits ready for those things. They will follow in the immediate wake of the war 2% SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS itself and will set civilization up again. We are provincials no longer. The tragical events of the thirty months of vital turmoil through which we have just passed have made us citizens of the world. 4 There can be no turning back. Our own fortunes 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 the more American if we but remain true to the principles in which we have been bred. They are not the principles of a province or of a single continent. We have known and boasted all along that they were the principles of a liberated mankind. These, therefore, are the things we shall stand for, whether in war or in peace : 5 That all nations are equally interested in the peace of the world and in the political stability of free peoples, and equally responsible for their maintenance ; That the essential principle of peace is the actual equality of nations in all matters of right or privilege ; That peace cannot securely or justly rest upon an armed balance of power ; That Governments derive all their just powers from the consent of the governed and that no other powers should be supported by the common thought, purpose, or power of the family of nations; That the seas should be equally free and safe for the use of all peoples, under rules set up by common agreement and consent, and that, so far as practicable, they should be accessible to all upon equal terms ; That national armaments should be limited to the necessities of national order and domestic safety; 29 WAR ADDRESSES OF WOODROW WILSON That the community of interest and of power upon which peace must henceforth depend imposes upon each nation the duty of seeing to it that all influences proceeding from its own citizens meant to encourage or assist revolution in other states should be sternly and effectually suppressed and prevented. I need not argue these principles to you, my fellow countrymen; they are your own, part and parcel of your own thinking and your own motive in affairs. They spring up native amongst us. Upon this as a platform of purpose and of action we can stand together. And it is imperative that we should stand together. We are being forged into 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, be purged of faction and division, purified of the errant humors of party and of private interest, and shall stand forth in the days to come with a new dignity of national pride and spirit. Let each man see to it that the dedication is in his own heart, the high purpose of the nation in his own mind, ruler of his own will and desire. 6 I stand here and have taken the high and solemn oath 7 to which you have been audience because the people of the United States have chosen me for this august delegation of power and have by their gracious judgment named me their leader in affairs. I know now what the task means. I realize to the full the responsibility which it involves. I pray God I may be given the wisdom and the prudence to do my duty in the true spirit of this great people. I am their 30 SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS servant and can succeed only as they sustain and guide me by their confidence and their counsel. The thing I shall count upon, the thing without which neither counsel nor action will avail, is the unity of America — and America united in feeling, in purpose, and in its vision of duty, of opportunity, and of service. We are to beware of all men who would turn the tasks and the necessities of the nation to their own private profit or use them for the building up of private power ; beware that no faction or disloyal intrigue break the harmony or embarrass the spirit of our people ; beware that our Government be kept pure and incorrupt in all its parts. United alike in the conception of our duty and in the high resolve to perform it in the face of all men, let us dedicate ourselves to the great task to which we must now set our hand. 8 For myself I beg your tolerance, your countenance, and your united aid. The shadows that now lie dark upon our path will soon be dispelled and we shall walk with the light all about us if we be but true to ourselves — to ourselves as we have wished to be known in the counsels of the world and in the thought of all those who love liberty and justice and the right exalted. 3i AT WAR WITH GERMANY Address to Congress, April 2, 191 7 Gentlemen of the Congress: I have called the Congress into extraordinary session because there are serious — very serious — choices of policy to be made, and made immediately, which it was neither right nor constitutionally permissible 1 that I should assume the responsibility of making. On the 3d of February last I officially laid before you the extraordinary announcement of the Imperial German Government that on and after the first day of February it was its purpose to put aside all re- straints of law or of humanity and use its submarines to sink every vessel that sought to approach either the ports of Great Britain and Ireland or the western coasts of Europe, or any of the ports controlled by the enemies of Germany within the Mediterranean. That had seemed to be the object of the German submarine warfare earlier in the war, but since April of last year the Imperial German Government had somewhat restrained the commanders of its undersea craft in conformity with its promise then given to us that passenger boats should not be sunk and that due warning would be given to all other vessels which its submarines might seek to destroy, when no resistance 32 AT WAR WITH GERMANY was offered or escape attempted, and care taken that their crews were given at least a fair chance to save their lives in their open boats. 2 The precautions taken were meager and haphazard enough, as was proved in distressing instance after instance in the progress of the cruel and unmanly business, but a certain degree of restraint was observed. The new policy has swept every restriction aside. Vessels of every kind, whatever their flag, their char- acter, their cargo, their destination, their errand, have been ruthlessly sent to the bottom without warning and without thought of help or mercy for those on board, the vessels of friendly neutrals along with those of belligerents. Even hospital ships and ships carrying relief to the sorely bereaved and stricken people of Belgium, though the latter were provided with safe conduct through the prescribed areas by the German Govern- ment itself and were distinguished by unmistakable marks of identity, have been sunk with the same reckless lack of compassion or of principle. International law had its origin in the attempt to set up some law, which would be respected and observed upon the seas, where no nation had right of dominion and where lay the free highways of the world. By painful stage after stage has that law been built up, with meager enough results, indeed, after all was accomplished that could be accomplished, but always with a clear view, at least, of what the heart and conscience of mankind demanded. This minimum of right 3 the German Government has swept aside under the plea of retaliation and 33 WAR ADDRESSES OF WOODROW WILSON necessity, and because it had no weapons which it could use at sea except these, which it is impossible to employ, as it is employing them, without throwing to the winds all scruples of humanity or of respect for the understandings that were supposed to underlie the intercourse of the world. I am not now thinking of the loss of property in- volved, immense and serious as that is, but only of the wanton and wholesale destruction of the lives of noncombatants — men, women, and children — engaged in pursuits which have always, even in the darkest periods of modern history, been deemed innocent and legitimate. Property can be paid for; the lives of peaceful and innocent people cannot be. 4 The present German warfare against commerce is a warfare against mankind. It is a war against all nations. American ships have been sunk, Amer- ican lives 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 been sunk and over- whelmed in the waters in the same way. There has been no discrimination. The challenge is to all mankind. Each nation must decide for itself how it will meet it. The choice we make for ourselves must be made with a moderation of counsel and a temperateness of judgment befitting our char- acter and our motives as a nation. We must put excited feeling away. Our motive will not be revenge or the victorious assertion of the physical might of the nation, but only the vindication of right, of human right, of which we are only a single champion. 34 AT WAR WITH GERMANY When I addressed the Congress on the 26th of February last I thought that it would suffice to assert our neutral rights with arms, our right to use the seas against unlawful interference, our right to keep our people safe against unlawful violence. But armed neutrality, it now appears, is im- practicable. Because submarines have been used against merchant shipping, it is impossible to defend ships against their attacks, as the law of nations has assumed that merchantmen would defend themselves against privateers or cruisers, visible craft, giving chase upon the open sea. It is common prudence in such circumstances, grim necessity indeed, to destroy them before they have shown their own intention. They must be dealt with upon sight, if dealt with at all. The German Government denies the right of neutrals to use arms at all within the areas of the sea which it has prohibited, even in the defense of rights which no modern publicist has ever before questioned their right to defend. The intimation is conveyed that the armed guards which we have placed on our merchant ships will be treated as beyond the pale of law and subject to be dealt with as pirates would be. Armed neutrality is ineffectual enough at best. In such circumstances and in the face of such pretensions it is worse than ineffectual. It is likely only to produce what it was meant to prevent. It is practically certain to draw us into the war without either the rights or the effectiveness of belligerents. 35 WAR ADDRESSES OF WOODROW WILSON There is one choice we cannot make, we are in- capable of making : We will not choose the path of submission and suffer the most sacred rights of our nation and our people to be ignored or violated. The wrongs against which we now array ourselves are not common wrongs; they cut to the very roots of human life. With a profound sense of the solemn and even tragical character of the step I am taking and of the grave responsibilities which it involves, but in un- hesitating obedience to what I deem my constitutional duty, I advise that the Congress declare the recent course of the Imperial German Government to be in fact nothing less than war against the Government and people of the United States; that it formally accept the status of belligerent which has thus been thrust upon it; and that it take immediate steps not only to put the country in a more thorough state of defense but also to exert all its power and employ all its resources to bring the Govern- ment of the German Empire to terms and end the war. What this will involve is clear. It will involve the utmost practicable cooperation in counsel and action with the Governments now at war with Germany, and, as incident to that, the extension to those Govern- ments of the most liberal financial credits, in order that our resources may, so far as possible, be added to theirs. It will involve the organization and mobilization of all the material resources of the country to supply the materials of war and serve the incidental needs of the nation in the most 36 AT WAR WITH GERMANY abundant, and yet the most economical and efficient, way possible. It will involve the immediate full equipment of the navy in all respects, but particularly in supply- ing it with the best means of dealing with the enemy's submarines. It will involve the immediate addition to the armed forces of the United States, already pro- vided for by law in case of war, of at least 500,000 men, who should, in my opinion, be chosen upon the principle of universal liability to service, and also the authorization of subsequent additional increments of equal force so soon as they may be needed and can be handled in training. It will involve also, of course, the granting of adequate credits to the Government, sustained, I hope, so far as they can equitably be sustained by the present generation, by well-conceived taxation. I say sustained so far as may be equitable by taxation because it seems to me that it would be most unwise to base the credits which will now be necessary entirely on money borrowed. It is our duty, I most respect- fully urge, to protect our people so far as we may against the very serious hardships and evils which would be likely to arise out of the inflation which would be produced by vast loans. In carrying out the measures by which these things are to be accomplished we should keep constantly in mind the wisdom of interfering as little as possible in our own preparation and in the equipment of our own military forces with the duty — for it will be a very practical duty — of supplying the nations already at war with Germany with the materials which they 37 ' WAR ADDRESSES OF WOODROW WILSON can obtain only from us or by our assistance. They are in the field and we should help them in every way to be effective there. I shall take the liberty of suggesting, through the several executive departments 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 been framed after very careful thought by the branch of the Government upon which the responsibility of conducting the war and safeguarding the nation will most directly fall. While we do these things, these deeply momentous things, let us be very clear, and make very clear to all the world what our motives and our objects are. My own thought has not been driven from its habitual and normal course by the unhappy events of the last two months, and I do not believe that the thought of the nation has been altered or clouded by them. I have exactly the same thing in mind now that I had in mind when I addressed the Senate on the 2 2d of January last ; the same that I had in mind when I addressed the Congress on the 3d of February and on the 26th of February. Our object now, as then, is to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the life of the world as against selfish and autocratic power and to set up amongst the really free and self- governed peoples of the world such a concert of pur- pose and of action as will henceforth insure the observance of those principles. Neutrality is no longer feasible or desirable where the peace of the world is involved and the freedom 38 AT WAR WITH GERMANY of its peoples, and the menace to that peace and freedom lies in the existence of autocratic Govern- ments backed by organized force, which is controlled wholly by their will, not by the will of their people. We have seen the last of neutrality in such cir- cumstances. We are at the beginning of an age in which it will be insisted that the same standards of conduct and of responsibility for wrong done shall be observed among nations and their Governments that are observed among the individual citizens of civilized states. 5 We have no quarrel with the German people. We have no feeling toward them but one of sympathy and friendship. It was not upon their impulse that their Government acted in entering this war. It was not with their previous knowledge or approval. 6 It was a war determined upon as wars used to be determined upon in the old, unhappy days when peoples were nowhere consulted by their rulers and wars were provoked and waged in the interest of dynasties or of little groups of ambitious men who were accustomed to use their fellow men as pawns and tools. Self-governed nations do not fill their neighbor states with spies nor set the course of intrigue to bring about some critical posture of affairs which will give them an opportunity to strike and make conquest. Such designs can be successfully worked only under cover and where no one has the right to ask questions. Cunningly contrived plans of deception or aggres- sion, carried, it may be, from generation to generation, can be worked out and kept from the light only 39 WAR ADDRESSES OF WOODROW WILSON within the privacy of courts or behind the carefully guarded confidences of a narrow and privileged class. They are happily impossible where public opinion commands and insists upon full information con- cerning all the nation's affairs. A steadfast concert for peace can never be main- tained except by a partnership of democratic nations. No autocratic government could be trusted to keep faith within it or observe its covenants. It must be a league of honor, a partnership of opinion. Intrigue would eat its vitals away, the plottings of inner circles would be a corruption seated at its very heart. Only free peoples who could plan what they would and render account to no one can hold their purpose and their honor steady to a common end and prefer the interests of mankind to any narrow interest of their own. Does not every American feel that assurance has been added to our hope for the future peace of the world by the wonderful and heartening things that have been happening within the last few weeks in Russia ? 7 Russia was known by those who knew it best to have been always in fact democratic at heart, in all the vital habits of her thought, in all the intimate relationships of her people that spoke their natural instinct, their habitual attitude toward life. Autocracy that crowned the summit of her po- litical structure, long as it has stood and terrible as was the reality of its power, was not in fact Russian in origin, in character, or purpose, and now it has been shaken and the great, generous Russian people have 40 AT WAR WITH GERMANY been added in all their native majesty and might to the forces that are righting for freedom in the world, for justice, and for peace. Here is a fit partner for a league of honor. One of the things that has served to convince us that the Prussian autocracy was not and could never be our friend is that from the very outset of the pres- ent war it has filled our unsuspecting communities and even our offices of government with spies and set criminal intrigues everywhere afoot against our national unity of council, our peace within and without, our industries and our commerce. Indeed, it is now evident that its spies were here even before the war began, and it is unhappily not a matter of conjecture but a fact proved in our courts of justice that the intrigues which have more than once come perilously near to disturbing the peace and dislocating the industries of the country have been carried on at the instigation, with the support, and even under the personal direction of official agents of the Imperial Government accredited to the Government of the United States. 8 Even in checking these things and trying to extirpate them we have sought to put the most generous interpretation possible upon them because we knew that their source lay, not in any hostile feeling or purpose of the German people toward us (who were, no doubt, as ignorant of them as we our- selves were) but only in the selfish designs of a Govern- ment that did what it pleased and told its people nothing. But they have played their part in serving to convince us at last that that Government entertains 4i WAR ADDRESSES OF WOODROW WILSON no real friendship for us and means to act against our peace and security at its convenience. That it means to stir up enemies against us at our very doors the intercepted note to the German Minister at Mexico City is eloquent evidence. 