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PRESIDENT WILSON’S
STATE PAPERS
AND ADDRESSES

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WITH EDITORIAL NOTES
A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
AN INTRODUCTION AND
AN ANALYTICAL INDEX

NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
BSY33¥

COPYRIGHT 1917
By THE REVIEW OF REVIEWS CO.

COPYRIGHT 1918
By THE REVIEW OF REVIEWS CO.

First Edition, June, 1918

| Second Edition, October, 1918

Printed in the United States of America

 
INTRODUCTION

Under our form of government, the President occupies
a place that has no exact parallel in the government of any
other important country. In the last analysis we are gov-
erned by public opinion, of which the President is chief
exponent. He is the country’s spokesman, not merely by
custom but by express Constitutional provision and man-
date. He is directed to inform Congress from time to time
concerning the vital interests of the United States. He is
also made the spokesman of the country in its dealings with
foreign governments.

The President’s Messages to Congress are not merely a
form of communication between the executive and the law-
making authority, but they are intended to give information
and guidance to the citizenship. Thus we have a surprising
quantity of important historical and governmental material
of an authoritative kind in the unbroken series of Presiden-
tial messages and addresses, beginning with the first in-
augural of George Washington and coming down to the
latest official utterance of Woodrow Wilson.

All of our Presidents have been fully responsive to the
duty of giving information to Congress and the country
concerning the carrying-on of the government and the
public concerns of the nation. Not one of them in the
list has come seriously short in this regard, although
some of them have been more conspicuous than others in
point of literary or oratorical ability.

Perhaps no other President has, relatively speaking,
accomplished as much of his work through the successful
Introduction

use of written and spoken appeals to Congress, to American
citizens, and to the public opinion of the world, as has
Woodrow Wilson. His utterances have shaped events, not
only in the current sense but in the larger aspects of his-
tory. His Messages to Congress have been unusual in their
frequency, vital in their relation to policies, and notable
in the fact that he has appeared in person to present them.
All of these Messages are published in this little volume.

Besides these Messages to Congress, however, he has
made many important addresses of a semi-official nature
since assuming the Presidency, while he has been the author
of a series of diplomatic notes and of proclamations relating
to international affairs that constitute state papers of the
highest significance. These documents also are included
in the present volume, together with much material of
Presidential authorship relating to the conduct of the war
and to the policies of the Government.

The remarkable literary quality of Mr. Wilson’s ad-
dresses is only eclipsed by their statesmanlike character in
relation to public affairs of great moment. His sentences
and paragraphs, in their discussion of world affairs, have
helped to crystallize the vague longings of right-thinking
men in all nations into something like definite policies for
permanent peace on the basis of democracy and interna-
tional justice. This collection of state papers and Presi-
dential utterances is not, therefore, of transitory interest
and importance, but of permanent value; and it ought to
be in the home and at the hand of every intelligent citizen.

ALBERT SuHaw.
CONTENTS

Biographical Sketch of Woodrow Wilson
First Inaugural Address (March 4, 1913)

Special Message to Congress, wane Tariff Revi-
sion (April 8, 1913) ‘ ;

Statement Regarding “Lobby” Influences on Tariff
Legislation (May 26, 1913) . ;

Special Message to Congress, Urging eee ee
lation (June 23, 19138) ;

Address at Gettysburg Reunion (July 4, gin):

Special Message to es on Mexico “—
27, 1913) ars

Address at Rededication of Giese: Holl, Phile-
delphia (October 25, 1913)

Address before Southern Consett en
Mobile, Ala. (October 27, 1913)

First Annual Message to peuee ere 2,
1918) piel aie

Special Message to Genarean on Trusts sas
Monopolies (January 20, 1914)

Proclamations Concerning Shipment of Arms into
Mexico (February 3, 1914, and October 19, 1915)

Special Message to Congress, Urging Repeal of Free-
Tolls Provision for American Ships at Panama
(March 5, 1914)

Special Message to Congress, on the Tampico Inci-
dent (April 20, 1914)

Instruction to Attorney-General to Sue for Dissolu-
tion of New Haven Railroad ea oes
21, 1914) 5

PAGE
xi

10
14

18

27

82

37

47

55

57

59

63
CON TENTS— (Continued)

Special Message to Congress, Urging Additional
Revenue (September 4, 1914)

Second Annual Message to be die (Decenber

8, 1914)
Address at aie Sai, on Sagiecs Day c anuary
8, 1915)

Immigration Bill Veto: First ovine 28, 1918)

Address before American Electric Railway Associa-
tion, Washington (January 29, 1915)

Address before United States Chamber of sissies
Washington (February 38,1915) . . «©

Address at Associated Press ee New York
(April 20, 1915) ‘

Address at Naturalization coe: Philadelphia
(May 10, 1915) ‘ 2

Address at Pan-American Financial Cee.
Washington (May 24,1915) . ‘

Address to Daughters of the American Revolution,
Washington (October 11, 1915) :

Address at Manhattan Club, New York, on National
Defense Program (November 4, 1915)

Third Annual Deere to soley Meee 7,
1915) :

Addresses on ec mnwee for National Haber,
New York and Middle West ee 27 to
February 3, 1916) ‘

The European War: Diplomatic ito ete.
Note to Belligerents, Suggesting Observance of
Declaration of London (August 6, 1914)
Urging Neutrality on American People (August
19, 1914)
Warning Germany Against Submarine “War Zone”
Policy (February 10,1915) . . . .

PAGE

' 64

67

80
94

97

1038

108

114

119

122

126

133

155

215
217

220
CONTENTS—(Continued)

Protesting Against British Use of American Flag
(February 10, 1915) .

Identic Note to Great Britain aun Gensany, 'Pro-
posing Solution of Blockade and Submarine
Controversy (February 20,1915) .

Pointing Out Irregularities in British and French
Blockade of Germany (March 5, 1915) ‘

Denouncing British Blockade as Tegal (October
21,1915) . .

First Tasitania’ Note to Came (May 13,
1915).

Second and Third “Tristhanta”” Notes (june 9,
1915, and July 21, 1915)

Note to Austria, on the “Ancona” Sinking ( Decem-
ber 6, 1916) :

Note to Geemany; on the ‘ ‘Sussex” Affair (April
18, 1916)

Special Message to Consens on " the “Sussex”
Affair (April 19, 1916) . .

Accepting German Agreement to Modify Sub-
marine War Against Merchant nee ae 8,
1916) i

Address before League to Enforce » Peace Washing
ton (May 27, 1916)

Address before Press Club, New York (Sune 30,
1916)

Address at Sslesmanship Congress ‘Seusett (aly
10, 1916)

Address at Citizenship Convention, Washington ay
13, 1916) ‘

Special Message to Congress, on Threatened Railroad
Strike (August 29, 1916) ‘

Address Accepting Renomination, Long Branch ( Sep.
tember 2, 1916) ,

Address on Lincoln, agen Ky. (September 4 4,
1916) ‘

PAGE

223

225

227

229

239

244

254

257

262

269

271

276

279

290

294

302

319
CONTENTS—( Continued)

Address at Woman Suffrage Convention, Atlantic
City, N. J. (September 8, 1916) . oS

Address before Grain Dealers’ Association, Baltimore
(September 25, 1916)

Fourth Annual ae to sad aa 5,
1916) :

Note to Belligerents, Seeding dink eae Terms
Be Stated (December 18,1916) . . . «

Address before United States Senate, on Essential
Terms of Peace in Europe (January 22, 1917)

Immigration Bill Veto: Second (January 29, 1917)

Special Message to Congress, Announcing Sever-
ance of Diplomatic Relations with ne
(February 3, 1917)

Special Message to Congress, Requesting esteetes
to Arm Merchant Ships (February 26, 1917)

Second Inaugural Address (March 5, 1917)

Special Message to Congress, Advising that Ger-
many’s Course Be Declared War Against United
States (April 2, 1917) . am Ks

Proclamation of State of War and of Alien a
Regulations (April 6, 1917 i

Proclamation on Ways to Serve the Nation Beane
War (April 16, 1917)

Address at Dedication of Red Cross Building Wash-
ington (May 12, 1917)

Proclamation of Selective Draft Act (May 18, ‘ary

Outline of Food Administration eee — 19,
1917) a ‘

Embargo Proclamations (J wile -August, 1917 )

Message to the Russian Provisional Government
(May 26,1917) . . . .

PAGE

823

327

837

343

348
356

358

363

368

372

383

387

392
395

399
403

405
CONTENTS— (Continued)

Address to Confederate eee eee wie
5, 1917)
Flag Day Address, Washington bitte 14, 1917)

Message of Greeting to France, on Bastile ee
(July 14, 1917) a

Address of Welcome to the Special asses febin
Japan, Viscount Ishii (August 28, 1917)

Message to the Russian National Council, at Moscow
(August 27, 1917) :

Reply to Pope Benedict’s Peace Proposal (August
27, 1917)

Announcement of the Price to ‘be "Paid ig Wheat
(August 30, 1917)

Message to the National Army ee 3, 1917)

Appeal to School Children to Codperate with Red
Cross (September 15, 1917) .

Appointment of Commission to Adjust Labor Dis-
putes (September 19, 1917) . 8
Statement Commending Work of Congress (October

6, 1917)

Proclamation Designating a “Liberty Loan” Day
(October 12, 1917) ‘ ;

Messages to Brazil (Octétien Ravenibiens 3 1917 5

Thanksgiving Proclamation (November 7, 1917)

Address before American Federation of Labor, Buf-
falo (November 12, 1917) 5

Fifth Annual Message to Congress (December a,
1917) 5 e

Proclamation Placing pidlieiaits under Cawectinadet
Control (December 26, 1917)

Address to Congress, on Government Administration
of Railroads ((January 4, 1918)

PAGE

408
411

419

419

420

421

424
426

427

428

429

430
432
433

434

443

455

459
: CONTENTS—(Continued)

Address to Congress, Stating War Aims and Peace
Terms of United States (January 8, 1918) .-

Address to Congress, Analyzing German and Austrian
Peace Utterances (February 11, 1918) .

Address at Baltimore, Condemning German Peace
Treaties (April 6, 1918)

Letter That Ended a ee Strike ( February ",

1918)
Address Opening aipaten for ae “Red Guang
Fund, New York (May 18,1918) . . .

Message to the Italian People (May 28, 1918)
Address to Congress, on the Need for Additional
Revenue (May 27, 1918)

Address at Mount Vernon, on War Objects of Asie
ciated Peoples of the World (July 4, 1918)

An Independence Day Message (July 4, 1918) .

Proclamation Placing Telegraph and Telephone Sys-
tems Under Government Control (July 22, 1918)

Denunciation of Lynchings (July 26, 1918)

Appeal to Persons Engaged in Coal Mining, for In-
creased Output (August 9, 1918), :

Proclamation of New Selective Draft Act cone
31, 1918) j

Labor Day Message tedhens 2, 1918)

Letter That Ended a Machinists’ Strike aaa
18, 1918)

Proclamation Forbidding Use of Foodstuffs in Bia
duction of Malt Liquors (September 16, 1918)

Endorsement of Fourth Liberty Loan (October, 1918)

Address Opening Campaign for Fourth Liberty oe
New York (September 27, 1918) a

Index 7
Notable Phrases ae Woodrow Wilson

x

PAGE

464

AT2

479

484

486
491

492

497
502

503
506

508

510
512

515

517
519
520

529
537
CAREER OF WOODROW WILSON

TweENTY-EIGHTH PRESIDENT oF THE UNitTep States
[Vice-President, two terms, Thomas R. Marshall]

The return of the Democratic party to power was made
certain by the feeling of the country that the Payne-Aldrich
tariff, enacted by the Republicans early in Mr. Taft’s term,
did not properly meet the pledge that the tariff should be
thoroughly revised and substantially reduced by those re-
sponsible for the protective policy. In 1910, the Demo-
crats elected a majority of the new Congress. In 1912,
they carried the Presidential election as well as the Con-
gressional. For the first time, the plan of popular pri-
maries was used by the parties in the selection of can-
didates.

The Democratic primaries showed Champ Clark
(Speaker of the House) to be a plurality favorite, while
the Republican primaries showed a clear preference for
Theodore Roosevelt. But the effort to secure a second term
for Taft gave him control of the Republican convention at
Chicago, with the result that the larger half of the Repub-
lican party supported Roosevelt on a separate ticket. Wood-
row Wilson, Governor of New Jersey, had been a prom-
inent Democratic candidate, and through the influence of
Mr. Bryan, Wilson prevailed over Clark in the Democratic
convention at Baltimore. Apart from the fact that it was
logically a Democratic year, the split in the Republican
party made Democratic victory quite inevitable.

Woodrow Wilson had not been in active politics, but he
had long been a distinguished citizen and an eminent au-
thority in the field of American history, government, and
public policy.’ From his youth he had excelled in oratory,
and his life study had been in the fields of jurisprudence

xi
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Paper:
°

and politics. After graduation from Princeton in 1879,
he had studied law at the University of Virginia and had
for a short time practiced law at Atlanta, Ga. His birth-
place was Staunton, Va., and his boyhood had been spent
in the States farther south. In 1883 he had entered upon
special studies at Johns Hopkins University, where in 1886
he received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

He had not only obtained recognition at that time as
an accomplished student in history, economics, and the
science of government, but he bad completed what has al-
ways held place as a very notable book, entitled ‘“Con-
gressional Government,” which deals with the American na-
tional system in contrast with the British. After some
years of teaching elsewhere, Wilson returned to Princeton
as professor, and in due time became president of that in-
stitution, having devoted himself constantly to work in the
field of American history, comparative politics, and the
principles of constitutional law and government.

The headship of an American educational institution is
analagous, in the character of its executive authority, to
the governorship of a State or the presidency of the Union.
In 1910 he was made Governor of the State of New Jersey,
and at once attracted notice throughout the country as a
probable President of the United States. He was still
Governor when elected to the Presidency.

Wilson’s first term was notable for the vigor and success
with which he led his party in the revision of the tariff,
the important reconstruction of the country’s banking and
currency system, and in various other policies which were
favorably received regardless of party divisions. The prin=
cipal foreign situation with which he had to deal in the
early part of his term was caused by the chaotic condition
of Mexico. Later, however, and before he had been in the
presidential chair a full year and a half, the great war in
Europe began and his attention was absorbed by the prob-
lems due to the neutral position of the United States as

xii
Career of Woodrow Wilson

among the most powerful commercial nations of the world
which were now opposing each other in two belligerent
groups.

President Wilson’s renomination, in the summer of 1916,
was unanimously accorded by the Democratic party. The
Republicans nominated Charles E. Hughes (formerly Gov-
ernor of the State of New York), who had for six years
been an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme
Court. The election was very close, and turned finally
upon the count of votes in the State of California. Mr.
Wilson’s reélection was, however, fully conceded by his
opponents and accepted with characteristic good will by
the entire country.

The most serious situation of the latter part of his first
term had to do with his diplomatic controversy with Ger-
many over the ruthless and illegal use of submarines
against the world’s merchant shipping in the North Sea
and in waters adjacent to the British, French, and Italian
coasts. The principal slogan used by the Democrats, par-
ticularly in the West and South, in reélecting Mr. Wilson
was found in the phrase: “He kept us out of war.” But
just a month after his second inauguration he led the coun-
try into war, with the support of a Democratic Congress
and the very general endorsement, regardless of party, of
the entire country. This apparent change in his attitude
was due to the resumption by Germany, on a far greater
scale than two years previous, of reprisal methods in the
form of unrestricted use of floating mines and submarine
torpedoes in what the Germans denominated a “blockade”
of England, France, and Italy—this policy being in viola-
tion of the rights of neutrals.

Mr. Wilson’s leadership—his country having supported
him in the great decision—was fully accepted at home and
highly respected abroad. His object, which was to “make
the world safe for democracy,” was acclaimed by the Euro-
pean Allies who were fighting Germany; and his official

xiii
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

views were felt as strengthening movement for popular
government everywhere in the world. He was visited by
important commissions from the governments of France,
Great Britain, Italy, Russia, Japan, and several other
countries; and his attitude toward these countries, and
toward the support of the war against German aggression,
secured in every case the confidence and admiration of
these official visitors. His leadership in creating a National
Army and in obtaining financial support for his war meas-
ures upon a scale of unparalleled magnitude, had resulted
within six months after war was declared on April 6, 1917,
in measures that were at once transforming a considerable
‘part of the human energies and material resources of the
country into effective agencies for the carrying-on of war.

Born, Staunton, Va., Dec. 28, 1856. Graduated, Princeton, 1879.
Graduated in law, University of Virginia, 1881. Practised law at
Atlanta, Ga., 1882-3. Post-graduate work at Johns Hopkins, 1883-5.
Ph. D., 1886. Associate Professor of History and Political Econ-
omy, Bryn Mawr College, 1885-8; Professor of History and Po-
litical Economy, Wesleyan University; 1888-90; Professor of Juris-
prudence and Political Economy, Princeton University, 1890-95;
Professor of Jurisprudence, Princeton, 1895-7; Professor of Juris-
prudence and Politics, Princeton, 1897-1910; President of Princeton
University, 1902-10. Governor of New Jersey, January 17, 1911-
March 1, 1912. Nominated for President of the United States,
Democratic National Convention, Baltimore, 1912. Elected on Nov.
4, 1912, receiving 435 electoral votes, against 88 for Theodore
Roosevelt, Progressive, and 8 for William Howard Taft, Repub-
lican. (Wilson’s popular vote was 2,450,000 less than that of all
other candidates combined.) Nominated for second term by the
Democratic National Convention at St. Louis, June, 1916, and
elected on Nov. 7, 1916 receiving 276 electoral votes against 255
for Charles E. Hughes, Republican, with a popular plurality of
about 400,000, 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 Washing-
ton” (1896); “A History of the American People” (1902); “Can-
stitutional Government in the United States” (1908); “Free Life”
(1913); “The New Freedom” (1913); “When a Man Comes to
Himself” (1915), ‘

xiv
‘President Wilson’ s State Papers
and Addresses
WOODROW WILSON’S INAUGURAL ADDRESS

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 purpose. 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 lat-
terly 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 comprehend their real character, have
come to assume the aspect of things long believed in and
familiar, stuff of our own convictions. We have been re-
freshed 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
industries which have been built up by the genius of in-
dividual men and the limitless enterprise of groups of men.
It is great, also, very great, in its moral force. We have
built up, moreover, a great system of government, which has
stood through a long age as in many respects a model for

1
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers ;

those who seek to set liberty upon foundations that will
endure against fortuitous change, against storm and acci-
dent.

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 exceed-
ing bounty of nature, without which our genius for en-
terprise would have been worthless and impotent, scorn-
ing to be careful, shamefully prodigal as well as ad-
mirably efficient. We have been proud of our industrial
achievements, but we have not hitherto stopped thought-
fully 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 Govern-
ment went many deep secret things which we too long
delayed to look into and scrutinize with candid, 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 recon-
sider, to restore, to correct the evil without impairing the
good, to purify and humanize every process of our com-
mon 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

2
Woodrow Wilson

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 them-
selves. We had not forgotten our morals. We remem-
bered 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 standards 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 standard 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 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 concen-
trating cash and restricting credits; an industrial system
which, take it on all its sides, financial as well as adminis-
trative, holds capital in leading strings, restricts the lib-
erties 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 efficiency of great business undertakings or served as it
should be through the instrumentality of science taken di-
rectly to the farm, or afforded the facilities of credit best
suited to its practical needs; watercourses undeveloped,
waste places unreclaimed, forests untended, fast disappear-
ing without plan or prospect of renewal, unregarded waste
heaps at every mine. We have studied as perhaps no other

8
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

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 safe-
guarding 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 sentimental duty.
The firm basis of government is justice, not pity. These
are matters of justice. There can be no equality or oppor-
tunity, 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 indus-
trial 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 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 con-
ditions of labor which individuals are powerless to deter-
mine 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-ne-
glected, fundamental safeguarding of property and of in-
dividual 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 con-
science 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

4
Woodrow Wilson

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 govern-
ment 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 recon-
ciled 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 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 hu-
manity. 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 sustain me!

Wasurineton, March 4, 1913.

Wooprow Witson’s First Specia, ADDRESS TO CONGRESS
Cautuinc ror ImmepiaTE Tarirr REVISION

(Delivered before Congress in Joint Session, April 8, 1913.)

[Eprroriat Note: The two first Presidents, George
Washington and John Adams, delivered their annual ad-
dresses “On the State of the Union” in person. Thomas
Jefferson, the third President, introduced the written form
of communication. His successors followed the precedent.
Woodrow Wilson returned to the original custom and ap-

6
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

peared before the Congress to deliver not only the Annual
Message, but also many special Messages.

Tariff revision downward had been one of the uncompro-
mising issues on which he and his party had won the cam-
paign. When he delivered this Address, the new tariff bill
(the Underwood Bill), already had been definitely formu-
lated and approved by him. Its big features were free
wool (the famous Schedule K), and the income tax pro-
vision, passed under the Siateenth Amendment to the Con-
stitution. Such an Amendment had been urged repeatedly
by Roosevelt in order to make income tax legislation pos-
sible, after the United States Supreme Court had declared
the first income tax provision unconstitutional. The Under-
wood Bill was signed by the President in October, 1913.]

Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, gentlemen of the Congress,
I am very glad indeed to have this opportunity to address
the two Houses directly and to verify for myself the impres-
sion that the President of the United States is a person,
not a mere department of the Government hailing Congress
from some isolated island of jealous power, sending mes-
sages, not speaking naturally and with his own voice—that
he is a human being trying to co-operate with other hu-
man beings in a common service. After this pleasant ex-
perience I shall feel quite normal in all our dealings with
one another.

I have called the Congress together in extraordinary ses-
sion 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 exist-
ing 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 required 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 al-

6
Woodrow Wilson

teration 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 when no
large circumstance of our industrial development 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 arti-
ficial arrangement.

We have seen tariff legislation wander very far afield in
our day—very far indeed from the field in which our pros-
perity might have had a normal growth and stimulation.
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 Government. 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 un-
consciously, we have built up a set of privileges and ex-
emptions from competition behind which it was easy by any,
even the crudest, forms of combination to organize monop-
oly; 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 arrange-
ment. Only new principles of action will save us from a

7
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

final hard crystallization of monopoly and a complete loss
of the influences that quicken enterprise and keep independ-
ent energy alive.

It is plain what those principles must be. We must
abolish everything that bears even the semblance of priv-
ilege 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 enterpris-
ing, masters of competitive supremacy, better workers 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 taxiff duties henceforth laid must be effective com-
petition, 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
roots 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 con-
fusion. 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 stimu-
lation only so far as it will build, not pull down. In deal-
ing 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

8
Woodrow Wilson

is above just challenge and only an occasional error of judg-
ment is chargeable against us, we shall be fortunate.

We are called upon to render the country a great service
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 opening 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 attention 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 matters 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.

Witson Arracks “Lossy” Encacep in Inriuencine Con-
Gress on Tarirr SCHEDULES

[On May 26, 1913, the President gave out for publication the
following statement:]

I think that the public ought to know the extraordinary
exertions being made by the lobby in Washington to gain
recognition for certain alterations of the Tariff bill. Wash-
ington has seldom seen so numerous, so industrious or so
insidious a lobby. The newspapers are being filled with
paid advertisements calculated to mislead the judgment of
public men not only, but also the public opinion of the
country itself. There is every evidence that money with-

9
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

out limit is being spent to sustain this lobby and to create
an appearance of a pressure of opinion antagonistic to
some of the chief items of the Tariff bill.

It is of serious interest to the country that the people at
large should have no lobby and be voiceless in these mat-
ters, while great bodies of astute men seek to create an
artificial epinion and to overcome the interests of the pub-
lic for their private profit. It is thoroughly worth the
while of the people of this country to take knowledge of
this matter. Only public opinion can check and destroy it.

The Government in all its branches ought to be relieved
from this intolerable burden and this constant interruption
to the calm progress of debate. I know that in this I am
speaking for the members of the two houses, who would
rejoice as much as I would to be released from this un-
bearable situation.

