_> ** Vi A o a? « * 0, i- % c° .^. °o <*♦ ,C^. % c, .£ 'ok' • „» ^ -J ^ • x -^ O* ^ Copyright by Harris & Ewing The supreme test nj the nati and sen e together! We must C!.A565513 APR -I 1920 CONTENTS President Wilson's Great Speeches page Introduction 7 The Famous War Message to Congress, April 2, 1917 11 The Declaration of War with Germany 23 Text of the Joint Resolution of Congress, April 6. President Wilson's Address to His Fellow-Countrymen, April 16 24 The Army Draft Law — Essential Provisions 30 President's Proclamation Setting Date of Registration for the Draft 33 Statement Declining Col. Roosevelt's Offer to Raise Volunteer Divisions for Immediate Service 36 Statement on the Food-Control Program of the Government. . 39 American Neutrality — Statement by the President, August 19, 1914 43 Address to Congress on Raising Additional Revenue, Septem- ber 4, 1914 46 Annual Address (Message) to Congress, December 8, 1914... 50 Address at Flag-Day Exercises, June 14, 1915 64 Address at G. A. R. Celebration, September 26, 1915 68 Address to Daughters of the American Revolution, October 11, 1915 72 3 4 CONTENTS PAQ1 Annual Address to Congress, December 7, 1915, Including Historic Eemarks on Disloyalty Within the Nation. . 79 The Submarine Peril — Address to Congress, April 19, 1916. . 100 President Wilson 's Inner Self Revealed — Address at National Press Club, May 15, 1916 107 Address to the League to Enforce Peace, May 27, 1916 117 On Abraham Lincoln's Birthplace — Address at Hodgenville, Kentucky, September 4, 1916 122 Preventing a Great Railroad Strike — Address to Congress on the Threatening Situation, August 29, 1916 127 Annual Address to Congress, December 5, 1916 136 Last Hopes of Peace with Germany — Address to the United States Senate, January 22, 1917 144 Letter from President Wilson, May 22, 1917, on the Causes of the War 153 Diplomatic Relations Broken — Address to Congress, February 3, 1917 154 The War Clouds Thicken — Address to Congress, February 26, 1917 160 Second Inaugural Address, March 5, 1917 166 Advice to New Citizens — Address at Philadelphia, May 10, 1915 171 First Address to Congress, Delivered at a Joint Session, April 8, 1913 176 First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1913 180 On Mexican Affairs — Address to Congress, August 27, 1913. . . 186 At Independence Hall — Address in Philadelphia, July 4, 1914. . 194 President Wilson on Censorship of the Press 204 CONTENTS 5 History-Making Documents PAcne Restraint* of United States Commerce — First Proclamation of the German Admiralty Declaring a Naval War Zone. . 205 The American Protest 206 Secretary Bryan to Ambassador Gerard. Use of American Flag by British Ships 209 Ambassador Page to the Secretary of State. American Proposal for Agreement as to Neutral Ships 211 Identic Note to England and Germany. The German Reply (Translation) 214 Ambassador Gerard to the Secretary of State. British Statement on Submarine Warfare 217 The British Ambassador to the Secretary of State. Rejoinder of the United States 219 Secretary Bryan to Ambassador Page. The Attitude of France 222 Ambassador Sharp to the Secretary of State. British Charges Against Germany 225 Ambassador Page to the Secretary of State (Memoran- dum from Sir Edward Grey). Sales of Munitions — The Policy of the United States 231 Secretary Bryan to the German Ambassador. When the Lusitania Was Sunk — First Note of Protest 235 Secretary Bryan to Ambassador Gerard. Verdict of Coroner 's Jury in the Lusitania Case 240 German Statement on the Lusitania Sinking 241 British Reply to the Foregoing 242 Second Lusitania Note to Germany 245 Secretary of State ad Interim to Ambassador Gerard. Germany 'a Reply a Month Later 251 The American Rejoinder 259 Secretary Lansing to Ambassador Gerard. (J CONTENTS PAGB Germany's Broken Agreement Respecting Submarines 262 Recall of Ambassador Dumba of Austria 262 Recall of German Attaches 264 The Diplomatic Correspondence, Submarines and Armed Merchantmen 267 Informal and Confidential Letter to the Belligerent Powers. Sinking of the "Sussex" 272 First Threat to Sever Diplomatic Relations with Germany. Facts in the " Sussex" Case 279 Peace Note to the Powers 280 Secretary of State to Ambassador Page. British Answer to American Peace Note 284 Memorandum from the British Embassy. The German Answer 290 Note from Foreign Minister Zimmerman. Germany 's Last Memorandum 291 German Ambassador to Secretary of State. Conditions of Safety for American Ships 294 Diplomatic Relations Severed 296 Secretary Lansing to Ambassador von Bernstorff. American Minister Whitlock "Withdrawn from Belgium 300 Statement Given to the Press March 24, 1917. Allied Agreement to Make No Separate Peace with Germany. . 302 Act of Congress Providing for the ' ' Liberty Loan " 303 The President's Note to Russia Stating Our War Aims 309 M. Viviani's Speech to House of Representatives 313 Address of the Prince of TJdine. 316 Remarks of Right Hon. Arthur J. Balfour 321 Facsimile Signatures of Members of the "War Congress". . . . 324 CONTENTS PAGB President Wilson's Reply to the Second Peace Plea of the Pope, August 27, 1917 324 President Wilson 's Address to the Annual Convention of the American Federation of Labor at Buffalo, N. Y., Novem- ber 12, 1917 328 President Wilson's Address to Congress, Proclaiming the War Aims of the United States, January 8, 1918 339. President Wilson 's Third Liberty Loan Speech, Baltimore, Md., April 6, 1918 349 The President Announces His Intention to Go to Paris 355 The Four Points Supplementing the Fourteen Principles. . . . 373 Five Fundamentals for a League of Nations 389 President Wilson 's Speech in Rome 399 The President 's Paris Speech 403 His Speech to the Troops in France 409 President Wilson 's London Speech 412 League or Rebellion, Wilson Warns 418 PRESIDENT WILSON'S GREAT SPEECHES INTRODUCTION The public addresses and state papers of "Woodrow "Wilson will undoubtedly occupy a place of pre-eminence among the historical records of the American nation. Posterity will fix their final value, but we of the present know and appreciate their importance in this most crit- ical period of the world's history. No messages to the American people, no diplomatic documents, were ever more fraught with interest to the average citizen, or touched more closely the lives and liberties of our myriad population. Humanity itself is deeply concerned with the subject- matter and the text of President "Wilson's utterances since the Great "War began. That is the keynote of many of these historic addresses to the Congress of the United States, public speeches on various occasions, and diplo- matic notes to belligerent powers, which have been care- fully culled from a great mass of available material for the purposes of this volume. Regard for the best inter- ests of humanity being their noble theme, they will ever be read by American citizens with patriotic pride. On the declaration by Congress of the existence of a state of war between the United States and Germany — this nation of a hundred and ten million peace-loving and democratic people aligned itself with practical soli- 7 8 INTRODUCTION darity behind its great leader in the White House. The strife of parties for political supremacy was laid aside as of minor consequence in a time of grave national danger. Patriotism became the sole standard of public action. Americans realized that there was in the White House not only a great man and a great President, but also a great patriot, whose leadership it was a solemn duty to follow. Marvelously patient as the President was during the earlier period of the European struggle and the first stages of German ruthlessness ; greatly as he desired to maintain an honorable peace and to keep his country out of war, he did not hesitate when the issue was finally forced upon him. The man of peace became a man of war, confident in the right, and in language that no pa- triot can misunderstand or fail to echo in his heart of hearts, Mr. Wilson gave to the world his most perfect reasons for drawing the sword in the cause of humanity. As he himself declared in the address to Congress that prefaced the declaration of war, "The world must be made safe for democracy." This memorable address, that carried hope and encouragement to the nations across the sea fighting for a lasting peace, is fittingly reproduced at the beginning of this book, where it stands as an undying exposition of the unanswerable reasons for our conflict with Germany. Seldom if ever has a President of the United States been called on to face responsibilities as great as those which have confronted Mr. Wilson. It is sufficient to say here that Woodrow Wilson has risen superior to every emergency and has at his back a united nation, imbued to the core with confidence in his leadership. Regarded from whatever standpoint they may be, President Wilson's state papers were models of interna- INTRODUCTION 9 tional propriety, and will live in history as such. His speeches were enlightening, because so far as was pos- sible he took the people into his confidence as the grave international situation developed from time to time. Hence these papers and addresses furnish a wonderful political history of the Great "War in its relation to the interests of the United States. Underlying all of Mr. Wilson's addresses there is evi- dence of his sincere conviction that his country has a nobler mission to perform for civilization than that of merely safeguarding its own material interests, impor- tant as that consideration is to every American citizen. "The world must be made safe for democracy." And the civilized world looks to America to help make it safe. That is the idea which Mr. Wilson realizes and has made plain to his fellow-countrymen in his addresses. To read and study them is a patriotic duty. Sincerity is another keynote of all the War President 's utterances. Every American knows that Mr. Wilson was convinced almost against his will of the necessity for war. But the very sincerity that marked his efforts to keep the country out of war compelled his final action and prompted his determination to win the war. Seldom if ever has a series of speeches and documents like those in the following pages been so replete with sig- nificance or so clearly expressed. Even in the diplo- matic exchanges which have been selected for reproduc- tion there is a remarkable absence of the ambiguity usual in such documents. Hence their contents will appeal to the average patriotic reader as well as to the student of current history, and of the causes of the war. Long as the world shall last, these addresses will live. Our children and our children 's children will be reading them when the present generation shall have passed 10 INTRODUCTION away, leaving the world the better off for our work for humanity in this war. And if any there be, calling them- selves American citizens, who harbor the shadow of a doubt as to the wisdom, nay the national necessity, of President Wilson 's policy toward the world war, leading to our final participation in the great struggle, let them read these addresses and the diplomatic, history-making documents which supplement and support them in these pages, — and be forever convinced. Little need be said as to the literary quality of these state papers. Our great President is a master of the English language, unquestionably the greatest master of English that ever occupied the presidential chair. Language is a weapon which he wields with unerring skill. He wastes no words, but like Shakespeare gives to each its proper weight and worth. His speeches are studded with literary gems and while they command and hold the interest of the average reader, they furnish mines of wealth for continuous study by those who seek models of good diction. Scholarly, sincere, wise, patriotic — these are the out- standing characteristics of Mr. Wilson's speeches and state papers, and the greatest of these is their patriotic quality, reflecting as an exemplar for every American citizen the devoted patriotism of our providential President. BIOGRAPHY Woodrow Wilson was born at Staunton, Va., December 28, 1856; attended Davidson College, North Carolina, 1874-5; A.B., Princeton, 1879, A.M., 1882; graduated in law, University of Virginia, 1881, and practiced law in Atlanta, Ga., 1882-3; took a post-graduate course at Johns Hopkins University, 1882-3, obtaining degree of Ph.D. in 1886. On June 24, 1885, he married Ellen Louise Axsen, of Savan- nah, Ga. (died August 6, 1914). From 1885 to 1888 he was Associate Professor of History and Political Economy at Bryn Mawr College; 1888-1890, Professor of History and Political Economy, Wesleyan University; 1890- 1895, Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Economy, Prince- ton University, and from 1895 to 1897, Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton; Professor of Jurisprudence and Politics, Princeton, 1897-1910, and President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910. From January 17, 1911, to March 1, 1912, he was Governor of New Jersey, and at the Democratic National Convention at Baltimore, 1912, was nominated for President of the United States. He was elected on November 4, 1912, receiving 435 electoral votes against 88 for Theodore Roosevelt, Progressive, and 8 for William Howard Taft, Republican. On December 18, 1915, he married Edith Boiling Gait, of Washington, D. C. He was nominated for his second presidential term by the Democratic National Convention at St. Louis, June, 1916, and elected on November 7, 1916, receiving 276 electoral votes against 255 for Charles E. Hughes, Republican, with a popular plurality of about 400,000. He is the author of "Congressional Government, A Study in American Politics" (1885); "The State — Elements of Historical and Practical Politics" (1889); "Division and Reunion, 1829- 1889" (1893); "An Old Master, and Other Political Essays" (1893); "Mere Literature, and Other Essays" (1893); "George Washington" (1896); "A History of the American People" (1902); "Constitutional Government in the United States " (1908); "Free Life" (1913); "The New Freedom" (1913); "When a Man Comes to Himself" (1915); "On Being Human" (1916). On April 6, 1917, he issued a declaration of war against Ger- many, and against Austria on December 12, 1917. Left United States on December 4, 1918, to participate in Allied Peace Conference at Paris, France. WHY WE WENT TO WAR President Wilson's Famous Address at the Opening of the War Congress, April 2, 1917 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 that I should as- sume the responsibility of making. On the third 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 restraints 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 Government had some- what restrained the commanders of its undersea craft in conformity with its promise then given to us that passen- ger 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 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. The precautions taken were meagre and haphazard 11 12 PRESIDENT WILSON'S enough, as was proved in distressing instance after in- stance in the progress of the cruel and unmanly busi- ness, but a certain degree of restraint was observed. The new policy has swept every restriction aside. Vessels of every kind, whatever their flag, their character, their cargo, their destination, their errand, have been ruth- lessly 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 lat- ter were provided with safe conduct through the pro- scribed areas by the German Government itself and were distinguished by unmistakable marks of identity, have been sunk with the same reckless lack of compassion or of principle. I was for a little while unable to believe that such things would in fact be done by any government that had hitherto subscribed to the humane practices of civilized nations. International law had its origin in the attempt to set up some law which would be respected and ob- served 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 meagre enough results, indeed, after all was accom- plished 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 the Ger- man Government has swept aside under the plea of re- taliation and necessity and because it had no weapons which it could use at sea except these which it is impossi- ble 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 GREAT SPEECHES 13 intercourse of the world. I am not now thinking of the loss of property involved, immense and serious as that is, but only of the wanton and wholesale destruction of the lives of non-combatants, men, women, and children, engaged in pursuits which have always, even in the dark- est periods of modern history, been deemed innocent and legitimate. Property can be paid for ; the lives of peace- ful and innocent people cannot be. The present German submarine warfare against commerce is a warfare against mankind. It is a war against all nations. American ships have been sunk, American lives taken, in ways which it has stirred us very deeply to learn of, but the ships and peo- ple of other neutral and friendly nations have been sunk and overwhelmed in the waters in the same way. There has been no discrimination. The challenge is to all man- kind. 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 character 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. When I addressed the Congress on the twenty-sixth 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 impracticable. Because submarines are in effect outlaws when used as the German submarines have been used against merchant shipping, it is impossible to defend ships against their attacks as the law of nations 14 PRESIDENT WILSON'S 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 cir- cumstances, grim necessity indeed, to endeavor 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 pro- scribed, 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 pre- tensions 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. There is one choice we cannot make, we are incapable 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 vio- lated. The wrongs against which we now array ourselves are no common wrongs; they cut to the very roots of human life. With a profound sense of the solemn and even tragical character of the step I am taking and of the grave respon- sibilities which it involves, but in unhesitating obedience to what I deem my constitutional duty, I advise that the Congress declare the recent course of the Imperial Ger- man 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 GREAT SPEECHES 15 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 Government 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 inci- dent to that, the extension to those governments 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 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 supplying it with the best means of dealing with the enemy's sub- marines. It will involve the immediate addition to the armed forces of the United States already provided for by law in case of war of at least five hundred thousand 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 respectfully 16 PEESIDENT WILSON'S 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 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 sev- eral executive departments of the Government, for the consideration of your committees, measures for the accom- plishment 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 things in mind now that I had in mind when I addressed the Senate on the twenty-second of January last; the same that I had in mind when I addressed the Congress on the third of February and on the twenty-sixth of Feb- GREAT SPEECHES 17 ruary. Our object now, as then, is to vindicate the prin- ciples 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 purpose and of action as will henceforth ensure the observance of those principles. Neutrality is no longer feasible or desirable where the peace of the world is involved and the freedom of its peoples, and the menace to that peace and freedom lies in the existence of autocratic governments 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. 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. It was a war determined upon as wars used to be determined upon in the old, unhappy days when peoples were nowhere con- sulted by their rulers and wars were provoked and waged in the interest of dynasties or of little groups of ambi- tious men who were accustomed to use their fellow men as pawns and tools. Self-governed nations do not fill their neighbor states with spies or set the course of in- trigue 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 out only under cover and where no one has the right to ask 18 PRESIDENT WILSON'S questions. Cunningly contrived plans of deception or aggression, carried, it may be, from generation to gener- ation, can be worked out and kept from the light only within the privacy of courts or behind the carefully guarded confidences of a narrow and privileged class. They are happily impossible where public opinion com- mands and insists upon full information concerning all the nation 's affairs. A steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained except by a partnership of democratic nations. No auto- cratic 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 who could plan what they would and render account to no one would be a cor- ruption seated at its very heart. Only free peoples 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 hap- pening within the last few weeks in Russia ? 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. The autocracy that crowned the summit of her political structure, long as it had stood and terrible aa was the reality of its power, was not in fact Russian in origin, character, or purpose ; and now it has been shaken off and the great, generous Russian people have been added in all their native majesty and might to the forces GEEAT SPEECHES 19 that are fighting 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 present war it has filled our unsuspecting communities and even our offices of government with spies and set criminal intrigues every- where afoot against our national unity of counsel, our peace within and without, our industries and our com- merce. Indeed, it is now evident that its spies were here even before the war began ; and it is unhappily not a mat- ter of conjecture, but a fact proved in our courts of jus- tice 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. 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 ourselves were), but only in the selfish designs of a Gov- ernment that did what it pleased and told its people noth- ing. But they have played their part in serving to con- vince us at last that that Government entertains no real friendship for us and means to act against our peace and security at its convenience. That it means to stir up ene- mies against us at our very doors the intercepted note to the German Minister at Mexico City is eloquent evidence. We are accepting this challenge of hostile purpose because we know that in such a government, following 20 PRESIDENT WILSON'S 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 democratic governments of the world. We are now about to accept gage of battle with this natural foe to liberty and shall, if necessary, spend the whole force of the nation to check and nullify its pre- tensions 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 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 obed- ience. 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 material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We 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 rancour and without selfish object, 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 with- out 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, GREAT SPEECHES 21 indeed, avowed its unqualified endorsement and accept- ance of the reckless and lawless submarine warfare adopted now without disguise by the Imperial German Government, and it has therefore not been possible for this Government to receive Count Tarnowski, the Am- bassador recently accredited to this Government by the Imperial and Royal Government of Austria-Hungary; but that Government has not actually engaged in war- fare 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 defend- ing 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 towards a people or with the desire to bring any injury or disadvan- tage upon them, but only in armed opposition to an irre- sponsible government which has thrown aside all con- siderations 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 re-establishment of intimate relations of mutual advantage between us — however hard it be may for them, for the time being, to believe that this is spoken from our hearts. We have borne with their present gov- ernment through all these bitter months because of that friendship — 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 towards the millions of men and women of German birth and native sympathy who 22 PRESIDENT WILSON'S live amongst us and share our life, and we shall be proud to prove it towards 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 restraining 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 lifts its head at all, it will lift it only here and there and with- out countenance except from a lawless and malignant few. It is a distressing and oppressive duty, Gentlemen of the Congress, which I have performed in thus addressing you. There are, it may be, many months of fiery trial and sacrifice ahead of us. It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, 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 happi- ness and the peace which she ha£ treasured. God helping her, she can do no other. GREAT SPEECHES 23 THE DECLARATION OF WAR Sixty-Fifth Congress of the United States of America At the first session, begun and held at the City of Washington on Monday, the second day of April, one thousand nine hundred and seventeen. Joint resolution declaring that a state of war exists between the Imperial German Government and the Gov- ernment and the people of the United States and making provision to prosecute the same. Whereas the Imperial German Government has com- mitted 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 Govern- ment to carry on war against the Imperial German Gov- ernment ; and to bring the conflict to a successful termi- nation all of the resources of the country are hereby pledged by the Congress of the United States. Champ Clark, Speaker of the House of Representatives. Thos. R. Marshall, Vice-President of the United States and President of the Senate. Approved, April 6, 1917, Woodrow Wilson. 24 PRESIDENT WILSON'S PRESIDENT WILSON'S ADDRESS TO HIS FELLOW-COUNTRYMEN April 16, 1917 My Fellow-Countrymen : The entrance of our own beloved country into the grim and terrible war for democracy and human rights which has shaken the world creates so many problems of national life and action which call for immediate consideration and settlement that I hope you will permit me to address to you a few words of earnest counsel and appeal with regard to them. We are rapidly putting our navy upon an effective war footing and are about to create and equip a great army, but these are the simplest parts of the great task to which we have addressed ourselves. There is not a single selfish element, so far as I can see, in the cause we are fighting for. We are fighting for what we believe and wish to be the rights of mankind and for the future peace and se- curity of the world. To do this great thing worthily and successfully we must devote ourselves to the service without regard to profit or material advantage and with an energy and intelligence that will rise to the level of the enterprise itself. We must realize to the full how great the task is and how many things, how many kinds and elements of capacity and service and self-sacrifice, it involves. These, then, are the things we must do, and do well, besides fighting — the things without which mere fight- ing would be fruitless : We must supply abundant food for ourselves and for our armies and our seamen not only, but also for a large GEEAT SPEECHES 2fc part of the nations with whom we have now made coin mon cause, in whose support and by whose sides we shall be fighting; We must supply ships by the hundreds out of our ship- yards to carry to the other side of the sea, submarines or no submarines, what will every day be needed there, and abundant materials out of our fields and our mines and our factories with which not only to clothe and equip our own forces on land and sea but also to clothe and support our people for whom the gallant fellows under arms can no longer work, to help clothe and equip the armies with which we are co-operating in Europe, and to keep the looms and manufactories there in raw material ; coal to keep the fires going in ships at sea and in the fur- naces of hundreds of factories across the sea; steel out of which to make arms and ammunition both here and there ; rails for worn-out railways back of the fighting fronts; locomotives and rolling stock to take the place of those every day going to pieces; mules, horses, cattle for labor and for military service ; everything with which the people of England and France and Italy and Russia have usually supplied themselves but can not now afford the men, the materials, or the machinery to make. It is evident to every thinking man that our indus- tries, on the farms, in the shipyards, in the mines, in the factories, must be made more prolific and more effi- cient than ever and that they must be more economically managed and better adapted to the particular require- ments of our task than they have been ; and what I want to say is that the men and the women who devote their thought and their energy to these things will be serving the country and conducting the fight for peace and freedom just as truly and just as effectively as the men 26 PRESIDENT WILSON'S on the battlefield or in the trenches. The industrial forces of the country, men and women alike, will be a great national, a great international, Service Army — a notable and honored host engaged in the service of the nation and the world, the efficient friends and saviors of free men everywhere. Thousands, nay, hundreds of thousands, of men otherwise liable to military service will of right and necessity be excused from that service and assigned to the fundamental, sustaining work of the fields and factories and mines, and they will be as much part of the great patriotic forces of the nation as the men under fire. I take the liberty, therefore, of addressing this word to the farmers of the country and to all who work on the farms : The supreme need of our own nation and of the nations with which we are co-operating is an abundance of supplies, and especially of foodstuffs. The impor- tance of an adequate food supply, especially for the present year, is superlative. Without abundant food, alike for the armies and the peoples now at war, the whole great enterprise upon which we have embarked will break down and fail. The world 's food reserves are low. Not only during the present emergency but for some time after peace shall come both our own people and a large proportion of the people of Europe must rely upon the harvests in America. Upon the farmers of this coun- try, therefore, in large measure, rests the fate of the war and the fate of the nations. May the nation not count upon them to omit no step that will increase the produc- tion of their land or that will bring about the most effectual co-operation in the sale and distribution of their products? The time is short. It is of the most impera- tive importance that everything possible be done and GREAT SPEECHES 27 done immediately to make sure of large harvests. I call upon young men and old alike and upon the able-bodied boys of the land to accept and act upon this duty — to turn in hosts to the farms and make certain that no pains and no labor is lacking in this great matter. I particularly appeal to the farmers of the South to plant abundant foodstuffs as well as cotton. They can show their patriotism in no better or more convincing way than by resisting the great temptation of the pres- ent price of cotton and helping, helping upon a great scale, to feed the nation and the peoples everywhere who are fighting for their liberties and for our own. The variety of their crops will be the visible measure of their comprehension of their national duty. The Government of the United States and the govern- ments of the several States stand ready to co-operate. They will do everything possible to assist farmers in se- curing an adequate supply of seed, an adequate force of laborers when they are most needed, at harvest time, and the means of expediting shipments of fertilizers and farm machinery, as well as of the crops themselves when harvested. The course of trade shall be as unhampered as it is possible to make it and there shall be no unwar- ranted manipulation of the nation 's food supply by those who handle it on its way to the consumer. This is our opportunity to demonstrate the efficiency of a great De- mocracy and we shall not fall short of it ! This let me say to the middlemen of every sort, whether they are handling our foodstuffs or our raw materials of manufacture or the products of our mills and factories : The eyes of the country will be especially upon you. This is your opportunity for signal service, efficient and dis- interested. The country expects you, as it expects all 28 PRESIDENT WILSON'S others, to forego unusual profits, to organize and expedite shipments of supplies of every kind, but especially of food, with an eye to the service you are rendering and in the spirit of those who enlist in the ranks, for their people, not for themselves. I shall confidently expect you to deserve and win the confidence of people of every sort and station. To the men who run the railways of the country, "whether they be managers or operative employees, let me say that the railways are the arteries of the nation 's life and that upon them rests the immense responsibility of seeing to it that those arteries suffer no obstruction of any kind, no inefficiency or slackened power. To the merchant let me suggest the motto, "Small profits and quick service;" and to the shipbuilder the thought that the life of the war depends upon him. The food and the war supplies must be carried across the seas no matter how many ships are sent to the bottom. The places of those that go down must be supplied and supplied at once. To the miner let me say that he stands where the farmer does : the work of the world waits on him. If he slackens or fails, armies and statesmen are helpless. He also is enlisted in the great Service Army. The manu- facturer does not need to be told, I hope, that the nation looks to him to speed and perfect every process; and I want only to remind his employees that their service is absolutely indispensable and is counted on by every man who loves the country and its liberties. Let me suggest, also, that everyone who creates or culti- vates a garden helps, and helps greatly, to solve the problem of the feeding of the nations; and that every housewife who practices strict economy puts herself in the ranks of those who serve the nation. This is the time GREAT SPEECHES 29 for America to correct her unpardonable fault of waste- fulness and extravagance. Let every man and every woman assume the duty of careful, provident use and expenditure as a public duty, as a dictate of patriotism which no one can now expect ever to be excused or for- given for ignoring. In the hope that this statement of the needs of the nation and of the world in this hour of supreme crisis may stimulate those to whom it comes and remind all who need reminder of the solemn duties of a time such as the world has never seen before, I beg that all editors and pub- lishers everywhere will give as prominent publication and as wide circulation as possible to this appeal. I renture to suggest, also, to all advertising agencies that they would perhaps render a very substantial and timely service to the country if they would give it widespread repetition. And I hope that clergymen will not think the theme of it an unworthy or inappropriate subject of comment and homily from their pulpits. The supreme test of the nation has come. We must all speak, act, and serve together ! Woodbow Wilson. THE ARMY DRAFT LAW Essential Provisions as Quoted by the President in His Proclamation of May 18, 1917, Setting the Day of Registration Sec. 5. That all male persons between the ages of 21 and 30, both inclusive, shall be subject to registration in accordance with regulations to be prescribed by the presi- dent; and upon proclamation by the president or other public notice given by him or by his direction stating the time and place of such registration it shall be the duty of all persons of the designated ages, except officers and enlisted men of the regular army, the navy, and the na- tional guard and naval militia, while in the service of the United States, to present themselves for and submit to registration under the provisions of this act, and every such person shall be deemed to have notice of the re- quirements of this act upon the publication of said proc- lamation or other notice as aforesaid given by the presi- dent or by his direction ; and any person who shall will- fully fail or refuse to present himself for registration or to submit thereto as herein provided shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and shall, upon conviction in the District court of the United States having jurisdiction thereof, be punished by imprisonment for not more than one year, and shall thereupon be duly registered, provided that in the call of the docket precedence shall be given in courts trying the same to the trial of criminal proceedings under this act. 30 AEMY DRAFT LAW 31 Provided further, that persons shall be subject to reg- istration, as herein provided, who shall have attained their twenty-first birthday and who shall not have at- tained their thirty-first birthday on or before the day set for the registration, and all persons so registered shall be and remain subject to draft into the forces hereby au- thorized, unless exempted or excused therefrom as in this act provided. Provided, further, that in the case of temporary ab- sence from actual place of legal residence of any person liable to registration as provided herein, such registra- tion may be made by mail under regulations to be pre- scribed by the president. Sec. 6. That the president is hereby authorized to utilize the service of any or all departments and any or all officers or agents of the United States and of the sev- eral states, territories, and the District of Columbia, and subdivisions thereof, in the execution of this act, and all officers and agents of the United States and of the several states, territories, and subdivisions thereof, and of the District of Columbia, and all persons designated or ap- pointed under regulations prescribed by the president, whether such appointments are made by the president himself or by the governor or other officer of any state or territory to perform any duty in the execution of this act, are hereby required to perform such duty as the president shall order or direct, and all such officers and agents and persons so designated or appointed shall hereby have full authority for all acts done by them in the execution of this act by the direction of the president. Correspondence in the execution of this act may be car- ried in penalty envelopes bearing the frank of the war department. Any person charged as herein provided with the duty 32 ARMY DRAFT LAW of carrying into effect any of the provisions of this act or the regulations made or directions given thereunder who shall fail or neglect to perform such duty, and any person charged with such duty or having and exercising any authority under said act, regulations, or directions who shall knowingly make or be a party to the making of any false or incorrect registration, physical examina- tion, exemption, enlistment, enrollment, or muster; and any person who shall make or be a party to the making of any false statement or certificate as to the fitness or liability of himself or any other person for service under the provisions of this act or regulations made by the president thereunder, or otherwise evades or aids another to evade the requirements of this act or of said regula- tions, or who, in any manner, shall fail or neglect fully to perform any duty required of him in the execution of this act, shall, if not subject to military law, be guilty of a misdemeanor, and, upon conviction in the District court of the United States having jurisdiction thereof, be pun- ished by imprisonment for not more than one year, or, if subject to military law, shall be tried by court martial and suffer such punishment as a court martial may direct. PROCLAMATION OF MAY 18, 1917 Naming the Day of Registration (June 5) for All Citizens Liable to Draft Under the Provi- sions of the Foregoing Law I, Woodrow Wilson, president of the United States, do call upon the governor of each of the several states and territories, the board of commissioners of the District of Columbia, and all officers and agents of the several states and territories, of the District of Columbia, and of the eounties and municipalities therein, to perform certain duties in the execution of the foregoing law, which duties will be communicated to them directly in regulations of even date herewith. And I do further proclaim and give notice to all per- sons subject to registration in the several states and in the District of Columbia in accordance with the above law, that the time and place of such registration shall be between 7 a. m. and 9 p. m. on the 5th day of June, 1917, at the registration place in the precinct wherein they have their permanent homes. Those who shall have attained their twenty-first birth- day and who shall not have attained their thirty-first birthday on or before the day here named are required to register, excepting only officers and enlisted men of the regular army, the navy, the marine corps, and the national guard and naval militia while in the service of the United States, and officers in the officers ' reserve corps and enlisted men in the enlisted reserve corps while in active service. 33 34 PEESIDENT WILSON'S In the territories of Alaska, Hawaii, and Porto Rico a day for registration will be named in a later proclamation. And I do charge those who, through sickness, shall be unable to present themselves for registration that they apply on or before the day of registration to the county clerk of the county where they may be for instructions as to how they may be registered by agent. Those who expect to be absent on the day named from the counties in which they have their permanent homes may register by mail, but their mailed registration cards must reach the places in which they have their perma- nent homes by the day named herein. They should apply as soon as practicable to the county clerk of the county wherein they may be for instructions as to how they may accomplish their registration by mail. In case such persons as, through sickness or absence, may be unable to present themselves personally for reg- istration shall be sojourning in cities of over 30,000 pop- ulation they shall apply to the city clerk of the city wherein they may be sojourning rather than to the clerk of the county. The clerks of counties and of cities of over 30,000 popu- lation in which numerous applications from the sick and from nonresidents are expected are authorized to estab- lish such sub-agencies and to employ and deputize such clerical force as may be necessary to accommodate these applications. The power against which we are arrayed has sought to impose its will upon the world by force. To this end it has increased armament until it has changed the face of war. In the sense in which we have been wont to think of armies there are no armies in this struggle. There are entire nations armed. Thus, the men who remain to till GREAT SPEECHES 35 the soil and man the factories are no less a part of the army than the men beneath the battle flags. It must be so with us. It is not an army that we must shape and train for war ; it is a nation. To this end our people must draw close in one compact front against a common foe. But this cannot be if each man pursue a private purpose. All must pursue one pur- pose. The nation needs all men ; but it needs each man, not in the field that will most pleasure him, but in the endeavor that will best serve the common good. Thus, though a sharpshooter pleases to operate a trip- hammer for the forging of great guns, and an expert machinist desires to march with the flag, the nation is being served only when the sharpshooter marches and the machinist remains at his levers. The whole nation must be a team in which each man shall play the part for which he is best fitted. To this end congress has pro- vided that the nation shall be organized for war by selec- tion and that each man shall be classified for service in the place to which it shall best serve the general good to call him. The significance of this cannot be overstated. It is a new thing in our history and a landmark in our progress. It is a new manner of accepting and vitalizing our duty to give ourselves with thoughtful devotion to the common purpose of us all. It is in no sense a conscription of the unwilling ; it is rather selection from a nation which has volunteered in mass. It is no more a choosing of those who shall march with the colors than it is a selection of those who shall serve an equally necessary and devoted purpose in the industries that lie behind the battle line. The day here named is the time upon which all shall present themselves for assignment to their tasks. It is for that reason destined to be remembered as one of the 36 PEESIDENT WILSON'S most conspicuous moments in our history. It is nothing less than the day upon which the manhood of the country shall step forward in one solid rank in defense of the ideals to which this nation is consecrated. It is impor- tant to those, ideals no less than to the pride of this gen- eration in manifesting its devotion to them that there be no gaps in the ranks. It is essential that the day be approached in thoughtful apprehension of its significance and that we accord to it the honor and the meaning that it deserves. Our industrial need prescribes that it be not made a technical holiday, but the stern sacrifice that is before us urges that it be carried in all our hearts as a great day of patriotic devotion and obligation when the duty shall lie upon every man, whether he is himself to be registered or not, to see to it that the name of every male person of the designated ages is written on these lists of honor. In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed. Done at the city of Washington this 18th day of May in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and seventeen and of the independence of the United States of America the one hundred and forty-first. Woodrow Wilson. DECLINES COL. ROOSEVELT'S OFFER When Congress authorized Mr. Wilson to accept Col. Roosevelt's offer to raise four divisions of volunteer troops for ' ' immediate service in Prance, ' ' the President declined to avail himself of the authority, and made the following statement, May 18, 1917: GBEAT SPEECHES 37 I shall not avail myself, at any rate at the present stage of the war, of the authorization conferred by the act to organize volunteer divisions. To do so would seriously interfere with the carrying out of the chief and most immediately important-purpose contemplated by this leg- islation, the prompt creation and early use of an effective army, and would contribute practically nothing to the effective strength of the armies now engaged against Germany. I understand that the section of this act which author- izes the creation of volunteer divisions in addition to the draft was added with a view to providing an independent oommand for Mr. Roosevelt and giving the military au- thorities an opportunity to use his fine vigor and enthu- siasm in recruiting the forces now at the western front. It would be very agreeable to me to pay Mr. Roosevelt this compliment, and the allies the compliment of sending to their aid one of our most distinguished public men, an ex-president who has rendered many conspicuous public services and proved his gallantry in many striking ways. Politically, too, it would no doubt have a very fine effect and make a profound impression. But this is not the time or the occasion for compliment or for any action not calculated to contribute to the immediate success of the war. The business now in hand is undramatic, practical, and of scientific definiteness and precision. I shall act with regard to it at every step and in every particular under expert and professional advice, from both sides of the water. That advice is that the men most needed are men of the ages contemplated in the draft provisions of the pres- ent bill, not men of the age and sort contemplated in the section which authorizes the formation of volunteer units, 38 PKESIDENT WILSON'S and that for the preliminary training of the men who are to be drafted we shall need all of our experienced officers. Mr. Roosevelt .told me, when I had the pleasure of seeing him a few weeks ago, that he would wish to have associated with him some of the most effective officers of the regular army. He named many of those whom he would desire to have designated for the service, and they were men who cannot possibly be spared from the too small force of officers at our command for the much more pressing and necessary duty of training regular troops to be put into the field in France and Belgium as fast as they can be got ready. The first troops sent to France will be taken from the present forces of the regular army and will be under the command of trained soldiers only. The responsibility for the successful conduct of our own part in this great war rests upon me. I could not escape it if I would. I am too much interested in the cause we are fighting for to be interested in anything but success. The issues involved are too immense for me to take into consideration anything whatever except the best, most effective, most immediate means of military action. What these means are I know from the mouths of men who have seen war as it is now conducted, who have no illusions, and to whom the whole grim matter is a matter of business. I shall center my attention upon those means and let everything else wait. I should be deeply to blame should I do otherwise, whatever the argument of policy or of personal gratification or advantage. GEEAT SPEECHES 39 STATEMENT ON THE FOOD LAW President Wilson's Explanation, May 19, 1917, of the Food-Control Program of the Administration It is very desirable, in order to prevent misunderstand- ings or alarms and to assure co-operation in a vital matter, that the country should understand exactly the scope and purpose of the very great powers which I have thought it necessary in the circumstances to ask the Congress to put in my hands with regard to our food supplies. Those powers are very great indeed, but they are no greater than it has proved necessary to lodge in the other governments which are conducting this momentous war, and their object is stimulation and conservation, not ar- bitrary restraint or injurious interference with the nor- mal processes of production. They are intended to benefit and assist the farmer and all those who play a legitimate part in the preparation, distribution and mar- keting of foodstuffs. It is proposed to draw a sharp line of distinction be- tween the normal activities of the government represented in the Department of Agriculture in reference to food production, conservation and marketing on the one hand and the emergency activities necessitated by the war in reference to the regulation of food distribution and con- sumption on the other. All measures intended directly to extend the normal activities of the Department of Agriculture, in reference to the production, conservation and the marketing of farm crops, will be administered, as in normal times, through that department, and the powers asked for over distribution and consumption, over exports, imports, 40 PRESIDENT WILSON'S prices, purchase and requisition of commodities, storing and the like which may require regulation during the war will be placed in the hands of a commissioner of food administration appointed by the President and directly responsible to him. The objects sought to be served by the legislation asked for are : Full inquiry into the existing available stocks of foodstuffs and into the costs and practices of the vari- ous food-producing and distributing trades ; the preven- tion of all unwarranted hoarding of every kind and of the control of the foodstuffs by persons who are not in any legitimate sense producers, dealers or traders; the requisitioning when necessary for the public use of food supplies and of the equipment necessary for handling them properly ; the licensing of wholesome and legitimate mixtures and milling percentages, and the prohibition of the unnecessary or wasteful use of foods. Authority is asked also to establish prices — but not in order to limit the profits of the farmers, but only to guar- antee to them when necessary a minimum price which will insure them a profit where they are asked to attempt new crops, and to secure the consumer against extortion by breaking up corners and attempts at speculation when they occur by fixing temporarily a reasonable price at which middlemen must sell. I have asked Mr. Herbert C. Hoover to undertake this all-important task of food administration. He has ex- pressed his willingness to do so on condition that he is to receive no payment for his services and that the whole of the force under him, exclusive of clerical assistance, shall be employed so far as possible upon the same volunteer basis. He has expressed his confidence that this difficult GEEAT SPEECHES 41 matter of food administration can be successfully accom- plished through the voluntary co-operation and direction of legitimate distributors of foodstuffs and with the help of the women of the country. Although it is absolutely necessary that unquestion- able powers shall be placed in my hands in order to insure the success of this administration of the food supplies of the country, I am confident that the exercise of those powers will be necessary only in the few cases where some small and selfish minority proves unwilling to put the nation 's interests above personal advantage, and that the whole country will heartily support Mr. Hoover's efforts by supplying the necessary volunteer agencies through- out the country for the intelligent control of food con- sumption and securing the co-operation of the most capa- ble leaders of the very interests most directly affected, that the exercise of the powers deputed to him will rest very successfully upon the good-will and co-operation of the people themselves, and that the ordinary economic machinery of the country will be left substantially undis- turbed. The proposed food administration is intended, of course, only to meet a manifest emergency and to con- tinue only while the war lasts. Since it will be com- posed for the most part of volunteers there need be no fear of the possibility of a permanent bureaucracy arising out of it. All control of consumption will disappear when the emergency has passed. It is with that object in view that the administration considers it to be of pre- eminent importance that the existing associations of pro- ducers and distributors of foodstuffs should be mobilized and made use of on a volunteer basis. This successful conduct of the projected food adminis- 42 PRESIDENT WILSON'S tration by such means will be the finest possible demon- stration of the willingness, the ability and the efficiency of democracy, and of its justified reliance upon the free- dom of individual initiative. The last thing that any American could contemplate with equanimity would be the introduction of anything resembling Prussian autoc- racy into the food control of this country. It is of vital interest and importance to every man who produces food and to every man who takes part in its distribution that these policies thus liberally adminis- tered should succeed and succeed altogether. It is only in that way that we can prove it to be absolutely unnec- essary to resort to the rigorous and drastic measures which have proved to be necessary in some of the Euro- pean countries. GREAT SPEECHES 43 AMERICAN NEUTRALITY Statement of the President, August 19, 1914, in the Early Days of the Great War My Fellow-Countrymen : I suppose that every thoughtful man in America has asked himself, during these last troubled weeks, what influence the European war may exert upon the United States, and I take the liberty of addressing a few words to you in order to point out that it is entirely within our own choice what its effects upon us will be and to urge very earnestly upon you the sort of speech and conduct which will best safeguard the Nation against distress and disaster. The effect of the war upon the United States will de- pend upon what American citizens say and do. Every man who really loves America will act and speak in the true spirit of neutrality, which is the spirit of impar- tiality and fairness and friendliness to all concerned. The spirit of the Nation in this critical matter will be determined largely by what individuals and society and those gathered in public meetings do and say, upon what newspapers and magazines contain, upon what ministers utter in their pulpits, and men proclaim as their opinions on the street. The people of the United States are drawn from many nations, and chiefly from the nations now at war. It is natural and inevitable that there should be the utmost variety of sympathy and desire among them with regard to the issues and circumstances of the conflict. Some will wish one nation, others another, to succeed in the momentous struggle. It will be easy to excite passion and difficult to allay it. Those responsible for exciting it 44 PKESIDENT WILSON'S will assume a heavy responsibility, responsibility for no less a thing than that the people of the United States, whose love of their Country and whose loyalty to its Gov- ernment should unite them as Americans all, bound in honor and affection to think first of her and her interests, may be divided in camps of hostile opinion, hot against each other, involved in the war itself in impulse and opinion if not in action. Such divisions among us would be fatal to our peace of mind and might seriously stand in the way of the proper performance of our duty as the one great nation at peace, the one people holding itself ready to play a part of impartial mediation and speak the counsels of peace and accommodation, not as a partisan, but as a friend. I venture, therefore, my fellow-countrymen, to speak a solemn word of warning to you against that deepest, most subtle, most essential breach of neutrality which may spring out of partisanship, out of passionately taking sides. The United States must be neutral in fact as well as in name during these days that are to try men 's souls. We must be impartial in thought as well as in action, must put a curb upon our sentiments as well as upon every transaction that might be construed as a preference of one party to the struggle before another. My thought is of America. I am speaking, I feel sure, the earnest wish and purpose of every thoughtful Amer- ican that this great country of ours, which is, of course, the first in our thoughts and in our hearts, should show herself in this time of peculiar trial a Nation fit beyond others to exhibit the fine poise of undisturbed judgment, the dignity of self-control, the efficiency of dispassionate action; a Nation that neither sits in judgment upon GREAT SPEECHES 45 others nor is disturbed in her own counsels and which keeps herself fit and free to do what is honest and disin- terested and truly serviceable for the peace of the world. Shall we not resolve to put upon ourselves the restraints which will bring to our people the happiness and the great and lasting influence for peace we covet for them ? 46 PRESIDENT WILSON'S ADDRESS TO CONGRESS ON RAISING ADDITIONAL REVENUE September 4, 1914 Gentlemen op the Congress: I come to you today to discharge a duty which I wish with all my heart I might have been spared; but it is a very clear duty, and therefore I perform it without hesi- tation or apology. I come to ask very earnestly that additional revenue be provided for the Government. During the month of August there was, as compared with the corresponding month of last year, a falling off of $10,629,538 in the revenues collected from customs. A continuation of this decrease in the same proportion throughout the current fiscal year would probably mean a loss of customs revenues of from sixty to one hundred millions. I need not tell you to what this falling off is due. It is due, in chief part, not to the reductions re- cently made in the customs duties, but to the great de- crease in importations ; and that is due to the extraordi- nary extent of the industrial area affected by the present war in Europe. Conditions have arisen which no man foresaw ; they affect the whole world of commerce and eco- nomic production ; and they must be faced and dealt with. It would be very unwise to postpone dealing with them. Delay in such a matter and in the particular circum- stances in which we now find ourselves as a nation might involve consequences of the most embarrassing and de- plorable sort, for which I, for one, would not care to be responsible. It would be very dangerous in the present circumstances to create a moment's doubt as to the strength and sufficiency of the Treasury of the United States, its ability to assist, to steady, and sustain the GREAT SPEECHES 47 financial operations of the country's business. If the Treasury is known, or even thought, to be weak, where will be our peace of mind ? The whole industrial activity of the country would be chilled and demoralized. Just now the peculiarly difficult financial problems of the mo- ment are being. successfully dealt with, with great self- possession and good sense and very sound judgment ; but they are only in process of being worked out. If the process of solution is to be completed, no one must be given reason to doubt the solidity and adequacy of the Treasury of the Government which stands behind the whole method by which our difficulties are being met and handled. The Treasury itself could get along for a considerable period, no doubt, without immediate resort to new sources of taxation. But at what cost to the business of the com- munity? Approximately $75,000,000, a large part of the present Treasury balance, is now on deposit with national banks distributed throughout the country. It is deposited, of course, on call. I need not point out to you what the probable consequences of inconvenience and distress and confusion would be if the diminishing in- come of the Treasury should make it necessary rapidly to withdraw these deposits. And yet without additional revenue that plainly might become necessary, and the time when it became necessary could not be controlled or determined by the convenience of the business of the country. It would have to be determined by the opera- tions and necessities of the Treasury itself. Such risks are not necessary and ought not to be run. We can not too scrupulously or carefully safeguard a financial situ- ation which is at best, while war continues in Europe, dif- ficult and abnormal. Hesitation and delay are the worst forms of bad policy under such conditions. 48 PBESIDENT WILSON'S And we ought not to borrow. "We ought to resort to taxation, however we may regret the necessity of putting additional temporary burdens on our people. To sell bonds would be to make a most untimely and unjustifiable demand on the money market; untimely, because this is manifestly not the time to withdraw working capital from other uses to pay the Government's bills; unjustifiable, because unnecessary. The country is able to pay any just and reasonable taxes without distress. And to every other form of borrowing, whether for long periods or for short, there is the same objection. These are not the cir- cumstances, this is at this particular moment and in this particular exigency not the market, to borrow large sums of money. What we are seeking is to ease and assist every financial transaction, not to add a single additional em- barrassment to the situation. The people of this country are both intelligent and profoundly patriotic. They are ready to meet the present conditions in the right way and to support the Government with generous self-denial. They know and understand, and will be intolerant only of those who dodge responsibility or are not frank with them. The occasion is not of our own making. We had no part in making it. But it is here. It affects us as di- rectly and palpably almost as if we were participants in the circumstances which gave rise to it. We must accept the inevitable with calm judgment and unruffled spirits, like men accustomed to deal with the unexpected, habitu- ated to take care of themselves, masters of their own affairs and their own fortunes. We shall pay the bill, though we did not deliberately incur it. In order to meet every demand upon the Treasury with- out delay or peradventure and in order to keep the Treas- ury strong, unquestionably strong, and strong throughout GREAT SPEECHES 49 the present anxieties, I respectfully urge that an addi- tional revenue of $100,000,000 be raised through internal taxes devised in your wisdom to meet the emergency. The only suggestion I take the liberty of making is that such sources of revenue be chosen as will begin to yield at once and yield with a certain and constant flow. I can not close without expressing the confidence with which I approach a Congress, with regard to this or any other matter, which has shown so untiring a devotion to public duty, which has responded to the needs of the Nation throughout a long season despite inevitable fatigue and personal sacrifice, and so large a proportion of whose Members have devoted their whole time and energy to the business of the country. 50 PRESIDENT WILSON'S ANNUAL ADDRESS (MESSAGE) TO CONGRESS December 8, 1914 Gentlemen of the Congress: The session upon which you are now entering will be the closing session of the Sixty-third Congress, a Con- gress, I venture to say, which will long be remembered for the great body of thoughtful and constructive work which it has done, in loyal response to the thought and needs of the country. I should like in this address to review the notable record and try to make adequate as- sessment of it ; but no doubt we stand too near the work that has been done and are ourselves too much part of it to play the part of historians toward it. Our program of legislation with regard to the regula- tion of business is now virtually complete. It has been put forth, as we intended, as a whole, and leaves no con- jecture as to what is to follow. The road at last lies clear and firm before business. It is a road which it can travel without fear or embarrassment. It is the road to ungrudged, unclouded success. In it every honest man, every man who believes that the public interest is part of his own interest, may walk with perfect confidence. Moreover, our thoughts are now more of the future than of the past. "While we have worked at our tasks of peace the circumstances of the whole age have been al- tered by war. What we have done for our own land and our own people we did with the best that was in us, whether of character or of intelligence, with sober enthu- siasm and a confidence in the principles upon which we were acting which sustained us at every step of the diffi- cult undertaking ; but it is done. It has passed from our GREAT SPEECHES 51 hands. It is now an established part of the legislation of the country. Its usefulness, its effects will disclose themselves in experience. What chiefly strikes us now, as we look about us during these closing days of a year which will be forever memorable in the history of the world, is that we face new tasks, have been facing them these six months, must face them in the months to come — face them without partisan feeling, like men who have forgotten everything but a common duty and the fact that we are representatives of a great people whose thought is not of us but of what America owes to herself and to all mankind in such circumstances as these upon which we look amazed and anxious. War has interrupted the means of trade not only but elso the processes of production. In Europe it is destroy- ing men and resources wholesale and upon a scale unpre- cedented and appalling. There is reason to fear that the time is near, if it be not already at hand, when several of the countries of Europe will find it difficult to do for their people what they have hitherto been always easily able to do — many essential and fundamental things. At any rate, they will need our help and our manifold serv- ices as they have never needed them before; and we should be ready, more fit and ready than we have ever been. It is of equal consequence that the nations whom Eu- rope has usually supplied with innumerable articles of manufacture and commerce of which they are in constant need and without which their economic development halts and stands still, can now get only a small part of what they formerly imported and eagerly look to us to supply their all but empty markets. This is particularly true of our own neighbors, the States, great and small, of Cen- tral and South America. Their lines of trade have hith- 52 PKESIDENT WILSON'S erto run chiefly athwart the seas, not to our ports but to the ports of Great Britain and of the older continent of Europe. I do not stop to inquire why, or to make any comment on probable causes. What interests us just now is not the explanation but the fact, and our duty and opportunity in the presence of it. Here are markets which we must supply, and we must find the means of action. The United States, this great people for whom we speak and act, should be ready, as never before, to serve itself and to serve mankind; ready with its re- sources, its energies, its forces of production, and its means of distribution. It is a very practical matter, a matter of ways and means. We have the resources, but are we fully ready to use them? And, if we can make ready what we have, have we the means at hand to distribute it? We are not fully ready; neither have we the means of distribu- tion. We are willing, but we are not fully able. We have the wish to serve and to serve greatly, generously ; but we are not prepared as we should be. We are not ready to mobilize our resources at once. We are not prepared to use them immediately and at their best, with- out delay and without waste. To speak plainly, we have grossly erred in the way in which we have stunted and hindered the development of our merchant marine. And now, when we need ships, we have not got them. We have year after year debated, without end or conclusion, the best policy to pursue with, regard to the use of the ores and forests and water powers of our national domain in the rich States of the West, when we should have acted ; and they are still locked up. The key is still turned upon them, the door shut fast at which thousands of vigorous men, full of initiative, knock GEEAT SPEECHES 53 clamorously for admittance. The water power of our navigable streams outside the national domain also, even in the eastern States, where we have worked and planned for generations, is still not used as it might be, because we will and we won 't ; because the laws we have made do not intelligently balance encouragement against restraint. We withhold by regulation. I have come to ask you to remedy and correct these mistakes and omissions, even at this short session of a Congress which would certainly seem to have done all the work that could reasonably be expected of it. The time and the circumstances are extraordinary, and so must our efforts be also. Fortunately, two great measures, finely conceived, the one to unlock, with proper safeguards, the resources of the national domain, the other to encourage the use of the navigable waters outside that domain for the genera- tion of power, have already passed the House of Repre- sentatives and are ready for immediate consideration and action by the Senate. With the deepest earnestness I urge their prompt passage. In them both we turn our backs upon hesitation and makeshift and formulate a genuine policy of use and conservation, in the best sense of those words. We owe the one measure not only to the people of that great western country for whose free and systematic development, as it seems to me, our legis- lation has done so little, but also to the people of the Nation as a whole; and we as clearly owe the other in fulfillment of our repeated promises that the water power of the country should in fact as well as in name be put at the disposal of great industries which can make eco- nomical and profitable use of it, the rights of the public being adequately guarded the while, and monopoly in the use prevented. To have begun such measures and 54 PKESIDENT WILSON'S not completed them would indeed mar the record of this great Congress very seriously. I hope and confidently believe that they will be completed. And there is another great piece of legislation which awaits and should receive the sanction of the Senate: I mean the bill which gives a larger measure of self-gov- ernment to the people of the Philippines. How better, in this time of anxious questioning and perplexed policy, could we show our confidence in the principles of lib- erty, as the source as well as the expression of life, how better could we demonstrate our own self-possession and steadfastness in the courses of justice and disinterested- ness than by thus going calmly forward to fulfill our promises to a dependent people, who will now look more anxiously than ever to see whether we have indeed the liberality, the unselfishness, the courage, the faith we have boasted and professed. I can not believe that the Senate will let this great measure of constructive justice await the action of another Congress. Its passage would nobly crown the record of these two years of memorable labor. But I think that you will agree with me that this does not complete the toll of our duty. How are we to carry our goods to the empty markets of which I have spoken if we have not the ships ? How are we to build up a great trade if we have not the certain and constant means of transportation upon which all profitable and useful com- merce depends ? And how are we to get the ships if we wait for the trade to develop without them ? To correct the many mistakes by which we have discouraged and all but destroyed the merchant marine of the country, to retrace the steps by which we have, it seems almost de- liberately, withdrawn our flag from the seas, except GKEAT SPEECHES 55 where, here and there, a ship of war is bidden carry it or some wandering yacht displays it, would take a long time and involve many detailed items of legislation, and the trade which we ought immediately to handle would disappear or find other channels while we debated the items. The case is not unlike that wh'icK confronted us when our own continent was to be opened up to settlement and industry, and we needed long lines of railway, extended means of transportation prepared beforehand, if devel- opment was not to lag intolerably and wait interminably. We lavishly subsidized the building of transcontinental railroads. "We look back upon that with regret now, be- cause the subsidies led to many scandals of which we are ashamed ; but we know that the railroads had to be built, and if we had it to do over again we should of course build them, but in another way. Therefore I propose another way of providing the means of transportation, which must precede, not tardily follow, the development of our trade with our neighbor states of America. It may seem a reversal of the natural order of things, but it is true, that the routes of trade must be actually opened — by many ships and regular sailings and moderate charges — before streams of merchandise will flow freely and profitably through them. Hence the pending shipping bill, discussed at the last session but as yet passed by neither House. In my judg- ment such legislation is imperatively needed and can not wisely be postponed. The Government must open these gates of trade, and open them wide ; open them before it is altogether profitable to open them, or altogether rea- sonable to ask private capital to open them at a venture. It is not a question of the Government monopolizing the field. It should take action to make it certain that trans- 56 PKESIDENT WILSON'S portation at reasonable rates will be promptly provided, even where the carriage is not at first profitable ; and then, when the carriage has become sufficiently profitable to attract and engage private capital, and engage it in abundance, the Government ought to withdraw. I very earnestly hope that the Congress will be of this opinion, and that both Houses will adopt this exceedingly impor- tant bill. The great subject of rural credits still remains to be dealt with, and it is a matter of deep regret that the diffi- culties of the subject have seemed to render it impossible to complete a bill for passage at this session. But it can not be perfected yet, and therefore there are no other constructive measures the necessity for which I will at this time call your attention to ; but I would be negligent of a very manifest duty were I not to call the attention of the Senate to the fact that the proposed convention for safety at sea awaits its confirmation and that the limit fixed in the convention itself for its acceptance is the last day of the present month. The conference in which this convention originated was called by the United States; the representatives of the United States played a very influential part indeed in framing the provisions of the proposed convention; and those provisions are in them- selves for the most part admirable. It would hardly be consistent with the part we have played in the whole matter to let it drop and go by the board as if forgotten and neglected. It was ratified in May last by the German Government and in August by the Parliament of Great Britain. It marks a most hopeful and decided advance in international civilization. We should show our earnest good faith in a great matter by adding our own acceptance of it. GREAT SPEECHES 57 There is another matter of which I must make special mention, if I am to discharge my conscience, lest it should escape your attention. It may seem a very small thing. It affects only a single item of appropriation. But many human lives and many great enterprises hang upon it. It is the matter of making adequate provision for the survey and charting of our coasts. It is immediately pressing and exigent in connection with the immense coast line of Alaska, a coast line greater than that of the United States themselves, though it is also very impor- tant indeed with regard to the older coasts of the conti- nent. We can not use our great Alaskan domain, ships will not ply thither, if those coasts and their many hidden dangers are not thoroughly surveyed and charted. The work is incomplete at almost every point. Ships and lives have been lost in threading what were supposed to be well-known main channels. We have not provided adequate vessels or adequate machinery for the survey and charting. We have used old vessels that were not big enough or strong enough and which were so nearly unseaworthy that our inspectors would not have allowed private owners to send them to sea. This is a matter which, as I have said, seems small, but is iu reality very great. Its importance has only to be looked into to be appreciated. Before I close may I say a few words upon two topics, much discussed out of doors, upon which it is highly im- portant that our judgments should be clear, definite, and steadfast ? One of these is economy in government expenditures. The duty of economy is not debatable. It is manifest and imperative. In the appropriations we pass we are spending the money of the great people whose servants 58 PRESIDENT WILSON'S we are — not our own. "We are trustees and responsible stewards in the spending. The only thing debatable and upon which we should be careful to make our thought and purpose clear is the kind of economy demanded of us. I assert with the greatest confidence that the people of the United States are not jealous of the amount their Government costs if they are sure that they get what they need and desire for the outlay, that the money is being spent for objects of which they approve, and that it is being applied with good business sense and manage- ment. Governments grow, piecemeal, both in their tasks and in the means by which those tasks are to be performed, and very few Governments are organized, I venture to say, as wise and experienced business men would organize them if they had a clean sheet of paper to write upon. Certainly the Government of the United States is not. I think that it is generally agreed that there should be a systematic reorganization and reassembling of its parts so as to secure greater efficiency and effect considerable savings in expense. But the amount of money saved in that way would, I believe, though no doubt considerable in itself, running, it may be, into the millions, be rela- tively small — small, I mean, in proportion to the total necessary outlays of the Government. It would be thor- oughly worth effecting, as every saving would, great or small. Our duty is not altered by the scale of the saving. But my point is that the people of the United States do not wish to curtail the activities of this Government ; they wish, rather, to enlarge them; and with every enlarge- ment, with the mere growth, indeed, of the country itself, there must come, of course, the inevitable increase of ex- pense. The sort of economy we ought to practice may be effected, and ought to be effected, by a careful study and GREAT SPEECHES 59 assessment of the tasks to be performed ; and the money- spent ought to be made to yield the best possible returns in efficiency and achievement