9 We are accepting this challenge of hostile purpose because we know that in such a Government, follow- ing such methods, we can never have a friend ; and that in the presence of its organized power, always lying in wait to accomplish we know not what pur- pose, there can be no assured security for the demo- cratic Governments of the world. We are now about to accept gauge of battle with this natural foe to liberty, and shall, if necessary, spend the whole force of the nation to check and nullify its pretensions and its power. We are glad, now that we see the facts with no veil of false pretense about them, to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its peoples — the Ger- man people included — for the rights of nations great and small and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and of obedience. The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the trusted foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the cham- pions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of the nation can make them. 42 AT WAR WITH GERMANY Just because we fight without rancor and without selfish objects, seeking nothing for ourselves but what we shall wish to share with all free peoples, we shall, I feel confident, conduct our operations as belligerents without passion and ourselves observe with proud punctilio the principles of right and of fair play we profess to be fighting for. I have said nothing of the Governments allied with the Imperial Government of Germany because they have not made war upon us or challenged us to defend our right and our honor. The Austro-Hungarian Government has, indeed, avowed its unqualified indorsement and acceptance of the reckless and lawless submarine warfare adopted now without disguise by the Imperial German Gov- ernment, and it has therefore not been possible for this Government to receive Count Tarnowski, the Ambassador recently accredited to this Government by the Imperial and Royal Government of Austria- Hungary; but that Government has not actually engaged in warfare against citizens of the United States on the seas, and I take the liberty, for the present at least, of postponing a discussion of our relations with the authorities at Vienna. We enter this war only where we are clearly forced into it because there are no other means of defending our rights. It will be all the easier for us to conduct ourselves as belligerents in a high spirit of right and fairness because we act without animus, not in enmity toward a people or with the desire to bring any injury or dis- advantage upon them, but only in armed opposition 43 WAR ADDRESSES OF WOODROW WILSON to an irresponsible government which has thrown aside all considerations of humanity and of right and is running amuck. We are, let me say again, the sincere friends of the German people, and shall desire nothing so much as the early reestablishment of intimate relations of mutual advantage between us -— however hard it may be for them, for the time being, to believe that this is spoken from our hearts. We have borne with their present Government through all these bitter months because of that friend- ship — exercising a patience and forbearance which would otherwise have been impossible. We shall, happily, still have an opportunity to prove that friendship in our daily attitude and actions toward the millions of men and women of German birth and native sympathy who live amongst us and share our life, and we shall be proud to prove it toward all who are in fact loyal to their neighbors and to the Government in the hour of test. They are, most of them, as true and loyal Americans as if they had never known any other fealty or allegiance. They will be prompt to stand with us in rebuking and re- straining the few who may be of a different mind and purpose. If there should be disloyalty, it will be dealt with with a firm hand of stern repression ; but if it lif ts its head at all, it will lift it only here and there and without countenance except from a lawless and malig- nant few. It is a distressing and oppressive duty, gentlemen of the Congress, which I have performed in thus 44 AT WAR WITH GERMANY addressing you. There are, it may be, many months of fiery trial and sacrifice ahead of us. It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civiliza- tion itself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, 10 and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts — for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free. To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no other. 45 The Declaration of JVar Whereas, The Imperial German Govern- ment has committed repeated acts of war against the Government and the people of the United States of America; therefore, be it Resolved, by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the state of war between the United States and the Imperial German Government, which has thus been thrust upon the United States, is hereby formally declared; and That the President be, and he is hereby, authorized and directed to employ the entire naval and military forces of the United States and the resources of the Government to carry on war against the Imperial German Government; and to bring the conflict to a successful termination all the resources of the country are hereby pledged by the Congress of the United States. WHAT WE ARE FIGHTING FOR Message to the Pro visional Government of Russia, May 26, 1917 In view of the approaching visit of the American delegation to Russia to express the deep friendship of the American people for the people of Russia and to discuss the best and most practical means of co- operation between the two peoples in carrying the present struggle for the freedom of all peoples to a successful consummation, it seems opportune and ap- propriate that I should state again, in the light of this new partnership, the objects the United States has had in mind in entering the war. Those objects have been very much beclouded during the past few weeks by mistaken and misleading statements, and the issues at stake are too momentous, too tremendous, too significant for the whole human race to permit any misinterpretations or misunderstandings, how- ever slight, to remain uncorrected for a moment. The war has begun to go against Germany, and in their desperate desire to escape the inevitable ulti- mate defeat those who are in authority in Germany are using every possible instrumentality, are mak- ing use even of the influence of groups and parties among their own subjects to whom they have never been just or fair or even tolerant, to promote 47 WAR ADDRESSES OF WOODROW WILSON a propaganda on both sides of the sea which will preserve for them their influence at home and their power abroad, to the undoing of the very men they are using. The position of America in this war is so clearly avowed that no man can be excused for mistaking it. She seeks no material profit or aggrandizement of any kind. She is fighting for no advantage or selfish object of her own, but for the liberation of peoples everywhere from the aggressions of autocratic force. The ruling classes in Germany have begun of late to profess a like liberality and justice of purpose, but only to preserve the power they have set up to Ger- many and the selfish advantages which they have wrongly gained for themselves and their private proj- ects of power all the way from Berlin to Bagdad and beyond. Government after government has by their influence, without open conquest of its territory, been linked together in a net of intrigue directed against nothing less than the peace and liberty of the world. The meshes of that intrigue must be broken, but can- not be broken unless wrongs already done are undone ; and adequate measures must be taken to prevent it from ever again being rewoven or repaired. Of course, the Imperial German Government and those whom it is using for their own undoing are seek- ing to obtain pledges that the war will end in the restoration of the status quo ante. It was the status quo ante out of which this iniquitous war issued forth, the power of the Imperial German Government within the Empire and its widespread domination and in- fluence outside of that Empire. That status must be 48 WHAT WE ARE FIGHTING FOR altered in such fashion as to prevent any such hideous thing from ever happening again. We are righting for the liberty, the self-government, and the undictated development of all peoples, and every feature of the settlement that concludes this war must be conceived and executed for that purpose. Wrongs must first be righted, and then adequate safe- guards must be created to prevent their being com- mitted again. We ought not to consider remedies merely because they have a pleasing and sonorous sound. Practical questions can be settled only by practical means. Phrases will not accomplish the result. Effective readjustments will ; and whatever readjustments are necessary must be made. But they must follow a principle, and that prin- ciple is plain. No people must be forced under sov- ereignty under which it does not wish to live. No territory must change hands except for the purpose of securing those who inhabit it a fair chance of life and liberty. No indemnities must be insisted on except those that constitute payment for manifest wrongs done. No readjustments of power must be made except such as will tend to secure the future peace of the world and the future welfare and happi- ness of its peoples. 1 And then the free peoples of the world must draw together in some common covenant, some genuine and practical cooperation that will in effect combine their force to secure peace and justice in the dealings of nations with one another. The brotherhood of mankind must no longer be a fair but empty phrase ; it must be given a structure of force and reality. 49 WAR ADDRESSES OF WOODROW WILSON The nations must realize their common life and effect a workable partnership to secure that life against the aggressions of autocratic and self-pleasing power. For these things we can afford to pour out blood and treasure. For these are the things we have always professed to desire, and unless we pour out blood and treasure now and succeed, we may never be able to unite or show conquering force again in the great cause of human liberty. The day has come to con- quer or submit. If the forces of autocracy can divide us they will overcome us : if we stand together, victory is certain and the liberty which victory will secure. We can afford then to be generous, but we cannot afford then or now to be weak or omit any single guarantee of justice and security. 5° THE FLAG WE FOLLOW President Wilson's Speech on June 14, 1917 My Fellow Citizens : We meet to celebrate Flag Day because this flag which we honor, and under which we serve, is the emblem of our unity, our power, our thought and purpose as a nation. It has no other character than that which we give it from generation to generation. The choices are ours. It floats in majestic silence above the hosts that execute those choices, whether in peace or in war. And yet, though silent, it speaks to us — speaks to us of the past, of the men and women who went before us and of the records they wrote upon it. We celebrate the day of its birth, and from its birth until now it has witnessed a great history, has floated on high the symbol of great events, of a great plan of life worked out by a great people. We are about to carry it into battle, to lift it where it will draw the fire of our enemies. We are about to bid thousands, hundreds of thousands, it may be millions, of our men, the young, the strong, the ca- pable men of the nation, to go forth and die beneath it on fields of blood far away — for what ? For some unaccustomed thing ? For something for which it has never sought before? American armies were never 5i WAR ADDRESSES OF WOODROW WILSON before sent across the seas. Why are they sent now ? For some new purpose for which this great flag has never been carried before or for some old, familiar, heroic purpose for which it has seen men, its own men, die on every battlefield upon which Americans have borne arms since the Revolution? These are questions which must be answered. We are Americans. We in our turn serve America, and can serve her with no private purpose. We must use her flag as she has always used it. We are ac- countable at the bar of history and must plead in utter frankness what purpose it is we seek to serve. It is plain enough how we were forced into the war. The extraordinary insults and aggressions of the Im- perial German Government left us no self-respecting choice but to take up arms in defense of our rights as a free people and of our honor as a sovereign Govern- ment. The military masters of Germany denied us the right to be neutral. They filled our unsuspecting communities with vicious spies and conspirators and sought to corrupt the opinion of our people in their own behalf. When they found that they could not do that their agents diligently spread sedition among us and sought to draw our own citizens from their allegiance — and some of these agents were men connected with the official embassy of the German Government itself here in our own capital. 1 They sought by violence to destroy our industries and arrest our commerce. They tried to incite Mexico to take up arms against us and to draw Japan into a hostile alliance with her — and that, not by indirection but by direct 52 THE FLAG WE FOLLOW suggestion from the Foreign Office in Berlin. They impudently denied us the use of the high seas and repeatedly executed their threat that they would send to their death any of our people who ventured to ap- proach the coasts of Europe. And many of our own people were corrupted. Men began to look upon their own neighbors with suspicion and to wonder in their hot resentment and surprise whether there was any community in which hostile intrigue did not lurk. What great nation in such circumstances would not have taken up arms ? Much as we had desired peace it was denied us, and not of our own choice. This flag under which we serve would have been dishonored had we withheld our hand. But that is only part of the story. We know now as clearly as we knew before we were ourselves en- gaged that we are not the enemies of the German people and that they are not our enemies. They did not originate or desire this hideous war or wish that we should be drawn into it ; and we are vaguely con- scious that we are righting their cause, as they will some day see it, as well as our own. They are them- selves in the grip of the same sinister power that has now at last stretched its ugly talons out and drawn blood from us. 2 The whole world is at war because the whole world is in the grip of that power and is trying out the great battle which shall determine whether it is to be brought under its mastery or fling itself free. The war was begun by the military masters of Ger- many, who proved to be also the masters of Austria- Hungary. 3 These men have never regarded nations 53 WAR ADDRESSES OF WOODROW WILSON as peoples, men, women, and children of like blood and frame as themselves, for whom governments existed and in whom governments had their life. They have regarded them merely as serviceable organizations which they could by force or intrigue bend or cor- rupt to their own purpose. They have regarded the smaller states in particular and the peoples who could be overwhelmed by force as their natural tools and instruments of domination. Their purpose has long been avowed. The statesmen of other nations, to whom that purpose was incredible, paid little atten- tion ; regarded what German professors expounded in their class rooms, and German writers set forth to the world as the goal of German policy, as rather the dream of minds detached from practical affairs, as preposterous private conceptions of German destiny, than as the actual plans of responsible rulers; but the rulers of Germany themselves knew all the while what concrete plans, what well-advanced intrigues, lay back of what the professors and the writers were say- ing, and were glad to go forward unmolested, filling the thrones of Balkan states with German princes, 4 putting German officers at the service of Turkey to drill her armies and make interest with her Govern- ment, developing plans of sedition and rebellion in India and Egypt, setting their fires in Persia. The demands made by Austria upon Serbia were a mere single step in a plan which compassed Europe and Asia, from Berlin to Bagdad. They hoped those demands might not arouse Europe, but they meant to press them whether they did or not, for they thought themselves ready for the final issue of arms. 54 THE FLAG WE FOLLOW Their plan was to throw a broad belt of German military power and political control across the very center of Europe and beyond the Mediterranean into the heart of Asia, and Austria-Hungary was to be as much their tool and pawn as Serbia or Bulgaria or Turkey or the ponderous states of the East. Austria- Hungary, indeed, was to become part of the Central German Empire, absorbed and dominated by the same forces and influences that had originally cemented the German states themselves. The dream had its heart at Berlin. It could have had a heart nowhere else. It rejected the idea of solidarity of race entirely. The choice of peoples played no part in it at all. It contemplated binding together racial and political units which could be kept together only by force — Czechs, Magyars, Croats, Serbs, Rumanians, Turks, Armenians — the proud states of Bohemia and Hun- gary, the stout little commonwealths of the Balkans, the indomitable Turks, the subtle peoples of the East. These peoples did not wish to be united. They ardently desired to direct their own affairs, and would be satisfied only by undisputed independence. They could be kept quiet only by the presence or the con- stant threat of armed men. They would live under a common power only by sheer compulsion and await the day of revolution. But the German military statesmen had reckoned with all that and were ready to deal with it in their own way. And they have actually carried the greater part of that amazing plan into execution. 