[It was plainly understood that the statement was aimed particu-
larly at the “wool lobby” and the “sugar lobby.” A Senate investi-
gation followed and disclosed the names of many men who had
busied themselves in attempting to influence Congress. The effect
of the appeal to the public was to clear away very suddenly all
secret machinations in regard to the new tariff act.]

Witson Urnces Currency Lecisiation

(Address delivered before Congress in Joint Session, June
28, 1918.)

[Evrrortan Nore: At the time of this Address, the
country’s finance was under the operation of the Aldrich-
Vreeland Currency Law, passed in 1908, which provided
for the issue by the Treasury Department of emergency
currency to the banks whenever necessary. The bill passed
in response to Wilson’s Address was the Glass-Owen Fed-
eral Reserve Banking Law, which provided for Federal
Reserve centers throughout the United States under mixed
government and private control. ]

10
Woodrow Wilson

Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, gentlemen of the Congress,
it is under the compulsion of what seems to me a clear and
imperative duty that I have a second time this session
sought the privilege of addressing you in person. I know,
of course, that the heated season of the year is upon us,
that work in these Chambers and in the committee rooms
in likely to become a burden as the season lengthens, and
that every consideration of personal convenience and per-
sonal comfort, perhaps, in the cases. of some of us, con-
siderations of personal health even, dictate an early con-
clusion of the deliberations of the session; but there are
occasions of public duty when these things which touch us
privately seem very small; when the work to be done is so
pressing and so fraught with big consequence that we know
that we are not at liberty to weigh against it any point of
personal sacrifice. We are now in the presence of such an
occasion. It is absolutely imperative that we should give
the business men of this country a banking and currency
system by means of which they can make use of the free-
dom of enterprise and of individual initiative which we are
about to bestow upon them.

We are about to set them free; we must not leave them
without the tools of action when they are free. We are
about to set them free by removing the trammels of the
protective tariff. Ever since the Civil War they have
waited for this emancipation and for the free opportunities
it will bring with it. It has been reserved for us to give it
to them. Some fell in love, indeed, with the slothful secu-
rity of their dependence upon the Government; some took
advantage of the shelter of the nursery to set up a mimic
mastery of their own within its walls. Now both the tonic
and the discipline of liberty and maturity are to ensue.
There will be some readjustments of purpose and point, of
view. There will follow a period of expansion and new
enterprise, freshly conceived. It is for us to determine
now whether it shall be rapid and facile and of easy accom-

11
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

plishment. This it can not be unless the resourceful busi-
ness men who are to deal with the new circumstances are to
have at hand and ready for use the instrumentalities and
conveniences of free enterprise which independent men
need when acting on their own initiative.

It is not enough to strike the shackles from business.
The duty of statesmanship is not negative merely. It is
constructive also. We must show that we understand what
business needs and that we know how to supply it. No
man, however casual and superficial his observation of the
conditions now prevailing in the country, can fail to see
that one of the chief things business needs now and will
need increasingly as it gains in scope and vigor in the
years immediatelly ahead of us is the proper means by
which readily to vitalize its credit, corporate and individual,
and its originative brains. What will it profit us to be free
if we are not to have the best and most accessible instru-
mentalities of commerce and enterprise? What will it profit
us to be quit of one kind of monopoly if we are to remain
in the grip of another and more effective kind? How are
we to gain and keep the confidence of the business commu-
nity unless we show that we know how both to aid and to
protect it? What shall we say if we make fresh enterprise
necessary and also make it very difficult by leaving all else
except the tariff just as we found it? The tyrannies of
business, big and little, lie within the field of credit. We
know that. Shall we not act upon the knowledge? Do we
not know how to act upon it? If a man can not make his
assets available at pleasure, his assets of capacity and
character and resource, what satisfaction is it to him to see
opportunity beckoning to him on every hand when others
have the keys of credit in their pockets and treat them
as all but their own private possession? It is perfectly
clear that it is our duty to supply the new banking and
currency system the country needs, and it will need it imme-
diately more than it has ever needed it before,

12
Woodrow Wilson

The only question is, When shall we supply it—now or
later, after the demands shall have become reproaches that
we were so dull and so slow? Shall we hasten to change
the tariff laws and then be laggards about making it pos-
sible and easy for the country to take advantage of the
change? There can be only one answer to that question.
We must act now, at whatever sacrifice to ourselves. It is
a duty which the circumstances forbid us to postpone. I
should be recreant to my deepest convictions of public obli-
gation did I not press it upon you with solemn and urgent
insistence.

The principles upon which we should act are also clear.
The country has sought and seen its path in this matter
within the last few years—sees it more clearly now than it
ever saw it before—much more clearly than when the last
legislative proposals on the subject were made. We must
have a currency, not rigid as now, but readily, elastically
responsive to sound credit, the expanding and contracting
credits of everyday transactions, the normal ebb and flow
of personal and corporate dealings. Our banking laws
must mobilize reserves; must not permit the concentration
anywhere in a few hands of the monetary resources of the
country or their use for speculative purposes in such vol-
ume as to hinder or impede or stand in the way of other
more legitimate, more fruitful uses. And the control of the
system of banking and of issue which our new laws are
to set up must be public, nof private, must be vested in the
Government itself, so that the banks may be the instru-
ments, not the masters, of business and of individual enter-
prise and initiative.

The committees of the Congress to which legislation of
this character is referred have devoted careful and dispas-
sionate study to the means of accomplishing these objects.
They have honored me by consulting me. They are ready
to suggest action. I have come to you, as the head of the
Government and the responsible leader of the party in

18
Presidential Messages, Addresses and “State Papers

power, to urge action now, while there is time to serve the
country deliberately and as we should, in a clear air of
common counsel. I appeal to you with a deep conviction
of duty. I believe that you share this conviction. I there-
fore appeal to you with confidence. I am at your service
without reserve to play my part in any way you may call
upon me to play it in this great enterprise of exigent re-
form which it will dignify and distinguish us to perform
and discredit us to neglect.

Wiuson’s Appress at Gerryspura, Berors G. A. R. anp
Conreperate VETERANS, UPON OccasION OF
Firtiers Anniversary Reunion, Jury 4, 1913

[In the President’s audience on this occasion were several thou-
sand survivors of the Gettysburg battle, who had gone back to
the scene of the conflict—with other veterans of the armies of the
North and the South—to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of
“the high-water mark of the Confederacy.”]

Friends and Fellow-Citizgens:

I need not tell you what the battle of Gettysburg meant.
These gallant men in blue and gray sit all about us here.
Many of them met upon this ground in grim and deadly
struggle. Upon these famous fields and hillsides their
comrades died about them. In their presence it were an
impertinence to discourse upon how the battle went, how
it ended, what it signified! But fifty years have gone by
since then, and I crave the privilege of speaking to you
for a few minutes of what those fifty years have meant.

What have they meant? They have meant peace and
union and vigour, and the maturity and might of a great
nation. How wholesome and healing the peace has been!
We have found one another again as brothers and com-
rades in arms, enemies no longer, generous friends rather,
our battles long past, the quarrel forgotten—except that
we shall not forget the splendid valour, the manly devotion
of the men then arrayed against one another, now grasping

14
Woodrow Wilson

hands and smiling into each other’s eyes. How complete
the union has become and how dear to all of us, how un-
questioned, how benign and majestic, as State after State
has been added to this our great family of free men!
How handsome the vigour, the maturity, the might of the
great Nation we love with undivided hearts; how full of
large and confident promise that a life will be wrought
out that will crown its strength with gracious justice and
with a happy welfare that will touch all alike with deep
contentment! We are debtors to those fifty crowded years;
they have made us heirs to a mighty heritage.

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

Have affairs paused? Does the Nation stand still? Is
what the fifty years have wrought since those days of battle
finished, rounded out, and completed? Here is a great
people, great with every force that has ever beaten in the
lifeblood of mankind. And it is secure. There is no one
within its borders, there is no power among the nations
of the earth, to make it afraid. But has it yet squared
itself with its own great standards set up at its birth, when
it made that first noble, naive appeal to the moral judgment
of mankind to take notice that a government had now
at last been established which was to serve men, not mas-
ters? It is secure in everything except the satisfaction
that its life is right, adjusted to the uttermost to the stand-
ards of righteousness and humanity. The days of sacrifice
and cleansing are not closed. We have harder things to
do than were done in the heroic days of war, because harder

15
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

to see clearly, requiring more vision, more calm balance of
judgment, a more candid searching of the very springs of
right.

Look around you upon the field of Gettysburg! Picture
the array, the fierce heats and agony of battle, column
hurled against column, battery bellowing to battery! Val-
our? Yes! Greater no man shall see in war; and self-
sacrifice, and loss to the uttermost; the high recklessness
of exalted devotion which does not count the cost. We
are made by these tragic, epic things to know what it costs
to make a nation—the blood and sacrifice of multitudes of
unknown men lifted to a great stature in the view of all
generations by knowing no limit to their manly willingness
to serve. In armies thus marshaled from the ranks of free
men you will see, as it were, a nation embattled, the leaders
and the led, and may know, if you will, how little except
in form its action differs in days of peace from its action
in days of war.

May we break camp now and be at ease? Are the forces
that fight for the Nation dispersed, disbanded, gone to their
homes forgetful of the common cause? Are our forces dis-
organized, without constituted leaders and the might of
men consciously united because we contend, not with armies,
but with principalities and powers and wickedness in high
places. Are we content to lie still? Does our union mean
sympathy, our peace contentment, our vigour right action,
our maturity self-comprehension and a clear confidence in
choosing what we shall do? War fitted us for action, and
action never ceases.

I have been chosen the leader of the Nation. I cannot
justify the choice by any qualities of my own, but so it
has come about, and here I stand. Whom do I command?
The ghostly hosts who fought upon these battle fields long
ago and are gone? These gallant gentlemen stricken in
years whose fighting days are over, their glory won? What
are the orders for them, and who rallies them? I have in

16
Woodrow Wilson

my mind another host, whom these set free of civil strife
in order that they might work out in days of peace and
settled order the life of a great Nation. That host is the
people themselves, the great and the small, without class
or difference of kind or race or origin; and undivided in
interest, if we have but the vision to guide and direct them
and order their lives aright in what we do. Our constitu-
tions are their articles of enlistment. The orders of the
day are the laws upon our statute books. What we strive
for is their freedom, their right to lift themselves from
day to day and behold the things they have hoped for, and
so make way for still better days for those whom they love
who are to come after them. The recruits are the little
children crowding in. The quartermaster’s stores are in
the mines and forests and fields, in the shops and factories.
Every day something must be done to push the campaign
forward; and it must be done by plan and with an eye
to some great destiny. .

How shall we hold such thoughts in our hearts and not
be moved? I would not have you live even to-day wholly
in the past, but would wish to stand with you in the light
that streams upon us now out of that great day gone by.
Here is the nation God has builded by our hands. What
shall we do with it? Who stands ready to act again and
always in the spirit of this day of reunion and hope and
patriotic fervor? The day of our country’s life has but
broadened into morning. Do not put uniforms by. Put
the harness of the present on. Lift your eyes to the great
tracts of life yet to be conquered in the interest of righteous
peace, of that prosperity which lies in a people’s hearts and
outlasts all wars and errors of men. Come, let us be com-
rades and soldiers yet to serve our fellow men in quiet
counsel, where the blare of trumpets is neither heard nor
heeded and where the things are done which make blessed
the nations of the world in peace and righteousness and
love. \ ’

17
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

Wizson’s Sprcian Messace on Mexico

(Delivered before Congress in Joint Session,
August 27, 1913)

[Eprrorran Nore: General Huerta had been pro-
claimed Provisional President on February 18, 1918, by the
rebelling troops under his control. On February 19 a ha-
stily assembled Congress elected him Provisional President.
On February 22, 1918, Francisco Madero and Pino Suarez,
deposed President and V ice-President, were shot dead
“while attempting to escape.” President Wilson had re-
fused to recognize Huerta; and for a year following this
message he remained steadfast. Huerta then resigned. ]

Gentlemen of the Congress:

It is clearly my duty to lay before you, very fully and
without reservation, the facts concerning our present rela-
tions 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 fulfillment of its obligation
to Mexico herself, as a friend and neighbor, and to Ameri-
can 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 be-
cause 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 ele-
ment in the determination of our duty. We are glad to call
ourselves the friend 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 sacrifice and every
generous manifestation, The peace, prosperity, and con-

18
Woodrow Wilson

tentment of Mexico mean more, much more, to us than
merely an enlarged field for our commerce 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 disap-
pointed, we deeply sympathize. We shall yet prove to the
Mexican people that we know how 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 particular—America north and
south and upon both continents—waits upon the develop-
ment of Mexico; and that development can be sound and
lasting only if it be the product of a genuine freedom, a
just and ordered government 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 re-
gret 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 pro-
visional 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 evi-

19
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers
dently impossible by any other means than force. Diffi-
culties more and more entangle those who claim to consti-
tute the legitimate government of the Republic. They
have not made good their claim in fact. 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 solution 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 effect-.
ing 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, formerly 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 progress is being made towards the
establishment of a government at the City of Mexico which the
country will obey and respect.

The Government of the United States does not stand in the same
case with the other great Governments of the world in respect of
what is happening cr 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 what-
ever we do or propose in this perplexing and distressing situation
not only to pay the most scrupulous regard to the sovereignty
and independence of Mexico—that we take as a matter of course
to which we are bound by every obligation of right and honor—
but also to give every possible evidence that we act in the interest .
of Mexico alone, and not in the interest of any person or body
of persons who may have personal or property claims in Mexico
which they may feel that they have the right to press. We are
seeking to counsel Mexico for her own good, and in the interest

20
Wooarow wiuson

of her own peace, and not for any other purpose whatever. The
Government of the United States would deem itself discredited if
it had any selfish or ulterior purpose in transactions where the
peace, happiness, and prosperity of a whole people are involved.
It is acting as its friendship for Mexico, not as any selfish interest,
dictates.

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

A satisfactory settlement seems to us to be conditioned on—

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

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

(ec) The consent of Gen. Huerta to bind himself not to be a
ere for election as President of the Republic at this election;
an

(d) The agreement of all parties to abide by the results of the
election and co-operate in the most loyal way in organizing and
supporting the new administration.

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

Taking all the existing conditions into consideration, the Govern-
ment of the United States can conceive of no reasons sufficient to
justify those who are now attempting to shape the policy or exer-
cise 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 oz
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 pur-
pose 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,
al
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

[The Mexican note was addressed to Mr. Lind and signed by
Senor F. Gamboa, Secretary for Foreign Affairs. Its salient parts
were:

The imputation that no progress has been made toward estab-
lishing a Government that may enjoy the obedience of the Mexican
people is unfounded. In contradiction with their gross imputation,
which is not supported by any proofs, principally because there
are none, it affords me pleasure to refer, Mr. Confidential Agent,
to the following facts which abound in evidence and which to a
certain extent must be known to you by direct observation. The
Mexican Republic, Mr. Confidential Agent, is formed by 27
States, 3 Territories, and 1 Federal District, in which the supreme
power of the Republic has its seat. Of these 27 States, 18 of
them, the 3 Territories, and the Federal District (making a total
of 22 political entities) are under the absolute control of the
present Government, which, aside from the above, exercises its
authority over almost every port in the Republic and, consequently,
over the custom houses therein established. Its southern frontier
is open and at peace. Moreover, my Government has an army of
80,000 men in the field, with no other purpose than to insure
complete peace in the Republic, the only national aspiration and
solemn promise of the present provisional President. . . .

Inasmuch as the Government of the United States is willing to
act in the most disinterested friendship, it will be difficult for it
to find a more propitious opportunity than the following: If it
should only watch that no material and monetary assistance is
given to rebels who find refuge, conspire, and provide themselves
with arms and food on the other side of the border; if it should
demand from its minor and local authorities the strictest observ-
ance of the neutrality laws, I assure you, Mr. Confidential Agent,
that the complete pacification of this Republic would be accom-
plished within a relatively short time. . . .

His Excellency Mr. Wilson is laboring under a serious delusion
when he declares that the present situation of Mexico is incom-
patible with the compliance of her international obligations and
with the required maintenance of conditions tolerable in Central
America. No charge has been made by any foreign Government
accusing us of the above lack of compliance, we are punctually
meeting all of our credits, we are still maintaining diplomatic
missions cordially accepted in almost all the countries of the world.
With regard to our interior development, a contract has just been
signed with Belgian capitalists which means to Mexico the con-
struction of something like 5,000 kilometers of railway. In
conclusion, we fail to see the evil results, which are prejudicial
only to ourselves, felt in Central America by our present domestic
war. . . . With reference to the rebels who style themselves
“Constitutionalists,” one of the representatives of whom has been
given an ear by Members of the United States Senate, what could

22
Woodrow Wilson

there be more gratifying to us than if, convinced of the precipice
to which we are being dragged by the resentment of their defeat,
in a moment of reaction they would depose their rancor and add
their strength to ours so that all together we would undertake
the great and urgent task of national reconstruction? Unfor-
tunately they do not avail themselves of the amnesty law enacted
by the provisional government. . . .

The request that General Victoriano Huerta should agree not to
appear as a candidate for the Presidency of the Republic in the
coming election cannot be taken into consideration, because, aside
from its strange and unwarranted character, there is a risk that
the same might be interpreted as a matter of personal dislike.
a - The legality of the government of General Huerta cannot
be disputed. Article 85 of our political constitution provides:

If at the beginning of a constitutional term neither the Presi-
dent nor the Vice-President elected present themselves, the Presi-
dent whose term has expired will cease in his functions, and the
secretary for foreign affairs shall immediately take charge of the
Executive power in the capacity of provisional President; and if
there should be no secretary for foreign affairs, the Presidency
shall devolve on one of the other secretaries pursuant to the order
provided by the law.

Now, then, the facts which occurred are the following: The
resignation of Francisco I. Madero, constitutional President, and
Jose Maria Pino Suarez, constitutional Vice-President of the
Republic. These resignations having been accepted, Pedro
Lascurain, Minister for Foreign Affairs, took charge by law of
the vacant executive power, appointing, as he had the power to
do, Gen. Victoriano Huerta to the post of Minister of the
Interior. As Mr. Lascurain soon afterwards resigned, and as his
resignation was immediately accepted by Congress, Gen. Vic-
toriano Huerta took charge of the executive power, also by
operation of law, with the provisional character and under the
constitutional promise already complied with to issue a call for
special elections. As will be seen, the point of issue is exclusively
one of constitutional law in which no foreign nation, no matter
how powerful and respectable it may be, should mediate in the
least. . . «

With reference to the final part of the instructions of President
Wilson, which I beg to include herewith and say, “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,” that final part
causes me to propose the following equally decorous arrangement:
One, that our ambassador be received in Washington; two, that
the United States of America send us a new ambassador without
previous conditions.

And all this threatening and distressing situation will have

a3
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

reached a happy conclusion; mention will not be made of the
causes which might carry us, if the tension persists, to no one
knows what incalculable extremities for two peoples who have the
unavoidable obligation to continue being friends, provided, of
course, that this friendship is based upon mutual respect, which
is indispensable between two sovereign entities wholly equal before
law and justice.]

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 friend-
liness and yet sober determination that some just solution
be found for the Mexican difficulties; and they did not be-
lieve that the present administration spoke through Mr.
Lind, for the people of the United States. The effect of
this unfortunate misunderstanding on their part is to leave
them singularly isolated and without friends who can effect-
ually aid them. So long as the misunderstanding continues
we can only await the time of their awakening to a realiza-
tion 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 be-
lieve that only a little while will be necessary. For the
circumstances are new. The rejection of our friendship
makes them new and will inevitably bring its own altera-
tions 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 op-

2h
Woodrow Wilson

portunity 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 co-operative action, should for-
tunate occasion offer.

While we wait, the contest of the rival forces will un-
doubtedly for a little while be sharper than ever, just be-
cause it will be plain that an end must be made of the
existing situation, and that very promptly; and with the
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 coun-
try is upset. We should earnestly urge all Americans 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 unnecessary 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 misunderstanding.

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 Mex-
ico receive any assistance from this side the border. I shall
follow the best practice of nations in the matter of neutral-
ity by forbidding the exportation of arms or munitions of
war of any kind from the United States to any part of
the Republic of Mexico—a policy suggested by several in-
teresting precedents and certainly dictated by many mani-

25
’

Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

fest considerations of practical expediency. We can not
in the circumstances be the partisans of either party to the
contest that now distracts Mexico, or constitute ourselves
the virtual umpire between them.

I am happy to say that several of the great Governments
of the world have given this Government their 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 ordinary principles of inter-
national obligation. All the world expects us in such cir-
cumstances to act as Mexico’s nearest friend and intimate
adviser. This is our immemorial relation towards her.
There is nowhere any serious 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 Central 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 iri-
umph as Mexico’s friends sooner than we could trimph
as her enemies—and how much more handsomely, with
how much higher and finer satisfactions of conscience and
of honor!

26
Woodrow Wilson

Wison’s Appress on Occasion or THE REDEDICATION AND
Restoration oF Concress Hau, PHILADELPHIA,
Ocroser 25, 1913

Your Honor, Mr. Chairman, Ladies, and Gentlemen:

No American could stand in this place to-day and think
of the circumstances which we are come together to cele-
brate without being most profoundly stirred. There has
come over me since I sat down here a sense of deep sol-
emnity, because it has seemed to me that I saw ghosts
crowding—a great assemblage of spirits no longer visible,
but whose influence we still feel as we feel the molding
power of history itself. The men who sat in this hall, to
whom we now look back with a touch of deep sentiment,
were men of flesh and blood, face to face with extremely
difficult problems. The population of the United States
then was hardly three times the present population of the
city of Philadelphia, and yet that was a Nation as this is
a Nation, and the men who spoke for it were setting their
hands to work which was to last, not only that their people
might be happy, but that an example might be lifted up for
the instruction of the rest of the world.

I like to read the quaint old accounts such as Mr. Day
has read to us this afternoon. Strangers came then to
America to see what the young people that had sprung up
here were like, and they found men in counsel who knew
how to construct governments. They found men delibera-
ting here who had none of the appearance of novices, none
of the hesitation of men who did not know whether the
work they were doing was going to last or not; men who
addressed themselves to a problem of construction as fami-
liarly as we attempt to carry out the traditions of a Gov-
ernment established these 137 years.

I feel to-day the compulsion of these men, the compulsion
of examples which were set up in this place. And of what
do their examples remind us? They remind us not merely

27
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

of public service but of public service shot through with
principle and honor. :

Politics, ladies and gentlemen, is made up in just about
equal parts of comprehension and sympathy. No man
ought to go into politics who does not comprehend the task
that he is going to attack. He may comprehend it so com-
pletely that it daunts him, that he doubts whether his own
spirit is stout enough and his own mind able enough to
attempt its great undertakings, but unless he comprehend
it he ought not to enter it. After he has comprehended
it, there should come into his mind those profound im-
pulses of sympathy which connect him with the rest of
mankind, for politics is a business of interpretation, and
no men are fit for it who do not see and seek more than
their own advantage and interest.

We have stumbled upon many unhappy circumstances
in the hundred years that have gone by since the event
that we are celebrating. Almost all of them have come
from self-centered men, men who saw in their own interest
the interest of the country, and who did not have vision
enough to read it in wider terms, in the universal terms
of equity and justice and the rights of mankind. I hear a
great many people at Fourth of July celebrations laud the
Declaration of Independence who in between Julys shiver
at the plain language of our bills of rights. The Declara-
tion of Independence was, indeed, the first audible breath
of liberty, but the substance of liberty is written in such
documents as the declaration of rights attached, for ex-
ample, to the first constitution of Virginia which was a’
model for the similar documents read elsewhere into our
great fundamental charters. That document speaks in very
plain terms. The men of that generation did not hesitate
to say that every people has a right to choose its own forms
of government—not once, but as often as it pleases—and to
accommodate those forms of government to its existing in-

28
Woodrow Wilson

terests and circumstances. Not only to establish but to
alter is the fundamental principle of self-government.