And, like good stewards, we should so account for every dollar of our appropria- tions as to make it perfectly evident what it was spent for and in what way it was spent. It is not expenditure but extravagance that we should fear being criticized for; not paying for the legitimate enterprises and undertakings of a great Government whose people command what it should do, but adding what will benefit only a few or pouring money out for what need not have been undertaken at all or might have been postponed or better and more economically con- ceived and carried out. The Nation is not niggardly ; it is very generous. It will chide us only if we forget for whom we pay money out and whose money it is we pay. These are large and general standards, but they are not very difficult of application to particular cases. The other topic I shall take leave to mention goes deeper into the principles of our national life and policy. It is the subject of national defense. It can not be discussed without first answering some very searching questions. It is said in some quarters that we are not prepared for war. What is meant by being prepared ? Is it meant that we are not ready upon brief notice to put a nation in the field, a nation of men trained to arms ? Of course we are not ready to do that ; and we shall never be in time of peace so long as we retain our present political principles and institutions. And what is it that it is suggested we should be prepared to do ? To defend ourselves against attack? We have always found means to do that, and shall find them whenever it is necessary without calling our people away from their 60 PEESIDENT WILSON'S necessary tasks to render compulsory military service in times of peace. Allow me to speak with great plainness and directness upon this great matter and to avow my convictions with deep earnestness. I have tried to know what America is, what her people think, what they are, what they most cherish and hold dear. I hope that some of their finer passions are in my own heart — some of the great concep- tions and desires which gave birth to this Government and which have made the voice of this people a voice of peace and hope and liberty among the peoples of the irorld, and that, speaking my own thoughts, I shall, at least in part, speak theirs also, however faintly and inade- quately, upon this vital matter. We are at peace with all the world. No one who speaks counsel based on fact or drawn from a just and candid interpretation of realities can say that there is reason to fear that from any quarter our independence or the in- tegrity of our territory is threatened. Dread of the power of any other nation we are incapable of. We are not jealous of rivalry in the fields of commerce or of any other peaceful achievement. We mean to live our own lives as we will; but we mean also to let live. We are, indeed, a true friend to all the nations of the world, be- cause we threaten none, covet the possessions of none, desire the overthrow of none. Our friendship can be accepted and is accepted without reservation, because it is offered in a spirit and for a purpose which no one need ever question or suspect. Therein lies our greatness. We are the champions of peace and of concord. And we should be very jealous of this distinction which we have sought to earn. Just now we should be particularly jeal- ous of it, because it is our dearest present hope that this character and reputation may presently, in God's provi- GREAT SPEECHES 61 dence, bring us an opportunity such as has seldom been vouchsafed any nation, the opportunity to counsel and obtain peace in the world and reconciliation and a healing settlement of many a matter that has cooled and inter- rupted the friendship of nations. This is the time above all others when we should wish and resolve to keep our strength by self-possession, our influence by preserving our ancient principles of action. From the first we have had a clear and settled policy with regard to military establishments. We never have had, and while we retain our present principles and ideals we never shall have, a large standing army. If asked, Are you ready to defend yourselves ? we reply, Most as- suredly, to the utmost ; and yet we shall not turn America into a military camp. We will not ask our young men to spend the best years of their lives making soldiers of themselves. There is another sort of energy in us. It will know how to declare itself and make itself effective should occasion arise. And especially when half the world is on fire we shall be careful to make our moral insurance against the spread of the conflagration very definite and certain and adequate indeed. Let us remind ourselves, therefore, of the only thing we can do or will do. We must depend in every time of national peril, in the future as in the past, not upon a standing army, nor yet upon a reserve army, but upon a citizenry trained and accustomed to arms. It will be right enough, right American policy, based upon our accustomed principles and practices, to provide a system by which every citizen who will volunteer for the train- ing may be made familiar with the use of modern arms, the rudiments of drill and maneuver, and the mainte- nance and sanitation of camps. We should encourage 62 PRESIDENT WILSON'S such training and make it a means of discipline which our young men will learn to value. It is right that we should provide it not only, but that we should make it as attractive as possible, and so induce our young men to undergo it at such times as they can command a little freedom and can seek the physical development they need, for mere health's sake, if for nothing more. Every means by which such things can be stimulated is legiti- mate, and such a method smacks of true American ideas. It is right, too, that the National Guard of the States should be developed and strengthened by every means which is not inconsistent with our obligations to our own people or with the established policy of our Government. And this, also, not because the time or occasion specially calls for such measures, but because it should be our con- stant policy to make these provisions for our national peace and safety. More than this carries with it a reversal of the whole history and character of our polity. More than this, proposed at this time, permit me to say, would mean merely that we had lost our self-possession, that we had been thrown off our balance by a war with which we have nothing to do, whose causes can not touch us, whose very existence affords us opportunities of friendship and dis- interested service which should make us ashamed of any thought of hostility or fearful preparation for trouble. This is assuredly the opportunity for which a people and a government like ours were raised up, the opportunity not only to speak but actually to embody and exemplify the counsels of peace and amity and the lasting concord which is based on justice and fair and generous dealing. A powerful navy we have always regarded as our proper and natural means of defense ; and it has always been of defense that we have thought, never of aggres- GEEAT SPEECHES 63 sion or of conquest. But who shall tell us now what sort of a navy to build? We shall take leave to be strong upon the seas, in the future as in the past ; and there will be no thought of offense or of provocation in that. Our ships are our natural bulwarks. "When will the experts tell us just what kind we should construct — and when will they be right for ten years together, if the relative efficiency of craft of different kinds and uses continues to change as we have seen it change under our very eyes in these last few months. But I turn away from the subject. It is not new. There is no new need to discuss it. We shall not alter our attitude toward it because some amongst us are nervous and excited. We shall easily and sensibly agree upon a policy of defense. The question has not changed its aspect because the times are not normal. Our policy will not be for an occasion. It will be conceived as a permanent and settled thing, which we will pursue at all seasons, without haste and after a fashion perfectly consistent with the peace of the world, and the abiding friendship of states, and the unhampered freedom of all with whom we deal. Let there be no misconception. The country has been misinformed. We have not been negli- gent of national defense. We are not unmindful of the great responsibility resting upon us. We shall learn and profit by the lesson of every experience and every new circumstance ; and what is needed will be adequately done. I close, as I began, by reminding you of the great tasks and duties of peace which challenge our best powers and invite us to build what will last, the tasks to which we can address ourselves now and at all times with free-hearted zest and with all the finest gifts of constructive wisdom we possess. To develop our life and our resources; to supply our own people, and the people of the world as 64 PRESIDENT WILSON'S their need arises from the abundant plenty of our fields and our marts of trade ; to enrich the commerce of our own States and of the world with the products of our mines, our farms, and our factories, with the creations of our thought and the fruits of our character — this is what will hold our attention and our enthusiasm steadily, now and in the years to come, as we strive to show in our life as a nation what liberty and the inspirations of an eman- cipated spirit may do for men and for societies, for indi- viduals, for states, and for mankind. ADDRESS AT FLAG-DAY EXERCISES of the Treasury Department, June 14, 1915 Mr. Secretary, Friends and Fellow-Citizens: I know of nothing more difficult than to render an adequate tribute to the emblem of our nation. For those of us who have shared that nation's life and felt the beat of its pulse it must be considered a matter of impossibility to express the great things which that emblem embodies. I venture to say that a great many things are said about the flag which very few people stop to analyze. For me the flag does not express a mere body of vague sentiment. The flag of the United States has not been created by rhetorical sentences in declarations of independence and in bills of rights. It has been created by the experience of a great people, and nothing is written upon it that has not been written by their life. It is the embodiment, not of a sentiment, but of a history, and no man can rightly serve under that flag who has not caught some of the meaning of that history. GREAT SPEECHES 65 Experience, ladies and gentlemen, is made by men and women. National experience is the product of those who do the living under that flag. It is their living that has created its significance. You do not create the meaning of a national life by any literary exposition of it, but by the actual daily endeavors of a great people to do the tasks of the day and live up to the ideals of honesty and righteousness and just conduct. And as we think of these things, our tribute is to those men who have created this experience. Many of them are known by name to all the world — statesmen, soldiers, merchants, masters of in- dustry, men of letters and of thought who have coined our hearts into action or into words. Of these men we feel that they have shown us the way. They have not been afraid to go before us. They have known that they were speaking the thoughts of a great people when they led that great people along the paths of achievement. There was not a single swashbuckler among them. They were men of sober, quiet thought, the more effective because there was no bluster in it. They were men who thought along the lines of duty, not along the lines of self-aggran- dizement. They were men, in short, who thought of the people whom they served and not of themselves. But while we think of these men and do honor to them as to those who have shown us the way, let us not forget that the real experience and life of a nation lies with the great multitude of unknown men. It lies with those men whose names are never in the headlines of newspapers, those men who know the heat and pain and desperate loss of hope that sometimes comes in the great struggle of daily life; not the men who stand on the side and com- ment, not the men who merely try to interpret the great struggle, but the men who are engaged in the struggle. They constitute the body of the nation. This flag is the 66 PRESIDENT WILSON'S essence of their daily endeavors. This flag does not ex- press any more than what they are and what they desire to be. As I think of the life of this great nation it seems to me that we sometimes look to the wrong places for its sources. "We look to the noisy places, where men are talking in the market place; we look to where men are expressing their individual opinions; we look to where partisans are expressing passion; instead of trying to attune our ears to that voiceless mass of men who merely go about their daily tasks, try to be honorable, try to serve the people they love, try to live worthy of the great communities to which they belong. These are the breath of the nation 's nostrils ; these are the sinews of its might. How can any man presume to interpret the emblem of the United States, the emblem of what we would fain be among the family of nations, and find it incumbent upon us to be in the daily round of routine duty ? This is Flag Day, but that only means that it is a day when we are to recall the things which we should do every day of our lives. There are no days of special patriotism. There are no days when we should be more patriotic than on other days. We celebrate the Fourth of July merely because the great enterprise of liberty was started on the fourth of July in America, but the great enterprise of liberty was not begun in America. It is illustrated by the blood of thousands of martyrs who lived and died before the great experiment on this side of the water. The Fourth of July merely marks the day when we con- secrated ourselves as a nation to this high thing which we pretend to serve. The benefit of a day like this is merely in turning away from the things that distract us, turning away from the things that touch us personally and absorb our interest in the hours of daily work. We GREAT SPEECHES 67 remind ourselves of those things that are greater than we are, of those principles by which we believe our hearts to be elevated, of the more difficult things that we must undertake in these days of perplexity when a man 's judg- ment is safest only when it follows the line of principle. I am solemnized in the presence of such a day. I would not undertake to speak your thoughts. You must interpret them for me. But I do feel that back, not only of every public official, but of every man and woman of the United States, there marches that great host which has brought us to the present day ; the host that has never for- gotten the vision which it saw at the birth of the nation ; the host which always responds to the dictates of human- ity and of liberty; the host that will always constitute the strength and the great body of friends of every man who does his duty to the United States. I am sorry that you do not wear a little flag of the Union every day instead of some days. I can only ask you, if you lose the physical emblem, to be sure that you wear it in your heart, and the heart of America shall interpret the heart of the world. 68 PEESIDENT WILSON'S ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT at G. A. R. Celebration, Camp Emery, Washington, September 28, 1915 Mr. Chairman, Gentlemen of the Grand Army op the Republic, Ladies and Gentlemen : I bid you a very cordial welcome to the capital of the Nation, and yet I feel that it is not necessary to bid you welcome here, because you know that the welcome is always warm and always waiting for you. One could not stand in this presence without many moving thoughts. It is a singular thing that men of a single generation should have witnessed what you have witnessed in the crowded fifty years which you celebrate tonight. You took part when you were young men in a struggle the meaning of which, I dare say, you thought would not be revealed during your lifetime, and yet more has happened in the making of this Nation in your life- time than has ever happened in the making of any other nation in the lifetime of a dozen generations. The Nation in which you now live is not the Nation for whose union you fought. You have seen many things come about which have made this Nation one of the rep- resentative nations of the world with regard to the mod- ern spirit of that world, and you have the satisfaction, which I dare say few soldiers have ever had, of looking back upon a war absolutely unique in this, that instead of destroying it healed, that instead of making a permanent division it made a permanent union. You have seen something more interesting than that, because there is a sense in which the things of the heart are more interesting than the things of the mind. This Nation was from the beginning a spiritual enterprise, and you have seen the GREAT SPEECHES 69 spirits of the two once divided sections of this country absolutely united. A war which seemed as if it had the seed of every kind of bitterness in it has seen a single generation put bitterness absolutely out of its heart, and you feel, as I am sure the men who fought against you feel, that you were comrades even then, though you did not know it, and that now you know that you are com- rades in a common love for a country which you are equally eager to serve. This is a miracle of the spirit, so far as national history is concerned- This is one of the very few wars in which in one sense everybody engaged may take pride. Some wars are to be regretted ; some wars mar the annals of history ; but some wars, contrasted with those, make those annals distinguished, show that the spirit of man some- times springs to great enterprises that are even greater than his own mind had conceived. So it seems to me that, standing in a presence like this, no man, whether he be in the public service or in the ranks of private citizens merely, can fail to feel the challenge to his own heart, can fail to feel the challenge to a new consecration to the things that we all believe in. The thing that sinks deepest in my heart as I try to realize the memories that must be crowding upon you is this : You set the Nation free for that great career of development, of unhampered development, which the world has wit- nessed since the Civil War, but for my own part I would not be proud of the extraordinary physical development of this country, of its extraordinary development in mate- rial wealth and financial power, did I not believe that the people of the United States wished all of this power devoted to ideal ends. There have been other nations as rich as we ; there have been other nations as powerful ; there have been other nations as spirited ; but I hope we 70 PEESIDENT WILSON'S shall never forget that we created this Nation, not to serve ourselves, but to serve mankind. I love this country because it is my home, but every man loves his home. It does not suffice that I should be at- tached to it because it contains the places and the persons whom I love — because it contains the threads of my own life. That does not suffice for patriotic duty. I should also love it, and I hope I do love it, as a great instrument for the uplift of mankind ; and what you, gentlemen, have to remind us of as you look back through a lifetime to the great war in which you took part is that you fought that this instrument meant for the service of mankind should not be impaired either in its material or in its spiritual power. I hope I may say without even an implication of criti- cism upon any other great people in the world that it has always seemed to me that the people of the United States wished to be regarded as devoted to the promotion of par- ticular principles of human right. The United States were founded, not to provide free homes, but to assert human rights. This flag meant a great enterprise of the human spirit. Nobody, no large bodies of men, in the time that flag was first set up believed with a very firm belief in the efficacy of democracy. Do you realize that only so long ago as the time of the American Revolution democ- racy was regarded as an experiment in the world and we were regarded as rash experimenters? But we not only believed in it ; we showed that our belief was well founded and that a nation as powerful as any in the world could be erected upon the will of the people ; that, indeed, there was a power in such a nation that dwelt in no other nation unless also in that other nation the spirit of the people prevailed. Democracy is the most difficult form of government, GREAT SPEECHES 71 because it is the form under which you have to persuade the largest number of persons to do anything in particu- lar. But I think we were the more pleased to undertake it because it is difficult. Anybody can do what is easy. We have shown that we could do what was hard, and the pride that ought to dwell in your hearts tonight is that you saw to it that that experiment was brought to the day of its triumphant demonstration. We now know, and the world knows, that the thing that we then undertook, rash as it seemed, has been practicable, and that we have set up in the world a government maintained and promoted by the general conscience and the general conviction. So I stand here, not to welcome you to the Nation's capital as if I were your host, but merely to welcome you to your own capital, because I am, and am proud to be, your servant. I hope I shall catch, as I hope we shall all catch, from the spirit of this occasion a new consecration to the high duties of American citizenship. 72 PRESIDENT WILSON'S ADDRESS TO THE DAUGHTERS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION Washington, October 11, 1915 Madam President and Ladies and Gentlemen: Again it is my very great privilege to welcome you to the City of Washington and to the hospitalities of the Capital. May I admit a point of ignorance ? I was sur- prised to learn that this association is so young, and that an association so young should devote itself wholly to memory I can not believe. For to me the duties to which you are consecrated are more than the duties and the pride of memory. There is a very great thrill to be had from the memories of the American Revolution, but the American Revolution was a beginning, not a consummation, and the duty laid upon us by that beginning is the duty of bringing the things then begun to a noble triumph of completion. For it seems to me that the peculiarity of patriotism in Amer- ica is that it is not a mere sentiment. It is an active prin- ciple of conduct. It is something that was born into the world, not to please it but to regenerate it. It is some- thing that was born into the world to replace systems that had preceded it and to bring men out upon a new plane of privilege. The glory of the men whose memories you honor and perpetuate is that they saw this vision, and it was a vision of the future. It was a vision of great days to come when a little handful of three million people upon the borders of a single sea should have become a great multitude of free men and women spreading across a great continent, dominating the shores of two oceans, and sending West as well as East the influences of indi- vidual freedom. These things were consciously in their minds as they framed the great Government which was GEEAT SPEECHES 73 born out of the American Revolution ; and every time we gather to perpetuate their memories it is incumbent upon us that we should be worthy of recalling them and that we should endeavor by every means in our power to emulate their example. The American Revolution was the birth of a nation; it was the creation of a great free republic based upon traditions of personal liberty which theretofore had been confined to a single little island, but which it was purposed should spread to all mankind. And the singular fascina- tion of American history is that it has been a process of constant re-creation, of making over again in each genera- tion the thing which was conceived at first. You know how peculiarly necessary that has been in our case, be- cause America has not grown by the mere multiplication of the original stock. It is easy to preserve tradition with continuity of blood ; it is easy in a single family to remem- ber the origins of the race and the purposes of its organi- zation ; but it is not so easy when that race is constantly being renewed and augmented from other sources, from stocks that did not carry or originate the same principles. So from generation to generation strangers have had to be indoctrinated with the principles of the American family, and the wonder and the beauty of it all has been that the infection has been so generously easy. For the principles of liberty are united with the principles of hope. Every individual, as well as every Nation, wishes to realize the best thing that is in him, the best thing that can be conceived out of the materials of which his spirit is constructed. It has happened in a way that fascinates the imagination that we have not only been augmented by additions from outside, but that we have been greatly stimulated by those additions. Living in the easy pros- perity of a free people, knowing that the sun had always 74 PRESIDENT WILSON'S been free to shine upon us and prosper our undertakings, we did not realize how hard the task of liberty is and how rare the privilege of liberty is ; but men were drawn out of every climate and out of every race because of an irre- sistible attraction of their spirits to the American ideal. They thought of America as lifting, like that great statue in the harbor of New York, a torch to light the pathway of men to the things that they desire, and men of all sorts and conditions struggled toward that light and came to our shores with an eager desire to realize it, and a hunger for it such as some of us no longer felt, for we were as if satiated and satisfied and were indulging ourselves after a fashion that did not belong to the ascetic devotion of the early devotees of those great principles. Strangers came to remind us of what we had promised ourselves and through ourselves had promised mankind. All men came to us and said, ' ' Where is the bread of life with which you promised to feed us, and have you partaken of it your- selves ? ' ' For my part, I believe that the constant renewal of this people out of foreign stocks has been a constant source of reminder to this people of what the inducement was that was offered to men who would come and be of our number. Now we have come to a time of special stress and test. There never was a time when we needed more clearly to conserve the principles of our own patriotism than this present time. The rest of the world from which our polities were drawn seems for the time in the crucible and no man can predict what will come out of that crucible. "We stand apart, unembroiled, conscious of our own prin- ciples, conscious of what we hope and purpose, so far as our powers permit, for the world at large, and it is nec- essary that we should consolidate the American principle. GREAT SPEECHES 75 Every political action, every social action, should have for its object in America at this time to challenge the spirit of America ; to ask that every man and woman who thinks first of America should rally to the standards of our life. There have been some among us who have not thought first of America, who have thought to use the might of America in some matter not of America's origination. They have forgotten that the first duty of a nation is to express its own individual principles in the action of the family of nations and not to seek to aid and abet any rival or contrary ideal. Neutrality is a negative word. It is a word that does not express what America ought to feel. America has a heart and that heart throbs with all sorts of intense sym- pathies, but America has schooled its heart to love the things that America believes in, and it ought to devote itself only to the things that America believes in, and be- lieving that America stands apart in its ideals, it ought not to allow itself to be drawn, so far as its heart is con- cerned, into anybody's quarrel. Not because it does not understand the quarrel, not because it does not in its head assess the merits of the controversy, but because America has promised the world to stand apart and maintain cer- tain principles of action which are grounded in law and in justice. We are not trying to keep out of trouble ; we are trying to preserve the foundations upon which peace can be rebuilt. Peace can be rebuilt only upon the ancient and accepted principles of international law, only upon those things which remind nations of their duties to each other, and, deeper than that, of their duties to mankind and to humanity. America has a great cause which is not confined to the American continent. It is the cause of humanity itself. I do not mean in anything that I say even to imply a judg- 76 PRESIDENT WILSON'S ment upon any nation or upon any policy, for my object here this afternoon is not to sit in judgment upon any- body but ourselves and to challenge you to assist all of us who are trying to make America more than ever conscious of her own principles and her own duty. I look forward to the necessity in every political agitation in the years which are immediately at hand of calling upon every man to declare himself, where he stands. Is it America first or is it not ? We ought to be very careful about some of the impres- sions that we are forming just now. There is too general an impression, I fear, that very large numbers of our fellow-citizens born in other lands have not entertained with sufficient intensity and affection the American ideal. But the number of such is, I am sure, not large. Those who would seek to represent them are very vocal, but they are not very influential. Some of the best stuff of America has come out of foreign lands, and some of the best stuff in America is in the men who are naturalized citizens of the United States. I would not be afraid upon the test of "America first" to take a census of all the foreign-born citizens of the United States, for I know that the vast majority of them came here because they believed in America; and their belief in America has made them better citizens than some people who were born in America. They can say that they have bought this privilege with a great price. They have left their homes, they have left their kindred, they have broken all the nearest and dearest ties of human life in order to come to a new land, take a new rootage, begin a new life, and so by self-sacrifice express their confidence in a new prin- ciple ; whereas, it cost us none of these things. We were born into this privilege ; we were rocked and cradled in it; we did nothing to create it; and it is, therefore, the GREAT SPEECHES 77 greater duty on our part to do a great deal to enhance it and preserve it. I am not deceived as to the balance of opinion among the foreign-born citizens of the United States, but I am in a hurry for an opportunity to have a line-up and let the men who are thinking first of other countries stand on one side and all those that are for America first, last, and all the time on the other side. Now, you can do a great deal in this direction. When I was a college officer I used to be very much opposed to hazing ; not because hazing is not wholesome, but because sophomores are poor judges. I remember a very dear friend of mine, a professor of ethics on the other side of the water, was asked if he thought it was ever justifiable to tell a lie. He said Yes, he thought it was sometimes justifiable to lie; "but," he said, "it is so difficult to judge of the justification that I usually tell the truth. " I think that ought to be the motto of the sophomore. There are freshmen who need to be hazed, but the need is to be judged by such nice tests that a sophomore is hardly old enough to determine them. But the world can determine them. We are not freshmen at college, but we are con- stantly hazed. I would a great deal rather be obliged to draw pepper up my nose than to observe the hostile glances of my neighbors. I would a great deal rather be beaten than ostracized. I would a great deal rather endure any sort of physical hardship if I might have the affection of my fellow-men. We constantly discipline our fellow-citizens by having an opinion about them. That is the sort of discipline we ought now to administer to everybody who is not to the very core of his heart an American. Just have an opinion about him and let him experience the atmospheric effects of that opinion ! And I know of no body of persons comparable to a body of 78 PKESIDENT WILSON'S ladies for creating an atmosphere of opinion ! I have myself in part yielded to the influences of that atmos- phere, though it took me a long time to determine how I was going to vote in New Jersey. So it has seemed to me that my privilege this afternoon was not merely a privilege of courtesy, but the real priv- ilege of reminding you — for I am sure I am doing nothing more — of the great principles which we stand associated to promote. I for my part rejoice that we belong to a country in which the whole business of government is so difficult. We do not take orders from anybody; it is a universal communication of conviction, the most subtle, delicate, and difficult of processes. There is not a single individual's opinion that is not of some consequence in making up the grand total, and to be in this great coopera- tive effort is the most stimulating thing in the world. A man standing alone may well misdoubt his own judgment. He may mistrust his own intellectual processes; he may even wonder if his own heart leads him right in matters of public conduct ; but if he finds his heart part of the great throb of a national life, there can be no doubt about it. If that is his happy circumstance, then he may know that he is part of one of the great forces of the world. I would not feel any exhilaration in belonging to America if I did not feel that she was something more than a rich and powerful nation. I should not feel proud to be in some respects and for a little while her spokes- man if I did not believe that there was something else than physical force behind her. I believe that the glory of America is that she is a great spiritual conception and that in the spirit of her institutions dwells not only her distinction but her power. The one thing that the world can not permanently resist is the moral force of great and triumphant convictions. GEEAT SPEECHES 79 ANNUAL ADDRESS TO CONGRESS December 7, 1915 [This Address Includes Mr. Wilson's Historic Kemarks on Dis- loyalty Within the Nation.] Gentlemen of the Congress: Since I last had the privilege of addressing you on the state of the Union the war of nations on the other side of the sea, which had then only begun to disclose its portentous proportions, has extended its threatening and sinister scope until it has swept within its flame some portion of every quarter of the globe, not excepting our own hemisphere, has altered the whole face of interna- tional affairs, and now presents a prospect of reorganiza- tion and reconstruction such as statesmen and peoples have never been called upon to attempt before. We have stood apart, studiously neutral. It was our manifest duty to do so. Not only did we have no part or interest in the policies which seem to have brought the conflict on; it was necessary, if a universal catastrophe was to be avoided, that a limit should be set to the sweep of destructive war and that some part of the great family of nations should keep the processes of peace alive, if only to prevent collective economic ruin and the breakdown throughout the world of the industries by which its pop- ulations are fed and sustained. It was manifestly the duty of the self-governed nations of this hemisphere to redress, if possible, the balance of economic loss and con- fusion in the other, if they could do nothing more. In the day of readjustment and recuperation we earnestly hope and believe that they can be of infinite service. In this neutrality, to which they were bidden not only by their separate life and their habitual detachment from 80 PRESIDENT WILSON'S the politics of Europe but also by a clear perception of international duty, the states of America have become conscious of a new and more vital community of interest and moral partnership in affairs, more clearly conscious of the many common sympathies and interests and duties which bid them stand together. There was a time in the early days of our own great nation and of the republics fighting their way to inde- pendence in Central and South America when the govern- ment of the United States looked upon itself as in some sort the guardian of the republics to the south of her as against any encroachments or efforts at political control from the other side of the water ; felt it its duty to play the part even without invitation from them ; and I think that we can claim that the task was undertaken with a true and disinterested enthusiasm for the freedom of the Americas and the unmolested self-government of her independent peoples. But it was always difficult to main- tain such a role without offence to the pride of the peoples whose freedom of action we sought to protect, and without provoking serious misconceptions of our motives, and every thoughtful man of affairs must welcome the altered circumstances of the new day in whose light we now stand, when there is no claim of guardianship or thought of wards but, instead, a full and honorable association as of partners between ourselves and our neighbors, in the interest of all America, north and south. Our concern for the independence and prosperity of the states of Central and South America is not altered. We retain unabated the spirit that has inspired us throughout the whole life of our government and which was so frankly put into words by President Monroe. "We still mean always to make a common cause of national independence and of political liberty in America. But that purpose is now GREAT SPEECHES 81 better understood so far as it concerns ourselves. It is known not to be a selfish purpose. It is known to have in it no thought of taking advantage of any government in this hemisphere or playing its political fortunes for our own benefit. All the governments of America stand, so far as we are concerned, upon a footing of genuine equality and unquestioned independence. We have been put to the test in the case of Mexico, and we have stood the test. Whether we have benefited Mex- ico by the course we have pursued remains to be seen. Her fortunes are in her own hands. But we have at least proved that we will not take advantage of her in her dis- tress and undertake to impose upon her an order and gov- ernment of our own choosing. Liberty is often a fierce and intractable thing, to which no bounds can be set, and to which no bounds of a few men's choosing ought ever to be set. Every American who has drunk at the true fountains of principle and tradition must subscribe with- out reservation to the high doctrine of the Virginia Bill of Rights, which in the great days in which our government was set up was everywhere amongst us accepted as the creed of free men. That doctrine is, ' ' That government is, or ought to be, instituted for the common benefit, pro- tection, and security of the people, nation, or commu- nity ; ' ' that ' ' of all the various modes and forms of gov- ernment, that is the best which is capable of producing the greatest degree of happiness and safety, and is most effectually secured against the danger of maladministra- tion ; and that, when any government shall be found in- adequate or contrary to these purposes, a majority of the •ommunity hath an indubitable, inalienable, and inde- feasible right to reform, alter, or abolish it, in such man- ner as shall be judged most conducive to the public weal. ' ' 82 PRESIDENT WILSON'S We have unhesitatingly applied that heroic principle to the case of Mexico, and now hopefully await the rebirth of the troubled Kepublic, which had so much of which to purge itself and so little sympathy from any outside quarter in the radical but necessary process. We will aid and befriend Mexico, but we vail not coerce her ; and our course with regard to her ought to be sufficient proof to all America that we seek no political suzerainty or selfish control. The moral is, that the states of America are not hostile rivals but cooperating friends, and that their growing sense of community of interest, alike in matters political and in matters economic, is likely to give them a new sig- nificance as factors in international affairs and in the political history of the world. It presents them as in a very deep and true sense a unit in world affairs, spiritual partners, standing together because thinking together, quick with common sympathies and common ideals. Sep- arated they are subject to all the cross currents of the confused politics of a world of hostile rivalries; united in spirit and purpose they cannot be disappointed of their peaceful destiny. This is Pan- Americanism. It has none of the spirit of empire in it. It is the embodiment, the effectual em- bodiment, of the spirit of law and independence and liberty and mutual service. A very notable body of men recently met in the City of Washington, at the invitation and as the guests of this Government, whose deliberations are likely to be looked back to as marking a memorable turning point in the his- tory of America. They were representative spokesmen of the several independent states of this hemisphere and were assembled to discuss the financial and commercial GEEAT SPEECHES 83 relations of the republics of the two continents which nature and political fortune have so intimately linked together. I earnestly recommend to your perusal the reports of their proceedings and of the actions of their committees. You will get from them, I think, a fresh con- ception of the ease and intelligence and advantage with which Americans of both continents may draw together in practical cooperation and of what the material founda- tions of this hopeful partnership of interest must consist, — of how we should build them and of how necessary it is that we should hasten their building. There is, I venture to point out, an especial significance just now attaching to this whole matter of drawing the Americas together in bonds of honorable partnership and mutual advantage because of the economic readjust- ments which the world must inevitably witness within the next generation, when peace shall have at last resumed its healthful tasks. In the performance of these tasks I believe the Americas to be destined to play their parts together. I am interested to fix your attention on this prospect now because unless you take it within your view and permit the full significance of it to command your thought I cannot find the right light in which to set forth the particular matter that lies at the very front of my whole thought as I address you today. I mean national defense. No one who really comprehends the spirit of the great people for whom we are appointed to speak can fail to perceive that their passion is for peace, their genius best displayed in the practice of the arts of peace. Great demoeracies are not belligerent. They do not seek or desire war. Their thought is of individual liberty and of the free labor that supports life and the uncensored 84 PRESIDENT WILSON'S thought that quickens it. Conquest and dominion are not in our reckoning, or agreeable to our principles. But just because we demand unmolested development and the undisturbed government of our own lives upon our own principles of right and liberty, we resent, from whatever quarter it may come, the aggression we ourselves will not practice. "We insist upon security in prosecuting our self- chosen lines of national development. "We do more than that. We demand it also for others. "We do not confine our enthusiasm for individual liberty and free national development to the incidents and movements of affairs which affect only ourselves. We feel it wherever there is a people that tries to walk in these difficult paths of independence and right. From the first we have made common cause with all partisans of liberty on this side the sea, and have deemed it as important that our neighbors should be free from all outside domination as that we our- selves should be, have set America aside as a whole for the uses of independent nations and political freemen. Out of such thoughts grow all our policies. We regard war merely as a means of asserting the rights of a people against aggression. And we are as fiercely jealous of coercive or dictatorial power within our own nation as of aggression from without. We will not maintain a stand- ing army except for uses which are as necessary in times of peace as in times of war ; and we shall always see to it that our military peace establishment is no larger than is actually and continuously needed for the uses of days in which no enemies move against us. But we do believe in a body of free citizens ready and sufficient to take care of themselves and of the governments which they have set up to serve them. In our constitutions themselves we have commanded that "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, ' ' and our confidence GREAT SPEECHES 85 has been that our safety in times of danger would lie in the rising of the nation to take care of itself, as the farmers rose at Lexington. But war has never been a mere matter of men and guns. It is a thing of disciplined might. If our citizens are ever to fight effectively upon a sudden summons, they must know how modern fighting is done, and what to do when the summons comes to render themselves immediately available and immediately effective. And the govern- ment must be their servant in this matter, must supply them with the training they need to take care of them- selves and of it. The military arm of their government, which they will not allow to direct them, they may prop- erly use to serve them and make their independence se- cure, — and not their own independence merely but the rights also of those with whom they have made common cause, should they also be put in jeopardy. They must be fitted to play the great role in the world, and particularly in this hemisphere, which they are qualified by principle and by chastened ambition to play. It is with these ideals in mind that the plans of the Department of War for more adequate national defense were conceived which will be laid before you, and which I urge you to sanction and put into effect as soon as they can be properly scrutinized and discussed. They seem to me the essential first steps, and they seem to me for the present sufficient. They contemplate an increase of the standing force of the regular army from its present strength of five thou- sand and twenty-three officers and one hundred and two thousand nine hundred and eighty-five enlisted men of all services to a strength of seven thousand one hundred and thirty-six officers and one hundred and thirty-four 86 PEESIDENT WILSON'S thousand seven hundred and seven enlisted men, or 141,- 843, all told, all services, rank and file, by the addition of fifty-two companies of coast artillery, fifteen companies of engineers, ten regiments of infantry, four regiments of field artillery, and four aero squadrons, besides seven hundred and fifty officers required for a great variety of extra service, especially the all important duty of training the citizen force of which I shall presently speak, seven hundred and ninety-two noncommissioned officers for service in drill, recruiting and the like, and the necessary quota of enlisted men for the Quartermaster Corps, the Hospital Corps, the Ordnance Department, and other similar auxiliary services. These are the additions neces- sary to render the army adequate for its present duties, duties which it has to perform not only upon our own con- tinental coasts and borders and at our interior army posts, but also in the Philippines, in the Hawaiian Islands, at the Isthmus, and in Porto Rico. By way of making the country ready to assert some part of its real power promptly and upon a larger scale, should occasion arise, the plan also contemplates supple- menting the army by a force of four hundred thousand disciplined citizens, raised in increments of one hundred and thirty-three thousand a year throughout a period of three years. This it is proposed to do by a process of enlistment under which the serviceable men of the coun- try would be asked to bind themselves to serve with the colors for purposes of training for short periods through- out three years, and to come to the colors at call at any time throughout an additional ' ' furlough ' ' period of three years. This force of four hundred thousand men would be provided with personal accoutrements as fast as en- listed and their equipment for the field made ready to be supplied at any time. They would be assembled for GREAT SPEECHES 87 training at stated intervals at convenient places in asso- ciation with suitable units of the regular army. Their period of annual training would not necessarily exceed two months in the year. It would depend upon the patriotic feeling of the younger men of the country whether they responded to such a call to service or not. It would depend upon the patriotic spirit of the employers of the country whether they made it possible for the younger men in their employ to respond under favorable conditions or not. I, for one, do not doubt the patriotic devotion either of our young men or of those who give them employment, — those for whose benefit and protection they would in fact enlist. I would look forward to the success of such an experiment with entire confidence. At least so much by way of preparation for defense seems to me to be absolutely imperative now. We cannot do less. The programme which will be laid before you by the Secretary of the Navy is similarily conceived. It involves only a shortening of the time within which plans long matured shall be carried out; but it does make definite and explicit a programme which has heretofore been only implicit, held in the minds of the Committees on Naval Affairs and disclosed in the debates of the two Houses but nowhere formulated or formally adopted. It seems to me very clear that it will be to the advantage of the coun- try for the Congress to adopt a comprehensive plan for putting the navy upon a final footing of strength and efficiency and to press that plan to completion within the next five years. "We have always looked to the navy of the country as our first and chief line of defense; we have always seen it to be our manifest course of prudence 88 PEESIDENT WILSON'S to be strong on the seas. Year by year we have been creating a navy which now ranks very high indeed among the navies of the maritime nations. We should now defi- nitely determine how we shall complete what we have begun, and how soon. The programme to be laid before you contemplates the construction within five years of ten battleships, six battle cruisers, ten scout cruisers, fifty destroyers, fifteen fleet submarines, eighty-five coast submarines, four gunboats, one hospital ship, two ammunition ships, two fuel oil ships, and one repair ship. It is proposed that of this number we shall the first year provide for the construc- tion of two battle ships, two battle cruisers, three scout cruisers, fifteen destroyers, five fleet submarines, twenty- five coast submarines, two gunboats, and one hospital ship ; the second year, two battleships, one scout cruiser, ten destroyers, four fleet submarines, fifteen coast sub- marines, one gunboat, and one fuel oil ship; the third year, two battle ships, one battle cruiser, two scout cruis- ers, five destroyers, two fleet submarines, and fifteen coast submarines; the fourth year, two battle ships, two battle cruisers, two scout cruisers, ten destroyers, two fleet submarines, fifteen coast submarines, one ammunition ship, and one fuel oil ship ; and the fifth year, two battle ships, one battle cruiser, two scout cruisers, ten de- stroyers, two fleet submarines, fifteen coast submarines, one gunboat, one ammunition ship, and one repair ship. The Secretary of the Navy is asking also for the im- mediate addition to the personnel of the navy of seven thousand five hundred sailors, twenty-five hundred ap- prentice seamen, and fifteen hundred marines. This in- crease would be sufficient to care for the ships which are to be completed within the fiscal year 1917 and also for the number of men which must be put in training to man GREAT SPEECHES 89 the ships which will be completed early in 1918. It is also necessary that the number of midshipmen at the Naval Academy at Annapolis should be increased by at least three hundred in order that the force of officers should be more rapidly added to ; and authority is asked to appoint, for engineering duties only, approved grad- uates of engineering colleges, and for service in the aviation corps a certain number of men taken from civil life. If this full programme should be carried out we should have built or building in 1921, according to the estimates of survival and standards of classification followed by the General Board of the Department, an effective navy consisting of twenty-seven battleships, of the first line, six battle cruisers, twenty-five battleships of the second line, ten armored cruisers, thirteen scout cruisers, five first class cruisers, three second class cruisers, ten third class cruisers, one hundred and eight destroyers, eighteen fleet submarines, one hundred and fifty-seven coast subma- rines, six monitors, twenty gunboats, four supply ships, fifteen fuel ships, four transports, three tenders to tor- pedo vessels, eight vessels of special types, and two ammu- nition ships. This would be a navy fitted to our needs and worthy of our traditions. But armies and instruments of war are only part of what has to be considered if we are to provide for the supreme matter of national self-sufficiency and security in all its aspects. There are other great matters which will be thrust upon our attention whether we will or not. There is, for example, a very pressing question of trade and shipping involved in this great problem of national adequacy. It is necessary for many weighty reasons of national efficiency and development that we should have 90 PEESIDENT WILSON'S a great merchant marine. The great merchant fleet we once used to make us rich, that great body of sturdy sailors who used to carry our flag into every sea, and who were the pride and often the bulwark of the nation, we have almost driven out of existence by inexcusable neg- lect and indifference and by a hopelessly blind and pro- vincial policy of so-called economic protection. It is high time we repaired our mistake and resumed our commer- cial independence on the seas. For it is a question of independence. If other nations go to war or seek to hamper each other's commerce, our merchants, it seems, are at their mercy, to do with as they please. "We must use their ships, and use them as they determine. We have not ships enough of our own. "We cannot handle our own commerce on the seas. Our inde- pendence is provincial, and is only on land and within our own borders. We are not likely to be permitted to use even the ships of other nations in rivalry of their own trade, and are without means to extend our commerce even where the doors are wide open and our goods desired. Such a situation is not to be endured. It is of capital importance not only that the United States should be its own carrier on the seas and enjoy the economic inde- pendence which only an adequate merchant marine would give it, but also that the American hemisphere as a whole should enjoy a like independence and self-sufficiency, if it is not to be drawn into the tangle of European affairs. Without such independence the whole question of our political unity and self-determination is very seriously clouded and complicated indeed. Moreover, we can develop no true or effective American policy without ships of our own — not ships of war, but ships of peace, carrying goods and carrying much more : creating friendships and rendering indispensable serv- GKEAT SPEECHES 91 ices to all interests on this side the water. They must move constantly back and forth between the Americas. They are the only shuttles that can weave the delicate fabric of sympathy, comprehension, confidence, and mu- tual dependence in which we wish to clothe our policy of America for Americans. The task of building up an adequate merchant marine for America, private capital must ultimately undertake and achieve, as it has undertaken and achieved every other like task amongst us in the past, with admirable enterprise, intelligence, and vigor; and it seems to me a manifest dictate of wisdom that we should promptly remove every legal obstacle that may stand in the way of this much to be desired revival of our old independ- ence and should facilitate in every possible way the build- ing, purchase, and American registration of ships. But capital cannot accomplish this great task of a sudden. It must embark upon it by degrees, as the opportunities of trade develop. Something must be done at once ; done to open routes and develop opportunities where they are as yet undeveloped; done to open the arteries of trade where the currents have not yet learned to run — espe- cially between the two American continents, where they are, singularly enough, yet to be created and quickened ; and it is evident that only the government can under- take such beginnings and assume the initial financial risks. When the risk has passed and private capital begins to find its way in sufficient abundance into these new channels, the government may withdraw. But it cannot omit to begin. It should take the first steps, and should take them at once. Our goods must not lie piled up at our ports and stored upon side tracks in freight cars which are daily needed on the roads; must not be left without means o* transport to any foreign quarter. 92 PEESIDENT WILSON'S We must not await the permission of foreign sLip-owners and foreign governments to send them where we will. "With a view to meeting these pressing necessities of our commerce and availing ourselves at the earliest pos- sible moment of the present unparalleled opportunity of linking the two Americas together in bonds of mutual interest and service, an opportunity which may never return again if we miss it now, proposals will be made to the present Congress for the purchase or construction of ships to be owned and directed by the government similar to those made to the last Congress, but modified in some essential particulars. I recommend these proposals to you for your prompt acceptance with the more confi- dence because every month that has elapsed since the former proposals were made has made the necessity for such action more and more manifestly imperative. That need was then foreseen ; it is now acutely felt and every- where realized by those for whom trade is waiting but who can find no conveyance for their goods. I am not so much interested in the particulars of the programme as I am in taking immediate advantage of the great oppor- tunity which awaits us if we will but act in this emer- gency. In this matter, as in all others, a spirit of common counsel should prevail, and out of it should come an early solution of this pressing problem. There is another matter which seems to me to be very intimately associated with the question of national safety and preparation for defense. That is our policy towards the Philippines and the people of Porto Rico. Our treat- ment of them and their attitude towards us are manifestly of the first consequence in the development of our duties in the world and in getting a free hand to perform those duties. We must be free from every unnecessary burden GREAT SPEECHES 93 or embarrassment ; and there is no better way to be clear of embarrassment than to fulfil our promises and promote the interests of those dependent on us to the utmost. Bills for the alteration and reform of the government of the Philippines and for rendering fuller political justice to the people of Porto Rico were submitted to the sixty- third Congress. They will be submitted also to you. I need not particularize their details. You are most of you already familiar with them. But I do recommend them to your early adoption with the sincere conviction that there are few measures you could adopt which would more serviceably clear the way for the great policies by which we wish to make good, now and always, our right to lead in enterprises of peace and good will and economic and political freedom. I have spoken to you to-day, Gentlemen, upon a single theme, the thorough preparation of the nation to care for its own security and to make sure of entire freedom to play the impartial role in this hemisphere and in the world which we all believe to have been providentially assigned to it. I have had in my mind no thought of any immediate or particular danger arising out of our relations with other nations. We are at peace with all the nations of the world, and there is reason to hope that no question in controversy between this and other Governments will lead to any serious breach of amicable relations, grave as some differences of attitude and policy have been and may yet turn out to be. I am sorry to say that the greatest threats against our na- tional peace and safety have been uttered within our own borders. There are citizens of the United States, I blush to admit, born under other flags but welcomed 94 PRESIDENT WILSON'S under our generous naturalization laws to the full free- dom and opportunity of America, who have poured the poison of disloyalty into the very arteries of our national life ; who have sought to bring the authority and good name of our Government into contempt, to destroy our industries wherever they thought it effective for their vindictive purposes to strike at them, and to debase our politics to the uses of foreign intrigue. Their num- ber is not great as compared with the whole number of those sturdy hosts by which our nation has been enriched in recent generations out of virile foreign stocks ; but it is great enough to have brought deep dis- grace upon us and to have made it necessary that we should promptly make use of processes of law by which we may be purged of their corrupt distempers. America never witnessed anything like this before. It never dreamed it possible that men sworn into its own citizenship, men drawn out of great free stocks such as supplied some of the best and strongest ele- ments of that little, but how heroic, nation that in a high day of old staked its very life to free itself from every entanglement that had darkened the fortunes of the older nations and set up a new standard here, — that men of such origins and such free choices of allegiance would ever turn in malign reaction against the Govern- ment and people who have welcomed and nurtured them and seek to make this proud country once more a hot- bed of European passion. A little while ago such a thing would have seemed incredible. Because it was incredible we made no preparation for it. We would have been almost ashamed to prepare for it, as if we were suspicious of ourselves, our own comrades and neighbors! But the ugly and incredible thing has act- ually come about and we are without adequate federal GREAT SPEECHES 95 laws to deal with it. I urge you to enact such laws at the earliest possible moment and feel that in doing so I am urging you to do nothing less than save the honor and self-respect of the nation. Such creatures of pas- sion, disloyalty, and anarchy must be crushed out. They are not many, but they are infinitely malignant, and the hand of our power should close over them at once. They have formed plots to destroy property, they have entered into conspiracies against the neutrality of the Government, they have sought to pry into every con- fidential transaction of the Government in order to serve interests alien to our own. It is possible to deal with these things very effectually. I need not suggest the terms in which they may be dealt with. I wish that it could be said that only a few men, misled by mistaken sentiments of allegiance to the gov- ernments under which they were born, had been guilty of disturbing the self-possession and misrepresenting the temper and principles of the country during these days of terrible war, when it would seem that every man who was truly an American would instinctively make it his duty and his pride to keep the scales of judgment even and prove himself a partisan of no na- tion but his own. But it cannot. There are some men among us, and many resident abroad who, though born and bred in the United States and calling themselves Americans, have so forgotten themselves and their honor as citizens as to put their passionate sympathy with one or the other side in the great European conflict above their regard for the peace and dignity of the United States. They also preach and practice disloy- alty. No laws, I suppose, can reach corruptions of the mind and heart ; but I should not speak of others with- out also speaking of these and expressing the even 96 PKESIDENT WILSON'S deeper humiliation and scorn which every self-possessed and thoughtfully patriotic American must feel when he thinks of them and of the discredit they are daily bring- ing upon us. While we speak of the preparation of the nation to make sure of her security and her effective power we must not fall into the patent error of supposing that her real strength comes from armaments and mere safeguards of written law. It comes, of course, from her people, their energy, their success in their under- takings, their free opportunity to use the natural re- sources of our great home land and of the lands outside our continental borders which look to us for protection, for encouragement, and for assistance in their develop- ment ; from the organization and freedom and vitality of our economic life. The domestic questions which en- gaged the attention of the last Congress are more vital to the nation in this its time of test than at any other time. We cannot adequately make ready for any trial of our strength unless we wisely and promptly direct the force of our laws into these all-important fields of domestic action. A matter which it seems to me we should have very much at heart is the creation of the right instrumentalities by which to mobilize our eco- nomic resources in any time of national necessity. I take it for granted that I do not need your authority to call into systematic consultation with the directing officers of the army and navy men of recognized leader- ship and ability from among our citizens who are thor- oughly familiar, for example, with the transportation facilities of the country and therefore competent to advise how they may be coordinated when the need arises, those who can suggest the best way in which GREAT SPEECHES 97 to bring about prompt cooperation among the manufac- . turers of the country, should it be necessary, and those who could assist to bring the technical skill of the coun- try to the aid of the Government in the solution of par- ticular problems of defense. I only hope that if I should find it feasible to constitute such an advisory body the Congress would be willing to vote the small sum of money that would be needed to defray the expenses that would probably be necessary to give it the clerical and administrative machinery with which to do serviceable work. "What is more important is, that the industries and resources of the country should be available and ready for mobilization. It is the more imperatively neces- sary, therefore, that we should promptly devise means for doing what we have not yet done : that we should give intelligent federal aid and stimulation to indus- trial and vocational education, as we have long done in the large field of our agricultural industry ; that, at the same time that we safeguard and conserve the natural resources of the country we should put them at the disposal of those who will use them promptly and intelligently, as was sought to be done in the admirable bills submitted to the last Congress from its commit- tees on the public lands, bills which I earnestly recom- mend in principle to your consideration ; that we should put into early operation some provision for rural credits which will add to the extensive borrowing facilities already afforded the farmer by the Reserve Bank Act adequate instrumentalities by which long credits may be obtained on land mortgages; and that we should study more carefully than they have hitherto been studied the right adaptation of our economic arrange- ments to changing conditions. 98 PRESIDENT WILSON'S Many conditions about which we have repeatedly legislated are being altered from decade to decade, it is evident, under our very eyes, and are likely to change even more rapidly and more radically in the days im- mediately ahead of us, when peace has returned to the world and the nations of Europe once more take up their tasks of commerce and industry with the energy of those who must bestir themselves to build anew. Just what these changes will be no one can certainly foresee or confidently predict. There are no calculable, because no stable, elements in the problem. The most we can do is to make certain that we have the necessary instrumentalities of information constantly at our serv- ice so that we may be sure that we know exactly what we are dealing with when we come to act, if it should be necessary to act at all. We must first certainly know what it is that we are seeking to adapt ourselves to. I may ask the privilege of addressing you more at length on this important matter a little later in your session. In the meantime may I make this suggestion? The transportation problem is an exceedingly serious and pressing one in this country. There has from time to time of late been reason to fear that our railroads would not much longer be able to cope with it successfully, as at present equipped and coordinated. I suggest that it would be wise to provide for a commission of inquiry to ascertain by a thorough canvass of the whole question whether our laws as at present framed and adminis- tered are as serviceable as they might be in the solution of the problem. It is obviously a problem that lies at the very foundation of our efficiency as a people. Such an inquiry ought to draw out every circumstance and opinion worth considering and we need to know all GEEAT SPEECHES 99 sides of the matter if we mean to do anything in the field of federal legislation. No one, I am sure, would wish to take any backward step. The regulation of the railways of the country by federal commission has had admirable results and has fully justified the hopes and expectations of those by whom the policy of regulation was originally proposed. The question is not what should we undo ? It is, whether there is anything else we can do that would supply us with effective means, in the very process of regulation, for bettering the conditions under which the railroads are operated and for making them more useful servants of the country as a whole. It seems to me that it might be the part of wisdom, therefore, before further legisla- tion in this field is attempted, to look at the whole prob- lem of coordination and efficiency in the full light of a fresh assessment of circumstance and opinion, as a guide to dealing with the several parts of it. For what we are seeking now, what in my mind is the single thought of this message, is national efficiency and security. We serve a great nation. We should serve it in the spirit of its peculiar genius. It is the genius of common men for self-government, industry, justice, liberty and peace. We should see to it that it lacks no instrument, no facility or vigor of law, to make it sufficient to play its part with energy, safety, and assured success. In this we are no partisans but heralds and prophets of a new age. 100 PRESIDENT WILSON'S THE SUBMARINE PERIL President Wilson's Address to Congress, April 19, 1916, on German Violations of International Law Gentlemen of the Congress: A situation has arisen in the foreign relations of the country of which it is my plain duty to inform you very frankly. It will be recalled that in February, 1915, the Imperial German Government announced its intention to treat the waters surrounding Great Britain and Ireland as embraced within the seat of war and to destroy all merchant ships owned by its enemies that might be found within any part of that portion of the high seas, and that it warned all vessels, of neutral as well as of belligerent ownership, to keep out of the waters it had thus proscribed or else enter them at their peril. The Government of the United States earnestly protested. It took the position that such a policy could not be pursued without the practical certainty of gross and palpable violations of the law of nations, particularly if submarine craft were to be employed as its instru- ments, inasmuch as the rules prescribed by that law, rules founded upon principles of humanity and estab- lished for the protection of the lives of non-combatants at sea, could not in the nature of the case be observed by such vessels. It based its protest on the ground that persons of neutral nationality and vessels of neutral ownership would be exposed to extreme and intolerable risks, and tha.t no right to close any part of the high seas against their use or to expose them to such risks could lawfully be asserted by any belligerent govern- ment. The law of nations in these matters, upon which GEEAT SPEECHES 101 the Government of the United States based its protest, is not of recent origin or founded upon merely arbitrary principles set up by convention. It is based, on the eontrary, upon manifest and imperative principles of humanity and has long been established with the ap- proval and by the express assent of all civilized nations. Notwithstanding the earnest protest of our Govern- ment, the Imperial German Government at once pro- ceeded to carry out the policy it had announced. It expressed the hope that the dangers involved, at any rate the dangers to neutral vessels, would be reduced to a minimum by the instructions which it had issued to its submarine commanders, and assured the Govern- ment of the United States that it would take every possible precaution both to respect the rights of neu- trals and to safeguard the lives of non-combatants. What has actually happened in the year which has since elapsed has shown that those hopes were not justi- fied, those assurances insusceptible of being fulfilled. In pursuance of the policy of submarine warfare against the commerce of its adversaries, thus announced and entered upon by the Imperial German Government in despite of the solemn protest of this Government, the commanders of German undersea vessels have attacked merchant ships with greater and greater activity, not only upon the high seas surrounding Great Britain and Ireland, but wherever they could encounter them, in a way that has grown more and more ruthless, more and more indiscriminate as the months have gone by, less and less observant of restraints of any kind; and have delivered their attacks without compunction against vessels of every nationality and bound upon every sort of errand. Vessels of neutral ownership, even vessels of neutral ownership bound from neutral port to neutral 102 PRESIDENT WILSON'S port, have been destroyed along with vessels of bel- ligerent ownership in constantly increasing numbers. Sometimes the merchantman attacked has been warned and summoned to surrender before being fired on or torpedoed; sometimes passengers or crews have been vouchsafed the poor security of being allowed to take to the ship's boats before she was sent to the bottom. But again and again no warning has been given, no escape even to the ship's boats allowed to those on board. What this Government foresaw must happen has happened. Tragedy has followed tragedy on the seas in such fashion, with such attendant circumstances, as to make it grossly evident that warfare of such a sort, if warfare it be, cannot be carried on without the most palpable violation of the dictates alike of right and of humanity. Whatever the disposition and inten- tion of the Imperial German Government, it has mani- festly proved impossible for it to keep such methods of attack upon the commerce of its enemies within the bounds set by either the reason or the heart of mankind. In February of the present year the Imperial German Government informed this Government and the other neutral governments of the world that it had reason to believe that the Government of Great Britain had armed all merchant vessels of British ownership and had given them secret orders to attack any submarine of the enemy they might encounter upon the seas, and that the Impe- rial German Government felt justified in the circum- stances in treating all armed merchantmen of belliger- ent ownership as auxiliary vessels of war, which it would have the right to destroy without warning. The law of nations has long recognized the right of mer- chantmen to carry arms for protection and to use them to repel attack, though to use them, in such circum- GREAT SPEECHES 103 stances, at their own risk; but the Imperial German Government claimed the right to set these understand- ings aside in circumstances which it deemed extraor- dinary. Even the terms in which it announced its purpose thus still further to relax the restraints it had previously professed its willingness and desire to put upon the operations of its submarines carried the plain implication that at least vessels which were not armed would still be exempt from destruction without warning and that personal safety would be accorded their pas- sengers and crews ; but even that limitation, if it was ever practicable to observe it, has in fact constituted no check at all upon the destruction of ships of every sort. Again and again the Imperial German Government has given this Government its solemn assurances that at least passenger ships would not be thus dealt with, and yet it has again and again permitted its undersea com- manders to disregard those assurances with entire im- punity. Great liners like the Lusitania and the Arabic and mere ferryboats like the Sussex have been attacked without a moment's warning, sometimes before they had even become aware that they were in the presence of an armed vessel of the enemy, and the lives of non-com- batants, passengers and crew, have been sacrificed wholesale, in a manner which the Government of the United States cannot but regard as wanton and without the slightest color of justification. No limit of any kind has in fact been set to the indiscriminate pursuit and destruction of merchantmen of all kinds and nationali- ties within the waters, constantly extending in area, where these operations have been carried on; and the roll of Americans who have lost their lives on ships thus attacked and destroyed has grown month by month until the ominous toll has mounted into the hundreds. 