5 Look how things stand. Austria is at their mercy. It has acted, not upon its own initiative or upon the choice of its own 55 WAR ADDRESSES OF WOODROW WILSON people, but at Berlin's dictation ever since the war began. Its people now desire peace, but cannot have it until leave is granted from Berlin. The so-called Central Powers are in fact but a single Power. Serbia is at its mercy, should its hands be but for a moment freed. Bulgaria has consented to its will, and Ru- mania is overrun. The Turkish armies, which Ger- mans trained, are serving Germany, certainly not themselves, and the guns of German warships lying in the harbor at Constantinople remind Turkish statesmen every day that 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 to understand the eagerness for peace that has been manifested from Berlin ever since the snare was set and sprung? Peace, peace, peace has been the talk of her Foreign Office for now a year and more; not peace upon her own initiative but upon the initiative of the nations over which she now deems herself to hold the advantage. A little of the talk has been public, but most of it has been private. Through all sorts of channels it has come to me, and in all sorts of guises, but never with the terms disclosed which the German Government would be willing to accept. That Government has other valuable pawns in its hands besides those I have mentioned. It still holds a valuable part of France, though with slowly relaxing grasp, and practically the whole of Belgium. Its armies press close upon Russia and overrun Poland at their will. It cannot go further ; it dare not go back. It wishes to close its bargain before it is too late and it has little left to offer for the pound of flesh it will demand. 56 THE FLAG WE FOLLOW The military masters under whom Germany is bleed- ing see very clearly to what point fate has brought them. If they fall back or are forced back an inch, their power both abroad and at home will fall to pieces like a house of cards. It is their power at home they are thinking about now more than their power abroad. It is that power which is trembling under their very feet, and deep fear has entered their hearts. They have but one chance to perpetuate their mili- tary power or even their controlling political influence. If they can secure peace now with the immense ad- vantages still in their hands which they have up to this point apparently gained, they will have justified themselves before the German people ; they will have gained by force what they promised to gain by it, an immense expansion of German power, an immense enlargement of German industrial and commercial opportunities. Their prestige will be secure, and with their prestige their political power. If they fail, their people will thrust them aside ; a Government account- able to the people themselves will be set up in Ger- many as it has been in England, in the United States, in France, and in all the great countries of the modern time except Germany. If they succeed they are safe and Germany and the world are undone ; if they fail Germany is saved and the world will be at peace. If they succeed America will fall within the menace. We and all the rest of the world must remain armed as they will remain, and must make ready for the next step in their aggression; if they fail the world may unite for peace and Germany may be of the union. 57 WAR ADDRESSES OF WOODROW WILSON Do you not now understand the new intrigue, the intrigue for peace, and why the masters of Germany do not hesitate to use any agency that promises to effect their purpose, the deceit of the nations? 6 Their present particular aim is to deceive all those who throughout the world stand for the rights of peoples and the self-government of nations ; for they see what immense strength the forces of justice and of liberalism are gathering out of this war. They are employing liberals in their enterprise. They are using men, in Germany and without, as their spokesmen whom they have hitherto despised and oppressed, using them for their own destruction — Socialists, the leaders of labor, the thinkers they have hitherto sought to silence. Let them once succeed and these men, now their tools, will be ground to powder beneath the weight of the great military empire they will have set up ; the revolutionists in Russia will be cut off from all succor or cooperation in western Europe and a counter revolution fostered and supported ; 7 Ger- many herself will lose her chance of freedom, and all Europe will arm for the next, the final, struggle. The sinister intrigue is being no less actively con- ducted in this country than in Russia and in every country in Europe to which the agents and dupes of the Imperial German Government can get access. That Government has many spokesmen here, in places high and low. They have learned discretion. They keep within the law. It is opinion they utter now, not sedition. They proclaim the liberal purposes of their masters, declare this a foreign war which can touch America with no danger to either her lands or 58 THE FLAG WE FOLLOW her institutions, set England at the center of the stage and talk of her ambition to assert economic dominion throughout the world, appeal to our ancient tradition of isolation in the politics of the nations and seek to undermine the Government with false professions of loyalty to its principles. But they will make no headway. The false betray themselves always in every accent. It is only friends and partisans of the German Government whom we have already identified who utter these thinly dis- guised disloyalties. The facts are patent to all the world, and nowhere are they more plainly seen than in the United States, where we are accustomed to deal with facts and not with sophistries ; and the great fact that stands out above all the rest is that this is a people's war, a war for freedom and justice and self- government among all the nations of the world, a war to make the world safe for the peoples who live upon it and have made it their own, the German people themselves included, and that with us rests the choice to break through all these hypocrisies and patent cheats and masks of brute force and help set the world free, or else stand aside and let it be dominated a long age through by sheer weight of arms and the arbitrary choices of self-constituted masters, by the nation which can maintain the biggest armies and the most irresistible armaments — a power to which the world has afforded no parallel and in the face of which political freedom must wither and perish. For us there is but one choice. We have made it. Woe be to the man or group of men that seeks to stand in our way in this day of high resolution when 59 WAR ADDRESSES OF WOODROW WILSON every principle we hold dearest is to be vindicated and made secure for the salvation of the nations. We are ready to 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 faith to which we were born, and a new glory shall shine in the face of our people. 8 60 THE PRESIDENT'S REPLY TO THE POPE Washington, D. C, August 27, 191 7 To His Holiness Benedictus XV, Pope : In acknowledgment of the communication of your Holiness to the belligerent peoples, dated August 1, 191 7, the President of the United States requests me to transmit the following reply : Every heart that has not been blinded and hardened by this terrible war must be touched by this moving appeal of his Holiness the Pope, must feel the dignity and force of the humane and generous motives which prompted it, and must fervently wish that we might take the path of peace he so persuasively points out. But it would be folly to take it if it does not in fact lead to the goal he proposes. Our response must be based upon the stern facts, and upon nothing else. It is not a mere cessation of arms he desires ; it is a stable and enduring peace. This agony must not be gone through with again, and it must be a matter of very sober judgment what will insure us against it. His Holiness in substance proposes that we return to the status quo ante helium and that then there be a general condonation, disarmament, and a concert of nations based upon an acceptance of the principle of 61 WAR ADDRESSES OF WOODROW WILSON arbitration ; that by a similar concert freedom of the seas be established ; and that the territorial claims of France and Italy, the perplexing problems of the Balkan states, and the restitution of Poland be left to such conciliatory adjustments as may be possible in the new temper of such a peace, due regard being paid to the aspirations of the peoples whose political fortunes and affiliations will be involved. It is manifest that no part of this program can be successfully carried out unless the restitution of the status quo ante furnishes a firm and satisfactory basis for it. The object of this war is to deliver the free peoples of the world from the menace and the actual power of a vast military establishment controlled by an irresponsible government, which, having secretly planned to dominate the world, proceeded to carry the plan out without regard either to the sacred obli- gations of treaty or the long-established practices and long-cherished principles of international action and honor ; which chose its own time for the war ; de- livered its blow fiercely and suddenly ; stopped at no barrier, either of law or of mercy; swept a whole continent within the tide of blood — not the blood of soldiers only, but the blood of innocent women and children also and of the helpless poor ; and now stands balked, but not defeated, the enemy of four-fifths of the world. This power is not the German people. It is the ruth- less master of the German people. It is no business of ours how that great people came under its control or submitted with temporary zest to the domination of its purpose ; but it is our business to see to it that 62 THE PRESIDENT'S REPLY TO THE POPE the history of the rest of the world is no longer left to its handling. To deal with such a power by way of peace upon the plan proposed by his Holiness the Pope would, so far as we can see, involve a recuperation of its strength and a renewal of its policy ; would make it necessary to create a permanent hostile combination of nations against the German people, who are its instruments ; and would result in abandoning the new-born Russia to the intrigue, the manifold subtle interference, and the certain counter-revolution which would be at- tempted by all the malign influences to which the German Government has of late accustomed the world. Can peace be based upon a restitution of its power or upon any word of honor it could pledge in a treaty of settlement and accommodation? Responsible statesmen must now everywhere see, if they never saw before, that no peace can rest se- curely upon political or economic restrictions meant to benefit some nations and cripple or embarrass others, upon vindictive action of any sort, or any kind of revenge or deliberate injury. The American people have suffered intolerable wrongs at the hands of the Imperial German Government, but they desire no reprisal upon the German people, who have them- selves suffered all things in this war, which they did not choose. They believe that peace should rest upon the rights of peoples, not the rights of govern- ments — the rights of peoples, great or small, weak or powerful — their equal right to freedom and security and self-government, and to a participation upon fair terms in the economic opportunities of the world, the 63 WAR ADDRESSES OF WOODROW WILSON German people, of course, included, if they will accept equality and not seek domination. The test, therefore, of every plan of peace is this : Is it based upon the faith of all the peoples involved, or merely upon the word of an ambitious and intrigu- ing Government, on the one hand, and of a group of free peoples, on the other ? This is a test which goes to the root of the matter; and it is the test which must be applied. The purposes of the United States in this war are known to the whole world — to every people to whom the truth has been permitted to come. They do not need to be stated again. We seek no material ad- vantage of any kind. We believe that the intolerable wrongs done in this war by the furious and brutal power of the Imperial German Government ought to be repaired, but not at the expense of the sovereignty of any people — rather a vindication of the sover- eignty both of those that are weak and of those that are strong. Punitive damages, the dismemberment of empires, the establishment of selfish and exclusive economic leagues, we deem inexpedient, and in the end worse than futile, no proper basis for a peace of any kind, least of all for an enduring peace. That must be based upon justice and fairness and the common rights of mankind. We cannot take the word of the present rulers of Ger- many as a guarantee of anything that is to endure unless explicitly supported by such conclusive evidence of the will and purpose of the German people them- selves as the other peoples of the world would be justified in accepting. Without such guarantees 64 THE PRESIDENT'S REPLY TO THE POPE treaties of settlement, agreements for disarmament, covenants to set up arbitration in the place of force, territorial adjustments, reconstitutions of small na- tions, if made with the German Government, no man, no nation, could now depend on. . We must await some new evidence of the purposes of the great peoples of the Central Powers. God grant it may be given soon and in a way to restore the confidence of all peoples everywhere in the faith of nations and the possibility of a covenanted peace. Robert Lansing 1 Secretary of State of the United States of America 6S THE AMERICAN PEOPLE MUST STAND TOGETHER Address to American Federation of Labor Convention, Buffalo, New York, November 12, 191 7 I esteem it a great privilege and a real honor to be thus admitted to your public counsels. When your executive committee paid me the compliment of in- viting me here, I gladly accepted the invitation be- cause it seems to me that this, above all other times in our history, is the time for common counsel, for the drawing together not only of the energies but of the minds of the nation. I thought that this was a welcome opportunity for disclosing to you some of the thoughts that have been gathering in my mind during the last momentous months. I am introduced to you as the President of the United States, and yet I would be pleased if you would put the thought of office into the background and regard me as one of your fellow citizens who has come here to speak, not the words of authority, but the words of counsel ; the words which men should speak to one another who wish to be frank in a moment more critical perhaps than the history of the world has ever yet known ; a moment when it is every man's duty to forget himself, to forget his own interests, to rill himself with the nobility of a great national and 66 AMERICAN PEOPLE MUST STAND TOGETHER world conception, and act upon a new platform ele- vated above the ordinary affairs of life and lifted to where men have views of the long destiny of man- kind. 1 I think that in order to realize just what this moment of counsel is, it is very desirable that we should remind ourselves just how this war came about 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 into all the obscure soils of history, and in my view this is the last decisive issue between the old principles of power and the new principles of freedom. The war was started by Germany. Her authori- ties deny that they started it, but I am willing to let the statement I have just made await the verdict of history. And the thing that needs to be explained is why Germany started the war. Remember what the position of Germany in the world was — as enviable a position as any nation has ever occupied. The whole world stood at admiration of her wonderful intellectual and material achievements. All the intel- lectual men of the world went to school to her. As a university man, I have been surrounded by men trained in Germany, men who had resorted to Ger- many because nowhere else could they get such thorough and searching training, particularly in the principles of science and the principles that underlie modern material achievement. Her men of science had made her industries perhaps the most competent industries of the world, and the label "Made in Ger- many" was a guarantee of good workmanship and of sound material. She had access to all the markets 67 WAR ADDRESSES OF WOODROW WILSON of the world, and every other who traded in those markets feared Germany because of her effective and almost irresistible competition. She had a "place in the sun." 2 Why was she not satisfied? What more did she want ? 3 There was nothing in the world of peace that she did not already have and have in abundance. We boast of the extraordinary pace of American advancement. We show with pride the statistics of the increase of our industries and the population of our cities. Well, those statistics did not match the recent statistics of Germany. Her old cities took on youth, grew faster than any American cities ever grew. Her old industries opened their eyes and saw a new world and went out for its conquest. And yet the authorities of Germany were not satisfied. You have one part of the answer to the question why she was not satisfied in her methods of competition. There is no important industry in Germany upon which the Government has not laid its hands, to direct it and, when necessity arose, control it; and you have only to ask any man whom you meet who is familiar with the conditions that prevailed before the war in the matter of national competition to find out the methods of competition which the German manu- facturers and exporters used under the patronage and support of the Government of Germany. You will find that they were the same sorts of competition that we have tried to prevent by law within our own borders. If they could not sell their goods cheaper than we could sell ours at a profit to themselves, they could get a subsidy from the Government which made 68 AMERICAN PEOPLE MUST STAND TOGETHER it possible to sell them cheaper anyhow, and the con- ditions of competition were thus controlled in large measure by the German Government itself. But that did not satisfy the German Government. All the while there was lying behind its thought in its dreams of the future a political control which would enable it in the long run to dominate the labor and the industry of the world. They were not content with success by superior achievement; they wanted success by authority. I suppose very few of you have thought much about the Berlin-to-Bagdad Rail- way. The Berlin-to-Bagdad Railway was constructed in order to run the threat of force down the flank of the industrial undertakings of half a dozen other countries; so that when German competition came in, it would not be resisted too far, because there was always the possibility of getting German armies into the heart of that country quicker than any other armies could be got there. Look at the map of Europe now ! 4 Germany is thrusting upon us again and again the discussion of peace. And she talks about what ? Talks about Bel- gium; talks about northern France; talks about Alsace-Lorraine. Well, those are deeply interesting subjects to us and to them, but they are not talking about the heart of the matter. Take the map and look at it. Germany has absolute control of Austria- Hungary, practical control of the Balkan states, control of Turkey, control of Asia Minor. I saw a map in which the whole thing was printed in appro- priate black the other day, and the black stretched all the way from Hamburg to Bagdad — the bulk of 6 9 WAR ADDRESSES OF WOODROW WILSON German power inserted into the heart of the world. If she can keep that, she has kept all that her dreams contemplated when the war began. If she can keep that, her power can disturb the world as long as she keeps it, always provided, for I feel bound to put this proviso in, always provided the present influences that control the German Government continue to control it. I believe that the spirit of freedom can get into the hearts of Germans and find as fine a wel- come there as it can find in any other hearts, but the spirit of freedom does not suit the plans of the Pan- Germans. 