We are just as much under compulsion to study the par-
ticular circumstances of our own day as the gentlemen
were who sat in this hall and set us precedents, not of
what to do but of how to do it. Liberty inheres in the
circumstances of the day. Human happiness consists in
the life which human beings are leading at the time that
they live. I can feed my memory as happily upon the cir-
cumstances of the revolutionary and constitutional period
as you can, but I can not feed all my purposes with them
in Washington now. Every day problems arise which wear
some new phase and aspect, and I must fall back, if I
would serve my conscience, upon those things which are
fundamental rather than upon those things which are super-
ficial, and ask myself this question, How are you going to
assist in some small part to give the American people and,
by example, the peoples of the world more liberty, more
happiness, more substantial prosperity} and how are you
going to make that prosperity a common heritage instead
of a selfish possession?

The men of the day which we now celebrate had a very
great advantage over us, ladies and gentlemen, in this one
particular: Life was simple in America then. All men
shared the same circumstances in almost equal degree. We
think of Washington, for example, as an aristocrat, as a
man separated by training, separated by family and neigh-
borhood tradition, from the ordinary people of the rank
and file of the country. Have you forgotten the personal
history of George Washington? Do you not know that he
struggled as poor boys now struggle for a meager and im-
perfect education; that he worked at his surveyor’s tasks
in the lonely forests; that he knew all the roughness, all
the hardships, all the adventure, all the variety of the
common life of that day; and that if he stood a little stiffly
in this place, if he looked a little aloof, it was because life

29
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

had dealt hardly with him? All his sinews had been stif-
fened by the rough work of making America. He was a
man of the people, whose touch had been with them since
the day he saw the light first in the old Dominion of Vir-
ginia. And the men who came after him, men, some of
whom had drunk deep at the sources of philosophy and of
study, were, nevertheless, also men who on this side of the
water knew no complicated life but the simple life of primi-
tive neighborhoods. Our task is very much more difficult.
That sympathy which alone interprets public duty is more
difficult for a public man to acquire now than it was then,
because we live in the midst of circumstances and conditions
infinitely complex.

No man can boast that he understands America. No man
can boast that he has lived the life of America, as almost
every man who sat in this hall in those days could boast.
No man can pretend that except by common counsel he
can gather into his consciousness what the varied life of this
people is. The duty that we have to keep open eyes and
open hearts and accessible understandings is a very much
more difficult duty to perform than it was in their day. Yet
how much more important that it should be performed, for
fear we make infinite and irreparable blunders. The city of
Washington is in some respects self-contained, and it is easy
there to forget what the rest of the United States is think-
ing about. I count it a fortunate circumstance that almost
all the windows of the White House and its offices open
upon unoccupied spaces that stretch to the banks of the
Potomac and then out into Virginia and on to the heavens
themselves, and that as I sit there I can constantly forget
Washington and remember the United States. Not that
I would intimate that all of the United States lies south
of Washington, but there is a serious thing back of my
thought. If you think too much about being re-elected,
it is very difficult to be worth re-electing. You are so apt
to forget that the comparatively small number of persons,

80
Woodrow Wilson

numerous as they seem to be when they swarm, who come
to Washington to ask for things, do not constitute an im-
portant proportion of the population of the country, that it
is constantly necessary to come away from Washington and
renew one’s contact with the people who do not swarm
there, who do not ask for anything, but who do trust you
without their personal counsel to do your duty. Unless a
man gets these contacts he grows weaker and weaker. He
needs them as Hercules needed the touch of mother earth.
If you lift him up too high or he lifts himself too high, he
loses the contact and therefore loses the inspiration.

I love to think of those plain men, however far from
plain their dress sometimes was, who assembled in this
hall. One is startled to think of the variety of costume and
color which would now occur if we were let loose upon the
fashions of that age. Men’s lack of taste is largely con-
cealed now by the limitations of fashion. Yet these men,
who sometimes dressed like the peacock, were, nevertheless,
of the ordinary flight of their time. They were birds of a
feather; they were birds come from a very simple breeding;
they were much in the open heaven. They were beginning,
when there was so little to distract their attention, to show
that they could live upon fundamental principles of govern-
ment. We talk those principles, but we have not time to
absorb them. We have not time to let them into our blood,
and thence have them translated into the plain mandates
of action.

The very smallness of this room, the very simplicity of
it all, all the suggestions which come from its restoration,
are reassuring things—things which it becomes a man to
realize. Therefore my theme here to-day, my only thought,
is a very simple one. Do not let us go back to the annals
of those sessions of Congress to find out what to do, be-
cause we live in another age and the circumstances are abso-
lutely different; but let us be men of that kind; let us feel
at every turn the compulsions of principle and of honor

81
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

which they felt; let us free our vision from temporary cir-
cumstances and look abroad at the horizon and take into our
lungs the great air of freedom which has blown through
this country and stolen across the seas and blessed people
everywhere; and, looking east and west and north and south,
let us remind ourselves that we are the custodians, in some
degree, of the principles which have made men free and
governments just.

Witson’s Appress Berors tHe SoutnerN CoMMERCIAL
Coneress at Mosite, Ata., Ocroper 27, 1913

[The Panama Canal was approaching completion—the Presi-

dent himself, two weeks earlier, having touched a button in the

White House and set off an explosive which blasted away the last
barrier separating the waters of the Atlantic and the Pacific.]

Your Excellency, Mr. Chairman:

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

The future, ladies and gentlemen, is going to be very dif-
ferent for this hemisphere from the past. These States
lying to the south of us, which have always been our neigh-
bors, will now be drawn closer to us by innumerable ties,
and, I hope, chief of all, by the tie of a common under-

32
Woodrow Wilson

standing of each other. Interest does not tie nations to~
gether; it sometimes separates them. But sympathy and
understanding does unite them, and I believe that by the
new route that is just about to be opened, while we physi-
cally cut two continents asunder, we spiritually unite them.
It is a spiritual union which we seek.

I wonder if you realize, I wonder if your imaginations
have been filled with the significance of the tides of com-
merce. Your governor alluded in very fit and striking
terms to the voyage of Columbus, but Columbus took his
voyage under compulsion of circumstances. Constantinople
had been captured by the Turks and all the routes of trade
with the East had been suddenly closed. If there was not
a way across the Atlantic to open those routes again, they
were closed forever, and Columbus set out not to discover
America, for he did not know that it existed, but to discover
the eastern shores of Asia. He set sail for Cathay and
stumbled upon America. With that change in the outlook
of the world, what happened? England, that had been at
the back of Europe with an unknown sea behind her, found
that all things had turned as if upon a pivot and she was
at the front of Europe; and since then all the tides of
energy and enterprise that have issued out of Europe have
seemed to be turned westward across the Atlantic. But you
will notice that they have turned westward chiefly north of
the Equator and that it is the northern half of the globe
that has seemed to be filled with the media of intercourse
and of sympathy and of common understanding.

Do you not see now what is about to happen? These
great tides which have been running along parallels of lati-
tude will now swing southward athwart parallels of lati-
tude, and that opening gate at the Isthmus of Panama will
open the world to a commerce that she has not known be-
fore, a commerce of intelligence, of thought and sympathy
between North and South. The Latin American States,
which, to their disadvantage, have been off the main lines,

83
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

‘will now be on the main lines. I feel that these gentlemen
honoring us with their presence to-day will presently find
that some part, at any rate, of the center of gravity of the
world has shifted. Do you realize that New York, for ex-
ample, will be nearer the western coast of South America
than she is now to the eastern coast of South America? Do
you realize that a line drawn northward parallel with the
greater part of the western coast of South America will run
only about 150 miles west of New York? The great bulk
of South America, if you will look at your globes (not at
your Mercator’s projection), lies eastward of the continent
of North America. You will realize that when you realize
that the canal will run southeast, not southwest, and that
when you get into the Pacific you will be farther east than
you were when you left the Gulf of Mexico. These things
are significant, therefore, of this, that we are closing one
chapter in the history of the world and are opening another,
of great, unimaginable significance.

There is one peculiarity about the history of the Latin
American States which I am sure they are keenly aware
of. You hear of “concessions” to foreign capitalists in
Latin America. You do not hear of concessions to foreign
capitalists in the United States. They are not granted con-
cessions. They are invited to make investments. The work
is ours, though they are welcome to invest in it. We do
not ask them to supply the capital and do the work. It is
an invitation, not a privilege; and States that are obliged,
because their territory does not lie within the main field of
modern enterprise and action, to grant concessions are in
this condition, that foreign interests are apt to dominate
their domestic affairs, a condition of affairs always dan-
gerous and apt to become intolerable. What these States
are going to see, therefore, is an emancipation from the
subordination, which has been inevitable, to foreign enter-
prise and an assertion of the splendid character which, in
spite of these difficulties, they have again and again been

34
Woodrow Wilson

able to demonstrate. The dignity, the courage, the self-
possession, the self-respect of the Latin American States,
their achievements in the face of all these adverse circum-
stances, deserve nothing but the admiration and applause
of the world. They have had harder bargains driven with
them in the matter of loans than any other peoples in the
world. @ Interest has been exacted of them that was not
exacted of anybody else, because the risk was said to be
greater; and then securities were taken that destroyed the
risk—an admirable arrangement for those who were forcing
the terms! I rejoice in nothing so much as in the prospect
that they will now be emancipated from these conditions,
and we ought to be the first to take part in assisting in that
emancipation. I think some of these gentlemen have already
had occasion to bear witness that the Department of State
in recent months has tried to serve them in that wise. In
the future they will draw closer and closer to us because
of circumstances of which I wish to speak with moderation
and, I hope, without indiscretion.

We must prove ourselves their friends, and champions
upon terms of equality and honor. You can not be friends
upon any other terms than upon the terms of equality. You
can not be friends at all except upon the terms of honor.
We must show ourselves friends by comprehending their
interest whether it squares with our own interest or not.
It is a very perilous thing to determine the foreign policy
of a nation in the terms of material interest. It not only is
unfair to those with whom you are dealing, but it is de-
grading as regards your own actions.

Comprehension must be the soil in which shall grow all
the fruits of friendship, and there is a reason and a com-
pulsion lying behind all this which is dearer than anything
else to the thoughtful men of America. I mean the develop-
ment of constitutional liberty in the world. Human rights,
national integrity, and opportunity as against material in-
terests—that, ladies and gentlemen, is the issue which we

36
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

now have to face. I want to take this occasion to say that
the United States will never again seek one additional foot
of territory by conquest. She will devote herself to show-
ing that she knows how to make honorable and fruitful use
of the territory she has, and she must regard it as one of
the duties of friendship to see that from no quarter are
material interests made superior to human liberty @nd na-
tional opportunity. I say this, not with a single thought
that anyone will gainsay it, but merely to fix in our con-
sciousness what our real relationship with the rest of
America is. It is the relationship of a family of mankind
devoted to the development of true constitutional liberty.
We know that that is the soil out of which the best enter-
prise springs. We know that this is a cause which we are
making in common with our neighbors, because we have had
to make it for ourselves. . . . '

I know what the-.response of the thought and heart of
America will be to the program I have outlined, because
America was created to realize a program like that. This is
not America because it is rich. This is America because it
has set up for a great population great opportunities of
material prosperity. America is a name which sounds in
the ears of men everywhere as a synonym with individual
opportunity because a synonym of individual liberty. I
»would rather belong to a poor nation that was free than to
a rich nation that had ceased to be in love with liberty. But
we shall not be poor if we love liberty, because the nation
that loves liberty truly sets every man free to do his hest
and be his best, and that means the release of all the
splendid energies of a great people who think for them-
selves.

In emphasizing the points which must unite us in sym-
pathy and in spiritual interest with the Latin American
peoples we are only emphasizing the points of our own
life, and we should prove ourselves untrue to our own tradi-
tions if we proved ourselves untrue friends to them. . . .

36
Woodrow Wilson

Wixson’s First Annuat Messace

(Delivered before Congress in Joint Session,
December 2, 1913)
[The custom of including departmental reports in the President’s

annual message is here abandoned by Mr. Wilson; and this message
is therefore noticeably shorter than those of his predecessors. ]

Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, Gentlemen of the Congress:

In pursuance of my constitutional duty to “give to the
Congress information of the state of the Union,” I take the
liberty of addressing you on several matters which ought,
as it seems to me, particularly to engage the attention of
your honorable bodies, as of all who study the welfare
and progress of the Nation.

I shall ask your indulgence if I venture to depart in
some degree from the usual custom of setting before you in
formal review the many matters which have engaged the
attention and called for the action of the several depart-
ments of the Government or which look to them for early
treatment in the future, because the list is long, very long,
and would suffer in the abbreviation to which I should have
to subject it. I shall submit to you the reports of the heads
of the several departments, in which these subjects are set
forth in careful detail, and beg that they may receive the _
thoughtful attention of your committees and of all Mem-
bers of the Congress who may have the leisure to study
them. Their obvious importance, as constituting the very
substance of the business of the Government, makes com-
ment and emphasis on my part unnecessary.

The country, I am thankful to say, is at peace with all
the world, and many happy manifestations multiply about
us of a growing cordiality and sense of community of inter-
est among the nations, foreshadowing an age of settled
peace and good will. More and more readily each decade
do the nations manifest their willingness to bind them-

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

selves by solemn treaty to the processes of peace, the proc-
esses of frankness and fair concession. So far the United
States has stood at the front of such negotiations. She
will, I earnestly hope and confidently believe, give fresh
proof of her sincere adherence to the cause of international
friendship by ratifying the several treaties of arbitration
awaiting renewal by the Senate. In addition to these,
it has been the privilege of the Department of State to gain
the assent, in principle, of no less than 31 nations, repre-
senting four-fifths of the population of the world, to the
negotiation of treaties by which it shall be agreed that
whenever differences of interest or of policy arise which
can not be resolved by the ordinary processes of diplomacy
they shall be publicly analyzed, discussed, and reported
upon by a tribunal chosen by the parties before either
nation determines its course of action.

There is only one possible standard by which to deter-
mine controversies between the United States and other
nations, and that is compounded of these two elements:
Our own honor and our obligations to the peace of the
world. A test so compounded ought easily to be made to
govern both the establishment of new treaty obligations and
the interpretation of those already assumed.

There is but one cloud upon our horizon. That has
shown itself to the south of us, and hangs over Mexico.
There can be no certain prospect of peace in America until
General Huerta has surrendered his usurped authority in
Mexico; until it is understood on all hands, indeed, that
such pretended governments will not be countenanced or
dealt with by the Government of the United States. We
are the friends of constitutional government in America;
we are more than its friends, we are its champions; because
in no other way can our neighbors, to whom we would wish
in every way to make proof of our friendship, work out
their own development in peace and liberty. Mexico has no
Government. The attempt to maintain one at the City of

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Woodrow Wilson

Mexico has broken down, and a mere miltary despotism
has been set up which has hardly more than the semblance
of national authority. It originated in the usurpation of
Victoriano Huerta, who, after a brief attempt to play the
part of constitutional President, has at last cast aside even
the pretense of legal right and declared himself dictator.
As a consequence, a condition of affairs now exists in Mex-
ico which has made it doubtful whether even the most ele-
mentary and fundamental rights either of her own people
or of the citizens of ther countries resident within her ter-
ritory can long be successfully safeguarded, and which
threatens, if long continued, to imperil the interests of
peace, order, and tolerable life in the lands immediately
to the south of us. Even if the usurper had succeeded in
his purposes, in despite of the constitution of the Republic
and the rights of its people, he would have set up nothing
but a precarious and hateful power, which could have lasted
but a little while, and whose eventual downfall would have
left the country in a more deplorable condition than ever.
But he has not succeeded. He has forfeited the respect and
the moral support even of those who were at one time willing
to see him succeed. Little by little he has been completely
isolated. By a little every day his power and prestigg
are crumbling and the collapse is not far away. We shall
not, I believe, be obliged to alter our policy of watchful
waiting. And then, when the end comes, we shall hope to
see constitutional order restored in distressed Mexico by
the concert and energy of such of her leaders as prefer the
liberty of their people to their own ambitions.

I turn to matters of domestic concern. You already
have under consideration a bill for the reform of our sys-
tem of banking and currency, for which the country waits
with impatience, as for something fundamental to its whole
business life and necessary to set credit free from arbitrary
and artificial restraints. I need not say how earnestly
I hope for its early enactment into law. I take leave to

39
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

beg that the whole energy and attention of the Senate be
concentrated upon it till the matter is successfully disposed
of, And yet I feel that the request is not needed—that
the Members of that great House need no urging in this
service to the country.

I present to you, in addition, the urgent necessity that
special provision be made also for facilitating the credits
needed by the farmers of the country. The pending cur-
rency bill does the farmers a great service. It puts them
upon an equal footing with other business men and masters
of enterprise, as it should; and upon its passage they will
find themselves quit of many of the difficulties which now
hamper them in the field of credit. The farmers, of
course, ask and should be given no special privilege, such
as extending to them the credit of the Government itself.
What they need and should obtain is legislation which will
make their own abundant and substantial credit resources
available as a foundation for joint, concerted local action
in their own behalf in getting the capital they must use.
It is to this we should now address ourselves.

It has, singularly enough, come to pass that we have al-
lowed the industry of our farms to lag behind the other
activities of the country in its development.’ I need not
stop to tell you how fundamental to the life of the Nation
is the production of its food. Our thoughts may ordinarily
be concentrated upon the cities and the hives of industry,
upon the cries of the crowded market place and the clangor
of the factory, but it is from the quiet interspaces of the
open valleys and the free hillsides that we draw the
sources of life and of prosperity, from the farm and the
ranch, from the forest and the mine. Without these every
street would be silent, every office deserted, every factory
fallen into disrepair. And yet the farmer does not stand
upon the same footing with the forester and the miner in
the market of credit. He is the servant of the seasons.
Nature determines how long he must wait for his crops,

40
Woodrow Wilson

and will not be hurried in her processes. He may give
his note, but the season of its maturity depends upon the
season when his crop matures, lies at the gates of the mar-
ket where his products are sold. And the security he gives
is of a character not known in the broker’s office or
as familiarly as it might be on the counter of the
banker.

The Agricultural Department of the Government is seek-
ing to assist as never before to make farming an efficient
business, of wide cooperative effort, in quick touch with the
markets for foodstuffs. The farmers and the Government
will henceforth work together as real partners in this field,
where we now begin to see our way very clearly and where
many intelligent plans are already being put into execution.
The Treasury of the United States has, by a timely and
well-considered distribution of its deposits, facilitated the
moving of the crops in the present season and prevented the
scarcity of available funds too often experienced at such
times. But we must not allow ourselves to depend upon
extraordinary expedients. We must add the means by
which the farmer may make his credit constantly and easily
available and command when he will the capital by which
to support and expand his business. We lag behind many
other great countries of the modern world in attempting to
do this. Systems of rural credit have been studied and
developed on the other side of the water while we left our
farmers to shift for themselves in the ordinary money mar-
ket. You have but to look about you in any rural district
to see the result, the handicap and embarrassment which
have been put upon those who produce our food.

Conscious of this backwardness and neglect on our part,
the Congress recently authorized the creation of a special
commission to study the various systems of rural credit
which have been put into operation in Europe, and this
commission is already prepared to report. Its report ought
to make it easier for us to determine what methods will

41
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

be best suited to our own farmers. I hope and believe that
the committees of the Senate and House will address them-
selves to this matter with the most fruitful results, and I
believe that the studies and recently formed plans of the
Department of Agriculture may be made to serve them
very greatly in their work of framing appropriate and ade-
quate legislation. It would be indiscreet and presumptuous
in anyone to dogmatize upon so great and many-sided a
question, but I feel confident that common counsel will pro-
duce the results we must all desire. _

Turn from the farm to the world of business which cen-
ters in the city and in the factory, and I think that all
thoughtful observers will agree that the immediate service
we owe the business communities of the country is to pre-
vent private monopoly more effectually than it has yet been
prevented. I think it will be easily agreed that we should
let the Sherman antitrust law stand, unaltered, as it is,
with its debatable ground about it, but that we should as
much as possible reduce the area of that debatable ground
by further and more explicit legislation; and should also
supplement that great act by legislation which will not only
clarify it but also facilitate its administration and make it
fairer to all concerned. No doubt we shall all wish, and
the country will expect, this to be the central subject of our
deliberations during the present session; but it is a subject
so many-sided and so deserving of careful and discrimi-
nating discussion that I shall take the liberty of addressing
you upon it in a special message at a later date than this.
It is of capital importance that the business men of this
country should be relieved of all uncertainties of law with
regard to their enterprises and investments and a clear
path indicated which they can travel without anxiety. It
is as important that they should be relieved of embarrass-
ment and set free to prosper as that private monopoly
should be destroyed. The ways of action should be thrown
wide open.

42
Woodrow Wilson

I turn to a subject which I hope can be handled promptly
and without serious controversy of any kind. I mean the
method of selecting nominees for the Presidency of the
United States. I feel confident that I do not misinterpret
the wishes or the expectations of the country when I urge
the prompt enactment of legislation which will provide
for primary elections throughout the country at which
the voters of the several parties may choose their nominees
for the Presidency without the intervention of nominating
conventions. I venture the suggestion that this legislation
should provide for the retention of party conventions, but
only for the purpose of declaring and accepting the verdict
of the primaries and formulating the platforms of the par-
ties; and I suggest that these conventions should consist
not of delegates chosen for this single purpose, but of the
nominees fer Congress, the nominees for vacant seats in the
Senate of the United States, the Senators whose terms
have not yet closed, the national committees, and the candi-
dates for the Presidency themselves, in order that platforms
may be framed by those responsible to the people for carry-
ing them into effect.

These are all matters of vital domestic concern, and be-
sides them, outside the charmed circle of our own national
life in which our affections command us, as well as our
consciences, there stand out our obligations toward our
territories oversea. Here we are trustees. Porto Rico,
Hawaii, the Philippines, are ours, indeed, but not ours to
do what we please with. Such territories, once regarded as
mere possessions, are no longer to be selfishly exploited;
they are part of the domain of public conscience and of
serviceable and enlightened statesmanship. We must ad-
minister them for the people who live in them and with
the same sense of responsibility to them as toward our own
people in our domestic affairs. No doubt we shall success-
fully enough bind Porto Rico and the Hawaiian Islands
to ourselves by ties of justice and interest and affection,

48
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

but the performance of our duty toward the Philippines is
a more difficult and debatable matter. We can satisfy the
obligations of generous justice toward the people of Porto
Rico by giving them the ample and familiar rights and
privileges accorded our own citizens in our own territories
and our obligations toward the people of Hawaii by per-
fecting the provisions for self-government already granted
them, but in the Philippines we must go further. We must
hold steadily in view their ultimate independence, and we
must move toward the time of that independence as steadily
as the way can be cleared and the foundations thoughtfully
and permanently laid.

Acting under the authority conferred upon the President
by Congress, I have already accorded the people of the
islands a majority in both houses of their legislative body
by appointing five instead of four native citizens to the
membership of the commission. I believe that in this way
we shall make proof of their capacity in counsel and their
sense of responsibility in the exercise of political power,
and that the success of this step will be sure to clear our
view for the steps which are to follow. Step by step we
should extend and perfect the system of self-government in
the islands, making test of them and modifying them as
experience discloses their successes and their failures; that
we should more and more put under the control of the na-
‘tive citizens of the archipelago the essential instruments of
their life, their local instrumentalities of government, their
schools, all the common interest of their communities, and
so by counsel and experience set up a government which all
the world will see to be suitable to a people whose affairs
are under their own control. At last, I hope and believe,
we are beginning to gain the confidence of the Filipino
peoples. By their counsel and experience, rather than
by our own, we shall Jearn how best to serve them and how
soon it will be possible and wise to withdraw our super-
vision. Let us once find the path and set out with firm and

44
Woodrow Wilson

confident tread upon it and we shall not wander from it or
linger upon it.