104 PRESIDENT WILSON'S One of the latest and most shocking instances of this method of warfare was that of the destruction of the French cross-Channel steamer Sussex. It must stand forth, as the sinking of the steamer Lusitania did, as so singularly tragical and unjustifiable as to constitute a truly terrible example of the inhumanity of submarine warfare as the commanders of German vessels have for the past twelvemonth been conducting it. If this in- stance stood alone, some explanation, some disavowal by the German Government, some evidence of criminal mistake or wilful disobedience on the part of the com- mander of the vessel that fired the torpedo might be sought or entertained ; but unhappily it does not stand alone. Recent events make the conclusion inevitable that it is only one instance, even though it be one of the most extreme and distressing instances, of the spirit and method of warfare which the Imperial German Govern- ment has mistakenly adopted, and which from the first exposed that Government to the reproach of thrusting all neutral rights aside in pursuit of its immediate objects. The Government of the United States has been very patient. At every stage of this distressing experience of tragedy after tragedy in which its own citizens were involved it has sought to be restrained from any extreme course of action or of protest by a thoughtful considera- tion of the extraordinary circumstances of this unprece- dented war, and actuated in all that it said or did by the sentiments of genuine friendship which the people of the United States have always entertained and continue to entertain towards the German nation. It has, of course, accepted the successive explanations and assurances of the Imperial German Government as given in entire sincerity and good faith, and has hoped, even against GREAT SPEECHES 105 hope, that it would prove to be possible for the German Government so to order and control the acts of its naval commanders as to square its policy with the principles of humanity as embodied in the law of nations. It has been willing to wait until the significance of the facts became absolutely unmistakable and susceptible of but one interpretation. That point has now unhappily been reached. The facts are susceptible of but one interpretation. The Imperial German Government has been unable to put any limits or restraints upon its warfare against either freight or passenger ships. It has therefore become painfully evident that the position which this Govern- ment took at the very outset is inevitable, namely, that the use of submarines for the destruction of an enemy's commerce is of necessity, because of the very character of the vessels employed and the very methods of attack which their employment of course involves, incompat- ible with the principles of humanity, the long estab- lished and incontrovertible rights of neutrals, and the sacred immunities of non-combatants. I have deemed it my duty, therefore, to say to the Imperial German Government that if it is still its pur- pose to prosecute relentless and indiscriminate warfare against vessels of commerce by the use of submarines, notwithstanding the now demonstrated impossibility of conducting that warfare in accordance with what the Government of the United States must consider the sacred and indisputable rules of international law and the universally recognized dictates of humanity, the Government of the United States is at last forced to the conclusion that there is but one course it can pursue ; and that unless the Imperial German Government should now immediately declare and effect an abandon- 106 PRESIDENT WILSON'S ment of its present methods of warfare against pas- senger and freight carrying vessels this Government can have no choice but to sever diplomatic relations with the Government of the German Empire altogether. This decision I have arrived at with the keenest regret; the possibility of the action contemplated I am sure all thoughtful Americans will look forward to with unaffected reluctance. But we cannot forget that we are in some sort and by the force of circumstances the responsible spokesmen of the rights of humanity, and that we cannot remain silent while those rights seem in process of being swept utterly away in the maelstrom of this terrible war. We owe it to a due regard for our own rights as a nation, to our sense of duty as a representative of the rights of neutrals the world over, and to a just conception of the rights of mankind to take this stand now with the utmost solemnity and firmness. I have taken it, and taken it in the confidence that it will meet with your approval and support. All sober- minded men must unite in hoping that the Imperial German Government, which has in other circumstances stood as the champion of all that we are now contending for in the interest of humanity, may recognize the jus- tice of our demands and meet them in the spirit in which they are made. * GREAT SPEECHES 107 THE PRESIDENT'S INNER SELF Remarkable Heart-to- Heart Talk to Newspaper Men at the National Press Club, May 15, 1916 Mr. President and Gentlemen op the Press Club : I am both glad and sorry to be here ; glad because I am always happy to be with you, and know and like so many of you, and sorry because I have to make a speech. One of the leading faults of you gentlemen of the press is your inordinate desire to hear other men talk, to draw them out upon all occasions, whether they wish to be drawn out or not. I remember being in this Press Club once before, making many unpremeditated disclosures of myself, and then having you with your singular instinct for publicity insist that I should give it away to every- body else. I was thinking as I was looking forward to coming here this evening of that other occasion when I stood very nearly at the threshold of the duties that I have since been called upon to perform, and I was going over in my mind the impressions that I then had by way of forecast of the duties of President and comparing them with the experiences that have followed. I must say that the forecast has been very largely verified, and that the impressions I had then have been deepened rather than weakened. You may recall that I said then that I felt constantly a personal detachment from the Presidency ; that one thing that I resented when I was not performing the duties of the office was being reminded that I was the President of the United States. I felt toward it as a man feels toward a great function which, in working hours, he is obliged to perform, but which, out of working hours, he 108 PRESIDENT WILSON'S is glad to get away from and almost forget and resume the quiet course of his own thoughts. I am constantly reminded as I go about, as I do sometimes at the week end, of the personal inconvenience of being President of the United States. If I want to know how many people live in a small town all I have to do is to go there and they at once line up to be counted. I might, in a census- taking year, save the census takers a great deal of trouble by asking them to accompany me and count the people on the spot. Sometimes, when I am most beset, I seri- ously think of renting a pair of whiskers or of doing something else that will furnish me with an adequate disguise, because I am sorry to find that the cut of my jib is unmistakable and that I must sail under false colors if I am going to sail incognito. Yet as I have matched my experiences with my antici- pations, I, of course, have been aware that I was taken by surprise because of the prominence of many things to which I had not looked forward. When we are deal- ing with domestic affairs, gentlemen, we are dealing with things that to us as Americans are more or less calculable. There is a singular variety among our citizenship, it is true, a greater variety even than I had anticipated ; but, after all, we are all steeped in the same atmosphere, we are all surrounded by the same environment, we are all more or less affected by the same traditions, and, more- over, we are working out something that has to be worked out among ourselves, and the elements are there to be dealt with at first hand. But when the fortunes of your own country are, so to say, subject to the incalculable winds of passion that are blowing through other parts of the world, then the strain is of a singular and unpre- cedented kind, because you do not know by what turn of the wheel of fortune the control of things is going to be GEEAT SPEECHES 109 taken out of your hand ; it makes no difference how deep the passion of the Nation lies, that passion may be so overborne by the rush of fortune in circumstances like those which now exist that you feel the sort of — I had almost said resentment that a man feels when his own affairs are not within his own hands. You can imagine the strain upon the feeling of any man who is trying to interpret the spirit of his country when he feels that that spirit can not have its own way beyond a certain point. And one of the greatest points of strain upon me, if I may be permitted to point it out, was this : There are two reasons why the chief wish of America is for peace. One is that they love peace and have noth- ing to do with the present quarrel ; and the other is that they believe the present quarrel has carried those engaged in it so far that they can not be held to ordinary stand- ards of responsibility, and that, therefore, as some men have expressed it to me, since the rest of the world is mad, why should we not simply refuse to have anything to do with the rest of the world in the ordinary channels of action ? Why not let the storm pass, and then, when it is all over, have the reckonings? Knowing that from both these two points of view the passion of America was for peace, I was, nevertheless, aware that America is one of the Nations of the world, not only, but one of the chief Nations of the world — a Nation that grows more and more powerful almost in spite of herself; that grows morally more and more influential even when she is not aware of it; and that if she is to play the part which she most covets, it is necessary that she should act more or less from the point of view of the rest of the world. If I can not retain my moral influence over a man except by occa- sionally knocking him down, if that is the only basis upon which he will respect me, then for the sake of his soul I HO PEESIDENT WILSON'S have got occasionally to knock him down. You know hovr we have read in — isn't it in Ralph Connor's stories of western life in Canada ? — that all his sky pilots are ready for a fracas at any time, and how the ultimate salvation of the souls of their parishioners depends upon their using their fists occasionally. If a man will not listen to you quietly in a seat, sit on his neck and make him listen ; just as I have always maintained, particularly in view of certain experiences of mine, that the shortest road to a boy 's moral sense is through his cuticle. There is a direct and, if I may be permitted the pun, a fundamental con- nection between the surface of his skin and his moral consciousness. You arrest his attention first in that way, and then get the moral lesson conveyed to him in milder ways that, if he were grown up, would be the only ways you would use. So I say that I have been aware that in order to do the very thing that we are proudest of the ability to do, there might come a time when we would have to do it in a way that we would prefer not to do it ; and the great burden on my spirits, gentlemen, has been that it has been up to me to choose when that time came. Can you imagine a thing more calculated to keep a man awake at nights than that ? Because, just because I did not feel that I was the whole thing and was aware that my duty was a duty of inter- pretation, how could I be sure that I had the right ele- ments of information by which to interpret truly? "What we are now talking about is largely spiritual. You say, "All the people out my way think so and so." Now, I know perfectly well that you have not talked with all the people out your way. I find that out again and again. And so you are taken by surprise. The people of the United States are not asking anybody's leave to do their own thinking, and are not asking anybody to tip GREAT SPEECHES HI them off what they ought to think. They are thinking for themselves, every man for himself ; and you do not know, and, the worst of it is, since the responsibility is mine, I do not know what they are thinking about. I have the most imperfect means of finding out, and yet I have got to act as if I knew. That is the burden of it, and I tell you, gentlemen, it is a pretty serious burden, particularly if you look upon the office as I do — that I am not put here to do what I please. If I were, it would have been very much more interesting than it has been. I am put here to interpret, to register, to suggest, and, more than that, and much greater than that, to be suggested to. Now, that is where the experience that I forecast has differed from the experience that I have had. In do- mestic matters I think I can in most cases come pretty near a guess where the thought of America is going, but in foreign affairs the chief element is where action is going on in other quarters of the world and not where thought is going in the United States. Therefore, I have several times taken the liberty of urging upon you gen- tlemen not yourselves to know more than the State De- partment knows about foreign affairs. Some of you have shown a singular range of omniscience, and certain things have been reported as understood in administra- tive circles which I never heard of until I read the news- papers. I am constantly taken by surprise in regard to decisions which are said to be my own, and this gives me an uncomfortable feeling that some providence is at work with which I have had no communication at all. Now, that is pretty dangerous, gentlemen, because it hap- pens that remarks start fires. There is tinder lying every- where, not only on the other side of the water, but on this side of the water, and a man that spreads sparks may be responsible for something a great deal worse than 112 PEESIDENT WILSON'S burning a town on the Mexican border. Thoughts may be bandits. Thoughts may be raiders. Thoughts may be invaders. Thoughts may be disturbers of interna- tional peace ; and when you reflect upon the importance of this country keeping out of the present war, you will know what tremendous elements we are all dealing with. We are all in the same boat. If somebody does not keep the processes of peace going, if somebody does not keep their passions disengaged, by what impartial judgment and suggestion is the world to be aided to a solution when the whole thing is over? If you are in a conference in which you know nobody is disinterested, how are you going to make a plan? I tell you this, gentlemen, the only thing that saves the world is the little handful of disinterested men that are in it. Now, I have found a few disinterested men. I wish I had found more. I can name two or three men with whom I have conferred again and again and again, and I have never caught them by an inadvertence thinking about themselves for their own interests, and I tie to those men as you would tie to an anchor. I tie to them as you would tie to the voices of conscience if you could be sure that you always heard them. Men who have no axes to grind ! Men who love America so that they would give their lives for it and never care whether anybody heard that they had given their lives for it ; willing to die in obscurity if only they might serve ! Those are the men, and nations like those men are the nations that are going to serve the world and save it. There never was a time in the history of the world when character, just sheer character all by itself, told more than it does now. A friend of mine says that every man who takes office in "Washington either grows or swells, and when I give a man an office, I watch him carefully to see whether he is GBEAT SPEECHES 113 swelling or growing. The mischief of it is that when they swell they do not swell enough to burst. If they would only swell to the point where you might insert a pin and let the gases out, it would be a great delight. I do not know any pastime that would be more diverting, except that the gases are probably poisonous, so that we would have to stand from under. But the men who grow, the men who think better a year after they are put in office than they thought when they were put in office, are the balance wheel of the whole thing. They are the ballast that enables the craft to carry sail and to make port in the long run, no matter what the weather is. So I have come willing to make this narrative of experi- ence to you. I have come through the fire since I talked to you last. Whether the metal is purer than it was, God only knows ; but the fire has been there, the fire has pene- trated every part of it, and if I may believe my own thoughts I have less partisan feeling, more impatience of party maneuver, more enthusiasm for the right thing, no matter whom it hurts, than I ever had before in my life. And I have something that it is no doubt danger- ous to have, but that I can not help having. I have a pro- found intellectual contempt for men who can not see the signs of the times. I have to deal with some men who know no more of the modern processes of politics than if they were living in the eighteenth century, and for them I have a profound and comprehensive intellectual con- tempt. They are blind. They are hopelessly blind ; and the worst of it is I have to spend hours of my time talking to them when I know before I start as much as after I have finished that it is absolutely useless to talk to them. I am talking in vacuo. The business of every one of us, gentlemen, is to realize that if we are correspondents of papers who have not yet 114 PEESIDENT WILSON'S heard of modern times we ought to send them as many intimations of modern movements as they are willing to print. There is a simile that was used "by a very inter- esting English writer that has been much in my mind. Like myself, he had often been urged not to try to change so many things. I remember when I was president of a university a man said to me, ' ' Good heavens, man, why don't you leave something alone and let it stay the way it is?" And I said, "If you will guarantee to me that it will stay the way it is I will let it alone ; but if you knew anything you would know that if you leave a live thing alone it will not stay where it is. It will develop and will either go in the wrong direction or decay. ' ' I reminded him of this thing that the English writer said, that if you want to keep a white post white you can not let it alone. It will get black. You have to keep doing some- thing to it. In that instance you have got to keep paint- ing it white, and you have got to paint it white very frequently in order to keep it white, because there are forces at work that will get the better of you. Not only will it turn black, but the forces of moisture and the other forces of nature will penetrate the white paint and get at the fiber of the wood, and decay will set in, and the next time you try to paint it you will find that there is nothing but punk to paint. Then you will remember the Red Queen in "Alice in Wonderland," or "Alice Through the Looking Glass" — I forget which, it has been so long since I read them — who takes Alice by the hand and they rush along at a great pace, and then when they stop Alice looks around and says, "But we are just where we were when we started. " " Yes, ' ' says the Red Queen, "you have to run twice as fast as that to get anywhere else." That is also true, gentlemen, of the world and of affairs. GEEAT SPEECHES 115 You have got to run fast merely to stay where you are, and in order to get anywhere, you have got to run twice as fast as that. That is what people do not realize. That is the mischief of these hopeless dams against the stream known as reactionaries and standpatters, and other words of obloquy. That is what is the matter with them ; they are not even staying where they were. They are sinking further and further back in what will sometime com- fortably close over their heads as the black waters of oblivion. I sometimes imagine that I see their heads going down, and I am not inclined even to throw them a life preserver. The sooner they disappear, the better. We need their places for people who are awake ; and we particularly need now, gentlemen, men who will divest themselves of party passion and of personal preference and will try to think in the terms of America. If a man describes himself to me now in any other terms than those terms, I am not sure of him ; and I love the fellows that come into my office sometimes and say, "Mr. Presi- dent, I am an American. ' ' Their hearts are right, their instinct true, they are going in the right direction, and will take the right leadership if they believe that the leader is also a man who thinks first of America. You will see, gentlemen, that I did not premeditate these remarks, or they would have had some connection with each other. They would have had some plan. I have merely given myself the pleasure of telling you what has really been in my heart, and not only has been in my heart but is in my heart every day of the week. If I did not go off at week ends occasionally and throw off, as much as it is possible to throw off, this burden, I could not stand it. This week I went down the Potomac and up the James and substituted history for politics, and there was an infinite, sweet calm in some of those old 116 PKESIDENT WILSON'S places that reminded me of the records that were made in the days that are past ; and I comforted myself with the recollection that the men we remember are the disin- terested men who gave us the deeds that have covered the name of America all over with the luster of imperish- able glory. GEEAT SPEECHES 117 ADDRESS TO THE LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE Washington, May 27, 1916 When the invitation to be here tonight came to me, I was glad to accept it, — not because it offered me an opportunity to discuss the programme of the League, — that you will, I am sure, not expect of me, — but because the desire of the whole world now turns eagerly, more and more eagerly, toward the hope of peace, and there is just reason why we should take our part in counsel upon this great theme. It is right that I, as spokesman of our Government, should attempt to give expression to what I believe to be the thought and purpose of the people of the United States in this vital matter. This great war that broke so suddenly upon the world two years ago, and which has swept within its flame so great a part of the civilized world, has affected us very profoundly, and we are not only at liberty, it is perhaps our duty, to speak very frankly of it and of the great interests of civilization which it affects. With its causes and its objects we are not concerned. The obscure fountains from which its stupendous flood has burst forth we are not interested to search for or explore. But so great a flood, spread far and wide to every quarter of the globe, has of necessity engulfed many a fair province of right that lies very near to us. Our own rights as a Nation, the liberties, the privileges, and the property of our people have been profoundly affected. We are not mere disconnected lookers-on. The longer the war lasts, the more deeply do we become concerned that it should be brought to an end and the world be permitted to resume its normal life and course US PRESIDENT WTLSCr .. And when i: does eon I n end ve shall be as much concerned as tl oati : war to see peace give promise of days . :-h the m ' shall he lifted, -suranee th&: and war shall always ned part of the common interest of mankind. We are participants, whether we would or n I in the life of the world. The interests of all nations ■re our own also. We are partners with the rest. What affects mankind is inevitably our affair as well iz : the nations : I rope and of Asia. Onr wiion on the causes of the present war we t liberty to make, and to make it may throw some . - - forward upon the future, as well as backward upon the past It is plain that this war could have come only as it did. suddenly and out of secret counsels, at warning to the world, without discussion. " out any of the deliberate movements of counsel with which it would seem natural to approach so stupendous a contest. It is probable that :: it had been foreseen I " old happen, just what alliances would be formed., just what forces arrayed against one an: - those who brought the great contest on would have been glad to substitute conference for force. If we ourselves had been afforded some opportunity to apprise the nts oi the attitude which it would be our duty to take, of the policies and practices against which we would feel bound to use all our moral and economic strength, and in certain circumstances even our physical strength also, our own contribution to the counsel which _ : have averted the struggle would have been con- red worth weighing and regarding. And the lesson which the shock of being taken by surprise in a matter so deeply vital to all the nations of GEEAT SPEECHES 119 the world has made poignantly clear is, that the peace of the world must henceforth depend upon a new and more wholesome diplomacy. Only when the great nations of the world have reached some sort of agreement as to what they hold to be fundamental to their common interest, and as to some feasible method of acting in concert when any nation or group of nations seeks to disturb those fundamental things, can we feel that civilization is at last in a way of justifying its existence and claiming to be finally established. It is clear that nations must in the future be governed by the same high code of honor that we demand of individuals. "We must, indeed, in the very same breath with which we avow this conviction, admit that we have ourselves upon occasion in the past been offenders against the law of diplomacy which we thus forecast : but our conviction is not the less clear, but rather the more clear, on that account. If this war has accomplished nothing else for the benefit of the world, it has at least disclosed a great moral necessity and set forward the thinking of the states- men of the world by a whole age. Repeated utterances of the leading statesmen of most of the great nations now engaged in war have made it plain that their thought has come to this, that the principle of public right must henceforth take precedence over the individual interests of particular nations, and that the nations of the world must in some way band themselves together to see that that right prevails as against any sort of selfish aggres- sion ; that henceforth alliance must not be set up against alliance, understanding against understanding, but that there must be a common agreement for a common object, and that at the heart of that common object must lie the inviolable rights of peoples and of mankind. The na- tions of the world have become each other's neighbors. 120 PRESIDENT WILSON'S It is to their interest that they should understand each other. In order that they may understand each other, it is imperative that they should agree to cooperate in a common cause, and that they should so act that the guid- ing principle of that common cause shall be even-handed and impartial justice. This is undoubtedly the thought of America. This is what we ourselves will say when there comes proper occa- sion to say it. In the dealings of nations with one an- other arbitrary force must be rejected and we must move forward to the thought of the modern world, the thought of which peace is the very atmosphere. That thought consti- tutes a chief part of the passionate conviction of America. We believe these fundamental things : First, that every people has aright to choose the sovereignty under which they shall live. Like other nations, we have ourselves no doubt once and again offended against that principle when for a little while controlled by selfish passion, as our franker historians have been honorable enough to admit ; but it has become more and more our rule of life and action. Second, that the small states of the world have a right to enjoy the same respect for their sovereignty and for their territorial integrity that great and powerful nations expect and insist upon. And, third, that the world has a right to be free from every disturbance of its peace that has its origin in aggression and disregard of the rights of peoples and nations. So sincerely do we believe in these things that I am sure that I speak the mind and wish of the people of America when I say that the United States is willing to become a partner in any feasible association of nations formed in order to realize these objects and make them secure against violation. There is nothing that the United States wants for GSEAT SPEECHES 121 itself that any other nation has. We are willing, on the contrary, to limit ourselves along with them to a pre- scribed course of duty and respect for the rights of others which will check any selfish passion of our own, as it will check any aggressive impulse of theirs. If it should ever be our privilege to suggest or initiate a movement for peace among the nations now at war, I am sure that the people of the United States would wish their Government to move along these lines: First, such a settlement with regard to their own immediate interests as the belligerents may agree upon. We have nothing material of any kind to ask for ourselves, and are quite aware that we are in no sense or degree parties to the present quarrel. Our interest is only in peace and its future guarantees. Second, an universal association of the nations to maintain the inviolate security of the high- way of the seas for the common and unhindered use of all the nations of the world, and to prevent any war begun either contrary to treaty covenants or without warning and full submission of the causes to the opinion of the world — a virtual guarantee of territorial integrity and political independence. But I did not come here, let me repeat, to discuss a programme. I came only to avow a creed and give ex- pression to the confidence I feel that the world is even now upon the eve of a great consummation, when some common force will be brought into existence which shall safeguard right as the first and most fundamental inter- est of all peoples and all governments, when coercion shall be summoned not to the service of political ambition or selfish hostility, but to the service of a common order, a common justice, and a common peace. God grant that the dawn of that day of frank dealing and of settled peace, concord, and cooperation may be near at hand ! 122 PEESIDENT WILSON'S ON ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S BIRTHPLACE Mr. Wilson's Address on the Acceptance by the War Department of a Deed of Gift to the Nation of the Lincoln Farm at Hodgenville, Kentucky, September 4, 1913 No more significant memorial could have been pre- sented to the nation than this. It expresses so much of what is singular and noteworthy in the history of the country ; it suggests so many of the things that we prize most highly in our life and in our system of government. How eloquent this little house within this shrine is of the vigor of democracy! There is nowhere in the land any home so remote, so humble, that it may not contain the power of mind aud heart and conscience to which nations yield and history submits its processes. Nature pays no tribute to aristocracy, subscribes to no creed of caste, renders fealty to no monarch or master of any name or kind. Genius is no snob. It does not run after titles or seek by preference the high circles of society. It affects humble company as well as great. It pays no special tribute to universities or learned societies or con- ventional standards of greatness, but serenely chooses its own comrades, its own haunts, its own cradle even, and its own life of adventure and of training. Here is proof of it. This little hut was the cradle of one of the great sons of men, a man of singular, delightful, vital genius who presently emerged, upon the great stage of the na- tion's history, gaunt, shy, ungainly, but dominant and majestic, a natural ruler of men, himself inevitably the central figure of the great plot. No man can explain this, but every man can see how it demonstrates the vigor of democracy, where every door is open, in every hamlet GREAT SPEECHES 123 and countryside, in city and wilderness alike, for the ruler to emerge when he will and claim his leadership in the free life. Such are the authentic proofs of the validity and vitality of democracy. Here, no less, hides the mystery of democracy. Who shall guess this secret of nature and providence and a free polity? Whatever the vigor and vitality of the stock from which he sprang, its mere vigor and sound- ness do not explain where this man got his great heart that seemed to comprehend all mankind in its catholic and benignant sympathy, the mind that sat enthroned behind those brooding, melancholy eyes, whose vision swept many an horizon which those about him dreamed not of — that mind that comprehended what it had never seen, and understood the language of affairs with the ready ease of one to the manner born — or that nature which seemed in its varied richness to be the familiar of men of every way of life. This is the sacred mystery of democracy, that its richest fruits spring up out of soils which no man has prepared and in circumstances amidst which they are the least expected. This is a place alike of mystery and of reassurance. It is likely that in a society ordered otherwise than our own, Lincoln could not have found himself or the path of fame and power upon which he walked serenely to his death. In this place it is right that we should remind. ourselves of the solid and striking facts upon which our faith in democracy is founded. Many another man be- sides Lincoln has served the nation in its highest places of counsel and of action whose origins were as humble as his. Though the greatest example of the universal energy, richness, stimulation, and force of democracy, he is only one example among many. The permeating and all-per- vasive virtue of the freedom which challenges us in Amer- 124 PRESIDENT WILSON'S ica to make the most of every gift and power we possess, every page of our history serves to emphasize and illus- trate. Standing here in this place, it seems almost the whole of the stirring story. Here Lincoln had his beginnings. Here the end and consummation of that great life seem remote and a bit incredible. And yet there was no break anywhere be- tween beginning and end, no lack of natural sequence anywhere. Nothing really incredible happened. Lin- coln was unaffectedly as much at home in the White House as he was here. Do you share with me the feeling, I wonder, that he was permanently at home nowhere? It seems to me that in the case of a man — I would rather say of a spirit — like Lincoln the question where he was is of little significance, that it is always what he was that really arrests our thought and takes hold of our imagi- nation. It is the spirit always that is sovereign. Lin- coln, like the rest of us, was put through the discipline of the world — a very rough and exacting discipline for him, an indispensable discipline for every man who would know what he is about in the midst of the world 's affairs ; but his spirit got only its schooling there. It did not derive its character or its vision from the experiences which brought it to its full revelation. The test of every American must always be, not where he is, but what he is. That, also, is of the essence of democracy, and is the moral of which this place is most gravely expressive. We would like to think of men like Lincoln and Wash- ington as typical Americans, but no man can be typical who is so unusual as these great men were. It was typ- ical of American life that it should produce such men with supreme indifference as to the manner in which it produced them, and as readily here in this hut as amidst the little circle of cultivated gentlemen to whom Virginia GBEAT SPEECHES 125 owed so much in leadership and example. And Lincoln and Washington were typical Americans in the use they made of their genius. But there will be few such men at best, and we will not look into the mystery of how and why they come. We will only keep the door open for them always, and a hearty welcome — after we have rec- ognized them. I have read many biographies of Lincoln ; I have sought out with the greatest interest the many intimate stories that are told of him, the narratives of nearby friends, the sketches at close quarters, in which those who had the privilege of being associated with him have tried to depict for us the very man himself ' ' in his habit as he lived ' ' ; but I have nowhere found a real intimate of Lincoln's. I nowhere get the impression in any narrative or remi- niscence that the writer had in fact penetrated to the heart of his mystery, or that any man could penetrate to the heart of it. That brooding spirit had no real famil- iars. I get the impression that it never spoke out in complete self-revelation, and that it could not reveal itself completely to anyone. It was a very lonely spirit that looked out from underneath those shaggy brows and comprehended men without fully communing with them, as if, in spite of all its genial efforts at comradeship, it dwelt apart, saw its visions of duty where no man looked on. There is a very holy and very terrible isolation for the conscience of every man who seeks to read the destiny in affairs for others as well as for himself, for a nation as well as for individuals. That privacy no man can intrude upon. That lonely search of the spirit for the right perhaps no man can assist. This strange child of the cabin kept company with invisible things, was born into no intimacy but that of its own silently assembling and deploying thoughts. 126 PRESIDENT WILSON'S I have come here today, not to utter a eulogy on Lin- coln ; he stands in need of none, but to endeavor to inter- pret the meaning of this gift to the nation of the place of his birth and origin. Is not this an altar upon which we may forever keep alive the vestal fire of democracy as upon a shrine at which some of the deepest and most sacred hopes of mankind may from age to age be rekin- dled? For these hopes must constantly be rekindled, and only those who live can rekindle them. The only stuff that can retain the life-giving heat is the stuff of living hearts. And the hopes of mankind cannot be kept alive by words merely, by constitutions and doc- trines of right and codes of liberty. The object of de- mocracy is to transmute these into the life and action of society, the self-denial and self-sacrifice of heroic men and women willing to make their lives an embodiment of right and service and enlightened purpose. The com- mands of democracy are as imperative as its privileges and opportunities are wide and generous. Its compul- sion is upon us. It will be great and lift a great light for the guidance of the nations only if we are great and carry that light high for the guidance of our own feet. "We are not worthy to stand here unless we ourselves be in deed and in truth real democrats and servants of man- kind, ready to give our very lives for the freedom and justice and spiritual exaltation of the great nation which shelters and nurtures us. GREAT SPEECHES 127 PREVENTING A GREAT RAILROAD STRIKE Address of the President to Congress on the Threatening Situation, August 29, 1916 Gentlemen of the Congress : I have come to you to seek your assistance in dealing with a very grave situation which has arisen out of the demand of the employees of the railroads engaged in freight train service that they be granted an eight-hour working day, safeguarded by payment for an hour and a half of service for every hour of work beyond the eight. The matter has been agitated for more than a year. The public has been made familiar with the demands of the men and the arguments urged in favor of them, and even more familiar with the objections of the railroads and their counter demand that certain privileges now enjoyed by their men and certain bases of payment worked out through many years of contest be reconsid- ered, especially in their relation to the adoption of an eight-hour day. The matter came some three weeks ago to a final issue and resulted in a complete deadlock be- tween the parties. The means provided by law for the mediation of the controversy failed and the means of arbitration for which the law provides were rejected. The representatives of the railway executives proposed that the demands of the men be submitted in their en- tirety to arbitration, along with certain questions of re- adjustment as to pay and conditions of employment which seemed to them to be either closely associated with the demands or to call for reconsideration on their own merits; the men absolutely declined arbitration, espe- cially if any of their established privileges were by that 128 PRESIDENT WILSON'S means to be drawn again in question. The law in the matter put no compulsion upon them. The four hun- dred thousand men from whom the demands proceeded had voted to strike if their demands were refused; the strike was imminent ; it has since been set for the fourth of September next. It affects the men who man the freight trains on practically every railway in the coun- try. The freight service throughout the United States must stand still until their places are filled, if, indeed, it should prove possible to fill them at all. Cities will be cut off from their food supplies, the whole commerce of the nation will be paralyzed, men of every sort and occu- pation will be thrown out of employment, countless thou- sands will in all likelihood be brought, it may be, to the very point of starvation, and a tragical national calamity brought on, to be added to the other distresses of the time, because no basis of accommodation or settlement has been found. Just so soon-as it became evident that mediation under the existing law had failed and that arbitration had been rendered impossible by the attitude of the men, I consid- ered it my duty to confer with the representatives of both the railways and the brotherhoods, and myself offer me- diation, not as an arbitrator, but merely as spokesman of the nation, in the interest of justice, indeed, and as a friend of both parties, but not as judge, only as the rep- resentative of one hundred millions of men, women, and children who would pay the price, the incalculable price, of loss and suffering should these few men insist upon approaching and concluding the matters in controversy between them merely as employers and employees, rather than as patriotic citizens of the United States looking before and after and accepting the larger responsibility which the public would put upon them. GREAT SPEECHES 129 It seemed to me, in considering the subject-matter of the controversy, that the whole spirit of the time and the preponderant evidence of recent economic experience spoke for the eight-hour day. It has been adjudged by the thought and experience of recent years a thing upon which society is justified in insisting as in the interest of health, efficiency, contentment, and a general increase of economic vigor. The whole presumption of modern ex- perience would, it seemed to me, be in its favor, whether there was arbitration or not, and the debatable points to settle were those which arose out of the acceptance of the eight-hour day rather than those which affected its establishment. I, therefore, proposed that the eight-hour day be adopted by the railway managements and put into practice for the present as a substitute for the existing ten-hour basis of pay and service ; that I should appoint, with the permission of the Congress, a small commission to observe the results of the change, carefully studying the figures of the altered operating costs, not only, but also the conditions of labor under which the men worked and the operation of their existing agreements with the railroads, with instructions to report the facts as they found them to the Congress at the earliest possible day, but without recommendation; and that, after the facts had been thus disclosed, an adjustment should in some orderly manner be sought of all the matters now left unadjusted between the railroad managers and the men. These proposals were exactly in line, it is interesting to note, with the position taken by the Supreme Court of the United States when appealed to to protect certain litigants from the financial losses which they confidently expected if they should submit to the regulation of their charges and of their methods of service by public legis- lation. The Court has held that it would not undertake 120 PKESIDENT WILSON'S to form a judgment upon forecasts, but could base its action only upon actual experience ; that it must be sup- plied with facts, not with calculations and opinions, how- ever scientifically attempted. To undertake to arbitrate the question of the adoption of an eight-hour day in the light of results merely estimated and predicted would be to undertake an enterprise of conjecture. No wise man could undertake it, or, if he did undertake it. could feel assured of his conclusions. I unhesitatingly offered the friendly services of the administration to the railway managers to see to it that justice was done the railroads in the outcome. I felt warranted in assuring them that no obstacle of law would be suffered to stand in the way of their increasing their revenues to meet the expenses resulting from the change so far as the development of their business and of their administrative efficiency did not prove adequate to meet them. The public and the representatives of the public, I felt justified in assuring them, were disposed to nothing but justice in such cases and were willing to serve those who served them. The representatives of the brotherhoods accepted the plan ; but the representatives of the railroads declined to accept it. In the face of what I cannot but regard as the practical certainty that they will be ultimately obliged to accept the eight-hour day by the concerted action of organized labor, backed by the favorable judgment of society, the representatives of the railway management have felt justified in declining a peaceful settlement which would engage all the forces of justice, public and private, on their side to take care of the event. They fear the hostile influence of shippers, who would be opposed to an increase of freight rates (for which, however, of course, GKEAT SPEECHES 131 the public itself would pay) ; they apparently feel no confidence that the Interstate Commerce Commission could withstand the objections that would be made. They do not care to rely upon the friendly assurances of the Congress or the President. They have thought it best that they should be forced to yield, if they must yield, not by counsel, but by the suffering of the country. While my conferences with them were in progress, and when to all outward appearance those conferences had come to a standstill, the representatives of the brotherhoods sud- denly acted and set the strike for the fourth of September. The railway managers based their decision to reject my counsel in this matter upon their conviction that they must at any cost to themselves or to the country stand firm for the principle of arbitration which the men had rejected. I based my counsel upon the indisputable fact that there was no means of obtaining arbitration. The law supplied none ; earnest efforts at mediation had failed to influence the men in the least. To stand firm for the principle of arbitration and yet not get arbitration seemed to me futile, and something more than futile, be- cause it involved incalculable distress to the country and consequences in. some respects worse than those of war, and that in the midst of peace. I yield to no man in firm adherence, alike of conviction and of purpose, to the principle of arbitration in indus- trial disputes ; but matters have come to a sudden crisis in this particular dispute and the country had been caught unprovided with any practicable means of enforcing that conviction in practice (by whose fault we will not now stop to inquire). A situation had to be met whose ele- ments and fixed conditions were indisputable. The prac- tical and patriotic course to pursue, as it seemed to me, 132 PRESIDENT WILSON'S was to secure immediate peace by conceding the one thing in the demands of the men which society itself and any arbitrators who represented public sentiment were most likely to approve, and immediately lay the foundations for securing arbitration with regard to everything else involved. The event has confirmed that judgment. I was seeking to compose the present in order to safe- guard the future; for I wished an atmosphere of peace and friendly cooperation in which to take counsel with the representatives of the nation with regard to the best means for providing, so far as it might prove possible to provide, against the recurrence of such unhappy situa- tions in the future — the best and most practicable means of securing calm and fair arbitration of all industrial disputes in the days to come. This is assuredly the best way of vindicating a principle, namely, having failed to make certain of its observance in the present, to make certain of its observance in the future. But I could only propose. I could not govern the will of others who took an entirely different view of the cir- cumstances of the case, who even refused to admit the circumstances to be what they have turned out to be. Having failed to bring the parties to this critical con- troversy to an accommodation, therefore, I turn to you, deeming it clearly our duty as public servants to leave nothing undone that we can do to safeguard the life and interests of the nation. In the spirit of such a purpose, I earnestly recommend the following legislation : First, immediate provision for the enlargement and administrative reorganization of the Interstate Commerce Commission along the lines embodied in the bill recently passed by the House of Representatives and now await- ing action by the Senate ; in order that the Commission GREAT SPEECHES 133 may be enabled to deal with the many great and various duties now devolving upon it with a promptness and thoroughness which are, with its present constitution and means of action, practically impossible. Second, the establishment of an eight-hour day as the legal basis alike of work and of wages in the employment of all railway employees who are actually engaged in the work of operating trains in interstate transportation. Third, the authorization of the appointment by the President of a small body of men to observe the actual results in experience of the adoption of the eight-hour day in railway transportation alike for the men and for the railroads ; its effects in the matter of operating costs, in the application of the existing practices and agree- ments to the new conditions and in all other practical aspects, with the provision that the investigators shall report their conclusions to the Congress at the earliest possible date, but without recommendation as to legisla- tive action; in order that the public may learn from an unprejudiced source just what actual developments have ensued. Fourth, explicit approval by the Congress of the con- sideration by the Interstate Commerce Commission of an increase of freight rates to meet such additional expend- itures by the railroads as may have been rendered neces- sary by the adoption of the eight-hour day and which have not been offset by administrative readjustments and economies, should the facts disclosed justify the increase. Fifth, an amendment of the existing federal statute which provides for the mediation, conciliation, and arbi- tration of such controversies as the present by adding to it a provision that in case the methods of accommodation now provided for should fail, a full public investigation 134 PKESIDENT WILSON'S of the merits of every such dispute shall be instituted and completed before a strike or lockout may lawfully be attempted. And, sixth, the lodgment in the hands of the Execu- tive of the power, in case of military necessity, to take control of such portions and such rolling stock of the railways of the country as may be required for military use and to operate them for military purposes, with au- thority to draft into the military service of the United States such train crews and administrative officials as the circumstances require for their safe and efficient use. This last suggestion I make because we cannot in any circumstances suffer the nation to be hampered in the essential matter of national defense. At the present moment circumstances render this duty particularly ob- vious. Almost the entire military force of the nation is stationed upon the Mexican border to guard our terri- tory against hostile raids. It must be supplied, and steadily supplied, with whatever it needs for its main- tenance and efficiency. If it should be necessary for purposes of national defense to transfer any portion of it upon short notice to some other part of the country, for reasons now unforeseen, ample means of transporta- tion must be available, and available without delay. The power conferred in this matter should be carefully and explicitly limited to cases of military necessity, but in all such cases it should be clear and ample. There is one other thing we should do if we are true champions of arbitration. We should make all arbitral awards judgments by record of a court of law in order that their interpretation and enforcement may lie, not with one of the parties to the arbitration, but with an impartial and authoritative tribunal. GREAT SPEECHES 135 These things I urge upon you, not in haste or merely as a means of meeting a present emergency, but as perma- nent and necessary additions to the law of the land, sug- gested, indeed, by circumstances we had hoped never to see, but imperative as well as just, if such emergencies are to be prevented in the future. I feel that no ex- tended argument is needed to commend them to your favorable consideration. They demonstrate themselves. The time and the occasion only give emphasis to their importance. We need them now and we shall continue to need them. 136 PRESIDENT WILSON'S ANNUAL ADDRESS TO CONGRESS December 5, 1916 Gentlemen op the Congress: In fulfilling at this time the duty laid upon me by the Constitution of communicating to you from time to time information of the state of the Union and recommending to your consideration such legislative measures as may be judged necessary and expedient, I shall continue the practice, which I hope has been acceptable to you, of leaving to the reports of the several heads of the execu- tive departments the elaboration of the detailed needs of the public service and confine myself to those matters of more general public policy with which it seems necessary and feasible to deal at the present session of the Congress. I realize the limitations of time under which you will necessarily act at this session and shall make my sugges- tions as few as possible ; but there were some things left undone at the last session which there will now be time to complete and which it seems necessary in the interest of the public to do at once. In the first place, it seems to me imperatively necessary that the earliest possible consideration and action should be accorded the remaining measures of the programme of settlement and regulation which I had occasion to recommend to you at the close of your last session in view of the public dangers disclosed by the unaccommodated difficulties which then existed, and which still unhappily continue to exist, between the railroads of the country and their locomotive engineers, conductors, and trainmen. I then recommended : First, immediate provision for the enlargement and administrative reorganization of the Interstate Com- GREAT SPEECHES 137 merce Commission along the lines embodied in the bill recently passed by the House of Representatives and now awaiting action by the Senate; in order that the Commission may be enabled to deal with the many great and various duties now devolving upon it with a prompt- ness and thoroughness which are, with its present con- stitution and means of action, practically impossible. Second, the establishment of an eight-hour day as the legal basis alike of work and of wages in the employment of all railway employees who are actually engaged in the work of operating trains in interstate transportation. Third, the authorization of the appointment by the President of a small body of men to observe the actual results in experience of the adoption of the eight-hour day in railway transportation alike for the men and for the railroads. Fourth, explicit approval by the Congress of the con- sideration by the Interstate Commerce Commission of an increase of freight rates to meet such additional expend- itures by the railroads as may have been rendered neces- sary by the adoption of the eight-hour day and which have not been offset by administrative readjustments and economies, should the facts disclosed justify the increase. Fifth, an amendment of the existing federal statute which provides for the mediation, conciliation, and arbi- tration of such controversies as the present by adding to it a provision that, in case the methods of accommo- dation now provided for should fail, a full public inves- tigation of the merits of every such dispute shall be instituted and completed before a strike or lockout may lawfully be attempted. And, sixth, the lodgment in the hands of the Executive of the power, in case of military necessity, to take control 138 PRESIDENT WILSON'S of such portions and such rolling stock of the railways of the country as may he required for military use and to operate them for military purposes, with authority to draft into the military service of the United States such train crews and administrative officials as the circum- stances require for their safe and efficient use. The second and third of these recommendations the Congress immediately acted on ; it established the eight- hour day as the legal basis of work and wages in train service and it authorized the appointment of a commis- sion to observe and report upon the practical results, deeming these the measures most immediately needed; but it postponed action upon the other suggestions until an opportunity should be offered for a more deliberate consideration of them. The fourth recommendation I do not deem it necessary to renew. The power of the Interstate Commerce Commission to grant an increase of rates on the ground referred to is indisputably clear and a recommendation by the Congress with regard to such a matter might seem to draw in question the scope of the Commission's authority or its inclination to do justice when there is no reason to doubt either. The other suggestions — the increase in the Interstate Commerce Commission's membership and in its facilities for performing its manifold duties, the provision for full public investigation and assessment of industrial dis- putes, and the grant to the Executive of the power to control and operate the railways when necessary in time of war or other like public necessity — I now very ear- nestly renew. The necessity for such legislation is manifest and press- ing. Those who have entrusted us with the responsibility and duty of serving and safeguarding them in such mat- ters would find it hard, I believe, to excuse a failure to GREAT SPEECHES 139 act upon these grave matters or any unnecessary post- ponement of action upon them. Not only does the Interstate Commerce Commission now find it practically impossible, with its present mem- bership and organization, to perform its great functions promptly and thoroughly, but it is not unlikely that it may presently be found advisable to add to its duties still others equally heavy and exacting. It must first be per- fected as an administrative instrument. The country cannot and should not consent to remain any longer exposed to profound industrial disturbances for lack of additional means of arbitration and concilia- tion which the Congress can easily and promptly supply. And all will agree that there must be no doubt as to the power of the Executive to make immediate and uninter- rupted use of the railroads for the concentration of the military forces of the nation wherever they are needed and whenever they are needed. This is a programme of regulation, prevention, and administrative efficiency which argues its own case in the mere statement of it. "With regard to one of its items, the increase in the efficiency of the Interstate Com- merce Commission, the House of Representatives has already acted; its action needs only the concurrence of the Senate. I would hesitate to recommend, and I dare say the Congress would hesitate to act upon the suggestion should I make it, that any man in any occupation should be obliged by law to continue in an employment which he desired to leave. To pass a law which forbade or pre- vented the individual workman to leave his work before receiving the approval of society in doing so would be to adopt a new principle into our jurisprudence which I take it for granted we are not prepared to introduce. 140 PRESIDENT WILSON'S But the proposal that the operation of the railways of the country shall not be stopped or interrupted by the concerted action of organized bodies of men until a public investigation shall have been instituted which shall make the whole question at issue plain for the judgment of the opinion of the nation is not to propose any such principle. It is based upon the very different principle that the con- certed action of powerful bodies of men shall not be per- mitted to stop the industrial processes of the nation, at any rate before the nation shall have had an opportunity to acquaint itself with the merits of the case as between employee and employer, time to form its opinion upon an impartial statement of the merits, and opportunity to consider all practicable means of conciliation or arbi- tration. I can see nothing in that proposition but the justifiable safeguarding by society of the necessary proc- esses of its very life. There is nothing arbitrary or unjust in it unless it be arbitrarily and unjustly done. It can and should be done with a full and scrupulous regard for the interests and liberties of all concerned as well as for the permanent interests of society itself. Three matters of capital importance await the action of the Senate which have already been acted upon by the House of Representatives : the bill which seeks to extend greater freedom of combination to those engaged in promoting the foreign commerce of the country than is now thought by some to be legal under the terms of the laws against monopoly; the bill amending the present organic law of Porto Rico ; and the bill proposing a more thorough and systematic regulation of the expenditure of money in elections, commonly called the Corrupt Prac- tices Act. I need not labor my advice that these meas- ures be enacted into law. Their urgency lies in the manifest circumstances which render their adoption at GREAT SPEECHES 141 this time not only opportune but necessary. Even delay would seriously jeopard the interests of the country and of the government. Immediate passage of the bill to regulate the expend- iture of money in elections may seem to be less necessary than the immediate enactment of the other measures to which I refer ; because at least two years will elapse before another election in which federal offices are to be filled ; but it would greatly relieve the public mind if this im- portant matter were dealt with while the circumstances and the dangers to the public morals of the present method of obtaining and spending campaign funds stand clear under recent observation and the methods of ex- penditure can be frankly studied in the light of present experience; and a delay would have the further very serious disadvantage of postponing action until another election was at hand and some special object connected with it might be thought to be in the mind of those who urged it. Action can be taken now with facts for guid- ance and without suspicion of partisan purpose. I shall not argue at length the desirability of giving a freer hand in the matter of combined and concerted effort to those who shall undertake the essential enter- prise of building up our export trade. That enterprise will presently, will immediately assume, has indeed al- ready assumed, a magnitude unprecedented in our expe- rience. We have not the necessary instrumentalities for its prosecution ; it is deemed to be doubtful whether they could be created upon an adequate scale under our pres- ent laws. We should clear away all legal obstacles and create a basis of undoubted law for it which will give freedom without permitting unregulated license. The thing must be done now, because the opportunity is here and may escape us if we hesitate cr delay. 142 PRESIDENT WILSON'S The argument for the proposed amendments of the organic law of Porto Rico is brief and conclusive. The present laws governing the Island and regulating the rights and privileges of its people are not just. We have created expectations of extended privilege which we have not satisfied. There is uneasiness among the people of the Island and even a suspicious doubt with regard to our intentions concerning them which the adoption of the pending measure would happily remove. We do not doubt what we wish to do in any essential particular. We ought to do it at once. At the last session of the Congress a bill was passed by the Senate which provides for the promotion of voca- tional and industrial education which is of vital impor- tance to the whole country because it concerns a matter, too long neglected, upon which the thorough industrial preparation of the country for the critical years of eco- nomic development immediately ahead of us in very large measure depends. May I not urge its early and favor- able consideration by the House of Representatives and its early enactment into law? It contains plans which affect all interests and all parts of the country and I am sure that there is no legislation now pending before the Congress whose passage the country awaits with more thoughtful approval or greater impatience to see a great and admirable thing set in the way of being done. There are other matters already advanced to the stage of conference between the two Houses of which it is not necessary that I should speak. Some practicable basis of agreement concerning them will no doubt be found and action taken upon them. Inasmuch as this is, Gentlemen, probably the last occa- sion I shall have to address the Sixty-fourth Congress, I hope that you will permit me to say with what genuine GEEAT SPEECHES 143 pleasure and satisfaction I have cooperated with you in the many measures of constructive policy with which you have enriched the legislative annals of the country. It has been a privilege to labor in such company. I take the liberty of congratulating you upon the completion of a record of rare serviceableness and distinction. 144 PRESIDENT WILSON'S LAST HOPES OF PEACE President Wilson's Address to the Senate of the United States, January 22, 1917 Gentlemen of the Senate : On the eighteenth 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 dis- cuss 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, guarantees, and acts of reparation which they deem to be the indispensable conditions of a satisfactory settlement. We are that much nearer a defi- nite discussion of the peace which shall end the present war. We are that much nearer the discussion of the international concert which must thereafter hold the world at peace. In every discussion of the peace that must end this war it is taken for granted that that peace must be followed 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 associated GREAT SPEECHES 145 with me in the final determination of our international 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 Government in the 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 prin- ciples 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 of other nations to guarantee peace and justice throughout the world. Such a settlement cannot now be long post- poned. 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 dif- ference in what way and upon what terms it is ended. The treaties and agreements which bring it to an end 146 PEESIDENT WILSON'S must embody terms which will create a peace that is worth guaranteeing and preserving, a peace that will win the approval of mankind, 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, 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 afterwards when it may be too late. No covenant of cooperative peace that does not in- clude 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. The elements of that peace must be ele- ments that engage the confidence and satisfy the prin- ciples of the American governments, elements consistent with their political faith and with the practical convic- tions 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 be- tween the belligerents will not satisfy even the belligerents themselves. Mere agreements may not make peace secure. It will be absolutely necessary that a force 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 withstand it. If the peace presently to be made is to GEEAT SPEECHES 147 endure, it must be a peace made secure by the organized major force of mankind. The terms of the immediate peace agreed upon will determine whether it is a peace for which such a guaran- tee can be secured. The question upon which the whole future peace and policy of the world depends is this: Is the present war a struggle for a just and secure peace, or only for a new balance of power ? If it be only a strug- gle for a new balance of power, who will guarantee, who can guarantee, the stable equilibrium of the new arrange- ment ? Only a tranquil Europe can be a stable Europe. There must be, not a balance of power, but a community of power ; not organized rivalries, but an organized com- mon peace. Fortunately we have received very explicit assurances 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 antag- onists. 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 without victory. It is not pleasant to say this. I beg that I may be permitted to put my own interpretation upon it and that it may be understood that no other interpretation was in my thought. I am seeking 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, 148 PRESIDENT WILSON'S 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 state of mind, the right feeling between nations, is as necessary for a lasting peace as is the just settlement of vexed questions of territory or of racial and national allegiance. 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 indi- vidual strength, of the nations upon whose concert peace will depend. Equality of territory or of resources there of course cannot be; nor any other sort of equality not gained in the ordinary peaceful and legitimate develop- ment 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 right among organized nations. No peace can last, or ought to last, which does not recognize and accept the principle that governments derive all their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that no right any- where exists to harid peoples about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were property. 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 inviolable security of life, of worship, and of industrial and social development should be guaranteed to all peoples who have lived GREAT SPEECHES 149 hitherto under the power of governments devoted to a faith and purpose hostile to their own. 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 reali- ties. Any peace which does not recognize and accept this principle will inevitably be upset. It will not rest upon the affections or the convictions of mankind. The fer- ment 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 tranquility of spirit and a sense of justice, of freedom, and of right. So far as practicable, moreover, every great people now struggling towards 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 the 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. And the paths of the sea must alike in law and in fact be free. The freedom of the seas is the sine qua won of peace, equality, and cooperation. No doubt a somewhat radical reconsideration of many of the rules of interna- tional practice hitherto thought to be established may be necessary in order to make the seas indeed free and com- mon in practically all circumstances for the use of man- 150 PRESIDENT WILSON'S kind, 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, con- stant, unthreatened intercourse of nations is an essential part of the process of peace and of development. It need not be difficult either to define or to secure the freedom of the seas if the governments of the world sincerely desire to come to an agreement concerning it. It is a problem closely connected with the limitation 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 programmes 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 with- out concession and sacrifice. There can be no sense of safety and equality among the nations if great prepon- derating armaments 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 accommodate 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 question con- nected with the future fortunes of nations and of man- kind. 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 yearning desire for peace was anywhere to find free voice and utterance. GREAT SPEECHES 151 Perhaps I am the only person in high authority amongst all the peoples of the world who is at liberty to speak and hold nothing back. I am speaking as an individual, and yet I am speaking also, of course, as the responsible head of a great government, and I feel confident that I have said what the people of the United States would wish me to say. 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 programme 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 Government of the United States will join the other civ- ilized nations of the world in guaranteeing the perma- nence 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 fulfilment, rather, of all that we have professed or striven for. 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 polity over any other nation or people, but that every people should be left free to determine its own polity, 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 en- tangling alliances which would draw them into compe- titions of power, catch them in a net of intrigue and selfish rivalry, and disturb their own affairs with influ- 152 PEESIDENT WILSON'S ences intruded from without. There is no entangling alliance in a concert of power. When all unite to act in the same sense and with the same purpose 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 gov- erned; that freedom of the seas which in international conference after conference 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 instrument of aggression or of selfish violence. These are American principles, American policies. We could stand for no others. And they are also the prin- ciples 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. GEE AT SPEECHES 153 Letter to a Congressman 1 ' It is incomprehensible to me how any frank or honest person could doubt or question my position with regard to the war and its objects. I have again and again stated the very serious and long continued wrongs which the imperial German Government has perpetrated against the rights, the commerce, and the citizens of the United States. The list is long and overwhelming. No nation that respects itself or the rights of humanity could have borne those wrongs any longer. "Our objects in going into the war have been stated with equal clearness. The whole of the conception which I take to be the conception of our fellow countrymen, with regard to the outcome of the war and the terms of its set- tlement I set forth with the utmost explicitness in an address to the Senate of the United States on the 22d of January last. Again in my message to Congress on the 2d of April last those objects were stated in unmis- takable terms. "I can conceive of no purpose in seeking to becloud this matter except the purpose of weakening the hands of the Government and making the part which the United States is to play in this great struggle for human liberty an inefficient and hesitating part. "We have entered the war for our own reasons and with our own objects clearly stated, and shall forget neither the reasons nor the objects. ' ' There is no hate in our hearts for the German people, but there is a resolve which cannot be shaken even by misrepresentation to overcome the pretensions of the autocratic government which act upon purposes to which the German people have never consented. ' ' May 22, 1917. Woodrow Wilson. 154 PEESIDENT WILSON'S DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS BROKEN The President's Address to Congress, February 3, 1917 Gentlemen of the Congress : The Imperial German Government on the thirty-first of January announced to this Government and to the governments of the other neutral nations that on and after the first 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 desig- nated areas of the high seas to which it is clearly my duty to call your attention. Let me remind the Congress that on the eighteenth of April last, in view of the sinking on the twenty-fourth of March of the cross-channel passenger steamer ' ' Sussex ' ' by a German submarine, without summons or warning, and the consequent loss of the lives of several citizens of the United States who were passengers aboard her, this Government addressed a note to the Imperial German Government in which it made the following declaration : 1 ' If it is still the purpose of the Imperial Government 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 interna- tional law and the universally recognized dictates of humanity, the Government of the United States is at last forced to the conclusion that there is but one course it can pursue. Unless the Imperial Government should now immediately declare and effect an abandonment of its present methods of submarine warfare against pas- senger and freight-carrying vessels, the Government of GEEAT SPEECHES 155 the United States can have no choice but to sever diplo- matic relations with the German Empire altogether. ' ' In reply to this declaration the Imperial German Gov- ernment 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 dura- tion to the fighting forces of the belligerents, thereby also insuring the freedom of the seas, a principle upon which the German Government believes, 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 inter- national law, such vessels, both within and without the area declared as naval war zone, shall not be sunk with- out warning and without saving human lives, unless these ships attempt to escape or offer resistance. "But," it added, "neutrals can not expect that Ger- many, forced to fight for her existence, shall, for the sake of neutral 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 inter- national law. Such a demand would be incompatible with the character of 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 determined to restore the principle of the freedom of the seas, from whatever quarter it has been violated." 156 PRESIDENT WILSON'S To this the Government of the United States replied on the eighth of May, accepting, of course, the assurances given, but adding, "The Government of the United States feels it neces- sary 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 instant might appear to be susceptible of that construction. In order, however, to avoid any pos- sible misunderstanding, the Government of the United States notifies the Imperial Government that it can not 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 eighth of May the Imperial German Government made no reply. On the thirty-first of January, the Wednesday of the present week, the German Ambassador handed to the Secretary of State, along with a formal note, a memo- randum which contains 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 GREAT SPEECHES 157 to destroy the Central Powers, and that the Government of the United States will further realize that the now openly disclosed intentions of the Entente Allies give back to Germany the freedom of action which she reserved in her note addressed to the Government of the United States on May 4, 1916. "Under these circumstances Germany will meet the illegal measures of her enemies by forcibly preventing after February 1, 1917, in a zone around Great Britain, France, Italy, and in the Eastern Mediterranean all nav- igation, that of neutrals included, from and to England and from and to France, etc., etc. All ships met within the zone will be sunk. ' ' I think that you will agree with me that, in view of this declaration, which suddenly and without prior inti- mation of any kind deliberately withdraws the solemn assurance given in the Imperial Government's note of the fourth of May, 1916, this Government has no alter- native consistent with the dignity and honor of the United States but to take the course which, in its note of the eighteenth of April, 1916, it announced that it would take in the event that the German Government did not declare and effect an abandonment of the methods of submarine warfare which it was then employing and to which it now purposes again to resort. 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 at Berlin will immediately be withdrawn; and, in accordance with this decision, to hand to His Excellency his passports. Notwithstanding this unexpected action of the Ger- 158 PRESIDENT WILSON'S man Government, this sudden and deeply deplorable renunciation of its assurances, given this Government at one of the most critical moments of tension in the rela- tions 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 wilful prosecu- tion of the ruthless naval programme they have an- nounced their intention to adopt. Only actual overt acts on their part can make me believe it even now. 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 un- derstandings of international law and the obvious dictates of humanity, I shall take the liberty of coming again before the Congress to ask that authority be given me to use any means that may be necessary for the protection of our seamen and our people in the prosecution of their peaceful and legitimate errands on the high seas. I can do nothing less. I take it for granted that all neutral gov- ernments will take the same course. We do not desire any hostile conflict with the Imperial German Government. "We are the sincere friends of the German people and earnestly desire to remain at peace with the Government which 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 GREAT SPEECHES 159 people. "We wish to serve no selfish ends. We seek merely to stand true alike in thought and in action to the imme- morial principles of our people which I sought to express 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 we may not be challenged to defend them by acts of wilful injustice on the part of the Government of Germany ! 160 PRESIDENT WILSON'S THE WAR CLOUDS THICKEN Mr. Wilson's Address to Congress, February 26, 1917 Asking Power to Arm Ships 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 third of February I officially informed you of the sudden and unexpected action of the Imperial Ger- man Government in declaring its intention to disregard the promises it had made to this Government in April last and undertake immediate submarine 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 those operations without regard to the established restrictions of international practice, without regard to any considerations of human- ity 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. 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 first 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 suf- GREAT SPEECHES 161 fered, 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 consigned to a London firm, was essentially like the case of the Frye, 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 de- serves grave condemnation, but was accompanied by no circumstances which might not have been expected at any time in connection with the use of the submarine against merchantmen as the German Government has used it. In sum, therefore, the situation we find ourselves in with regard to the actual conduct of the German sub- marine warfare against commerce and its effects upon our own ships and people is substantially the same that it was when I addressed you on the third 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 insurance or adequate protec- tion, 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 command- ers would in fact avoid has not occurred. 162 PKESIDENT WILSON'S But, while this is happily true, it must be admitted that there have been certain additional indications and expres- sions 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 unex- pected discretion and restraint 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 thought- ful 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. I cannot in such circumstances be unmindful of the fact that the expiration of the term of the present Con- gresses 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 that fact, to obtain from you full and immediate assurance of the authority which I may need at any moment to exer- cise. 