5 Power cannot be used with concentrated force against free peoples if it is used by free people. You know how many intimations come to us from one of the Central Powers 6 that it is more anxious for peace than the chief Central Power, and you know that it means that the people of that Central Power know that if the war ends as it stands, they will in effect themselves be vassals of Germany, notwith- standing that their populations are compounded of all the peoples of that part of the world, and not- withstanding the fact that they do not wish in their pride and proper spirit of nationality to be so ab- sorbed and dominated. Germany is determined that the political power of the world shall belong to her. There have been such ambitions before. They have been in part realized, but never before have those ambitions been based upon so exact and precise and scientific a plan of domination. May I not say that it is amazing to me that any group of persons should be so ill-informed as to sup- pose, as some groups in Russia apparently suppose, 70 AMERICAN PEOPLE MUST STAND TOGETHER that any reforms planned in the interest of the people can live in the presence of a Germany powerful enough to undermine or overthrow them by intrigue or force? Any body of free men that compounds with the present German Government is compound- ing for its own destruction. But that is not the whole of the story. Any man in America, or anywhere else, who supposes that the free industry and enterprise of the world can continue if the Pan- German plan is achieved and German power fastened upon the world, is as fatuous as the dreamers in Russia. What I am opposed to is not the feeling of the pacifists but their stupidity. My heart 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. You will notice that I sent a friend of mine, Colonel House, 7 to Europe, who is as great a lover of peace as any man in the world, but I did not send him on a peace mission. I sent him to take part in a con- ference as to how the war was to be won. And he knows, as I know, that that is the 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 with regard to what we are going to do. If we are true friends of freedom — our own or any- body else's — we will see that the power of this country, 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 I say that nobody is allowed to stand in the way, I do not mean that they shall be prevented by the power of the Government but by the power of the American 7i WAR ADDRESSES OF WOODROW WILSON spirit. 8 Our duty, if we are to do this great thing and show America to be what we believe her to be — the greatest hope and energy of the world — is to stand together night and day until the job is finished. While we are fighting for freedom we must see, among other things, that labor is free; and that means a number of interesting things. It means not only that we must do what we have declared our purpose to do, see that 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 the conditions of labor are improved are not blocked or checked. That we must do. That has been the matter about which I have taken pleasure in con- ferring from time to time with your president, Mr. Gompers; 9 and if I may be permitted to do so, I want to express my admiration of his patriotic cour- age, his large vision, and his statesmanlike sense of what has to be done. I like to lay my mind along- side of a mind that knows how to pull in harness. The horses that kick over the traces will have to be put in corral. Now, to stand together means that nobody must interrupt the processes of our energy, if the inter- ruption can possibly be avoided without the absolute invasion of freedom. To put it concretely, that means this : Nobody has a right to stop the processes of labor until all the methods of conciliation and settlement have been exhausted. And I might as well say right here that I am not talking to you alone. You sometimes stop the courses of labor, but there are others who do the same, and I believe I am 72 AMERICAN PEOPLE MUST STAND TOGETHER speaking from my own experience not only, but from the experience of others, when I say that you are reasonable in a larger number of cases than the capitalists. I am not saying these things to them personally yet, because I have not had a chance ; but they have to be said, not in any spirit of criticism, but in order to clear the atmosphere and come down to business. Everybody on both sides has now got to transact business, and a settlement is never impossible when both sides want to do the square and right thing. Moreover a settlement is hard to avoid when the parties can be brought face to face. I can differ from a man much more radically when he is not in the room than I can when he is in the room, because then the awkward thing is, he can come back at me and answer what I say. It is always dangerous for a man to have the floor entirely to himself. There- fore we must insist in every instance that the parties come into each other's presence and there discuss the issues between them and not separately in places which have no communication with each other. I always like to remind myself of a delightful saying of an Englishman of the past generation, Charles Lamb. 10 He stuttered a bit, and once when he was with a group of friends he spoke very harshly of some man who was not present. One of the friends said, "Why, Charles, I didn't know that you knew So-and- so." "O-o-oh," he said, "I-I d-d-don't; I-I can't h-h-hate a m-m-man I-I know." There is a great deal of human nature, of very pleasing human nature, in the saying. It is hard to hate a man you know. I may admit, parenthetically, that there are some 73 WAR ADDRESSES OF WOODROW WILSON politicians whose methods I do not at all believe in, but they are jolly good fellows, and if they only would not talk the wrong kind of politics with me, I should love to be with them. 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 we desire to get together. Therefore, my counsel to you is this : Let us show ourselves Americans by showing that we do not want to go off in separate camps or groups by ourselves, but that we want to cooperate with all other classes and all other groups in the common enterprise which is to release the spirits of the world from bondage. I would be willing to set that up as the final test of an American. That is the meaning of democracy. I have been very much distressed, my fellow citizens, by some of the things that have happened recently. The mob spirit is displaying itself here and there in this country. I have no sympathy with what some men are saying, but I have no sympathy with the men who take their punishment into their own hands ; and I want to say to every man who does join such a mob that I do not recognize him as worthy of the free institu- tions of the United States. There are some organiza- tions in this country whose object is anarchy and the destruction of law, but I would not meet their efforts by making myself a partner in destroying the law. I despise and hate their purposes as much as any man, but I would respect the ancient processes of justice ; and I would be too proud not to see them done jus- tice, however wrong they are. 74 AMERICAN PEOPLE MUST STAND TOGETHER So I want to utter my earnest protest against any manifestation of the spirit of lawlessness anywhere or in any cause. Why, gentlemen, look what it means. We claim to be the greatest democratic people in the world, and democracy means first of all that we can govern ourselves. If our men have not self-control, then they are not capable of that great thing which we call democratic government. A man who takes the law into his own hands is not the right man to cooperate in any formation or development of law and institutions. And some of the processes by which the struggle between capital and labor is carried on are processes that come very near to tak- ing the law into your own hands. I do not mean for a moment to compare them with what I have just been speaking of, but I want you to see that they are mere gradations in the manifestation of the un- willingness to cooperate. The fundamental lesson of the whole situation is that we must not only take common counsel, but also yield to and obey common counsel. Not all of the instrumentalities for this are at hand. I am hopeful that in the very near future new instrumentalities may be organized by which we can see to it that various things which are now going on shall not go on. There are various processes of the dilution of labor and the unnecessary substitution of labor and the bidding in distant markets and unfairly upsetting the whole competition of labor which ought not to go on — I mean now on the part of employers — and we must interject into this some instrumentality of coopera- tion by which the fair thing will be done all around. 75 WAR ADDRESSES OF WOODROW WILSON I am hopeful that some such instrumentalities may be devised, but whether they are or not, we must use those that we have, and upon every occasion where it is necessary, have such an instrumentality orig- inated upon that occasion. So, my fellow citizens, the reason I came away from Washington is that I sometimes get lonely down there. 11 There are so many people in Washington who know things that are not so, and there are so few people who know anything about what the people of the United States are thinking about. I have to come away and get reminded of the rest of the coun- try. I have to come away and talk to men who are up against the real thing and say to them, "I am with you if you are with me." And the only test of being with me is not to think about me personally at all, but merely to think of me as the expression for the time being of the power and dignity and hope of the United States. 76 NO PEACE WITH AUTOCRACY Message to Congress December 4, 191 7 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 grave significance for us. I shall not undertake to detail or even to summarize these events. The practical particulars of the part we have played in them will be laid before you in the reports of the executive departments. 1 I shall discuss only our present outlook upon these vast affairs, our present duties, and the immediate means of accomplishing the objects we shall hold always in view. I shall not go back to debate the causes of the war. The intolerable wrongs done and planned against us by the sinister masters of Germany have long since become too grossly obvious and odious to every true American to need to be rehearsed. But I shall ask you to consider again and with very grave scrutiny our objectives and the measures by which we mean to attain them ; for the purpose of discussion here in this place is action and our action must move straight toward definite ends. Our object is, of course, to win 77 WAR ADDRESSES OF WOODROW WILSON the war, and we shall not slacken or suffer ourselves to be diverted until it is won. But it is worth while asking and answering the question, When shall we consider the war won? From one point of view it is not necessary to broach this fundamental matter. I do not doubt that the American people know what the war is about and what sort of an outcome they will regard as a realization of their 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 of dissent — who does not ? I hear the criticism and the clamor of the noisily thoughtless and troublesome. I also see men here and there fling themselves in impotent disloyalty against the calm, indomitable power of the nation. I hear men debate peace who understand neither its nature nor the way in which we may attain it, with uplifted eyes and unbroken spirits. But I know that none of these speaks for the nation. They do not touch the heart of anything. They may safely be left to strut about their uneasy hour and be forgotten. But from another point of view I believe that it is necessary to say plainly what we here at the seat of action consider the war to be for and what part we mean to play in the settlement of its searching issues. We are the spokesmen 2 of the American people and they have a right to know whether their purpose is ours. They desire peace by the overcoming of evil, by the defeat once and for all of the sinister forces that interrupt peace and render it impossible, and they wish to know how closely our thought runs with 78 NO PEACE WITH AUTOCRACY theirs and what action we propose. They are im- patient with those who desire peace by any sort of compromise — deeply and indignantly impatient — but they will be equally impatient with us if we do not make it plain to them what our objectives are and what we are planning for in seeking to make conquest of peace by arms. I believe that I speak for them when I say two things : First, that this intolerable Thing of which the masters of Germany have shown us the ugly face, this menace of combined intrigue and force, which we now see so clearly as the German power, a Thing without conscience or honor or capacity for covenanted peace, must be crushed, and if it be not utterly brought to an end, at least shut out from the friendly intercourse of the nations; and, second, that when this Thing and its power are indeed defeated and the time comes that we can discuss peace — when the German people have spokesmen whose word we can believe. , 3 and when those spokesmen are ready in the name of their people to accept the common judgment of the nations as to what shall henceforth be the bases of law and of covenant for the life of the world — we shall be willing and glad to pay the full price for peace, and pay it ungrudgingly. We know what that price will be. It will be full, impartial justice — justice done at every point and to every nation that the final settlement must affect, our enemies as well as our friends. 4 You catch, with me, the voices of humanity that are in the air. They grow daily more audible, more articulate, more persuasive, and they come from the hearts of men everywhere. They insist that the 79 WAR ADDRESSES OF WOODROW WILSON war shall not end in vindictive action of any kind ; that no nation or people shall be robbed or punished because the irresponsible rulers of a single country have themselves done deep and abominable wrong. It is this thought that has been expressed in the for- mula, "No annexations, no contributions, no punitive indemnities." 5 Just because this crude formula expresses the instinctive judgment as to the right of plain men every- where it has been made diligent use of by the masters of German intrigue to lead the people of Russia astray, 6 and the people of every other country their agents could reach, in order that a premature peace might be brought about 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 reason why a right use should not be made of it. It ought to be brought under the patronage of its real friends. Let it be said again that autocracy must first be shown the utter futility of its claims to power or leadership in the modern world. It is impossible to apply any standard of justice so long as such forces are unchecked and un- defeated as the present masters of Germany com- mand. Not until that has been done can right be set up as arbiter and peacemaker among the nations. But when that has been done — as, God willing, it assuredly will be — we shall at last be free to do an unprecedented thing, and this is the time to avow our purpose to do it. We shall be free to base peace on generosity and justice, 7 to the exclusion 80 NO PEACE WITH AUTOCRACY of all selfish claims to advantage even on the part of the victors. Let there be no misunderstanding. Our present and immediate task is to win the war, and nothing shall turn us aside from it until it is accomplished. Every power and resource we possess, whether of men, of money, or of materials, is being devoted and will continue to be devoted to that purpose until it is achieved. Those who desire to bring peace about before that purpose is achieved I counsel to carry their advice elsewhere. We will not entertain it. We shall regard the war as won only when the German people say to us, through properly accred- ited representatives, that they are ready to agree to a settlement based upon justice and the reparation of the wrongs their rulers have done. They have done a wrong to Belgium, which must be repaired. They have established a power over other lands and peoples than their own — over the great empire of Austria-Hungary, over hitherto free Balkan states, over Turkey, and within Asia — which must be relinquished. 8 Germany's success by skill, by industry, by knowl- edge, by enterprise, we did not grudge or oppose, but admired rather. She had built up for herself a real empire of trade and influence, secured by the peace of the world. We were content to abide the rivalries of manufacture, science, and commerce that were involved for us in her success and stand or fall as we had or did not have the brains and the initiative to surpass her. But at the moment when she had conspicuously won her triumphs of peace she threw Si WAR ADDRESSES OF WOODROW WILSON them away to establish in their stead what the world will no longer permit to be established, military and political domination by arms, by which to oust where she could not excel the rivals she most feared and hated. The peace we make must remedy that wrong. It must deliver the once fair lands and happy peoples of Belgium and northern ' France from the Prussian conquest and the Prussian menace, but it must also deliver the peoples of Austria-Hungary, the peoples of the Balkans, and the peoples of Turkey, alike in Europe and in Asia, from the impudent and alien domination of the Prussian military and commercial autocracy. 9 We owe it, however, to ourselves to say that we do not wish in any way to impair or to rearrange the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It is no affair of ours what they do with their own life, either industrially or politically. We do not purpose nor desire to dictate to them in any way. We only desire to see that their affairs are left in their own hands, in all matters, great or small. We shall hope to secure for the peoples of the Balkan peninsula and for the people of the Turkish Empire the right and opportunity to make their own lives safe, their own fortunes secure against oppression or injustice and from the dictation of foreign courts or parties, and our attitude and pur- pose with regard to Germany herself are of a like kind. We intend no wrong against the German Empire, no interference with her internal affairs. 10 We should deem either the one or the other absolutely un- justifiable, absolutely contrary to the principles we 82 NO PEACE WITH AUTOCRACY have professed to live by and to hold most sacred throughout our life as a nation. The people of Germany are being told by the men whom they now permit to deceive them and to act as their masters that they are fighting for the very life and existence of their empire, a war of desperate self-defense against deliberate aggression. Nothing could be more grossly or wantonly false, and we must seek by the utmost openness and candor as to our real aims to convince them of its falseness. We are in fact fighting for their emancipation from fear, along with our own, from the fear as well as from the fact of unjust attack by neighbors or rivals or schemers after world empire. No one is threatening the exist- ence or the independence 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 obliged to live under ambitious and intriguing masters interested to disturb the peace of the world, men or classes of men whom the other peoples of the world could not trust, it might be impossible to admit them to the partnership of nations which must henceforth guarantee the world's peace. That partnership must be a partnership of peoples, not a mere partnership of governments. 