A duty faces us with regard to Alaska which seems to
me very pressing and very imperative; perhaps I should
say a double duty, for it concerns both the political and
the material development of the Territory. The people of
Alaska should be given the full Territorial form of govern-
ment, and Alaska, as a storehouse, should be unlocked.
One key to it is a system of railways. These the Govern-
ment should itself build and administer, and the ports and
terminals it should itself control in the interest of all who
wish to use them for the service and development of the
country and its people.

But the construction of yvailways is only the first step; is
only thrusting in the key to the storehouse and throwing
back the lock and opening the door. How the tempting re-
sources of the country are to be exploited is another matter,
to which I shall take the liberty of from time to time call-
ing your attention, for it is a policy which must be worked
out by well-considered stages, not upon theory, but upon
lines of practical expediency. It is part of our general
problem of conservation. We have a freer hand in work-
ing out the problem in Alaska than in the States of the
Union; and yet the principle and object are the same,
wherever we touch it. We must use the resources of the
country, not lock them up. There need be no conflict or
jealousy as between State and Federal authorities, for
there can be no essential difference of purpose between
them. The resources in question must be used, but not
destroyed or wasted; used, but not monopolized upon any
narrow idea of individual rights as against the abiding:
interests of communities. That a policy can be worked
out by conference and concession which will release these
resources and yet not jeopard or dissipate them, I for one
have no doubt; and it can be done on lines of regulation
which need be no less acceptable to the people and gov-

46
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

ernments of the States concerned than to the people and
Government of the Nation at large, whose heritage these
resources are. We must bend our counsels to this end.
A common purpose ought to make agreement easy.

Three or four matters of special importance and sig-
nificance I beg that you will permit me to mention in
closing.

Our Bureau of Mines ought to be equipped and empow-
ered to render even more effectual service than it renders
now in improving the conditions of mine labor and making
the mines more economically productive as well as more
safe. This is an all-important part of the work of con-
servation; and the conservation of human life and energy
lies even nearer to our interest than the preservation from
waste of our material resources.

We owe it, in mere justice to the railway employees of
the country, to provide for them a fair and effective em-
ployers’ liability act; and a law that we can stand by in this
matter will be no less to the advantage of those who ad-
minister the railroads of the country than to the advantage
of those whom they employ. The experience of a large
number of the States abundantly proves that.

We ought to devote ourselves to meeting pressing de-
mands of plain justice like this as earnestly as to the ac-
complishment of political and economic reforms. Social
justice comes first. Law is the machinery for its realiza-
tion and is vital only as it expresses and embodies it.

An international congress for the discussion of all ques-
tions that affect safety at sea is now sitting in London at
the suggestion of our own Government. So soon as the
conclusions of that congress can be learned and considered
we ought to address ourselves, among other things, to the
prompt alleviation of the very unsafe, unjust, and burden-,
some conditions which now surround the employment of
sailors and render it extremely difficult to obtain the
services of spirited and competent men such as every ship

46
Woodrow Wilson

needs if it is to be safely handled and brought to port.

May I not express the very real pleasure I have experi-
enced in cooperating with this Congress and sharing with
it the labors of common service to which it has devoted it-
self so unreservedly during the past seven months of un-
complaining concentration upon the business of legislation?
Surely it is a proper and pertinent part of my report on
“the state of the Union” to express my admiration for the
diligence, the good temper, and the full comprehension of
public duty which has already been manifested by both
the Houses; and I hope that it may not be deemed an im-
pertinent intrusion of myself into the picture if I say with
how much and how constant satisfaction I have availed my-
self of the privilege of putting my time and energy at their
disposal alike in counsel and in action.

Wutson’s Specia Messace on Trusts anp MoNnopotiges

(Delivered before Congress in Joint Session January 20,
1914)

[Eprrorran Note: Wilson’s views on trust legislation
were fairly well known, having been embodied in the fa-
mous New Jersey laws which became noted as “The Seven
Sisters” while he still was Governor of that State. This
Message formulated the following definite laws: (1) Pro-
hibition of interlocking directorates, (2) government su-
pervision of railway financing, (8) ewxact definition of the
meaning of the Sherman anti-trust law, (4) an interstate
trade commission to direct and shape corrective processes
and inform the public, (5) legislation to reach individuals
responsible for corporate wrong-doing.

Bills had already been prepared, under the direction of
Henry D. Clayton of Alabama, Chairman of the Judiciary
Committee of the House, who had declined nomination to
the Senate on Wilson’s public request that he remain in the
House to formulate this legislation.

47
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

The bills, known first as the “Five Brothers,” finally
were merged into one bill, the Clayton anti-trust bill, and
passed in October, 1914. The Federal Trade Commission
law was passed September, 1914.]

Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, gentlemen of the Congress,
in my report “on the state of the Union,” which I had the
privilege of reading to you on the 2d of December last, I
ventured to reserve for discussion at a later date the subject
of additional legislation regarding the very difficult and in-
tricate matter of trusts and monopolies. The time now
seems opportune to turn to that great question, not only
because the currency legislation, which absorbed your at-
tention and the attention of the country in December, is
now disposed of, but also because opinion seems to be clear-
ing about us with singular rapidity in this other great field
of action. In the matter of the currency it cleared sud-
denly and very happily after the much-debated act was
passed; in respect of the monopolies which have multiplied
about us and in regard to the various means by which they
have been organized and maintained, it seems to be coming
to a clear and all but universal agreement in anticipation of
our action, as if by way of preparation, making the way
easier to see and easier to set out upon with confidence and
without confusion of counsel.

Legislation has its atmosphere like everything else, and
the atmosphere of accommodation and mutual understand-
ing which we now breathe with so much refreshment is mat-
ter of sincere congratulation. It ought to make our task
very much less difficult and embarrassing than it would
have been had we been obliged to continue to act amidst
the atmosphere of suspicion and antagonism which has so
long made it impossible to approach such questions with
dispassionate fairness. Constructive legislation, when suc-
cessful, is always the embodiment of convincing experience
and of the mature public opinion which finally springs out

48
Woodrow Wilson

of that experience. Legislation is a business of interpreta
tion, not of origination; and it is now plain what the opinion
is to which we must give effect in this matter. It is not
recent or hasty opinion. It springs out of the experience of
a whole generation. It has clarified itself by long contest,
and those who for a long time battled with it and sought to
change it are now frankly and honorably yielding to it and
seeking to conform their actions to it.

The great business men who organized and financed
monopoly and those who administered it in actual everyday
transactions have, year after year until now, either denied
its existence or justified it as necessary for the effective
maintenance and development of the vast business processes
of the country in the modern circumstances of trade and
manufacture and finance; but all the while opinion has made
head against them. The average business man is convinced
that the ways of liberty are also the ways of peace and the
ways of success as well; and at last the masters of business
on the great scale have begun to yield their preference and
purpose, perhaps their judgment also, in honorable sur-
render.

What we are purposing to do, therefore, is, happily, not
to hamper or interfere with business as enlightened business
men prefer to do it, or in any sense to put it under the ban.
The antagonism between business and Government is over.
We are now about to give expression to the best business
judgment of America, to what we know to be the business
conscience and honor of the land. The Government and
business men are ready to meet each other halfway in a
common effort to square business methods with both public
opinion and the law. The best-informed men of the busi-
ness world condemn the methods and processes and conse-
quences of monopoly as we condemn them, and the instinc-
tive judgment of the vast majority of business men every-
where goes with them. We shall now be their spokes-
men. ‘That is the strength of our position and the

49
Presidential Messages, ‘Addresses and State Papers

sure prophecy of what will ensue when our reasonable work
is done.

When serious contest ends, when men unite in opinion
and purpose, those who are to change their ways of business
joining with those who ask for the change, it is possible to
effect it in the way in which prudent and thoughtful and
patriotic men would wish to see it brought about, with as
few, as slight, as easy and simple business readjustments as
possible in the circumstances, nothing essential disturbed,
nothing torn up by the roots, no parts rent asunder which
can be left in wholesome combination. Fortunately, no
measures of sweeping or novel change are necessary. It
will be understood that our object is not to unsettle business
or anywhere seriously to break its established courses
athwart. On the contrary, we desire the laws we are now
about to pass to be the bulwarks and safeguards of in-
dustry against the forces who have disturbed it. What we
have to do can be done in a new spirit, in thoughtful mod-
eration, without revolution of any untoward kind.

We are all agreed that “private monopoly is indefensible
and intolerable,’ and our program is founded upon that
conviction. It will be a comprehensive but not a radical
or unacceptable program and these are its items, the
changes which opinion deliberately sanctions and for which
business waits:

It waits with acquiescence, in the first place, for laws
which will effectually prohibit and prevent such interlock-
ings of the personnel of the directorates of great corpora-
tions—banks and railroads, industrial, commercial, and pub-
lic service bodies—as in effect result in making those who
borrow and those who lend practically one and the same,
those who sell and those who buy but the same persons
trading with one another under different names and in dif-
ferent combinations, and those who affect to compete in
fact partners and masters of some whole field of business.
Sufficient time should be allowed, of course, in which to

50
Woodrow Wilson

effect these changes of organization without inconvenience
or confusion.

Such a prohibition will work much more than a mere
negative good by correcting the serious evils which have
arisen because, for example, the men who have been the
directing spirits of the great investment banks have usurped
the place which belongs to independent industrial manage-
ment working in its own behoof. It will bring new men,
new energies, a new spirit of initiative, new blood, into the
management of our great business enterprises. It will open
the field of industrial development and origination to scores
of men who have been obliged to serve when their abilities
entitled them to direct. It will immensely hearten the
young men coming on and will greatly enrich the business
activities of the whole country.

In the second place, business men as well as those who
direct public affairs now recognize, and recognize with pain-
ful clearness, the great harm and injustice which has been
done to many, if not all, of the great railroad systems of
the country by the way in which they have been financed
and their own distinctive interests subordinated to the in-
terests of the men who financed them and of other business
enterprises which those men wished to promote. The coun-
try is ready, therefore, to accept, and accept with relief as
well as approval, a law which will confer upon the Inter-
state Commerce Commission the power to superintend and
regulate the financial operations by which the railroads are
henceforth to be supplied with the money they need for
their proper development to meet the rapidly growing
requirements of the country for increased and improved
facilities of transportation. We can not postpone action
in this matter without leaving the railroads exposed to
many serious handicaps and hazards; and the prosperity
of the railroads and the prosperity of the country are in-
separably connected. Upon this question those who are
chiefly responsible for the actual management and opera-

61
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

tion of the railroads have spoken very plainly and very
earnestly, with a purpose we ought to be quick to accept.
It will be one step, and a very important one, toward the
necessary separation of the business of production from the
business of transportation.

The business of the country awaits also, has long awaited
and has suffered because it could not obtain, further and
more explicit legislative definition of the policy and mean-
ing of the existing antitrust law. Nothing hampers business
like uncertainty. Nothing daunts or discourages it like the
necessity to take chances, to run the risk of falling under
the condemnation of the law before it can make sure just
what the law is. Surely we are sufficiently familiar with
the actual processes and methods of monopoly and of the
many hurtful restraints of trade to make definition possible,
at any rate up to the limits of what experience has dis-
closed. These practices, being now abundantly disclosed,
can be explicitly and item by item forbidden by statute in
such terms as will practically eliminate uncertainty, the
law itself and the penalty being made equally plain.

And the business men of the country desire something
more than that the menace of legal process in these matters
be made explicit and intelligible. They desire the advice,
the definite guidance, and information which can be sup-
plied by an administrative body, an interstate trade com-
mission.

The opinion of the country would instantly approve of
such a commission. It would not wish to see it empowered
to make terms with monopoly or in any sort to assume con-
trol of business, as if the Government made itself re-
sponsible. It demands such a commission only as an
indispensable instrument of information and publicity, as
a clearing house for the facts by which both the public
mind and the managers of great business undertakings
should be guided, and as an instrumentality for doing
justice to business where the processes of the courts

52
Woodrow Wilson

or the natural forces of correction outside the courts are
inadequate to adjust the remedy to the wrong in a way
that will meet all the equities and circumstances of the case.

Producing industries, for example, which have passed
the point up to which combination may be consistent with
the public interest and the freedom of trade, can not always
be dissected into their component units as readily as rail-
road companies or similar organizations can be. Their dis-
solution by ordinary legal process may oftentimes involve
financial consequences likely to overwhelm the security mar-
ket and bring upon it breakdown and confusion. There
ought to be an administrative commission capable of di-
recting and shaping such commission capable of directing
and shaping such corrective processes, not only in aid of
the courts but also by independent suggestion, if necessary.

Inasmuch as our object and the spirit of our action in
these matters is to meet business half way in its processes
of self-correction and disturb its legitimate course as little
as possible, we ought to see to it, and the judgment of prac-
tical and sagacious men of affairs everywhere would applaud
us if we did see to it, that penalties and punishments should
fall not upon business itself, to its confusion and inter-
ruption, but upon the individuals who use the instrumentali-
ties of business to do things which public policy and sound
business practice condemn. Every act of business is done
at the command or upon the initiative of some ascertainable
person or group of persons. These should be held indi-
vidually responsible and the punishment should fall upon
them, not upon the business organization of which they
make illegal use. It should be one of the main objects of
our legislation to divest such persons of their corporate
cloak and deal with them as with those who do not repre-
sent their corporations, but merely by deliberate intention
break the law. Business men the country through would,
I am sure, applaud us if we were to take effectual steps
to see that the officers and directors of great business bodies

58
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

were prevented from bringing them and the business of the
country into disrepute and danger.

Other questions remain which will need very thoughtful
and practical treatment. Enterprises in these modern days
of great individual fortunes are oftentimes interlocked, not
by being under the control of the same directors but by
the fact that the greater part of their corporate stock is
owned by a single person or group of persons who are in
some way intimately related in interest. We are agreed,
I take it, that holding companies should be prohibited, but
what of the controlling private ownership of individuals or
actually co-operative groups of individuals? Shall the priv-
ate owners of capital stock be suffered to be themselves in
effect holding companies? We do not wish, I suppose, to
forbid the purchase of stocks by any person who pleases
to buy them in such quantities as he can afford, or in any
way arbitrarily to limit the sale of stocks to bona fide pur-
chasers. Shall we require the owners of stock, when their
voting power in several companies which ought to be inde-
pendent of one another would constitute actual control, to
make election in which of them they will exercise their right
to vote? This question I venture for your consideration.

There is another matter in which imperative considera-
tions of justice and fair play suggest thoughtful remedial
action. Not only do many of the combinations effected or
sought to be effected in the industrial world work an in-
justice upon the public in general; they also directly and
seriously injure the individuals who are put out of business
in one unfair way or another by the many dislodging and
exterminating forces of combination. I hope that we shall
agree in giving private individuals who claim to have been
injured by theses processes the right to found their suits
for redress upon the facts and judgments proved and en-
tered in suits by the Government where the Government
has upon its own initiative sued the combinations com-
plained of and won its suit, and that the statute of limita-

5d}
Woodrow Wilson

tions shall be suffered to run against such litigants only
from the date of the conclusion of the Government’s action.
It is not fair that the private litigant should be obliged to
set up and establish again the facts which the Government
has proved. He can not afford, he has not the power, to
make use of such processes of inquiry as the Government
has command of. Thus shall individual justice be done
while the processes of business are rectified and squared
with the general conscience.

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

Tur Two Procramations ConceRNING THE SHIPMENT OF |
Arms into Mexico

Whereas, by a proclamation of the President issued on
March 14, 1912, under a Joint Resolution of Congress
approved by the President on the same day, it was de-
clared that there existed in Mexico conditions of domestic
violence which were promoted by the use of arms or muni-
tions of war procured from the United States; and

Whereas, by the Joint Resolution above mentioned it
thereupon became unlawful to export arms or munitions of
war to Mexico except under such limitations and exceptions
as the President should prescribe:

56
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

Now, therefore, I, Wooprow Wixson, President of the
United States of America, hereby proclaim that, as the con-
ditions on which the Proclamation of March 14, 1912, was
based have essentially changed, and as it is desirable to
place the United States with reference to the exportation
of arms or munitions of war to Mexico in the same position
as other Powers, the said Proclamation is hereby revoked.

Done at the City of Washington this third day of Febru-
ary, in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred
and fourteen, and pf the Independence of the United States
the one hundred and thirty-eighth.

Wooprow WILson.

By the President:

W. J. Bryan, Secretary of State.

Whereas, a Joint Resolution of Congress, approved
March 14, 1912, provides: “That whenever the President
shall find that in any American country conditions of do-
mestic violence exist which are promoted by the use of
arms or munitions of war procured from the United
States, and shall make proclamation thereof, it shall be
unlawful to export except under such limitations as the
President shall prescribe any arms or munitions of war
from the United States to such country until otherwise
ordered by the President or by Congress” ;

Now, therefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, President of the
United States of America, do hereby proclaim that I have
found that there exist in Mexico such conditions of domestic
violence promoted by the use of arms or munitions of war
procured from the United States as contemplated by the
said Joint Resolution; and I do hereby admonish all citizens
of the United States and every person to abstain from every
violation of the provisions of the Joint Resolution above set
forth, hereby made applicable to Mexico, and I do hereby
warn them that all violations of such provisions will be
rigorously prosecuted. And I do hereby enjoin upon all

56
Woodrow Wilson

officers of the United States, charged with the execution of
the laws thereof, the utmost diligence in preventing viola-
tions of the said Joint Resolution and this my Proclama-
tion issued thereunder, and in bringing to trial and pun-
ishment any offenders against the same.

Done at the city of Washington this nineteenth day of
October in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred
and fifteen and of the Independence of the United States
of America the one hundred and fortieth.

Wooprow Witson.

By the President:

Rozert Lansina, Secretary of State.

[On the same day (October 19) the President ordered that an
exception be made in favor of the Carranza de facto government,
by permitting arms shipments into the territory under that govern-
ment’s control.]

Wizson Urees Reprau or:-Law Givine American Coast-
wisz Suips Freepom rrom Panama Toris

(Delivered before Congress, Joint Session, March 5, 1914.)
[Eprrortat Notre: The Panama Canal Act had granted
passage of the canal to American coastwise ships free of
tolls. The question of whether or not this was a violation
of the treaty with Great Britain was vehemently debated in
the United States, but the debate was, on the whole, based
more on differing National instincts and opinions than
on clearly understood facts. The history of Anglo-Ameri-
can treaties and negotiations over Central American canal
projects is highly involved and only a few specialists in
diplomatic history and international law could really as-
sert authoritative knowledge. As nearly as the temper of
so huge a population as ours could be gauged, it seems cor-
rect to say that the majority favored a repeal of the act
on the ground that it was better for American justice to
surrender a possible right than to commit a possible injus-
tice. Congress responded favorably to the Message.]

&7
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

Gentlemen of the Congress:

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

I have come to ask you for the repeal of that provision
of the Panama Canal Act of August 24, 1912, which ex-
empts vessels engaged in the coastwise trade of the United
States from payment of tolls, and to urge upon you the
justice, the wisdom, and the large policy of such a repeal
with the utmost earnestness of which I am capable.

In my own judgment, very fully considered and ma-
turely formed, that exemption constitutes a mistaken eco-
nomic policy from every point of view, and is, moreover,
in plain contravention of the treaty with Great Britain con-
cerning the canal concluded on November 18,.1901. But
I have not come to urge upon you my personal views. I
have come to state to you a fact and a situation. Whatever
may be our own differences of opinion concerning this much
debated measure, its meaning is not debated outside the
United States. Everywhere else the language of the treaty
is given but one interpretation, and that interpretation pre-
cludes the exemption I am asking you to repeal. We con-
sented to the treaty; its language we accepted, if we did
not originate it; and we are too big, too powerful, too self-
respecting a nation to interpret with a too strained or re-
fined reading the words of our own promises just because
we have power enough to give us leave to read them as we
please. The large thing to do is the only thing we can af-
ford to do, a voluntary withdrawal from a position every-
where questioned and misunderstood. We ought to reverse

58
Woodrow Wilson

our action without raising the question whether we were
right or wrong, and so once more deserve our reputation
for generosity and for the redemption of every obligation
without quibble or hesitation.

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

Witson’s SpeciaL Message on THE Tampico AFFAIR

(Delivered before Congress in Joint Session April 20,
1914.)

Gentlemen of the Congress:

It is my duty to call your attention to a situation which
has arisen in our dealings with Gen. Victoriano Huerta at
Mexico City which calls for action, and to ask your advice
and co-operation.

On April 9 a Paymaster of the U. S. S. Dolphin landed
at the Iturbide bridge landing at Tampico with a whale-
boat and boat’s crew to take off certain supplies for his
ship, and while engaged in loading the boat was arrested
by an officer and squad of men of the army of General
Huerta. Neither the Paymaster nor any one of the crew
was armed. Two of the men were in the boat when the ar-
rest was made, and were obliged to leave it and submit to
be taken into custody, notwithstanding that the boat carried,
both at her bow and her stern, the flag of the United
States. The officer who made the arrest was proceeding
up one of the streets of the town with his prisoners when
met by an officer of higher authority, who ordered him to
return to the landing and await orders, and within an hour
and a half from the time of the arrést, orders were re-
ceived from the commander of the Huertista forces at
Tampico for the release of the Paymaster and his men.
The release was followed by apologies from the commander

59
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

and also by an expression of regret by General Huerta
himself. General Huerta urged that martial law obtained
at the time at Tampico, that orders had been issued that
no one should be allowed to land at the Iturbide bridge, and
that our sailors had no right to land there. Our naval com-
manders at the port had not been notified of any such pro-
hibition, and, even if they had been, the only justifiable
course open to the local authorities would have been to re-
quest the Paymaster and his crew to withdraw and to lodge
a protest with the commanding officer of the fleet. Admiral
Mayo regarded the arrest as so serious an affront that he
was not satisfied with the apologies offered, but demanded
that the flag of the United States be saluted with special
ceremony by the military commander of the port.

The incident can not be regarded as a trivial one, espe-
cially as two of the men arrested were taken from the boat
itselfi—that is to say, from the territory of the United
States; but had it stood by itself, it might have been at-
tributed to the ignorance or arrogance of a single officer.

Unfortunately, it was not an isolated case. A series of
incidents have recently occurred which can not but create
the impression that the representatives of General Huerta
were willing to go out of their way to show disregard for
the dignity and rights of this Government, and felt per-
fectly safe in doing what they pleased, making free to
show in many ways their irritation and contempt.

A few days after the incident at Tampico an orderly from
the U. S. S. Minnesota was arrested at Vera Cruz while
ashore in uniform to obtain the ship’s mail, and was for a
time thrown into jail. An official dispatch from this Goy-
ernment to its embassy at Mexico City was withheld by
the authorities of the telegraphic service until peremptorily
demanded by our Chargé d’ Affaires in person.

So far as I can learn, such wrong and annoyances have
been suffered to occur only against representatives of the
United States. I have heard of no complaints from other

60
Woodrow Wilson

governments of similar treatment. Subsequent explana-
tions and formal apologies did not and could not alter the
popular impression, which it is possible it had been the
object of the Huertista authorities to create, that the Gov-
ernment of the United States was being singled out, and
might be singled out with impunity, for slights and affronts
in retaliation for its refusal to recognize the pretensions
of General Huerta to be regarded as the Constitutional Pro-
visional President of the Republic of Mexico.

The manifest danger of such a situation was that such
offenses might grow from bad to worse until something hap-
pened of so gross and intolerable a sort as to lead directly
and inevitably to armed conflict. It was necessary that the
apologies of General Huerta and his representatives should
go much further, that they should be such as to attract the
attention of the whole population to their significance, and
such as to impress upon General Huerta himself the neces-
sity of seeing to it that no further occasion for explanations
and professed regrets should arise. I, therefore, felt it my
duty to sustain Admiral Mayo in the whole of his demand
and to insist that the flag of the United States should be
saluted in such a way as to indicate a new spirit and atti-
tude on the part of the Huertistas.

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

This Government can, I earnestly hope, in no circum-
stances be forced into war with the people of Mexico.
Mexico is torn by civil strife. If we are to accept the
tests of its own Constitution, it has no government. Gen-
eral Huerta has set his power up in the City of Mexico,
such as it is, without right and by methods for which there
can be no justification. Only part of the country is under
his control.