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 implica- tion. 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. GEEAT SPEECHES 163 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. 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 rights by diplomatic means against the unwarranted 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 necessary to put armed force anywhere into action. The American people do not desire it, and our desire is not different from theirs. I am sure that they will understand the spirit in which I am now acting, the purpose I hold near- est 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 pre- serve 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 exercis- ing 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 wilful acts and aggressions of others. 164 PEESIDENT WILSON'S You will understand why I can make no definite pro- posals or forecasts of action now and must ask for your supporting authority in the most general terms. The form in which action may become necessary 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 them- selves displayed throughout these trying months; and it is in that belief that I request that you will authorize me to supply 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 peace- ful pursuits on the seas. I request also that you will grant me at the same time, along with the powers I ask, a suffi- cient 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 mis- led as to my main thought, the thought that lies beneath these phrases and gives them dignity and weight. It is not of material interests merely that we are thinking. It is, rather, of fundamental human rights, chief of all the right of life itself. I am thinking, 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 fundamental than that. I am thinking of those rights of humanity without which there is no civili- zation. My theme is of those great principles of com- passion 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 indus- GREAT SPEECHES 165 trial 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 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 can- not imagine any man with American principles at his heart hesitating to defend these things. 166 PEESIDENT WILSON'S SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS, 1917 [The date of Mr. Wilson's second accession to the Presidency of the United States, March 4, 1917, falling on a Sunday, he took the oath of office privately on that day, and delivered his inaugural address next day, March 5, in the presence of an immense throng gathered outside the Capitol at Washington, as follows:] 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 im- portant 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 thought- fully 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. 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 concern- ing 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 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 GREAT SPEECHES 167 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. 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 sea- sons 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 ourselves that we were not ready to demand for all 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 we can demonstrate what it is we insist upon and cannot forego. We may even be drawn on, by cir- 168 PRESIDENT WILSON'S cumstances, not by our own purpose or desire, to a more active assertion of our rights as we see them and a more immediate association with the great struggle itself. But nothing 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. 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 uni- versal forces of mankind, and we are making our spirits ready for those things. They will follow in the immediate wake of the war 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. 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 : 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; GREAT SPEECHES 139 That the essential principle of peace is the actual equal- ity 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 eonsent 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 agree- ment 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 neces- sities of national order and domestic safety; 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 proceed- ing 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 170 PRESIDENT WILSON'S own heart, the high purpose of the Nation in his own mind, ruler of his own will and desire. I stand here and have taken the high and solemn oath to which you have been audience because the people of the United States have chosen me for this august dele- gation 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 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, — an 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. For myself I beg your toler- ance, your countenance, and your united aid. The shad- ows that now lie dark upon our path will soon be dis- pelled 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. GKEAT SPEECHES 171 ADVICE TO NEW CITIZENS The President's Address to Newly Naturalized Ameri- cans, Philadelphia, May 10, 1915 Mr. Mayor, Fellow Citizens : It warms my heart that you should give me such a reception; but it is not of myself that I wish to think tonight, but of those who have just become citizens of the United States. This is the only country in the world which experiences this constant and repeated rebirth. Other countries de- pend upon the multiplication of their own native people. This country is constantly drinking strength out of new sources by the voluntary association with it of great bodies of strong men and forward-looking women out of other lands. And so by the gift of the free will of inde- pendent people it is being constantly renewed from gen- eration to generation by the same process by which it was originally created. It is as if humanity had determined to see to it that this great Nation, founded for the benefit of humanity, should not lack for the allegiance of the people of the world. You have just taken an oath of allegiance to the United States. Of allegiance to whom ? Of allegiance to no one, unless it be God — certainly not of allegiance to those who temporarily represent this great Government. You have taken an oath of allegiance to a great ideal, to a great body of principles, to a great hope of the human race. You have said, "We are going to America not only to earn a living, not only to seek the things which it was more difficult to obtain where we were born, but to help forward the great enterprises of the human spirit — to let men know that everywhere in the world there are men 172 PRESIDENT WILSON'S who will cross strange oceans and go where a speech is spoken which is alien to them if they can but satisfy their quest for what their spirits crave; knowing that what- ever the speech there is but one longing and utterance of the human heart, and that is for liberty and justice." And while you bring all countries with you, you come with a purpose of leaving all other countries behind you — bringing what is best of their spirit, but not looking over your shoulders and seeking to perpetuate what you intended to leave behind in them. I certainly would not be one even to suggest that a man cease to love the home of his birth and the nation of his origin — these things are very sacred and ought not to be put out of our hearts — but it is one thing to love the place where you were born and it is another thing to dedicate yourself to the place to which you go. You can not dedicate yourself to America unless you become in every respect and with every purpose of your will thorough Americans. You can not become thorough Americans if you think of your- selves in groups. America does not consist of groups. A man who thinks of himself as belonging to a particular national group in America has not yet become an Ameri- can, and the man who goes among you to trade upon your nationality is no worthy son to live under the Stars and Stripes. My urgent advice to you would be, not only always to think first of America, but always, also, to think first of humanity. You do not love humanity if you seek to divide humanity into jealous camps. Humanity can be welded together only by love, by sympathy, by justice, not by jealousy and hatred. I am sorry for the man who seeks to make personal capital out of the passions of his fellow- men. He has lost the touch and ideal of America, for America was created to unite mankind by those passions GREAT SPEECHES 173 which lift and not by the passions which separate and debase. "We came to America, either ourselves or in the persons of our ancestors, to better the ideals of men, to make them see finer things than they had seen before, to get rid of the things that divide and to make sure of the things that unite. It was but an historical accident no doubt that this great country was called the ''United States"; yet I am very thankful that it has that word "United" in its title, and the man who seeks to divide man from man, group from group, interest from interest in this great Union is striking at its very heart. It is a very interesting circumstance to me, in thinking of those of you who have just sworn allegiance to this great Government, that you were drawn across the ocean by some beckoning finger of hope, by some belief, by some vision of a new kind of justice, by some expectation of a better kind of life. No doubt you have been disappointed in some of us. Some of us are very disappointing. No doubt you have found that justice in the United States goes only with a pure heart and a right purpose as it does everywhere else in the world. No doubt what you found here did not seem touched for you, after all, with the complete beauty of the ideal which you had conceived beforehand. But remember this: If we had grown at all poor in the ideal, you brought some of it with you. A man does not go out to seek the thing that is not in him. A man does not hope for the thing that he does not believe in, and if some of us have forgotten what America believed in, you, at any rate, imported in your own hearts a renewal of the belief. That is the reason that I, for one, make you welcome. If I have in any degree for- gotten what America was intended for, I will thank God if you will remind me. I was born in America. You dreamed dreams of what America was to be, and I hope 174 PRESIDENT WILSON'S you brought the dreams with you. No man that does not see visions will ever realize any high hope or undertake any high enterprise. Just because you brought dreams with you, America is more likely to realize dreams such as you brought. You are enriching us if you came ex- pecting us to be better than we are. See, my friends, what that means. It means that Americans must have a consciousness different from the consciousness of every other nation in the world. I am not saying this with even the slightest thought of criti- cism of other nations. You know how it is with a family. A family gets centered on itself if it is not careful and is less interested in the neighbors than it is in its own mem- bers. So a nation that is not constantly renewed out of new sources is apt to have the narrowness and prejudice of a family ; whereas, America must have this conscious- ness, that on all sides it touches elbows and touches hearts with all the nations of mankind. The example of Amer- ica must be a special example. The example of America must be the example not merely of peace because it will not fight, but of peace because peace is the healing and elevating influence of the world and strife is not. There is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight. There is such a thing as a nation being so right that it does not need to convince others by force that it is right. You have come into this great Nation voluntarily seek- ing something that we have to give, and all that we have to give is this : We can not exempt you from work. No man is exempt from work anywhere in the world. We can not exempt you from the strife and the heartbreak- ing burden of the struggle of the day — that is common to mankind everywhere ; we can not exempt you from the loads that you must carry. We can only make them light by the spirit in which they are carried. That is the GREAT SPEECHES 1?5 juste^ h0P6 ' h ™ thG SPirft ° f Hbert7 ' * " the Spirit 0f When I was asked, therefore, by the Mayor and the committee that accompanied him to come up from Wash- mgton to meet this great company of newly admitted citizens, I could not decline the invitation. I ought not to be away from Washington, and yet I feel that it has renewed my spirit as an American to be here. In Wash- ington men tdl you so many things every day that are not so and I like to come and stand in the presence of a great body of my fellow-citizens, whether they have been my fellow-citizens a long time or a short time, and drink, as it were, out of the common fountains with them and go back feeling what you have so generously given me-the sense of your support and of the living vitality in your hearts of the great ideals which have made America the hope of the world. 176 PEESIDENT WILSON'S FIRST ADDRESS TO CONGRESS Delivered at a Joint Session of the Two Houses, April 8, 1913 Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, Gentlemen of the Con- gress: I am very glad indeed to have this opportunity to ad- dress the two Houses directly and to verify for myself the impression that the President of the United States is a person, not a mere department of the Government hail- ing Congress from some isolated island of jealous power, sending messages, not speaking naturally and with his own voice — that he is a human being trying to co-oper- ate with other human beings in a common service. After this pleasant experience I shall feel quite normal in all our dealings with one another. I have called the Congress together in extraordinary session because a duty was laid upon the party now in power at the recent elections which it ought to perform promptly, in order that the burden carried by the people under existing law may be lightened as soon as possible and in order, also, that the business interests of the country may not be kept too long in suspense as to what the fiscal changes are to be to which they will be re- quired to adjust themselves. It is clear to the whole country that the tariff duties must be altered. They must be changed to meet the radical alteration in the conditions of our economic life which the country has witnessed within the last generation. While the whole face and method of our industrial and commercial life were being changed beyond recognition the tariff sched- ules have remained what they were before the change began, or have moved in the direction they were given GREAT SPEECHES 177 when no large circumstance of our industrial develop- ment was what it is to-day. Our task is to square them with the actual facts. The sooner that is done the sooner we shall escape from suffering from the facts and the sooner our men of business will be free to thrive by the law of nature (the nature of free business) instead of by the law of legislation and artificial arrangement. We have seen tariff legislation wander very far afield in our day — very far indeed from the field in which our prosperity might have had a normal growth and stimula- tion. No one who looks the facts squarely in the face or knows anything that lies beneath the surface of action can fail to perceive the principles upon which recent tariff legislation has been based. We long ago passed beyond the modest notion of "protecting" the industries of the country and moved boldly forward to the idea that they were entitled to the direct patronage of the Govern- ment. For a long time — a time so long that the men now active in public policy hardly remember the conditions that preceded it — we have sought in our tariff schedules to give each group of manufacturers or producers what they themselves thought that they needed in order to maintain a practically exclusive market as against the rest of the world. Consciously or unconsciously, we have built up a set of privileges and exemptions from competi- tion behind which it was easy by any, even the crudest, forms of combination to organize monopoly ; until at last nothing is normal, nothing is obliged to stand the tests of efficiency and economy, in our world of big business, but everything thrives by concerted arrangement. Only new principles of action will save us from a final hard crystallization of monopoly and a complete loss of the influences that quicken enterprise and keep independent energy alive. 178 PKESIDENT WILSON'S It is plain what those principles must be. "We must abolish everything that bears even the semblance of privi- lege or of any kind of artificial advantage, and put our business men and producers under the stimulation of a constant necessity to be efficient, economical, and enter- prising, masters of competitive supremacy, better work- ers and merchants than any in the world. Aside from the duties laid upon articles which we do not, and probably can not, produce, therefore, and the duties laid upon luxuries and merely for the sake of the revenues they yield, the object of the tariff duties henceforth laid must be effective competition, the whetting of American wits by contest with the wits of the rest of the world. It would be unwise to move toward this end headlong, with reckless haste, or with strokes that cut at the very root of what has grown up amongst us by long process and at our own invitation. It does not alter a thing to upset it and break it and deprive it of a chance to change. It destroys it. We must make changes in our fiscal laws, in our fiscal system, whose object is development, a more free and wholesome development, not revolution or upset or confusion. We must build up trade, especially foreign trade. We need the outlet and the enlarged field of energy more than we ever did before. We must build up industry as well, and must adopt freedom in the place of artificial stimulation only so far as it will build, not pull down. In dealing with the tariff the method by which this may be done will be a matter of judgment, exercised item by item. To some not accustomed to the excitements and responsibilities of greater freedom our methods may in some respects and at some points seem heroic, but remedies may be heroic and yet be remedies. It is our business to make sure that they are genuine remedies. Our object is clear. If our motive is above GEEAT SPEECHES 179 just challenge and only occasional error of judgment is chargeable against us, we shall be fortunate. We are called upon to render the country a great serv- ice in more matters than one. Our responsibility should be met and our methods should be thorough, as thorough as moderate and well considered, based upon the facts as they are, and not worked out as if we were beginners. We are to deal with the facts of our own day, with the facts of no other, and to make laws which square with those facts. It is best, indeed it is necessary, to begin with the tariff. I will urge nothing upon you now at the open- ing of your session which can obscure that first object or divert our energies from that clearly defined duty. At a later time I may take the liberty of calling your atten- tion to reforms which should press close upon the heels of the tariff changes, if not accompany them, of which the chief is the reform of our banking and currency laws ; but just now I refrain. For the present, I put these mat- ters on one side and think only of this one thing — of the changes in our fiscal system which may best serve to open once more the free channels of prosperity to a great people whom we would serve to the utmost and throughout both rank and file. I thank you for your courtesy. 180 PRESIDENT WILSON'S FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS Delivered by President Wilson at the Capitol, March 4, 1913 There has been a change of government. It began two years ago, when the House of Representatives became Democratic by a decisive majority. It has now been com- pleted. The Senate about to assemble will also be Demo- cratic. The offices of President and Vice President have been put into the hands of Democrats. What does the change mean ? That is the question that is uppermost in our minds to-day. That is the question I am going to try to answer, in order, if I may, to interpret the occasion. It means much more than the mere success of a party. The success of a party means little except when the Nation is using that party for a large and definite pur- pose. No one can mistake the purpose for which the Nation now seeks to use the Democratic Party. It seeks to use it to interpret a change in its own plans and point of view. Some old things with which we had grown familiar, and which had begun to creep into the very habit of our thought and of our lives, have altered their aspect as we have latterly looked critically upon them, with fresh, awakened eyes ; have dropped their disguises and shown themselves alien and sinister. Some new things, as we look frankly upon them, willing to compre- hend their real character, have come to assume the aspect of things long believed in and familiar, stuff of our own convictions. We have been refreshed by a new insight into our own life. We see that in many things that life is very great. It is incomparably great in its material aspects, in its body of wealth, in the diversity and sweep of its energy, in the GEEAT SPEECHES 181 industries which have been conceived and built up by the genius of individual men and the limitless enterprise of groups of men. It is great, also, very great, in its moral force. Nowhere else in the world have noble men and women exhibited in more striking forms the beauty and the energy of sympathy and helpfulness and counsel in their efforts to rectify wrong, alleviate suffering, and set the weak in the way of strength and hope. We have built up, moreover, a great system of government, which has stood through a long age as in many respects a model for those who seek to set liberty upon foundations that will endure against fortuitous change, against storm and accident. Our life contains every great thing, and con- tains it in rich abundance. But the evil has come with the good, and much fine gold has been corroded. With riches has come inexcusable waste. We have squandered a great part of what we might have used, and have not stopped to conserve the exceeding bounty of nature, without which our genius for enterprise would have been worthless and impotent, scorning to be careful, shamefully prodigal as well as admirably efficient. We have been proud of our indus- trial achievements, but we have not hitherto stopped thoughtfully enough to count the human cost, the cost of lives snuffed out, of energies overtaxed and broken, the fearful physical and spiritual cost to the men and women and children upon whom the dead weight and burden of it all has fallen pitilessly the years through. The groans and agony of it all had not yet reached our ears, the solemn, moving undertone of our life, coming up out of the mines and factories and out of every home where the struggle had its intimate and familiar seat. With the great Government went many deep secret things which we too long delayed to look into and scrutinize with candid, 182 PEESIDENT WILSON'S fearless eyes. The great Government we loved has too often been made use of for private and selfish purposes, and those who used it had forgotten the people. At last a vision has been vouchsafed us of our life as a whole. We see the bad with the good, the debased and decadent with the sound and vital. With this vision we approach new affairs. Our duty is to cleanse, to reconsider, to restore, to correct the evil without impair- ing the good, to purify and humanize every process of our common life without weakening or sentimentalizing it. There has been something crude and heartless and unfeeling in our haste to succeed and be great. Our thought has been "Let every man look out for himself, let every generation look out for itself, ' ' while we reared giant machinery which made it impossible that any but those who stood at the levers of control should have a chance to look out for themselves. We had not forgotten our morals. We remembered well enough that we had set up a policy which was meant to serve the humblest as well as the most powerful, with an eye single to the stand- ards of justice and fair play, and remembered it with pride. But we were very heedless and in a hurry to be great. We have come now to the sober second thought. The scales of heedlessness have fallen from our eyes. We have made up our minds to square every process of our national life again with the standards we so proudly set up at the beginning and have always carried at our hearts. Our work is a work of restoration. We have itemized with some degree of particularity the things that ought to be altered and here are some of the chief items : A tariff which cuts us off from our proper part in the commerce of the world, violates the just principles of taxation, and makes the Government GREAT SPEECHES 1S3 a facile instrument in the hands of private interests; a banking and currency system based upon the necessity of the Government to sell its bonds fifty years ago and perfectly adapted to concentrating cash and restrict- ing credits ; an industrial system which, take it on all its sides, financial as well as administrative, holds capital in leading strings, restricts the liberties and limits the opportunities of labor, and exploits without renewing or conserving the natural resources of the country; a body of agricultural activities never yet given the effi- ciency of great business undertakings or served as it should be through the instrumentality of science taken directly to the farm, or afforded the facilities of credit best suited to its practical needs; watercourses unde- veloped, waste places unreclaimed, forests untended, fast disappearing without plan or prospect of renewal, unre- garded waste heaps at every mine. "We have studied as perhaps no other nation has the most effective means of production, but we have not studied cost or economy as we should either as organizers of industry, as statesmen, or as individuals. Nor have we studied and perfected the means by which government may be put at the service of humanity, in safeguarding the health of the Nation, the health of its men and its women and its children, as well as their rights in the struggle for existence. This is no senti- mental duty. The firm basis of government is justice, not pity. These are matters of justice. There can be no equality or opportunity, the first essential of justice in the body politic, if men and women and children be not shielded in their lives, their very vitality, from the consequences of great industrial and social processes which they can not alter, control, or singly cope with. Society must see to it that it does not itself crush or 184 PEESIDENT WILSON'S weaken or damage its own constituent parts. The first duty of law is to keep sound the society it serves. Sanitary laws, pure food laws, and laws determining conditions of labor which individuals are powerless to determine for themselves are intimate parts of the very business of justice and legal efficiency. These are some of the things we ought to do, and not leave the others undone, the old-fashioned, never-to-be- neglected, fundamental safeguarding of property and of individual right. This is the high enterprise of the new day: To lift everything that concerns our life as a Nation to the light that shines from the hearthfire of every man's conscience and vision of the right. It is inconceivable that we should do this as partisans; it is inconceivable we should do it in ignorance of the facts as they are or in blind haste. We shall restore, not destroy. We shall deal with our economic system as it is and as it may be modified, not as it might be if we had a clean sheet of paper to write upon; and step by step we shall make it what it should be, in the spirit of those who question their own wisdom and seek counsel and knowledge, not shallow self-satisfaction or the excitement of excursions whither they can not tell. Justice, and only justice, shall always be our motto. And yet it will be no cool process of mere science. The Nation has been deeply stirred, stirred by a solemn passion, stirred by the knowledge of wrong, of ideals lost, of government too often debauched and made an instrument of evil. The feelings with which we face this new age of right and opportunity sweep across our heartstrings like some air out of God's own presence, where justice and mercy are reconciled and the judge and the brother are one. We know our task to be no mere task of politics but a task which shall search us through GREAT SPEECHES 185 and through, whether we be able to understand our time and the need of our people, whether we be indeed their spokesmen and interpreters, whether we have the pure heart to comprehend and the rectified will to choose our high course of action. This is not a day of triumph ; it is a day of dedication. Here muster, not the forces of party, but the forces of humanity. Men 's hearts wait upon us ; men 's lives hang in the balance; men's hopes call upon us to say what we will do. "Who shall live up to the great trust ? "Who dares fail to try ? I summon all honest men, all patriotic, all forward-looking men, to my side. God helping me, I will not fail them, if they will but counsel and sus- tain me ! 186 PRESIDENT WILSON'S ON MEXICAN AFFAIRS Address of the President to Congress, at a Joint Session, August 27, 1913 Gentlemen of the Congress: It is clearly my duty to lay before you, very fully and without reservation, the facts concerning our present relations with the Republic of Mexico. The deplorable posture of affairs in Mexico I need not describe, but I deem it my duty to speak very frankly of what this Government has done and should seek to do in fulfill- ment of its obligation to Mexico herself, as a friend and neighbor, and to American citizens whose lives and vital interests are daily affected by the distressing conditions which now obtain beyond our southern border. Those conditions touch us very nearly. Not merely because they lie at our very doors. That of course makes us more vividly and more constantly conscious of them, and every instinct of neighborly interest and sympathy is aroused and quickened by them ; but that is only one element in the determination of our duty. "We are glad to call ourselves the friends of Mexico, and we shall, I hope, have many an occasion, in happier times as well as in these days of trouble and confusion, to show that our friendship is genuine and disinterested, capable of sacri- fice and every generous manifestation. The peace, pros- perity, and contentment of Mexico mean more, much more, to us than merely an enlarged field of our com- merce and enterprise. They mean an enlargement of the field of self-government and the realization of the hopes and rights of a nation with whose best aspirations, so long suppressed and disappointed, we deeply sympathize. "We shall yet prove to the Mexican people that we know how GEEAT SPEECHES 187 to serve them without first thinking how we shall serve ourselves. But we are not the only friends of Mexico. The whole world desires her peace and progress; and the whole world is interested as never before. Mexico lies at last where all the world looks on. Central America is about to be touched by the great routes of the world's trade and intercourse running free from ocean to ocean at the Isthmus. The future has much in store for Mexico, as for all the States of Central America ; but the best gifts can come to her only if she be ready and free to receive them and to enjoy them honorably. America in particu- lar — America north and south and upon both continents — waits upon the development of Mexico; and that de- velopment can be sound and lasting only if it be the product of a genuine freedom, a just and ordered govern- ment founded upon law. Only so can it be peaceful or fruitful of the benefits of peace. Mexico has a great and enviable future before her, if only she choose and attain the paths of honest constitutional government. The present circumstances of the Republic, I deeply regret to say, do not seem to promise even the foundations of such a peace. "We have waited many months, months full of peril and anxiety, for the conditions there to improve, and they have not improved. They have grown worse, rather. The territory in some sort controlled by the provisional authorities at Mexico City has grown smaller, not larger. The prospect of the pacification of the country, even by arms, has seemed to grow more and more remote; and its pacification by the authorities at the capital is evidently impossible by any other means than force. Difficulties more and more entangle those who claim to constitute the legitimate government of the Republic. They have not made good their claim in fact. 188 PRESIDENT WILSON'S Their successes in the field have proved only temporary. War and disorder, devastation and confusion, seem to threaten to become the settled fortune of the distracted country. As friends we could wait no longer for a solu- tion which every week seemed further away. It was our duty at least to volunteer our good offices — to offer to assist, if we might, in effecting some arrangement which would bring relief and peace and set up a universally acknowledged political authority there. Accordingly, I took the liberty of sending the Hon. John Lind, former governor of Minnesota, as my personal spokesman and representative, to the City of Mexico, with the following instructions : ' ' Press very earnestly upon the attention of those who are now exercising authority or wielding influence in Mexico the following considerations and advice : "The Government of the United States does not feel at liberty any longer to stand inactively by while it becomes daily more and more evident that no real prog- ress is being made towards the establishment of a govern- ment at the City of Mexico which the country will obey and respect. ' ' The Government of the United States does not stand in the same case with the other great Governments of the world in respect of what is happening or what is likely to happen in Mexico. We offer our good offices, not only because of our genuine desire to play the part of a friend, but also because we are expected by the powers of the world to act as Mexico's nearest friend. "We wish to act in these circumstances in the spirit of the most earnest and disinterested friendship. It is our purpose in whatever we do or propose in this perplexing and distressing situation not only to pay the most scrupu- GREAT SPEECHES I39 lous regard to the sovereignty and independence of Mexico — that we take as a matter of course to which we are bound by every obligation of right and honor — but also to give every possible evidence that we act in the interest of Mexico alone, and not in the interest of any person or body of persons who may have personal or property claims in Mexico which they may feel that they have the right to press. We are seeking to counsel Mexico for her own good and in the interest of her own peace, and not for any other purpose whatever. The Govern- ment of the United States would deem itself discredited if it had any selfish or ulterior purpose in transactions where the peace, happiness, and prosperity of a whole people are involved. It is acting as its friendship for Mexico, not as any selfish interest, dictates. "The present situation in Mexico is incompatible with the fulfillment of international obligations on the part of Mexico, with the civilized development of Mexico herself, and with the maintenance of tolerable political and eco- nomic conditions in Central America. It is upon no common occasion, therefore, that the United States offers her counsel and assistance. All America cries out for a settlement. "A satisfactory settlement seems to us to be condi- tioned on — " (a) An immediate cessation of fighting throughout Mexico, a definite armistice solemnly entered into and scrupulously observed ; " (b) Security given for an early and free election in which all will agree to take part : "(c) The consent of Gen. Huerta to bind himself not to be a candidate for election as President of the Republic at this election ; and "(d) The agreement of all parties to abide by the 190 PRESIDENT WILSON'S results of the election and cooperate in the most loyal way in organizing and supporting the new administra- tion. ' ' The Government of the United States will be glad to play any part in this settlement or in its carrying out which it can play honorably and consistently with inter- national right. It pledges itself to recognize and in every way possible and proper to assist the administration chosen and set up in Mexico in the way and on the condi- tions suggested. 1 ' Taking all the existing conditions into consideration, the Government of the United States can conceive of no reason sufficient to justify those who are now attempting to shape the policy or exercise the authority of Mexico in declining the offices of friendship thus offered. Can Mexico give the civilized world a satisfactory reason for rejecting our good offices? If Mexico can suggest any better way in which to show our friendship, serve the people of Mexico, and meet our international obligations, we are more than willing to consider the suggestion. ' ' Mr. Lind executed his delicate and difficult mission with singular tact, firmness, and good judgment, and made clear to the authorities at the City of Mexico not only the purpose of his visit but also the spirit in which it had been undertaken. But the proposals he submitted were rejected, in a note the full text of which I take the liberty of laying before you. I am led to believe that they were rejected partly because the authorities at Mexico City had been grossly misinformed and misled upon two points. They did not realize the spirit of the American people in this matter, their earnest friendliness and yet sober determination that some just solution be found for the Mexican diffi- GEEAT SPEECHES 191 culties ; and they did not believe that the present adminis- tration spoke, through Mr. Lind, for the people of the United States. The effect of this unfortunate misunder- standing on their part is to leave them singularly isolated and without friends who can effectually aid them. So long as the misunderstanding continues we can only await the time of their awakening to a realization of the actual facts. "We can not thrust our good offices upon them. The situation must be given a little more time to work itself out in the new circumstances; and I believe that only a little while will be necessary. For the circum- stances are new. The rejection of our friendship makes them new and will inevitably bring its own alterations in the whole aspect of affairs. The actual situation of the authorities at Mexico City will presently be revealed. Meanwhile, what is it our duty to do ? Clearly, every- thing that we do must be rooted in patience and done with calm and disinterested deliberation. Impatience on our part would be childish, and would be fraught with every risk of wrong and folly. "We can afford to exercise the self-restraint of a really great nation which realizes its own strength and scorns to misuse it. It was our duty to offer our active assistance. It is now our duty to show what true neutrality will do to enable the people of Mexico to set their affairs in order again and wait for a further opportunity to offer our friendly counsels. The door is not closed against the resumption, either upon the initiative of Mexico or upon our own, of the effort to bring order out of the confusion by friendly cooperative action, should fortunate occasion offer. While we wait the contest of the rival forces will undoubtedly for a little while be sharper than ever, just because it will be plain that an end must be made of the existing situation, and that very promptly ; and with the 192 PRESIDENT WILSON'S increased activity of the contending factions will come, it is to be feared, increased danger to the noncombatants in Mexico as well as to those actually in the field of battle. The position of outsiders is always particularly trying and full of hazard where there is civil strife and a whole country is upset. We should earnestly urge all Ameri- cans to leave Mexico at once, and should assist them to get away in every way possible — not because we would mean to slacken in the least our efforts to safeguard their lives and their interests, but because it is imperative that they should take no unnecesary risks when it is physically possible for them to leave the country. We should let every one who assumes to exercise authority in any part of Mexico know in the most unequivocal way that we shall vigilantly watch the fortunes of those Americans who can not get away, and shall hold those responsible for their sufferings and losses to a definite reckoning. That can be and will be made plain beyond the possibility of a mis- understanding. For the rest, I deem it my duty to exercise the authority conferred upon me by the law of March 14, 1912, to see to it that neither side to the struggle now going on in Mexico receive any assistance from this side of the border. I shall follow the best practice of nations in the matter of neutrality by forbidding the exportation of arms or muni- tions of war of any kind from the United States to any part of the Republic of Mexico — a policy suggested by several interesting precedents and certainly dictated by many manifest considerations of practical expediency. We can not in the circumstances be the partisans of either party to the contest that now distracts Mexico, or consti- tute ourselves the virtual umpire between them. I am happy to say that several of the great Govern- ments of the world have given this Government their GREAT SPEECHES 193 generous moral support in urging upon the provisional authorities at the City of Mexico the acceptance of our proffered good offices in the spirit in which they were made. We have not acted in this matter under the ordi- nary principles of international obligation. All the world expects us in such circumstances to act as Mexico's nearest friend and intimate adviser. This is our imme- morial relation towards her. There is nowhere any seri- ous question that we have the moral right in the case or that we are acting in the interest of a fair settlement and of good government, not for the promotion of some selfish interest of our own. If further motive were necessary than our own good will towards a sister Republic and our own deep concern to see peace and order prevail in Cen- tral America, this consent of mankind to what we are attempting, this attitude of the great nations of the world towards what we may attempt in dealing with this distressed people at our doors, should make us feel the more solemnly bound to go to the utmost length of patience and forbearance in this painful and anxious business. The steady pressure of moral force will before many days break the barriers of pride and prejudice down, and we shall triumph as Mexico's friends sooner than we could triumph as her enemies — and how much more handsomely, with how much higher and finer satis- factions of conscience and of honor ! 194 PRESIDENT WILSON'S AT INDEPENDENCE HALL Address of President Wilson in Philadelphia, July 4, 1914 Mr. Chairman and Fellow Citizens : We are assembled to celebrate the one hundred and thirty-eighth anniversary of the birth of the United States. I suppose that we can more vividly realize the circumstances of that birth standing on this historic spot than it would be possible to realize them anywhere else. The Declaration of Independence was written in Phila- delphia ; it was adopted in this historic building by which we stand. I have just had the privilege of sitting in the chair of the great man who presided over the deliberations of those who gave the declaration to the world. My hand rests at this moment upon the table upon which the decla- ration was signed. "We can feel that we are almost in the visible and tangible presence of a great historic transac- tion. Have you ever read the Declaration of Independence or attended with close comprehension to the real character of it when you have heard it read ? If you have, you will know that it is not a Fourth of July oration. The Decla- ration of Independence was a document preliminary to war. It was a vital piece of practical business, not a piece of rhetoric ; and if you will pass beyond those pre- liminary passages which we are accustomed to quote about the rights of men and read into the heart of the document you will see that it is very express and detailed, that it consists of a series of definite specifications con- cerning actual public business of the day. Not the busi- ness of our day, for the matter with which it deals is past, but the business of that first revolution by which the GKEAT SPEECHES 195 Nation was set up, the business of 1776. Its general statements, its general declarations can not mean any- thing to us unless we append to it a similar specific body of particulars as to what we consider the essential busi- ness of our own day. Liberty does not consist, my fellow citizens, in mere general declarations of the rights of man. It consists in the translation of those declarations into definite action. Therefore, standing here where the declaration was adopted, reading its business-like sentences, we ought to ask ourselves what there is in it for us. There is noth- ing in it for us unless we can translate it into the terms of our own conditions and of our own lives. "We must reduce it to what the lawyers call a bill of particulars. It contains a bill of particulars, but the bill of particulars of 1776. If we would keep it alive, we must fill it with a bill of particulars of the year 1914. The task to which we have constantly to readdress our- selves is the task of proving that we are worthy of the men who drew this great declaration and know what they would have done in our circumstances. Patriotism con- sists in some very practical things — practical in that they belong to the life of every day, that they wear no extraor- dinary distinction about them, that they are connected with commonplace duty. The way to be patriotic in America is not only to love America, but to love the duty that lies nearest to our hand and know that in performing it we are serving our country. There are some gentlemen in Washington, for example, at this very moment who are showing themselves very patriotic in a way which does not attract wide attention but seems to belong to mere everyday obligations. The Members of the House and Senate who stay in hot Washington to maintain a quorum of the Houses and transact the all-important 196 PEESIDENT WILSON'S business of the Nation are doing an act of patriotism. I honor them for it, and I am glad to stay there and stick by them until the work is done. It is patriotic, also, to learn what the facts of our national life are and to face them with candor. I have heard a great many facts stated about the present business condition of this country, for example — a great many allegations of fact, at any rate, but the allegations do not tally with one another. And yet I know that truth always matches with truth ; and when I find some insisting that everything is going wrong and others insisting that everything is going right, and when I know from a wide observation of the general circumstances of the country taken as a whole that things are going extremely well, I wonder what those who are crying out that things are wrong are trying to do. Are they trying to serve the country, or are they trying to serve something smaller than the country ? Are they trying to put hope into the hearts of the men who work and toil every day, or are they trying to plant discouragement and despair into those hearts ? And why do they cry that everything is wrong and yet do nothing to set it right ? If they love America and anything is wrong amongst us, it is their business to put their hand with ours to the task of setting it right. When the facts are known and acknowledged, the duty of all patriotic men is to accept them in candor and to address themselves hopefully and confidently to the com- mon counsel which is necessary to act upon them wisely and in universal concert. I have had some experiences in the last 14 months which have not been entirely reassuring. It was universally admitted, for example, my fellow citizens, that the bank- ing system of this country needed reorganization. We set GREAT SPEECHES 197 the best minds that we could find to the task of discover- ing the best method of reorganization. But we met with hardly anything but criticism from the bankers of the country; we met with hardly anything but resistance from the majority of those at least who spoke at all con- cerning the matter. And yet so soon as that act was passed there was a universal chorus of applause, and the very men who had opposed the measure joined in that applause. If it was wrong the day before it was passed, why was it right the day after it was passed? Where had been the candor of criticism not only, but the concert of counsel which makes legislative action vigorous and safe and successful? It is not patriotic to concert measures against one another; it is patriotic to concert measures for one an- other. In one sense the Declaration of Independence has lost its significance. It has lost its significance as a decla- ration of national independence. Nobody outside of America believed when it was uttered that we could make good our independence; now nobody anywhere would dare to doubt that we are independent and can maintain our independence. As a declaration of independence, therefore, it is a mere historic document. Our inde- pendence is a fact so stupendous that it can be measured only by the size and energy and variety and wealth and power of one of the greatest nations in the world. But it is one thing to be independent and it is another thing to know what to do with your independence. It is one thing to come to your majority and another thing to know what you are going to do with your life and your energies ; and one of the most serious questions for sober- minded men to address themselves to in the United States is this : What are we going to do with the influence and 198 PRESIDENT WILSON'S power of this great Nation? Are we going to play the old role of using that power for our aggrandizement and material benefit only ? You know what that may mean. It may upon occasion mean that we shall use it to make the people of other nations suffer in the way in which we said it was intolerable to suffer when we uttered our Declaration of Independence. The Department of State at Washington is constantly called upon to back up the commercial enterprises and the industrial enterprises of the United States in foreign countries, and it at one time went so far in that direction that all its diplomacy came to be designated as "dollar diplomacy." It was called upon to support every man who wanted to earn anything anywhere if he was an American. But there ought to be a limit to that. There is no man who is more interested than I am in carrying the enterprise of American business men to every quarter of the globe. I was interested in it long before I was suspected of being a politician. I have been preaching it year after year as the great thing that lay in the future for the United States, to show her wit and skill and enter- prise and influence in every country in the world. But observe the limit to all that which is laid upon us perhaps more than upon any other nation in the world. "We set this Nation up, at any rate we professed to set it up, to vindicate the rights of men. We did not name any differ- ences between one race and another. We did not set up any barriers against any particular people. We opened our gates to all the world and said, ' ' Let all men who wish to be free come to us and they will be welcome." We said, "This independence of ours is not a selfish thing for our own exclusive private use. It is for everybody to whom we can find the means of extending it. ' ' We can GEEAT SPEECHES 199 not with that oath taken in our youth, we can not with that great ideal set before us when we were a young people and numbered only a scant 3,000,000, take upon ourselves, now that we are 100,000,000 strong, any other conception of duty than we then entertained. If Ameri- can enterprise in foreign countries, particularly in those foreign countries which are not strong enough to resist us, takes the shape of imposing upon and exploiting the mass of the people of that country it ought to be checked and not encouraged. I am willing to get anything for an American that money and enterprise can obtain except the suppression of the rights of other men. I will not help any man buy a power which he ought not to exercise over his fellow beings. You know, my fellow countrymen, what a big question there is in Mexico. Eighty-five per cent of the Mexican people have never been allowed to have any genuine par- ticipation in their own Government or to exercise any substantial rights with regard to the very land they live upon. All the rights that men most desire have been exercised by the other 15 per cent. Do you suppose that that circumstance is not sometimes in my thought? I know that the American people have a heart that will beat just as strong for those millions in Mexico as it will beat, or has beaten, for any other millions elsewhere in the world, and that when once they conceive what is at stake in Mexico they will know what ought to be done in Mexico. I hear a great deal said about the loss of prop- erty in Mexico and the loss of the lives of foreigners, and I deplore these things with all my heart. Undoubtedly, upon the conclusion of the present disturbed conditions in Mexico those who have been unjustly deprived of their property or in any wise unjustly put upon ought to be 200 PEESIDENT WILSON'S compensated. Men's individual rights have no doubt been invaded, and the invasion of those rights has been attended by many deplorable circumstances which ought some time, in the proper way, to be accounted for. But back of it all is the struggle of a people to come into its own, and while we look upon the incidents in the fore- ground let us not forget the great tragic reality in the background which towers above the whole picture. A patriotic American is a man who is not niggardly and selfish in the things that he enjoys that make for human liberty and the rights of man. He wants to share them with the whole world, and he is never so proud of the great flag under which he lives as when it comes to mean to other people as well as to himself a symbol of hope and liberty. I would be ashamed of this flag if it ever did anything outside America that we would not permit it to do inside of America. The world is becoming more complicated every day, my fellow citizens. No man ought to be foolish enough to think that he understands it all. And, therefore, I am glad that there are some simple things in the world. One of the simple things is principle. Honesty is a perfectly simple thing. It is hard for me to believe that in most circumstances when a man has a choice of ways he does not know which is the right way and which is the wrong way. No man who has chosen the wrong way ought even to come into Independence Square ; it is holy ground which he ought not to tread upon. He ought not to come where immortal voices have uttered the great sentences of such a document as this Declaration of Independence upon which rests the liberty of a whole nation. And so I say that it is patriotic sometimes to prefer the honor of the country to its material interest. Would you rather be deemed by all the nations of the world in- GEEAT SPEECHES 201 capable of keeping your treaty obligations in order that you might have free tolls for American ships ? The treaty under which we gave up that right may have been a mis- taken treaty, but there was no mistake about its meaning. When I have made a promise as a man I try to keep it, and I know of no other rule permissible to a nation. The most distinguished nation in the world is the nation that can and will keep its promises even to its own hurt. And I want to say parenthetically that I do not think anybody was hurt. I can not be enthusiastic for subsidies to a monopoly, but let those who are enthusiastic for sub- sidies ask themselves whether they prefer subsidies to unsullied honor. The most patriotic man, ladies and gentlemen, is some- times the man who goes in the direction that he thinks right even when he sees half the world against him. It is the dictate of patriotism to sacrifice yourself if you think that that is the path of honor and of duty. Do not blame others if they do not agree with you. Do not die with bitterness in your heart because you did not con- vince the rest of the world, but die happy because you be- lieve that you tried to serve your country by not selling your soul. Those were grim days, the days of 1776. Those gentlemen did not attach their names to the Decla- ration of Independence on this table expecting a holiday on the next day, and that 4th of July was not itself a holi- day. They attached their signatures to that significant document knowing that if they failed it was certain that every one of them would hang for the failure. They were committing treason in the interest of the liberty of 3,000,- 000 people in America. All the rest of the world was against them and smiled with cynical incredulity at the audacious undertaking. Do you think that if they could see this Nation now they would regret anything that they 202 PRESIDENT WILSON'S then did to draw the gaze of a hostile world upon them ? Every idea must be started by somebody, and it is a lonely thing to start anything. Yet if it is in you, you must start it if you have a man 's blood in you and if you love the country that you profess to be working for. I am sometimes very much interested when I see gen- tlemen supposing that popularity is the way to success in America. The way to success in this great country, with its fair judgments, is to show that you are not afraid of anybody except God and his final verdict. If I did not believe that, I would not believe in democracy. If I did not believe that, I would not believe that people can gov- ern themselves. If I did not believe that the moral judg- ment would be the last judgment, the final judgment, in the minds of men as well as the tribunal of God, I could not believe in popular government. But I do believe these things, and, therefore, I earnestly believe in the democ- racy not only of America but of every awakened people that wishes and intends to govern and control its own affairs. It is very inspiring, my friends, to come to this that may be called the original fountain of independence and liberty in America and here drink draughts of patriotic feeling which seem to renew the very blood in one 's veins. Down in Washington sometimes when the days are hot and the business presses intolerably and there are so many things to do that it does not seem possible to do anything in the way it ought to be done, it is always possible to lift one 's thought above the task of the moment and, as it were, to realize that great thing of which we are all parts, the great body of American feeling and American principle. No man could do the work that has to be done in Washington if he allowed himself to be sepa- GREAT SPEECHES 203 rated from that body of principle. He must make him- self feel that he is a part of the people of the United States, that he is trying to think not only for them, but with them, and then he can not feel lonely. He not only can not feel lonely but he can not feel afraid of anything. My dream is that as the years go and the world knows more and more of America it will also drink at these fountains of youth and renewal ; that it also will turn to America for those moral inspirations which lie at the basis of all freedom; that the world will never fear America unless it feels that it is engaged in some enter- prise which is inconsistent with the rights of humanity; and that America will come into the full light of the day when all shall know that she puts human rights above all other rights and that her flag is the flag not only of America but of humanity. "What other great people has devoted itself to this exalted ideal ? To what other nation in the world can all eyes look for an instant sympathy that thrills the whole body politic when men anywhere are fighting for their rights ? I do not know that there will ever be a declara- tion of independence and of grievances for mankind, but I believe that if any such document is ever drawn it will be drawn in the spirit of the American Declaration of Independence, and that America has lifted high the light which will shine unto all generations and guide the feet of mankind to the goal of justice and liberty and peace. 204 PRESIDENT WILSON'S On Censorship of the Press President Wilson expressed his opinion of the censor- ship provision in the espionage bill in a letter, May 22, 1917, to Chairman Webb of the House judiciary com- mittee, in which he said : "I have been much surprised to find several of the public prints stating that the Administration had aban- doned the position which it so distinctly took, and still holds — that authority to exercise censorship over the press to the extent that that censorship is embodied in the recent action of the House of Representatives is abso- lutely necessary to the public safety. It, of course, has not been abandoned, because the reasons still exist why such authority is necessary for the protection of the nation. "I have every confidence that the great majority of the newspapers of the country will observe a reticence about everything whose publication could be of injury, but in every country there are some persons in a position to do mischief in this field who cannot be relied on, and whose interests or desires will lead to actions on their part highly dangerous to the nation in the midst of a war. I want to say again that it seems to me imperative that powers of this sort should be granted." Z S-ft2a •a .a * -U 7 V .5? seCSM ,£ Si '£ M . - a* 3 ^ ^ HISTORY. MAKING DOCUMENTS RESTRAINTS OF U. S. COMMERCE First Proclamation of the German Admiralty Declaring a Naval War Zone 1. The waters surrounding Great Britain and Ireland, including the whole English Channel, are hereby declared to be war zone. On and after the 18th of February, 1915, every enemy merchant ship found in the said war zone will be destroyed without its being always possible to avert the dangers threatening the crews and passengers on that account. 2. Even neutral ships are exposed to danger in the war zone as, in view of the misuse of neutral flags ordered on January 31 by the British Government and of the accidents of naval war, it can not always be avoided to strike even neutral ships in attacks that are directed at enemy ships. 3. Northward navigation around the Shetland Islands, in the eastern waters of the North Sea and in a strip of not less than 30 miles width along the Netherlands coast is in no danger. Von Pohl, Chief of the Admiral Staff of the Navy. Berlin, February 4, 1915. 205 206 HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS THE AMERICAN PROTEST Secretary of State Bryan to Ambassador Gerard at Berlin Department of State, Washington, February 10, 1915. Please address a note immediately to the Imperial German Government to the following effect: The Government of the United States, having had its attention directed to the proclamation of the German Admiralty issued on the fourth of February, that the waters surrounding Great Britain and Ireland, including the whole of the English Channel, are to be considered as comprised within the seat of war; that all enemy mer- chant vessels found in those waters after the eighteenth instant will be destroyed, although it may not always be possible to save crews and passengers; and that neutral vessels expose themselves to danger within this zone of war because, in view of the misuse of neutral flags said to have been ordered by the British Government on the thirty-first of January and of the contingencies of mari- time warfare, it may not be possible always to exempt neutral vessels from attacks intended to strike enemy ships, feels it to be its duty to call the attention of the Imperial German Government, with sincere respect and the most friendly sentiments but very candidly and ear- nestly, to the very serious possibilities of the course of action apparently contemplated under that proclamation. The Government of the United States views those pos- sibilities with such grave concern that it feels it to be its privilege, and indeed its duty in the circumstances, to request the Imperial German Government to consider before action is taken the critical situation in respect of HISTOEY-MAKING DOCUMENTS 207 the relations between this country and Germany which might arise were the German naval forces, in carrying out the policy foreshadowed in the Admiralty's procla- mation, to destroy any merchant vessel of the United States or cause the death of American citizens. It is of course not necessary to remind the German Government that the sole right of a belligerent in deal- ing with neutral vessels on the high seas is limited to visit and search, unless a blockade is proclaimed and effectively maintained, which this Government does not understand to be proposed in this case. To declare or exercise a right to attack and destroy any vessel entering a prescribed area of the high seas without first certainly determining its belligerent nationality and the contraband character of its cargo would be an act so unprecedented in naval warfare that this Government is reluctant to believe that the Imperial Government of Germany in this case con- templates it as possible. The suspicion that enemy ships are using neutral flags improperly can create no just pre- sumption that all ships traversing a prescribed area are subject to the same suspicion. It is to determine exactly such questions that this Government understands the right of visit and search to have been recognized. This Government has carefully noted the explanatory statement issued by the Imperial German Government at the same time with the proclamation of the German Ad- miralty, and takes this occasion to remind the Imperial German Government very respectfully that the Govern- ment of the United States is open to none of the criticisms for unneutral action to which the German Government be- lieve the governments of certain other neutral nations have laid themselves open; that the Government of the United States has not consented to or acquiesced in any measures which may have been taken by the other bellig- 208 HISTORY MAKING DOCUMENTS erent nations in the present war which operate to restrain neutral trade, but has, on the contrary, taken in all such matters a position which warrants it in holding those governments responsible in the proper way for any un- toward effects upon American shipping which the ac- cepted principles of international law do not justify ; and that it, therefore, regards itself as free in the present instance to take with a clear conscience and upon accepted principles the position indicated in this note. If the commanders of German vessels of war should act upon the presumption that the flag of the United States was not being used in good faith and should de- stroy on the high seas an American vessel or the lives of American citizens, it would be difficult for the Govern- ment of the United States to view the act in any other light than as an indefensible violation of neutral rights which it would be very hard indeed to reconcile with the friendly relations now so happily subsisting between the two Governments. If such a deplorable situation should arise, the Imperial German Government can readily appreciate that the Gov- ernment of the United States would be constrained to hold the Imperial German Government to a strict ac- countability for such acts of their naval authorities and to take any steps it might be necessary to take to safe- guard American lives and property and to secure to American citizens the full enjoyment of their acknowl- edged rights on the high seas. The Government of the United States, in view of these considerations, which it urges with the greatest respect and with the sincere purpose of making sure that no misunderstanding may arise and no circumstance occur that might even cloud the intercourse of the two Govern- ments, expresses the confident hope and expectation that HISTOEY-MAKING DOCUMENTS 209 the Imperial German Government can and will give assur- ance that American citizens and their vessels will not be molested by the naval forces of Germany otherwise than by visit and search, though their vessels may be traversing the sea area delimited in the proclamation of the German Admiralty. It is added for the information of the Imperial Gov- ernment that representations have been made to His Britannic Majesty's Government in respect to the un- warranted use of the American flag for the protection of British ships. Ambassador W. H. Page to the Secretary of State American Embassy, London, February 19, 1915. Sir Edward Grey has just handed me the following memorandum since your telegram to him was given to the press in Washington : "The memorandum communicated on the 11th Febru- ary calls attention in courteous and friendly terms to the action of the captain of the British S. S. Lusitania in raising the flag of the United States of America when approaching British waters and says that the Government of the United States feel a certain anxiety in consider- ing the possibility of any general use of the flag of the United States by British vessels traversing those waters since the effect of such a policy might be to bring about a menace to the lives and vessels of United States citizens. ' ' It was understood that the German Government had announced their intention of sinking British merchant vessels at sight by torpedoes without giving any oppor- tunity of making any provision for saving the lives of 210 HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS noncouibatant crews and passengers. It was in conse- quence of this threat that the Lusitania raised the United States flag on her inward voyage and on her subsequent outward voyage. A request was made by the United States passengers who were embarking on board her that the United States flag should be hoisted presumably to insure their safety. Meanwhile the memorandum from Your Excellency had been received. His Majesty's Gov- ernment did not give any advice to the company as to how to meet this request and it is understood that the Lusitania left Liverpool under the British flag. ' ' It seems unnecessary to say more as regards the Lusi- tania in particular regard to the use of foreign flags by merchant vessels. The British merchant shipping act makes it clear that the use of the British flag by foreign merchant vessels is permitted in time of war for the purpose of escaping capture. It is believed that in the case of some other nations there is a similar recognition of the same practice with regard to their flags and that none have forbidden it. It would therefore be unreason- able to expect His Majesty's Government to pass legisla- tion forbidding the use of foreign flags by British mer- chant vessels to avoid capture by the enemy. Now that the German Government have announced their intention to sink merchant vessels at sight with their noncombatant crews, cargoes, and papers, a proceeding hitherto re- garded by the opinion of the world not as war, but as piracy, it is felt that the United States Government could not fairly ask the British Government to order British merchant vessels to forego the means — always hitherto permitted — of escaping not only capture but the much worse fate of sinking and destruction. Great Britain has always when neutral accorded to the vessels of other States at war liberty to use the British flag as a means of HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS 211 protection against capture, and instances are on record when United States vessels availed themselves of this facility during the American Civil "War. It would be contrary to fair expectation if now, when the conditions are reversed, the United States and neutral nations were to grudge to British ships liberty to take similar action. The British Government have no intention of advising their merchant shipping to use foreign flags as general practice or to resort to them otherwise than for escaping capture or destruction. ''The obligation upon a belligerent warship to ascer- tain definitely for itself the nationality and character of a merchant vessel before capturing it and "a fortiori" before sinking and destroying it has been universally recognized. If that obligation is fulfilled, hoisting a neu- tral flag on board a British vessel can not possibly en- danger neutral shipping and the British Government hold that if loss to neutrals is caused by disregard of this obli- gation it is upon the enemy vessel disregarding it and upon the Government giving orders that it should be dis- regarded that the sole responsibility for injury to neutrals ought to rest. ' ' Secretary of State Bryan to Ambassador W. H. Page Department of State, "Washington, February 20, 1915. You will please deliver to Sir Edward Grey the fol- lowing identic note which we are sending England and Germany : In view of the correspondence which has passed be- tween this Government and Great Britain and Germany 212 HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS respectively, relative to the Declaration of a war zone by the German Admiralty and the use of neutral flags by British merchant vessels, this Government ventures to express the hope that the two belligerent Governments may, through reciprocal concessions, find a basis for agreement which will relieve neutral ships engaged in peaceful commerce from the great dangers which they will incur in the high seas adjacent to the coasts of the belligerents. The Government of the United States respectfully sug- gests that an agreement in terms like the following might be entered into. This suggestion is not to be regarded as in any sense a proposal made by this Government, for it of course fully recognizes that it is not its privilege to propose terms of agreement between Great Britain and Germany, even though the matter be one in which it and the people of the United States are directly and deeply interested. It is merely venturing to take the liberty which it hopes may be" 1 accorded a sincere friend desirous of embarrassing neither nation involved and of serving, if it may, the common interests of humanity. The course outlined is offered in the hope that it may draw forth the views and elicit the suggestions of the British and German Governments on a matter of capital interest to the whole world. Germany and Great Britain to agree: 1. That neither will sow any floating mines, whether upon the high seas or in territorial waters ; that neither will plant on the high seas anchored mines except within cannon range of harbors for defensive purposes only; and that all mines shall bear the stamp of the Govern- ment planting them and be so constructed as to become harmless if separated from their moorings. 2. That neither will use submarines to attack mer- HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS 213 chant vessels of any nationality except to enforce the right of visit and search. 3. That each will require their respective merchant vessels not to use neutral flags for the purpose of disguise or ruse de guerre. Germany to agree: That all importations of food or foodstuffs from the United States (and from such other neutral countries as may ask it) into Germany shall be consigned to agencies to be designated by the United States Government ; that these American agencies shall have entire charge and con- trol without interference on the part of the German Gov- ernment, of the receipt and distribution of such impor- tations, and shall distribute them solely to retail dealers bearing licenses from the German Government entitling them to receive and furnish such food and foodstuffs to noneombatants only; that any violation of the terms of the retailers' licenses shall work a forfeiture of their rights to receive such food and foodstuffs for this pur- pose ; and that such food and foodstuffs will not be requi- sitioned by the German Government for any purpose whatsoever or be diverted to the use of the armed forces of Germany. Great Britain to agree: That food and foodstuffs will not be placed upon the absolute contraband list and that shipments of such com- modities will not be interfered with or detained by British authorities if consigned to agencies designated by the United States Government in Germany for the receipt and distribution of such cargoes to licensed German re- tailers for distribution solely to the noncombatant popu- lation. In submitting this proposed basis of agreement this Government does not wish to be understood as admitting 214 .HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS or denying any belligerent or neutral right established by the principles of international law, but would consider the agreement, if acceptable to the interested powers, a modus vivendi based upon expediency rather than legal right and as not binding upon the United States either in its present form or in a modified form until accepted by this Government. Ambassador Gerard to the Secretary of State American Embassy, Berlin, March 1, 1915. Following is translation of the German reply : ' ' The undersigned has the honor to inform His Excel- lency, Mr. James W. Gerard, Ambassador of the United States of America, in reply to the note of the 22d instant, that the Imperial German Government have taken note with great interest of the suggestion of the American Government that certain principles for the conduct of maritime war on the part of Germany and England be agreed upon for the protection of neutral shipping. They see therein new evidence of the friendly feelings of the American Government toward the German Government which are fully reciprocated by Germany. "It is in accordance with Germany's wishes also to have maritime war conducted according to rules which without discriminately restricting one or the other of the bellig- erent powers in the use of their means of warfare, are equally considerate of the interests of neutrals and the dictates of humanity. Consequently it was intimated i» the German note of the 16th instant that observation of the Declaration of London on the part of Germany's ad- HISTORY -MAKING DOCUMENTS 215 versaries would create a new situation from which the German Government would gladly draw the proper conclusions. "Proceeding from this view, the German Government have carefully examined the suggestion of the American Government and believe that they can actually see in it a suitable basis for the practical solution of the ques- tions which have arisen. "With regard to the various points of the American note they beg to make the following remarks : "1. With regard to the sowing of mines, the German Government would be willing to agree as suggested not to use floating mines and to have anchored mines con- structed as indicated. Moreover, they agree to put the stamp of the Government on all mines to be planted. On the other hand, it does not appear to them to be feasible for the belligerents wholly to forego the use of anchored mines for offensive purposes. "2. The German Government would undertake not to use their submarines to attack mercantile vessels of any flag except when necessary to enforce the right of visit and search. Should the enemy nationality of the vessel or the presence of contraband be ascertained submarine would proceed in accordance with the gen- eral rules of international law. "3. As provided in the American note, this restric- tion of the use of the submarines is contingent on the fact that enemy mercantile abstain from the use of the neutral flag and other neutral distinctive marks. It would appear to be a matter of course that such mer- cantile also abstain from arming themselves and from all resistance by force, since such procedure contrary to international law would render impossible any action of the submarines in accordance with international law. 216 HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS "4. The regulation of legitimate importations of food into Germany suggested by the American Govern- ment appears to be in general acceptable. Such regula- tion would, of course, be confined to importations by sea, but that would on the other hand include indirect importations by way of neutral ports. The German Government would, therefore, be willing to make the declarations of the nature provided in the American note so that the use of the imported food and foodstuffs solely by the non-combatant population would be guar- anteed. The Imperial Government must, however, in addition (* # *) having the importation of other raw material used by the economic system of non-combat- ants including forage permitted. To that end the enemy Governments would have to permit the free entry into Germany of the raw material mentioned in the free list of the Declaration of London and to treat materials included in the list of conditional contraband according to the same principles as food and foodstuffs. "The German Government venture to hope that the agreement for which the American Government have paved the way may be reached after due consideration of the remarks made above, and that in this way peace- able neutral shipping and trade will not have to suffer any more than is absolutely necessary from the unavoid- able effect of maritime war. These effects could be still further reduced if, as was pointed out in the German note of the 16th instant, some way could be found to exclude the shipping of munitions of war from neutral countries to belligerents on ships of any nationality. "The German Government must, of course, reserve a definite statement of their position until such time as they may receive further information from the Ameri- can Government enabling them to see what obligations HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS 217 the British Government are on their part willing to assume. "The undersigned avails himself of this occasion, etc. "(Signed) Von Jagow. "Dated Foreign Office, Berlin, February 28, 1915." The British Ambassador to the Secretary of State Germany has declared that the English Channel, the north and west coasts of France, and the waters around the British Isles are a war area and has officially notified that all enemy ships found in that area will be destroyed and that neutral vessels may be exposed to danger. This is in effect a claim to torpedo at sight, without regard to the safety of the crew or passengers, any merchant vessel under any flag. As it is not in the power of the German Admiralty to maintain any sur- face craft in these waters, this attack can only be deliv- ered by submarine agency. The law and custom of nations in regard to attack on commerce have always presumed that the first duty of the captor of a merchant vessel is to bring it before a prize court where it may be tried, where the regularity of the capture may be challenged and where neutrals may recover their cargoes. The sinking of prizes is in itself a questionable act to be resorted to only in extraordinary circumstances and after provision has been made for the safety of all the crew or passeners, if there are passengers on board. The responsibility for discriminating between neutral and enemy vessels, and between neutral and enemy cargo, obviously rests with the attacking ship, whose duty is to verify the status and character of the vessel and cargo and to 218 HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS preserve all papers before sinking or even capturing it. So, also, is the humane duty of providing for the safety of the crews of merchant vessels, whether neutral or enemy, an obligation upon every belligerent. It is upon this basis that all previous discussions of the law for regulating warfare at sea have proceeded. A German submarine, however, fulfills none of these obligations ; she enjoys no local command of the waters in which she operates; she does not take her captures within the jurisdiction of a prize court; she carries no prize crew which she can put on board a prize ; she uses no effective means of discriminating between a neutral and an enemy vessel ; she does not receive on board for safety the crew and passengers of the vessel she sinks ; her methods of warfare are therefore entirely outside the scope of any of the international instruments regu- lating operations against commerce in time of war. The German declaration substitutes indiscriminate destruction for regulated capture. Germany is adopt- ing these methods against peaceful traders and non- combatant crews with the avowed object of preventing commodities of all kinds, including food for the civil population, from reaching or leaving the British Isles or northern France. Her opponents are therefore driven to frame retalia- tory measures in order in their turn to prevent com- modities of any kind from reaching or leaving Germany. These measures will, however, be enforced by the Brit- ish and French Governments without risk to neutral ships or to neutral or non-combatant life and in strict observance of the dictates of humanity. The British and French Governments will therefore hold themselves free to detain and take into port ships carrying goods of presumed enemy destination, ownership, or origin. HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS 219 It is not intended to confiscate such vessels or cargoes unless they would otherwise be liable to condemnation. The treatment of vessels and cargoes which have sailed before this date will not be affected. Cecil Spring Rice. British Embassy, Washington, March 1, 1915. Secretary of State Eryan to Ambassador Page Department of State, Washington, March 5, 1915. In regard to the recent communications received from the British and French Governments concerning re- straints upon commerce with Germany, please communi- cate with the British foreign office in the sense follow- ing: The difficulty of determining action upon the British and French declarations of intended retaliation upon commerce with Germany lies in the nature of the pro- posed measures in their relation to commerce by neutrals. While it appears that the intention is to interfere with and take into custody all ships, both outgoing and in- coming, trading with Germany, which is in effect a blockade of German ports, the rule of blockade, that a ship attempting to enter or leave a German port regard- less of the character of its cargo may be condemned, is not asserted. The language of the declaration is "the British and French Governments will, therefore, hold themselves free to detain and take into port ships carrying goods of presumed enemy destination, ownership, or origin. 