11 It might be impossible, also, in such untoward circumstances, to admit Germany to the free economic intercourse 12 which must inevitably spring out of the other partnerships of a real peace. But there would be no aggression in that; and such a situation, in- evitable because of distrust, would in the very nature 83 WAR ADDRESSES OF WOODROW WILSON of things sooner or later cure itself, by processes which would assuredly set in. The wrongs, the very deep wrongs, committed in this war will have to be righted. That of course. But they cannot and must not be righted by the commission of similar wrongs against Germany and her allies. The world will not permit the commission of similar wrongs as a means of reparation and settle- ment. Statesmen must by this time have learned that the opinion of the world is everywhere wide awake and fully comprehends the issues involved. No representative of any self-governed nation will dare disregard it by attempting any such covenants of selfishness and compromise as were entered into at the Congress of Vienna. 13 The thought of the plain people here and everywhere throughout the world, the people who enjoy no privilege and have very simple and unsophisticated standards of right and wrong, is the air all governments must hence- forth breathe if they would live. It is in the full dis- closing light of that thought that all policies must be conceived and executed in this midday hour of the world's life. German rulers have been able to upset the peace of the world only because the German people were not suffered under their tutelage to share the comrade- ship of the other peoples of the world either in thought or in purpose. They were allowed to have no opinion of their own which might be set up as a rule of conduct for those who exercised authority over them. But the congress that concludes this war will feel the full strength of the tides that run now in the hearts and 84 NO PEACE WITH AUTOCRACY consciences of free men everywhere. Its conclusions will run with those tides. All these things have been true from the very beginning of this stupendous war ; and I cannot help thinking that if they had been made plain at the very outset the sympathy and enthusiasm of the Russian people might have been once for all enlisted on the side of the Allies, suspicion and distrust swept away, and a real and lasting union of purpose effected. 14 Had they believed these things at the very moment of their revolution and had they been confirmed in that belief since, the sad reverses which have recently marked the progress of their affairs toward an ordered and stable government of free men might have been avoided. The Russian people have been poisoned by the very same falsehoods that have kept the German people in the dark, and the poison has been administered by the very same hands. The only possible antidote is the truth. It cannot be uttered too plainly or too often. From every point of view, therefore, it has seemed to be my duty to speak these declarations of purpose, to add these specific interpretations to what I took the liberty of saying to the Senate in January. Our entrance into the war has not altered our attitude toward the settlement that must come when it is over. When. I said in January that the nations of the world were entitled not only to free pathways upon the sea but also to assured and unmolested access to those pathways I was thinking, and I am thinking now, not of the smaller and weaker nations alone, which need our countenance and support, but also 85 WAR ADDRESSES OF WOODROW WILSON of the great and powerful nations, and of our present enemies as well as our present associates in the war. I was thinking, and am thinking now, of Austria 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 are seeking permanent, not temporary, foundations for the peace of the world, and must seek them candidly and fearlessly. As always, the right will prove to be the expedient. What shall we do, then, to push this great war of freedom and justice to its righteous conclusion ? We must clear away with a thorough hand all impediments to success, and we must make every adjustment of law that will facilitate the full and free use of our whole capacity and force as a fighting unit. One very embarrassing obstacle that stands in our way is that we are at war with Germany, but not with her allies. / therefore very earnestly recom- mend that the Congress immediately declare the United States in a state of war with Austria-Hungary } h Does it seem strange to you that this should be the con- clusion 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 simply the vassal 16 of the German Government. We must face the facts as they are and act upon them without sentiment in this stern business. The Government of Austria-Hungary is not acting upon its own initiative or in response to the wishes and feelings of its own peoples, but as the instrument of another nation. We must meet its force with our 86 NO PEACE WITH AUTOCRACY own and regard the Central Powers as but one. The war can be successfully conducted in no other way. The same logic would lead also to a declaration of war against Turkey and Bulgaria. They also are the tools of Germany. But they are mere tools and do not yet stand in the direct path of our necessary action. 17 We shall go wherever the necessities of this war carry us, but it seems to me that we should go only where immediate and practical considerations lead us and not heed any others. The financial and military measures which must be adopted will suggest themselves as the war and its undertakings develop, but I will take the liberty of proposing to you certain other acts of legislation which seem to me to be needed for the support of the war and for the release of our whole force and energy. It will be necessary to extend in certain particulars the legislation of the last session with regard to alien enemies ; and also necessary, I believe, to create a very definite and particular control over the en- trance and departure of all persons into and from the United States. Legislation should be enacted defining as a criminal offense every willful violation of the Presidential proclamations relating to enemy aliens promulgated under Section 4067 of the Revised Statutes and pro- viding appropriate punishment 18 ; and women as well as men should be included under the terms of the acts placing restraints upon alien enemies. It is likely that as time goes on many alien enemies will be willing to be fed and housed at the expense of the Government in the detention camps, and it would be 87 WAR ADDRESSES OF WOODROW WILSON the purpose of the legislation I have suggested to confine offenders among them in penitentiaries and other similar institutions where they could be made to work as other criminals do. Recent experience has convinced me that the Con- gress must go further in authorizing the Government to set limits to prices. The law of supply and demand, I am sorry to say, has been replaced by the law of unrestrained selfishness. While we have eliminated profiteering in several branches of industry it still runs impudently rampant in others. 19 The farmers, for example, complain with a great deal of justice that, while the regulation of food prices restricts their incomes, no restraints are placed upon the prices of most of the things they must themselves pur- chase ; and similar inequities obtain on all sides. It is imperatively necessary that the consideration of the full use of the water power of the country and also the consideration of the systematic and yet economical development of such of the natural re- sources of the country as are still under the control of the Federal Government should be resumed and affirmatively and constructively dealt with at the earliest possible moment. The pressing need of such legislation is daily becoming more obvious. The legislation proposed at the last session with regard to regulated combinations among our exporters, in order to provide for our foreign trade a more effective organization and method of cooperation, ought by all means to be completed at this session. And I beg that the members of the House of Representatives will permit me to express the opinion 88 NO PEACE WITH AUTOCRACY that it will be impossible to deal in any way but a very wasteful and extravagant fashion with the enor- mous appropriations of the public moneys which must continue to be made, if the war is to be properly sustained, unless the House will consent to return to its former practice of initiating and preparing all appropriation bills through a single committee, in order that responsibility may be centered, expenditures standardized and made uniform, and waste and duplication as much as possible avoided. 20 Additional legislation may also become necessary before the present Congress adjourns in order to effect the most efficient coordination and operation of the railway and other transportation systems of the country ; 21 but to that I shall, if circumstances should demand, call the attention of Congress upon another occasion. If I have overlooked anything that ought to be done for the more effective conduct of the war, your own counsels will supply the omission. What I am perfectly clear about is that in the present session of the Congress our whole attention and energy should be concentrated on the vigorous and rapid and successful prosecution of the great task of winning the war. We can do this with all the greater zeal and enthu- siasm because we know that for us this is a war of high principle, debased by no selfish ambition of conquest or spoliation ; because we know, and all the world knows, that we have been forced into it to save the very institutions we live under from corruption and destruction. The purposes of the Central Powers 89 WAR ADDRESSES OF WOODROW WILSON strike straight at the very heart of everything we believe in; their methods of warfare outrage every principle of humanity and of knightly honor ; their intrigue has corrupted the very thought and spirit of many of our people ; their sinister and secret diplo- macy has sought to take our very territory away from us and disrupt the union of the states. Our safety would be at an end, our honor forever sullied and brought into contempt, were we to permit their triumph. They are striking at the very existence of democracy and liberty. 22 It is because it is for us a war of high, disinterested purpose, in which all the free people of the world are banded together for the vindication of right, a war for the preservation of our nation and of all that it has held dear of principle and of purpose, that we feel ourselves doubly constrained to propose for its outcome only that which is righteous and of irreproachable intention, for our foes as well as for our friends. The cause being just and holy, the settlement must be of like motive and quality. For this we can fight, but for nothing less noble or less worthy of our traditions. For this cause we entered the war 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 most necessary to speak plainly, in order that all the world may know that even in the heat and ardor of the struggle and when our whole thought is of carrying the war through to its end we have not forgotten any ideal or principle for which the name of America has been held in honor among the 90 NO PEACE WITH AUTOCRACY nations and for which it has been our glory to contend in the great generations 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 is laid upon the nations. He will show them favor, I devoutly believe, only if they rise to the clear heights of His own justice and mercy. 9i THE PROGRAM OF PEACE Address to Congress, January 8, 191 8 Gentlemen of the Congress : Once more, as repeatedly 'before, the spokesmen of the Central Empires have indicated their desire to discuss the objects of the war and the possible basis of a general peace. Parleys have been in progress at Brest-Litovsk between Russian representatives and representatives of the Central Powers to which the attention of all the belligerents has been invited for the purpose of ascertaining whether it may be possible to extend these parleys into a general con- ference with regard to terms of peace and settlement. The Russian representatives presented not only a perfectly definite statement of the principles upon which they would be willing to conclude peace, but also an equally definite program of the concrete application of those principles. The representatives of the Central Powers, on their part, presented an outline of settlement which, if much less definite, seemed susceptible of liberal interpretation until their specific program of practical terms was added. That program proposed no concessions at all, either to the sovereignty of Russia, or to the preferences of the population with whose fortunes it dealt, but 92 THE PROGRAM OF PEACE meant, in a word, that the Central Empires were to keep every foot of territory their armed forces had occupied — every province, every city, every point of vantage — as a permanent addition to their territories and their power. 1 It is a reasonable con- jecture that the general principles of settlement which they at first suggested originated with the more liberal statesmen of Germany and Austria, the men who had begun to feel the force of their own people's thought and purpose, while the concrete terms of actual settlement came from the military leaders, who have no thought but to keep what they have got. The negotiations have been broken off. The Russian representatives were sincere and in earnest. They cannot entertain such proposals of conquest and domination. The whole incident is full of significance. It is also full of perplexity. With whom are the Russian representatives dealing? For whom are the repre- sentatives of the Central Empires speaking? Are they speaking for the majorities of their respective parliaments, or for the minority parties, that military and imperialistic minority which has so far dominated their whole policy and controlled the affairs of Turkey and of the Balkan states, which have felt obliged to become their associates in this war? The Russian representatives have insisted, very justly, very wisely, and in the true spirit of modern democracy that the conferences they have been holding with the Teutonic and Turkish statesmen should be held within open, not closed, doors, and all the world has been audience, as was desired. To whom have we been listening, 93 WAR ADDRESSES OF WOODROW WILSON then ? To those who speak the spirit and intention of the resolutions of the German Reichstag 2 of the 19th of July last, the spirit and intention of the liberal leaders and parties of Germany, or to those who resist and defy that spirit and intention and insist upon con- quest and subjugations? Or are we listening, in fact, to both, unreconciled and in open and hopeless contradiction? These are very serious and pregnant questions. Upon the answer to them depends the peace of the world. But whatever the results of the parleys at Brest- Litovsk, whatever the confusions of counsel and of purpose in the utterances of the spokesmen of the Central Empires, they have again attempted to ac- quaint the world with their objects in the war and have again challenged their adversaries to say what their objects are and what sort of settlement they would deem just and satisfactory. There is no good reason why that challenge should not be responded to, and responded to with the utmost candor. We did not wait for it. Not once, but again and again we have laid our whole thought and purpose before the world, not in general terms only, but each time with sufficient definition to make it clear what sort of definite terms of settlement must necessarily spring out of them. Within the last week, Mr. Lloyd George 3 has spoken with admirable candor and in admirable spirit for the people and Government of Great Britain. There is no confusion of counsel among the adversaries of the Central Powers, no uncertainty of principle, no vagueness of detail. The only secrecy of counsel, 94 THE PROGRAM OF PEACE the only lack of fearless frankness, the only failure to make definite statements of the objects of the war, lies with Germany and her allies. The issues of life and death hang upon these definitions. No statesman who has the least conception of his responsibility ought for a moment to permit himself to continue this tragical and appalling outpouring of blood and treasure unless he is sure beyond a peradventure that the objects of the vital sacrifice are part and parcel of the very life of society and that the people for whom he speaks think them right and imperative, as he does. There is, moreover, a voice calling for these defini- tions of principle and of purpose which is, it seems to me, more thrilling and more compelling than any of the many moving voices with which the troubled air of the world is filled. It is the voice of the Russian people. 4 They are prostrate and all but helpless, it would seem, before the grim power of Germany, which has hitherto known no relenting and no pity. Their power, apparently, is shattered, and yet their soul is not subservient. They will not yield either in principle or in action. Their conviction of 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 of spirit, and a universal human sympathy which must challenge the admiration of every friend of mankind, and they have refused to compound their ideals or desert others that they them- selves may be safe. They call 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 the people of the United States would wish me to 95 WAR ADDRESSES OF WOODROW WILSON respond with utter simplicity and frankness. Whether their present leaders believe it or not, it is our heart- felt desire and hope that some way may be opened whereby we may be privileged to assist the people of Russia to attain their utmost hope of liberty and ordered peace. It will be our wish and purpose that the processes of peace, when they are begun, shall be absolutely open, and that they shall involve and permit hence- forth no secret understandings of any kind. The day of conquest and aggrandizement is gone by; so is also the day of secret covenants entered into in the interest of particular governments, and likely at some unlooked-for moment to upset the peace of the world. It is this happy fact, now clear to the view of every public man whose thoughts do not still linger in an age that is dead and gone, which makes it possible for every nation whose purposes are consistent with justice and the peace of the world to avow now or at any other time the objects it has in view. We entered this war because violations of right had occurred which touched us to the quick and made the life of our own people impossible unless they were corrected and the world secured once for all against their re- currence. What we demand in this war, therefore, is nothing peculiar to ourselves. It is that the world be made fit and safe to live in ; and particularly that it be made safe for every peace-loving nation, which, like our own, wishes to live its own life, determine its own institutions, and be assured of justice and fair dealing by the other peoples of the world as against force and selfish aggression. All the peoples of the 9 6 THE PROGRAM OF PEACE world are in effect partners in this interest, and for our own part we see very clearly that unless justice be done to others it 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 see it, is this : 1. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind, but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view. 2. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in war, except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part by international action for the enforcement of inter- national covenants. 3. The removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace and associating themselves for its maintenance. 4. Adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will be reduced to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety. 5. A free, open minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined. 6. The evacuation of all Russian territory and such a settlement of all questions affecting Russia, as will secure the best and freest cooperation of the other 97 WAR ADDRESSES OF WOODROW WILSON nations of the world in obtaining for her an un- hampered and unembarrassed opportunity for the independent determination of her own political development and national policy, and assure her of a sincere welcome into the society of free nations under institutions of her own choosing ; and, more than a welcome, assistance also of every kind that she may need and may herself desire. The treatment accorded Russia by her sister nations in the months to come will be the acid test of their good will, of their comprehension of her needs as distinguished from their own interests, and of their intelligent and unselfish sympathy. 7. Belgium, the whole world will agree, must be evacuated and restored, without any attempt to limit the sovereignty which she enjoys in common with all other free nations. 5 No other single act will serve as this will serve to restore confidence among the nations in the laws which they have themselves set and determined for the government of their relations with one another. Without this healing act the whole structure and validity of international law is forever impaired. 8. All French territory should be freed and the in- vaded portions restored, and the wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which has unsettled the peace of the world for nearly fifty years, should be righted, in order that peace may once more be made secure in the interest of all. 9. A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearly recognizable lines of nationality. 98 THE PROGRAM OF PEACE 10. The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to see safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the freest opportunity of autonomous development. ii. Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro should be evacuated, occupied territories restored, Serbia accorded free and secure access to the sea, and the relations of the several Balkan states to one another determined by friendly counsel along historically established lines of allegiance and nationality, and international guaranties of the political and economic independence and territorial integrity of the several Balkan states should be entered into. 12. The Turkish portions of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development, and the Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a free passage to the ships and commerce of all nations under international guaranties. 13. An independent Polish state should be erected, which should include the territories inhabited by in- disputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenant. 14. A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guaranties of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike. 99 WAR ADDRESSES OF WOODROW WILSON In regard to these essential rectifications of wrong and assertions of right, we feel ourselves to be intimate partners of all the Governments and peoples associated together against the imperialists. We cannot be separated in interest or divided in purpose. We stand together until the end. For such arrangements and covenants we are willing to fight and to continue to fight until they are achieved, but only because we wish the right to prevail, and desire a just and stable peace, such as can be secured only by removing the chief provocations to war, which this program does remove. We have no jealousy of German greatness, and there is nothing in this pro- gram that impairs it. We grudge her no achievement or distinction of learning or of specific enterprise, such as have made her record very bright and very enviable. We do not wish to injure her, or to block in any way her legitimate influence or power. We do not wish to fight her either with arms or with hostile arrangements of trade, if she is willing to associate herself with us and the other peace-loving nations 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 the world — the new world in which we now live — instead of a place of mastery. 6 Neither do we presume to suggest to her any altera- tion or modification of her institutions. But it is necessary, we must frankly say, and necessary as a preliminary to any intelligent dealings with her on our part, that we should know whom her spokesmen speak for when they speak to us, whether for the ioo THE PROGRAM OF PEACE Reichstag majority, or for the military party, and the men whose creed is imperial domination. We have spoken now, surely in terms too concrete to admit of any further doubt or question. An evi- dent principle runs through the whole program I have outlined. It is the principle of justice to all peoples and nationalities, and their right to live on equal terms of liberty and safety with one another, whether they be strong or weak. Unless this principle be made its foundation, no part of the structure of in- ternational justice can stand. The peoples of the United States could act upon no other principle, and to the vindication of this principle they are ready to devote their lives, their honor, and everything that they possess. The moral climax of this, the culminating and final war for human liberty, has come, and they are ready to put their own strength, their own highest purpose, their own integrity and devotion, to the test. IOI THE FOUR PRINCIPLES OF PEACE Address to Congress, Febeuary ii, 191 8 Gentlemen of the Congress : On the 8th of January I had the honor of address- ing you on the objects of the war as our people conceive them. The Prime Minister of Great Britain had spoken in similar terms on the 5th of January. To these addresses the German Chancellor replied on the 24th and Count Czernin for Austria on the same day. It is gratifying to have our desire so promptly realized that all exchanges of view on this great matter should be made in the hearing of all the world. Count Czernin's reply, which is directed chiefly to my own address on the 8th of January, is uttered in a very friendly tone. He finds in my statement a sufficiently encouraging approach to the views of his own Government to justify him in believing that it furnishes a basis for a more detailed discussion of purposes by the two Governments. He is repre- sented to have intimated that the views he was ex- pressing had been communicated to me beforehand and that I was aware of them at the time he was uttering them ; but in this I am sure he was misun- derstood. I had received no intimation of what he 102 THE FOUR PRINCIPLES OF PEACE intended to say. There was, of course, no reason why he should communicate privately with me. I am quite content to be one of his public audience. Count von Hertling's reply is, I must say, very vague and very confusing. It is full of equivocal phrases and leads it is not clear where. It is certainly in a very different tone from that of Count Czernin and apparently of an opposite purpose. It confirms, I am sorry to say, rather than removes, the unfortunate impression made by what we had learned of the con- ferences at Brest-Litovsk. His discussion and accept- ance of our general principles lead him to no practical conclusions. He refuses to apply them to the substan- tive items which must constitute the body of any final settlement. He is jealous of international action and of international counsel. He accepts, he says, the principle of public diplo- macy, but he appears to insist that it be confined, at any rate in this case, to generalities and that the several particular questions of territory and sov- ereignty, the several questions upon whose settlement must depend the acceptance of peace by the twenty- three states now engaged in the war, must be discussed and settled, not in general council, but severally by the nations most immediately concerned by interest or neighborhood. He agrees that the seas should be free, but looks askance at any limitation to that free- dom by international action in the interest of the common order. He would without reserve be glad to see economic barriers removed between nation and nation, for that could in no way impede the ambitions of the military party with whom he seems constrained 103 WAR ADDRESSES OF WOODROW WILSON to keep on terms. Neither does he raise objection to a limitation of armaments. That matter will be settled of itself, he thinks, by the economic conditions which must follow the war. But the German colonies, he demands, must be returned without debate. He will discuss with no one but the representatives of Russia what disposition shall be made of the peoples and the lands of the Baltic provinces; with no one but the Government of France the " conditions" under which French territory shall be evacuated; and only with Austria what shall be done with Poland. In the determination of all questions affecting the Balkan states he defers, as I understand him, to Austria and Turkey; and with regard to the agree- ments to be entered into concerning the non-Turkish peoples of the present Ottoman Empire, to the Turkish authorities themselves. After a settlement all around, effected in this fashion, by individual barter and con- cession, he would have no objection, if I correctly interpret his statement, to a league of nations which would undertake to hold the new balance of power steady against external disturbance. It must be evident to every one who understands what this war has wrought in the opinion and temper of the world that no general peace worth the infinite sacrifices of these years of tragical suffering can possibly be arrived at in any such fashion. The method the German Chancellor proposes is the method of the Congress of Vienna. 1 We cannot and will not return to that. What is at stake now is the peace of the world. What we are striving for is a new international order based upon broad and universal 104 THE FOUR PRINCIPLES OF PEACE principles of right and justice, — no mere peace of shreds and patches. Is it possible that Count von Hertling does not see that, does not grasp it, is in fact living in his thought in a world dead and gone ? Has he utterly forgotten the Reichstag resolutions of the 19th of July or does he deliberately ignore them ? They spoke of the conditions of a general peace, not of national aggrandizement or of arrangements between state and state. The peace of the world depends upon the just settlement of each of these problems to which I adverted in my recent address to the Congress. I, of course, do not mean that the peace of the world depends upon the acceptance of any particular set of suggestions as to the way in which those problems are to be dealt with. I mean only that those problems each and all affect the whole world ; that unless they are dealt with in a spirit of unselfish and unbiased justice, with a view to the wishes, the natural con- victions, the racial aspirations, the security and peace of mind, of the peoples involved, no permanent peace will have been attained. They cannot be discussed separately or in corners. None of them constitutes a private or separate interest from which the opinion of the world may be shut out. Whatever affects the peace affects mankind, and nothing settled by military force, if settled wrong, is settled at all. It will presently have to be reopened. Is Count von Hertling not aware that he is speaking in the court of mankind, that all the awakened nations of the world now sit in judgment on what every public man, of whatever nation, may say on the issues of a conflict which has spread to every region of the world ? 105 WAR ADDRESSES OF WOODROW WILSON The Reichstag resolutions 2 of July themselves frankly accepted the decisions of that court. There shall be no annexations, no contributions, no punitive dam- ages. Peoples are not to be handed about from one sovereignty to another by an international conference or an understanding between rivals and antagonists. National aspirations must be respected ; peoples may now be dominated and governed only by their own consent. "Self-determination" 3 is not a mere phrase. It is an imperative principle of action, which statesmen will henceforth ignore at their peril. We. cannot have general peace for the asking, nor by the arrangements of a peace conference. It cannot be pieced together out of individual understandings between powerful states. All the parties to this war must join in the settlement of every issue anywhere involved in it, because what we are seeking is peace that we can all unite to guarantee and maintain, and every item of it must be submitted to the common judgment whether it be right and fair, an act of justice, rather than a bargain between sovereigns. The United States has no desire to interfere in European affairs or to act as arbiter in European territorial disputes. She would disdain to take advan- tage of any internal weakness or disorder to impose her own will upon another people. She is quite ready to be shown that the settlements she has suggested are for the best or the most enduring. They are only her own provisional sketch of principles, and of the way in which they should be applied. She entered this war because she was made a partner, whether 106 THE FOUR PRINCIPLES OF PEACE she would or not, in the sufferings and indignities inflicted by the military masters of Germany against the peace and security of mankind ; and the conditions of peace will touch her as nearly as they will touch any other nation to which is intrusted a leading part in the maintenance of civilization. She cannot see her way to peace until the causes of this war are removed and its renewal rendered as nearly as may be impossible. This war had its roots in the disregard of the rights of small nations and of nationalities which lacked the union and the force to make good their claim to determine their own allegiances and their own forms of political life. Covenants must now be entered into which will render such things impossible for the future ; and those covenants must be backed by the united force of all the nations that love justice and are willing to maintain it at any cost. If territorial settlements and the political relations of great popu- lations which have not the organized power to resist are to be determined by the contracts of the powerful governments which consider themselves most directly affected, as Count von Hertling proposes, why may not economic questions also? It has come about in the altered world in which we now find ourselves that justice and the rights of peoples affect the whole field of international dealing as much as access to raw materials and fair and equal conditions of trade. Count von Hertling wants the essential bases of commercial and industrial life to be safeguarded by common agreement and guaranty, but he cannot expect that to be conceded him if the other matters to be determined by the articles of peace are not 107 WAR ADDRESSES OF WOODROW WILSON handled in the same way as items in the final account- ing. He cannot ask the benefit of common agreement in the one field without according it in the other. I take it for granted that he sees that separate and self- ish compacts with regard to trade and the essential materials of manufacture would afford no founda- tion for peace. Neither, he may rest assured, will separate and selfish compacts with regard to prov- inces and peoples. Count Czernin seems to see the fundamental elements of peace with clear eyes and does not seek to obscure them. He sees that an independent Poland, made up of all the indisputably Polish peoples who lie contiguous to one another, is a matter of European concern and must, of course, be conceded ; that Belgium must be evacuated and be restored, no matter what sacrifices and concessions that may in- volve ; and that national aspirations must be satisfied, even within his own Empire, in the common interest of Europe and mankind. If he is silent about ques- tions which touch the interest and purpose of his allies more nearly than they touch those of Austria only, it must, of course, be because he feels constrained, I suppose, to defer to Germany and Turkey in the circumstances. Seeing and conceding, as he does, the essential principles involved and the necessity of candidly applying them, he naturally feels that Austria can respond to the purpose of peace as expressed by the United States with less embarrassment than could Germany. He would probably h ave gone much farther had it not been for the embarrassments of Austria's alliances and of her dependence upon Germany. 108 THE FOUR PRINCIPLES OF PEACE After all, the test of whether it is possible for either Government to go any further in this comparison of views is simple and obvious. The principles to be applied are these : First, that each part of the final settlement must be based upon the essential justice of that particular case and upon such adjustments as are most likely to bring a peace that will be permanent ; Second, that peoples and provinces are not to be bartered about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were mere chattels and pawns in a game, even the great game, now forever discredited, of the balance of power; but that T.hird, every territorial settlement involved in this war must be made in the interest and for the benefit of the populations concerned, and not as a part of any mere adjustment or compromise of claims amongst rival states ; and Fourth, that all well-defined national aspirations shall be accorded the utmost satisfaction that can be accorded them without introducing new or perpetuat- ing old elements of discord and antagonism that would be likely in time to break the peace of Europe and consequently of the world. A general peace erected upon such foundations can be discussed. 