If armed conflict should unhappily come as a result of
his attitude of personal resentment toward this Government,

61
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

we should be fighting only General Huerta and those who
adhere to him and give him their support, and our object
would be only to restore to the people of the distracted
republic the opportunity to set up again their own laws
and their own government.

But I earnestly hope that war is not now in question. I
believe that I speak for the American people when I say
that we do not desire to control in any degree the affairs
of our sister republic. Our feeling for the people of Mexico
is one of deep and genuine friendship, and everything that
we have so far done or refrained from doing has proceeded
from our desire to help them, not to hinder or embarrass
them. We would not wish even to exercise the good offices
of friendship without their welcome and consent.

The people of Mexico are entitled to settle their own do-
mestic affairs in their own way, and we sincerely desire to
respect their right. The present situation need have none
of the grave complications of interference if we deal with
it promptly, firmly, and wisely.

No doubt I could do what is necessary in the circum-
stances to enforce respect for our Government without re-
course to the Congress, and yet not exceed my constitutional
power as President; but I do not wish to act in a matter
possibly of so grave consequence except in close conference
and co-operation with both the Senate and House. I there-
fore come to ask your approval that I should use the
armed forces of the United States in such ways and to such
an extent as may be necessary to obtain from General
Huerta and his adherents the fullest recognition of the
rights and dignity of the United States, even amid the
distressing conditions now unhappily obtaining in
Mexico.

There can in what we do be no thought of aggression or
of selfish aggrandizement. We seek to maintain the dignity
and authority of the United States only because we wish
always to keep our great influence unimpaired for the uses

62
Woodrow Wilson

oi liberty, both in the United States and wherever else it
may be employed for the benefit of mankind.

[The important event that had led up to this incident was the
continued refusal to recognize Huerta. A popular election had
been set in Mexico for October 26, 1913, to elect a Constitutional
President. On October 10 Huerta sent a strong force of soldiers
to the Parliament House in Mexico City and arrested 110 members
of the lower chamber, making himself supreme and rendering the
election farcical. Congress gave President Wilson the approval for
which he asked, by passing a joint resolution that the President
was justified in using the armed forces of the United States to
enforce demands on Huerta for unequivocal amends to the United
States. This resolution was adopted April 22 1914.]

Witson Orpvers Dissotution or New Encianp RaILRoaD
Mercers

[Evrroriat Nore: As a result of sensational disclosures
in New England relating to monopoly of transportation
acquired by the New York, New Haven and Hartford Rail-
road as a principal, the Federal Government, in order to
save the interests of stock-holders and of the public, pro-
posed to the controlling financiers a systematic process of
correcting the objectionable practices and of dissolving the
unlawful combinations. After long negotiations the United
States Attorney-General, J. C. McReynolds, was obliged
to inform the President that the directors of the N. Y., N.
H. and H. R. R. had failed to comply with the terms of
settlement. The President thereupon gave the Attorney-
General the following written instruction:]

Their final decision in this matter causes me the deepest
surprise and regret. Their failure upon so slight a pretext
to carry out an agreement deliberately and solemnly entered
into, and which was manifestly in the common interest, is
to me inexplicable and entirely without justification.

You have been kind enough to keep me informed of every
step the Department took in this matter and the action of
the Department has, throughout, met with my entire ap-

68
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

proval. It was just, reasonable and efficient. It should
have resulted in avoiding what must now be done.

In the circumstances the course you propose is the only
one the Government can pursue. I therefore request and
direct that a proceeding in equity be. filed, seeking the dis-
solution of unlawful monopolization of transportation in
New England territory now sought to be mantained by the
New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad Company,
and that the criminal aspects of the case be laid before a
Grand Jury.

Wooprow WiItson.

Tue Wuire Housz, July 21, 4914.

[Eprroriat Nore: The suit was begun October 18, 1915,
and ended January 10, 1916, in the acquittal of six de-
fendants and a disagreement of the jury as to the guilt or
innocence of the other five. ]

Witson’s Sreciat Message on Provisions ror ApDI-
TIONAL REVENUE

(Delivered before Congress in Joint Session September
4, 1914.)

Gentlemen of the Congress:

I come to you to-day 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 addi-
tional 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 con-
tinuation of this decrease in the same proportion through-
out the current fiscal year would probably mean a loss of
customs revenues of from sixty to one hundred millions. I
need not tell vou to what this falling off.is due. It is due,

64
Woodrow Wilson

in chief part, not to the reductions recently made in the cus-
toms duties, but to the great decrease in importations; and
that is due to the extraordinary 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 economic 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 circumstances
in which we now find ourselves as a nation might involve
consequences of the most embarrassing and deplorable 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 financial operations of the coun-
try’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 de-
moralized. Just now the peculiarly difficult financial prob-
Jems of the moment are being successfully dealt with, with
great self-possession and good sense and very sound judg-
ment; 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 sélidity and adequacy of the
Treasury of the Government which stands behind the whole
method Ly 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 income of the Treas-

66
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

ury should make it necessary rapidly to withdraw these de-
posits. And yet without additional revenue that plainly
might become necessary, and the time when it became neces-
sary could not be controlled or determined by the con-
venience of the business of the country. It would have to
be determined by the operations 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 situation which is at best, while war
continues in Europe, difficult and abnormal. Hesitation and
delay are the worst forms of bad policy under such con-
ditions.

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 un-
necessary. The country is able to pay any just and reason-
able 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 circumstances, 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 embarrassment to the situa-
tion. 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 directly and
palpably almost as if we were participants in the circum-

66
Woodrow Wilson.

stances which gave rise to it. We must accept the inevitable:
with calm judgment and unruffled spirits, like men ac-
customed to deal with the unexpected, habituated 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 Treasury
strong, unquestionably strong, and strong throughout the
present anxieties, I respectfully urge that an additional
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 te
public duty, which has responded to the needs of the Na-
tion throughout a long season despite inevitable fatigue and
personal sacrifice, and so large a proportion of whose Mem-
bers have devoted their whole sine and energy to the busi-
ness of the country.

Witson’s Seconp AnnuaL MEssaGE

(Delivered before Congress in Joint Session 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 Congress, 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 assessment of it; but no doubt

67
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

we stand too near the work that has been done and are our=
selves too much part of it to play the part of historians
toward it.

Our program of legislation with regard to the regulation
of business is now virtually complete. It has been put
forth, as we intended, as a whole, and leaves no conjecture
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, un-.
clouded 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 altered 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 enthusiasm and a confidence
in the principles upon which we were acting which sus-
tained us at every step of the difficult undertaking; but it is
done. It has passed from our hands. It is now an estab-
lished part of the legislation of the country. Its useful-
ness, 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
also the processes of production. In Europe it is destroy-
ing men and resources wholesale and upon a scale unpre-

68
Woodrow Wilson

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 services 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 Europe
has usually supplied with innumerable articles of manu-
facture 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 Central and
South America. Their lines of trade have hitherto 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 resources, its energies, its forces of produc-
tion, 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 distribution. 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

69
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

once. We are not prepared to use them immediately and
at their best, without 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 thou- ~
sands of vigorous men, full of initiative, knock 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; be-
cause the laws we have made do not intelligently balance
encouragement against restraint. We withhold by regula-
tion.

I have come to ask you to remedy and correct these mis-
takes 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 cir-
cumstances 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 na-
tional domain, the other to encourage the use of the navi-
gable waters outside that domain for the generation of
power, have already passed the House of Representatives
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

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Woodrow Wilson

western country for whose free and systematic develop-
ment, as it seems to me, our legislation 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 economical and profitable use of it, the rights of
the public being adequately guarded the while, and monop-
oly in the use prevented. To have begun such measures
and 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-govern-
ment 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 liberty, as the
sources as well as the expression of life, how better could
we demonstrate our own self-possession and steadfastness
in the courses of justice and disinterestedness than by thus
going calmly forward to fulfill our promises to a depend-
ent 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 trans-
portation upon which all profitable and useful commerce
depends? And how are we to get the ships if we wait

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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 deliberately,
withdrawn our flag from the seas, except 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 chan-
nels while we debated the items.

The case is not unlike that which 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 develop-
ment was not to lag intolerably and wait interminably. We
lavishly subsidized the building of trancontinental rail-
roads. We look back upon that with regret now, because
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 pro-
viding 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 acually opened—by many ships and regular
sailings and moderate charges—before streams of merchan-
dise 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 reason-
able to ask private capital to open them at a venture. It is
not a question of the Government monopolizing the field.

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Woodrow Wilson

It should take action to make it certain that transportation
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 en-
gage private capital, and engage it in abundance, the Gov-
ernment ought to withdraw. I very earnestly hope that
the Congress will be of this opinion, and that both Houses
will adopt this exceedingly important 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 con-
structive 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 conven-
tion originated was called by the United States; the repre-
sentatives of the United States played a very influential
part indeed in framing the provisions of the proposed con-
vention; and those provisions are in themselves 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 Au-
gust 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.

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

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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 important indeed with
regard to the older coasts of the continent. We can not
use our great Alaskan domain, ships will not ply thither,
if those coasts and their many hidden dangers are not thor-
oughly 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 chan-
nels. 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
in 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 impor-
tant that our judgments should be clear, definite and stead-
fast?

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 spend-
ing the money of the great people whose servants 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

4
Woodrow Wilson

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’ management.

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 éxperienced business men would organize them
if they had a clean sheet of paper to write upon. Cer-
tainly 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 be-
lieve, though no doubt considerable in itself, running, it
may be, into the millions, be relatively small,—small, I
mean, in proportion to the total necessary outlays of the
Government. It would be thoroughly 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 enlargement, with the mere growth, indeed, of
the country itself, there must come, of course, the inevitable
increase of expense. The sort of economy we ought to
practice may be effected, and ought to be effected, by a
careful study and assessment of the tasks to be performed;
and 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 appropriations 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

78
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

have been undertaken at all or might have been postponed
or better and more economically conceived 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 pre-
pared? 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 sug-
gested 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 necessary tasks to render com-
pulsory 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 cher--
ish and hold dear. I hope that some of their finer passions
are in my own heart,—some of the great conceptions 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 world, and that,
speaking my own thoughts, I shall, at least in part, speak
theirs also, however faintly and inadequately, upon this vi-
tal matter.

We are at peace with all the world. No one who speaks

76
Woodrow Wilson

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 integ-
rity of our territory is threatened. Dread of the power
of any other nation we are incapable of. We are not jeal-
ous 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, because 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 cham-
pions 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 jealous of it, because
it is our dearest present hope that this character and repu-
tation may presently, in God’s providence, bring us an op-
portunity 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 interrupted 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 them-
selves. There is another sort of energy in us. It will
know how to declare itself and make itself effective should

7
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

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 na-
tional peril, in the future as in the past, not upon a stand-
ing army, nor yet upon a reserve army, but upon a citi-
zenry 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 training may be
made familiar with the use of modern arms, the rudiments
of drill and maneuver, and the maintenance and sanitation
of camps. We should encourage 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 noth-
ing more. Every means by which such things can be stimu-
lated is legitimate, 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 occa-
sion specially calls for such measures, but because it should
be our constant policy to make these provisions for our na-
tional peace and safety.

More than this carries with it a reversal of the whole
history and character of our polity. More than this, pro-
posed 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 noth-

78
Woodrow Wilson

ing to do, whose causes can not touch us, whose very exist-
ence affords us opportunities of friendship and disinterested
service which should make us ashamed of any thought of
hostility or fearful preparation for trouble. This is as-
suredly the opportunity for which a people and a govern-
ment 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 aggression or of
conquest. But who shall tell us now what sort of 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 expert 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 atti-
tude 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 aspects be-
cause 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, the abiding friendship of states, and
the unhampered freedom of all with whom we deal. Let
there be no misconception. The country has been mis-
informed. We have not been negligent of national defense.
We are not unmindful of the great responsibility resting
upon us. We shall learn and profit by the lesson of every

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

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 sup-
ply our own people, and the people of the world as 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 emancipated
spirit may do for men and for societies, for individuals, for
states, and for mankind.

Witson’s Jackson Day Appress at INDIANAPOLIS,
January 8, 1915

[In which he praises the Democratic party and ridicules every-
thing Republican. Here we find President Wilson in his lightest
vein. In this address, also, he declared, regarding Mexican fac-
tions, that “so far as my influence goes while I am President
nobody shall interfere with them.”]

Governor Ralston, Ladies and Gentlemen:

You have given me a most royal welcome, for which I
thank you from the bottom of my heart. It is rather lonely
living in Washington. I have been confined for two years
at hard labor, and even now I feel that I am simply out
on parole. You notice that one of the most distinguished
members of the United States Senate is here to see that I
go back. And yet, with sincere apologies to the Senate and

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Woodrow Wilson

House of Representatives, I want to say that I draw more
inspiration from you than I do from them. They, like
myself, are only servants of the people of the United States.
Our sinews consist in your sympathy and support, and our
renewal comes from contact with you and with the strong
movements of public opinion in the country.

But I have come here on Jackson Day. If there are
Republicans present, I hope they will feel the compelling
influences of such a day. There was nothing mild about
Andrew Jackson; that is the reason I spoke of the “com-
pelling influences” of the day. Andrew Jackson was a
forthright man who believed everything he did believe in
fighting earnest. And really, ladies and gentlemen, in pub-
lic life that is the only sort of man worth thinking about
for a moment. If I was not ready to fight for everything I
believe in, I would think it my duty to go back and take a
back seat. I like, therefore, to breathe the air of Jackson
Day. I like to be reminded of the old militant hosts of
Democracy which I believe have come to life again in our
time. The United States had almost forgotten that it must
keep its fighting ardor in behalf of mankind when Andrew
Jackson became President; and you will notice that when-
ever the United States forgets its ardor for mankind it is
necessary that a Democrat should be elected President.

The trouble with the Republican party is that it has not
had a new idea for thirty years. I am not speaking as a
politician; I am speaking as an historian. I have looked for
new ideas in the records and I have not found any pro-
ceeding from the Republican ranks. They have had leaders
from time to time who suggested new ideas, but they never
did anything to carry them out. I suppose there was no
harm in their talking, provided they could not do anything.
Therefore, when it was necessary to say that we had talked
about things long enough which it was necessary to do, and
the time had come to do them, it was indispensable that a
Democrat should be elected President.

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

I would not speak with disrespect of the Republican
party. I always speak with great respect of the past. The
past was necessary to the present, and was a sure pre-
diction of the future. The Republican party is still a covert
and refuge for those who are afraid, for those who want
to consult their grandfathers about everything. You will
notice that most of the advice taken by the Republican
party is taken from gentlemen old enough to be grand-
fathers, and that when they claim that a reaction has taken
place, they react to the re-election of the oldest members
of their party. They will not trust the youngsters. They
are afraid the youngsters may have something up their
sleeve.

My friends, what I particularly want you to observe is
this, that politics in this country does not depend any longer
upon the regular members of either party. There are not
enough regular Republicans in this country to take and
hold national power; and I must immediately add there
are not enough regular Democrats in this country to do it,
either. This country is guided and itg policy is determined
by the independent voter; and I have gome to ask you how
we can best prove to the independent voter that the instru-
ment he needs is the Democratic party, and that it would
be hopeless for him to attempt to use the Republican party.
I do not have to prove it; I admit it.

What seems to me perfectly evident is this: That if you
made a rough reckoning, you would have to admit that only
about one-third of the Republican party is progressive; and
you would also have to admit that about two-thirds of the
Democratic party is progressive. Therefore, the independ-
ent progressive voter finds a great deal more company in
the Democratic ranks than in the Republican ranks. ‘

What I want to point out to you—and I believe that this
is what the whole country is beginning to perceive—is this,
that there is a larger body of men in the regular ranks of
the Democratic party who believe in the progressive policies

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Woodrow Wilson

of our day and mean to see them carried forward and per-
petuated than there is in the ranks of the Republican party.
How can it be otherwise, gentlemen? The Democratic
party, and only the Democratic party, has carried out the
policies which the progressive people of this country have
desired. There is not a single great act of this present
great Congress which has not been carried out in obedience
to the public opinion of America; and the public opinion of
America is not going to permit any body of men to go back-
ward with regard to these great matters.

Let me instance a single thing: I want to ask the busi-
ness men here present if this is not the first January in
their recollection that did not bring a money stringency
for the time being, because of the necessity of paying out
great sums of money by way of dividends and the other
settlements which come at the first of the year? I have
asked the bankers if that happened this year, and they
say, “No; it did not happen; it could not happen under
the Federal Reserve Act.” We have emancipated the
credits of this country; and is there anybody here who
will doubt that the other policies that have given guaranty
to this country that there will be free competition are poli-
cies which this country will never allow to be reversed?
I have taken a long time, ladies and gentlemen, to select
the Federal Trade Commission, because I wanted to choose
men and be sure that I had chosen men who would be
really serviceable to the business men of this country, great
as well as small, the rank and the file. These things have
been done and will never be undone. They were talked
about and talked about with futility until a Democratic
Congress attempted and achieved them.

But the Democratic party is not to suppose that it is
done with the business. The Democratic party is still on
trial. The Democratic party still has to prove to the in-
dependent voters of the country not only that it believes
in these things, but that it will continue to work along these

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

lines and that it will not allow any enemy of these things
to break its ranks. This country is not going to use any
party that can not do continuous and consistent teamwork.
If any group of men should dare to break the solidarity of
the Democratic team for any purpose or from any motive,
theirs will be a most unenviable notoriety and a responsi-
bility which will bring deep bitterness to them. The only
party that is serviceable to a nation is a party that can
hold absolutely together and march with the discipline and
with the zest of a conquering host.

I am not saying these things because I doubt that the
Democratic party will be able to do this, but because I be-
lieve that as leader for the time being of that party I can
promise the country that it will do these things. I know my
colleagues at Washington; I know their spirit and their pur-
pose; and I know that they have the same emotion, the same
high emotion of public service, that I hope I have.

I want at this juncture to pay my tribute of respect and
of affectionate admiration for the two great Democratic
Senators from the State of Indiana. I have never had to
lie awake nights wondering what they were going to do.
And the country is not going to trouble itself, ladies and
gentlemen, to lie awake nights and wonder what men are
going todo. If they have to do that, they will choose other
men. Teamwork all the time is what they are going to de-
mand of us, and that is our individual as well as our col-
lective responsibility. That is what Jackson stands for.
If a man will not play with the team, then he does not
belong to the team. You see, I have spent a large part of
my life in college and I know what a team means when I
see it; and I know what the captain of a team must have
if he is going to win. So it is no idle figure of speech
with me.

Now, what is their duty? You say, “Hasn’t this Con-
gress carried out a great program?’”’ Yes, it has carried
out a great program. It has had the most remarkable

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Woodrow Wilson

record that any Congress since the Civil War has had; and
I say since the Civil War because I have not had time to
think about those before the Civil War. But we are living
at an extraordinary moment. The world has never been
in the condition that it is in now, my friends. Half the
world is on fire. Only America among the great powers
of the world is free to govern her own life; and all the
world is looking to America to serve its economic need. And
while this is happening what is going on?

Do you know, gentlemen, that the ocean freight rates
have gone up in some instances to ten times their ordinary
figure? and that the farmers of the United States, those
who raise grain and those who raise cotton—these things
that are absolutely necessary to the world as well as to
ourselves—can not get their due profit out of the great
prices that they are willing to pay for these things on the
other side of the sea, because practically the whole profit
is eaten up by the extortionate charges for ocean carriage?
In the midst of this the Democrats propose a temporary
measure of relief in a shipping bill. The merchants and
the farmers of this country must have ships to carry their
goods. Just at the present moment there is no other way
of getting them through the instrumentality that is sug-
gested in the shipping bill. I hear it said in Washington
on all hands that the Republicans in the United States Sen-
ate mean to talk enough to make the passage of that bill im-
possible. These self-styled friends of business, these men
who say the Democratic party does not know what to do
for business, are saying that the Democrats shall do noth-
ing for business. I challenge them to show their right to
stand in the way of the release of American products to the
rest of the world! Who commissioned them—a minority,
a lessening minority? (For they will be in a greater
minority in the next Senate than in this.) You know it is
the peculiarity of that great body that it has rules of pro-
cedure which make it possible for a minority to defy the

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

Nation; and these gentlemen are now seeking to defy the
Nation and prevent the release of American products to
the suffering world which needs them more than it ever
needed them before. Their credentials as friends of busi-
ness and friends of America will be badly discredited if
they succeed. If I were speaking from a selfish, partisan
point of view, I could wish nothing better than that they
should show their true colors as partisans and succeed. But
I am not quite so malevolent as that. Some of them are
misguided ; some of them are blind; most of them are igno-
rant. I would rather pray for them than abuse them. The
great voice of America ought to make them understand
what they are said to be attempting now really means. I
have to say ‘“‘are said to be attempting,” because they do
not come and tell me that they are attempting them. I do
not know why. I would express my opinion of them in
parliamentary language, but I would express it, I hope, no
less plainly because couched in the terms of courtesy. This
country is bursting its jacket, and they are seeing to it that
the jacket is not only kept tight but is riveted with steel.

The Democratic party does know how to serve business
in this country, and its future program is a program of
service. We have cleared the decks. We have laid the
lines now upon which business that was to do the country
harm shall be stopped and an economic control which was
intolerable shall be broken up. We have emancipated
America, but America must do something with her freedom.
There are great bills pending in the United States Senate
just now that have been passed by the House of Repre-
sentatives, which are intended as constructive measures in
behalf of business—one great measure which will make
available the enormous water powers of this country for
the industry of it; another bill which will unlock the re-
sources of the public domain which the Republicans, desir-
ing to save, locked up so that nobody could use them.

The reason I say the Republicans have not had a new

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Woodrow Wilson

idea in thirty years is that they have not known how to do
anything except sit on the lid. If you can release the steam
so that it will drive great industries, it is not necessary to
sit on the lid. What we are trying to do in the great con-
servation bill is to carry out for the first time in the history
of the United States a system by which the great resources
of this country can be used instead of being set aside so
that no man can get at them. I shall watch with a great
deal of interest what the self-styled friends of business try
to do to those bills. Do not misunderstand me. There are
some men on that side of the Chamber who understand the
value of these things and are standing valiantly by them,
but they are a small minority. The majority that is stand-
ing by them is on our side of the Chamber, and they are the
friends of America.

But there are other things which we have to do. Some-
times when I look abroad, my friends, and see the great
mass of struggling humanity on this continent, it goes very
much to my heart to see how many men are at a disadvan-
tage and are without guides and helpers. Don’t you think
it would be a pretty good idea for the Democratic party
to undertake a systematic method of helping the working-
men of America? There is one very simple way in which
they can help the workingmen. If you were simply to es-
tablish a great Federal employment bureau, it would do a
vast deal. By the Federal agencies which spread over this
eountry men could be directed to those parts of the country,
to those undertakings, to those tasks where they could find
profitable employment. The labor of this country needs
to be guided from opportunity to opportunity. We proved
it the other day. We were told that in two States of the
Union 30,000 men were needed to gather the crops. We
suggested in a Cabinet meeting that the Department of
Labor should have printed information about this in such
form that it could be posted up in the post offices all over
the United States, and that the Department of Labor should

87
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

get in touch with the labor departments of the States, so
that notice could go out from them, and their cooperation
obtained. What was the result? Those 30,000 men were
found and were sent to the places where they got profitable
employment. I do not know any one thing that has hap-
pened in my administration that made me feel happier
than that—that the job and the man had been brought
together. It will not cost a great deal of money and it
will do a great deal of service if the United States were to
undertake to do such things systematically and all the
year round; and I for my part hope that it will do that.
If I were writing an additional plank for a Democratic
platform, I would put that in.

There is another thing that needs very much to be done.
I am not one of those who doubt either the industry or the
learning or the integrity of the courts of the United States,
but I do know that they have a very antiquated way of do-
ing business. I do know that the United States in its ju-
dicial procedure is many decades behind every other civil-
ized Government in the world, and I say that it is an im-
mediate and an imperative call upon us to rectify that,
because the speediness of justice, the inexpensiveness of
justice, the ready access to justice, is the greater part of
justice itself.