220 HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS It is not intended to confiscate such vessels or cargoes unless they would otherwise be liable to condemnation." The first sentence claims a right pertaining only to a state of blockade. The last sentence proposes a treat- ment of ships and cargoes as if no blockade existed. The two together present a proposed course of action previously unknown to international law. As a consequence neutrals have no standard by which to measure their rights or to avoid danger to their ships and cargoes. The paradoxical situation thus created should be changed and the declaring powers ought to assert whether they rely upon the rules governing a blockade or the rules applicable when no blockade exists. The declaration presents other perplexities. The last sentence quoted indicates that the rules of contraband are to be applied to cargoes detained. The rule covering non-contraband articles carried in neutral bottoms is that the cargo shall be released and the ships allowed to proceed. This rule can not, under the first sentence quoted, be applied as to destination. What, then, is to be done with a cargo of non-contraband goods detained under the declaration? The same question may be asked as to conditional contraband cargoes. The foregoing comments apply to cargoes destined for Germany. Cargoes coming out of German ports present another problem under the terms of the declara- tion. Under the rules governing enemy exports only goods owned by enemy subjects in enemy bottoms are subject to seizure and condemnation. Yet by the decla- ration it is purposed to seize and take into port all goods of enemy ' ' ownership and origin. ' ' The word ' ' origin ' ' is particularly significant. The origin of goods destined to neutral territory on neutral ships is not and never HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS 221 has been a ground for forfeiture, except in case a block- ade is declared and maintained. What, then, would the seizure amount to in the present case except to delay the delivery of the goods ? The declaration does not indicate what disposition would be made of such cargoes if owned by a neutral or if owned by an enemy subject. Would a different rule be applied according to ownership ? If so, upon what principles of interna- tional law would it rest? And upon what rule if no blockade is declared and maintained could the cargo of a neutral ship sailing out of a German port be con- demned? If it is not condemned, what other legal course is there but to release it ? While this Government is fully alive to the possibility that the methods of modern naval warfare, particularly in the use of the submarine for both defensive and offensive operations, may make the former means of maintaining a blockade a physical impossibility, it feels that it can be urged with great force that there should be also some limit to ' ' the radius of activity, ' ' and espe- cially so if this action by the belligerents can be con- strued to be a blockade. It would certainly create a serious state of affairs if, for example, an American vessel laden with a cargo of German origin should escape the British patrol in European waters only to be held up by a cruiser off New York and taken into Halifax. Similar cablegram sent to Paris. 222 HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS THE ATTITUDE OF FRANCE Ambassador Sharp to the Secretary of State American Embassy, Paris, March 14, 1915. French Government replies as follows : " In a letter dated March 7 Your Excellency was good enough to draw my attention to the views of the Govern- ment of the United States regarding the recent communi- cations from the French and British Governments con- cerning a restriction to be laid upon commerce with Germany. According to Your Excellency's letter, the declaration made by the Allied Governments presents some uncertainty as regards its application, concerning which the Government of the United States desires to be enlightened in order to determine what attitude it should take. "At the same time Your Excellency notified me that while granting the possibility of using new methods of retaliation against the new use to which submarines have been put, the Government of the United States was some- what apprehensive that the allied belligerents might (if their action is to be construed as constituting a blockade) capture in waters near America any ships which might have escaped the cruisers patrolling European waters. In acknowledging receipt of Your Excellency's commu- nication I have the honor to inform you that the Govern- ment of the Republic has not failed to consider this point as presented by the Government of the United States, and I beg to specify clearly the conditions of application, as far as my Government is concerned, of the declaration of the Allied Governments. As well set forth by the Federal Government the old methods of blockade can not be en- HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS 223 tirely adhered to in view of the use Germany has made of her submarines, and also by reason of the geographical situation of that country. In answer to the challenge to the neutral as well as to its own adversaries, contained in the declaration by which the German Imperial Gov- ernment stated that it considered the seas surrounding Great Britain and the French coast on the Channel as a military zone, and warned neutral vessels not to enter the same on account of the danger they would run, the Allied Governments have been obliged to examine what meas- ures they could adopt to interrupt all maritime commu- nication with the German Empire and thus keep it block- aded by the naval power of the two allies, at the same time, however, safeguarding as much as possible the legiti- mate interests of neutral powers, and respecting the laws of humanity, which no crime of their enemy will induce them to violate. "The Government of the Republic, therefore, reserves to itself the right of bringing into a French or allied port any ship carrying a cargo presumed to be of German origin, destination, or ownership, but it will not go to the length of seizing any neutral ship except in case of contraband. The discharged cargo shall not be confis- cated. In the event of a neutral proving his lawful own- ership of merchandise destined to Germany, he shall be entirely free to dispose of same, subject to certain condi- tions. In case the owner of the goods is a German they shall simply be sequestrated during the war. "Merchandise of enemy origin shall only be seques- trated when it is at the same time the property of an enemy ; merchandise belonging to neutrals shall be held at the disposal of its owner to be returned to the port of departure. "As Your Excellency will observe, these measures, 224 HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS while depriving the enemy of important resources, respect the rights of neutrals and will not in any way jeopardize private property, as even the enemy owner will only suffer from the suspension of the enjoyment of his rights during the term of hostilities. "The Government of the Republic, being desirous of allowing neutrals every facility to enforce their claims, has decided to give the prize court (an independent tri- bunal) cognizance of these questions, and in order to give the neutrals as little trouble as possible it has speci- fied that the prize court shall give sentence within eight days, counting from the date on which the case shall have been brought before it. "I do not doubt, Mr. Ambassador, that the Federal Government, comparing on the one hand the unspeak- able violence with which the German military government threatens neutrals, the criminal actions unknown in mari- time annals already perpetrated against neutral prop- erty and ships and even against the lives of neutral sub- jects or citizens, and on the other hand the measures adopted by the Allied Governments of Prance and Great Britain respecting the laws of humanity and the rights of individuals, will readily perceive that the latter have not overstepped their strict rights as belligerents. "Finally, I am anxious to assure you that it is not and it has never been the intention of the Government of th© Republic to extend the action of its cruisers against enemy merchandise beyond European seas, the Mediterranean included. ' ' Sharp. HISTOEY-MAKING DOCUMENTS 225 CHARGES AGAINST GERMANY Ambassador W. H. Page to the Secretary of State American Embassy, London, March 15, 1915. Following is the full text of a memorandum dated March 13, which Grey handed me today: "On the 22d of February last I received a communica- tion from Your ExceUency of the identic note addressed to His Majesty's Government and to Germany, respecting an agreement on certain points as to the conduct of the war at sea. The reply of the German Government to this note has been published and it is not understood from the reply that the German Government are prepared to abandon the practice of sinking British merchant vessels by submarines, and it is evident from their reply that they will not abandon the use of mines for offensive pur- poses on the high seas as contrasted with the use of mines for defensive purposes only within cannon range of their own harbors, as suggested by the Government of the United States. This being so, it might appear unneces- sary for the British Government to make any further reply than to take note of the German answer. We desire, however, to take the opportunity of making a fuller statement of the whole position and of our feeling with regard to it. We recognize with sympathy the desire of the Government of the United States to see the European war conducted in accordance with the previ- ously recognized rules of international law and the dic- tates of humanity. It is thus that the British forces have conducted the war, and we are not aware that these forces, either naval or military, can have laid to their charge any improper proceedings, either in the conduct of hos- 226 HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS tilities or in the treatment of prisoners or wounded. On the German side it has been very different. ' ' 1. The treatment of civilian inhabitants in Belgium and the north of Prance has been made public by the Belgian and French Governments and by those who have had experience of it at first hand. Modern history affords no precedent for the sufferings that have been inflicted on the defenseless and noncombatant popula- tion in the territory that has been in German military occupation. Even the food of the population was confis- cated until in Belgium an International Commission, largely influenced by American generosity and con- ducted under American auspices, came to the relief of the population and secured from the German Government a promise to spare what food was still left in the country though the Germans still continue to make levies in money upon the defenseless population for the support of the German Army. ' ' 2. We have from time to time received most terrible accounts of the barbarous treatment to which British officers and soldiers have been exposed after they have been taken prisoner, while being conveyed to German prison camps; one or two instances have already been given to the United States Government, founded upon authentic and first-hand evidence which is beyond doubt. Some evidence has been received of the hardships to which British prisoners of war are subjected in the prison camps, contrasting, we believe, most unfavorably with the treatment of German prisoners in this country. We have proposed, with the consent of the United States Government, that a commission of United States officers should be permitted in each country to inspect the treat- ment of prisoners of war. The United States Govern- ment have been unable to obtain any reply from the HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS 227 German Government to this proposal and we remain in continuing anxiety and apprehension as to the treatment of British prisoners of war in Germany. "3. At the very outset of the war a German mine layer was discovered laying a mine field on the high seas. Further mine fields have been laid from time to time with- out warning, and so far as we know are still being laid on the high seas, and many neutral as well as British vessels have been sunk by them. "4. At various times during the war German subma- rines have stopped and sunk British merchant vessels, thus making the sinking of merchant vessels a general practice, though it was admitted previously, if at all, only as an exception, the general rule to which the British Government have adhered being that merchant vessels, if captured, must be taken before a prize court. In one case already quoted in a note to the United States Gov- ernment, a neutral vessel carrying foodstuffs to an un- fortified town in Great Britain has been sunk. Another case is now reported in which a German armed cruiser has sunk an American vessel, the William P. Frye, carry- ing a cargo of wheat from Seattle to Queenstown. In both cases the cargoes were presumably destined for the civil population. Even the cargoes in such circumstances should not have been condemned without the decision of a prize court, much less should the vessels have been sunk. It is to be noted that both these cases occurred before the detention by the British authorities of the Wilhelmina and her cargo of foodstuffs, which the German Govern- ment allege is the justification for their own action. The Germans have announced their intention of sinking Brit- ish merchant vessels by torpedo without notice and with- out any provision for the safety of the crew. They have •already carried out this intention in the case of neutral 228 HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS as well as of British vessels, and a number of noneom- batant and innocent lives on British vessels, unarmed and defenseless, have been destroyed in this way. "5. Unfortified, open, and defenseless towns, such as Scarborough, Yarmouth, and Whitby, have been delib- erately and wantonly bombarded by German ships of war, causing in some cases considerable loss of civilian life, including women and children. ' ' 6. German aircraft have dropped bombs on the east coast of England where there were no military or strate- gic points to be attacked. ' ' On the other hand, I am aware of but two criticisms that have been made on British action in all these respects: (1) It is said that the British naval authori- ties also have laid some anchored mines on the high seas. They have done so, but the mines were anchored and so constructed that they would be harmless if they went adrift, and no mines whatever were laid by the British naval authorities till many weeks after the Ger- mans had made a regular practice of laying mines on the high seas. (2) It is said that the British Govern- ment have departed from the view of international law which they had previously maintained, that foodstuffs destined for the civil population should never be inter- fered with, this charge being founded on the submission to a prize court of the cargo of the Wilhelmina. The spe- cial considerations affecting this cargo have already been presented in a memorandum to the United States Gov- ernment, and I need not repeat them here. Inasmuch as the stoppage of all foodstuffs is an admitted conse- quence of blockade, it is obvious that there can be no uni- versal rule based on considerations of morality and hu- manity which is contrary to this practice. The right to stop foodstuffs destined for the civil population must HISTOEY-MAKING DOCUMENTS 229 therefore in any case be admitted if an effective 'cordon' controlling intercourse with the enemy is drawn, an- nounced, and maintained. Moreover, independently of rights arising from belligerent action in the nature of blockade, some other nations, differing from the opinion of the Governments of the United States and Great Brit- ain, have held that to stop the food of the civil population is a natural and legitimate method of bringing pressure to bear on an enemy country, as it is upon the defense of a besieged town. It is also upheld on the authority of both Prince Bismarck and Count Caprivi, and therefore presumably is not repugnant to German morality. The following are the quotations from Prince Bismarck and Count Caprivi on this point. Prince Bismarck, in an- swering, in 1885, an application from the Kiel Chamber of Commerce for a statement of the view of the German Government on the question of the right to declare as contraband foodstuffs that were not intended for military forces, said, "I reply to the chamber of commerce that any disadvantage our commercial and carrying interests may suffer by the treatment of rice as contraband of war does not justify our opposing a measure which it has been thought fit to take in carrying on a foreign war. Every war is a calamity which entails evil consequences, not only on the combatants but also on neutrals. These evils may easily be increased by the interference of a neutral power with the way in which a third carries on the war to the disadvantage of the subjects of the interfering power, and by this means German commerce might be weighted with far heavier losses than a transitory pro- hibition of the rice trade in Chinese waters. The measure in question has for its object the shortening of the war by increasing the difficulties of the enemy, and is a justifiable step in war if impartially enforced against all neutral 230 HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS ships. ' Count Caprivi, during a discussion in the German Eeichstag on the 4th of March, 1892, on the subject of the importance of international protection for private prop- erty at sea, made the following statements: 'A country may be dependent for her food or for her raw products upon her trade. In fact, it may be absolutely necessary to destroy the enemy's trade.' * * * 'The private introduction of provisions into Paris was prohibited during the siege, and in the same way a nation would be justified in preventing the import of food and raw prod- uce. ' The Government of Great Britain have frankly declared, in concert with the Government of France, their intention to meet the German attempt to stop all supplies of every kind from leaving or entering British or French ports by themselves stopping supplies going to or from Germany for this end. The British fleet has instituted a blockade, effectively controlling by cruiser ' cordon ' all passage to and from Germany by sea. The difference between the two policies is, however, that while our object is the same as that of Germany, we propose to attain it without sacrificing neutral ships or noncombatant lives or inflicting upon neutrals the damage that must be en- tailed when a vessel and its cargo are sunk without notice, examination, or trial. I must emphasize again that this measure is a natural and necessary consequence of the unprecedented methods, repugnant to all law and moral- ity, which have been described above, which Germany began to adopt at the very outset of the war, and the effects of which have been constantly accumulating." HISTOKY-MAKING DOCUMENTS 231 SALES OF MUNITIONS Secretary of State Bryan to the German Ambassador [On April 4, 1915, the German Ambassador at Wash- ington, Count J. von Bernstorff, addressed a note to the Secretary of State on German- American trade and the question of delivery of arms to the Allies. Mr. Bryan's reply was as follows:] Department of State, EXCELLENCY: Washington, April 21, 1915. I have given thoughtful consideration to your Excel- lency's note of the 4th of April, 1915, enclosing a mem- orandum of the same date, in which Your Excellency discusses the action of this Government with regard to trade between the United States and Germany and the attitude of this Government with regard to the exporta- tion of arms from the United States to the nations now at war with Germany. I must admit that I am somewhat at a loss how to inter- pret Your Excellency's treatment of these matters. There are many circumstances connected with these important subjects to which I would have expected Your Excellency to advert, but of which you make no mention, and there are other circumstances to which you do refer which I would have supposed to be hardly appropriate for dis- cussion between the Government of the United States and the Government of Germany. I shall take the liberty, therefore, of regarding Your Excellency's references to the course pursued by the Government of the United States with regard to inter- ferences with trade from this country, such as the Gov- ernment of Great Britain have attempted, as intended merely to illustrate more fully the situation to which you desire to call our attention and not as an invitation to 232 HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS discuss that course. Your Excellency's long experience in international affairs will have suggested to you that the relations of the two Governments with one another can not wisely be made a subject of discussion with a third Government, which can not be fully informed as to the facts and which can not be fully cognizant of the reasons for the course pursued. I believe, however, that I am justified in assuming that what you desire to call forth is a frank statement of the position of this Govern- ment in regard to its obligations as a neutral power. The general attitude and course of policy of this Gov- ernment in the maintenance of its neutrality I am par- ticularly anxious that Your Excellency should see in their true light. I had hoped that this Government's position in these respects had been made abundantly clear, but I am of course perfectly willing to state it again. This seems to me the more necessary and desira- ble because, I regret to say, the language which Your Excellency employs in your memorandum is susceptible of being construed as impugning the good faith of the United States in the performance of its duties as a neu- tral. I take it for granted that no such implication was intended, but it is so evident that Your Excellency is laboring under certain false impressions that I can not be too explicit in setting forth the facts as they are, when fully reviewed and comprehended. In the first place, this Government has at no time and in no manner yielded any one of its rights as a neutral to any of the present belligerents. It has acknowledged, as a matter of course, the right of visit and search and the right to apply the rules of contraband of war to articles of commerce. It has, indeed, insisted upon the use of visit and search as an absolutely necessary safeguard against mistaking neutral vessels for vessels owned by an HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS 233 enemy and against mistaking legal cargoes for illegal. It has admitted also the right of blockade if actually ex- ercised and effectively maintained. These are merely the well-known limitations which war places upon neutral commerce on the high seas. But nothing beyond these has it conceded. I call Your Excellency 's attention to this, notwithstanding it is already known to all the world as a consequence of the publication of our correspond- ence in regard to these matters with several of the bellig- erent nations, because I can not assume that you have official cognizance of it. In the second place, this Government attempted to secure from the German and British Governments mutual concessions with regard to the measures those Govern- ments respectively adopted for the interruption of trade on the high seas. This it did, not of right, but merely as exercising the privileges of a sincere friend of both parties and as indicating its impartial good will. The attempt was unsuccessful; but I regret that Your Ex- cellency did not deem it worthy of mention in modifica- tion of the impressions you expressed. We had hoped that this act on our part had shown our spirit in these times of distressing war as our diplomatic correspondence had shown our steadfast refusal to acknowledge the right of any belligerent to alter the accepted rules of war at sea in so far as they affect the rights and interests of neutrals. In the third place, I note with sincere regret that, in discussing the sale and exportation of arms by citizens of the United States to the enemies of Germany, Your Ex- cellency seems to be under the impression that it was within the choice of the Government of the United States, notwithstanding its professed neutrality and its diligent efforts to maintain it in other particulars, to inhibit this trade, and that its failure to do so manifested an unfair 234 HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS attitude toward Germany. This Government holds, as I believe Your Excellency is aware, and as it is constrained to hold in view of the present indisputable doctrines of accepted international law, that any change in its own laws of neutrality during the progress of a war which would affect unequally the relations of the United States with the nations at war would be an unjustifiable depart- ure from the principles of strict neutrality by which it has consistently sought to direct its actions, and I respectfully submit that none of the circumstances urged in Your Excellency's memorandum alters the principle involved. The placing of an embargo on the trade in arms at the present time would constitute such a change and be a direct violation of the neutrality of the United States. It will, I feel assured, be clear to Your Excellency that, holding this view and considering itself in honor bound by it, it is out of the question for this Government to consider such a course. I hope that Your Excellency will realize the spirit in which I am drafting this reply. The friendship between the people of the United States and the people of Ger- many is so warm and of such long standing, the ties which bind them to one another in amity are so many and so strong, that this Government feels under a special com- pulsion to speak with perfect frankness when any occa- sion arises which seems likely to create any misunder- standing, however slight or temporary, between those who represent the Governments of the two countries. It will be a matter of gratification to me if I have removed from Your Excellency's mind any misapprehension you may have been under regarding either the policy or the spirit and purposes of the Government of the United States. Its neutrality is founded upon the firm basis of conscience and good will. "W. J. Bryan. HISTOKY-MAKING DOCUMENTS 235 WHEN THE LUSITANIA WAS SUNK Secretary of State Bryan to Ambassador Gerard Department of State, Washington, May 13, 1915. Please call on the Minister of Foreign Affairs and after reading to him this communication leave with him a copy. In view of recent acts of the German authorities in vio- lation cf American rights on the high seas which cul- minated in the torpedoing and sinking of the British steamship Lusitania on May 7, 1915, by which over 100 American citizens lost their lives, it is clearly wise and desirable that the Government of the United States and the Imperial German Government should come to a clear and full understanding as to the grave situation which has resulted. The sinking of the British passenger steamer Falaba by a German submarine on March 28, through which Leon C. Thrasher, an American citizen, was drowned; the attack on April 28 on the American vessel Cushing by a German aeroplane; the torpedoing on May 1 of the American vessel Gulflight by a German submarine, as a result of which two or more American citizens met their death; and, finally, the torpedoing and sinking of the steamship Lusitania, constitute a series of events which the Government of the United States has observed with growing concern, distress, and amazement. Recalling the humane and enlightened attitude hitherto assumed by the Imperial German Government in mat- ters of international right, and particularly with regard to the freedom of the seas; having learned to recognize the German views and the German influence in the field 236 HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS of international obligation as always engaged upon the side of justice and humanity ; and having understood the instructions of the Imperial German Government to its naval commanders to be upon the same plane of humane action prescribed by the naval codes of other nations, the Government of the United States was loath to believe — it can not now bring itself to believe — that these acts, so absolutely contrary to the rules, the practices, and the spirit of modern warfare, could have the countenance or sanction of that great Government. It feels it to be its duty, therefore, to address the Imperial German Gov- ernment concerning them with the utmost frankness and in the earnest hope that it is not mistaken in expecting action on the part of the Imperial German Government which will correct the unfortunate impressions which have been created and vindicate once more the position of that Government with regard to the sacred freedom of the seas. The Government of the United States has been apprised that the Imperial German Government considered them- selves to be obliged by the extraordinary circumstances of the present war and the measures adopted by their adversaries in seeking to cut Germany off from all com- merce, to adopt methods of retaliation which go much beyond the ordinary methods of warfare at sea, in the proclamation of a war zone from which they have warned neutral ships to keep away. This Government has al- ready taken occasion to inform the Imperial German Government that it can not admit the adoption of such measures or such a warning of danger to operate as in any degree an abbreviation of the rights of American ship- masters or of American citizens bound on lawful errands as passengers on merchant ships of belligerent nation- ality; and that it must hold the Imperial German Gov- HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS 237 ernment to a strict accountability for any infringement of those rights, intentional or incidental. It does not under- stand the Imperial German Government to question those rights. It assumes, on the contrary, that the Imperial Government accept, as of course, the rule that the lives of noncombatants, whether they be of neutral citizenship or citizens of one of the nations at war, can not lawfully or rightfully be put in jeopardy by the capture or destruc- tion of an unarmed merchantman, and recognize also, as all other nations do, the obligation to take the usual pre- caution of visit and search to ascertain whether a sus- pected merchantman is in fact of belligerent nationality or is in fact carrying contraband of war under a neutral flag. The Government of the United States, therefore, desires to call the attention of the Imperial German Government with the utmost earnestness to the fact that the objection to their present method of attack against the trade of their enemies lies in the practical impossibility of employing submarines in the destruction of commerce without dis- regarding those rules of fairness, reason, justice, and humanity, which all modern opinion regards as impera- tive. It is practically impossible for the officers of a submarine to visit a merchantman at sea and examine her papers and cargo. It is practically impossible for them to make a prize of her ; and, if they can not put a prize crew on board of her, they can not sink her with- out leaving her crew and all on board of her to the mercy of the sea in her small boats. These facts it is under- stood the Imperial German Government frankly admit. "We are informed that in the instances of which we have spoken time enough for even that poor measure of safety was not given, and in at least two of the cases cited not so much as a warning was received. Manifestly sub- 238 HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS marines can not be used against merchantmen, as the last few weeks have shown, without an inevitable violation of many sacred principles of justice and humanity. American citizens act within their indisputable rights in taking their ships and in traveling wherever their legitimate business calls them upon the high seas, and exercise those rights in what should be the well- justified confidence that their lives will not be endangered by acts done in clear violation of universally acknowledged inter- national obligations, and certainly in the confidence that their own Government will sustain them in the exercise of their rights. There was recently published in the newspapers of the United States, I regret to inform the Imperial German Government, a formal warning, purporting to come from the Imperial German Embassy at Washington, addressed to the people of the United States, and stating, in effect, that any citizen of the United States who exercised his right of free travel upon the seas would do so at his peril if his journey should take him within the zone of waters within which the Imperial German Navy was using sub- marines against the commerce of Great Britain and France, notwithstanding the respectful but very earnest protest of his Government, the Government of the United States. I do not refer to this for the purpose of calling the attention of the Imperial German Government at this time to the surprising irregularity of a communication from the Imperial German Embassy at Washington ad- dressed to the people of the United States through the newspapers, but only for the purpose of pointing out that no warning that an unlawful and inhumane act will be committed can possibly be accepted as an excuse or pal- liation for that act or as an abatement of the responsi- bility for its commission. HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS 239 Long acquainted as this Government has been with the character of the Imperial German Government and with the high principles of equity by which they have in the past been actuated and guided, the Government of the United States can not believe that the commanders of the vessels which committed these acts of lawlessness did so except under a misapprehension of the orders issued hy the Imperial German naval authorities. It takes it for granted that, at least within the practical possibilities of every such case, the commanders even of submarines were expected to do nothing that would in- volve the lives of noncombatants or the safety of neutral ships, even at the cost of failing of their object of capture or destruction. It confidently expects, therefore, that the Imperial German Government will disavow the acts of which the Government of the United States complains, that they will make reparation so far as reparation is possible for injuries which are without measure, and that they will take immediate steps to prevent the recurrence of anything so obviously subversive of the principles of warfare for which the Imperial German Government have in the past so wisely and so firmly contended. The Government and the people of the United States look to the Imperial German Government for just, prompt, and enlightened action in this vital matter with the greater confidence because the United States and Germany are bound together not only by special ties of friendship but also by the explicit stipulations of the treaty of 1828 between the United States and the King- dom of Prussia. Expressions of regret and offers of reparation in case of the destruction of neutral ships sunk by mistake, while they may satisfy international obligations, if no loss of life results, can nob justify or excuse a practice, 240 HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS the natural and necessary effect of which is to subject neutral nations and neutral persons to new and immeas- urable risks. The Imperial German Government will not expect the Government of the United States to omit any word or any act necessary to the performance of its sacred duty of maintaining the rights of the United States and its citizens and of safeguarding their free exercise and enjoyment. Bryan. VERDICT OF CORONER'S JURY IN THE LUSITANIA CASE The Cunard line steamship Lusitania, having a ton- nage of 32,500, a length of 785 feet and a speed of nearly twenty-five knots an hour, making it one of the largest and swiftest passenger vessels ever launched, was tor- pedoed and sunk by a German submarine off the south- eastern coast of Ireland May 7, 1915, with a loss of 1,198 lives. Of the victims 102 were Americans ; the remainder were British or other foreign subjects. A coroner's inquest was held at Kinsale, Ireland, on May 10, on some of the bodies brought ashore in small boats, and the verdict of the jury was as follows: "We find that the deceased met death from prolonged immersion and exhaustion in the sea eight miles south- southwest of Old Head of Kinsale Friday, May 7, 1915, owing to the sinking of the Lusitania by torpedoes fired by a German submarine. "We find that this appalling crime was committed contrary to international law and the conventions of all civilized nations. HISTOEY-MAKING DOCUMENTS 241 "We also charge the officers of said submarine and the Emperor and Government of Germany, under whose orders they acted, with the crime of wholesale murder before the tribunal of the civilized world. "We desire to express sincere condolences and sym- pathy with the relatives of the deceased, the Cunard Com- pany and the United States, many of whose citizens per- ished in this murderous attack on an unarmed liner. ' ' GERMAN STATEMENT ON THE LUSI- TANIA SINKING- The following message issued by the German Foreign Office in Berlin May 10 was delivered by the German Ambassador, Count von Bernstorff, to William J. Bryan, Secretary of State, in Washington, May 11: "Please communicate the following to the State De- partment : "The German Government desires to express its deep- est sympathy at the loss of lives on board the Lusitania. The responsibility rests, however, with the British Gov- ernment, which through its plan of starving the civilian population of Germany has forced Germany to resort to retaliatory measures. "In spite of the German offer to stop the submarine war in case the starvation plan was given up, British mer- chant vessels are being generally armed with guns and have repeatedly tried to ram submarines, so that a pre- vious search was impossible. "They cannot, therefore, be treated as ordinary mer- chant vessels. A recent declaration made to the British Parliament by the Parliamentary Secretary in answer to a question by Lord Charles Beresford said that at the 242 HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS present practically all British merchant vessels were armed and provided with hand grenades. "Besides, it has been openly admitted by the English press that the Lusitania on previous voyages repeatedly carried large quantities of war material. On the present voyage the Lusitania carried 5,400 cases of ammunition, while the rest of the cargo also consisted chiefly of con- traband. "If England, after repeated official and unofficial warnings, considered herself able to declare that that boat ran no risk and thus lightheartedly assumed respon- sibility for the human life on board a steamer which, owing to its armament and cargo, was liable to destruc- tion, the German Government, in spite of its heartfelt sympathy for the loss of American lives, cannot but regret that Americans felt more inclined to trust to English promises rather than to pay attention to the warnings from the German side." BEITISH REPLY TO THE FOREGOING In reply to the above German defense of the sinking of the Lusitania the following official statement was trans- mitted to the State Department May 11 : "The German Government states that responsibility for the loss of the Lusitania rests with the British Govern- ment, which, through its plan of starving the civil popu- lation of Germany, has forced Germany to resort to retal- iatory measures. The reply to this is as follows : "The German Government on February 4 declared their intention of instituting a general submarine block- ade of Great Britain and Ireland, with the avowed pur- HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS 243 pose of cutting off supplies for these islands. This block- ade was put into effect February 18. "As already stated, merchant vessels had, as a matter of fact, been sunk by a German submarine at the end of January. Before February 4 no vessel carrying food supplies for Germany had been held up by his majesty's government, except on the ground that there was reason to believe the foodstuffs were intended for use of the armed forces of the enemy or the enemy government. "The decision of his majesty's government to carry out the measures laid down by the order in council was due to the action of the German Government in insisting on their submarine blockade. ' ' This, added to other infractions of international law by Germany, led to British reprisals. ' ' The Germans state that, in spite of their offer to stop their submarine war in case the starvation plan was given up, Great Britain has taken even more stringent blockade measures. The answer to this is as follows : ' ' It was not understood from the reply of the German Government that they were prepared to abandon the prin- ciple of sinking British vessels by submarine. They have refused to abandon the use of mines for offensive pur- poses on the high seas on any condition. They have com- mitted various other infractions of international law, such as strewing the high seas and trade routes with mines, and British and neutral vessels will continue to run dan- ger from this course whether Germany abandons her submarine blockade or not. "The Germans represent British merchant vessels gen- erally as armed with guns and say that they repeatedly ram submarines. The answer to this is as follows : "It is not to be wondered at that merchant vessels, knowing they are liable to be sunk without warning and 244 IliSTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS without any chance being given those on board to save their lives, should take measures for self-defense. With regard to the Lusitania, the vessel was not armed on her last voyage and had not been armed during the whole war. "The Germans attempt to justify the sinking of the Lusitania by the fact that she had arms and ammunition on board. The presence of contraband on board a neutral vessel does render her liable to capture, but certainly not to destruction with the loss of a large portion of her crew and passengers. ' ' The Germans maintain that after repeated official and unofficial warnings his majesty's government were re- sponsible for the loss of life, as they considered themselves able to declare that the boat ran no risk, and thus 'light- heartedly assume the responsibility for the human lives on board a steamer which, owing to its armaments and cargo, is liable to destruction. ' The reply thereto is : "First. His majesty's government never declared the boat ran no risk. "Second. The fact that the Germans issued their warning shows that the crime was premeditated. They had no more right to murder passengers after warning jJHan before. "Third. In spite of their attempts to put the blame on Great Britain, it will tax the ingenuity even of the Germans to explain away the fact that it was a German torpedo, fired by a German seaman from a German sub- marine that sank the vessel and caused over 1,000 deaths. ' ' HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS 245 SECOND LUSITANIA NOTE The Secretary of State ad Interim to Ambassador Gerard at Berlin [This was the Lusitania note, written by President Wilson, and dispatched to Berlin June 9, which caused the resignation of Mr. Bryan as Secretary of State on the previous day. He dis- agreed with the President as to the tone to be adopted toward Germany.] Department of State, Washington, June 9, 1915. American Ambassador, Berlin : You are instructed to deliver textually the following note to the Minister of Foreign Affairs : In compliance with Your Excellency's request, I did not fail to transmit to my Government immediately upon their receipt your note of May 28 in reply to my note of May 15, and your supplementary note of June 1, setting forth the conclusions so far as reached by the Imperial German Government concerning the attacks on the Amer- ican steamers Cushing and Gul flight. I am now in- structed by my Government to communicate the following in reply: The Government of the United States notes with grati- fication the full recognition by the Imperial German Gov- ernment, in discussing the cases of the Cushing and Gulf- light, of the principle of the freedom of all parts of the open sea to neutral ships and the frank willingness of the Imperial German Government to acknowledge and meet its liability where the fact of attack upon neutral ships "which have not been guilty of any hostile act" by Ger- man aircraft or vessels of war is satisfactorily established, and the Government of the United States will in due course lay before the Imperial German Government, as 246 HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS it requests, full information concerning the attack on the steamer Cushing. With regard to the sinking of the steamer Falaba, by which an American citizen lest his life, the Government of the United States is surprised to find the Imperial German Government contending that an effort on the part of a merchantman to escape capture and secure assistance alters the obligation of the officer seeking to make the capture in respect of the safety of the lives of those on board the merchantman, although the vessel had ceased her attempt to escape when torpedoed. These are not new circumstances. They have been in the minds of statesmen and of international jurists throughout the development of naval warfare, and the Government of the United States does not understand that they have ever been held to alter the principles of humanity upon which it has insisted. Nothing but actual forcible resist- ance or continued efforts to escape by flight when ordered to stop for the purpose of visit on the part of the mer- chantman has ever been held to forfeit the lives of her passengers or crew. The Government of the United States, however, does not understand that the Imperial German Government is seeking in this case to relieve itself of liability, but only intends to set forth the circumstances which led the commander of the submarine to allow him- self to be hurried into the course which he took. Your Excellency's note, in discussing the loss of Ameri- can lives resulting from the sinking of the steamship Lusitania, adverts at some length to certain information which the Imperial German Government has received with regard to the character and outfit of that vessel, and Your Excellency expresses the fear that this information may not have been brought to the attention of the Gov- ernment of the United States. It is stated in the note HISTOEY-MAKING DOCUMENTS 217 that the Lusitania was undoubtedly equipped with masked guns, supplied with trained gunners and special ammunition, transporting troops from Canada, carry- ing a cargo not permitted under the laws of the United States to a vessel also carrying passengers, and serving, in virtual effect, as an auxiliary to the naval forces of Great Britain. Fortunately these are matters concern- ing which the Government of the United States is in a position to give the Imperial German Government official information. Of the facts alleged in Your Excellency's note, if true, the Government of the United States would have been bound to take official cognizance in performing its recognized duty as a neutral power and in enforcing its national laws. It was its duty to see to it that the Lusitania was not armed for offensive action, that she was not serving as a transport, that she did not carry a cargo prohibited by the statutes of the United States, and that, if in fact she was a naval vessel of Great Britain, she should not receive clearance as a merchantman, and it per- formed that duty and enforced its statutes with scrupu- lous vigilance through its regularly constituted officials. It is able, therefore, to assure the Imperial German Gov- ernment that it has been misinformed. If the Imperial German Government should deem itself to be in posses- sion of convincing evidence that the officials of the Gov- ernment of the United States did not perform these duties with thoroughness the Government of the United States sincerely hopes that it will submit that evidence for con- sideration. Whatever may be the contentions of the Imperial Ger- man Government regarding the carriage of contraband of war on board the Lusitania: or regarding the explosion of that material by the torpedo, it need only be said that in the view of this Government these contentions are 248 HISTOEY-MAKING DOCUMENTS irrelevant to the question of the legality of the methods used by the German naval authorities in sinking the vessel. But the sinking of passenger ships involves principles of humanity which throw into the background any special circumstances of detail that may be thought to affect the cases, principles which lift it, as the Imperial German Government will no doubt be quick to recognize and acknowledge, out of the class of ordinary subjects of dip- lomatic discussion or of international controversy. What- ever be the other facts regarding the Lusitania, the prin- cipal fact is that a great steamer, primarily and chiefly a conveyance for passengers, and carrying more than a thousand souls who had no part or lot in the conduct of the war, was torpedoed and sunk without so much as a challenge or a warning, and that men, women and chil- dren were sent to their death in circumstances unparal- leled in modern warfare. The fact that more than one hundred American citizens were among those who per- ished made it the duty of the Government of the United States to speak of these things and once more, with solemn emphasis, to call the attention of the Imperial German Government to the grave responsibility which the Gov- ernment of the United States conceives that it has in- curred in this tragic occurrence, and to the indisputable principle upon which that responsibility rests. The Gov- ernment of the United States is contending for something much greater than mere rights of property or privileges of commerce. It is contending for nothing less high and sacred than the rights of humanity, which every gov- ernment honors itself in respecting and which no govern- ment is justified in resigning on behalf of those under its care and authority. Only her actual resistance to cap- ture or refusal to stop when ordered to do so for the pur- HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS 249 pose of visit could have afforded the commander of the submarine any justification for so much as putting the lives of those on board the ship in jeopardy. This prin- ciple the Government of the United States understands the explicit instructions issued on August 3, 1914, by the Imperial German Admiralty to its commanders at sea to have recognized and embodied, as do the naval codes of all other nations, and upon it every traveler and seaman had a right to depend. It is upon this principle of humanity as well as upon the law founded upon this principle that the United States must stand. The Government of the United States is happy to observe that Your Excellency's note closes with the inti- mation that the Imperial German Government is willing, now as before, to accept the good offices of the United States in an attempt to come to an understanding with the Government of Great Britain by which the character and conditions of the war upon the sea may be changed. The Government of the United States would consider it a privilege thus to, serve its friends and the world. It stands ready at any time to convey to either government any intimation or suggestion the other may be willing to have it convey, and cordially invites the Imperial German Government to make use of its services in this way at its convenience. The whole world is concerned in anything that may bring about even a partial accommodation of interests or in any way mitigate the terrors of the present distressing conflict. In the meantime, whatever arrangement may happily be made between the parties to the war, and whatever may in the opinion of the Imperial German Government have been the provocation or the circumstantial justifica- tion for the past acts of its commanders at sea, the Gov- ernment of the United States confidently looks to see the 250 HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS justice and humanity of the Government of Germany vin- dicated in all cases where Americans have been wronged or their rights as neutrals invaded. The Government of the United States therefore very earnestly and very solemnly renews the representations of its note transmitted to the Imperial German Govern- ment on the 15th of May, and relies in these representa- tions upon the principles of humanity, the universally nized understandings of international law and the ancient friendship of the German nation. The Government of the United States cannot admit that the proclamation of a war zone from which neutral ships have been warned to keep away be made to operate as in any degree an abbreviation of the rights either of xVmeri- can shipmasters or of American citizens bound on lawful errands as passengers on merchant ships of belligerent nationality. It does not understand the Imperial Ger- man Government to question those rights. It understands it also to accept as established beyond question the prin- ciple that the lives of noncombatants cannot lawfully or rightfully be put in jeopardy by the capture or destruc- tion of an unresisting merchantman, and to recognize the obligation to take sufficient precaution to ascertain whether a suspected merchantman is in fact of belligerent nationality or is in fact carrying contraband of war under a neutral flag. The Government of the United States therefore deems it reasonable to expect that the Imperial German Government will adopt the measures necessary to put these principles into practice in respect of the safe- guarding of American lives and American ships, and asks for assurances that this will be done. Robert Lansing Secretary of State ad Interim. HISTOEY-MAKING DOCUMENTS 251 GERMANY'S REPLY A MONTH LATER The German Minister for Foreign Affairs to the Ameri- can Ambassador at Berlin Foreign Office, Berlin, July 8, 1915. The undersigned has the honor to make the following reply to the note of His Excellency Mr. James W. Gerard,- Ambassador of the United States of America, dated the 10th ultimo, Foreign Office No. 3814, on the sub- ject of the impairment of American interests by the German submarine war: The Imperial Government has learned with satisfaction from the note how earnestly the Government of the United States is concerned in seeing the principles of humanity realized in the present war. Also, this appeal meets with full sympathy in Germany, and the Imperial Government is quite willing to permit its statements and decisions in the case under consideration to be governed by the principles of humanity just as it has done always. The Imperial Government welcomed it with gratitude when the American Government in its note of May 15, 1915, itself recalled that Germany had always permitted itself to be governed by the principles of progress and humanity in dealing with the law of maritime war. Since the time when Frederick the Great negotiated with John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson the treaty of friendship and commerce of September 10, 1785, between Prussia and the republic of the "West, German and American statesmen have in fact always stood to- gether in the struggle for the freedom of the seas and for the protection of peaceable trade. In the international proceedings which have since been conducted for the regulation of the right of maritime war Germany and 252 HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS America have jointly advocated progressive principles, especially the abolishment of the right of capture at sea and the protection of the interests of neutrals. Even at the beginning of the present war the German Govern- ment immediately declared its willingness, in response to the proposal of the American Government, to ratify the Declaration of London and thereby to subject itself, in the use of its naval forces, to all the restrictions pro- vided therein in favor of neutrals. Germany has like- wise been always tenacious of the principle that war should be conducted against the armed and organized forces of the enemy country, but that the civilian pop- ulation of the enemy must be spared as far as possible from the measures of war. The Imperial Government cherishes the definite hope -that some way will be found when peace is concluded, or perhaps earlier, to regulate the law of maritime war in a manner guaranteeing the freedom of the seas, and will welcome it with gratitude and satisfaction if it can work hand in hand with the American Government on that occasion. If in the present war the principles which should be the ideal of the future have been traversed more and more the longer its duration, the German Government has no guilt therein. It is known to the American Government how Ger- many's adversaries, by completely paralyzing peaceable traffic between Germany and the neutral countries, have aimed from the very beginning, and with increasing lack of consideration, at the destruction not so much of the armed forces as the life of the German nation, repudiat- ing in so doing all the rules of international law and dis- regarding all the rights of neutrals. On November 3, 1914, England declared the North Sea to be a war area, and by planting poorly anchored mines and the stoppage HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS 253 and capture of vessels made passage extremely dangerous and difficult for neutral shipping, so that it is actually blockading neutral coasts and ports, contrary to all inter- national law. Long before the beginning of the sub- marine war England practically completely intercepted legitimate neutral navigation to Germany also. Thus Germany was driven to submarine war on trade. On November 16, 1914, the English Prime Minister declared in the House of Commons that it was one of England's principal tasks to prevent food for the German popula- tion from reaching Germany by way of neutral ports. Since March 1 of this year England has been taking from neutral ships without further formality all merchandise proceding to Germany, as well as all merchandise coming from Germany, even when neutral property. Just as was the case with the Boers, the German people is now to be given the choice of perishing from starvation, with its women and children, or of relinquishing its inde- pendence. While our enemies thus loudly and openly have pro- claimed war without mercy until our utter destruction, we are conducting war in self-defense for our national exist- ence and for the sake of peace of assured permanency. We have been obliged to adopt submarine warfare to meet the declared intentions of our enemies and the method of warfare adopted by them in contravention of interna- tional law. With all its efforts in principle to protect neutral life and property from damage as much as possible, the Ger- man Government recognized unreservedly in its memo- randum of February 4 that the interests of neutrals might suffer from submarine warfare. However, the American Government will also understand and appreciate that in the fight for existence which has been forced upon Ger- 254 HISTOKY-MAKING DOCUMENTS many by its adversaries and announced by them, it is the sacred duty of the Imperial Government to do all within its power to protect and to save the lives of German sub- jects. If the Imperial Government were derelict in these, its duties, it would be guilty before God and history of the violation of those principles of the highest humanity which are the foundation of every national existence. The case of the Lusitania shows with horrible clearness to what jeopardizing of human lives the manner of con- ducting war employed by our adversaries leads. In most direct contradiction of international law, all distinctions between merchantmen and war vessels have been obliter- ated by the order to British merchantmen to arm them- selves and to ram submarines and the promise of rewards therefor, and neutrals who use merchantmen as travelers have thereby been exposed in an increasing degree to all the dangers of war. If the commander of the German submarine which destroyed the Lusitania had caused the crew and travelers to put out in boats before firing the torpedo this would have meant the sure destruction of his own vessel. After the experiences in the sinking of much smaller and less seaworthy vessels it was to be expected that a mighty ship like the Lusitania would remain above water long enough, even after the torpedoing, to permit the passengers to enter the ship 's boats. Circumstances of a very peculiar kind, especially the presence on board of large quantities of highly explosive materials, defeated this expectation. In addition, it may be pointed out that if the Lusitania had been spared thousands of cases of ammunition would have been sent to Germany 's enemies and thereby thousands of German mothers and children robbed of their supporters. In the spirit of friendship with which the German nation has been imbued toward the union and its inhab- HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS 255 itauts since the earliest days of its existence, the Imperial Government will always be ready to do all it can, during the present war also, to prevent the jeopardizing of the lives of American citizens. The Imperial Government therefore repeats the assur- ances that American ships will not be hindered in the prosecution of legitimate shipping, and the lives of Ameri- can citizens on neutral vessels shall not be placed in jeopardy. In order to exclude any unforeseen dangers to Ameri- can passenger steamers, made possible in view of the conduct of maritime war on the part of Germany's adver- saries, the German submarines will be instructed to per- mit the free and safe passage of such passenger steamers when made recognizable by special markings and notified a reasonable time in advance. The Imperial Government, however, confidently hopes that the Ameri- can Government will assume the guarantee that these ves- sels have no contraband on board. The details of the arrangements for the unhampered passage of these vessels would have to be agreed upon by the naval authorities of both sides. In order to furnish adequate facilities for travel across the Atlantic ocean for American citizens, the German Government submits for consideration a proposal to increase the number of available steamers by installing in the passenger service a reasonable number of neutral steamers, the exact number to be agreed upon, under the American flag under the same conditions as the Ameri- can steamers above mentioned. The Imperial Government believes that it can assume that in this manner adequate facilities for travel across the Atlantic Ocean can be afforded American citizens. There would therefore appear to be no compelling neces- 256 HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS sity for American citizens to travel to Europe in time of war on ships carrying an enemy flag. In particular the Imperial Government is unable to admit that American citizens can protect an enemy ship through the mere fact of their presence on board. Germany merely followed England's example when it declared part of the high seas an area of war. Consequently accidents suffered by neutrals on enemy ships in this area of war cannot well be judged differently from accidents to which neutrals are at all times exposed at the seat of war on land when they betake themselves into dangerous localities in spite of previous warning. If, however, it should not be possible for the American Government to acquire an adequate number of neutral passenger steamers, the Imperial Government is prepared to interpose no objections to the placing under the Ameri- can flag by the American Government of four enemy pas- senger steamers for the passenger traffic between America and England. The assurances of "free and safe" pas- sage for American passenger steamers would then be extended to apply under the identical preconditions to these formerly hostile passenger ships. The President of the United States has declared his readiness, in a way deserving of thanks, to communicate and suggest proposals to the Government of Great Britain with particular reference to the alteration of maritime war. The Imperial Government will always be glad to make use of the good offices of the President and hopes that his efforts in the present case, as well as in the direc- tion of the lofty ideal of the freedom of the seas, will lead to an understanding. The undersigned requests the Ambassador to bring the above to the knowledge of the American Government and avails himself of the opportunity to renew to His HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS 257 Excellency the assurance of his most distinguished con- sideration. Von Jagow. AMERICA'S REJOINDER Secretary of State Lansing to Ambassador Gerard Department of State, Washington, July 21, 1915. You are instructed to deliver textually the following note to the Minister for Foreign Affairs : The note of the Imperial German Government dated the 8th of July, 1915, has received the careful considera- tion of the Government of the United States, and it regrets to be obliged to say that it has found it very unsat- isfactory, because it fails to meet the real difference be- tween the two governments and indicates no way in which the accepted principles of law and humanity may be applied in the grave matter in controversy, but proposes, on the contrary, arrangements for a partial suspension of those principles which virtually set them aside. The Government of the United States notes with satis- faction that the Imperial German Government recognizes without reservation the validity of the principles insisted on in the several communications which this Govern- ment has addressed to the Imperial German Government with regard to its announcement of a war zone and the use of submarines against merchantmen on the high seas — the principle that the high seas are free, that the char- acter and cargo of a merchantman must first be ascer- tained before she can lawfully be seized or destroyed and that the lives of noncombatants may in no case be put in jeopardy unless the vessel resists or seeks to escape after 258 HISTOEY-MAKING DOCUMENTS being summoned to submit to examination ; for a belliger- ent act of retaliation is per se an act beyond the law, and the defense of an act as retaliatory is an admission that it is illegal. The Government of the United States is, however, keenly disappointed to find that the Imperial German Government regards itself as in large degree exempt from the obligation to observe these principles, even where neu- tral vessels are concerned, by what it believes the policy and practice of the Government of Great Britain to be in the present war with regard to neutral commerce. The Imperial German Government will readily understand that the Government of the United States cannot discuss the policy of the Government of Great Britain with re- gard to neutral trade except with that Government itself, and that it must regard the conduct of other belligerent governments as irrelevant to any discussion with the Imperial German Government of what this Government regards as grave and unjustifiable violations of the rights of American citizens by German naval commanders. Il- legal and inhuman acts, however justifiable they may be thought to be against an enemy who is believed to have acted in contravention of law and humanity, are mani- festly indefensible when they deprive neutrals of their acknowledged rights, particularly when they violate the right to life itself. If a belligerent cannot retaliate against an enemy without injuring the lives of neutrals as well as their property, humanity, as well as justice and a due regard for the dignity of neutral powers, should dic- tate that the practice be discontinued. If persisted in it would in such circumstances constitute an unpardonable offense against the sovereignty of the neutral nation affected. The Government of the United States is not unmindful of the extraordinary conditions created by this HISTOEY-MAKING DOCUMENTS 259 war or of the radical alterations of circumstance and method of attack produced by the use of instrumentalities of naval warfare which the nations of the world cannot have had in view when the existing rules of international law were formulated, and it is ready to make every rea- sonable allowance for these novel and unexpected aspects of war at sea, but it cannot consent to abate any essential or fundamental right of its people because of a mere alter- ation of circumstance. The rights of neutrals in time of war are based upon principle, not upon expediency, and the principles are immutable. It is the duty and obliga- tion of belligerents to find a way to adapt the new cir- cumstances to them. The events of the past two months have clearly indi- cated that it is possible and practicable to conduct such submarine operations as have characterized the activity of the Imperial German Navy within the so-called war zone in substantial accord with the accepted practices of regulated warfare. The whole world has looked with interest and increasing satisfaction at the demonstration of that possibility by German naval commanders. It is manifestly possible, therefore, to lift the whole practice of submarine attack above the criticism which it has aroused and remove the chief causes of offense. In view of the admission of illegality made by the Im- perial Government when it pleaded the right of retalia- tion in defense of its acts, and in view of the manifest possibility of conforming to the established rules of naval warfare, the Government of the United States cannot believe that the Imperial Government will longer refrain from disavowing the wanton act of its naval commander in sinking the Lusitania or from offering reparation for the American lives lost, so far as reparation can be made for a needless destruction of human life by an illegal act. 260 HISTOEY-MAKLNG DOCUMENTS The Government of the United States, while not indif- ferent to the friendly spirit in which it is made, cannot accept the suggestion of the Imperial German Govern- ment that certain vessels be designated and agreed upon which shall be free on the seas now illegally proscribed. The very agreement would, by implication, subject other vessels to illegal attack and would be a curtailment and therefore an abandonment of the principles for which this Government contends and which in time of calmer coun- sels every nation would concede as of course. The Government of the United States and the Imperial German Government are contending for the same great object, have long stood together in urging the very prin- ciples upon which the Government of the United States now so solemnly insists. They are both contending for the freedom of the seas. The Government of the United States will continue to contend for that freedom, from whatever quarter violated, without compromise and at any cost. It invites the practical cooperation of the Im- perial German Government at this time when cooperation may accomplish most and this great common object be most strikingly and effectively achieved. The Imperial German Government expresses the hope that this object may be in some measure accomplished even before the present war ends. It can be. The Gov- ernment of the United States not only feels obliged to insist upon it, by whomsoever violated or ignored, in the protection of its own citizens, but is also deeply inter- ested in seeing it made practicable between the belliger- ents themselves, and holds itself ready at any time to act as the common friend who may be privileged to suggest a way. In the meantime the very value which this Government sets upon the long and unbroken friendship between the HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS 261 people and Government of the United States and the peo- ple and Government of the German nation impels it to press very solemnly upon the Imperial German Govern- ment the necessity for a scrupulous observance of neutral rights in this critical matter. Friendship itself prompts it to say to the Imperial Government that repetition by the commanders of German naval vessels of acts in con- travention of those rights must be regarded by the Gov- ernment of the United States, when they affect American citizens, as deliberately unfriendly. Lansing. 262 HISTOEY-MAKING DOCUMENTS GERMANY'S BROKEN AGREEMENT Ambassador von Bernstorff to Secretary Lansing Washington, D. 0., Sept. 1, 1915. My Dear Mr. Secretary : "With reference to our conversation of this morning, I beg to inform you that my instructions concerning our answer to your last Lusitania note* contain the following passage : "Liners will not be sunk by our submarines without warning and without safety to the lives of noncombatants, provided that the liners do not try to escape or offer resistance. ' ' Although I know that you do not wish to discuss the Lusitania question till the Arabic incident has been defi- nitely and satisfactorily settled, I desire to inform you of the above because this policy of my Government was decided on before the Arabic incident occurred. I have no objection to your making any use you may please of the above information. I remain, my dear Mr. Lansing, very sincerely yours, J. von Bernstorff. RECALL OF AUSTRIAN AMBASSADOR The Secretary of State to Ambassador Penfield at Vienna Department of State, Washington, September 8, 1915. You are instructed to present immediately the fol- lowing in a note to the Foreign Office : HISTOEY-MAKING DOCUMENTS 263 "Mr. Constantin Dumba, the Austro -Hungarian Am- bassador at Washington, has admitted that he proposed to his Government plans to instigate strikes in Ameri- can manufacturing plants engaged in the production of munitions of war. The information reached this Gov- ernment through a copy of a letter of the Ambassador to his Government. The bearer was an American citizen named Archibald, who was traveling under an American passport. The Ambassador has admitted that he em- ployed Archibald to bear official despatches from him to his Government. "By reason of the admitted purpose and intent of Mr. Dumba to conspire to cripple legitimate industries of the people of the United States and to interrupt their legiti- mate trade, and by reason of the flagrant violation of diplomatic propriety in employing an American citizen protected by an American passport as a secret bearer of official despatches through the lines of the enemy of Aus- tria-Hungary, the President directs me to inform your Excellency that Mr. Dumba is no longer acceptable to the Government of the United States as the Ambassador of His Imperial Majesty at "Washington. "Believing that the Imperial and Royal Government will realize that the Government of the United States has no alternative but to request the recall of Mr. Dumba on account of his improper conduct, the Government of the United States expresses its deep regret that this course has become necessary and assures the Imperial and Royal Government that it sincerely desires to continue the cordial and friendly relations which exist between the United States and Austria-Hungary. ' ' Lansing. 264 HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS RECALL OF GERMAN ATTACHES The Secretary of State to the German Ambassador Department of State, "Washington, December 4, 1915. Excellency : Confirming my conversation with you on Decem- ber first, I have the honor to state that various facts and circumstances having come to the knowledge of the Government of the United States as to the con- nection of Captain Boy-Ed, Naval Attache, and Captain von Papen, Military Attache, of the Imperial German Embassy, with the illegal and questionable acts of certain persons within the United States, the President reached the conviction that the continued presence of these gen- tlemen as Attaches of the Embassy would no longer serve the purpose of their mission, and would be unac- ceptable to his Government. The President, therefore, directed me to notify Your Excellency, as I did orally, that Captain Boy-Ed and Captain von Papen are no longer acceptable to the Gov- ernment of the United States as Attaches of His Im- perial Majesty's Embassy at Washington, and to request that your Excellency's Government withdraw them im- mediately from their official connection with the Imperial German Embassy. As I informed you at the time of our interview, the Government of the United States deeply regrets that this action has become necessary and believes that the Im- perial Government will realize that this Government has, in view of all the circumstances, no alternative course consistent with the interests of the two Governments in their relations with each other. Accept, etc., Robert Lansing. HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS 265 The Secretary of State to the German Ambassador Department of State, Washington, December 10, 1915. My Dear Mr. Ambassador : On December 1st I informed Your Excellency that Captain Boy-Ed, the Naval Attache of your Embassy, and Captain von Papen, the Military Attache, were no longer persona grata to my Government and requested that the Imperial Government immediately recall the two attaches. As ten days have passed without the request of this Government being complied with and without commu- nication from you on the subject other than your per- sonal letter of the 5th instant, which in no way affected the fact that the two attaches were unacceptable or pre- sented a ground for delay, I feel compelled to direct your attention to the expectation of this Government that its request would be immediately granted. I trust, my dear Mr. Ambassador, that you appreciate the situation and will urge upon your Government a prompt compliance with the request in order that this Government may not be compelled to take action with- out awaiting the recall of the attaches, an action which this Government does not desire to take but will be forced to take unless the Imperial Government meets the ex- press wish of this Government without further delay. I need not impress upon Your Excellency the desirability of avoiding a circumstance which would increase the embarrassment of the present situation. I am, etc., Robert Lansing. 