4 Until such a peace can be secured we have no choice but to go on. So far as we can judge, these principles that we regard as fundamental are already everywhere accepted as imperative except among the spokesmen of the military and annexa- tionist party in Germany. If they have anywhere else been rejected, the objectors have not been 109 WAR ADDRESSES OF WOODROW WILSON sufficiently numerous or influential to make their voices audible. The tragical circumstance is that this one party in Germany is apparently willing and able to send millions of men to their death to prevent what all the world now sees to be just. I would not be a true spokesman of the people of the United States 5 if I did not say once more that we entered this war upon no small occasion and that we can never turn back from a course chosen upon prin- ciple. Our resources are in part mobilized now and we shall not pause until they are mobilized in their entirety. Our armies are rapidly going to the righting front, and will go more and more rapidly. Our whole strength will be put into this war of emancipation — emancipation from the threat and attempted mastery of selfish groups of autocratic rulers — whatever the difficulties and present partial delays. We are in- domitable in our power of independent action and can in no circumstances consent to live in a world governed by intrigue and force. We believe that our own desire for a new international order under which reason and justice and the common interests of mankind shall prevail is the desire of enlightened men everywhere. Without that new order the world will be without peace and human life will lack tolerable conditions of existence and development. Having set our hand to the task of achieving it, we shall not turn back. I hope that it is not necessary for me to add that no word of what I have said is intended as a threat. That is not the temper of our people. I have spoken no THE FOUR PRINCIPLES OF PEACE thus only that the whole world may know the true spirit of America — that men everywhere may know that our passion for justice and for self-government is no mere passion of words but a passion which, once set in action, must be satisfied. The power of the United States is a menace to no nation or people. It will never be used in aggression or for the aggrandizement of any selfish interest of our own. 6 It springs out of freedom and is for the service of freedom. in NOTES PERMANENT PEACE (Pages 3-12) On December 12, 1916, the German Government offered to meet the Entente Allies in a conference to discuss peace. It was generally felt that the proposal was made in the spirit of a victor to the van- quished, and the Allies rejected the offer as a " sham proposal." On December 18, President Wilson sent an identic note to all the bel- ligerent powers, asking them to state their terms for ending the war and guaranteeing the world against its renewal. The Entente Allies alone replied. A month later, on January 22, 1917, President Wilson addressed the Senate in the remarkable speech we are considering, wherein he declared the conditions on which the United States would give " its formal and solemn adherence to a league of peace." 1. All treaties must receive the approval of the Senate before they become effective. 2. This was spoken, of course, before the United States entered the war. 3. In these words President Wilson shows himself to be in accord with the chief ideals of the League to Enforce Peace. This league was organized in Independence Hall, Philadelphia — the very spot where the United States of America was born — on June 17, 1915. Ex-President William Howard Taft was made the first president of the League. The League at its first meeting adopted the four following proposals : We believe it to be desirable for the United States to join a league of nations binding the signatories to the following : First: All justiciable questions arising between the signatory powers, not settled by negotiation, shall, subject to the limitations of treaties, be submitted to a judicial tribunal for hearing and judgment, both upon the merits and upon any issue as to its jurisdiction of the question. "3 NOTES Second: All other questions arising between the signatories and not settled by negotiation shall be submitted to a council of conciliation for hearing, consideration, and recommendation. Third : The signatory powers shall jointly use forthwith both their economic and military forces against any one of their number that goes to war, or commits acts of hostility, against another of the signato- ries before any question arising shall be submitted as provided in the foregoing. Fourth: Conferences between the signatory powers shall be held from time to time to formulate and codify rules of international law, which, unless some signatory shall signify its dissent within a stated period, shall thereafter govern in the decisions of the judicial tribunal mentioned in Article One. 4. According to the theory of the " balance of power," no country or group of countries must be allowed to become so strong as to menace the rights of other countries. This principle was in full force during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 5. President Wilson was severely criticized both in Great Britain and in America for the use of this phrase. Do you think he would speak or write these words now? 6. Look up the history of Poland, Alsace-Lorraine, and other countries for examples of people who have been handed about "from sovereignty to sovereignty." Note the very forceful and effective manner in which President Wilson makes his thought clear. 7. Russia, for example, since the time of Peter the Great, has been seeking "windows to the west." Serbia and Hungary have been seriously handicapped by difficulty of access to the sea. Can you think of other countries similarly handicapped? 8. The United States was the only great power not involved in the war, and many of the lesser nations of Europe, such as Sweden and Norway, which were nominally neutral, were so involved as to be unable to speak freely. 9. Again and again in his speeches, President Wilson makes it clear that he is speaking for the people of the United States, that he is their mouthpiece. Does the head of an autocracy speak thus? 10. Re-read the Introduction to see how the military alliances of Europe before 19 14 were a very potent cause of the war. President Wilson has the faculty of seeing what is the vital issue of the hour, and of so stating this that the people are forced to face it squarely. 11. Especially at the First and Second Hague Peace Conferences in 1899 and 1907. 114 NOTES DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS BROKEN (Pages 13-18) Indignant at the refusal of the Entente to consider her peace proposals of December 16, and ignoring President Wilson's efforts to secure a discussion of peace terms, Germany issued a proclamation on January 31, 191 7, enlarging the war zone and removing all re- strictions on her submarine warfare. The zone then outlined en- tirely surrounded the British Isles, the Atlantic coast of France and Belgium, and included large areas in the Mediterranean Sea. Said this note, "All ships met within that zone will be sunk." This breach of the Sussex pledge of May 4, 19 16, President Wilson met by breaking off diplomatic relations with Germany, on February 3, 191 7. At 2 p. m., on the same day, the President appeared before the assembled Congressmen in the hall of the House of Representatives, and read the words of this carefully prepared address. The address recites in detail the negotiations which led to the giving of the Sussex pledge. 1. The Sussex was a French passenger steamer on its way across the English Channel, from Folkestone, England, to Dieppe, France. It was not armed and was not following the route of the military transports. It was torpedoed without warning. About eighty pas- sengers, including American citizens, were killed or wounded. 2. Many people have severely criticized President Wilson for not taking this firm stand much earlier. This was almost a year after the sinking of the Lusitania, and many other unarmed passenger ships had been sunk in the meantime. 3. This is the so-called Sussex pledge. 4. According to the usages of international intercourse, failure to reply to this diplomatic note leaves it as the accepted interpreta- tion of the previous note of the German Government. 5. This refers to the efforts by Great Britain and France to estab- lish a blockade and prevent supplies of any kind from reaching the Central Powers, and to the determination expressed by the Entente Powers of restoring Alsace-Lorraine to France, freeing the subject peoples of Austria-Hungary, etc. 6. This passage is eminently characteristic of President Wilson. He is very slow to believe that a person or a nation that he has long believed to be an honorable friend is in reality a base traitor. "5 NOTES ARMED NEUTRALITY (Pages 19-25) During the month of February the German submarines sank about two hundred ships, of which fifty-one were neutrals. It was obviously sheer folly to send unarmed American vessels to meet such risks. On February 26, therefore, President Wilson again addressed Congress, asking for the power to arm American merchant vessels. The meas- ure passed the House of Representatives by the decisive vote of 403 to 13, but a dozen Senators, taking advantage of the rules of the Senate which allowed unlimited debate, refused to permit a vote on the bill before the expiration of Congress at noon on March 4th. 1. The William P. Frye, carrying a cargo of wheat consigned to an English firm, was sunk January 28, 1915, by a German raider, Prim Eitel Friedrich. After considerable correspondence the Ger- man Government, November 29, 1915, agreed to pay damages for the destruction of ship and cargo, and to safeguard the crews before sinking other vessels. 2. President Wilson is constantly referring to himself as the servant of the people. Is this the spirit of democracy? 3. Note the skill with which President Wilson focuses attention on the main point at issue. 4. The closing paragraphs help to raise this address above the level of an ordinary state paper. President Wilson is not satisfied merely to state the facts and ask for the authority he desires. He makes use of the occasion to enforce some of the great ethical prin- ciples involved. The address is valuable as showing the growth in the President himself which the war has produced. The President exhausted every honorable means for avoiding war. A careful study of the address will reveal something of the gropings of his own mind, searching for solid ground on which to rest. From a literary viewpoint the address possesses little value ; from a historical view- point it is invaluable. People and President to a large degree moved at the same pace. A study of the development of President Wilson in this crisis is also a study of the development of the American people. SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS (Pages 26-31) President Wilson began his second term at noon Sunday, March 4, 191 7. The inaugural exercises were held on the following day, at which time this address was delivered. Il6 NOTES 1. The record to which Mr. Wilson here refers is the record for new legislation affecting the social and industrial life of the nation, such as the Federal Reserve Banking Law, the Farm Loan Banking Law, the Income Tax Law, and numerous others. The pupils might well make a list of the important new legislation in these four years, 1913- 1917. See yearbooks, current histories, and magazine summaries. The Independent, the Outlook, the Review of Reviews, the Literary Digest are all good for this purpose. 2. Look up the difference in meaning between composite and cosmopolitan. 3. Notice how often in these addresses President Wilson repeats this thought. 4. Here the President is half prophet. The American people were not consciously "citizens of the world" on March 4, 191 7. The vast majority of them were still inclined to abide by the earlier policy of our Government of avoiding entangling alliances with European Powers. The logic of events, the common suffering of the war, will make us eventually "citizens of the world." 5. These seven principles are worthy of careful consideration. Do they tally with the President's declarations of policy in his later addresses ? 6. Again the President is urging his oneness with the people of America. What is the source of the figure in this paragraph? Notice how vivid it makes the thought of the speaker. 7. The oath of office as President of the United States, which is administered by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court before the Inaugural Address. 8. Compare with Lincoln's " Gettysburg Address." AT WAR WITH GERMANY (Pages 32-45) German submarines continued to sink ships without warning. American citizens continued to lose their lives while pursuing their rightful business on the high seas. The feeling in America was stirred to a fever pitch by the publication of an intercepted dispatch from the German Foreign Minister Zimmermann to the German Minister in Mexico. This note suggested an offensive and defensive alliance between Mexico and Germany. "Together we will make war and together we will make peace." The note proposed that the south- western part of the United States should be Mexico's reward for her part in the war. Mexico was also to try to secure the cooperation of 117 NOTES Japan. The note was written during January, 191 7, before the United States had broken diplomatic relations. It was made public in March. At the same time evidence was secured of widespread plots by German spies, aided by the German Ambassador, Von Bernstorfl, to cripple the industries of the United States and render us impotent. In consequence, the 65th Congress was called in special session, April 2, 191 7. That evening the President appeared before the two Houses to deliver one of the most momentous messages in the history of our country, in which he asked Congress to recognize that the course of the German Government was " nothing less than war against the people and Government of the United States." 1. Congress meets in regular session on the first Monday of December in each year. Whenever the President calls Congress together at any other time the session is known as an extraordinary session. The President cannot declare war. The Constitution gives that power to Congress alone. 2. See Introduction for history of the submarine warfare. 3. That is, the right guaranteed by international law. 4. How many lives had been lost by submarine warfare when these words were spoken? See Introduction. 5. See Introduction for George Washington's policy as outlined in his first inaugural. Other nations, however, have not observed this high standard. 6. The German constitution gives to the Emperor and the Bundes- rath, a body of delegates appointed by the rulers of the various Ger- man states, full power to make war without consulting the repre- sentatives of the people. 7. Russia had only recently overthrown the Czar. 8. For instance, there is in the possession of the United States Government a check made out to Konig, head of the Hamburg- American secret service, and signed by Captain Franz von Papen, then military attache to the German embassy in Washington, fully identi- fied as having been used to pay for placing explosives disguised as coal in the bunkers of merchant vessels. Papers seized from Wolf von Igel, an employee of the German embassy, prove that the Ger- man Government, through her embassy in America, was involved in the destruction of lives and property, in suborning American writers and lecturers, in subsidizing a bureau to stir up labor troubles in munitions plants, and many other similar hostile activities. 9. See above for the meaning of this note. Il8 NOTES 10. Compare President Wilson's words with those of other Ameri- can statesmen : Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute. — Charles C. Pinckney, Ambassador to France, 1796. Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God ! I know not what course others may take ; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death! — Patrick Henry Let not the miscreant host vainly imagine that we fear their arms. No ! these we despise ; we dread nothing but slavery. Death is the creation of a poltroon's brain. 'T is immortality to sacrifice ourselves for the salvation of our country. — John Hancock Every good citizen makes his country's honor his own, and cher- ishes it, not only as precious, but as sacred. He is willing to risk his life in its defense, and is conscious that he gains protection while he gives it. — Andrew Jackson Fondly do we hope — fervently do we pray — that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled up by the bondman's 250 years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said 3000 years ago, so still it must be said, " The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." — Abraham Lincoln Let the pupil look for other similar expressions in the published speeches of our great leaders. THE DECLARATION OF WAR (Page 46) The resolution declaring a state of war with Germany and em- powering the President to carry on the war with all the resources of the nation was passed through the Senate by a vote of 82 to 6 on the 4th of April, and was adopted by the House by a vote of 373 to 50, after a sixteen-hour debate, on April 6, 19 17. WHAT WE ARE FIGHTING FOR (Pages 47-50) Soon after the Russian revolution and the entrance of the United States into the war, it was decided to send an American mission to Russia to congratulate the new government and to find out in what way the United States could assist in providing for its needs. The mission was headed by Elihu Root, former Secretary of State, and IIQ NOTES consisted of representatives of the railroads, business, and the army and navy, and of the religious, industrial, and socialist organizations of the United States. President Wilson took advantage of the occa- sion to send this message to the government and people of Russia, explaining what the United States was fighting for. 1. Compare these general principles with the more specific state- ments on pages 98 and 109. THE FLAG WE FOLLOW (Pages 51-60) This address was delivered at the Flag Day celebration in Washington on June 14, 191 7. 1. Probably President Wilson already knew of the correspondence incriminating the German Ambassador, von Bernstorff, previously referred to. 2. The German emblem of power is the eagle. 3. Reread the Introduction to see if the facts warrant these statements. 4. Greece, Rumania, Bulgaria, and Albania were all ruled by kings of German lineage. 5. When these words were spoken, the broad belt from the Baltic to the Euphrates was actually in the possession of German armies ; the "Drang nach Osten" had apparently been realized. 6. The German Government, it has been proved, had established a world-wide secret-service system. Her spies were everywhere. Count von Bernstorff, the German Ambassador, was supplied by the German Government with funds which were freely spent to influ- ence public opinion against the President's policies. Many citizens and even officers in the United States army were found to be cooperating with this propaganda. Spies were everywhere. The intrigue for peace was persistent. 7. These words are prophetic. Few people took them seriously, but the events of the year in Russia proved the marvelous insight of President Wilson. The ultra-radical party, the Bolsheviki, over- threw the more moderate government of Kerensky, who favored the prosecution of the war. An armistice was signed with Germany in December. In March a treaty of peace was concluded which left Germany in full control of the destiny of Russia. 8. Probably this address is the most powerful of all the President's war addresses. 