Then there is something else. The Democrats have
heard the Republicans talking about the scientific way in
which to handle a tariff, though the Republicans have never
given any exhibition of a knowledge of how to handle it
scientifically. If it is scientific to put additional profits
into the hands of those who are already getting the greater
part of the profits, then they have been exceedingly scien-
tific. It has been the science of selfishness; it has been the
science of privilege. That kind of science I do not care
to know anything about except enough to stop it. But if
by scientific treatment of the tariff they mean adjustment
to the actual trade conditions of America and the world,

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Woodrow Wilson

then I am with them; and I want to call their attention
—for though they voted for it they apparently have not
noticed it—to the fact that the bill which creates the new
Trade Commission does that very thing. We were at pains
to see that it was put in there. That commission is au-
thorized and empowered to inquire into and report to Con-
gress not only upon all the conditions of trade in this
country, but upon the conditions of trade, the cost of manu-
facture, the cost of transportation—all the things that
enter into the question of the tariff—in foreign countries
and into all those questions of foreign combinations which
affect international trade between Europe and the United
States. It has the full powers which will guide Congress
in the scientific treatment of questions of international
trade. Being by profession a schoolmaster, I am glad to
point that out to the class of uninstructed Republicans,
though I have not always taught in the primary grade.

At every turn the things that the progressive Repub-
licans have proposed that were practicable, the Democrats
either have done or are immediately proposing to do. If
that is not our bill of particulars to satisfy the independ-
ent voters of the country, I would like to have one pro-
duced. There are things that the Progressive program
contained which we, being constitutional lawyers, hap-
pened to know can not be done by the Congress of the
United States. That is a detail which they seem to have
overlooked. But so far as they can be done by State leg-
islatures, I, for one, speaking for one Democrat, am
heartily in favor of their being done. .

Just before I came away from Washington I was going
over some of the figures of the last elections, the elections
of November last. The official returns have not all come
in yet. I do not know why they are so slow in getting
to us, but so far as they have come in they have given me
this useful information, that taking the States where Sen-
ators were elected, and where Senators were not elected

89
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

taking the election of Governors, and where Governors
were not elected taking the returns for the State legisla-
tures or for the Congressional delegates, the Democrats,
reckoning State by State, would, if it had been a presi-
dential year, have had a majority of about eighty in the
Electoral College. Fortunately or unfortunately, this is
not a presidential year; but the thing is significant to me
for this reason. A great many people have been speaking
of the Democratic party as a minority party. Well, if it
is, it is not so much of a minority party as the Republican,
and as between the minorities I think we can claim to be-
long to the larger minority. The moral of that is merely
what I have already been pointing out to you, that neither
party in its regular membership has a majority. I do not
want to make the independent voter too proud of himself,
but I have got to admit that he is our boss; and I am bound
to admit that the things that he wants are, so far as I
have seen them mentioned, things that I want.

I am not an independent voter, but I hope I can claim
to be an independent person, and I want to say this dis-
tinctly: I do not love any party any longer than it con-
tinues to serve the immediate and pressing needs of Amer-
ica, I have been bred in the Democratic party; I love
the Democratic party; but I love America a great deal
more than I love the Democratic party; and when the
Democratic party thinks that it is an end in itself, then I
rise up and dissent. It is a means to an end, and its power
depends, and ought to depend, upon its showing that it
knows what America needs and is ready to give it what it
needs, That is the reason I say to the independent voter
you have got us in the palm of your hand. I do not happen
to be one of your number, but I recognize your supremacy,
because I read the election returns; and I have this am-
bition, my Democratic friends—I can avow it on Jackson
day—I want to make every independent voter in this coun-
try 2 Democrat. It is a little cold and lonely out where

90
Woodrow Wilson

he is, because, though he holds the balance of power, he
is not the majority, and I want him to come in where it is
warm. I want him to come in where there is a lot of good
society, good companionship, where there are great emo-
tions. That is what I miss in the Republican party; they
do not seem to have any great emotions. They seem to
think a lot of things, old things, but they do not seem to
have any enthusiasm about anything.

There is one thing I have got a great enthusiasm about,
I might almost say a reckless enthusiasm, and that is
human liberty. The Governor has just now spoken about
watchful waiting in Mexico. I want to say a word about
Mexico, or not so much about Mexico as about our atti-
tude towards Mexico. I hold it as a fundamental prin-
ciple, and so do you, that every people has the right to
determine its own form of government; and until this re-
cent revolution in Mexico, until the end of the Diaz reign,
eighty per cent. of the people of Mexico never had a “look
in” in determining who should be their governors or what
their government should be. Now, I am for the eighty
per cent! It is none of my business, and it is none of your
business, how long they take in determining it. It is none
of my business, and it is none of yours, how they go about
the business. The country is theirs. The Government is
theirs. The liberty, if they can get it, and Godspeed them
in getting it, is theirs. And so far as my influence goes
while I am President nobody shall interfere with them.

That is what I mean by a great emotion, the great emo-
tion of sympathy. Do you suppose that the American
people are ever going to count a small amount of material
benefit and advantage to people doing business in Mexico
against the liberties and the permanent happiness of the
Mexican people? Have not European nations taken as
long as they wanted and spilt as much blood as they pleased
in settling their affairs, and shall we deny that to Mexico
because she is weak? No, I say! I am proud to belong

91
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

to a strong nation that says, ‘““This country which we could
crush shall have just as much freedom in her own affairs
as we have.” If I am strong, I am ashamed to bully the
weak. In proportion to my strength is my pride in with-
holding that strength from the oppression of another
people. And I know when I speak these things, not merely
from the generous response with which they have just met
from you, but from my long-time knowledge of the Ameri-
can people, that that is the sentiment of this great people.
With all due respect to editors of great newspapers, I have
to say to them that I seldom take my opinion of the Ameri-
can people from their editorials. When some great dailies,
not very far from where I am temporarily residing, thun-
dered with rising scorn at watchful waiting, my confidence
was not for a moment shaken. I knew what were the
temper and principles of the American people. If I did
not at least think I knew, I would emigrate, because I
would not be satisfied to stay where I am. There may
come a time when the American people will have to judge
whether I know what I am talking about or not, but at
least for two years more I am free to think that I do, with
a great comfort in immunity in the time being.

I feel, my friends, in a very confident mood today. I
feel confident that we do know the spirit of the American
people, that we do know the program of betterment which
it will be necessary for us to undertake, that we do have
a very reasonable confidence in the support of the Ameri-
can people. I have been talking with business men re-
cently about the present state of mind of American busi-
ness. There is nothing the matter with American business
except a state of mind. I understand that your chamber
of commerce here in Indianapolis is working now upon
the motto, “If you are going to buy it, buy it now.” That
is a perfectly safe maxim to act on. It is just as safe
to buy it now as it ever will be, and if you start the buying
there will be no end to it, and you will be a seller as well

92
Woodrow Wilson

as a buyer. I am just as sure of that as I can be, because
I have taken counsel with the men who know. I never
was in business and, therefore, I have none of the preju-
dices of business. I have ldoked on and tried to see what
the interests of the country were in business; I have taken
counsel with men who did know, and their counsel is uni-
form, that all that is needed in America now is to believe
in the future; and I can assure you as one of those who
speak for the Democratic party that it is perfectly safe
to believe in the future. We are so much the friends of
business that we were for a little time the enemies of those
who were trying to control business. I say “for a little
time” because we are now reconciled to them. They have
graciously admitted that we had a right to do what we did
do, and they have very handsomely said that they were
going to play the game.

I believe—I always have believed—that American busi-
ness men were absolutely sound at heart, but men im-
mersed in business do a lot of things that opportunity
offers which in other circumstances they would not do;
and I have thought all along that all that was necessary
to do was to call their attention sharply to the kind of re-
forms in business which were needed and that they would
acquiesce. Why, I believe they have heartily acquiesced.
There is all the more reason, therefore, that, great and
small, we should be confident in the future.

And what a future it is, my friends! Look abroad upon
the troubled world! Only America at peace! Among all
the great powers of the world only America saving her
power for her own people! Only America using her great
character and her great strength in the interests of peace
and of prosperity! Do you not think it likely that the
world will some time turn to America and say, “You were
right and we were wrong. You kept your head when we
lost ours. You tried to keep the scale from tipping, and
we threw the whole weight of arms in one side of the scale.

93
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

Now, in your self-possession, in your coolness, in your
strength, may we not turn to you for counsel and for as-
sistance?” Think of the deep-wrought destruction of eco-
nomic resources, of life, and of hope that is taking place
in some parts of the world, and think of the reservoir of
hope, the reservoir of energy, the reservoir of sustenance
that there is in this great land of plenty! May we not
look forward to the time when we shall be called blessed
among the nations, because we succored the nations of the
world in their time of distress and of dismay? I for one
pray God that that solemn hour may come, and I know
the solidity of character and I know the exaltation of hope,
I know the big principle with which the American people
will respc.id to the call of the world for this service. I
thank God that those who believe in America, who try to
serve her people, are likely to be also what America her-
self from the first hoped and meant to be—the servant
of mankind.

Witson Verors Immicration Biri Because or Literacy
Test anp Restriction oF Poririca, AsyLum

Tur Waite Houvss, January 28, 1915.

To the House of Representatives:

It is with unaffected regret that I find myself constrained
by clear conviction to return this bill (H. R. 6060, “An act
to regulate the immigation of aliens to and the residence
of aliens in the United States”) without my signature. Not
only do I feel it to be a very serious matter to exercise the
power of veto in any case, because it involves opposing the
single judgment of the President to the judgment of a ma-
jority of both the Houses of the Congress, a step which
no man who realizes his own liability to error can take
without great hesitation, but also because this particular

94
Woodrow Wilson

bill is in so many important respects admirable, well con-
ceived, and desirable. Its enactment into law would un-
doubtedly enhance the efficiency and improve the methods
of handling the important branch of the public service to
which it relates. But candor and a sense of duty with re-
gard to the responsibility so clearly imposed upon me by
the Constitution in matters of legislation leave me no choice
but to dissent.

In two particulars of vital consequence this bill embodies
a radical departure from the traditional and long-established
policy of this country, a policy in which our people have
conceived the very character of their Government to be ex-
pressed, the very mission and spirit of the Nation in re-
spect of its relations to the peoples of the world outside
their borders. It seeks to all but close entirely the gates
of asylum which have always been open to those who could
find nowhere else the right and opportunity of constitu-
tional agitation for what they conceived to be the natural
and inalienable rights of men; and it excludes those to
whom the opportunities of elementary education have been
denied, without regard to their character, their purposes,
or their natural capacity.

Restrictions like these, adopted earlier in our history as
a Nation, would very materially have altered the course and
cooled the humane ardors of our politics. The right of
political asylum has brought to this country many a man
of noble character and elevated purpose who was marked
as an outlaw in his own less fortunate land, and who has
yet become an ornament to our citizenship and to our pub-
lic councils. The children and the compatriots of these
illustrious Americans must stand amazed to see the repre-
sentatives of their Nation now resolved, in the fullness of
our national strength and at the maturity of our great
institutions, to risk turning such men back from our shores
without test of quality or purpose. It is difficult for me
to believe that the full effect of this feature of the bill

95
t
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

was realized when it was framed and adopted, and it is
impossible for me to assent to it in the form in which it is
here cast.

The literacy test and the tests and restrictions which ac-
company it constitute an even more radical change in the
policy of the Nation. Hitherto we have generously kept
our doors open to all who were not unfitted by reason of
disease or incapacity for self-support or such personal rec-
ords and antecedents as were likely to make them a menace
to our peace and order or to the wholesome and essential
relationships of life. In this bill it is proposed to turn
away from tests of character and of quality and impose
tests which exclude and restrict; for the new tests here
embodied are not tests of quality or of character or of per-
sonal fitness, but tests of opportunity. Those who come
seeking opportunity are not to be admitted unless they have
already had one of the chief of the opportunities they seek,
the opportunity of education. The object of such pro-
visions is restriction, not selection.

If the people of this country have made up their minds
to limit the number of immigrants by arbitrary tests and
so reverse the policy of all the generations of Americans
that have gone before them, it is their right to do so. I am
their servant and have no license to stand in their way.
But I do not believe that they have. I respectfully submit
that no one can quote their mandate to that effect. Has any
political party ever avowed a policy of restriction in this
fundamental matter, gone to the country on it, and been
commissioned to control its legislation? Does this bill rest
upon the conscious and universal assent and desire of the
American people? I doubt it. It is because I doubt it
that I make bold to dissent from it. I am willing to abide
by the verdict, but not until it has been rendered. Let the
platforms of parties speak out upon this policy and the
people pronounce their wish. The matter is too fundamen-
tal to be settled otherwise.

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Woodrow Wilson

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

‘ Wooprow Witson.

[Just two years later—on January 29, 1917—President Wilson
again vetoed an Immigration bill carrying a literacy test. An
additional reason then was that exempting those fleeing from re-
ligious persecution was likely to lead to international complications.
But Congress immediately repassed the bill by large majorities,
and the literacy test thus became a law, after having been vetoed
by Presidents Cleveland, Taft, and Wilson.]

Witson’s Appress Berore tHE American Exvecrric Rait-
way AssociaTION, WasHINGTON, January 29, 1915
[Referring to the beneficent influence the new Federal Trade

Commission should exert on “big business’—the era of suspicion
passed, the era of confidence entered.]

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen:

It is a real pleasure to me to be here and to look this
company in the face. I know how important the interests
that you represent are. :

It seems to me that I can say with a good deal of con-
fidence that we are upon the eve of a new era of enterprise
and of prosperity. Enterprise has been checked in this
country for almost twenty years, because men were moving
amongst a maze of interrogation points. They did not
know what was going to happen to them. All sorts of
regulation were proposed, and it was a matter of uncer-
tainty what sort of regulation was going to be adopted.
All sorts of charges were made against business, as if busi-
ness were at default, when most men knew that the great
majority of business men were honest, were public-spirited,
were intending the right thing, and the many were made
afraid because the few did not do what was right.

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

The most necessary thing, therefore, was for us to agree,
as we did by slow stages agree, upon the main particulars
of what ought not to be done and then to put our laws in
such shape as to correspond with that general judgment.
That, I say, was a necessary preliminary not only to a com-
mon understanding, but also to a universal codperation.
The great forces of a country like this can not pull sep-
arately; they have got to pull together. And except upon
a basis of common understanding as to the law and as to the
proprieti¢s of conduct, it is impossible to pull together. I,
for one, have never doubted that all America was of one
principle. I have never doubted that all America believed
in doing what was fair and honorable and of good report.
But the method, the method of control by law against the
small minority that was recalcitrant against these prin-
ciples, was a thing that it was difficult to determine upon;
and it was a very great burden, let me say, to fall upon a
particular administration of this Government to have to
undertake practically the whole business of final definition.
That is what has been attempted by the Congress now
about to come to a close. It has attempted the definitions
for which the country had been getting ready, or trying
to get ready, for half a generation. It will require a pe-
riod of test to determine whether they have successfully
defined them or not; but no one needs to have it proved
to him that it was necessary to define them and remove
the uncertainties, and that, the uncertainties being removed,
common understandings are possible and a universal codper-
ation.

You, gentlemen, representing these arteries of which I
have spoken, that serve to release the forces of communi-
ties and serve, also, to bind community with community, are
surely in a better position than the men perhaps of any other
profession to understand how communities constitute units—
how even a nation constitutes a unit; and that what is detri-
mental and hurtful to a part you, above all men, ought to

98
Woodrow Wilson

know is detrimental to all. You can not demoralize some
of the forces of a community without being in danger of
demoralizing all the forces of a community. Your interest
is not in the congestion of life, but in the release of life.
Your interest is not in isolation, but in union, the union of
parts of this great country, so that every energy in those
parts will flow freely and with full force from county to
county throughout the whole nation.

What I have come to speak of this afternoon is this
unity of our interest, and I want to make some—I will not
say “predictions,” but to use a less dangerous though bigger
word—prognostications. I understand that there is among
the medical profession diagnosis and prognosis. I dare
say the prognosis is more difficult than the diagnosis, since
it has to come first; and not being a physician, I have all
the greater courage in the prognosis. I have noticed all
my life that I could speak with the greatest freedom about
those things that I did not understand; but there are some
things that a man is bound to try to think out whether he
fully comprehends them or not. The thought of no single
man can comprehend the life of a great Nation like this,
and yet men in public life upon whom the burden of guid-
ance is laid must attempt to comprehend as much of it as
they can. Their strength will lie in common counsel;
their strength will lie in taking counsel of as many in-
formed persons as possible in each department with which
they have to deal; but some time or other the point will
come when they have to make a decision based upon a
prognosis. We have had to do that in attempting the defi-
nitions of law which have been attempted by this Congress,
and now it is necessary for us, in order to go forward
with the confident spirit with which I believe we can go
forward, to look ahead and see the things that are likely
to happen.

In the first place, I feel that the mists and miasmic airs
of suspicion that have filled the business world have now

99
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

been blown away. I believe that we have passed the era
of suspicion and have come into the era of confidence. Know-
ing the elements we have to deal with, we can deal with
them; and with that confidence of knowledge we can have
confidence of enterprise. That enterprise is going to mean
this: Nobody is henceforth going to be afraid of or sus-
picious of any business merely because it is big. If my
judgment is correct, nobody has been suspicious of any
business merely because it was big; but they have been
suspicious whenever they thought that the bigness was
being used to take an unfair advantage. We all have to
admit that it is easier for a big fellow to take advantage of
you than for a little fellow to take advantage of you; there-
fore, we instinctively watch the big fellow with a little closer
scrutiny than we watch the little fellow. But, bond having
been given for the big fellow, we can sleep o’nights. Bond
having been given that he will keep the peace, we do not
have to spend our time and waste our energy watching him.
The conditions of confidence being established, nobody need
think that if he is taller than the rest anybody is going
to throw a stone at him simply because he is a favorable
target—always provided there is fair dealing and real
service.

Because the characteristic of modern business, gentlemen,
is this: The number of cases in which men do business
on their own individual, private capital is relatively small
in our day. Almost all the greater enterprises are done
on what is, so far as the managers of that business are
concerned, other people’s money. That is what a joint-
stock company means. It means, “Won’t you lend us your
resources to conduct this business and trust us, a little
group of managers, to see that you get honest and proper
returns for your money?” and no man who manages a joint-
stock company can know for many days together, without
fresh inquiry, who his partners are, because the stock is
constantly changing hands, and the partners are seldom the

100
Woodrow Wilson

same people for long periods together. Which amounts
to saying that, inasmuch as you are using the money of
everybody who chooses to come in, your responsibility is
to everybody who has come in or who may come in. That
is simply another way of saying that your business is, so
far forth, a public business, and you owe it to the public
to take them into your confidence in regard to the way in
which it is conducted.

The era of private business in the sense of business con-
ducted with the money of the partners—I mean of the man-
aging partners—is practically passed, not only in this coun-
try, but almost everywhere. Therefore, almost all busi-
ness has this direct responsibility to the public in general:
We owe 2 constant report to the public, whose money we
are constantly asking for in order to conduct the business
itself. Therefore, we have got to trade not only on our
efficiency, not only on the service that we render, but on
the confidence that we cultivate. There is a new atmosphere
for business. The oxygen that the lungs of modern busi-
ness takes in is the oxygen of the public confidence, and if
you have not got that, your business is essentially paralyzed
and asphyxiated.

I take it that we are in a position now to come to a
common understanding, knowing that only a common un-
derstanding will be the stable basis of business, and that
what we want for business hereafter is the same kind of
liberty that we want for the individual. The liberty of the
individual is limited with the greatest sharpness where his
actions come into collision with the interests of the com-
munity he lives in. My liberty consists in a sort of parole.
Society says to me, “You may do what you please until
you do something that is in violation of the common under-
standing, of the public interest; then your parole is for-
feited. We will take you into custody. We will limit your
activities. We will penalize you if you use this thing that
you call your liberty against our interest.” Business does

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

not want, and ought not to ask for, more liberty than the
individual has; and I have always in my own thought
summed up individual liberty, and business liberty, and
every other kind of liberty, in the phrase that is common
in the sporting world, “A free field and no favor.”

There have been times—I will not specify them, but there
have been times—when the field looked free, but when
there were favors received from the managers of the course;
when there were advantages given; inside tracks accorded;
practices which would block the other runners; rules which
would exclude the amateur who wanted to get in. That
may be a free field, but there is favor, there is partiality,
there is preference, there is covert advantage taken of some-
body, and while it looks very well from the grandstand,
there are men whom you can find who were not allowed to
get in to the track and test their powers against the other
men who were racing for the honors of the day.

I think it is a serviceable figure. It means this: That
you are not going to be barred from the contest because
you are big and strong, and you are not going to be pen-
alized because you are big and strong, but you are going
to be made to observe the rules of the track and not get
in anybody’s way except as you can keep ahead of him by.
having more vigor and skill than he has. When we get
that understanding, that we are all sports, and that we are
not going to ask for, not only, but we are not going to
condescend to take, advantage of anything that does not
belong to us, then the atmosphere will clear so that it will
seem as if the sun had never shone as it does that day.
It is the spirit of true sportsmanship that ought to get
into everything, and men who, when they get beaten that
way, squeal do not deserve our pity... .

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Witson’s Appress Berorr tHe Unitep States CHAMBER
oF Commerce, Wasuineton, Fesruary 8, 1915

[The war in Europe, then ending its sixth month, had already

begun to increase enormously the foreign trade of the United

States. It had also, however, brought limitations of markets. The

President here began to urge that American business should prop-
erly seek new foreign fields.]

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen:

I feel that it is hardly fair to you for me to come in in
this casual fashion among a body of men who have been
seriously discussing great questions, and it is hardly fair
to me, because I come in cold, not having had the advan-
tage of sharing the atmosphere of your deliberations and
catching the feeling of your conference. Moreover, I hardly
know just how to express my interest in the things you are
gndertaking. . . .

I have asked myself before I came here today, what rela-
tion you could bear to the Government of the United States
and what relation the Government could bear to you?

There are two aspects and activities of the Government
with which you will naturally come into most direct con-
tact. The first is the Government’s power of inquiry, sys-
tematic and disinterested inquiry, and its power of scien-
tific assistance. You get an illustration of the latter, for
example, in the Department of Agriculture. Has it oc-

curred to you, I wonder, that we are just upon the eve of
a time when our Department of Agriculture will be of
infinite importance to the whole world? There is a short-
age of food in the world now. That shortage will be much
more serious a few months from now than it is now. It is
necessary that we should plant a great deal more; it is
necessary that our lands should yield more per acre than
they do now; it is necessary that there should not be a plow
or a spade idle in this country if the world is to be fed.
And the methods of our farmers must feed upon the scien-
tific information to be derived from the State departments

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

of agriculture, and from that taproot of all, the United
States Department of Agriculture. The object and use of
that department is to inform men of the latest developments
and disclosures of science with regard to all the processes by
which soils can be put to their proper use and their fertility
made the greatest possible. Similarly with the Bureau of
Standards. It is ready to supply those things by which you
can set norms, you can set bases, for all the scientific pro-
cesses of business.

I have a great admiration for the scientific parts of the
Government of the United States, and it has amazed me
that so few men have discovered them. Here in these de-
partments are quiet men, trained to the highest degree of
skill, serving for a petty remuneration along lines that are
infinitely useful to mankind; and yet in some cases they
waited to be discovered until this Chamber of Commerce
of the United States was established. Coming to this city,
officers of that association found that there were here things
that were infinitely useful to them and with which the
whole United States ought to be put into communication.

The Government of the United States is very properly
a great instrumentality of inquiry and information. One
thing we are just beginning to do that we ought to have
done long ago: We ought long ago to have had our Bureau
of Foreign and Domestic Commerce. We ought long ago
to have sent the best eyes of the Government out into the
world to see where the opportunities and openings of Ameri-
can commerce and American genius were to be found—
men who were not sent out as the commercial agents of any
particular set of business men in the United States, but who
were eyes for the whole business community. . . .