266 HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS The German Ambassador to the Secretary of State German Embassy, "Washington, December 10, 1915. Mr. Secretary of State : In reply to your note of the 4th of this month, I have the honor to inform Your Excellency that his Majesty the Emperor and King has been most graciously pleased to recall the Naval Attache of the Imperial Embassy, Cap- tain Boy-Ed, and the Military Attache, Captain von Papen. I am instructed to beg Your Excellency to obtain for the above-named gentlemen a safe conduct for the return trip to Germany from the powers at war with the Gen- man Empire, and also to insure the trip of the successors of those gentlemen to the United States in the event of their being appointed by His Majesty. Accept, etc., J. Bernstorfp. The Secretary of State to the German Ambassador Department of State, Washington, December 15, 1915. My Dear Mr. Ambassador : I am advised by the British and French Ambassadors that safe conducts will be furnished to Captains Boy-Ed and von Papen for their return to Germany, it being understood that they will take the southern route to Holland. The Ambassadors request information as to the vessel and date of sailing of the two gentlemen, which I hope you will furnish at your earliest convenience. It is also understood that they will, of course, perform no unneutral act, such as carrying dispatches to the German Government. I am, etc., Eobert Lansing. HISTOEY-MAKING DOCUMENTS 267 SUBMARINES AND ARMED MER- CHANTMEN Informal and Confidential Letter from the Secretary of State to the British Ambassador* Department of State, Washington, January 18, 1916. My Dear Mr. Ambassador : It is a matter of the deepest interest to my Government to bring to an end, if possible, the dangers to life which attend the use of submarines as at present employed in destroying enemy commerce on the high seas, since on any merchant vessel of belligerent nationality there may be citizens of the United States who have taken passage or are members of the crew, in the exercise of their rec- ognized rights as neutrals. I assume that Your Excel- lency 's Government are equally solicitous to protect their nations from the exceptional hazards which are pre- sented by their passage on a merchant vessel through those portions of the high seas in which undersea craft of their enemy are operating. "While I am fully alive to the appalling loss of life among noncombatants, regardless of age or sex, which has resulted from the present method of destroying mer- chant vessels without removing the persons on board to places of safety, and while I view that practice as con- trary to those humane principles which should control belligerents in the conduct of their naval operations, I * Same to the Ambassador of France, the Russian Ambassador, the Ambassador of Italy, the Belgian Minister, and, on January j24, 1916, to the Japanese Ambassador. 268 HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS do not feel that a belligerent should be deprived of the proper use of submarines in the interruption of enemj commerce since those instruments of war have proven their effectiveness in this particular branch of warfare on the high seas. In order to bring submarine warfare within the gen- eral rules of international law and the principles of humanity without destroying its efficiency in the destruc- tion of commerce, I believe that a formula may be found which, though it may require slight modifications of the practice generally followed by nations prior to the em- ployment of submarines, will appeal to the sense of justice and fairness of all the belligerents in the present war. Your Excellency will understand that in seeking a formula or rule of this nature I approach it of necessity from the point of view of a neutral, but I believe that it will be equally efficacious in preserving the lives of all noncombatants on merchant vessels of belligerent nationality. My comments on this subject are predicated on the fol- lowing propositions: 1. A noncombatant has a right to traverse the high seas in a merchant vessel entitled to fly a belligerent flag and to rely upon the observance of the rules of interna- tional law and principles of humanity if the vessel is approached by a naval vessel of another belligerent. 2. A merchant vessel of enemy nationality should not be attacked without being ordered to stop. 3. An enemy merchant vessel, when ordered to do so by a belligerent submarine, should immediately stop. 4. Such vessel should not be attacked after being or- dered to stop unless it attempts to flee or to resist, and in case it ceases to flee or resist, the attack should dis- continue. HISTOKY-MAKING DOCUMENTS 269 5. In the event that it is impossible to place a prize crew on board of an enemy merchant vessel or convoy it into port, tne vessel may be sunk, provided the crew and pas- sengers have been removed to a place of safety. In complying with the foregoing propositions which, in my opinion, embody the principal rules, the strict observ- ance of which will insure the life of a noncombatant on a merchant vessel which is intercepted by a submarine, I am not unmindful of the obstacles which would be met by undersea craft as commerce destroyers. Prior to the year 1915 belligerent operations against enemy commerce on the high seas had been conducted with cruisers carrying heavy armaments. Under these conditions international law appeared to permit a mer- chant vessel to carry an armament for defensive purposes without losing its character as a private commercial ves- sel. This right seems to have been predicated on the superior defensive strength of ships of war, and the lim- itation of armament to have been dependent on the fact that it could not be used effectively in offense against enemy naval vessels, while it could defend the merchant- men against the generally inferior armament of piratical ships and privateers. The use of the submarine, however, has changed these relations. Comparison of the defensive strength of a cruiser and a submarine shows that the latter, relying for protection on its power to submerge, is almost defense- less in point of construction. Even a merchant ship carrying a small caliber gun would be able to use it effectively for offense against a submarine. Moreover, pirates and sea rovers have been swept from the main trade channels of the seas, and privateering has been abolished. Consequently, the placing of guns on mer- chantmen at the present day of submarine warfare can 270 HISTOEY-MAKING DOCUMENTS be explained only on the ground of a purpose to render merchantmen superior in force to submarines and to pre- vent warning and visit and search by them. Any arma- ment, therefore, on a merchant vessel would seem to have the character of an offensive armament. If a submarine is required to stop and search a mer- chant vessel on the high seas and, in case it is found that she is of enemy character and that conditions necessitate her destruction, to remove to a place of safety all persons on board, it would not seem just or reasonable that the submarine should be compelled, while complying with these requirements, to expose itself to almost certain destruction by the guns on board the merchant vessel. It would, therefore, appear to be a reasonable and re- ciprocally just arrangement if it could be agreed by the opposing belligerents that submarines should be caused to adhere strictly to the rules of international law in the matter of stopping and searching merchant vessels, determining their belligerent nationality, and removing the crews and passengers to places of safety before sinking the vessels as prizes of war, and that merchant vessels of belligerent nationality should be prohibited and pre- vented from carrying any armament whatsoever. In presenting this formula as a basis for conditional declarations by the belligerent Governments, I do so in the full conviction that your Government will consider primarily the humane purpose of saving the lives of innocent people rather than the insistence upon a doubt- ful legal right which may be denied on account of new conditions. I would be pleased if you would be good enough to bring this suggestion to the attention of your Govern- ment and inform me of their views upon the subject, and whether they would be willing to make such a declara- HISTOEY-MAKING DOCUMENTS 271 tion conditioned upon their enemies making a similar declaration. A communication similar to this one has been addressed to the Ambassadors of France, Russia, and Italy, and the Minister of Belgium at this capital. I should add that my Government is impressed with the reasonableness of the argument that a merchant vessel carrying an armament of any sort, in view of the char- acter of submarine warfare and the defensive weakness of undersea craft, should be held to be an auxiliary cruiser and so treated by a neutral as well as by a bel- ligerent Government, and is seriously considering in- structing its officials accordingly. I am, etc., Robert Lansing. 272 HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS SINKING OF THE "SUSSEX" First Threat to Sever Diplomatic Relations with Germany The Secretary of State to Ambassador Gerard at Berlin [Telegram.] Department of State, Washington, March 27, 1916. Mr. Gerard is informed that considerable evidence has been ■ received by the Department to the effect that the steamship "Sussex" with several American citizens among the passengers was sunk by a submarine torpedo on the 24th instant, and he is directed to inquire imme- diately of the German Foreign Office whether a sub- marine belonging to Germany or her allies sunk th© "Sussex." The Department expects a prompt reply. The Secretary of State to Ambassador Gerard [Telegram.] Department of State, Washington, April 18, 1916. You are instructed to deliver to the Secretary of Foreign Affairs a communication reading as follows : I did not fail to transmit immediately, by telegraph, to my Government Your Excellency's note of the 10th instant in regard to certain attacks by German sub- marines, and particularly in regard to the disastrous explosion which on March 24, last, wrecked the French steamship "Sussex" in the English Channel. I have HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS 273 now the honor to deliver, under instructions from my Government, the following reply to Your Excellency : Information now in the possession of the Government of the United States fully establishes the facts in the case of the "Sussex," and the inferences which my Govern- ment has drawn from that information it regards as con- firmed by the circumstances set forth in Your Excel- lency's note of the 10th instant. On the 24th of March, 1916, at about 2 :50 o'clock in the afternoon, the unarmed steamer "Sussex," with 325 or more passengers on board, among whom were a number of American citizens, was torpedoed while crossing from Folkestone to Dieppe. The "Sussex" had never been armed; was a vessel known to be habitually used only for the conveyance of passengers across the English Channel; and was not following the route taken by troop ships or supply ships. About 80 of her passengers, noncombatants of all ages and sexes, in- cluding citizens of the United States, were killed or injured. A careful, detailed, and scrupulously impartial in- vestigation by naval and military officers of the United States has conclusively established the fact that the "Sussex" was torpedoed without warning or summons to surrender and that the torpedo by which she was struck was of German manufacture. In the view of the Gov- ernment of the United States these facts from the first made the conclusion that the torpedo was fired by a Ger- man submarine unavoidable. It now considers that con- clusion substantiated by the statements of Your Excel- lency's note. A full statement of the facts upon which the Government of the United States has based its con- clusion is inclosed. ^ The Government of the United States, after having given careful consideration to the note of the Imperial 274 HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS Government of the 10th of April, regrets to state that the impression made upon it by the statements and pro- posals contained in that note is that the Imperial Govern- ment has failed to appreciate the gravity of the situa- tion which has resulted, not alone from the attack on the "Sussex" but from the whole method and character of submarine warfare as disclosed by the unrestrained prac- tice of the commanders of German undersea craft during the past twelvemonth and more in the indiscriminate destruction of merchant vessels of all sorts, nationalities, and destinations. If the sinking of the "Sussex" had been an isolated case the Government of the United States might find it possible to hope that the officer who was responsible for that act had wilfully violated his orders or had been criminally negligent in taking none of the precautions they prescribed, and that the ends of justice might be satisfied by imposing upon him an adequate punishment, coupled with a formal disavowal of the act and payment of a suitable indemnity by the Imperial Government. But, though the attack upon the "Sussex" was manifestly indefensible and caused a loss of life so tragical as to make it stand forth as one of the most terrible examples of the inhumanity of submarine war- fare as the commanders of German vessels are conducting it, it unhappily does not stand alone. On the contrary, the Government of the United States is forced by recent events to conclude that it is only one instance, even though one of the most extreme and most distressing instances, of the deliberate method and spirit of indiscriminate destruction of merchant vessels of all sorts, nationalities, and destinatiqns which have become more and more unmistakable as the activity of German undersea vessels of war has in recent months been quick- ened and extended. HISTOET-MAKING DOCUMENTS 275 The Imperial Government will recall that when, in February, 1915, it announced its intention of treating the waters surrounding Great Britain and Ireland as embraced within the seat of war and of destroying all merchant ships owned by its enemies that might be found within that zone of danger, and warned all vessels, neutral as well as belligerent, to keep out of the waters thus proscribed or to enter them at their peril, the Gov- ernment of the United States earnestly protested. It took the position that such a policy could not be pursued without constant gross and palpable violations of the accepted law of nations, particularly if submarine craft were to be employed as its instruments, inasmuch as the rules prescribed by that law, rules founded on the prin- ciples of humanity and established for the protection of the lives of noncombatants at sea, could not in the nature of the case be observed by such vessels. It based its pro- test on the ground that persons of neutral nationality and vessels of neutral ownership would be exposed to extreme and intolerable risks ; and that no right to close any part of the high seas could lawfully be asserted by the Im- perial Government in the circumstances then existing. The law of nations in these matters, upon which the Gov- ernment of the United States based that protest, is not of recent origin or founded upon merely arbitrary prin- ciples set up by convention. It is based, on the contrary, upon manifest principles of humanity and has long been established with the approval and by the express assent of all civilized nations. The Imperial Government, notwithstanding, persisted in carrying out the policy announced, expressing the hope that the dangers involved, at any rate to neutral vessels, would be reduced to a minimum by the instructions which it had issued to the commanders of its submarines, 276 HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS and assuring the Government of the United States that it would take every possible precaution both to respect the rights of neutrals and to safeguard the lives of noncom- batants. In pursuance of this policy of submarine warfare against the commerce of its adversaries, thus announced and thus entered upon in despite of the solemn protest of the Government of the United States, the commanders of the Imperial Government's undersea vessels have carried on practices of such ruthless destruction which have made it more and more evident as the months have gone by that the Imperial Government has found it impracticable to put any such restraints upon them as it had hoped and promised to put. Again and again the Imperial Govern- ment has given its solemn assurances to the Government of the United States that at least passenger ships would not be thus dealt with, and yet it has repeatedly per- mitted its undersea commanders to disregard those assur- ances with entire impunity. As recently as February last it gave notice that it would regard all armed mer- chantmen owned by its enemies as part of the armed naval forces of its adversaries and deal with them as with men-of-war, thus, at least by Implication, pledging itself to give warning to vessels which were not armed and to accord security of life to their passengers and crews ; but even this limitation their submarine commanders have recklessly ignored. Vessels of neutral ownership, even vessels of neutral ownership bound from neutral port to neutral port, have been destroyed along with vessels of belligerent owner- ship in constantly increasing numbers. Sometimes the merchantmen attacked have been warned and summoned to surrender before being fired on or torpedoed ; some- times their passengers and crews have been vouchsafed HISTOEY -MAKING DOCUMENTS 277 the poor security of being allowed to take to the ship 's boats before the ship was sent to the bottom. But again and again no warning has been given, no escape even to the ship 's boats allowed to those on board. Great liners like the ' ' Lusitania " and "Arabic" and mere passenger boats like the "Sussex" have been attacked without a moment's warning, often before they have even become aware that they were in the presence of an armed ship of the enemy, and the lives of noncombatants, passengers, and crew have been destroyed wholesale and in a manner which the Government of the United States can not but regard as wanton and without the slightest color of justi- fication. No limit of any kind has in fact been set to their indiscriminate pursuit and destruction of merchantmen of all kinds and nationalities within the waters which the Imperial Government has chosen to designate as lying within the seat of war. The roll of Americans who have lost their lives upon ships thus attacked and destroyed has grown month by month until the ominous toll has mounted into the hundreds. The Government of the United States has been very patient. At every stage of this distressing experience of tragedy after tragedy it has sought to be governed by the most thoughtful consideration of the extraordinary cir- cumstances of an unprecedented war and to be guided by sentiments of very genuine friendship for the people and Government of Germany. It has accepted the suc- cessive explanations and assurances of the Imperial Gov- ernment as of course given in entire sincerity and good faith, and has hoped, even against hope, that it would prove to be possible for the Imperial Government so to order and control the acts of its naval commanders as to square its policy with the recognized principles of humanity as embodied in the law of nations. It has 278 HISTOEY-MAKING DOCUMENTS made every allowance for unprecedented conditions and has been willing to wait until the facts became unmis- takable and were susceptible of only one interpretation. It now owes it to a just regard for its own rights to say to the Imperial Government that that time has come. It has become painfully evident to it that the position which it took at the very outset is inevitable, namely, the use of submarines for the destruction of an enemy 's com- merce, is, of necessity, because of the very character of the vessels employed and the very methods of attack which their employment of course involves, utterly in- compatible with the principles of humanity, the long- established and incontrovertible rights of neutrals, and the sacred immunities of noncombatants. If it is still the purpose of the Imperial Government 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 interna- tional law and the universally recognized dictates of humanity, the Government of the United States is at last forced to the conclusion that there is but one course it can pursue. 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 hut to sever diplomatic relations with tlve German Empire altogether. This action the Government of the United States contemplates with the greatest reluctance but feels constrained to take in behalf of humanity and the rights of neutral nations. Lansing. HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS 279 FACTS IN "SUSSEX" CASE The French channel steamer "Sussex," employed regularly in passenger service between the ports of Folke- stone, England, and Dieppe, France, as it had been for years, left Folkestone for Dieppe at 1:25 p. m., March 24, 1916, with 325 or more passengers and a crew of 53 men. The passengers, among whom were about 25 Ameri- can citizens, were of several nationalities and many of them were women and children and nearly half of them subjects of neutral states. The "Sussex" carried no armament, had never been employed as a troop ship, and was following a route not used for transporting troops from Great Britain to France. The steamer proceeded on its course almost due south after passing Dungeness. The weather was clear and the sea smooth. At 2:50 p. m., when the "Sussex" was about 13 miles from Dungeness, the captain of the ves- sel, who was on the bridge, saw about 150 meters from the ship, on the port side, the wake of a torpedo. It was also seen very clearly by the first officer and the boat- swain who were with the captain on the bridge. Imme- diately the captain gave orders to port the helm and stop the starboard engine, the purpose being to swing the vessel to starboard so as to dodge the torpedo by allowing it to pass along the port bow on a line con- verging with the altered course of the steamer. Before, however, the vessel could be turned far enough to avoid crossing the course of the torpedo, the latter struck the hull at an angle a short distance forward of the bridge, exploded, destroyed the entire forward part of the steamer as far back as the first water-tight bulkhead, carried away the foremast with the wireless antennae and killed or injured about 80 of the persons on board. 280 HISTOEY-MAKING DOCUMENTS PEACE NOTE TO THE POWERS The Secretary of State to Ambassador W. H. Page Department of State, Washington, December 18, 1916. The President directs me to send you the following communication to be presented immediately to the Min- ister of Foreign Affairs of the Government to which you are accredited: "The President of the United States has instructed me to suggest to His Majesty's Government a course of action with regard to the present war which he hopes that the British Government will take under consideration as suggested in the most friendly spirit and as coming not only from a friend but also as coming from the repre- sentative of a neutral nation whose interests have been most seriously affected by the war and whose concern for its early conclusion arises out of a manifest necessity to determine how best to safeguard those interests if the war is to continue. "The suggestion which I am instructed to make the President has long had it in mind to offer. He is some- what embarrassed to offer it at this particular time be- cause it may now seem to have been prompted by the recent overtures of the Central Powers. It is in fact in no way associated with them in its origin and the Presi- dent would have delayed offering it until those overtures had been answered but for the fact that it also concerns the question of peace and may best be considered in con- nection with other proposals which have the same end in view. The President can only beg that his suggestion HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS 281 be considered entirely on its own merits and as if it had been made in other circumstances. "The President suggests that an early occasion be sought to call out from all the nations now at war such an avowal of their respective views as to the terms upon which the war might be concluded and the arrangements which would be deemed satisfactory as a guaranty against its renewal or the kindling of any similar conflict in the future as would make it possible frankly to compare them. He is indifferent as to the means taken to accomplish this. He would be happy himself to serve or even to take the initiative in its accomplishment in any way that might prove acceptable, but he has no desire to determine the method or the instrumentality. One way will be as ac- ceptable to him as another if only the great object he has in mind is attained. "He takes the liberty of calling attention to the fact that the objects which the statesmen of the belligerents on both sides have in mind in this war are virtually the same, as stated in general terms to their own people and to the world. Each side desires to make the rights and privileges of weak peoples and small States as secure against aggression or denial in the future as the rights and privileges of the great and powerful States now at war. Each wishes itself to be made secure in the future, along with all other nations and peoples, against the re- currence of wars like this and against aggression of selfish interference of any kind. Each would be jealous of the formation of any more rival leagues to preserve an uncertain balance of power amidst multiplying suspi- cions; but each is ready to consider the formation of a league of nations to insure peace and justice throughout the world. Before that final step can be taken, however, each deems it necessary first to settle the issues of the 282 HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS present war upon terms which will certainly safeguard the independence, the territorial integrity, and the po- litical and commercial freedom of the nations involved. "In the measures to be taken to secure the future peace of the world the people and Government of the United States are as vitally and as directly interested as the Governments now at war. Their interest, more- over, in the means to be adopted to relieve the smaller and weaker peoples of the world of the peril of wrong and violence is as quick and ardent as that of any other people or Government. They stand ready, and even eager, to cooperate in the accomplishment of these ends, when the war is over, with every influence and resource at their command. But the war must first be concluded. The terms upon which it is to be concluded they are not at liberty to suggest ; but the President does feel that it is his right and his duty to point out their intimate in- terest in its conclusion, lest it should presently be too late to accomplish the greater things which lie beyond its conclusion, lest the situation of neutral nations, now exceedingly hard to endure, be rendered altogether intol- erable, and lest, more than all, an injury be done civiliza- tion itself which can never be atoned for or repaired. "The President therefore feels altogether justified in suggesting an immediate opportunity for a comparison of views as to the terms which must precede those ulti- mate arrangements for the peace of the world, which all desire and in which the neutral nations as well as those at war are ready to play their full responsible part. If the contest must continue to proceed towards unde- fined ends by slow attrition until the one group of bel- ligerents or the other is exhausted, if million after mil- lion of human lives must continue to be offered up until on the one side or the other there are no more to offer, HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS 283 if resentments must be kindled that can never cool and despairs engendered from which there can be no recov- ery, hopes of peace and of the willing concert of free peoples will be rendered vain and idle. "The life of the entire world has been profoundly- affected. Every part of the great family of mankind has felt the burden and terror of this unprecedented contest of arms. No nation in the civilized world can be said in truth to stand outside its influence or to be safe against its disturbing effects. And yet the concrete objects for which it is being waged have never been definitely stated. "The leaders of the several belligerents have, as has been said, stated those objects in general terms. But, stated in general terms, they seem the same on both sides. Never yet have the authoritative spokesmen of either side avowed the precise objects which would, if attained, satisfy them and their people that the war had been fought out. The world has been left to conjecture what definitive results, what actual exchange of guaran- tees, what political or territorial changes or readjust- ments, what stage of military success even, would bring the war to an end. "It may be that peace is nearer than we know; that the terms which the belligerents on the one side and on the other would deem it necessary to insist upon are not so irreconcilable as some have feared ; that an interchange of views would clear the way at least for conference and make the permanent concord of the nations a hope of the immediate future, a concert of nations immediately practicable. • ' The President is not proposing peace ; he is not even offering mediation. He is merely proposing that sound- ings be taken in order that we may learn, the neutral 284 HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS nations with the belligerent, how near the haven of peace may be for which all mankind longs with an intense and increasing longing. He believes that the spirit in which he speaks and the objects which he seeks will be under- stood by all concerned, and he confidently hopes for a response whch will bring a new light into the affairs of the world." T Lansing. [A note similar in terms to the above was addressed simultaneously to all the belligerent powers. The an- swers of the Allies took the form of an Allied Note, referred to in the following document.] BRITISH ANSWER TO PEACE NOTE Memorandum from British Embassy, Washington Foreign Office, London, January 13, 1917. Sir : In sending you a translation of the Allied Note I desire to make the following observations, which you should bring to the notice of the United States Govern- ment. I gather from the general tenour of the President's note that while he is animated by an intense desire that peace should come soon and that when it comes it should be lasting, he does not for the moment at least concern himself with the terms on which it should be arranged. His Majesty 's Government entirely share the President 's ideas, but they feel strongly that the durability of peace must largely depend on its character and that no stable system of international relations can be built on founda- tions which are essentially and hopelessly defective. HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS 2 85 This becomes clearly apparent if we consider the main conditions which rendered possible the calamities from which the world is now suffering. These were the exist- ence of great powers consumed with the lust of domina- tion m the midst of a community of nations ill prepared for defence, plentifully supplied indeed with interna- tional laws, but with no machinery for enforcing them and weakened by the fact that neither the boundaries of the various States nor their internal constitution har- monised with the aspirations of their constituent races or secured to them just and equal treatment. That this last evil would be greatly mitigated if the Allies secured the changes in the map of Europe outlined m their joint note is manifest and I need not labour the point. It has been argued, indeed, that the expulsion of the Turks from Europe forms no proper or logical part of this general scheme. The maintenance of the Turkish Empire was during many generations, regarded by states- men of world-wide authority as essential to the mainte- nance of European peace. Why, it is asked, should the cause of peace be now associated with a complete reversal ot this traditional policy? The answer is that circumstances have completely changed. It is unnecessary to consider now whether the HIT" 1" xt ™ d ^^ mediatin S betwee » hostile races m the Near East, was a scheme which, had the Sultan been sincere and the powers united, could ever have been realised. It certainly cannot be realised now The Turkey of "Union and Progress" is at least as bar- TT S T£ T T x ar m ° re a ^ ressive ^an the Turkey of Sultan Abdul Hamid. In the hands of Germany it has ceased even in appearance to be a bulwark of peace and is openly used as an instrument of conquest. Under Ger- 286 HISTOEY-MAKING DOCUMENTS man officers Turkish soldiers are now fighting in lands from which they had long been expelled, and a Turkish Government, controlled, subsidized and supported by Germany, has been guilty of massacres in Armenia and Syria more horrible than any recorded in the history even of those unhappy countries. Evidently the interests of peace and the claims of nationality alike require that Turkish rule over alien races shall if possible be brought to an end ; and we may hope that the expulsion of Turkey from Europe will contribute as much to the cause of peace as the restoration of Alsace Lorraine to France, of Italia Irredenta to Italy, or any of the other territorial changes indicated in the Allied Note. Evidently, however, such territorial re-arrangements, though they may diminish the occasions of war, provide no sufficient security against its recurrence. If Germany, or rather those in Germany who mould its opinions and control its destinies, again set out to domineer the world, they may find that by the new order of things the ad- venture is made more difficult, but hardly that it is made impossible. They may still have ready to their hand a political system organised through and through on a military basis; they may still accumulate vast stores of military equipment ; they may still persist in their meth- ods of attack, so that their more pacific neighbours will be struck down before they can prepare themselves for defence. If so, Europe when the war is over will be far poorer in men, in money, and in mutual good will than it was when the war began but it will not be safer ; and the hopes for the future of the world entertained by the President will be as far as ever from fulfilment. There are those who think that for this disease Inter- national Treaties and International Laws may provide a sufficient cure. But such persons have ill learned the HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS 287 lessons so clearly taught by recent history. While other nations, notably the United States of America and Britain, were striving by treaties of arbitration to make sure that no chance quarrel should mar the peace they desired to make perpetual, Germany stood aloof. Her historians and philosophers preached the splendours of war, power was proclaimed as the true end of the State, and the General Staff forged with untiring industry the weapons by which at the appointed moment power might be achieved. These facts proved clearly enough that Treaty arrangements for maintaining peace were not likely to find much favour at Berlin ; they did not prove that such Treaties once made would be utterly ineffectual. This became evident only when war had broken out, though the demonstration, when it came, was overwhelm- ing. So long as Germany remains the Germany which without a shadow of justification overran and barbarously ill-treated a country it was pledged to defend, no State can regard its rights as secure if they have no better protection than a solemn Treaty. The case is made worse by the reflection that these methods of calculated brutality were designed by the Central Powers not merely to crush to the dust those with whom they were at war but to intimidate those with whom they were still at peace. Belgium was not only a victim, it was an example. Neutrals were intended to note the outrages which accompanied its conquest, the reign of terror which followed on its occupation, the de- portation of a portion of its population, the cruel oppres- sion of the remainder. And lest the nations happily pro- tected either by British Fleets or by their own from Ger- man Armies should suppose themselves safe from German methods, the submarine has (within its limits) assidu- ously imitated the barbarous practices of the sister service. 288 HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS The War Staffs of the Central Powers are well content to horrify the world if at the same time they can terrorize it. If, then, the Central Powers succeed, it will be to methods like these that they will owe their success. How can any reform of International relations be based on a peace thus obtained ? Such a peace would represent the triumph of all the forces which make war certain and make it brutal. It would advertise the futility of all the methods on which civilization relies to eliminate the occa- sions of International dispute and to mitigate their feroc- ity. Germany and Austria made the present war in- evitable by attacking the rights of one small State, and they gained their initial triumphs by violating the Treaty guarantees of the territories of another. Are small States going to find in them their future protectors or in Treaties made by them a bulwark against aggression? Terrorism by land and sea will have proved itself the in- strument of victory. Are the victors likely to abandon it on the appeal of neutrals ? If existing Treaties are no more than scraps of paper, can fresh Treaties help us? If the violation of the most fundamental canons of Inter- national Law be crowned with success, will it not be in vain that the assembled nations labour to improve their code? None will profit by their rules but Powers who break them. It is those who keep them that will suffer. Though, therefore, the people of this country share to the full the desire of the President for peace, they do not believe peace can be durable if it be not based on the success of the Allied cause. For a durable peace can hardly be expected unless three conditions are fulfilled. The first is that existing causes of international unrest should be, as far as possible, removed or weakened. The second is that the aggressive aims and the unscrupulous methods of the Central Powers should fall into disrepute HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS 289 among their own peoples. The third is that behind inter- national law and behind all Treaty arrangements for pre- venting or limiting hostilities some form of international sanction should be devised which would give pause to the hardiest aggressor. These conditions may be difficult of fulfilment. But we believe them to be in general har- mony with the President's ideas and we are confident that none of them can be satisfied, even imperfectly, unless peace be secured on the general lines indicated (so far as Europe is concerned) in the joint note. Therefore it is that this country has made, is making, and is prepared to make sacrifices of blood and treasure unparalleled in its history. It bears these heavy burdens not merely that it may thus fulfil its Treaty obligations nor yet that it may secure a barren triumph of one group of nations over another. It bears them because it firmly believes that on the success of the Allies depend the prospects of peaceful civilization and of those International reforms which the best thinkers of the New World, as of the Old, dare to hope may follow on the cessation of our present calamities. I am, etc., (Signed) Arthur James Balfour. His Excellency, The Right Honourable, Sir Cecil Spring Rice, G. C. M. G., etc., etc., etc. 290 HISTOEY-MAKING DOCUMENTS THE GERMAN ANSWER "Foreign Office, "Berlin, December 26, 1916. "With reference to the esteemed communication of December 21, Foreign Office No. 15118, the undersigned has the honor to reply as follows: To His Excellency the Ambassador of the United States of America, Mr. James W. Gerard. "The Imperial Government has accepted and consid- ered in the friendly spirit which is apparent in the com- munication of the President, noble initiative of the Presi- dent looking to the creation of bases for the foundation of a lasting peace. The President discloses the aim which lies next to his heart and leaves the choice of the way open. A direct exchange of views appears to the Im- perial Government as the most suitable way of arriving at the desired result. The Imperial Government has the honor, therefore, in the sense of its declaration of the 12th instant, which offered the hand for peace negotia- tions, to propose the speedy assembly, on neutral ground, of delegates of the warring States. "It is also the view of the Imperial Government that the great work for the prevention of future wars can first be taken up only after the ending of the present conflict of exhaustion. The Imperial Government is ready, when this point has been reached, to cooperate with the United States at this sublime task. "The undersigned, while permitting himself to have recourse to good offices of His Excellency the Ambassador in connection with the transmission of the above reply to the President of the United States, avails himself of this opportunity to renew the assurances of his highest consideration. "Zimmerman." HISTOEY-MAKING DOCUMENTS 291 GERMANY'S LAST MEMORANDUM The German Ambassador to the Secretary of State German Embassy, Washington, January 31, 1917. Mr. Secretary of State : Your Excellency was good enough to transmit to the Imperial Government a copy of the message which the President of the United States of America addressed to the Senate on the 22d inst. The Imperial Government has given it the earnest consideration which the Presi- dent's statements deserve, inspired as they are, by a deep sentiment of responsibility. It is highly gratifying to the Imperial Government to ascertain that the main tendencies of this important statement correspond largely to the desires and principles professed by Germany. These principles especially include self-government and equality of rights for all nations. Germany would be sincerely glad if in recognition of this principle countries like Ireland and India, which do not enjoy the benefits of political independence, should now obtain their free- dom. The German people also repudiate all alliances which serve to force the countries into a competition for might and to involve them in a net of selfish intrigues. On the other hand Germany will gladly cooperate in all efforts to prevent future wars. The freedom of the seas, being a preliminary condition of the free existence of nations and the peaceful intercourse between them, as well as the open door for the commerce of all nations, has always formed part of the leading principles of Ger- many's political program. All the more the Imperial Government regrets that the attitude of her enemies who 292 HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS are so entirely opposed to peace makes it impossible for the world at present to bring about the realization of these lofty ideals. Germany and her allies were ready to enter now into a discussion of peace and had set down as basis the guaranty of existence, honor and free develop- ment of their peoples. Their aims, as has been expressly stated in the note of December 12, 1916, were not directed towards the destruction or annihilation of their enemies and were according to their conviction perfectly com- patible with the rights of the other nations. As to Bel- gium, for which such warm and cordial sympathy is felt in the United States, the Chancellor had declared only a few weeks previously that its annexation had never formed part of Germany's intentions. The peace to be signed with Belgium was to provide such conditions in that country, with which Germany desires to maintain friendly neighborly relations, that Belgium should not be used again by Germany's enemies for the purpose of instigating continuous hostile intrigues. Such precau- tionary measures are all the more necessary, as Ger- many's enemies have repeatedly stated not only in speeches delivered by their leading men, but also in the statutes of the economical conference in Paris, that it is their intention not to treat Germany as an equal, even after peace has been restored, but to continue their hostile attitude and especially to wage a systematical economical war against her. The attempt of the four allied powers to bring about peace has failed owing to the lust of conquest of their enemies, who desired to dictate the conditions of peace. Under the pretence of following the principle of nation- ality our enemies have disclosed their real aims in this war, viz., to dismember and dishonor Germany, Austria- Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria. To the wish of recon- HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS 293 ciliation they oppose the will of destruction. They desire a fight to the bitter end. A new situation has thus been created which forces Germany to new decisions. Since two years and a half England is using her naval power for a criminal attempt to force Germany into submission by starvation. In brutal contempt of International Law the group of Pow- ers led by England does not only curtail the legitimate trade of their opponents but they also by ruthless press- ure compel neutral countries either to altogether forego every trade not agreeable to the Entente-Powers or to limit it according to their arbitrary decrees. The Ameri- can Government knows the steps which have been taken to cause England and her allies to return to the rules of International Law and to respect the freedom of the seas. The English Government, however, insists upon continu- ing its war of starvation, which does not at all affect the military power of its opponents, but compels women and children, the sick and the aged to suffer, for their country, pains and privations which endanger the vitality of the nation. Thus British tyranny mercilessly increases the suffering of the world indifferent to the laws of human- ity, indifferent to the protests of the neutrals whom they severely harm, indifferent even to the silent longing for peace among England's own allies. Each day of the terrible struggle causes new destruction, new sufferings. Each day shortening the war will, on both sides, preserve the life of thousands of brave soldiers and be a benefit to mankind. The Imperial Government could not justify before its own conscience, before the German people and before history the neglect of any means destined to bring about the end of the war. Like the President of the United States the Imperial Government had hoped to 294 HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS reach this goal by negotiations. After the attempts to come to an understanding with the Entente-Powers have been answered by the latter with the announcement of an intensified continuation of the war, the Imperial Govern- ment — in order to serve the welfare of mankind in a higher sense and not to wrong its own people — is now compelled to continue the fight for existence, again forced upon it, with the full employment of all the weapons which are at its disposal. Sincerely trusting that the people and Government of the United States will understand the motives for this decision and its necessity, the Imperial Government hopes that the United States may view the new situation from the lofty heights of impartiality and assist, on their part, to prevent further misery and avoidable sacrifice of human life. Enclosing memoranda regarding the details of the contemplated military measures at sea, I remain, etc., (Signed) J. Bernstorfp. Part of Memorandum Accompanying' the Above Note The instructions given to the commanders of German submarines provide for a sufficiently long period during which the safety of passengers on unarmed enemy pas- senger ships is guaranteed. Americans, en route to the blockade zone on enemy freight steamers, are not endangered, as the enemy ship- ping firms can prevent such ships in time from entering the zone. HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS 295 Sailing of regular American passenger steamers may continue undisturbed after February 1, 1917, if (a) the port of destination is Falmouth (b) sailing to or coming from that port course is taken via the Scilly Islands and a point 50 degrees north 20 degrees west, (c) the steamers are marked in the following way which must not be allowed to other vessels in. American ports: On ships' hull and superstructure three vertical stripes one meter wide each to be painted alternately white and red. Each mast should show a large flag checkered white and red, and the stern the American national flag. Care should be taken that, during dark, national flag and painted marks are easily recognizable from a distance and that the boats are well lighted throughout. (d) one steamer a week sails in each direction with arrival at Falmouth on Sunday and departure from Fal- mouth on Wednesday. (e) The United States Government guarantees that no contraband (according to German contraband list) is carried by those steamers. 296 HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS SEVERED The United States Secretary of State to the German Ambassador Department of State, Washington, February 3, 1917. Excellency : In acknowledging the note with accompanying memo- randa, which you delivered into my hands on the after- noon of January 31st, and which announced the purpose of your Government as to the future conduct of sub- marine warfare, I would direct your attention to the following statements appearing in the correspondence which has passed between the Government of the United States and the Imperial German Government in regard to submarine warfare. This Government on April 18, 1916, in presenting the case of the ' ' Sussex, ' ' declared — "If it is still the purpose of the Imperial Government 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 inter- national law and the universally recognized dictates of humanity, the Government of the United States is at last forced to the conclusion that there is but one course it can pursue. 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." HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS 297 In reply to the note from which the above declaration is quoted Your Excellency 's Government stated in a note dated May 4, 1916— "The German Government, guided by this idea, noti- fies the Government of the United States that the Ger- man naval forces have received the following orders: In accordance with the general principles of visit and search and destruction of merchant vessels recognized by international law, such vessels, both within and with- out the area declared as naval war zone, shall not be sunk without warning and without saving human lives, unless these ships attempt to escape or offer resistance. "But neutrals can not expect that Germany, forced to fight for her existence, shall, for the sake of neutral interests, 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 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 Govern- ment of the United States has repeatedly declared that it is determined to restore the principle of the freedom of the seas, from whatever quarter it has been violated. ' ' To this reply this Government made answer on May 8, 1916, in the following language : "The Government of the United States feels it neces- sary 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 298 HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS and any other belligerent Government, notwithstanding the fact that certain passages in the Imperial Govern- ment's note of the 4th instant might appear to be sus- ceptible of that construction. In order, however, to avoid any possible misunderstanding, the Government of the United States notifies the Imperial Government that it can not for a moment entertain, much less discuss, a sug- gestion 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. Re- sponsibility in such matters is single, not joint; absolute, not relative. ' ' To this Government's note of May 8th no reply was made by the Imperial Government. In one of the memoranda accompanying the note under acknowledgment, after reciting certain alleged illegal measures adopted by Germany's enemies, this statement appears : "The Imperial Government, therefore, does not doubt that the Government of the United States will under- stand the situation thus forced upon Germany by the Entente- Allies' brutal methods of war and by their determination to destroy the Central Powers, and that the Government of the United States will further realize that the now openly disclosed intentions of the Entente- Allies give back to Germany the freedom of action which she reserved in her note addressed to the Government of the United States on May 4, 1916. "Under these circumstances Germany will meet the illegal measures of her enemies by forcibly preventing, after February 1, 1917, in a zone around Great Britain, HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS 299 France, Italy, and in the eastern Mediterranean all navi- gation, that of neutrals included, from and to England and from and to France, etc., etc. All ships met within the zone will be sunk." In view of this declaration, which withdraws suddenly and without prior intimation the solemn assurance given in the Imperial Government's note of May 4, 1916, this Government has no alternative consistent with the dig- nity and honor of the United States but to take the course which it explicitly announced in its note of April 18, 1916, it would take in the event that the Imperial Government did not declare and effect an abandonment of the methods of submarine warfare then employed and to which the Imperial Government now purpose again to resort. The President has, therefore, directed me to announce to Your Excellency that all diplomatic relations between the United States and the German Empire are severed, and that the American Ambassador at Berlin will be immediately withdrawn, and in accordance with such announcement to deliver to Your Excellency your pass- ports. I have, etc. Robert Lansing. 300 HISTORY -MAKING DOCUMENTS AMERICAN MINISTER WITHDRAWN FROM BELGIUM Department of State, Washington, March 24, 1917. By direction of the President, the Minister at Brussels has been instructed to withdraw from Belgium, with all diplomatic and consular officers, and take up his official residence at Havre. After consultation with the Commission for Relief in Belgium, Mr. Whitlock has also been instructed to arrange for the departure of the American members of the Commission. This step, the seriousness of which is fully appreciated by the Government, was taken only after careful con- sideration and full consultation with all the interests involved. When diplomatic relations with Germany were broken off the normal procedure would have been to withdraw the Minister at Brussels and the American members of the Relief Commission. Both this Government and the Commission, however, felt a heavy moral responsibility for the millions of innocent civilians behind the Ger- man lines, and it was decided that the work of the Com- mission must be kept going despite all difficulties until continued American participation became impossible. For over two years it has been the single-minded pur- pose of this Government and the Commission to see that these ten millions of civilians were fed, and, with this end in view, the Americans concerned have submitted to restrictions imposed on them by the German authorities which, under ordinary conditions, would never have been tolerated. Immediately after t.ie break in relations the German HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS 301 authorities in Brussels withdrew from Mr. Whitlock the diplomatic privileges and immunities which he had until that time enjoyed. His courier .service to The Hague was stopped; he was denied the privilege of communi- cating with the Department of State in cipher, and later even in plain language. The members of the Relief Commission were placed under great restrictions of movement and communication which hampered the effi- cient performance of their task. In spite of all these difficulties the Government and Commission were deter- mined to keep the work going till the last possible mo- ment. Now, however, a more serious difficulty has arisen. In the course of the past 10 days several of the Commis- sion's ships have been attacked without warning by German submarines in flagrant violation of the solemn engagements of the German Government. Protests ad- dressed by this Government to'Berlin through the inter- mediary of the Spanish Government have not been answered. The German Government's disregard of its written undertakings causes grave concern as to the future of the relief work. In any event it is felt that the American staff of the Commission can no longer serve with advantage in Belgium. Although a verbal promise has been made that the members of the Commis- sion would be permitted to leave if they so desire, the German Government's observance of its other undertak- ings has not been such that the department wou'd feel warranted in accepting responsibility for leaving these American citizens in German-occupied territory. This Government has approved the proposal of the Netherlands Government to send into Belgium a certain number of Netherlands subjects to carry on the work thus far performed by the American staff. 302 HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS ALLIES STAND TOGETHER Text of the Allied Agreement to Make No Separate Peace with Germany The Italian Government having decided to accede to the declaration between the British, French and Russian Governments signed in London on September 5, 1914, which declaration was acceded to by the Japanese Gov- ernment on October 19, 1915, the undersigned, duly authorized thereto by their respective Governments, de- clare as follows : The British, French, Italian, Japanese and Russian Governments mutually engage not to conclude peace separately during the present war. The five Governments agree that when terms of peace come to be discussed no one of the Allies will demand conditions of peace without previous agreement with each of the other Allies. Done at London this 30th day of November, 1915. E. Grey, Paul Cambon, Imperiali, K. Inouye, Brenckendorfp. The names signed are those, respectively, of the British secretary of state for foreign affairs and the ambassadors of the Governments named. HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS 303 ACT OF CONGRESS PROVIDING FOR THE "LIBERTY LOAN" An act to authorize an issue of bonds to meet expendi- tures for the national security and defense, and, for the purpose of assisting in the prosecution of the war, to extend credit to foreign governments, and for other pur* poses. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa^ tives of the United States of America in Congress assem- bled, That the Secretary of the Treasury, with the ap- proval of the President, is hereby authorized to borrow, from time to time, on the credit of the United States for the purposes of this Act, and to meet expenditures authorized for the national security and defense and other public purposes authorized by law not exceeding in the aggregate $5,000,000.00, exclusive of the sums authorized by section four of this Act, and to issue there- for bonds of the United States. The bonds herein authorized shall be in such form and subject to such terms and conditions of issue, conversion, redemption, maturities, payment, and rate and time of payment of interest, not exceeding three and one-half per centum per annum, as the Secretary of the Treasury may prescribe. The principal and interest thereof shall be payable in United States gold coin of the present standard of value and shall be exempt, both as to prin- cipal and interest, from all taxation, except estate or inheritance taxes, imposed by authority of the United States, or its possessions, or by any State or local taxing authority ; but such bonds shall not bear the circulation privilege. The bonds herein authorized shall first be offered at 304 HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS not less than par as a popular loan, under such regula- tions prescribed by the Secretary of the Treasury as will give all citizens of the United States an equal oppor- tunity to participate therein; and any portion of the bonds so offered and not subscribed for may be otherwise disposed of at not less than par by the Secretary of the Treasury; but no commissions shall be allowed or paid on any bonds issued under authority of this Act. Sec. 2. That for the purpose of more effectually pro- viding for the national security and defense and prose- cuting the war by establishing credits in the United States for foreign governments, the Secretary of the Treasury, with the approval of the President, is hereby authorized, on behalf of the United States, to purchase, at par, from such foreign governments then engaged in war with the enemies of the United States, their obliga- tions hereafter issued, bearing the same rate of interest and containing in their essentials the same terms and con- ditions as those of the United States issued under au- thority of this Act; to enter into such arrangements as may be necessary or desirable for establishing such credits and for purchasing such obligations of foreign governments and for the subsequent payment thereof before maturity, but such arrangements shall provide that if any of the bonds of the United States issued and used for the purchase of such foreign obligations shall thereafter be converted into other bonds of the United States bearing a higher rate of interest than three and one-half per centum per annum under the provisions of section five of this Act, then and in that event the obliga- tions of such foreign governments held by the United States shall be, by such foreign governments, converted in like manner and extent into obligations bearing the HISTOEY-MAKING DOCUMENTS 305 same rate of interest as the bonds of the United States issued under the provisions of section five of this Act. For the purposes of this section there is appropriated, out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appro- priated, the sum of $3,000,000,000, or so much thereof as may be necessary: Provided, That the authority granted by this section to the Secretary of the Treasury to purchase bonds from foreign governments, as afore- said, shall cease upon the termination of the war between the United States and the Imperial German Government. Sec. 3. That the Secretary of the Treasury, under such terms and conditions as he may prescribe, is hereby authorized to receive on or before maturity payment for any obligations of such foreign governments purchased on behalf of the United States, and to sell at not less than the purchase price any of such obligations and to apply the proceeds thereof, and any payments made by foreign governments on account of their said obligations to the redemption or purchase at not more than par and accrued interest of any bonds of the United States issued under authority of this Act; and if such bonds are not available for this purpose the Secretary of the Treasury shall redeem or purchase any other outstanding interest- bearing obligations of the United States which may at such time be subject to call or which may be purchased at not more than par and accrued interest. Sec. 4. That the Secretary of the Treasury, in his discretion, is hereby authorized to issue the bonds not already issued heretofore authorized by section thirty- nine of the Act approved August fifth, nineteen hundred and nine, entitled "An Act to provide revenue, equalize duties, and encourage the industries of the United States, and for other purposes"; section one hundred and 306 HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS twenty-four of the Act approved June third, nineteen hundred and sixteen, entitled "An Act for making fur- ther and more effectual provision for the national de- fense, and for other purposes"; section thirteen of the Act of September seventh, nineteen hundred and sixteen, entitled "An Act to establish a United States shipping board for the purpose of encouraging, developing, and creating a naval auxiliary and a naval reserve and a mer- chant marine to meet the requirements of the commerce of the United States with its Territories and possessions and with foreign countries, to regulate carriers by water engaged in the foreign and interstate commerce of the United States, and for other purposes" ; section four hun- dred of the Act approved March third, nineteen hundred and seventeen, entitled "An Act to provide increased revenue to defray the expenses of the increased appro- priations for the Army and Navy and the extensions of fortifications, and for other purposes"; and the public resolution approved March fourth, nineteen hundred and seventeen, entitled "Joint resolution to expedite the de- livery of materials, equipment, and munitions and to secure more expeditious construction of ships," in the manner and under the terms and conditions prescribed in section one of this Act. That the Secretary of the Treasury is hereby author- ized to borrow on the credit of the United States from time to time, in addition to the sum authorized in section one of this Act, such additional amount, not exceeding $63,945,460 as may be necessary to redeem the three per cent loan of nineteen hundred and eight to nineteen hun- dred and eighteen, maturing August first, nineteen hun- dred and eighteen, and to issue therefor bonds of the United States in the manner and under the terms and conditions prescribed in section one of this Act. HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS 307 Sec. 5. That any series of bonds issued under author- ity of sections one and four of this Act may, under such terms and conditions as the Secretary of the Treasury may prescribe, be convertible into bonds bearing a higher rate of interest than the rate at which the same were issued if any subsequent series of bonds shall be issued at a higher rate of interest before the termination of the war between the United States and the Imperial German Government, the date of such termination to be fixed by a proclamation of the President of the United States. Sec. 6. That in addition to the bonds authorized by sections one and four of this Act, the Secretary of the Treasury is authorized to borrow from time to time, on the credit of the United States, for the purposes of this Act and to meet public expenditures authorized by law, such sum or sums as, in his judgment, may be necessary, and to issue therefor certificates of indebtedness at not less than par in such form and subject to such terms and conditions and at such rate of interest, not exceeding three and one-half per centum per annum, as he may prescribe ; and each certificate so issued shall be payable, with the interest accrued thereon, at such time, not ex- ceeding one year from the date of its issue, as the Secre- tary of the Treasury may prescribe. Certificates of in- debtedness herein authorized shall not bear the circula- tion privilege, and the sum of such certificates outstand- ing shall at no time exceed in the aggregate $2,000,- 000,000, and such certificates shall be exempt, both as to principal and interest, from all taxation, except estate or inheritance taxes, imposed by authority of the United States, or its possessions, or by any State or local taxing authority. 308 HISTOEY-MAKING DOCUMENTS Sec. 7. That the Secretary of the Treasury, in his dis- cretion, is hereby authorized to deposit in such banks and trust companies as he may designate the proceeds, or any part thereof, arising from the sale of the bonds and cer- tificates of indebtedness authorized by this Act, or the bonds previously authorized as described in section four of this Act, and such deposits may bear such rate of in- terest and be subject to such terms and conditions as the Secretary of the Treasury may prescribe : Provided,-That the amount so deposited shall not in any case exceed the amount withdrawn from any such bank or trust company and invested in such bonds or certificates of indebtedness plus the amount so invested by such bank or trust com- pany, and such deposits shall be secured in the manner required for other deposits by section fifty-one hundred and fifty-three, Revised Statutes, and amendments thereto: Provided further, That the provisions of sec- tion fifty-one hundred and ninety-one of the Revised Statutes, as amended by the Federal Reserve Act and the amendments thereof, with reference to the reserves re- quired to be kept by national banking associations and other member banks of the Federal Reserve System, shall not apply to deposits of public moneys by the United States in designated depositaries. Sec. 8. That in order to pay all necessary expenses, including rent, connected with any operations under this Act, a sum not exceeding one-tenth of one per centum of the amount of bonds and one-tenth of one per centum of the amount of certificates of indebtedness herein au- thorized is hereby appropriated, or as much thereof as may be necessary, out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, to be expended as the Secretary of the Treasury may direct : Provided, That, in addition HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS 309 to the reports now required by law, the Secretary of the Treasury shall, on the first Monday in December, nine- teen hundred and seventeen, and annually thereafter, transmit to the Congress a detailed statement of all ex- penditures under this Act. Approved, April 24, 1917. PRESIDENT WILSON'S REMARKABLE NOTE TO RUSSIA STATING OUR WAR AIMS In view of the approaching visit of the American dele- gation 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 cooperation be- tween the two peoples in carrying the present struggle for the freedom of all peoples to a successful consumma- tion, it seems opportune and appropriate 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 last few weeks by mistaken and misleading state- ments, and the issues at stake are too momentous, too tremendous, too significant for the whole human race, to permit any misinterpretations or misunderstandings, however slight, to remain uncorrected for a moment. The war has begun to go against Germany, and in their desperate desire to escape the inevitable ultimate defeat, those who are in authority in Germany are using every possible instrumentality, are making use even of 310 HISTOEY-MAKING DOCUMENTS the influence of groups and parties among their own subjects, to whom they have never been just or fair or even tolerant, to promote 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. America 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 in Germany and the selfish advantages which they have wrongly gained for themselves and their private projects 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 to- gether 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 cannot 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 res- toration 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 influence outside of that empire. That status must be altered in HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS 3H such fashion as to prevent any such hideous thing from ever happening again. "We are fighting 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 achieve the result. Effective readjustments will; and whatever readjust- ments are necessary must be made. But they must follow a principle, and that principle is plain. No people must be forced under sovereignty 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 consti- tute payment for manifest wrongs done. No readjust- ments of power must be made except such as will tend to secure the future peace of the world and the future welfare and happiness of its peoples. And then the freed 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. The nations must realize their common life and effect a workable part- nership to secure that life against the aggressions of autocratic and self -pleasing power. 