120 NOTES THE PRESIDENT'S REPLY TO THE POPE (Pages 61-65) In accordance with an age-old custom, Pope Benedict XV addressed an identic note to all the belligerent Powers on August 1, 191 7, pro- posing a meeting to discuss peace terms. The proposal was chiefly for a return to the conditions before the war, with some minor adjust- ments of territory, and with a concert of Powers to guard against future wars, as the following extract shows : " But in order no longer to speak in general terms, as the circum- stances had counseled us in the past, we now wish to make more concrete and practical proposals and to invite the governments of the belligerent peoples to come to an agreement upon the following points, which seem to be the basis of a just and lasting peace, leaving to them the task of analyzing and completing them. " First of all, the fundamental point must be that for the material force of arms be substituted the moral force of right, from which shall arise a fair agreement by all for the simultaneous and reciprocal diminution of armament, according to the rules and guarantees to be established, in a measure necessary and sufficient for the maintenance of public order in each state ; then in the substitution for armies of the institution of arbitration with its high pacifying function, according to the rules to be laid down and the penalties to be imposed on a state which would refuse either to submit a national question to arbitration or to accept its decision. " Once the supremacy of right has been established, all obstacles to the means of communication of the peoples would disappear, by assuring, by rules to be fixed later, the true liberty and community of the seas, which would contribute to ending the numerous causes of conflict and would also open to all new sources of prosperity and progress. " As to the damages to be repaired and as to the war expenses, we see no other means of solving the question than by submitting as a general principle complete and reciprocal condonation, which would be justified, moreover, by the immense benefit to be derived from disarmament, so much so that no one will understand the con- tinuation of a similar carnage, solely for reasons of an economic order. " For certain cases there exist particular reasons. They would be deliberated upon with justice and equity. But these peaceful agreements, with the immense advantages to be derived from them, are not possible without a reciprocal restitution of the territory at present occupied. 121 NOTES " Consequently, on the part of Germany, there should be the com- plete evacuation of Belgium with the guarantee of her full political, military, and economic independence toward it. The evacuation of French territory. On the part of the other belligerents, similar restitution of the German colonies. "As regards the territorial questions, as, for example, those which have arisen between Italy and Austria, and between Germany and France, there is reason to hope that in consideration of the immense advantages of a durable peace with disarmament, the parties in conflict would wish to examine them with a conciliatory disposition, taking into consideration, as we have said formerly, the aspirations of the peoples and the special interests and the general welfare of the great human society. " The same spirit of equity and justice ought to be followed in the examination of other territorial questions, notably those relative to Armenia and the Balkan states, and the territories making a part of the ancient kingdom of Poland, whose noble and historical tradi- tions and sufferings, which it has endured, especially during the present war, ought to conciliate the sympathies of nations." 1. Robert Lansing became Secretary of State after the resignation of William Jennings Bryan in the summer of 19 15. It is invariable custom that all communications between the United States Govern- ment and any other government are signed by the Secretary of State. It is well known that this Reply to the Pope, as well as many other of the diplomatic notes sent since the outbreak of the war in 19 14, was actually written by President Wilson. THE AMERICAN PEOPLE MUST STAND TOGETHER (Pages 66-76) This address was delivered to a convention of the American Federa- tion of Labor, the largest and most influential organization of laborers in the United States. In this speech the President explains at greater length than on any previous occasion the war policy of the United States. In the latter part of the speech he addresses himself particu- larly to the labor situation, which was serious. There existed a crying need for workers to put through the big projects of the Government, to supply munitions and ships for the war. There were threats of strikes, and laborers in some sections of the country were inclined to be hostile to the war program. President Wilson faced the situation squarely, and won his audience, which passed resolutions 122 * NOTES indicating an attitude of aggressive loyalty and zeal for the national 1. Notice how the President appeals for the support of the labor- ing men from the very highest motives of self-forgetfulness. 2. This refers to a remark of the German Emperor, made at Hamburg in 1901, that Germany was fighting to secure "a place in the sun." This phrase was speedily taken up as a slogan by the Pan- German League, and was used by the Crown Prince in his introduc- tion to " Germany in Arms " in 1913. 3. Notice that the President answers his own questions in this and the following paragraph. 4. This paragraph should be studied with a map of Europe and the Near East at hand. It would help to make the President's meaning clear if some pupil would color a map in "appropriate black" to show the territory in Germany's possession in November, 191 7. See Inter- national Year Book for 1915 and later dates, under Turkey, Com- munication, for further information about the Berlin-to-Bagdad Railroad. 5. The Pan-German League was organized in 1890 and has been engaged in an active propaganda to bring all European people of Germanic stock under a single flag, and to see Germany take a domi- nant share in the history of the world. The Pan-Germans urged the war, and since its beginning have earnestly advocated large annexations. 6. Austria-Hungary. 7. Colonel Edward M. House of Austin, Texas, a graduate of Cor- nell University, has been President Wilson's special representative in Europe on several occasions since 1914. Colonel House, through a long residence in England, has a large acquaintance with influential Europeans. 8. How can the "power of the American spirit" prevent slacking? 9. Samuel Gompers, one of the founders of the American Federa- tion of Labor, has been its president, with one year's intermission, since 1882. 10. Have you observed that this is the only anecdote in any of these addresses? Why would you expect it in this address rather than in any other? 11. The very familiar, even colloquial, tone of the entire speech, and particularly of this paragraph, would, of course, be utterly out of place in any other of the war addresses. It should be borne in 123 NOTES mind that the speech was delivered to an audience of workingmen, whereas most of his other addresses were carefully written out and read in a formal manner. NO PEACE WITH AUTOCRACY (Pages 77-91) When Congress met for its regular session in December, 191 7, President Wilson, following the custom which he had re-introduced from Washington's day, appeared before the assembled Congress and delivered his annual message. It was his first appearance before Congress after the declaration of war in April. In the meantime preparations on an enormous scale were under way for our active participation in the war. Several hundred thousand soldiers were in France receiving their final training, and a million more were in training in our own country. The Russian revolution had developed rapidly into a state of anarchy. The Bolsheviki (see Introduction) had come into power and were on the verge of signing an armistice with the enemy. Many German troops were thus released on the Russian front and were hurled against Italy in a terrific effort to break down the Italian offensive. Italy was needing our help; a necessary preliminary thereto must be a declaration of war on Austria-Hungary . This address of the President is epochal in character. Here he gives us a definition of our war aims that can be emblazoned on our banners for all the world to read and left flying to the breeze when the war is won. Here he sounds a trumpet call for all Americans and their allies to purge themselves of ambitions for aggrandize- ment. In this address the President stands as the acknowledged leader of the forces of democracy, fighting for the overthrow of autoc- racy, as the great champion of liberalism, freedom, and progress. He has translated the dreams of the poets into the words of a prac- tical statesman. The message has raised the war to a higher level. International morality will be better and purer because of these brave words. 1. At the beginning of each regular session of Congress each execu- tive department submits a report for the past year to the President, who in turn submits these reports to Congress. 2. The President and Congress are the spokesmen of the American people. In what sense is this true? 3. Compare with Reply to Pope, p. 64. 124 NOTES 4. Has it been customary among nations to make "full, impartial justice" the basis of peace, or is President Wilson sounding a new note of international morality ? 5. This formula had been adopted by the Russian revolutionists. 6. German spies and secret envoys had been very busy in Russia all summer and at the time this address was made were about to succeed in securing an armistice with Russia. 7. Generosity and justice are not wholly unprecedented in the history of the United States. For instance, the voluntary relinquish- ment of a considerable part of the Boxer indemnity to China was certainly an act of generosity. No other nation has voluntarily dealt with other nations in that manner. Do not all true Ameri- cans believe in fair play and in generous treatment toward defeated antagonists ? 8. Through enormous loans to her almost bankrupt allies, Germany secured great power over them. German officers in the Austrian and Turkish armies are numerous and powerful. 9. President Wilson is arguing for freedom for the oppressed peoples of Europe. Is the adjective "impudent" justified here? 10. German newspapers have repeatedly charged that President Wilson was trying to force his own ideas of government upon them. 11. See the address of January 22 and accompanying notes for a more detailed description of the League to Enforce Peace. 12. That is, it might be necessary to exclude Germany from the same rights of trade which other nations enjoy. 13. The Congress of Vienna met in 18 14 to readjust the European tangle after the downfall of Napoleon. It has long been noted for its cynical disregard of right and justice. Its readjustments were made solely on the basis of successful bargaining by the rulers of the states involved. The rights and wishes of peoples were utterly disregarded. 14. Read again the President's message to the Russian people and see how much of this ideal he then expressed. 15. Congress acceded to this request within a very few days with only one negative vote. 16. What is a vassal nation ? Is it correct to call Austria-Hungary a vassal nation ? 17. Why did Austria-Hungary stand in the way of direct action any more than did Bulgaria or Turkey ? 18. Proclamations issued by the President on April 6 and November 16, 191 7, had forbidden alien enemies to possess firearms, 125 NOTES to approach within one half mile of any fort, arsenal, or navy yard, to publish any attack upon the Government, to ascend in any balloon, airplane, etc. Alien enemies were also required to register and report. 19. Prices of many articles had risen enormously and in many cases the dealers made no pretensions of any reason for increasing the price other than their ability to get more. 20. A study of the Budget System of the British Parliament would help the student to get the full force of President Wilson's recommen- dation. See Lowell, " Government in England," Chapter 14. 21. There was serious congestion of freight on the railways, and some communities were almost entirely without coal and other necessities. 22. This paragraph is worth re-reading. It summarizes in Presi- dent Wilson's concise, clear-cut manner the whole reason for this war. In fact, the entire peroration is in his very best style, and is deserving of the most careful study, for content, for diction, and for high moral purpose. THE PROGRAM OF PEACE (Pages 92-101) Rather unexpectedly, President Wilson appeared before a joint session of Congress on January 8, 19 18, and addressed it on the subject of peace. The Central Powers had been conducting negotia- tions with the Bolsheviki government in Russia for some weeks at Brest-Litovsk, a city which had been captured in the Austro-German drive in the latter part of 19 15. The address is deserving of care- ful study and comparison with the traditional policy of the United States of aloofness from European problems. The fact that the Central Powers desired peace has been referred to repeatedly by President Wilson. His reply to the Pope and his Buffalo address give many of the reasons why a German peace would be unsatisfac- tory. The addresses before us are the first official definition of the objects which the United States Government feels are essential to peace. 1. In the parleys between the representatives of the Central Powers and those of the Bolsheviki government of Russia, the German repre- sentatives at first indicated a willingness to be reasonable, but clearer definitions of their position showed they expected Russia to reimburse German citizens for losses which they had suffered as the result of 126 NOTES laws passed by Russia, but were unwilling to pay Russian peasants for goods commandeered by the Germans. The Germans argued that all contributions exacted from occupied cities and territories as well as all requisitions were for supporting order and consequently should not be refunded. The German mem- bers said the Russian plan for creating an international fund to indemnify individuals for losses was impracticable and they also declared that submarine, Zeppelin, and airplane damages were not indemnifiable. 2. The text of these resolutions may be found in the Review of Reviews, August, 191 7, p. 115. 3. Mr. David Lloyd George, Prime Minister of Great Britain. 4. Undoubtedly one of the purposes of this address was to encour- age the Russians to continue their fight for democracy. 5. Germany, it will be recalled, has repeatedly expressed a will- ingness to evacuate Belgium, provided that her interests there be safeguarded. 6. Does not this appeal to you as perfectly frank and fair? Does it not seem to you that fair-minded Germans would willingly accept the principles laid down by the President ? THE FOUR PRINCIPLES OF PEACE (Pages 102-m) Following the President's address to Congress on January 8th, both Count Czernin, the Austrian Foreign Minister, and Count von Hert- ling, the German Chancellor, made public addresses in response. The first point of President Wilson's program, that there should be "open covenants of peace, openly arrived at" seemed thus in a fair way to be realized. The address of Count Czernin might fairly be interpreted as a bid for peace, as the following quotations may show : " When peace has been concluded with Russia it will no longer be possible, in my opinion, to prevent for long the conclusion of a gen- eral peace in spite of the efforts of the Entente statesmen. " Although I am under no delusion and know the fruit of peace cannot be matured in twenty-four hours, nevertheless I am con- vinced that it is now maturing and that the question whether or not an honorable general peace can be secured is merely a question of resistance. " President Wilson's peace offer confirms me in this opinion. Naturally an offer of this kind cannot be regarded as a matter 127 NOTES acceptable in every detail, for that obviously would render any negotiations superfluous. " I think there is no harm in stating that I regard the recent proposal of President Wilson as an appreciable approach to the Austro- Hungarian point of view, and that to some of them Austria-Hungary joyfully could give her approval." Count Czernin leaves the case of Turkey and the questions of Germany's conquests in Europe and of her lost colonies to these countries, but makes it plain that "Austria-Hungary, faithful to her engagements to fight to the end in defense to her allies, will defend the possessions of her war allies as she would her own." But as to Poland, the Austrian Foreign Minister adopts almost the exact language of the American President : " We also are supporters of an independent Polish state, which would include all territories and populations which indisputably are Polish. On this point we believe we should quickly come to an understanding with President Wilson. " Finally, in his idea of a league of peoples the President probably will meet with no opposition in the monarchy. " As may be seen, then, from this comparison of my views with those of Mr. Wilson, we agree not only on great principles in general, according to which the world is to be newly regulated after the end of this war, but our views also approach each other on several concrete peace questions. " The remaining differences do not seem to me great enough to lead to the belief that a discussion at this point should not bring clearness and rapprochement. " This situation, which probably arises from the fact that Austria- Hungary and the United States of America are the two great Powers among the two groups of enemy states whose interests least conflict, suggests the thought that an exchange of ideas between these two Powers might be the starting point for conciliatory discussions be- tween all states which have not entered into peace conversations. " I trust Mr. Wilson will use the great influence he doubtless has on all his allies that they explain conditions on which they are willing to negotiate, and he will have gained the immeasurable merit of hav- ing called a general peace conference to life." The President, therefore, appeared before Congress on February nth, and gave utterance to the "four principles" which must be accepted as the foundation for peace. 128 NOTES 1. This Congress has already been referred to. If the student is not familiar with the spirit of that Congress and with the kind of peace which was made in 1815, he should review these points. 2. Three parties in the German Reichstag, the Socialists, the Centrists or Catholics, and the Radicals, united on July 19, 191 7, in adopting the peace resolutions to which President Wilson refers. The text of these resolutions may be found in the Review of Reviews, August, 19 1 7 (p. 115), and elsewhere. 3. Meaning the right of any people to determine for themselves under what rule they shall live — a new phrase for the "consent of the governed." 4. This is plainly opening a door for Austria to continue the discussion of peace terms, if she is ready to subscribe to the four principles. 5. How often the President refers to himself as the spokesman of the American people. Do you notice any difference in this respect between the spirit of democracy and the spirit of autocracy? 6. This is a proud boast which few nations can make. 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