We are just beginning to do, systematically and scien-
tifically, what we ought long ago to have done, to employ
the Government of the United States to survey the world
in order that American commerce might be guided.

But there are other ways of using the Government of the

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United States, ways that have long been tried, though not
always with conspicuous success or fortunate results. You
can use the Government of the United States by influencing
its legislation. That has been a very active industry, but
it has not always been managed in the interest of the whole
people. It is very instructive and useful for the Govern-
ment of the United States to have such means as you are
ready to supply for getting a sort of consensus of opinion
which proceeds from no particular quarter and originates
with no particular interest. Information is.the very foun-
dation of all right action in legislation. . .

If we on the outside cannot understand the thing and
cannot get advice from the inside, then we will have to do
it with the flat hand and not with the touch of skill and
discrimination. Isn’t that true? Men on the inside of busi-
ness know how business is conducted and they cannot com-
plain if men on the outside make mistakes about business
if they do not come from the inside and give the kind of
advice which is necessary.

The trouble has been that when they came in the past—
for I think the thing is changing very rapidly—they came
with all their bristles out; they came on the defensive; they
came to see, not what they could accomplish, but what they
could prevent. They did not come to guide; they came to
block. That is of no use whatever to the general body
politic. What has got to pervade us like a great motive
power: is that we cannot, and must not, separate our in-
terests from one another, but must pool our interests. A
man who is trying to fight for his single hand is fighting
against the community and not fighting with it. There are
a great many dreadful things about war, as nobody needs
to be told in this day of distress and of terror, but there
is one thing about war which has a very splendid side, and
that is the consciousness that a whole nation gets that they
must all act as a unit for a common end. And when peace
is as handsome as war there will be no war. When men,

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

I mean, engage in the pursuits of peace in the same spirit
of self-sacrifice and of conscious service of the community
with which, at any rate, the common soldier engages in war,
then shall there be wars no more. You have moved the
vanguard for the United States in the purposes of this as-
sociation just a little nearer that ideal. That is the reason
I am here, because I believe it.

There is a specific matter about which I, for one, want
your advice. Let me say, if I may say it without dis-
respect, that I do not think you are prepared to give it
right away. You will have to make some rather extended
inquiries before you are ready to give it. What I am think-
ing of is competition in foreign markets as between the
merchants of different nations.

I speak of the subject with a certain degree of hesita-
tion, because the thing farthest from my thought is taking
advantage of nations now disabled from playing their full
part in that competition, and seeking a sudden selfish ad-
vantage because they are for the time being disabled. Pray
believe me that we ought to eliminate all that thought from
our minds and consider this matter as if we and the other
nations now at war were in the normal circumstances of
commerce.

There is a normal circumstance of commerce in which
we are apparently at a disadvantage. Our anti-trust laws
are thought by some to make it illegal for merchants in the
United States to form combinations for the purpose of
strengthening themselves in taking advantage of the oppor-
tunities of foreign trade. That is a very serious matter
for this reason: There are some corporations, and some
firms for all I know, whose business is great enough and
whose resources are abundant enough to enable them to
establish selling agencies in foreign countries; to enable
them to extend the long credits which in some cases are
necessary in order to keep the trade they desire; to enable
them, in other words, to organize their business in foreign

106
Woodrow Wilson

territory in a way which the smaller man cannot afford
to do. His business has not grown big enough to permit
him to establish selling agencies. The export commission
merchant, perhaps, taxes him a little too highly to make
that an available competitive means of conducting and ex-
tending his business.

The question arises, therefore, how are the smaller mer-
chants, how are the younger and weaker corporations going
to get a foothold as against the combinations which are per-
mitted and even encouraged by foreign governments in this
field of competition? There are governments which, as you
know, distinctly encourage the formation of great combina-
tions in each particular field of commerce in order to main-
tain selling agencies and to extend long credits, and to
use and maintain the machinery which is necessary for the
extension of business; and American merchants feel that
they are at a very considerable disadvantage in contending
against that. The matter has been many times brought to
my attention, and I have each time suspended judgment.
I want to be shown this: I want to be shown how such a
combination can be made and conducted in a way which
will not close it against the use of everybody who wants
to use it. A combination has a tendency to exclude new
members. When a group of men get control of a good
thing, they do not see any particular point in letting other
people into the good thing. What I would like very much
to be shown, therefore, is a method of codperation which is
not a mcthod of combination. Not that the two words
are mutually exclusive, but we have come to have a special
meaning attached to the word “combination.”, Most of our
combinations have a safety lock, and you have to know the
combination to get in. I want to know how these coépera-
tive methods can be adopted for the benefit of everybody
who wants to use them, and I say frankly if I can be shown
that, I am for them. If I can not be shown that, I am

107
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

against them. I hasten to add that I hopefully expect I can
be shown that. ,

You, as I have just now intimated, probably can not
show it to me offhand, but by the methods which you have
the means of using you certainly ought to be able to throw
a vast deal of light on the subject... .

Witson’s Appress av A Mretine oF THE AssociaTED Press,
New York, Aprit 20, 1915

[In which he pleads for “America First.”]

Mr. President, Gentlemen of the Associated Press,
Ladies and Gentlemen: I am deeply gratified by the gen-
erous reception you have accorded me. It makes me look
back with a touch of regret to former occasions when I
have stood in this place and enjoyed a greater liberty than
is granted me to-day. There have been times when I stood
in this spot and said what I really thought, and I can
not help praying that those days of indulgence may be
accorded me again. I have come here to-day, of course,
somewhat restrained by a sense of responsibility which I
cannot escape. For I take the Associated Press very seri-
ously. I know the enormous part that you play in the
affairs not only of this country but of the world. You deal
in the raw material of opinion and, if my convictions have
any validity, opinion ultimately governs the world.

It is, therefore, of very serious things that I think as
I face this body of men. I do not think of you, however,
as members of the Associated Press. I do not think of
you as men of different parties or of different racial deri-
vations or of different religious denominations. I want to
talk to you as to my fellow citizens of the United States,
for there are serious things which as fellow citizens we

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ought to consider. The times behind us, gentlemen, have
been difficult enough; the times before us are likely to be
more difficult still, because, whatever may be said about
the present cordition of the world’s affairs, it is clear that
they are drawing rapidly to a climax, and at the climax
the test will come, not only for the nations engaged in
the present colossal struggle—it will come to them, of
course—but the test will come for us particularly.

Do you realize that, roughly speaking, we are the only
great Nation at present disengaged? I am not speaking,
of course, with disparagement of the greatness of those
nations in Europe which are not parties to the present war,
but I am thinking of their close neighborhood to it. I am
thinking how their lives much more than ours touch the
very heart, and stuff of the business, whereas we have roll-
ing between us and those bitter days across the water 3,000
miles of cool and silent ocean. Our atmosphere is not yet
charged with those disturbing elements which must perme-
ate every nation of Europe. Therefore, is it not likely
that the nations of the world will some day turn to us for
the cooler assessment of the elements engaged? I am not
now thinking so preposterous a thought as that we should
sit in judgment upon them—no nation is fit to sit in judg-
ment upon any other nation—but that we shall some day
have to assist in reconstructing the processes of peace.
Our resources are untouched; we are more and more be-
coming by the force of circumstances the mediating Nation
of the world in respect of its finance. We must make up
our minds what are the best things to do and what are
the best ways to do them. We must put our money, our
energy, our enthusiasm, our sympathy into these things,
and we must have our judgments prepared and our spirits
chastened against the coming of that day.

So that I am not speaking in a selfish spirit when I say
that our whole duty, for the present at any rate, is summed
up in this motto, “America first.” Let us think of America

109
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

before we think of Europe, in order that America may be
fit to be Europe’s friend when the day of tested friendship
comes. The test of friendship is not now sympathy with
the one side or the other, but getting ready to help both
sides when the struggle is over. The basis of neutrality,
gentlemen, is not indifference; it is not self-interest. The
basis of neutrality is sympathy for mankind. It is fair-
ness, it is good will, at bottom. It is impartiality of spirit
and of judgment. I wish that all of our fellow citizens
could realize that. There is in some quarters a disposition
to create distempers in this body politic. Men are even
uttering slanders against the United States, as if to excite
her. Men are saying that if we should go to war upon
either side there would be a divided America—an abomi-
nable libel of ignorance! America is not all of it vocal
just now. It is vocal in spots, but I, for one, have a
complete and abiding faith in that great silent body of
Americans who are not standing up and shouting and ex-
pressing their opinions just now, but are waiting to find
out and support the duty of America. I am just as sure
of their solidity and of their loyalty and of their unanimity,
if we act justly, as I am that the history of this country
has at every crisis and turning point illustrated this great
lesson.

We are the mediating Nation of the world. I do not
mean that we undertake not to mind our own business and
to mediate where other people are quarreling. I mean
the word in a broader sense. We are compounded of the
nations of the world; we mediate their blood, we mediate
their traditions, we mediate their sentiments, their tastes,
their passions; we are ourselves compounded of those
things. We are, therefore, able to understand all nations;
we are able to understand them in the compound, not sep-
arately, as partisans, but unitedly as knowing and com-
prehending and embodying them all. It is in that sense
that I mean that America is a mediating Nation. The

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Woodrow Wilson

opinion of America, the action of America, is ready to turn,
and free to turn, in any direction. Did you ever reflect
upon how almost every other nation has through long cen-
turies been headed in one direction? That is not true of
the United States. The United States has no racial mo-
mentum. It has no history back of it which makes it run
all its energies and all its ambitions in one particular direc-
tion. And America is particularly free in this, that she
has no hampering ambitions as a world power. We do not
want a foot of anybody’s territory. If we have been obliged
by circumstances, or have considered ourselves to be obliged
by circumstances, in the past, to take territory which we
otherwise would not have thought of taking, I believe
I am right in saying that we lave considered it our duty
to administer that territory, not for ourselves but for the
people living in it, and to put this burden upon our con-
sciences—not to think that this thing is ours for our use,
but to regard ourselves as trustees of the great business
for those to whom it does really belong, trustees ready
to hand it over to the cestui que trust at any time when
the business seems to make that possible and feasible. That
is what I mean by saying we have no hampering ambitions.
We do not want anything that does not belong to us. Is
not a nation in that position free to serve other nations,
and is not a nation like that ready to form some part of
the assessing opinion of the world?

My interest in the neutrality of the United States is
not the petty desire to keep out of trouble. To judge by
my experience, I have never been able to keep out of
trouble. I have never looked for it, but I have always
found it. I do not want to walk around trouble. If any
man wants a scrap that is an interesting scrap and worth
while, I am his man. I warn him that he is not going to
draw me into the scrap for his advertisement, but if he is-
looking for trouble that is the trouble of men in general
and I can help a little, why, then, I am in for it. But I

J11
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

am interested in neutrality because there is something se
much greater to do than fight; there is a distinction wait-
ing for this Nation that no nation has ever yet got. That
is the distinction of absolute self-control and self-mastery.
Whom do you admire most among your friends? The irri-
table man? The man out of whom you can get a “rise”
without trying? The man who will fight at the drop of
the hat, whether he knows what the hat is dropped for
or not? Don’t you admire and don’t you fear, if you
have to contest with him, the self-mastered man who
watches you with calm eye and comes in only when you
have carried the thing so far that you must be disposed of?
That is the man you respect. That is the man who, you
know, has at bottom a much more fundamental and ter-
rible courage than the irritable, fighting man. Now, I
covet for America this splendid courage of reserve moral
force, and I wanted to point out to you gentlemen simply
this:

There is news and news. There is what is called news
from Turtle Bay that turns out to be falsehood, at any
rate in what it is said to signify, but which, if you could
get the Nation to believe it true, might disturb our equi-
librium and our self-possession. We ought not to deal in
stuff of that kind. We ought not to permit that sort of
thing to use up the electrical energy of the wires, because
its energy is malign, its energy is not of the truth, its
energy is of mischief. It is possible to sift truth. I have
known some things to go out on the wires as true when
there was only one man or one group of men who could have
told the originators of that report whether it was true or
not, and they were not asked whether it was true or not for
fear it might not be true. That sort of report ought not
to go out over the wires. There is generally, if not always,
somebody who knows whether the thing is so or not, and
in these days, above all other days, we ought to take par-
ticular pains to resort to the one small group of men, or

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Woodrow Wilson

to the one man if there be but one, who knows whether
those things are true or not. The world ought to know the
truth; the world ought not at this period of unstable equi-
librium to be disturbed by rumor, ought not to be disturbed
by imaginative combinations of circumstances, or, rather,
by circumstances stated in combination which do not belong
in combination. You gentlemen, and gentlemen engaged
like you, are holding the balances in your hand. This
unstable equilibrium rests upon scales that are in your
hands. For the food of opinion, as I began by saying, is
the news of the day. I have known many a man to go
off at a tangent on information that was not reliable. In-
deed, that describes the majority of men. The world is
held stable by the man who waits for the next day to find
out whether the report was true or not.

We cannot afford, therefore, to let the rumors of irre-
sponsible persons and origins get into the atmosphere of
the United States. We are trustees for what I venture
to say is the greatest heritage that any nation ever had,
the love of justice and righteousness and human liberty.
For, fundamentally, those are the things to which America
is addicted and to which she is devoted. There are groups
of selfish men in the United States, there are coteries,
where sinister things are purposed, but the great heart of
the American people is just as sound and true as it ever
was. And it is a single heart; it is the heart of America.
It is not a heart made up of sections selected out of other
countries.

What I try to remind myself of every day when I am
almost overcome by perplexities, what I try to remember,
is what the people at home are thinking about. I try to put
myself in the place of the man who does not know all the
things that I know and ask myself what he would like the
policy of this country to be. Not the talkative man, not
the partisan man, not the man who remembers first that
he is a Republican or a Democrat, or that his parents were

. 118
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

German or English, but the man who remembers first that
the whole destiny of modern affairs centers largely upon
his being an American first of all. If I permitted myself
to be a partisan in this present struggle, I would be un-
worthy to represent you. If I permitted myself sto forget
the people who are not partisans, I would be unworthy to
be your spokesman. I am not sure that I am worthy to
represent you, but I do claim this degree of worthiness—
that before everything else I love America.

Witson’s Appress To SeveraL THousanp Forricn-Born
Citizens, Arter NaTuraizaTION CEREMONIES,
at Puruapetpuia, May 10, 1915

[Three days earlier the Lusitania had been sunk by a German
submarine; and three days later a note was dispatched to Berlin
demanding disavowal. But in his speech the President made no
specific reference to the crisis—although his declaration that a
man may be “too proud to fight,” and a nation so right that it
does not need to use force, was widely understood to have a direct
bearing on the submarine controversy. This address and one
similar in scope, which will be found on page 290, were occasioned
by an aroused interest on the part of aliens in American citizen-
ship because of controversies with belligerent European govern-
ments over neutral rights.]

Mr. Mayor, Fellow-Citizens:

It warms my heart that you should give me such a re-
ception; but it is not of myself that I wish to think to-
night, 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 depend
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 independent people

1h
Woodrow Wilson

it is being constantly renewed from generation to genera-
tion 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 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 whatever 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 cannot 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 yourselves
in groups. America does not consist of groups. A man
who thinks of himself as belonging to a particular national

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group in America has not yet become an American, 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
which lift and not by the passions which separate and de-
base. We came to America, either ourselves or in the per-
sons 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,

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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 forgotten 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 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 come
expecting us to be better than we are.

See, my friends, what that means. It means that Ameri-
cans must have a consciousness different from the conscious-
ness of every other nation in the world. I am not saying
this with even the slightest thought of criticism 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 inter-
ested in the neighbors than it is in its own members. So
a nation that is not constantly renewed out of new sources
is apt to have the narrowness and prejuice of a family ;
whereas, America must have this consciousness, that on all
sides it touches elbows and touches hearts with all the na-
tions of mankind. The example of America 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 influ-
ence 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 seeking
something that we have to give, and all that we have to give

1i7
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

is this: We cannot exempt you from work. No man is
exempt from work anywhere in the world. We cannot
exempt you from the strife and the heartbreaking burden
of the struggle of the day—that is common to mankind
everywhere; we cannot 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 spirit of hope,
it is the spirit of liberty, it is the spirit of justice.

When I was asked, therefore, by the Mayor and the
committee that accompanied him to come up from Wash-
ington to meet this great company of newly admitted citi-
zens, I could not decline the invitation. 1 ought not to be
away from Washington, and yet I feel that it has renewed
my spirit as an American to be here. In Washington men
tell 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-citi-
zens 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.

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Woodrow Wilson

Prestpent Witson’s Appress at THE Pan-American
Financia, Conrerence, Wasuinecton, May 24, 1915
[The development of trade between North and South America—

both as a temporary substitute for the uncertain markets of war-

ring Europe and as a permanent asset—had been widely urged.

Many and serious were the technical difficulties cited by those in

a position to know. To eliminate some of these, and to obtain

mutual knowledge of commercial and financial methods, the Secre-

tary of the Treasury (W. G. McAdoo) called a conference of Pan-

American bankers and business men, Delegates came from eigh-
teen of the American republics.]

Mr. Chairman, Gentlemen of the American Republics,
Ladies and Gentlemen:

The part that falls to me this morning is a very simple
one, but a very delightful one. It is to bid you a very
hearty welcome indeed to this conference. The welcome
is the more hearty because we are convinced that a confer-
ence like this will result in the things that we most desire.
I am sure that those who have this conference in charge
have already made plain to you its purpose and its spirit.
Its purpose is to draw the American Republics together by
bonds of common interest and of mutual understanding;
and we comprehend, I hope, just what the meaning of that
is. There can be no sort of union of interest if there is a
purpose of exploitation by any one of the parties to a
great conference of this sort. The basis of successful com-
mercial intercourse is common interest, not selfish interest,
It is an actual interchange of services and of values: it is
based upon reciprocal relations and not selfish relations,
It is based upon those things upon which all successful
economic intercourse must be based, because selfishness
breeds suspicion; suspicion, hostility; and hostility, failure,
We are not, therefore, trying to make use of each other, but
we are trying to be of use to one another.

It is very surprising to me, it is even a source of morti»
fication, that a conference like this should have been so long
delayed, that it should never have occurred before, that it

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

should have required a crisis of the world to show the
Americas how truly they were neighbors to one another.
If there is any one happy circumstance, gentlemen, arising
out of the present distressing condition of the world, it is
that it has revealed us to one another: it has shown us
what it means to be neighbors. And I cannot help har-
boring the hope, the very high hope, that by this commerce
of minds with one another, as well as commerce in goods,
we may show the world in part the path to peace. It would
be a very great thing if the Americas could add to the dis-
tinction which they already wear this of showing the way
to peace, to permanent peace.

The way to peace for us, at any rate, is manifest. It is
the kind of rivalry which does not involve aggression. It
is the knowledge that men can be of the greatest service te
one another, and nations of the greatest service to on¢
another, when the jealousy between them is merely a jeal-
ousy of excellence, and when the basis of their intercourse
is friendship. There is only one way in which we wish to
take advantage of you and that is by making better goods,
by doing the things that we seek to do for each other better,
if we can, than you do them, and so spurring you on, if
we might, by so handsome a jealousy as that to excel us.
I am so keenly aware that the basis of personal friendship
is this competition in excellence, that I am perfectly cer-
tain that this is the only basis for the friendship of nations
—this handsome rivalry, this rivalry in which there is no
dislike, this rivalry in which there is nothing but the hope
of a common elevation in great enterprises which.we can
undertake in common.

There is one thing that stands in our way among others
—for you are more conversant with the circumstances than
I am; the thing I have chiefly in mind is the physical lack
of means of communication, the lack of vehicles—the lack
of ships, the lack of established routes of trade—the lack
of those things which are absolutely necessary if we are

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Woodrow Wilson

to have true commercial and intimate commercial relations
with one another; and I am perfectly clear in my judgment
that if private capital cannot soon enter upon the adventure
of establishing these physical means of communication, the
government must undertake to do so. We cannot indefi-
nitely stand apart and need each other for the lack of what
can easily be supplied, and if one instrumentality cannot
supply it, then another must be found which will supply it.
We cannot know each other unless we see each other; we
cannot deal with each other unless we communicate with
each other. So soon as we communicate and are upon a
familiar footing of intercourse, we shall understand one
another, and the bonds between the Americas will be such
bonds that no influence that the world may produce in the
future will ever break them.

If I am selfish for America, I at least hope that my
selfishness is enlightened. The selfishness that hurts the
other party is not enlightened selfishness. If I were acting
upon a mere ground of selfishness, I would seek to benefit
the other party and so tie him to myself; so that even if
you were to suspect me of selfishness, I hope you will also
suspect me of intelligence and of knowing the only safe
way for the establishment of the things which we covet,
as well as the establishment of the things which we desire
and which we would feel honored if we could earn and win.

I have said these things because they will perhaps enable
you to understand how far from formal my welcome to this
body is. It is a welcome from the heart, it is a welcome
from the head; it is a welcome inspired by what I hope are
the highest ambitions of those who live in these two great
continents, who seek to set an example to the world in
freedom of institutions, freedom of trade, and intelligence
of mutual service.

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

Presipent WILson’s ADDRESS TO THE DAUGHTERS OF THE
American Revo.tution, WasHINGTON,
Octoser 11, 1915

(On the Spirit of America)

Madam President and Ladies and Gentlemen:

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 America is that
it is not a mere sentiment. It is an active principle of
conduct. It is something that was born into the world, not
to please it, but to regenerate it. It is something 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 individual freedom. . .

The American Revolution was the birth of a nation; it
was the creation of a great free republic based upon tradi-
tions of personal liberty which .theretofore had been con-
fined 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, because
America has not grown by the mere multiplication of the
original stock. It is easy to preserve tradition with con-

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tinuity of blood; it is easy in a single family to remember
the origins of the race and the purposes of its organiza-
tion; 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 fam-
ily, and the wonder and the beauty of it all has been that
the infection has been so generously easy. For the princi-
ples 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 con-
ceived 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 prosperity of a free people,
‘knowing that the sun had always 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 irresistible 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 indulg-
ing 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.

Now we have come to a time of special stress and test.
There never was a time when we needed more clearly to

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conserve the principles of our own patriotism than this
present time. The rest of the world from which our poli-
tics 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 principles,
conscious of what we hope and purpose, so far as our pow-
ers permit, for the world at large, and it is necessary that
we should consolidate the American principle. Every po-
litical action, every social action, should have for its ob-
ject in America at this time to challenge the spirit of Amer-
ica; 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 con-
trary 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, believing
that America stands apart in its ideals, it ought not to allow
itself to be drawn, so far as its heart is concerned, into any-
body’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 had promised the
world to stand apart and maintain certain principles of ac-
tion 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

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Woodrow Wilson

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-
ment upon any nation or upon any policy, for my object
here this afternoon is not to sit in judgment upon anybody
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 looked 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 impressions
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 suf-
ficient 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. JI 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 ma-
jority 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 con-
fidence in a new principle; whereas, it cost us none of these
things. We were born into this privilege; we were rocked

125
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

and cradled in it; we did nothing to create it; and it is,
therefore, the 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. . . .

Presipent Witson Ovriines THE ADMINISTRATION’S
ProcraM oF PREPAREDNESS FoR NATIONAL
DEFENSE

(Address at the Manhattan Club, New York City,
November 4, 1915)

[Eprrortat Note: The submarine controversy with Ger-
many—for diplomatic notes see pages beginning with 155—
had long before this passed through several acute phases;
and the President had frankly altered his views regarding
an immediate and radical strengthening of the nation’s
means for defense. He had called upon Secretary Gar-
rison, of the War Department, and Secretary Daniels, of
the Navy, to prepare plans for submission to Congress. A
month before the session began, when he was to make
formal recommendations, the President made public the
Administration’s program, in the following address: |

Mr. Toastmaster and Gentlemen:

I shall assume that here around the dinner table on this
memorable occasion our talk should properly turn to the
wide and common interests which are most in our thoughts,
whether they be the interests of the community or of the
nation.