312 HISTORY-MAKING DOCUMENTS For these things we can afford to pour out blood and treasure. For these are the things we have always pro- fessed to desire, and unless we pour out blood and treas- ure 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 conquer 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. M. VIVIANI'S SPEECH TO HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES . Gentlemen, once more my fellow countrymen and I are admitted to the honor of being present at a sitting in a legislative Chamber. May I be permitted to express our emotion at this solemn derogation against rules more than a century old, and, so far as my own person is con- cerned, may I say that, as a member of Parliament, accus- tomed for 20 years to the passions and storms which sweep through political assemblies, I appreciate more than any- one at this moment the supreme joy of being near this chair, which is in such a commanding position that, how- ever feeble may be the voice that speaks thence, it is heard over the whole world. Gentlemen, I will not thank you, not because our grati- tude fails, but because new words to express it fail. No ; I do not thank you for your welcome. We have all felt, my companions and myself, that the manifestations which rose toward our persons came not only from your lips. We have felt that you were not merely fulfilling the obli- gations of international courtesy. Suddenly, in all its charming intimacy, the complexity of the American soul was revealed to us. When one meets an American one is supposed to meet a practical man, merely a practical man, caring only for business, only interested in business. But when at certain hours in private life one studies the American soul, one discovers at the same time how fresh and delicate it is ; and when at certain moments of public life one considers the soul of the Nation, then one sees all the force of the ideals that rise from it ; so that this American people, in its perfect balance, is at once practical and sentimental, 313 314 M. VIVIANI'S SPEECH a realizer and a dreamer, and is always ready, to place its practical qualities at the disposal of its puissant thoughts. And see, gentlemen, what a glorious comparison, to our profit, yours also, we can establish between our enemies and us. Intrusted with a mandate from a free people, we came among free men to compare our ideas, to ex- change our views, to measure the whole extent of the prob- lems raised by this war ; and all the allied nations, simply because they repose on democratic institutions, through their governments meet in the same lofty region on equal terms, in full liberty. I well know that at this very hour, in the central empire, there is an absolute monarch who binds to his will by vassal links of steel other peoples. It has been said this was a sign of strength; it is only a derisive appearance of strength. And in truth, only a few weeks ago, on the eve of the day when outraged America was about to rise in its force, on the morrow of the day when the Russian revolution, faithful to its alliance, called at once its soldiers to arms and its people to independence, this absolute monarch was seen to totter on the steps of his throne as he felt the first breath of the tempest pass over his crown. And he bent toward his people in humil- iation, and in order to win its sympathy borrowed from free peoples the highest institutions and promised his subjects universal suffrage. Here, as in the crucial hours of our history as in these of yours, it is liberty which clears the way for our soldiers. "We are all now united in our common effort for civiliza- tion, for right. The day before yesterday, in a public meeting at which I was present, I heard one of your greatest orators say with deep emotion, "It has been sworn on the tomb of Washington." And then I understood the full emotion M. VIVIANI'S SPEECH 315 and import of those words. If Washington could rise from his tomb, if from his sacred mound he could view the world as it now is, shrunk to smaller proportions by the lessening of material and moral distances and the min- gling of every kind of communication between men, he would feel his labors are not yet concluded, and that just as a man of superior and powerful mind has a debt to all other men, so a superior and powerful nation owes a debt to other nations, and after establishing its own indepen- dence must aid others to maintain their independence or to conquer it. It is the mysterious logic of history which President Wilson so marvelously understood, thanks to a mind as vigorous as it is subtle, as capable of analysis as it is of synthesis, of minute observation followed by swift action. It has been sworn on the tomb of Washington. It has been sworn on the tomb of our allied soldiers, fallen in a sacred cause. It has been sworn by the bedside of our wounded men. It has been sworn on the heads of our orphan children. It has been sworn on cradles and on tombs. It has been sworn. ADDRESS OF THE PRINCE OF UDINE Mr. Speaker and Members of the House, no one could appreciate the honor of your invitation more than myself and my colleagues. To address the Representatives of the greatest among new democracies at a time when the destinies of humanity are awaiting decision, at a time when our destiny and yours depend on the issue of the war, to bring you the greeting of distant brothers who are fighting for the same ideals at the foot of the snowy Alps or in the deadly trenches, to express to you our feelings and our sympathy for your feelings — all those are for me so many reasons for legitimate pride. [Applause.] During our brief stay among you we have found everywhere the most joyous welcome and the most friendly cordiality. Everywhere it was not only friendly words that greeted us but also friendly souls who wel- comed us. We have felt deeply moved by this. We know, gentlemen, that such cordial sentiments, such hearty friendship, are meant not so much for our persons as for our beautiful and distant country; our country, of which every foot is sacred to us because of its century-old greatness and sufferings and because of the noble share which it has always had in human thought and history, [xipplause.] But your great Eepublic, when it grants us such cour- teous hospitality, honors still more that which at the present moment is dearest to us — the efforts of Italy's soldiers, the noble sacrifice of so many young lives freely given for their country and for civilization and in defense 316 ADDRESS OF THE PRINCE OF UDINE 317 of ideals which you have made your own and which we all love. In the name of the soldiers of Italy, one of whom I am proud to be ; in the name of all those who are fighting on the mountains, on the plains, and on the treacherous seas ; in the name of those to whom your words of friendship have brought a message of hope and faith across the ocean, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. [Ap- plause.] The aims of the war for the allied nations were pointed out by President Wilson in his magnificent message, which will not only remain in the minds of our descend- ants as a historic event, but which has already aroused, because of its moral force, intense admiration among all civilized peoples. We shall be satisfied, whatever sacri- fices we may be called upon to make, when the rights of humanity are assured, when the guaranties of peace are effectual, and when free nations are able to work for their own prosperity and elevation. President Wilson has proclaimed that to the Americans right is more precious than peace and that the people of the United States are ready to shed their blood in defense of these principles in the name of which they became a nation. For the sake of the same principles we are ready to face every sacrifice and every sorrow. We are fighting a terrible war. Our enemies were long since prepared for it, while we were content to live, trust- ing in peace, and only sought to contribute to the devel- opment of our people and to the progress of our country, almost unconscious of the clouds which so suddenly grew dark over our heads. We came into the war when we realized that there was no room for neutrals and that neutrality was neither 318 ADDRESS OF THE PEINCE OF TJDINE possible nor desirable, when the freedom of all democratic nations was threatened and the very existence of free peoples was at stake. Ever since that day we have not hesitated before any danger or any suffering. Our wide fighting front pre- sents conditions of exceptional difficulty. The enemy is, or has been until now, in possesion of the best positions. He has dug deep trenches; he has concealed his guns among the mountains. We are even compelled to fight at altitudes of eight and ten thousand feet, in spots where it seemed impossible that any fighting should ever take place. We are alone on our wide and treacherous front, and every step forward that we take, every progress that we accomplish, costs us great efforts and many lives. The enthusiasm of our soldiers has often helped them among the glaciers of the Alps and the many snares of the Carso to triumph over difficulties which seemed to defy every human effort. But the deep faith which burns in them kept their strength alive. [Applause.] We must, we will, triumph over other difficulties and other insidious devices. Nature, which gave us our pure skies, our mild climate, has denied us almost entirely the two great necessities of modern industry — coal and iron. Therefore, with indus- tries still in course of formation, Italy has had ever since their inception to overcome obstacles which appeared insuperable. Italy occupies one of the first places in Europe as regards the number and power of her water- falls ; but this wealth, which constitutes the great reserve of the future, has only been partly exploited until now. The treacherous enemy, who has long since prepared the weapons of aggression, not having obtained victory on the field, is now trying by means of submarine warfare to endanger our existence, to cause a scarcity of food, and, ADDRESS OF THE PRINCE OF TJDINE 319 above all, a scarcity of the coal which Italy needs for her ammunition factories, for her railways, and for her industries. "We have reduced our consumption of all necessities, and we are ready to reduce it still further within the lim- its of possibility. We do not complain of the privations that we have to endure. Wealth itself has no value if life and liberty are endangered. And when millions of sol- diers offer their young lives for their country there is not one among the civil population who is not ready to make any sacrifice. But to overcome the dangers of the submarines, which, in defiance of every law of humanity, are not only destroy- ing wealth but endangering the lives of peaceful travelers, sinking hospital ships, and murdering women and chil- dren, we must all make a great effort. We must unite all our forces to oppose the strongest resistance to the insidious devices of the enemy. You possess a great and magnificent industrial organization. You, more than anyone, are in a position to put an end to the enemy's barbarous dream and to create with your energy much more than he can destroy. [Applause.] This great and terrible trial can only make us better men. They who know how to offer to the fatherland their wealth and their lives; they who give themselves unto death and, more than themselves, that which is sweetest and most sacred, their children; they who are ready to suffer and to die ; they will know when the morrow dawns how to contribute to civilization new elements of moral nobility and of strength. [Applause.] We must not grieve over our sorrows. When we fight for the rights of humanity we are conscious that we are elevating ourselves morally. When America proclaimed herself one with us a great 320 ADDRESS OF THE PRINCE OF UDINE joy ran through every city and every little village of Italy. We knew the full value of your cooperation, and at the same time we appreciated the nobility of your sentiments. The families of 3,000,000 Italians who dwelt in the United States under the protection of your hospitable and just laws felt a deep sense of joy. Mr. Speaker and Members of the House, the words which His Majesty the King of Italy, first among our soldiers, wrote to your President expressed his feelings and those of all his people. To-morrow when the news reaches Italy that this Con- gress, which represents the will of the American Nation, has desired to give to our mission the supreme honor of welcoming it in its midst your friendly words will reach the farthermost points where men are fighting and suffer- ing. And in the trenches, at the foot of the majestic Alps, there where the struggle is bitterest and where death is ever present, a thrill of joy and of hope will be felt — the joy of a sincere union, the hope of certain victory. [Pro- longed applause and cheers.] REMARKS OF RIGHT HOST. ARTHUR J. BALFOUR Mr. Balfour. Mr. Speaker, ladies and gentlemen of the House of Representatives, will you permit me, on behalf of my friends and myself, to offer you my deepest and sineerest thanks for the rare and valued honor which you have done us by receiving us here to-day? We all feel the greatness of this honor, but I think to none of us can it come home so closely as to one who, like myself, has been for 43 years in the service of a free assembly like your own. I rejoice to think that a member — a very old member, I am sorry to say — of the British House of Com- mons has been received here to-day by this great sister assembly with such kindness as you have shown to me and to my friends. [Applause.] Ladies and gentlemen, these two assemblies are the greatest and the oldest of the free assemblies now govern- ing great nations in the world. The history indeed of the two is very different. The beginnings of the British House of Commons go back to a dim historic past, and its full rights and status have only been conquered and perma- nently secured after centuries of political struggle. Your fate has been a happier one. You were called into exist- ence at a much later stage of social development. You came into being complete and perfected and all your pow- ers determined, and your place in the Constitution se- cured beyond chance of revolution; but, though the his- tory of these two great assemblies is different, each of them represents the great democratic principle to which we look forward as the security for the future peace of the world. [Applause.] All of the free assemblies now to be found governing the great nations of the earth 321 322 REMAEKS OF EIGHT HON. A. J. BALFOUR have been modeled either upon your practice or upon ours, or upon both combined. Mr. Speaker, the compliment paid to the mission from Great Britain by such an assembly and upon such an occa- sion is one not one of us is ever likely to forget, but there is something, after all, even deeper and more significant in the circumstances under which I now have the honor to address you, than any which arise out of the inter- change of courtesies, however sincere, between two great and friendly nations. We all, I think, feel instinctively that this is one of the great moments in the history of the world and that what is now happening on both sides of the Atlantic represents the drawing together of great and free peoples for mutual protection against the aggression of military despotism. [Prolonged applause and cheers.] I am not one of those and none of you are among those who are such bad democrats as to say that democracies make no mistakes. All free assemblies have made blun- ders ; sometimes they have committed crimes. Why is it, then, that we look forward to the spread of free institu- tions throughout the world, and especially among our present enemies, as one of the greatest guaranties of the future peace of the world? I will tell you, gentlemen, how it seems to me. It is quite true that the people and the representatives of the people may be betrayed by some momentary gust of passion into a policy which they ulti- mately deplore, but it is only a military despotism of the German type which can, through generations if need be, pursue steadily, remorselessly, unscrupulously, the ap- palling object of dominating the civilization of mankind. [Applause.] And mark you, this evil, this menace under which we are now suffering, is not one which diminishes with the growth of knowledge and the progress of mate- rial civilization, but on the contrary it increases with REMARKS OF RIGHT HON. A. J. BALFOUR 323 them. When I was young we used to flatter ourselves that progress inevitably meant peace, and that growth of knowledge was always accompanied, as its natural fruit, by the growth of good will among the nations of the earth. Unhappily we know better now, and we know there is such a thing in the world as a power which can with unvarying persistency focus all the resources of knowledge and of civilization into the one great task of making itself the moral and material master of the world. It is against that danger that we, the free peoples of western civilization, have banded ourselves together. [Applause.] It is in that great cause that we are going to fight and are now fighting this very moment side by side. [Applause.] In that cause we shall surely con- quer [applause], and our children will look back to this fateful date as the one day from which democracies can feel secure that their progress, their civilization, their rivalry, if need be, will be conducted, not on German lines, but in that friendly and Christian spirit which really befits the age in which we live. Mr. Speaker, ladies, and gentlemen, I beg most sin- cerely to repeat again how heartily I thank you for the cordial welcome which you have given us to-day, and to repeat my profound sense of the significance of this unique meeting. [Great applause.] The members of the English commission took their places at the right of the Speaker's rostrum and the Members of the House were presented to them, the Presi- dent of the United States accompanying the Members. The distinguished visitors were then escorted from, the Hall of the House. 324 PKESIDENT WILSON'S PRESIDENT WILSON'S REPLY TO THE SECOND PEACE PLEA OF THE POPE, AUGUST 27, 1917 To His Holiness, Benedictus XV., Pope. In acknowledgment of the communication of your holiness to the belligerent peoples, dated Aug. 1, 1917, the President of the United States requests me to trans- mit 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 bellum, and that then there be a general condonation, disarmament, and a concert of nations, based upon an acceptance of the principle of 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 Bal- kan 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 GEEAT SPEECHES 325 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 irrespon- sible government which, having secretly planned to dominate the world, proceeded to carry the plan out without regard either to the sacred obligations of treaty or the long established practices and long cherished principles of international action and honor; which chose its own time for the war; delivered 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 help- less 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 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 326 PKESIDENT WILSON'S result in abandoning the new-born Russia to the in- trigue, the manifold subtle interference, and the certain counter revolution which would be attempted by all the malign influence 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 securely 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 themselves 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 gov- ernments — the rights of peoples great or small, weak or powerful — their EQUAL right to freedom and secur- ity and self-government, and to a participation upon fair terms in the economic opportunities of the world — ■ the 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 intriguing 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 GREAT SPEECHES 327 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 re- paired, but not at the expense of the sovereignty of any people — rather a vindication of the sovereignty both of those that are weak and 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 Germany 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 justi- fied in accepting. Without such guarantees, treaties of settlement, agreements for disarmament, covenants to set up arbitration in the place of force, territorial ad- justments, reconstitutions of small nations, 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. Kobert Lansing. Secretary of State of the United States of America. 328 PEESIDENT WILSON'S PRESIDENT WILSON'S ADDRESS .TO THE ANNUAL CONVENTION OF THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR AT BUFFALO, N. Y., NOVEMBER 12, 1917 "Mr. President, Delegates of the American Federa- tion of Labor, Ladies and Gentlemen: I esteem it a great privilege and real honor to be thus admitted to your public councils. When your executive committee paid me the compliment of inviting me here I gladly accepted the invitation, because, it seems to me that this, above all other times in our history, is the time for common counsel for the drawing not only of the ener- gies but of the minds of the nation together. I thought that it 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 the 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 words of counsel, the words which men should speak to one an- other 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 for- get himself, to forget his own interests, to fill himself with the nobility of a great national and world concep- tion and act upon a new platform elevated above the ordinary affairs of life, elevated to where men have views of the long destiny of mankind. GREAT SPEECHES 329 Tells How War Was Started "I think that in order to realize just what this mo- ment 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 free- dom. "The war was started by Germany. Her authorities 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 Ger- many 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 mate- rial achievements and all the intellectual 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 Germany because nowhere else could they get such thorough and searching training, particularly in the principles of science and the princi- ples that underly modern material achievements. "Her men of science had made her industries perhaps the most competent industries in the world and the label 'made in Germany' was a guaranty of good work- manship and of sound material. She had access to all the markets of the world, and every other man who traded in those markets feared Germany because of her effective and almost irresistible competition. She had a place in the sun. Why was she not satisfied? What 330 PEESIDENT WILSON'S more did she want? 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 of 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 city 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 indus- try in Germany upon which the government has not laid its hands to direct it and, when necessity arises, con- trol it. Unfair Competition in Germany ' ' 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 international competition to find out the methods of competition which the German manufacturers 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 sub- sidy from the government which made it possible to sell them cheaper anyhow ; and the conditions of compe- tition were thus controlled in large measure by the German government itself. But that did not satisfy the German government. GREAT SPEECHES 331 "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 con- tent with success by superior achievement ; they wanted success by authority. ' ' I suppose very few of you have thought much about the Berlin-to-Bagdad railway. 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. Thrusting Peace Before World "Look at the map of Europe now. Germany, in thrusting upon us again and again the discussion of peace, talks about what — talks about Belgium, 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. Shows How Map Is Changed "Take the map and look at it. Germany has abso- lute 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 appropriate black the other day and the black stretched all the way from Hamburg to Bagdad — the bulk of German power inserted into the heart of the world. 332 PEESIDENT WILSON'S If it 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 welcome there as it can find in any other hearts. But the spirit of freedom does not suit the plans of the pan-Germans. Power cannot be used with concentrated force against free peoples if it is used by free people. Hint of Desire for Peace "You know how many intimations come to us from one of the central powers that it is more anxious for peace than the chief central power; and you know that it means that the people in that central power know that if the war ends as it stands they will in effect themselves be vassals of Germany, notwithstand- ing that their populations are compounded with all the people of that part of the world, and notwithstand- ing the fact that they do not wish in their pride and proper spirit of nationality to be so absorbed and dom- inated. "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 people should be so ill informed as to suppose, as some groups in Russia apparently suppose, that any reforms planned in the interest of the people can live GREAT SPEECHES 333 in the presence of a Germany powerful enough to under- mine or overthrow them by intrigue or force. Any body of free men that compounds with the present German government is compounding for its own de- struction. 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 con- tinue if the pan-German plan is achieved and German power fastened upon the world, is as fatuous as the dreamers of Russia. See Pacifists as Stupid "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. Tells of House's Mission to Europe "You will notice that I sent a friend of mine, Col. House, 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 conference 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 referred to with regard to what we are going to do. If we are true friends of freedom — our own or anybody else's — we will see that the power of this country and the productivity of this country is raised to its abso- lute 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 334 PRESIDENT WILSON'S way I don't mean that they shall be prevented by the power of the government, but by the power of the American spirit. 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, then must we be prepared to stand together night and day until the job is finished. Says Labor Must Be Free "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 conferring from time to time with your president, Mr. Gompers. And if I may be permitted to do so, I want to express my admiration of his patriotic courage, his large vision and his statesman- like sense of what is to be done. I like to lay my mind alongside of a mind that knows how to pull in harness. The horses that kick over the traces will have to be put in a corral. "Now to 'stand the ground' means that nobody must interrupt the processes of our energy, if the interrup- tion can possibly be avoided without the absolute inva- sion 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 th« GEEAT SPEECHES 335 eourses of labor, but there are others who do the same. And I believe that I am speaking of my own experience not only but of the experience of others, when I say that you are reasonable in a larger number of cases than the capitalists." Would Export All Critics "I am not saying these things to them personally yet, because I haven't had a chance, but they have to be said, not in any spirit of criticism, because I would like to see all the critics exported. But in order to clean the atmosphere and come down to business everybody on both sides has got to transact business and the set- tlement is never impossible when both sides want to do the square and right things. Moreover, a settlement is always hard to avoid when the parties can be brought face to face. "I can differ with a man much more radically when he isn't in the room than I can when he is in the room, because then the awkward thing is that he can come back at me and answer what I say. It is always dan- gerous for a man to have the floor entirely to himself. And therefore we must insist in every instance that the parties come into each other's presence and there dis- cuss 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 say- ing of an Englishman of a past generation, Charles Lamb. He was with a group of friends and he spoke very harshly of some man who was not present. I ought to say that Lamb stuttered a little and one of his friends said: 'Why, Charles, I didn't know that yow knew so and so?' " 'Oh,' he said, 'I don't. I can't hate a man I know.' 336 PEESIDENT WILSON'S Hard to Hate a Man You Know ' ' There is a great deal of human nature, of very pleas- ant human nature, in that saying. It is hard to hate a man you know. I must admit parenthetically that there are some politicians whose methods I do not at all be- lieve in, but they are jolly good fellows, and if they only would not talk the wrong kind of politics with me I would love to be with them. And 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 co-operate with all other classes and all other groups in a common enter- prise 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 sympathy with what some men are saying, but I have no sympathy with the men that 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 institutions of the United States. Would Not Destroy the Law "There are some organizations in this country whose object is anarchy and the destruction of law, but I GEEAT SPEECHES 337 would not meet their efforts by making myself a part- ner in destroying the law. I despise and hate their pur- poses as much as any man, but I respect the ancient processes of justice, and I would be too proud not to see them done justice, however wrong they are. And so I want to utter my earnest protest against any manifes- tation 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 de- mocracy means, first of all, that we can govern our- selves. If our men have not self-control then they are not capable of that great thing which we call demo- cratic government. A man who takes the law into his hands is not the right man to co-operate in any form or development of law and institution. And some of the processes by which the struggle between capital and labor is carried on are processes that come very near to taking 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 of the manifestations of the unwillingness to co-operate, and the fundamental lesson of the whole situation is that we must not only take common counsel, but that we must 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 go- ing on shall not go on. Speaks for Trade Co-Operation "There are various processes of the dilution of labor and the unnecessary substitution of labor and bidding 338 PEESIDENT WILSON'S 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 inter- ject into this some instrumentality of co-operation by which the fair thing will be done all around. I am hopeful that some such instrumentalities may be de- mised, but whether they are or not, we must use those that we have and upon every occasion where it is nec- essary have such an instrumentality originated. "And so, my fellow citizens, the reason that I came away from Washington is that I sometimes get lonely down there. There are so many people in Washington who know things that are not so, and there are so few people in Washington who know anything about what the people of the United States are thinking about, I have to come away to get reminded of the rest of the country ; 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." GREAT SPEECHES 339 PRESIDENT WILSON'S ADDRESS TO CONGRESS PROCLAIMING THE WAR AIMS OF THE UNITED STATES JANUARY 8, 1918 "Gentlemen of the congress: Once more, as repeat- edly before, the spokesmen of the central empires hare 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 Russia and representatives of the central powers, to which the at- tention of all the belligerents has been invited for the purpose of ascertaining whether it may be possible to extend these parleys into a general conference 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 these principles. Teutons Plan to Keep Land "The representatives of the central powers, on their part, presented an outline of settlement which if much less definite, seemed susceptible of liberal inter- pretation until their specific program of practical terms was added. That program proposed no concessions at all either to sovereignty of Russia or to the preferences of the population with whose fortunes it dealt, but meant, in a word, that the central empires were to keep every foot of territory their armed forces had occu- pied — every province, every city, every point of vantage — as a permanent addition to their territories and their power. 340 PRESIDENT WILSON'S "It is a reasonable conjecture that the general prin- ciples of settlement, which they at first suggested orig- inated with the more liberal statesmen of Germany and Austria, the men who have begun to feel the force of their own peoples' thought and purpose, while the con- crete terms of actual settlement came from the military leaders, who have no thought but to keep what they have got. Calls Russian Envoys Sincere "The negotiations have been broken off. The Rus- sian representatives were sincere and in earnest. They cannot entertain such proposals of conquest and dom- ination. "The whole incident is full of significance. It is also full of perplexity. With whom are the Russian repre- sentatives dealing? For whom are the representatives 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 asso- ciates in this war ? "The Russian representatives have insisted, very justly, very wisely, and in the true spirit of 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, then? To those who speak the spirit and intention of the resolutions of the German reichstag of the 9th of July last, the spirit and intention of the liberal leaders and parties of Ger- GREAT SPEECHES 341 many, or to those who resist and defy that spirit and intention and insist upon conquest and subjugation? Or are we listening in fact to both, unreconciled and in open and hopeless contradiction? These are very seri- ous and pregnant questions. Upon the answer to them depends the peace of the world. Central Powers Challenge Foes "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 cen- tral empires, they have again attempted to acquaint 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 do 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. Praises Words of Lloyd George ""Within the last week Mr. Lloyd George 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 cen- tral powers, no uncertainty of principle, no vagueness of detail. The only secrecy of counsel, the only lack of fearless frankness, the only failure to make definite statement of the objects of the war lies with Germany 342 PEESIDENT WILSON'S and her allies. The issues of life and death hang upon these definitions. No statesman who has the least con- ception of his responsibility ought for a moment to per- mit himself to continue this tragical and appalling out- pouring 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. Voice of the Russian People "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. 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 sub- servient. All Peoples Partners in Program "They will not yield either in principle or in action. The conception 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 themselves 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 GREAT SPEECHES 343 from theirs ; and I believe that the people of the United States would wish me to respond with utter simplicity and frankness. "Whether their present leaders believe it or not, it is our heartfelt desire and hope that some way may be opened whereby we may be privileged to assist the peo- ple of Russia to attain their utmost hope of liberty and ordered peace. Day of Aggrandizement Gene By "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 henceforth 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 recurrence. What we demand in this war, there- fore, 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, be assured of justice and fair dealing 344 PRESIDENT WILSON'S by the other peoples of the world as against force and selfish aggression. "All the peoples of the 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 : "No Private Understanding's" "I. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international un- derstandings of any kind, but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view. "II. 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 interna- tional covenants. "III. The removal, so far as possible, of all eco- nomic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace and associating themselves for its maini- tenance. To Reduce National Armaments "IV. Adequate guaranties given and taken that na- tional armaments will be reduced to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety. "V. 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 GEEAT SPEECHES 345 claims of the government whose title is to be deter- mined. Evacuate All Russian Territory "VI. The evacuation of all Russian territory and such a settlement of all questions affecting Russia as will secure the best and freest co-operation of the other nations of the world in obtaining for her an unham- pered and unembarrassed opportunity for the inde- pendent determination of her own political develop- ment and national policy and assure her of a sincere welcome into the society of free nations under institu- tions 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. Belgium Must Be Restored "VII. 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. 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 deter- mined for the government of their relations with one another. Without this healing act the whole structure and validity of international law is forever impaired. Right the Wrong of Alsace-Lorraine "VIII. All French territory should be freed and the invaded portions restored and the wrong done to 346 PRESIDENT WILSON'S France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace-Lor- raine, 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. "IX. A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearly recognizable lines of nation- ality. "X. The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to see safeguarded and as- sured, should be accorded the freest opportunity of au- tonomous development. "XI. Koumania, Serbia and Montenegro should be evacuated; occupied territories restored; Serbia ac- corded free and secure access to the sea, and the rela- tions of the several Balkan states to one another de- termined by friendly counsel along historically estab- lished lines of allegiance and nationality; and interna- tional guaranties of the political and economic inde- pendence and territorial integrity of the several Balkan states should be entered into. Autonomy for Races in Turkey "XII. 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 de- velopment, and the Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a free passage to the ships and commerce of all nations under international guaranties. For an Independent Poland "XIII. An independent Polish state should be erected which should include the territories inhabited GREAT SPEECHES 347 by indisputably Polish populations, which should be as- sured a free and secure access to the sea and whose political and economic independence and territorial in- tegrity should be guaranteed by international covenant. "XIV. A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of af- fording mutual guaranties of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike. "Stand Together to the End" "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 sepa- rated in interest or divided in purpose. We stand to- gether until the end. "For such arrangements and covenants we are will- ing 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. To Treat Germany as an Equal "We have no jealousy of German greatness and there is nothing in this program that impairs it. We grudge her no achievement or distinction of learning or of pacific 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 348 GREAT SPEECHES 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. ' ' Neither do we presume to suggest to her any altera- tion or modification of her institutions. But it is neces- sary, we must frankly say, and necessary as a prelimini- nary 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 reichstag ma- jority or for the military party and the men whose creed is imperial domination. "Justice to All Peoples" "We have spoken now, surely, in terms too concrete to admit of any further doubt or question. An evident principle runs through the whole program I have out- lined. 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 international justice can stand. The people 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 every- thing 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 strength, their own highest purpose, their own integrity and devotion to the test." PRESIDENT WILSON GIVES AMER- ICA'S ANSWER TO GERMANY'S DREAM OF CONQUEST "Fellow citizens: This is the anniversary of our ac- ceptance of Germany's challenge to fight for our right to live and be free, and for the sacred rights of free men everywhere. The nation is awake. There is no need to call to it. We know what the war must cost, our utmost sacrifice, the lives of our fittest men, and if need be, all that we possess. The loan we are met to discuss is one of the least parts of what we are called upon to do, though in itself imperative. The people of the whole country are alive to the necessity of it, and are ready to lead to the utmost, even where it involves a sharp skimping and daily sacrifice to lend out of meager earnings. They will look with reprobation and contempt upon who can and will not upon those who, demand a higher rate of interest upon those who think of it as a mere commercial transaction. I have not come therefore, to urge the loan. I have come only to give you, if I can, a more vivid conception of what it is for. Reasons for the War. "The reasons for this great war, the reason why it had to come, the need to fight it through, and the issues that hang upon its outcome, are more clearly dis- closed now than ever before. It is easy to see just what this particular loan means because the cause we are fighting for stands more sharply revealed than at any previous crisis of the momentous struggle. The man who knows least can now see plainly how the cause of justice stands and what the imperishable thing he is asked to invest in is. Men of America may be more 349 350 PRESIDENT WILSON'S sure than they ever were before that the cause is their own and that, if it should be lost, their own great na- tion's place and mission in the world would be lost with it. Purposes of Germany. "I call to you to witness, my fellow countrymen, that at no stage of this terrible business have I judged the purposes of Germany intemperately. I should be ashamed in the presence of affairs so grave, so fraught with the destinies of mankind throughout all the world, to speak with truculence, to use the weak language of hatred or vindictive purpose. "We must judge as we would be judged. I have sought to learn the objects Germany has in this war from the mouths of her own spokesmen, and to deal as frankly with them as I wished them to deal with me. I have laid bare our own ideals, our own purposes without reserve or doubtful phrase and have asked them to say as plainly what it is that they seek. "We have ourselves proposed no injustice, no ag- gression. We are ready, whenever the final reckoning is made, to be just to the German people, deal fairly with the German power, as with all others. There can be no difference between peoples in the final judgment, if it is indeed to be a righteous judgment. To propose anything but justice, even handed and dispassionate justice, to Germany at any time, whatever the outcome of the war, would be to renounce and dishonor our own cause. For we ask nothing that we are not willing to accord. Germany's Answer. "It has been with this thought that T have sought to learn from those who spoke for Germany whether it was GREAT SPEECHES 351 justice or dominion and the execution of their own will upon the other nations of the world that the German leaders were seeking. They have answered, in unmis- takable terms. They have avowed that it was not jus- tice but dominion and the unhindered execution of then- own will. The avowal has not come from Germany's statesmen. It has come from her military leaders, who are her real rulers. Her statesmen have said that they wished peace and were ready to discuss its terms when- ever their opponents were willing to sit down at the conference table with them. Her present chancellor has said-m indefinite and uncertain terms, indeed, and in phrases that often seem to deny their own meaning but with as much plainness as thought prudent-that he believed that peace should be based upon the principles which we had declared would be our own in the final settlement. "At Brest Litvosk her civilian delegates spoke in simi- lar terms; professed their desire to conclude a fair peace, and accord to the peoples with whose fortunes they were dealing the right to choose their own alle- giances. But action accompanied and followed the profession. Their military masters, the men who act for Germany and exhibit her purpose in execution, pro- claimed a very different conclusion. We can not mis- take what they have done-in Russia, in Finland, in the Ukraine, m Roumania. The real test of their us- tice and fair play has come. From this we may judge he rest They are enjoying in Russia a cheap triumph in which no brave or gallant nation can long take pride A great people, helpless by their own act, lies for the time at their mercy. Their fair professions are for- gotten. They nowhere set up justice, but everywhere impose their power and exploit everything for their 352 PEESIDENT WILSON'S own use and aggrandizement, and the peoples of con- quered provinces are invited to be free under their do- minion. The German Aim. "Are we not justified in believing that they would do the same things at their western front if they were not there face to face with armies whom even their countless divisions can not overcome? If when they have felt their check to be final, they should propose favorable and equitable terms with regard to Belgium and France and Italy, could they blame us if we con- cluded that they did so only to assure themselves of a free hand in Russia and the east? ' ' Their purpose is undoubtedly to make all the Slavic peoples, all the free and ambitious nations of the Baltic peninsula, all the lands that Turkey has dominated and misruled, subject to their will and ambition and build upon that dominion an empire of force upon which they fancy that they can then erect an empire of gain and commercial supremacy— an empire as hostile to the Americas as to Europe which it will overawe — an empire which will ultimately master Persia, India and the peoples of the far east. In such a program our ideals, the ideals of justice and humanity and liberty, the prin- ciple of the free self-determination of nations upon which all the modern world insists, can play no part. "They are rejected for the ideals of power, for the principle that the strong must rule the weak, that trade must follow the flag, whether those to whom it is taken welcome it or not, that the peoples of the world are to be made subject to the patronage and overlordship of those who have the power to enforce it. GEEAT SPEECHES 353 What German Action Means. ' ' That program once carried out, America and all who care or dare to stand with her must arm and prepare themselves to contest the mastery of the world, a mas- tery in which the rights of common men, the rights of women and all who are weak, must for the time being be trodden underfoot and disregarded and the old, age- long struggle for freedom and right begin again at its beginning. Everything that America has lived for and loved and grown great to vindicate and bring to a glor- ious realization will have fallen in utter ruin and the gates of mercy once more piteously shut upon mankind. "The thing is preposterous and impossible; and yet is it not what the whole course and action of the German armies has meant wherever they have moved? I do not wish, even in this moment of utter disillusionment, to judge harshly or unrighteously. I judge only what the German arms have accomplished with unpitying thor- oughness throughout every fair region they have touched. Eeady to Discuss Fair Peace. ' ' What, then, are we to do ? For myself, I am ready, ready still, ready even now, to discuss a fair and just and honest peace at any time that it is sincerely pro- posed — a peace in which the strong and the weak shall fare alike. But the answer, when I proposed such a peace, came from the German commanders in Russia and I can not mistake the meaning of the answer. "I accept the challenge. I know that you accept it. All the world shall know that you accept it. It shall appear in the utter sacrifice and self-forgetfulness with which we shall give all that we love and all that we have to redeem the world and make it fit for free men like 354 GREAT SPEECHES ourselves to live in. This now is the meaning of all that we do. Let everything that we say, my fellow countrymen, everything that we henceforth plan and accomplish, ring true to this response till the majesty and might of our concerted power shall fill the thought and utterly defeat the force of those who flout and misprise what we honor and hold dear. But One Response. "Germany has once more said that force, and force alone, shall decide whether justice and peace shall reign in the affairs of men, whether right as America con- ceives it shall determine the destinies of mankind. There is therefore but one response possible from us: Force, force to the utmost, force without stint or limit, the righteous and triumphant force which shall make right the law of the world, and cast every selfish do- minion down in the dust." ANNUAL ADDRESS TO CONGRESS DECEMBER 2, 1918 The President Announces His Intention to Go to Paris Gentlemen of the Congress : The year that has elapsed since I last stood before you to fulfill my constitutional duty to give to the Congress from time to time information on the state of the Union has been so crowded with great events, great processes, and great results that I cannot hope to give you an adequate picture of its transactions or of the far-reaching changes which have been wrought in the life of our nation and of the world. You have yourselves witnessed these things, as I have. It is too soon to assess them; and we who stand in the midst of them and are part of them are less qualified than men of another generation will be to say what they mean, or even what they have been. But some great outstanding facts are unmistakable and constitute, in a sense, part of the public business with which it is our duty to deal. To state them is to set the stage for the legislative and executive action which must grow out of them and which we have yet to shape and determine. A year ago we had sent 145,918 men overseas. Since then we have sent 1,950,513, an average of 162,542 each month, the number in fact rising, in May last to 245,- 951, in June to 278,760, in July to 307,182, and continu- ing to reach similar figures in August and September, — in August 289,570 and in September 257,438. No such 355 356 PRESIDENT WILSON'S movement of troops ever took place before, across three thousand miles of sea, followed by adequate equipment and supplies, and carried safely through extraordinary dangers of attack, — dangers which were alike strange and infinitely difficult to guard against. In all this movement only seven hundred and fifty-eight men were lost by enemy attack, — six hundred and thirty of whom were upon a single English transport which was sunk near the Orkney Islands. I need not tell you what lay back of this great move- ment of men and material. It is not invidious to say that back of it lay a supporting organization of the industries of the country and of all its productive ac- tivities more complete, more thorough in method and effective in result, more spirited and unanimous in pur- pose and effort than any other great belligerent had been able to effect. We profited greatly by the expe- rience of the nations which had already been engaged for nearly three years in the exigent and exacting busi- ness, their every resource and every executive profi- ciency taxed to the utmost. We were their pupils. But we learned quickly and acted with a promptness and a readiness of co-operation that justify our great pride that we were able to serve the world with unparalleled energy and quick accomplishment. But it is not the physical scale and executive effi- ciency of preparation, supply, equipment and despatch that I would dwell upon, but the mettle and quality of the officers and men we sent over and of the sailors who kept the seas, and the spirit of the nation that stood behind them. No soldiers or sailors ever proved them- selves more quickly ready for the test of battle or ac- quitted themselves with more splendid courage and achievement when put to the test. Those of us who GREAT SPEECHES 357 played some part in directing the great processes by which the war was pushed irresistibly forward to the final triumph may now forget all that and delight our thoughts with the story of what our men did. Their officers understood the grim and exacting task they had undertaken and performed it with an audacity, efficiency, and unhesitating courage that touch the story of convoy and battle with imperishable distinction at every turn, whether the enterprise were great or small, — from their great chiefs, Pershing and Sims, down to the youngest lieutenant; and their men were worthy of them, — such men as hardly need to be com- manded, and go to their terrible adventure blithely and with the quick intelligence of those who know just what it is they would accomplish. I am proud to be the fellow-countryman of men of such stuff and valour. Those of us who stayed at home did our duty ; the war could not have been won or the gallant men who fought it given their opportunity to win it otherwise ; but for many a long day we shall think ourselves "accurs'd we were not there, and hold our manhoods cheap while any speaks that fought" with these at St. Mihiel or Thierry. The memory of those days of triumphant bat- tle will go with these fortunate men to their graves; and each will have his favourite memory. "Old men forget ; yet all shall be forgot, but he 11 remember with advantages what feats he did that day ! ' ' What we all thank God for with deepest gratitude is that our men went in force into the line of battle just at the critical moment when the whole fate of the world seemed to hang in the balance and threw their fresh strength into the ranks of freedom in time to turn the whole tide and sweep of the fateful struggle,— turn it once for all, so that thenceforth it was back, back, back 358 PEESIDENT WILSON'S for their enemies, always back, never again forward! After that it was only a scant four months before the commanders of the Central Empires knew themselves beaten ; and now their very empires are in liquidation ! And throughout it all how fine the spirit of the nation was: what unity of purpose, what untiring zeal! What elevation of purpose ran through all its splendid display of strength, its untiring accomplishment. I have said that those of us who stayed at home to do the work of organization and supply will always wish that we had been with the men whom we sustained by our labour; but we can never be ashamed. It has been an inspiring thing to be here in the midst of fine men who had turned aside from every private interest of their own and devoted the whole of their trained capacity to the tasks that supplied the sinews of the whole great undertaking! The patriotism, the unselfishness, the thoroughgoing devotion and distinguished capacity that marked their toilsome labours, day after day, month after month, have made them fit mates and comrades of the men in the trenches and on the sea. And not the men here in Washington only. They have but directed the vast achievement. Throughout innumer- able factories, upon innumerable farms, in the depths of coal mines and iron mines and copper mines, wher- ever the stuffs of industry were to be obtained and pre- pared, in the shipyards, on the railways, at the docks, on the sea, in every labor that was needed to sustain the battle lines, men have vied with each other to do their part and do it well. They can look any man-at- arms in the face, and say, ' ' We also strove to win and gave the best that was in us to make our fleets and armies sure of their triumph!" And what shall we say of the women, — of their in- GREAT SPEECHES 359 stant intelligence, quickening every task that they touched; their capacity for organization and co-opera- tion, which gave their action discipline and enhanced the effectiveness of everything they attempted; their aptitude at tasks to which they had never before set their hands ; their utter self-sacrifice alike in what they did and in what they gave? Their contribution to the great result is beyond appraisal. They have added a new lustre to the annals of American womanhood. The least tribute we can pay them is to make them the equals of men in political rights as they have proved themselves their equals in every field of practical work they have entered, whether for themselves or for their country. These great days of completed achievement would be sadly marred were we to omit that act of jus- tice. Besides the immense practical services they have rendered, the women of the country have been the moving spirits in the systematic economies by which our people have voluntarily assisted to supply the suf- fering peoples of the world and the armies upon every front with food and everything else that we had that might serve the common cause. The details of such a story can never be fully written, but we carry them at our hearts and thank God that we can say that we are the kinsmen of such. And now we are sure of the great triumph for which every sacrifice was made. It has come, come in its completeness, and with the pride and inspiration of these days of achievement quick within us we turn to the tasks of peace again, — a peace secure against the violence of irresponsible monarchs and ambitious mili- tary coteries and made ready for a new order, for new foundations of justice and fair dealing. We are about to give order and organization to this 360 PKESIDENT WILSON'S peace not only for ourselves but for the other peoples of the world as well, so far as they will suffer us to serve them. It is international justice that we seek, not domestic safety merely. Our thoughts have dwelt of late upon Europe, upon Asia, upon the near and the far East, very little upon the acts of peace and accom- modation that wait to be performed at our own doors. While we are adjusting our relations with the rest of the world is it not of capital importance that we should clear away all grounds of misunderstanding with our immediate neighbors and give proof of the friendship we really feel? I hope that the members of the Senate will permit me to speak once more of the unratified treaty of friendship and adjustment with the Republic of Colombia. I very earnestly urge upon them an early and favorable action upon that vital matter. I believe that they will feel, with me, that the stage of affairs is now set for such action as will be not only just but generous and in the spirit of the new age upon which we have so happily entered. So far as our domestic affairs are concerned the prob- lem of our return to peace is a problem of economic and industrial readjustment. That problem is less serious for us than it may turn out to be for the nations which have suffered the disarrangements and the losses of war longer than we. Our people, moreover, do not wait to be coached and led. They know their own busi- ness, are quick and resourceful at every readjustment, definite in purpose, and self-reliant in action. Any leading strings we might seek to put them in would speedily become hopelessly tangled because they would pay no attention to them and go their own way. All that we can do as their legislative and executive ser- vants is to mediate the process of change here, there, GBEAT SPEECHES 361 and elsewhere as we may. I have heard much counsel as to the plans that should be formed and personally conducted to a happy consummation, but from no quar- ter have I seen any general scheme of "reconstruction" emerge which I thought it likely we could force our spirited business men and self-reliant laborers to accept with due pliancy and obedience. While the war lasted we set up many agencies by which to direct the industries of the country in the ser- vices it was necessary for them to render, by which to make sure of an abundant supply of the materials needed, by which to check undertakings that could for the time be dispensed with and stimulate those that were most serviceable in war, by which to gain for the purchasing departments of the Government a certain control over the prices of essential articles and mate- rials, by which to restrain trade with alien enemies, make the most of the available shipping, and systema- tize financial transactions, both public and private, so that there would be no unnecessary conflict or confu- sion, — by which, in short, to put every material energy of the country in harness to draw the common load and make of us one team in the accomplishment of a great task. But the moment we knew the armistice to have been signed we took the harness off. Eaw materials upon which the Government had kept its hand for fear there should not be enough for the industries that sup- plied the armies have been released and put into the general market again. Great industrial plants whose whole output and machinery had been taken over for the uses of the Government have been set free to return to the uses to which they were put before the war. It has not been possible to remove so readily or so quickly the control of foodstuffs and of shipping, because the 362 PRESIDENT WILSON'S world has still to be fed from our granaries and the ships are still needed to send supplies to our men over- sea and to bring the men back as fast as the disturbed conditions on the other side of the water permit; but even there restraints are being relaxed as much as pos- sible and more and more as the weeks go by. Never before have there been agencies in existence in this country which knew so much of the field of sup- ply, of labor, and of industry as the War Industries Board, the War Trade Board, the Labor Department, the Food Administration, and the Fuel Administration have known since their labors became thoroughly sys- tematized; and they have not been isolated agencies; they have been directed by men which represented the permanent departments of the Government and so have been the centers of unified and co-operative action. It has been the policy of the executive, therefore, since the armistice was assured (which is in effect a complete submission of the enemy) to put the knowledge of these bodies at the disposal of the business men of the coun- try and to offer their intelligent mediation at every point and in every matter where it was desired. It is surprising how fast the process of return to a peace footing has moved in the three weeks since the fighting stopped. It promises to outrun any inquiry that may be instituted and any aid that may be offered. It will not be easy to direct it any better than it will direct itself. The American business man is of quick initiative. The ordinary and normal processes of private initia- tive will not, however, provide immediate employment for all of the men of our returning armies. Those who are of trained capacity, those who are skilled workmen, those who have acquired familiarity with established businesses, those who are ready and willing to go to the GREAT SPEECHES 363 farms, all those whose aptitudes are known or will be sought out by employers will find no difficulty, it is safe to say, in finding place and employment. But there will be others who will be at a loss where to gain a livelihood unless pains are taken to guide them and put them in the way of work. There will be a large floating residuum of labor which should not be left wholly to shift for itself. It seems to me important, therefore, that the development of public works of every sort should be promptly resumed, in order that opportunities should be created for unskilled labor in particular, and that plans should be made for such de- velopments of our unused lands and our natural re- sources as we have hitherto lacked stimulation to un- dertake. I particularly direct your attention to the very prac- tical plans which the Secretary of the Interior has developed in his annual report and before your com- mittees for the reclamation of arid, swamp, and cut- over lands which might, if the states were willing and able to co-operate, redeem some three hundred million acres of land for cultivation. There are said to be fifteen or twenty million acres of land in the West, at present arid, for whose reclamation water is available, if properly conserved. There are about two hundred and thirty million acres from which the forests have been cut but which have never yet been cleared for the plow and which lie waste and desolate. These lie scat- tered all over the Union. And there are nearly eighty million acres of land that lie under swamps or subject to periodical overflow or too wet for anything but grazing which it is perfectly feasible to drain and pro- tect and redeem. The Congress can at once direct thousands of the returning soldiers to the reclamation 364 PRESIDENT WILSON'S of the arid lands which it has already undertaken, if it will but enlarge the plans and the appropriations which it has entrusted to the Department of the In- terior. It is possible in dealing with our unused land to effect a great rural and agricultural development which will afford the best sort of opportunity to men who want to help themselves; and the Secretary of the Interior has thought the possible methods out in a way which is worthy of your most friendly attention. I have spoken of the control which must yet for a while, perhaps for a long while, be exercised over ship- ping because of the priority of service to which our forces overseas are entitled and which should also be accorded the shipments which are to save recently lib- erated peoples from starvation and many devastated regions from permanent ruin. May I not say a special word about the needs of Belgium and northern France ? No sums of money paid by way of indemnity will serve of themselves to save them from hopeless disadvantage for years to come. Something more must be done than merely find the money. If they had money and raw materials in abundance tomorrow they could not re- sume their place in the industry of the world tomorrow, — the very important place they held before the flame of war swept across them. Many of their factories are razed to the ground. Much of their machinery is de- stroyed or has been taken away. Their people are scattered and many of their best workmen are dead. Their markets will be taken by others, if they are not in some special way assisted to rebuild their factories and replace their lost instruments of manufacture. They should not be left to the vicissitudes of the sharp competition for materials and for industrial facilities which is now to set in. I hope, therefore, that the GREAT SPEECHES 365 Congress will not be unwilling, if it should become nec- essary, to grant to some such agency as the War Trade Board the right to establish priorities of export and supply for the benefit of these people whom we have been so happy to assist in saving from the German terror and whom we must not now thoughtlessly leave to shift for themselves in a pitiless competitive market. For the steadying and facilitation of our own do- mestic business readjustments nothing is more impor- tant than the immediate determination of the taxes that are to be levied for 1918, 1919, and 1920. As much of the burden of taxation must be lifted from business as sound methods of financing the Government will per- mit,, and those who conduct the great essential indus- tries of the country must be told as exactly as possible what obligations to the Government they will be ex- pected to meet in the years immediately ahead of them. It will be of serious consequence to the country to delay removing all uncertainties in this matter a single day longer than the right processes of debate justify. It is idle to talk of successful and confident business reconstruction before those uncertainties are resolved. If the war had continued it would have been neces- sary to raise at least eight billion dollars by taxation payable in the year 1919 ; but the war has ended and I agree with the Secretary of the Treasury that it will be safe to reduce the amount to six billions. An imme- diate rapid decline in the expenses of the Government is not to be looked for. Contracts made for war sup- plies will, indeed, be rapidly cancelled and liquidated, but their immediate liquidation will make heavy drains on the Treasury for the months just ahead of us. The maintenance of our forces on the other side of the sea is still necessary. A considerable proportion of those 366 PRESIDENT WILSON'S forces must remain in Europe during the period of occupation, and those which are brought home will be transported and demobilized at heavy expense for months to come. The interest on our war debt must of course be paid and provision made for the retirement of the obligations of the Government which represent it. But these demands will of course fall much below what a continuation of military operations would have entailed and six billions should suffice to supply a sound foundation for the financial operations of the year. I entirely concur with the Secretary of the Treasury in recommending that the two billions needed in addi- tion to the four billions provided by existing law be obtained from the profits which have accrued and shall accrue from war contracts and distinctively war busi- ness, but that these taxes be confined to the war profits accruing in 1918, or in 1919 from business originating in war contracts. I urge your acceptance of his rec- ommendation that provision be made now, not subse- quently, that the taxes to be paid in 1920 should be reduced from six to four billions. Any arrangements less definite than these would add elements of doubt and confusion to the critical period of industrial read- justment through which the country must now imme- diately pass, and which no true friend of the nation's essential business interests can afford to be responsible for creating or prolonging. Clearly determined con- ditions, clearly and simply charted, are indispensable to the economic revival and rapid industrial develop- ment which may confidently be expected if we act now and sweep all interrogation points away. I take it for granted that the Congress will carry out the naval program which was undertaken before GREAT SPEECHES 367 we entered the war. The Secretary of the Navy has submitted to your committees for authorization that part of the program which covers the building plans of the next three years. These plans have been pre- pared along the lines and in accordance with the policy which the Congress established, not under the excep- tional conditions of the war, but with the intention of adhering to a definite method of development for the navy. I earnestly recommend the uninterrupted pur- suit of that policy. It would clearly be unwise for us to attempt to adjust our programs to a future world policy as yet undetermined. The question which causes me the greatest concern is the question of the policy to be adopted towards the railroads. I frankly turn to you for counsel upon it. I have no confident judgment of my own. I do not see how any thoughtful man can have who knows anything of the complexity of the problem. It is a problem which must be studied, studied immediately, and studied without bias or prejudice. Nothing can be gained by becoming partisans of any particular plan of settlement. It was necessary that the administration of the rail- ways should be taken over by the Government so long as the war lasted. It would have been impossible other- wise to establish and carry through under a single direction the necessary priorities of shipment. It would have been impossible otherwise to combine maximum production at the factories and mines and farms with the maximum possible car supply to take the products to the ports and markets; impossible to route troop shipments and freight shipments without regard to the advantage or disadvantage of the roads employed ; impossible to subordinate, when necessary, all ques- 368 PRESIDENT WILSON'S tions of convenience to the public necessity; impos- sible to give the necessary financial support to the roads from the public treasury. But all these necessi- ties have now been served, and the question is, what is best for the railroads and for the public in the future. Exceptional circumstances and exceptional methods of administration were not needed to convince us that the railroads were not equal to the immense tasks of transportation imposed upon them by the rapid and continuous development of the industries of the coun- try. We knew that already. And we knew that they were unequal to it partly because their full co-operation was rendered impossible by law and their competition made obligatory, so that it has been impossible to assign to them severally the traffic which could best be carried by their respective lines in the interest of expedition and national economy. We may hope, I believe, for the formal conclusion of the war by treaty by the time Spring has come. The twenty-one months to which the present control of the railways is limited after formal proclamation of peace shall have been made will run at the farthest, I take it for granted, only to the January of 1921. The full equipment of the railways which the federal adminis- tration had planned could not be completed within any such period. The present law does not permit the use of the revenues of the several roads for the execution of such plans except by formal contract with their directors, some of whom will consent while some will not, and therefore does not afford sufficient authority to undertake improvements upon the scale upon which it would be necessary to undertake them. Every ap- proach to this difficult subject-matter of decision brings us face to face, therefore, with this unanswered ques- GREAT SPEECHES 369 tion: What is it right that we should do with the railroads, in the interest of the public and in fairness to their owners? Let me say at once that I have no answer ready. The only thing that is perfectly clear to me is that it is not fair either to the public or to the owners of the rail- roads to leave the question unanswered and that it will presently become my duty to relinquish control of the roads, even before the expiration of the statutory period, unless there should appear some clear prospect in the meantime of a legislative solution. Their release would at least produce one element of a solution, namely, certainty and a quick stimulation of private initiative. I believe that it will be serviceable for me to set forth as explicitly as possible the alternative courses that lie open to our choice. We can simply release the roads and go back to the old conditions of private manage- ment, unrestricted competition, and multiform regula- tion by both state and federal authorities; or we can go to the opposite extreme and establish complete gov- ernment control, accompanied, if necessary, by actual government ownership ; or we can adopt an interme- diate course of modified private control, under a more unified and affirmative public regulation and under such alterations of the law as will permit wasteful com- petition to be avoided and a considerable degree of unification of administration to be effected, as, for ex- ample, by regional corporations under which the rail- ways of definable areas would be in effect combined in single systems. The one conclusion that I am ready to state with confidence is that it would be a disservice alike to the country and to the owners of the railroads to return 370 PRESIDENT WILSON'S to the old conditions unmodified. Those are conditions of restraint without development. There is nothing affirmative or helpful about them. What the country chiefly needs is that all its means of transportation should be developed, its railways, its waterways, its highways, and its countryside roads. Some new ele- ment of policy, therefore, is absolutely necessary, — necessary for the service of the public, necessary for the release of credit to those who are administering the railways, necessary for the protection of their se- curity holders. The old policy may be changed much or little, but surely it cannot wisely be left as it was. I hope that the Congress will have a complete and im- partial study of the whole problem instituted at once and prosecuted as rapidly as possible. I stand ready and anxious to release the roads from the present con- trol and I must do so at a very early date if by waiting until the statutory limit of time is reached I shall be merely prolonging the period of doubt and uncertainty which is hurtful to every interest concerned. I welcome this occasion to announce to the Congress my purpose to join in Paris the representatives of the governments with which we have been associated in the war against the Central Empires for the purpose of discussing with them the main features of the treaty of peace. I realize the great inconveniences that will attend my leaving the country, particularly at this time, but the conclusion that it was my paramount duty to go has been forced upon me by considerations which I hope will seem as conclusive to you as they have seemed to me. The allied governments have accepted the bases of peace which I outlined to the Congress on the eighth of January last, as the Central Empires also have, and GREAT SPEECHES 371 very reasonably desire my personal counsel in their interpretation and application, and it is highly desir- able that I should give it in order that the sincere de- sire of our Government to contribute without selfish purpose of any kind to settlements that will be of common benefit to all the nations concerned may be made fully manifest. The peace settlements which are now to be agreed upon are of transcendent importance both to us and to the rest of the world, and I know of no business or interest which should take precedence of them. The gallant men of our armed forces on land and sea have consciously fought for the ideals which they knew to be the ideals of their country; I have sought to express those ideals; they have accepted my statements of them as the substance of their own thought and purpose, as the associated governments have accepted them; I owe it to them to see to it, so far as in me lies, that no false or mistaken interpre- tation is put upon them, and no possible effort omitted to realize them. It is now my duty to play my full part in making good what they offered their life's blood to obtain. I can think of no call to service which could transcend this. I shall be in close touch with you and with affairs on this side the water, and you will know all that I do. At my request, the French and English governments have absolutely removed the censorship of cable news which until within a fortnight they had maintained and there is now no censorship whatever exercised at this end except upon attempted trade communications with enemy countries. It has been necessary to keep an open wire constantly available between Paris and the Department of State and another between France and the Department of War. In order that this might 372 PRESIDENT WILSON'S be done with the least possible interference with the other uses of the cables, I have temporarily taken over the control of both cables in order that they may be used as a single system. I did so at the advice of the most experienced cable officials, and I hope that the results will justify my hope that the news of the next few months may pass with the utmost freedom and with the least possible delay from each side of the sea to the other. May I not hope, Gentlemen of the Congress, that in the delicate tasks I shall have to perform on the other side of the sea, in my efforts truly and faithfully to interpret the principles and purposes of the country we love, I may have the encouragement and the added strength of your united support 1 I realize the magni- tude and difficulty of the duty I am undertaking ; I am poignantly aware of its grave responsibilities. I am the servant of the nation. I can have no private thought or purpose of my own in performing such an errand. I go to give the best that is in me to the common set- tlements which I must now assist in arriving at in con- ference with the other working heads of the associated governments. I shall count upon your friendly coun- tenance and encouragement. I shall not be inaccessible. The cables and the wireless will render me available for any counsel or service you may desire of me, and I shall be happy in the thought that I am constantly in touch with the weighty matters of domestic policy with which we shall have to deal. I shall make my absence as brief as possible and shall hope to return with the happy assurance that it has been possible to translate into action the great ideals for which America has striven. GEEAT SPEECHES 373 PRESIDENT WILSON'S MOUNT VER- NON FOURTH OF JULY SPEECH Including the Four Points Supplementing the Fourteen Principles Gentlemen of the Diplomatic Corps and My Fellow Citizens : I am happy to draw apart with you to this quiet place of old counsel in order to speak a little of the meaning of this day of our nation's independence. The place seems very still and remote. It is as serene and untouched by the hurry of the world as it was in those great days long ago when General Washington was here and held leisurely conference with the men who were to be associated with him in the creation of a nation. From these gentle slopes they looked out upon the world and saw it whole, saw it with the light of the future upon it, saw it with modern eyes that turned away from a past which men of liberated spirits could no longer endure. It is for that reason that we cannot feel, even here, in the immediate presence of this sacred tomb, that this is a place of death. It was a place of achievement. A great promise that was meant for all mankind was here given plan and reality. The asso- ciations by which we are here surrounded are the in- spiriting associations of that noble death which is only a glorious consummation. From this green hillside we also ought to be able to see with comprehending eyes the world that lies about us and should conceive anew the purposes that must set men free. It is significant, — significant of their own character and purpose and of the influences they were setting afoot, — that Washington and his associates, like the 374 PRESIDENT WILSON'S barons at Runnymede, spoke and acted, not for a class, but for a people. It has been left for us to see to it that it shall be understood that they spoke and acted, not for a single people only, but for all mankind. They were thinking, not of themselves and of the material interests which centered in the little groups of land- holders and merchants and men of affairs with whom they were accustomed to act, in Virginia and the colo- nies to the north and south of her, but of a people which wished to be done with classes and special in- terests and the authority of men whom they had not themselves chosen to rule over them. They entertained no private purpose, desired no peculiar privilege. They were consciously planning that men of every class should be free and America a place to which men out of every nation might resort who wished to share with them the rights and privileges of free men. And we take our cue from them, — do we not ? "We intend what they intended. We here in America believe our partici- pation in this present war to be only the fruitage of what they planted. Our case differs from theirs only in this, that it is our inestimable privilege to concert with men out of every nation what shall make not only the liberties of America secure but the liberties of every other people as well. We are happy in the thought that we are permitted to do what they would have done had they been in our place. There must now be settled once for all what was settled for America in the great age upon whose inspiration we draw today. This is surely a fitting place from which calmly to look out upon our task, that we may fortify our spirits for its accomplishment. And this is the appropriate place from which to avow, alike to the friends who look on and to the friends with whom we have the happiness GREAT SPEECHES 375 to be associated in action, the faith and purpose with which we act. This, then, is our conception of the great struggle in which we are engaged. The plot is written plain upon every scene and every act of the supreme tragedy. On the one hand stand the peoples of the world, — not only the peoples actually engaged, but many others also who suffer under mastery but cannot act ; peoples of many races and in every part of the world, — the people of stricken Russia still, among the rest, though they are for the moment unorganized and helpless. Opposed to them, masters of many armies, stand an isolated, friendless group of governments who speak no common purpose but only selfish ambitions of their own by which none can profit but themselves, and whose peoples are fuel in their hands; governments which fear their people and yet are for the time their sovereign lords, making every choice for them and dis- posing of their lives and fortunes as they will, as well as of the lives and fortunes of every people who fall under their power, — governments clothed with the strange trappings and the primitive authority of an age that is altogether alien and hostile to our own. The past and the present are in deadly grapple and the peoples of the world are being done to death between them. There can be but one issue. The settlement must be final. There can be no compromise. No halfway decision would be tolerable. No halfway decision is conceivable. These are the ends for which the asso- ciated peoples of the world are fighting and which must be conceded them before there can be peace : I. The destruction of every arbitrary power any- where that can separately, secretly, and of its single 376 PRESIDENT WILSON'S choice disturb the peace of the world; or, if it cannot be presently destroyed, at the least its reduction to virtual impotence. II. The settlement of every question, whether of territory, or sovereignty, of economic arrangement, or of political relationship, upon the basis of the free ac- ceptance of that settlement by the people immediately concerned, and not upon the basis of the material in- terest or advantage of any other nation or people which may desire a different settlement for the sake of its own exterior influence or mastery. III. The consent of all nations to be governed in their conduct towards each other by the same princi- ples of honor and of respect for the common law of civilized society that govern the individual citizens of all modern states in their relations with one another; to the end that all promises and covenants may be sa- credly observed, no private plots or conspiracies hatched, no selfish injuries wrought with impunity, and a mutual trust established upon the handsome founda- tion of a mutual respect for right. IV. The establishment of an organization of peace which shall make it certain that the combined power of free nations will check every invasion of right and serve to make peace and justice the more secure by affording a definite tribunal of opinion to which all must submit and by which every international read- justment that cannot be amicably agreed upon by the peoples directly concerned shall be sanctioned. These great objects can be put into a single sentence. "What we seek is the reign of law, based upon the con- sent of the governed and sustained by the organized opinion of mankind. These great ends cannot be achieved by debating and GREAT SPEECHES 377 seeking to reconcile and accommodate what statesmen may wish, with their projects for balances of power and of national opportunity. They can be realized only by the determination of what the thinking peoples of the world desire, with their longing hope for justice and for social freedom and opportunity. I can fancy that the air of this place carries the accents of such principles with a peculiar kindness. Here were started forces which the great nation against which they were primarily directed at first regarded as a revolt against its rightful authority but which it has long since seen to have been a step in the liberation of its own people as well as the people of the United States ; and I stand here now to speak, — speak proudly and with confident hope, — of the spread of this revolt, this liberation, to the great stage of the world itself! The blinded rulers of Prussia have roused forces they knew little of, — forces which, once roused, can never be crushed to earth again ; for they have at their heart an inspiration and a purpose which are deathless and of the very stuff of triumph ! 378 PEESIDENT WILSON'S ARMISTICE TERMS AND THE PRESI- DENT'S REMARKS Gentlemen of the Congress: In these anxious times of rapid and stupendous change it will in some degree lighten my sense of re- sponsibility to perform in person the duty of commu- nicating to you some of the larger circumstances of the situation with which it is necessary to deal. The German authorities who have, at the invitation of the Supreme War Council, been in communication with Marshal Foch have accepted and signed the terms of armistice which he was authorized and instructed to communicate to them. Those terms are as follows : 1. Cessation of operations by land and in the air six hours after the signature of the armistice. 2. Immediate evacuation of invaded countries — Bel- gium, France, Alsace-Lorraine, Luxembourg, so ordered as to be completed within fourteen days from the sig- nature of the armistice. German troops which have not left the above mentioned territories within the period fixed will become prisoners of war. Occupation by the Allied and United States forces jointly will keep pace with evacuation in these areas. All movements of evacuation and occupation will be regulated in ac- cordance with a note annexed to the stated terms. 3. Repatriation beginning at once and to be com- pleted within fourteen days of all inhabitants of the countries above mentioned, including hostages and per- sons under trial or convicted. 4. Surrender in good condition by the German armies of the following equipment: Five thousand guns (two thousand five hundred heavy, two thousand five hundred field), thirty thousand machine guns; GREAT SPEECHES 379 three thousand minenwerfer, two thousand aeroplanes (fighters, bombers — firstly D. Seventy-three's and night bombing machines). The above to be delivered in Simmstu to the Allies and United States troops in ac- cordance with the detailed conditions laid down in the annexed note. 5. Evacuation by the German armies of the coun- tries on the left bank of the Rhine. These countries on the left bank of the Rhine shall be administered by the local authorities under the control of the Allied and United States armies of occupation. The occupation of these territories will be determined by Allied and United States garrisons holding the principal crossings of the Rhine, Mayence, Coblenz, Cologne, together with bridgeheads at these points in thirty kilometer radius on the right bank and by garrisons similarly holding the strategic points of the regions. A neutral zone shall be reserved on the right of the Rhine between the stream and a line drawn parallel to it forty kilometers to the east from the frontier of Holland to the parallel of Gernsheim and as far as practicable a distance of thirty kilometers from the east of stream from this parallel upon Swiss frontier. Evacuation by the enemy of the Rhine lands shall be so ordered as to be com- pleted within a further period of eleven days, in all nineteen days after the signature of the armistice. All movements of evacuation and occupation will be regu- lated according to the note annexed. 6. In all territory evacuated by the enemy there shall be no evacuation of inhabitants; no damage or harm shall be done to the persons or property of the inhabi- tants. No destruction of any kind to be committed. Military establishments of all kinds shall be delivered intact as well as military stores of food, munitions, 380 PRESIDENT WILSON'S equipment not removed during the periods fixed for evacuation. Stores of food of all kinds for the civil population, cattle, etc., shall be left in situ. Industrial establishments shall not be impaired in any way and their personnel shall not be moved. Roads and means of communication of every kind, railroad, waterways, main roads, bridges, telegraphs, telephones, shall be in no manner impaired. 7. All civil and military personnel at present em- ployed on them shall remain. Five thousand locomo- tives, fifty thousand wagons and ten thousand motor lorries in good working order with all necessary spare parts and fittings shall be delivered to the Associated Powers within the period fixed for the evacuation of Belgium and Luxemburg. The railways of Alsace- Lorraine shall be handed over within the same period, together with all pre-war personnel and material. Further material necessary for the working of railways in the country on the left bank of the Rhine shall be left in situ. All stores of coal and material for the up- keep of permanent ways, signals and repair shops left entire in situ and kept in an efficient state by Germany during the whole period of armistice. All barges taken from the Allies shall be restored to them. A note ap- pended regulates the details of these measures. 8. The German command shall be responsible for re- vealing all mines or delay acting fuses disposed on terri- tory evacuated by the German troops and shall assist in their discovery and destruction. The German com- mand shall also reveal all destructive measures that may have been taken (such as poisoning or polluting of springs, wells, etc.), under penalty of reprisals. 9. The right of requisition shall be exercised by the Allied and the United States armies in all occupied GREAT SPEECHES 381 territory. The up-keep of the troops of occupation in the Rhine land (excluding Alsace-Lorraine) shall be charged to the German Government. 10. An immediate repatriation without reciprocity, according to detailed conditions which shall be fixed, of all Allied and United States prisoners of war. The Allied Powers and the United States shall be able to dispose of these prisoners as they wish. 11. Sick and wounded who cannot be removed from evacuated territory will be cared for by German per- sonnel who will be left on the spot with the medical material required. 12. All German troops at present in any territory which before the war belonged to Russia, Roumania or Turkey shall withdraw within the frontiers of Ger- many as they existed on August 1, 1914. 13. Evacuation by German troops to begin at once and all German instructors, prisoners, and civilian as well as military agents, now on the territory of Russia (as defined before 1914) to be recalled. 14. German troops to cease at once all requisitions and seizures and any other undertaking with a view to obtaining supplies intended for Germany in Roumania and Russia (as defined on August 1, 1914). 15. Abandonment of the treaties of Bucharest and Brest-Litovsk and of the supplementary treaties. 16. The Allies shall have free access to the territories evacuated by the Germans on their eastern frontier either through Danzig or by the Vistula in order to con- vey supplies to the populations of those territories or for any other purpose. 17. Unconditional capitulation of all German forces operating in East Africa within one month. 18. Repatriation, without reciprocity, within a maxi- 382 PRESIDENT WILSON'S mum period of one month, in accordance with detailed conditions hereafter to be fixed, of all civilians interned or deported who may be citizens of other Allied or Associated States than those mentioned in clause 3, paragraph 19, with the reservation that any future claims and demands of the Allies and the United States of America remain unaffected. 19. The following financial conditions are required : Reparation for damage done. While such armistice lasts no public securities shall be removed by the enemy which can serve as a pledge to the Allies for the re- covery or repatriation for war losses. Immediate resti- tution of the cash deposit, in the National Bank of Bel- gium, and in general immediate return of all documents, specie, stocks, shares, paper money together with plant for the issue thereof, touching public or private inter- ests in the invaded countries. Restitution of the Rus- sian and Roumanian gold yielded to Germany or taken by that power. This gold to be delivered in trust to the Allies until the signature of peace. 20. Immediate cessation of all hostilities at sea and definite information to be given as to the location and movements of all German ships. Notification to be given to neutrals that freedom of navigation in all terri- torial waters is given to the naval and mercantile ma- rines of the Allied and Associated Powers, all questions of neutrality being waived. 21. All naval and mercantile marine prisoners of war of the Allied and Associated Powers in German hands to be returned without reciprocity. 22. Surrender to the Allies and the United States of America of one hundred and sixty German submarines (including all submarine cruisers and mine laying sub- marines) with their complete armament and equipment GEEAT SPEECHES 383 in ports which will be specified by the Allies and the United States of America. All other submarines to be paid off and completely disarmed and placed under the supervision of the Allied Powers and the United States of America. 23. The following German surface warships which shall be designated by the Allies and the United States of America shall forthwith be disarmed and thereafter interned in neutral ports, or, for the want of them, in Allied ports, to be designated by the Allies and the United States of America and placed under the surveil- lance of the Allies and the United States of America, only caretakers being left on board, namely : Six battle cruisers, ten battleships, eight light cruisers, including two mine layers, fifty destroyers of the most modern type. All other surface warships (including river craft) are to be concentrated in German naval bases to be designated by the Allies and the United States of America, and are to be paid off and completely dis- armed and placed under the supervision of the Allies and the United States of America. All vessels of the auxiliary fleet (trawlers, motor vessels, etc.) are to be disarmed. 24. The Allies and the United States of America shall have the right to sweep up all mine fields and obstructions laid by Germany outside German terri- torial waters, and the positions of these are to be indicated. 25. Freedom of access to and from the Baltic to be given to the naval and mercantile marines of the Allied and Associated Powers. To secure this the Allies and the United States of America shall be em- powered to occupy all German forts, fortifications, bat- teries and defense works of all kinds in all the entrances 384 PRESIDENT WILSON'S from the Categat into the Baltic, and to sweep up all mines and obstructions within and without German territorial waters without any question of neutrality being raised, and the positions of all such mines and obstructions are to be indicated. 26. The existing blockade conditions set up by the Allies and Associated Powers are to remain unchanged and all German merchant ships found at sea are to remain liable to capture. 27. All naval aircraft are to be concentrated and immobilized in German bases to be specified by the Allies and the United States of America. 28. In evacuating the Belgian coasts and ports, Germany shall abandon all merchant ships, tugs, light- ers, cranes and all other harbor materials, all mate- rials for inland navigation, all aircraft and all materials and stores, all arms and armaments, and all stores and apparatus of all kinds. 29. All Black Sea ports are to be evacuated by Ger- many ; all Russian war vessels of all descriptions seized by Germany in the Black Sea are to be handed over to the Allies and the United States of America ; all neutral merchant vessels seized are to be released ; all warlike and other materials of all kinds seized in those ports are to be returned and German materials as specified in clause twenty-eight are to be abandoned. 30. All merchant vessels in German hands belonging to the Allied and Associated Powers are to be restored in ports to be specified by the Allies and the United States of America without reciprocity. 31. No destruction of ships or of materials to be permitted before evacuation, surrender or restoration. 32. The German Government shall formally notify the neutral Governments of the world, and particularly GEEAT SPEECHES 385 the Governments of Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Holland, that all restrictions placed on the trading of their vessels with the Allied and Associated Coun- tries, whether by the German Government or by private German interests, and whether in return for specific concessions such as the export of shipbuilding materials or not, are immediately canceled. 33. No transfers of German merchant shipping of any description to any neutral flag are to take place after signature of the armistice. 34. The duration of the armistice is to be thirty days, with option to extend. During this period, on failure of execution of any of the above clauses, the armistice may be denounced by one of the contracting parties, on forty-eight hours previous notice. 35. This armistice to be accepted or refused by Germany within seventy-two hours of notification. The war thus comes to an end; for, having accepted these terms of armistice, it will be impossible for the German command to renew it. It is not now possible to assess the consequences of this great consummation. We know only that this tragical war, whose consuming flames swept from one nation to another until all the world was on fire, is at an end and that it was the privilege of our own people to enter it at its most critical juncture in such fashion and in such force as to contribute in a way of which we are all deeply proud to the great result. We know, too, that the object of the war is attained; the object upon which all free men had set their hearts; and at- tained with a sweeping completeness which even now we do not realize. Armed imperialism such as the men conceived who were but yesterday the masters of Ger- many is at an end, its illicit ambitions engulfed in black 386 PRESIDENT WILSON'S disaster. Who will now seek to revive it? The arbi- trary power of the military caste of Germany which once could secretly and of its own single choice dis- turb the peace of the world is discredited and de- stroyed. And more than that, — much more than that, — has been accomplished. The great nations which associated themselves to destroy it have now definitely united in the common purpose to set up such a peace as will satisfy the longing of the whole world for disin- terested justice, embodied in settlements which are based upon something much better and much more lasting than the selfish competitive interests of power- ful states. There is no longer conjecture as to the ob- jects the victors have in mind. They have a mind in the matter, not only, but a heart also. Their avowed and concerted purpose is to satisfy and protect the weak as well as to accord their just rights to the strong. The humane temper and intention of the victorious governments has already been manifested in a very practical way. Their representatives in the Supreme War Council at Versailles have by unanimous resolu- tion assured the peoples of the Central Empires that everything that is possible in the circumstances will be done to supply them with food and relieve the dis- tressing want that is in so many places threatening their very lives ; and steps are to be taken immediately to organize these efforts at relief in the same sys- tematic manner that they were organized in the case of Belgium. By the use of the idle tonnage of the Cen- tral Empires it ought presently to be possible to lift the fear of utter misery from their oppressed popula- tions and set their minds and energies free for the great and hazardous tasks of political reconstruction GKEAT SPEECHES 387 which now face them on every hand. Hunger does not breed reform; it breeds madness and all the ugly distempers that make an ordered life impossible. For with the fall of the ancient governments which rested like an incubus upon the peoples of the Central Empires has come political change not merely, but revolution; and revolution which seems as yet to as- sume no final and ordered form but to run from one fluid change to another, until thoughtful men are forced to ask themselves, With what governments, and of what sort, are we about to deal in the making of the cove- nants of peace? With what authority will they meet us, and with what assurance that their authority will abide and sustain securely the international arrange- ments into which we are about to enter? There is here matter for no small anxiety and misgiving. When peace is made, upon whose promises and engagements besides our own is it to rest ? Let us be perfectly frank with ourselves and admit that these questions cannot be satisfactorily answered now or at once. But the moral is not that there is little hope of an early answer that will suffice. It is only that we must be patient and helpful and mindful above all of the great hope and confidence that lie at the heart of what is taking place. Excesses accom- plish nothing. Unhappy Russia has furnished abun- dant recent proof of that. Disorder immediately de- feats itself. If excesses should occur, if disorder should for a time raise its head, a sober second thought will follow and a day of constructive action, if we help and do not hinder. The present and all that it holds belongs to the na- tions and the peoples who preserve their self-control and the orderly processes of their governments; the 388 PRESIDENT WILSON'S future to those who prove themselves the true friends of mankind. To conquer with arms is to make only a temporary conquest; to conquer the world by earning its esteem is to make permanent conquest. I am con- fident that the nations that have learned the disci- pline of freedom and that have settled with self-pos- session to its ordered practice are now about to make conquest of the world by the sheer power of example and of friendly helpfulness. The peoples who have but just come out from under the yoke of arbitrary government and who are now coming at last into their freedom will never find the treasures of liberty they are in search of if they look for them by the light of the torch. They will find that every pathway that is stained with the blood of their own brothers leads to the wilderness, not to the seat of their hope. They are now face to face with their initial test. We must hold the light steady until they find themselves. And in the meantime, if it be possible, we must establish a peace that will justly define their place among the nations, remove all fear of their neigh- bors and of their former masters, and enable them to live in security and contentment when they have set their own affairs in order. I, for one, do not doubt their purpose or their capacity. There are some happy signs that they know and will choose the way of self- control and peaceful accommodation. If they do, we shall put our aid at their disposal in every way that we can. If they do not, we must await with patience and sympathy the awakening and recovery that will assuredly come at last. GREAT SPEECHES 389 THE FIVE FUNDAMENTALS FOR A LEAGUE OF NATIONS My Fellow Citizens: I am not here to promote the loan. That will be done, — ably and enthusiastically done, — by the hun- dreds of thousands of loyal and tireless men and women who have undertaken to present it to you and to our fellow citizens throughout the country; and I have not the least doubt of their complete success'; for I know their spirit and the spirit of the country. My confi- dence is confirmed, too, by the thoughtful and expe- rienced cooperation of the bankers here and every- where, who are lending their invaluable aid and guid- ance. I have come, rather, to seek an opportunity to present to you some thoughts which I trust will serve to give you, in perhaps fuller measure than be- fore, a vivid sense of the great issues involved, in order that you may appreciate and accept with added en- thusiasm the grave significance of the duty of support- ing the Government by your men and your means to the utmost point of sacrifice and self-denial. No man or woman who has really taken in what this war means can hesitate to give to the very limit of what they have ; and it is my mission here tonight to try to make it clear once more what the war really means. You will need no other stimulation or reminder of your duty. At every turn of the war we gain a fresh conscious- ness of what we mean to accomplish by it. When our hope and expectation are most excited we think more definitely than before of the issues that hang upon it and of the purposes which must be realized by means of it. For it has positive and well defined purposes 390 PEESIDENT WILSON'S which we did not determine and which we cannot alter. No statesman or assembly created them; no statesmen or assembly can alter them. They have arisen out of the very nature and circumstances of the war. The most that statesmen or assemblies can do is to carry them out or be false to them. They were perhaps not clear at the outset; but they are clear now. The war has lasted more than four years and the whole world has been drawn into it. The common will of mankind has been substituted for the particular purposes of individual states. Individual statesmen may have started the conflict, but neither they nor their op- ponents can stop it as they please. It has become a people's war, and peoples of all sorts and races, of every degree of power and variety of fortune, are in- volved in its sweeping processes of change and settle- ment. We came into it when its character had become fully defined and it was plain that no nation could stand apart or be indifferent to its outcome. Its challenge drove to the heart of everything we cared for and lived for. The voice of the war had become clear and gripped our hearts. Our brothers from many lands, as well as our own murdered dead under the sea, were calling to us, and we responded, fiercely and of course. The air was clear about us. "We saw things in their full, convincing proportions as they were ; and we have seen them with steady eyes and unchanging compre- hension ever since. We accepted the issues of the war as facts, not as any group of men either here or else- where had defined them, and we can accept no outcome which does not squarely meet and settle them. Those issues are these : Shall the military power of any nation or group of GREAT SPEECHES 391 nations be suffered to determine the fortunes of peoples over whom they have no right to rule except the right of force ? Shall strong nations be free to wrong weak nations and make them subject to their purpose and interest? Shall peoples be ruled and dominated, even in their own internal affairs, by arbitrary and irresponsible force or by their own will and choice. Shall there be a common standard of right and privi- lege for all peoples and nations or shall the strong do as they will and the weak suffer without redress? Shall the assertion of right be haphazard and by casual alliance or shall there be a common concert to oblige the observance of common rights? No man, no group of men, chose these to be the issues of the struggle. They are the issues of it; and they must be settled, — by no arrangement or compromise or adjustment of interests, but definitely and once for all and with a full and unequivocal acceptance of the principle that the interest of the weakest is as sa- cred as the interest of the strongest. This is what we mean when we speak of a permanent peace, if we speak sincerely, intelligently, and with a real knowledge and comprehension of the matter we deal with. We are all agreed that there can be no peace obtained by any kind of bargain or compromise with the gov- ernments of the Central Empires, because we have dealt with them already and have seen them deal with other governments that were parties to this struggle, at Brest-Litovsk and Bucharest. They have convinced us that they are without honor and do not intend jus- tice. They observe no covenants, accept no principle but force and their own interest. We cannot "come 392 PRESIDENT WILSON'S to terms" with them. They have made it impossible. The German people must by this time be fully aware that we cannot accept the word of those who forced this war upon us. "We do not think the same thoughts or speak the same language of agreement. It is of capital importance that we should also be explicitly agreed that no peace shall be obtained by any kind of compromise or abatement of the princi- ples we have avowed as the principles for which we are fighting. There should exist no doubt about that. I am, therefore, going to take the liberty of speaking with the utmost frankness about the practical implica- tions that are involved in it. If it be in deed and in truth the common object of the governments associated against Germany and of the nations whom they govern, as I believe it to be, to achieve by the coming settlements a secure and lasting peace, it will be necessary that all who sit down at the peace table shall come ready and willing to pay the price, the only price, that will procure it ; and ready and willing, also, to create in some virile fashion the only instrumentality by which it can be made certain that the agreements of the peace will be honored and fulfilled. That price is impartial justice in every item of the settlement, no matter whose interest is crossed; and not only impartial justice but also the satisfaction of the several peoples whose fortunes are dealt with. That indispensable instrumentality is a League of Nations formed under covenants that will be efficacious. Without such an instrumentality, by which the peace of the world can be guaranteed, peace will rest in part upon the word of outlaws and only upon that word. For Germany will have to redeem her character, not GKEAT SPEECHES 393 by what happens at the peace table but by what follows. And, as I see it, the constitution of that League of Nations and the clear definition of its objects must be a part, is in a sense the most essential part, of the peace settlement itself. It cannot be formed now. If formed now, it would be merely a new alliance con- fined to the nations associated against a common enemy. It is not likely that it could be formed after the settle- ment. It is necessary to guarantee the peace ; and the peace cannot be guaranteed as an afterthought. The reason, to speak in plain terms again, why it must be guaranteed is that there will be parties to the peace whose promises have proved untrustworthy, and means must be found in connection with the peace settlement itself to remove that source of insecurity. It would be folly to leave the guarantee to the subsequent volun- tary action of the Governments we have seen destroy Kussia and deceive Roumania. But these general terms do not disclose the whole matter. Some details are needed to make them sound less like a thesis and more like a practical programme. These, then, are some of the particulars, and I state them with the greater confidence because I can state them authoritatively as representing this Govern- ment's interpretation of its own duty with regard to peace : First, the impartial justice meted out must involve no discrimination between those to whom we wish to be just and those to whom we do not wish to be just. It must be a justice that plays no favorites and knows no standard but the equal rights of the several peoples concerned ; Second, no special or separate interest of any single 394 PEESIDENT WILSON'S nation or any group of nations can be made the basis of any part of the settlement which is not consistent with the common interest of all; Third, there can be no leagues or alliances or special covenants and understandings within the general and common family of the League of Nations ; Fourth, and more specifically, there can be no spe- cial, selfish economic combinations within the League and no employment of any form of economic boycott or exclusion except as the power of economic penalty by exclusion from the markets of the world may be vested in the League of Nations itself as a means of discipline and control; Fifth, all international agreements and treaties of every kind must be made known in their entirely to the rest of the world. Special alliances and economic rivalries and hostili- ties have been the prolific source in the modern world of the plans and passions that produce war. It would be an insincere as well as insecure peace that did not exclude them in definite and binding terms. The confidence with which I venture to speak for our people in these matters does not spring from our traditions merely and the well known principles of international action which we have always professed and followed. In the same sentence in which I say that the United States will enter into no special ar- rangements or understandings with particular nations let me say also that the United States is prepared to assume its full share of responsibility for the mainte- nance of the common covenants and understandings upon which peace must henceforth rest. We still read Washington's immortal warning against "entangling alliances" with full comprehension and an answering GEEAT SPEECHES 395 purpose. But only special and limited alliances en- tangle ; and we recognize and accept the duty of a new day in which we are permitted to hope for a general alliance which will avoid entanglements and clear the air of the world for common understandings and the maintenance of common rights. I have made this analysis of the international situa- tion which the war has created, not, of course, because I doubted whether the leaders of the great nations and peoples with whom we are associated were of the same mnid and entertained a like purpose, but because the air every now and again gets darkened by mists and groundless doubtings and mischievous perversions of counsel and it is necessary once and again to sweep all the irresponsible talk about peace intrigues and weakening morale and doubtful purpose on the part of those in authority utterly, and if need be uncere- moniously, aside and say things in the plainest words that can be found, even when it is only to say over again what has been said before, quite as plainly if in less unvarnished terms. As I have said, neither I nor any other man in gov- ernmental authority created or gave form to the issues of this war. I have simply responded to them with such vision as I could command. But I have responded gladly and with a resolution that has grown warmer and more confident as the issues have grown clearer and clearer. It is now plain that they are issues which no man can pervert unless it be wilfully. I am bound to fight for them, and happy to fight for them as time and circumstance have revealed them to me as to all the world. Our enthusiasm for them grows more and more irresistible as they stand out in more and more vivid and unmistakable outline. 396 PEESIDENT WILSON'S And the forces that fight for them draw into closer and closer array, organize their millions into more and more unconquerable might, as they become more and more distinct to the thought and purpose of the peo- ples engaged. It is the peculiarity of this great war that while statesmen have seemed to cast about for definitions of their purpose and have sometimes seemed to shift their ground and their point of view, the thought of the mass of men, whom statesmen are sup- posed to instruct and lead, has grown more and more unclouded, more and more certain of what it is that they are fighting for. National purposes have fallen more and more into the background and the common purpose of enlightened mankind has taken their place. The counsels of plain men have become on all hands more simple and straightforward and more unified than the counsels of sophisticated men of affairs, who still retain the impression that they are playing a game of power and playing for high stakes. That is why I have said that this is a peoples' war, not a statesmen's. Statesmen must follow the clarified common thought or be broken. I take that to be the significance of the fact that as- semblies and associations of many kinds made up of plain workaday people have demanded, almost every time they came together, and are still demanding, that the leaders of their governments declare to them plainly what it is, exactly what it is, that they were seeking in this war, and what they think the items of the final settlement should be. They are not yet satisfied with what they have been told. They still seem to fear that they are getting what they ask for only in states- men's terms, — only in the terms of territorial arrange- ments and divisions of power, and not in terms of GREAT SPEECHES 397 broad-visioned justice and mercy and peace and the satisfaction of those deepseated longings of oppressed and distracted men and women and enslaved peoples that seem to them the only things worth fighting a war for that engulfs the world. Perhaps statesmen have not always recognized this changed aspect of the whole world of policy and action. Perhaps they have not always spoken in direct reply to the questions asked because they did not know how searching those ques- tions were and what sort of answers they demanded. But I, for one, am glad to attempt the answer again and again, in the hope that I may make it clearer and clearer that my one thought is to satisfy those who struggle in the ranks and are, perhaps above all others, entitled to a reply whose meaning no one can have any excuse for misunderstanding, if he understands the language in which it is spoken or can get someone to translate it correctly into his own. And I believe that the leaders of the governments with which we are associated will speak, as they have occasion, as plainly as I have tried to speak. I hope that they will feel free to say whether they think that I am in any degree mistaken in my interpretation of the issues in- volved or in my purpose with regard to the means by which a satisfactory settlement of those issues may be obtained. Unity of purpose and of counsel are as im- peratively necessary in this war as was unity of com- mand in the battlefield ; and with perfect unity of pur- pose and counsel will come assurance of complete vic- tory. It can be had in no other way. "Peace drives" can be effectively neutralized and silenced only by showing that every victory of the nations associated against Germany brings the nations nearer the sort of peace which will bring security and reassurance to all 398 PRESIDENT WILSON'S peoples and make the recurrence of another such strug- gle of pitiless force and bloodshed forever impossible, and that nothing else can. Germany is constantly inti- mating the "terms" she will accept; and always finds that the world does not want terms. It wishes the final triumph of justice and fair dealing. GREAT SPEECHES 399 WILSON TO ITALY "All United on World League to Keep Peace" Your Majesty and Mr. President of the Chamber : You are bestowing upon me an unprecedented honor which I accept because I believe that it is extended to me as the representative of the great people for whom I speak. And I am going to take this first oppor- tunity to say how entirely the heart of the American people has been with the great people of Italy. We have seemed, no doubt, indifferent at times, to look from a great distance, but our hearts have never been far away. All sorts of ties have long bound the people of our America to the people of Italy, and when the people of the United States, knowing this people, have witnessed its sufferings, its sacrifices, its heroic actions upon the battlefield and its heroic endurance at home — its steadfast endurance at home touching us more nearly to the quick even than its heroic action on the battlefield — we have been bound by a new tie of profound admiration. Then back of it all, and through it all, running like the golden thread that wove it together, was our knowl- edge that the people of Italy had gone into this war for the same exalted principle of right and justice that moved our own people. And so I welcome this opportunity of conveying to you the heartfelt greetings of the people of the United States. But we cannot stand in the shadow of this war with- out knowing there are things which are in some senses more difficult than those we have undertaken, because, while it is easy to speak of right and justice, it is some- times difficult to work them out in practice, and there 400 PRESIDENT WILSON'S will be required a purity of motives and disinterested- ness of object which the world has never witnessed be- fore in the councils of nations. It is for that reason that it seems to me you will forgive me if I lay some of the elements of the new situation before you for a moment. The distinguishing fact of this war is that great empires have gone to pieces. And the characteristics of those empires are that they held different peoples reluctantly together under the coercion of force and the guidance of intrigue. The great difficulty among such states as those of the Balkans has been that they were always accessible to secret influence, and they were always being pene- trated by intrigue of some sort or another; that north of them lay disturbed populations which were held together not by sympathy and friendship but by the coercive force of a military power. Now the intrigue is checked and the bands are broken, and what we are going to provide is a new cement to hold the people together. They have not been accustomed to being independent. They must now be independent. I am sure that you recognize the principle as I do — that it is not our privilege to say what sort of a govern- ment they should set up. But we are friends of those people, and it is our duty as their friends to see to it that some kind of protection is thrown around them — something supplied which will hold them together. There is only one thing that holds nations together, if you exclude force, and that is friendship and good will. The only thing that binds men together is friend- ship, and by the same token the only thing that bids nations together is friendship. Therefore, our task at GKEAT SPEECHES 401 Paris is to organize the friendship of the world — to see to it that all the moral forces that make for right and justice and liberty are united and are given a vital organization to which the peoples of the world will readily and gladly respond. In other words, our task is no less colossal than this : To set up a new international psychology; to have a new real atmosphere. I am happy to say that in my dealings with the dis- tinguished gentlemen who lead your nation, and those who lead France and England, I feel that atmosphere gathering, that desire to do justice, that desire to estab- lish friendliness, that desire to make peace rest upon right, and with this common purpose no obstacles need be formidable. The only use of an obstacle is to be overcome. All that an obstacle does with brave men is not to frighten them, but to challenge them. So that it ought to be our pride to overcome everything that stands in the way. We know that there cannot be another balance of power. That has been tried and found wanting, for the best of all reasons, that it does not stay balanced inside itself, and a weight which does not hold together cannot constitute a make-weight in the affairs of men. Therefore there must be something substituted for the balance of power, and I am happy to find every- where in the air of these great nations the conception that that thing must be a thoroughly united league of nations. What men once considered theoretical and idealistic turns out to be practical and necessary. We stand at the opening of a new age, in which a new statesman- ship will, I am confident, lift mankind to new levels of endeavor and achievements. 402 PEESIDENT WILSON'S (During his speech the President constantly was in- terrupted by outbursts of applause, and when he ended he received cheers which lasted until he passed through the exit of the building. Outside the throngs in the street took up the demonstration, which continued until the doors of the Quirinal closed behind Mr. Wilson.) GREAT SPEECHES 403 THE PRESIDENT'S PARIS SPEECH Paris, France, Dec. 14, 1918. President and Mme. Poincare gave a luncheon at the Palace de l'Elysee in honor of President and Mrs. Wil- son. President Wilson on this occasion spoke as fol- lows, in replying to an address by President Poincare : Mr. President: I am deeply indebted to you for your gracious greet- ing. It is very delightful to find myself in France and to feel the quick contact of sympathy and unaffected friendship between the representatives of the United States and the representatives of France. You have been very generous in what you were pleased to say about myself, but I feel that what I have said and what I have tried to do have been said and done only in an attempt to speak the thought of the people of the United States truly and to carry that thought out in action. From the first the thought of the people of the United States turned toward something more than the mere winning of this war. It turned to the establishment of eternal principles of right and justice. It realized that merely to win the war was not enough ; that it must be won in such a way and the questions raised by it settled in such a way as to insure the future peace of the world and lay the foundations for the freedom and happiness of its many peoples and nations. Never before has war worn so terrible a visage or exhibited more grossly the debasing influence of illicit ambitions. I am sure that I shall look upon the ruin wrought by the armies of the central empires with the same repulsion and deep indignation that they stir in 404 PRESIDENT WILSON'S the hearts of the men of France and Belgium and I ap- preciate as you do, sir, the necessity of such action in the final settlement of the issues of the war as not only will rebuke such acts of terror and spoliation, but make men everywhere aware that they cannot be ven- tured upon without the certainty of just punishment. I know with what ardor and enthusiasm the soldiers and sailors of the United States have given the best that was in them in this war of redemption. They have expressed the true spirit of America. They be- lieve their ideals to be acceptable to free peoples every- where and are rejoiced to have played the part they have played in giving reality to those ideals in co-oper- ation with the armies of the allies. We are proud of the part they have played and we are happy that they should have been associated with such comrades in a common cause. It will daily be a matter of pleasure with me to be myself in France, joining with you in rejoicing over the victory that has been won. The ties that bind France and the United States are peculiarly close. I do not know in what other comradeship we could have fought with more zest or enthusiasm. It will daily be a matter of pleasrue with me to be brought into consultation with the statesmen of France and her allies in concerting the measures by which we may secure permanence for these happy relations of friendship and co-operation and secure for the world at large such safety and freedom in its life as can be secured only by the constant association and co-opera- tion of friends. I greet you, not only with deep personal respect, but as the representative of the great people of France, and beg to bring you the greetings of another great GREAT SPEECHES 405 people to whom the fortunes of France are of profound and lasting interest. I raise my glass to the health of the president of the French republic and to Mme. Poineare and the prosper- ity of France. In his address to President Wilson, President Poin- eare said : Mr. President : Paris and France awaited you with impatience. They were eager to acclaim in you the illustrious democrat whose words and deeds were inspired by exalted thought, the philosopher delighting in the solution of universal laws from particular events, the eminent statesman who had found a way to express the highest political and moral truths in formulas, which bear the stamp of immortality. They had also a passionate desire to offer thanks, in your person, to the great republic of which you are the chief, for the invaluable assistance which had been given spontaneously, during this war, to the defenders of right and liberty. Even before America had resolved to intervene in the struggle she had shown for the wounded and or- phans of France a solicitude and a generosity the mem- ory of which will always be enshrined in our hearts. The liberality of your Red Cross, the countless gifts of your fellow citizens, the inspiring initiative of Amer- ican women, anticipated your military and naval ac- tion and showed the world to which side your sympa- thies inclined. And, on the day when you flung your- selves into the battle, with what determination your great people and yourself prepared for united success. Some months ago you cabled to me that the United States would send ever increasing forces until the day 406 PEESIDENT WILSON'S should be reached on which the allies' armies were able to submerge the enemy under an overwhelming flow of new divisions and in effect for more than a year a steady stream of youth and energy has been poured out upon the shores of Prance. No sooner had they landed than your gallant bat- talions, fired by their chief, General Pershing, flung themselves into the combat with such a manly con- tempt of danger, such a smiling disregard of death, that our longer experience of this terrible war often moved us to counsel prudence. They brought with them, in arriving here, the enthusiasm of crusaders leaving for the holy land. It is their right today to look with pride upon the work accomplished and to feel assured that they have powerfully aided by their courage and their faith. Eager as they were to meet the enemy, they did not know when they arrived the enormity of his crimes. That they might know how the German armies make war it has been necessary that they see towns sys- tematically burned down, mines flooded, factories re- duced to ashes, orchards devastated, cathedrals shelled and fired — all that deliberated savagery aimed to de- stroy national wealth, nature and beauty, which the imagination could not conceive at a distance from the men and things that have endured it and today bear witness to it. You, Mr. President, will be able to measure with your own eyes the extent of the disasters, and the French government will make known to you the authentic doc- uments in which the German general staff developed with astounding cynicism its program of pillage and industrial annihilation. Your noble conscience will pronounce a verdict on these facts. GEEAT SPEECHES 407 Should this guilt remain unpunished, could it be re- newed, the most splendid victories would be in vain. Mr. President, France has struggled, has endured and has suffered during four long years; she has bled at every vein; she has lost the best of her children; she mourns for her youths. She yearns now, even as you do, for a peace of justice and security. It was not that she might be exposed once again to aggression that she submitted to such sacrifices. Nor was it in order that criminals should go unpunished, that they might lift their heads again to make ready for new crimes, that under your strong leadership America armed herself and crossed the ocean. Faithful to the memory of Lafayette and Rocham- beau, she came to the aid of France because France herself was faithful to her traditions. Our common ideal has triumphed. Together we have defended the vital principles of free nations. Now we must build together such a peace as will forbid the deliberate and hypocritical renewing of an organism aiming at conquest and oppression. Peace must make amends for the misery and sadness of yesterday and it must be a guaranty against the dangers of tomorrow. The association which has been formed for the purpose of war between the United States and the allies, and which contains the seed of the permanent institutions of which you have spoken so eloquently, will find from this day forward a clear and profitable employment in the concerted search for equitable decisions, and in the mutual support which we need if we are to make our rights prevail. Whatever safeguards we may erect for the future no one, alas, can assert that we shall forever spare to mankind the horrors of new wars. Five years ago the 408 PRESIDENT WILSON'S progress of science and the state of civilization might have permitted the hope that no government, however autocratic, would have succeeded in hurling armed nations upon Belgium and Serbia. Without lending ourselves to the illusion that pos- terity will be forever more safe from these collective follies, we must introduce into the peace we are going to build up all the conditions of justice and all the safeguards of civilization that we can put in it. To such a vast and magnificent task, Mr. President, you have chosen to come and apply yourself in concert with France. France offers you her thanks. She knows the friendship of America. She knows your rectitude and elevation of spirit. It is in the fullest confidence that she is ready to work with you. I lift my glass, Mr. President, in your honor and in honor of Mrs. Wilson. I drink to the prosperity of the republic of the United States, our great friend of yes- terday and of other days, of tomorrow and of all time ! GREAT SPEECHES 409 PRESIDENT IN ADDRESS TO TROOPS AT CHAUMONT PRAISES WORK Chaumont, France, Dec. 25, 1918. President Wilson in addressing the American soldiers today said that he did not find in the hearts of the great leaders with whom he was co-operating any difference of principle or of fundamental purpose. President Wil- son said: General Pershing and Fellow Comrades : I wish that I could give to each one of you the message that I know you are longing to receive from those at home who love you. I cannot do that, but I can tell you how every one has put his heart into it. So you have done your duty and something more. You have done your duty and you have done it with a spirit which gave it distinction and glory. And now we are to hail the fruits of everything. You conquered, when you came over, what you came over for and you have done what it was appointed for you to do. I know what you expected of me. Some time ago a gentleman from one of the coun- tries with which we are associated was discussing with me the moral aspects of this war, and I said that if we did not insist upon the high purpose which we have accomplished the end would not be justified. Everybody at home is proud of you and has followed every movement of this great army with confidence and affection. The whole people of the United States are now wait- ing to welcome you home with an acclaim which prob- ably has never greeted any other army, because our 410 PRESIDENT WILSON'S country is like this country, we have been so proud of the stand taken, of the purpose for which this war was entered by the United States. You knew what we expected of you, and you did it. I know what you and the people at home expected of me; and I am happy to say, my fellow countrymen, that I do not find in the hearts of the great leaders with whom it is my privilege now to co-operate any difference of principle or of fundamental purpose. It happened that it was the privilege of America to present the chart for peace, and now the process of settlement has been made comparatively simple by the fact that all the nations concerned have accepted that chart, and the application of these principles laid down there will be their application. The world will now know that the nations that fought this war, as well as the soldiers who represented them, are ready to make good, make good not only in the as- sertion of their own interests, but make good in the establishment of peace upon the permanent foundation of right and of justice. Because this is not a war in which the soldiers of the free nations have obeyed masters. You have com- manders, but you have no masters. Your very com- manders represent you in representing the nation, of which you constitute so distinguished a part. And everybody concerned in the settlement knows that it must be a people 's peace and that nothing must be done in the settlement of the issues of the war which is not as handsome as the great achievements of the armies of the United States and the allies. It is difficult, very difficult, men, in any normal speech like this, to show you my real heart. You men probably do not realize with what anxious attention GREAT SPEECHES 411 and care we have followed every step you have ad- vanced and how proud we are that every step was in advance and not in retreat; that every time you set your face in any direction you kept your face in that direction. A thrill has gone through my heart as it has gone through the hearts of every American, with almost every gun that was fired and every stroke that was struck in the gallant fighting that you have done, and there has been only one regret in America, and that was the regret that every man there felt that he was not over there in France, too. It has been a hard thing to perform the tasks in the United States ; it has been a hard thing to take part in directing what you did without coming over and help- ing you to do it. It has taken a lot of moral courage to stay at home. But we are proud to back you up everywhere that it was possible to back you up. And now I am happy to find what splendid names you have made for your- self among the civilian population of Prance as well as among your comrades in the armies of the French, and it is a fine testimony to you men that these people like you and love you and trust you, and the finest part of it all is that you deserve their trust. I feel a comradeship with you today which is delight- ful, as I look down upon these undisturbed fields and think of the terrible scenes through which you have gone and realize how the quiet of peace, the tran- quillity of settled hopes has descended upon us. And, while it is hard far away from home confidently to bid you a merry Christmas, I can, I think, confidently promise you a happy New Year, and I can from the bot- tom of my heart say God bless you. 412 PEESIDENT WILSON'S PRESIDENT WILSON'S LONDON SPEECH London, Dec. 28, 1918. Mr. Lord Mayor: We have come upon times when ceremonies like this have a new significance which most profoundly im- presses me as I stand here. The address which I have just heard is most generously and graciously conceived, and the delightful accent of sincerity in it seems like a part of that voice of counsel which is now every- where to be heard. I feel that a distinguished honor has been conferred upon me by this reception, and I beg to assure you, sir, and your associates, of my very profound apprecia- tion, but I know that I am only a part of what I may call a great body of circumstances. I do not believe that it was fancy on my part that I heard in the voice of welcome uttered in the streets of this great city and in the streets of Paris something more than a personal welcome. It seemed to me that I heard the voice of one people speaking to another people, and it was a voice in which one could distin- guish a singular combination of emotions. There was surely there the deep gratefulness that the fighting was over. There was the pride that the fighting had had such a culmination. There was that sort of gratitude that the nation engaged had produced such men as the soldiers of Great Britain and of the United States and of France and of Italy — men whose prowess and achievements they had witnessed with ris- ing admiration as they moved from culmination to culmination. GREAT SPEECHES 413 But there was something more in it — the conscious- ness that the business is not yet done, the consciousness that it now rests upon others to see that those lives were not lost in vain. I have not yet been to the actual battlefield, but I have been with many of the men who have fought the battles, and the other day I had the pleasure of being present at a session of the French Academy when they admitted Marshal Joffre to their membership. That sturdy, serene soldier stood and uttered, not the words of triumph, but summed up in a sentence which I will not try accurately to quote, but reproduce in spirit. It was that France must always remember that the small and the weak could never live free in the world unless the strong and the great always put their power and their strength in the service of right. That is the afterthought — the thought that some- thing must be done now; not only to make the just settlements — that of course — but to see that the set- tlements remained and were observed and that honor and justice prevails in the world. And as I have conversed with the soldiers I have been more and more aware that they fought for some- thing that not all of them had defined, but which all of them recognized the moment you stated it to them. They fought to do away with an old order and to establish a new one, and the center and characteristic of the old order was that unstable thing which we used to call the "balance of power," a thing in which the balance was determined by the sword which was thrown in on the one side or the other, a balance which was determined by the unstable equilibrium of com- petitive interests, a balance which was maintained by jealous watchfulness and an antagonism of interests 414 PEESIDENT WILSON'S which, though it was generally latent, was always deep seated. The men who have fought in this war have been the men from the free nations who are determined that that sort of thing should end now and forever. It is very interesting to me to observe how from every quar- ter, from every sort of mind, from every concert of counsel there comes the suggestion that there must now be not a balance of power, not one powerful group of nations set up against another, but a single, over- whelming, powerful group of nations who shall be the trust of the peace of the world. It has been delightful in my conferences with the leaders of your government to find how our minds moved along exactly the same line and how our thought was always that the key to the peace was the guaran- tee of the peace, not the items of it; that the items would be worthless unless there stood back of them a permanent concert of power for their maintenance. That is the most reassuring thing that has ever hap- pened in the world. When this war began the thought of a league of na- tions was indulgently considered as the interesting thought of closeted students. It was thought of as one of those things that it was right to characterize by a name which, as a university man, I have always re- sented. It was said to be academic, as if that in itself were a condemnation — something that men could think about but never get. Now we find the practical leading minds of the world determined to get it. No such sudden and potent union of purpose has ever been witnessed in the world before. Do you won- der, therefore, gentlemen, that in common with those GREAT SPEECHES 415 who represent you I am eager to get at the business and write the sentences down? And that I am particularly happy that the ground is cleared and the foundation laid — for we have already accepted the same body of principles. Those principles are clearly and definitely enough stated to make their application a matter which should afford no fundamental difficulty. And back of us is that imperative yearning of the world to have all disturbing questions quieted, to have all threats against peace silenced, to have just men everywhere come together for a common object. The peoples of the world want peace and they want it now, not merely by conquest of arms but by agree- ment of mind. It was this incomparably great object that brought me overseas. It has never before been deemed excusable for a President of the United States to leave the territory of the United States, but I know that I have the support of the judgment of my colleagues in the government of the United States in saying that it was my paramount duty to turn away even from the imperative tasks at home to lend such counsel and aid as I could to this great, may I not say final, enterprise of humanity. Mr. Lord Mayor, Your Royal Highness, Your Grace, Ladies and Gentlemen: You have again made me feel, sir, the very wonderful and generous welcome of this great city and you have reminded me of what has perhaps become one of the habits of my life. You have said that I have broken all precedents in coming across the ocean to join in the counsels of the peace conference, but I think those who have been asso- ciated with me in Washington will testify that that is 416 PRESIDENT WILSON'S nothing surprising. I said to the members of the press in Washington one evening that one of the things that had interested me most since I lived in Washington was that every time I did anything perfectly natural it was said to be unprecedented. It was perfectly natural to break this precedent, natural because the demand for intimate conference took precedence over every other duty. And, after all, the breaking of precedents, though this may sound strange doctrine in England, is the most sensible thing to do. The harness of precedent is sometimes a very sad and harassing trammel. In this case the breaking of precedent is sensible for a reason that is very prettily illustrated in a remark attributed to Charles Lamb. One evening in a com- pany of his friends they were discussing a person who was not present and Lamb said, in his hesitating man- ner, "I h-hate that fellow." "Why, Charles," one of his friends said, "I did not know that you knew him." "Oh," he said, "I, I, I d-don't. I c-ean't h-hate a man I know." And perhaps that simple and attractive remark may furnish a secret for cordial international relationship. When we know one another we cannot hate one an- other. I have been very much interested before coming here to see what sort of a person I was expected to be. So far as I can make out, I was expected to be a perfectly bloodless thinking machine, whereas I am perfectly aware that I have in me all the insurgent elements of the human race. I am sometimes, by reason of long Scotch tradition, able to keep these instincts in re- straint. The stern covenanter tradition that is behind me sends many an echo down the years. It is not only GREAT SPEECHES 417 diligently to pursue business, but also to seek this sort of comradeship, that I feel it is a privilege to have come across the seas and, in the welcome that you have accorded Mrs. Wilson and me, you have made us feel that companionship was accessible to us in the most delightful and enjoyable form. I thank you sincerely for this welcome, sir, and am very happy to join in a love feast which is all the more enjoyable because there is behind it a background of tragical suffering. Our spirits are released from the darkness of the clouds that at one time seemed to have settled upon the world in a way that could not be dis- persed, the sufferings of your own people, the suffering of the people of Prance, and the infinite suffering of the people of Belgium. The whisper of grief that has been blown all through the world is now silent and the sun of hope seems to spread its rays and to change the earth with a new prospect of happiness. So, our joy is all the more elevated because we know that our spirits are now lifted out of that valley. 418 PEESIDENT WILSON'S LEAGUE OR REBELLION, WILSON WARNS Governor Coolidge, Mr. Mayor, Fellow Citizens : I wonder if you are half as glad to see me as I am to see you. It warms my heart to see a great body of my fellow citizens again, because in some respects during the recent months I have been very lonely indeed with- out your comradeship and counsel, and I tried at every step of the work which fell to me to recall what I was sure would be your counsel with regard to the great matters which were under consideration. I do not want you to think that I have not been ap- preciative of the extraordinarily generous reception which was given to me on the other side in saying that it makes me very happy to get home again. I do not mean to say that I was not very deeply touched by the cries that came from the great crowds on the other side. But I want to say to you in all honesty that I felt them to be a call of greeting to you rather than to me. I did not feel that the greeting was personal. I had in my heart the overcrowning pride of being your repre- sentative and of receiving the plaudits of men every- where who felt that your hearts beat with theirs in the cause of liberty. There was no mistaking the tone in the voices of those great crowds. It was not a tone of mere greet- ing; it was not a tone of mere generous welcome — it was the calling of comrade to comrade, the cries that come from men who say: "We have waited for this day when the friends of liberty should come across the sea and shake hands with us, to see that a new world GKEAT SPEECHES 419 was constructed upon a new basis and foundation of justice and right." I can't tell you the inspiration that came from the sentiments that came out of those simple voices of the crowd. And the proudest thing I have to report to you is that this great country of ours is trusted throughout the world. I have not come to report the proceedings or the results of the proceedings of the peace conference — that would be premature. I can say that I have received very happy impres- sions from this conference, the impression that while there are many differences of judgment, while there are some divergencies of object, there is nevertheless a com- mon spirit and a common realization of the necessity of setting up new standards of right in the world. Because the men who are in conference in Paris real- ize as keenly as any American can realize that they are not the masters of their people ; that they are the servants of their people and that the spirit of their people has awakened to a new purpose and a new conception of their power to realize that purpose, and that no man dare go home from that conference and report anything less noble than was expected of it. The conference seems to you to go slowly ; from day to day in Paris it seems to go slowly; but I wonder if you realize the complexity of the task which it has undertaken. It seems as if the settlements of this war affect, and affect directly, every great, and I some- times think every small, nation in the world, and no one decision can prudently be made which is not prop- erly linked in with the great series of other decisions which must accompany it. And it must be reckoned in with the final result if 420 PRESIDENT WILSON'S the real quality and character of that result is to be properly judged. What we are doing is to hear the whole case; hear it from the mouths of the men most interested; hear it from those who are officially commissioned to state it; hear the rival claims, hear the claims that affect new nationalities; that affect new areas of the world; that affect new commercial and economical connec- tions that have been established by the great world war through which we have gone. And I have been struck by the moderateness of those who have represented national claims. I can testify that I have nowhere seen the gleam of passion. I have seen earnestness, I have seen tears come to the eyes of men who pleaded for downtrodden people whom they were privileged to speak for; but they were not the tears of anguish, they were the tears of ardent hope. And I don't see how any man can fail to have been subdued by these pleas, subdued to this feeling, that he was not there to assert an individual judgment of his own, but to try to assist the case of humanity. And in the midst of it all every interest seeks out first of all, when it reaches Paris, the representatives of the United States? Why? Because, and I think I am stating the most wonderful fact in history — because there is no nation in Europe that suspects the motives of the United States. "Was there ever so wonderful a thing seen before? Was there ever so moving a thing? Was there ever any fact that so bound the nation that had won that esteem forever to deserve it? I would not have you understand that the great men who represent the other nations there in conference are GEE AT SPEECHES 421 disesteemed by those who know them. Quite the con- trary. But you understand that the nations of Europe have again and again clashed with one another in competi- tive interest. It is impossible for men to forget those sharp issues that were drawn between them in times past. It is impossible for men to believe that all ambitions have all of a sudden been foregone. They remember territory that was coveted; they remember rights that it was attempted to extort; they remember political ambitions which it was attempted to realize — and, while they believe that men have come into a different temper, they cannot forget these things, and so they do not resort to one another for a dispassionate view of the matters in controversy. They resort to that nation which has won the en- viable distinction of being regarded as the friend of mankind. Whenever it is desired to send a small force of sol- diers to occupy a piece of territory where it is thought nobody else will be welcome, they ask for American soldiers. And where other soldiers would be looked upon with suspicion and perhaps met with resistance, the Amer- ican soldier is welcomed with acclaim. I have had so many grounds for pride on the other side of the water that I am very thankful that they are not grounds for personal pride. I'd be the most stuck up man in the world. And it has been an infinite pleasure to me to see those gallant soldiers of ours, of whom the Constitution of the United States made me the proud commander. You may be proud of the 26th Division [Boston and New 422 PEESIDENT WILSON'S England troops], but I commanded the 26th Division, and see what they did under my direction ! And every- body praises the American soldier with the feeling that in praising him he is subtracting from the credit of no one else. I have been searching for the fundamental fact that converted Europe to believe in us. Before this war Europe did not believe in us as she does now. She did not believe in us throughout the first three years of the war. She seems really to have believed that we were holding off because we thought we could make more by staying out than by going in. And all of a sudden, in a short eighteen months, the whole verdict is reversed. There can be but one ex- planation for it. They saw what we did — that without making a sin- gle claim we put all our men and all our means at the disposal of those who were fighting for their homes, in the first instance, but for a cause, the cause of human rights and justice, and that we went in, not to support their national claims, but to support the great cause which they held in common. And when they saw that America not only held ideals, but acted ideals, they were converted to America and became firm partisans of those ideals. I met a group of scholars when I was in Paris — some gentlemen from one of the Greek universities who had come to see me, and in whose presence, or, rather, in the presence of whose traditions of learning, I felt very young indeed. I told them that I had one of the delightful revenges that sometimes come to a man. All my life I had heard men speak with a sort of condescension of ideals and of idealists, and particularly GREAT SPEECHES 423 those separated, cloistered persons whom they choose to term academic, who were in the habit of uttering ideals in the free atmosphere when they clash with no- body in particular. And, I said, I have had this sweet revenge. Speaking with perfect frankness in the name of the people of the United States, I have uttered as the objects of this great war ideals, and nothing but ideals, and the war has been won by that inspiration. Men were fighting with tense muscle and lowered head until they came to realize those things, feeling they were fighting for their lives and their country, and when these accents of what it was all about reached them from America they lifted their heads, they raised their eyes to heaven, when they saw men in khaki com- ing across the sea in the spirit of crusaders, and they found that these were strange men, reckless of danger not only, but reckless because they seemed to see some- thing that made danger worth while. Men have testified to me in Europe that our men were possessed by something that they could only call a religious fervor. They were not like any of the other soldiers. They had a vision, they had a dream, and they were fighting in the dream, and, fighting in the dream, they turned the whole tide of battle, and it never came back. One of our American humorists, meeting the criti- cism that American soldiers were not trained long enough, said: ''It takes only half as long to train an American soldier as any other, because you only have to train him one way " ; and he did only go one way, and he never came back until he could do it when he pleased. And now do you realize that this confidence we have 424 PRESIDENT WILSON'S established throughout the world imposes a burden upon us — if you choose to call it a burden? It is one of those burdens which any nation ought to be proud to carry. Any man who resists the present tides that run in the world will find himself thrown upon a shore so high and barren that it will seem as if he had been separated from his human kind forever. The Europe I left the other day was full of some- thing that it had never felt fill its heart so full before. It was full of hope. The Europe of the second year of the war, the Eu- rope of the third year of the war, was sinking to a sort of stubborn desperation. They did not see any great thing to be achieved even when the war should be won. They hoped there would be some salvage; they hoped that they could clear their territories of invading armies ; they hoped they could set up their homes and start their industries afresh. But they thought it would simply be the resumption of the old life that Europe had led — led in fear, led in anxiety, led in constant sus- picious watchfulness. They never dreamed that it would be a Europe of settled peace and of justified hope. And now these ideals have wrought this new magic, that all the peoples of Europe are buoyed up and con- fident in the spirit of hope, because they believe that we are at the eve of a new age in the world when na- tions will understand one another, when nations will support one another in every just cause, when nations will unite every moral and every physical strength to see that the right shall prevail. If America were at this juncture to fail the world, what would come of it? I do not mean any disrespect GKEAT SPEECHES 425 to any other great people when I say that America is the hope of the world ; and if she does not justify that hope the results are unthinkable. Men will be thrown back upon the bitterness of disappointment not only, but the bitterness of despair. All nations will be set up as hostile camps again; the men at the peace con- ference will go home with their heads upon their breasts, knowing that they have failed — for they were bidden not to come home from there until they did something more than sign a treaty of peace. Suppose we sign the treaty of peace and that it is the most satisfactory treaty of peace that the confusing elements of the modern world will afford and go home and think about our labors ; we will know that we have left written upon the historic table at Versailles, upon which Vergennes and Benjamin Franklin wrote their names, nothing but a modern scrap of paper; no na- tions united to defend it, no great forces combined to make it good, no assurance given to the downtrodden and fearful people of the world that they shall be safe. Any man who thinks that America will take part in giving the world any such rebuff and disappointment as that does not know America. I invite him to test the sentiments of the nation. "We set this up to make men free and we did not confine our conception and purpose to America and now we will make men free. If we did not do that the fame of America would be gone and all her powers would be dissipated. She then would have to keep her power for those narrow, selfish, provincial purposes which seem so dear to some minds that have no sweep beyond the nearest horizon. I should welcome no sweeter challenge than that. I have fighting blood in me and it is sometimes a delight 426 PRESIDENT WILSON'S to let it have scope, but if it is a challenge on this oc- casion it will be an indulgence. Think of the picture, think of the utter blackness that would fall on the world. America has failed! America made a little essay at generosity and then withdrew. America said : ' ' We are your friends, ' ' but it was only for today, not for tomorrow. America said: "Here is our power to vindicate right" and then the next day said : ' ' Let right take care of itself and we will take care of ourselves." America said: "We set up a light to lead men along the paths of liberty, but we have lowered it. It is intended only to light our own path." We set up a great ideal of liberty and then was said: "Liberty is a thing that you must win for yourself. Do not call upon us," and think of the world that we would leave. Do you realize how many new nations are going to be set up in the presence of old and powerful nations in Europe and left there, if left by us, without a disinter- ested friend ? Do you believe in the Polish cause, as I do ? Are you going to set up Poland, immature, inexperienced, as yet unorganized, and leave her with a circle of armies around her? Do you believe in the aspiration of the Czecho-Slovaks and the Jugo-Slavs as I do? Do you know how many powers would be quick to pounce upon them if there were not the guarantees of the world be- hind their liberty? Have you thought of the suffering of Armenia ? You poured out your money to help succor the Armenians after they suffered, now set your strength so that they shall never suffer again. The arrangements of the present peace cannot stand GREAT SPEECHES 427 a generation unless they are guaranteed by the united forces of the civilized world. And if we do not guar- antee them, cannot you not see the picture? Your hearts have instructed you where the burden of this war fell. It did not fall upon the national treasuries, it did not fall upon the instruments of administration, it did not fall upon the resources of the nations. It fell upon the victims' homes everywhere, where women were toiling in hope that their men would come back. When I think of the homes upon which dull despair would settle were this great hope disappointed, I should wish for my part never to have had America play any part whatever in this attempt to emancipate the world. But I talk as if it were any question. I have no more doubt of the verdict of America in this matter than I have doubt of the blood that is in me. And so, my fellow citizens, I have come back to re- port progress, and I do not believe that the progress is going to stop short of the goal. The nations of the world have set their heads now to do a great thing, and they are not going to slacken their purpose. And when I speak of the nations of the world I do not speak of the governments of the world. I speak of the peoples who constitute the nations of the world. They are in the saddle, and they are going to see to it that if their present governments do not do their will, some other governments shall. And the secret is out, and the present governments know it. There is a great deal of harmony to be got out of common knowledge. There is a great deal of sympathy to be got out of living in the same atmosphere, and except for the differences of languages, which puzzled my American ear very sadly, I could have believed I was at home in France or in Italy or in England when 428 PRESIDENT WILSON'S I was on the streets, when I was in the presence of the crowds, when I was in great halls where men were gathered together irrespective of class. I do not feel quite as much at home there as I do here, but I felt that now, at any rate, after this storm of war had cleared the air, men were seeing eye to eye everywhere and that these were the kind of folks who would under- stand what the kind of folks at home would understand and that they were thinking the same things. I feel about you as I am reminded of a story of that excellent wit and good artist, Oliver Herford, who one day, sitting at luncheon at his club, was slapped vigor- ously on the back by a man whom he did not know very well. He said : ' ' Oliver, old boy, how are you ? ' ' He looked at him rather coldly. He said: "I don't know your name, I don't know your face, but your manners are very familiar. ' ' And I must say that your manners are very familiar, and, let me add, very de- lightful. It is a great comfort for one thing to realize that you all understand the language I am speaking. A friend of mine said that to talk through an interpreter was like witnessing the compound fracture of an idea. But the beauty of it is that, whatever the impediments of the channel of communication, the idea is the same ; that it gets registered, and it gets registered in respon- sive hearts and receptive purposes. I have come back for a strenuous attempt to transact business for a little while in America, but I have really come back to say to you in all soberness and honesty, that I have been trying my best to speak your thoughts. When I sample myself I think I find that I am a typical American, and if I sample deep enough and get down to what is probably the true stuff of a man, then GREAT SPEECHES 429 I have hope that it is part of the stuff that is like the other fellows at home. And, therefore, probing deep in my heart and trying to see the things that are right without regard to the things that may be debated as expedient, I feel that I am interpreting the purpose and the thought of Amer- ica, and in loving America I find I have joined the great majority of my fellow men throughout the world. TO THE NEW ARMY Message of President Wilson to Men Called to Nation's Service "The White House, Washington, D. C, Sept. 3, 1917. ' * To the Soldiers of the National Army : 1 ' Yon are undertaking a great duty. The heart of the whole country is with you. Everything that you do will be watched with the deepest interest and with the deepest solicitude not only by those who are near and dear to you, but by the whole nation besides. For this great war draws us all together, makes us all comrades and brothers, as all true Americans felt themselves to be when we first made good our national independence. The eyes of all the world will be upon you, because you are in some special sense the soldiers of freedom. Let it be your pride, therefore, to show all men everywhere not only what good soldiers you are, but also what good men you are, keeping yourselves fit and straight in everything and pure and clean through and through. Let us set for ourselves a standard so high that it will be a glory to live up to it and add a new laurel to the crown of America. My affectionate confidence goes with you in every battle and every test. God keep you and guide you ! "Woodrow Wilson." Autographs of Members of the House of Representatives. ALABAMA (£%&4L^Ui ^S&rOutj & ARIZONA Oa£ den ARKANSAS M •KStiL^. CALIFORNU [J «S& FLORIDA V.ATft&d IDAHO % £%&ck~j&%!Ujrf AC<..4.4. ^T%**^ ILLINOIS ^Pf -ft . f Vv^^UJbu r tt^fCHiS&Zr: faL^^tl^^ IOWA v-Hy^ KANSAS. SW& V^«i*x>-*- /CO C( '^Out^^j, KENTUCKY €*zz£4 LOUISIANA MARYLAND CM^o MASSACHUSETTS. tftfrffl^ 7^ t'-O MISSISSIPPI. i^X^^^-^r^>^ '/- MICHIGAN \ ?y. 7y £J^ nRR nmsr PENNSYLVANIA. Matte*** tuJr.fetz. JflJk^; IA**7 A JC?J^„ •0*sZ-> *>r\ -^cLJC^ PENNSYLVANIA, CONT'D RHODE ISLAND. SOUTH CAROLINA. v SOUTH DAKOTA i_^^H~i^^^n^. y>ftiV£i**^!L/ Qfufrr&L4 J{ TENNESSEE. VUMOUiS /^J TEXAS. U£0brtj,J[(/ $J^^^k3>. .7?, - WASHINGTON. UTAH VIRGINIA. e a< ^— ^ f <*£^£^^£^ ^^-y J, UT. jjawsx XfJfa Ok WEST VIRGINIA. 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