A year and a half ago our thought would have been al-
most altogether of great domestic questions. They are

126
“Woodrow Wilson

many and of vital consequence. We must and shall address
ourselves to their solution with diligence, firmness, and self-
possession, notwithstanding we find ourselves in the midst of
a world disturbed by great disaster and ablaze with terrible
war; but our thought is now inevitably of new things about
which formerly we gave ourselves little concern. We are
thinking now chiefly of our relations with the rest of the
world—not our commercial relations—about those we have
thought and planned always—but about our political rela-
tions, our duties as an individual and independent force in
the world to ourselves, our neighbors, and the world itself.

Our principles are well known. It is not necessary to
avow them again. We believe in political liberty and
founded our great government to obtain it, the liberty of
men and of peoples—of men to choose their own lives and
of peoples to choose their own allegiance. Our ambition,
also, all the world has knowledge of. It is not only to be
free and prosperous ourselves, but also to be the friend and
thoughtful partisan of those who are free or who desire
freedom the world over. If we have had aggressive pur-
poses and covetous ambitions, they were the fruit of our
thoughtless youth as a nation and we have put them aside.
We shall, I confidently believe, never again take another
foot of territory by conquest. We shall never in any cir-
cumstances seek to make an independent people subject to
our dominion; because we believe, we passionately believe,
in the right of every people to choose their own allegiance
and be free of masters altogether. For ourselves we wish
nothing but the full liberty of self-development; and with
ourselves in this great matter we associate all the peoples
of our own hemisphere. We wish not only for the United
States but for them the fullest freedom of independent
growth and of action, for we know that throughout this
hemisphere the same aspirations are everywhere being
worked out, under diverse conditions but with the same im-
pulse and ultimate object.

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

All this is very clear to us and will, I confidently predict,
become more and more clear to the whole world as the great
processes of the future unfold themselves. It is with a full
consciousness of such principles and such ambitions that we
are asking ourselves at the present time what our duty is
with regard to the armed force of the Nation. Within a
year we have witnessed what we did not believe possible,
a great European conflict involving many of the greatest
nations’ of the world. The influences of a great war are
everywhere in the air. All Europe is embattled. Force
everywhere speaks out with a loud and imperious voice in a
titanic struggle of governments, and from one end of our
own dear country to the other men are asking one another
what our own force is, how far we are prepared to main-
tain ourselves against any interference with our national
action or development.

In no man’s mind, I am sure, is there even raised the
question of the wilful use of force on our part against any
nation or any people. No matter what military or naval
force the United States might develop, statesmen through-
out the whole world might rest assured that we were gath-
ering that force, not for attack in any quarter, not for ag-
gression of any kind, not for the satisfaction of any political
or international ambition, but merely to make sure of our
own security. We have it in mind to be prepared, not for
war, but only for defense; and with the thought constantly
in our minds that the principles we hold most dear can be
achieved by the slow processes of history only in the kindly
and wholesome atmosphere of peace, and not by the use of
hostile force. The mission of America in the world is es-
sentially a mission of peace and good will among men.
She has become the home and asylum of men of all creeds
and races. Within her hospitable borders they have found
homes and congenial associations and freedom and a wide
and cordial welcome, and they have become part of the
bone and sinew and spirit of America itself. America

128
Woodrow Wilson

has been made up out of the nations of the world and is
the friend of the nations of the world.

But we feel justified in preparing ourselves to vindicate
our right to independent and unmolested action by making
the force that is in us ready for assertion.

And we know that we can do this in a way that will be
itself an illustration of the American spirit. In accordance
with our American traditions we want and shall work for
only an army adequate to the constant and legitimate uses
of times of international peace. But we do want to feel
that there is a great body of citizens who have received at
least the most rudimentary and necessary forms of military
training; that they will be ready to form themselves into a
fighting force at the call of the nation; and that the nation
has the munitions and supplies with which to equip them
without delay should it be necessary to call them into ac-
tion. We wish to supply them with the training they need,
and we think we can do so without calling them at any time
too long away from their civilian pursuits.

It is with this idea, with this conception, in mind that
the plans have been made which it will be my privilege to
lay before the Congress at its next session. That plan calls
for only such an increase in the regular Army of the United
States as experience has proved to be required for the per-
formance of the necessary duties of the Army in the Phil-
ippines, in Hawaii, in Porto Rico, upon the borders of the
United States, at the coast fortifications, and at the mili-
tary posts of the interior. For the rest, it calls for the
training within the next three years of a force of 400,000
citizen soldiers to be raised in annual contingents of 133,-
000, who would: be asked to enlist for three years with the
colors and three years on furlough, but who during their
three years of enlistment with the colors would not be or-
ganized as a standing force but would be expected merely
to undergo intensive training for a very brief period of each
year. Their training would take place in immediate associa-

129
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

tion with the organized units of the regular Army. It would
have no touch of the amateur about it, neither would it
exact of the volunteers more than they could give in any
one year from their civilian pursuits.

And none of this would be done in such a way as in
the slightest degree to supersede or subordinate our present
serviceable and efficient National Guard. On the contrary,
the National Guard itself would be used as part of the
instrumentality by which training would be given the citi-
zens who enlisted under the new conditions, and I should
hope and expect that the legislation by which all this
would be accomplished would put the National Guard itself
upon a better and more permanent footing than it has ever
been before, giving it not only the recognition which it
deserves, but a more definite support from the national gov-
ernment and a more definite connection with the military
organization of the nation.

What we all wish to accomplish is that the forces of
the nation should indeed be part of the nation and not a
separate professional force, and the chief cost of the sys-
tem would not be in the enlistment or in the training of the
men, but in the prceviding of ample equipment in case it
should be necessary to call all forces into the field.

Moreover, it has been American policy time out of mind
to look to the Navy as the first and chief line of defense.
The Navy of the United States is already a very great and
efficient force. Not rapidly, but slowly, with careful at-
tention, our naval force has been developed until the Navy
of the United States stands recognized as one of the most
efficient and notable of the modern time. All that is needed
in order to bring it to a point of extraordinary force and
efficiency as compared with the other navies of the world
is that we should hasten our pace in the policy we have
long been pursuing, and that chief of all we should have
a definite policy of development, not made from year to
year but looking well into the future and planning for a

1380
Woodrow Wilson

definite consummation. We can and should profit in all
that we do by the experience and example that have been
made obvious to us by the military and naval events of the
actual present. It is not- merely a matter of building bat-
tleships and cruisers and submarines, but also a matter
of making sure that we shall have the adequate equipment
of men and munitions and supplies for the vessels we build
and intend to build. Part of our problem is the problem
of what I may call the mobilization of the resources of the
nation at the proper time if it should ever be necessary to
mobilize them for national defense. We shall study ef-
ficiency and adequate equipment as carefully as we shall
study the number and size of our ships, and I believe that
the plans already in part made public by the Navy Depart-
ment are plans which the whole nation can approve with
rational enthusiasm.

No thoughtful man feels any panic haste in this matter.
The country is not threatened from any quarter. She
stands in friendly relations with all the world. Her re-
sources are known and her self-respect and her capacity
to care for her own citizens and her own rights. There
is no fear amongst us. Under the new-world conditions
we have become thoughtful of the things which all reason-
able men consider necessary for security and self-defense
on the part of every nation confronted with the great en-
terprise of human liberty and independence. That is all.

Is the plan we propose sane and reasonable and suited to
the needs of the hour? Does it not conform to the ancient
traditions of America? Has any better plan been proposed
than this programme that we now place before the country?
In it there is no pride of opinion. It represents the best
professional and expert judgment of the country. But I
am not so much interested in programmes as I am in safe-
guarding at every cost the good faith and honor of the
country. If men differ with me in this vital matter, 1
shall ask them to make it clear how far and in what way

131
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

they are interested in making the permanent interests of
the country safe against disturbance.

In the fulfillment of the programme I propose I shall
ask for the hearty support of the country, of the rank
and file of America, of men of all shades of political opin-
ion. For my position in this important matter is different
from that of the private individual who is free to speak
his own thoughts and to risk his own opinions in this mat-
ter. We are here dealing with things that are vital to the
life of America itself. In doing this I have tried to purge
my heart of all personal and selfish motives. For the time
being, I speak as the trustee and guardian of a nation’s
rights, charged with the duty of speaking for that nation
in matters involving her sovereignty—a nation too big and
generous to be exacting and yet courageous enough to de-
fend its rights and the liberties of its people wherever as-
sailed or invaded. I would not feel that I was discharging
the solemn obligation I owe the country were I not to speak
in terms of deepest solemnity of the urgency and necessity
of preparing ourselves to guard and protect the rights and
privileges of our people, our sacred heritage of the fathers
who struggled to make us an independent nation.

The only thing within our own borders that has given us
grave concern in recent months has been that voices have
been raised in America professing to be the voices of Ameri-
cans which were not indeed and in truth American, but
which spoke alien sympathies, which came from men who
loved other countries better than they loved America, men
who were partisans of other causes than that of America
and had forgotten that their chief and only allegiance was
to the great government under which they live. These
voices have not been many, but they have been loud and
very clamorous. . . . The chief thing necessary is
that the real voice of the nation should sound forth unmis-
takably and in majestic volume, in the deep unison of a
common, unhesitating national feeling. . . .

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Woodrow Wilson

Witson’s Tuirp Annuat MessacEe

(Delivered before Congress in Joint Session,
December 7, 1915.)

[The President here makes his formal recommendations looking
toward preparedness for national defense. ‘Vast naval increases
were ultimately granted by Congress, but the “absolutely impera-
tive” proposal of a citizen army was not pressed for passage—a
fact which was in part responsible for the resignation of the Sec-
retary of War, Mr. Garrison, on February 10, 1916. The Presi-
dent’s remarks about Mexico refer to the withdrawal of American
troops from Vera Cruz in November, 1914, and to the recognition
of the Carranza government in October, 1915, Three months after
Re Snes to Congress occurred the Villa raid on Columbus,

.M] ‘

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 international affairs, and now presents a pros-
pect of reorganization and reconstruction such as states-
men 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 popu-
lations 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 confusion in
the other, if they could do nothing more. In the day of

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

readjustment and recuperation we earnestly hope and be-
lieve 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 the
politics of Europe but also by a clear perception of inter-
national 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 independ-
ence in Central and South America when the government
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 unmo-
lested self-government of her independent peoples. But it
was always difficult to maintain such a réle without offence
to the pride of the peoples whose freedom of action we
sought to protect, and without provoking serious miscon-
ceptions of our motives, and every thoughtful man of af-
fairs 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 through-
out 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

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Woodrow Wilson

and of political liberty in America. But that purpose is
now 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 Mexico
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 without reserva-
tion 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, protection, and se-
curity of the people, nation, or community”; that “of all
the various modes and forms of government, that is the best
which is capable of producing the greatest degree of happi-
ness and safety, and is most effectually secured against the
danger of maladministration; and that, when any govern-
ment shall be found inadequate or contrary to these pur-
poses, a majority of the community hath an indubitable,
inalienable, and indefeasible right to reform, alter, or abol-
ish it, in such manner as shall be judged most conducive
to the public weal.” We have unhesitatingly applied that
heroic principle to the case of Mexico, and now hopefully
await the rebirth of the troubled Republic, which had so

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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 will 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 codperating 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 polit-
ical history of the world. It presents them as in a very
deep and true sense a unit in world affairs, spiritual part-
ners, standing together because thinking together, quick
with common sympathies and common ideals. Separated
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 embodi-
ment, 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 re-
lations 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 conception of the ease
and intelligence and advantage with which Americans of

136
Woodrow Wilson

both continents may draw together in practical cooperation
and of what the material foundations of this hopeful part-
nership 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 readjustments
which the world must inevitably witness within the next
generation, when peace shall have at last resumed its health-
ful 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 can not
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 to-day. I mean national defense.

No one who realily comprehends the ‘spirit of the great
people for whom we are appointed to speak can fail to per-
ceive that their passion is for peace, their genius best dis-
played in the practice of the arts of peace. Great democ-
racies 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 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 lib-
erty, 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

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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 of the sea, and have deemed it as important
that our neighbors should be free from all outside domina-
tion as that we ourselves should be; have set America aside
as a whole for the uses of independent nations and polit-
ical 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 coer-
cive or dictatorial power within our own nation as of ag-
gression from without. We will not maintain a standing
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 has been that our
safety in times of danger would lie in the rising of the na-
tion 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 avail-
able and immediately effective. And the government must
be their servant in this matter, must supply them with the
training they need to take care of themselves and of it.
The military arm of their government, which they will not
allow to direct them, they may properly use to serve them

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Woodrow Wilson

and make their independence secure,—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
réle 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 De-
partment 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 thousand
and twenty-three officers and one hundred and two thou-
sand nine hundred and eighty-five enlisted men of all serv-
ices to a strength of seven thousand one hundred and thirty-
six officers and one hundred and thirty-four thousand seven
hundred and seven enlisted men, or 141,843, all told, all
services, rank and file, by the addition of fifty-two compa:
nies 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, espe-
cially the all-important duty of training the citizen force
of which I shall presently speak, seven hundred and ninety-
two non-commissioned officers for service in drill, recruit-
ing and the like, and the necessary quota of enlisted men
for the Quartermaster Corps, the Hospital Corps, the Ord-
nance Department, and other similar auxiliary services.
‘These are the additions necessary to render the army ade-
quate for its present duties, duties which it has to perform
not only upon our own continental coasts and borders and
at our interior army posts, but also in the Philippines, in

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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 en-
listment under which the serviceable men of the country
would be asked to bind themselves to serve with the colors
for purposes of training for short periods throughout three
years, and to come to the colors at call at any time through-
out an additional “furlough” period of three years. This
force of four hundred thousand men would be provided
with personal accoutrements as fast as enlisted and their
equipment for the field made ready to be supplied at any
time. They would be assembled for training at stated in-
tervals at convenient places in association with suitable
units of the regular army. Their period of annual train-
ing 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 Sec-
retary of the Navy is similarly conceived. It involves only
a shortening of the time within which plans long matured

140
Woodrow Wilson

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 dis-
closed in the debates of the two Houses but nowhere formu-
lated or formally adopted. It seems to me very clear that
it will be to the advantage of the country 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 al-
ways 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 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 definitely determine how we shall complete
what we have begun, and how soon.

The programme to be laid before you sun uinies 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 construction of two
battleships, two battle-cruisers, three scout-cruisers, fifteen
destroyers, five fleet submarines, twenty-five coast sub-
marines, two gunboats, and one hospital ship; the second
year, two battleships, one scout-cruiser, ten destroyers, four
submarines, fifteen coast submarines, one gunboat, and one
fuel-oil ship; the third year, two battleships, one battle-
cruiser, two scout-cruisers, five destroyers, two fleet sub-
marines, and fifteen coast submarines; the fourth year, two
battleships, two battle-cruisers, two scout-cruisers, ten de-
stroyers, two fleet submarines, fifteen coast submarines, one
ammunition ship, and one fuel-oil ship; and the fifth year,
two battleships, one battle-cruiser, two scout-cruisers, ten
destroyers, two fleet submarines, fifteen coast sub-

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

marines, one gunboat, one ammunition ship, and one repair
ship.

The Secretary of the Navy is asking also for the imme-
diate addition to the personnel of the navy of seven thou-
sand five hundred sailors, twenty-five hundred apprentice
seamen, and fifteen hundred marines. This increase 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 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 graduates 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 con-
sisting 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 cruis-
ers, one hundred and eight destroyers, eighteen fleet sub-
marines, one hundred and fifty-seven coast submarines, six
monitors, twenty gunboats, four supply ships, fifteen fuel
ships, four transports, three tenders to torpedo vessels,
eight vessels of special types, and two ammunition 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 su-
preme matter of national self-sufficiency and security in all
its aspects. There are other great matters which will be

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Woodrow Wilson

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 ade-
quacy. It is necessary for many weighty reasons of na-
tional efficiency and development that we should have 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 neglect and indif-
ference and by a hopelessly blind and provincial policy of
so-called economic protection. It is high time we repaired
our mistake and resumed our commercial 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 de-
termine. We have not ships enough of our own. We can
not handle our own commerce on the seas. Our independ-
ence 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 situa-
tion 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 independence which only an
adequate merchant marine would give it, but also that the
American hemisphere as a whole should enjoy a like inde-
pendence and self-sufficiency, if it is not to be drawn into
the tangle of European affairs. Without such independ-
ence 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

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

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 services
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 mutual depend-
ence 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, in-
telligence, and vigor; and it seems to me a manifest dictate
of wisdom that we should promptly remove every legal ob-
stacle that may stand in the way of this much-to-be-desired
revival of our old independence and should facilitate in
every possible way the building, purchase, and American
registration of ships. But capital cannot accomplish this
great task of a sudden. It must embark upon it by de-
grees, as the opportunities of trade develop. Something
’ must be done at once; done to open routes and develop op-
portunities where they are as yet undeveloped; done to
open the arteries of trade where the currents have not yet
learned to run,—especially between the two American con-
tinents, where they are, singularly enough, yet to be created
and quickened; and it is evident that only the government
can undertake such beginnings and assume the initial finan-
cial 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 can not
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
of transport to any foreign quarter. Ws must not await the

144
Woodrow Wilson

permission of foreign ship-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 possible
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 Con-
gress 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 particu-
lars. I recommend these proposals to you for your prompt
acceptance with the more confidence because every month
that has elapsed since the former proposals were made has
made the necessity for such action more and more mani-
festly imperative. This need was then foreseen; it is now
acutely felt and everywhere realized by those for whom
trade is waiting but who can find no conveyance for their
goods. J am not so much interested in the particulars of
the programme as I am in taking immediate advantage of
the great opportunity which awaits us if we will but act in
this emergency. 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 in-
timately 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 treatment
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 or embar-
rassment; and there is no better way to be clear of em-
barrassment 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 Philip-

145

¢
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

pines 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 particular-
ize their details. You are most of you already familiar
with them. But I do recommend them to your early adop-
tion with the sincere conviction that there are few meas-
ures 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,

The plans for the armed forces of the nation which I
have outlined, and for the general policy of adequate prep-
aration for mobilization and defense, involve of course
very large additional expenditures of money,—expenditures
which will considerably exceed the estimated revenues of
the government. It is made my duty by law, whenever
the estimates of expenditure exceed the estimates of rev-
enue, to call the attention of the Congress to the fact and
suggest any means of meeting the deficiency that it may be
wise or possible for me to suggest. I am ready to believe
that it would be my duty to do so in any case; and I feel
particularly bound to speak of the matter when it appears
that the deficiency will arise directly out of the adoption
by the Congress of measures which I myself urge it to
adopt. Allow me, therefore, to speak briefly of the present
state of the Treasury and of the fiscal problems which the
next year will probably disclose.

On the thirtieth of June last there was an available bal-
ance in the general fund of the Treasury of $104,170,-
105.78. The total estimated receipts for the year 1916, on
the assumption that the emergency revenue measure passed
by the last Congress will not be extended beyond its pres-
ent limit, the thirty-first of December, 1915, and that the
present duty of one cent per pound on sugar will be discon-
tinued after the first of May, 1916, will be $670,365,500.
The balance of June last and these estimated revenues come,

146
Woodrow Wilson

therefore, to a grand total of $774,535,605.78. The total
estimated disbursements for the present fiscal year, inclu-
ding twenty-five millions for the Panama Canal, twelve
millions for probable deficiency appropriations, and fifty
thousand dollars for miscellaneous debt redemptions, will
be $753,891,000; and the balance in the general fund of
the Treasury will be reduced to $20,644,605.78. The
emergency revenue act, if continued beyond its present
time limitation, would produce, during the half year then
remaining, about forty-one millions. The duty of one cent
per pound on sugar, if continued, would produce during the
two months of the fiscal year remaining after the first of
May, about fifteen millions. These two sums, amounting
together to fifty-six millions, if added to the revenues of
the second half of the fiscal year, would yield the Treasury
at the end of the year an available balance of $76,644,-
605.78.

The additional revenues required to carry out the pro-
gramme of military and naval preparation of which I have
spoken would, as at present estimated, be for the fiscal
year 1917, $93,800,000. Those figures, taken with the
figures for the present fiscal year which I have already
given, disclose our financial problem for the year 1917.
Assuming that the taxes imposed by the emergency revenue
act and the present duty on sugar are to be discontinued,
and that the balance at the close of the present fiscal year
will be only $20,644,605.78, that the disbursements for the
Panama Canal will again be about twenty-five millions, and
that the additional expenditures for the army and navy are
authorized by the Congress, the deficit in the general fund
of the Treasury on the thirtieth of June, 1917, will be
nearly two hundred and thirty-five millions. To this sum
at least fifty millions should be added to represent a safe
working balance for the Treasury, and twelve millions to
include the usual deficiency estimates in 1917; and these
additions would make a total deficit of some two hundred

147
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers
and ninety-seven millions. If the present taxes should be
continued throughout this year and the next, however,
there would be a balance in the Treasury of some seventy-
six and a half millions at the end of the present fiscal year,
and a deficit at the end of the next year of only some fifty
maillions, or, reckoning in sixty-two millions for deficiency
appropriations and a safe Treasury balance at the end of
the year, a total deficit of some one hundred and twelve mil-
lions. The obvious moral of the figures is that it is a plain
counsel of prudence to continue all of the present taxes or
their equivalents, and confine ourselves to the problem of
providing one hundred and twelve millions of new revenue
rather than two hundred and ninety-seven millions.

How shall we obtain the new revenue? We are fre-
quently reminded that there are many millions of bonds
which the Treasury is authorized under existing law to sell
to reimburse the sums paid out of current revenues for the
construction of the Panama Canal; and it is true that bonds
to the amount of approximately $222,000,000 are now
available for that purpose. Prior to 1913 $134,631,980
of these bonds had actually been sold to recoup the expend-
itures at the Isthmus; and now constitute a considerable
item of the public debt. But I, for one, do not believe that
the people of this country approve of postponing the pay-
ment of their bills. Borrowing money is short-sighted
finance. It can be justified only when permanent things
are to be accomplished which many generations will cer-
tainly benefit by and which it seems hardly fair that a single
generation should pay for. The objects we are now pro-
posing to spend money for cannot be so classified, except
in the sense that everything wisely done may be said
to be done in the interest of posterity as well as in our
own. It seems to me a clear dictate of prudent statesman-
ship and frank finance that in what we are now, I hope,
about to undertake we should pay as we go. The people
of the country are entitled to know just what burdens of

148
Woodrow W ilson

taxation they are to carry, and to know from the outset,
now. The new bills should be paid by internal taxation.

To what sources, then, shall we turn? This is so pecul-
iarly a question which the gentlemen of the House of Repre-
sentatives are expected under the Constitution to propose
an answer to that you will hardly expect me to do more
than discuss it in very general terms. We should be follow-
ing an almost universal example of modern governments
if we were to draw the greater part or even the whole of
the revenues we need from the income taxes. By somewhat
lowering the present limits of exemption and the figure at
which the surtax shall begin to be imposed, and by increas-
ing, step by step throughout the present graduation, the
surtax itself, the income taxes as at present apportioned
would yield sums sufficient to balance the books of the
Treasury at the end of the fiscal year 1917 without any-
where making the burden unreasonably or oppressively
heavy. The precise reckonings are fully and accurately set
out in the report of the Secretary of the Treasury which
will be immediately laid before you.

And there are many additional sources of revenue which
can justly be resorted to without hammering the industries
of the country or putting any too great charge upon indi-
vidual expenditure. A tax of one cent per gallon on gaso-
line and naphtha would yield, at the present estimated pro-
duction, $10,000,000; a tax of fifty cents per horsepower
on automobiles and internal explosion engines, $15,000,000;
a stamp tax on bank cheques, probably $18,000,000; a tax
of twenty-five cents per ton on pig iron, $10,000,000; a
tax of twenty-five cents per ton on fabricated iron and steel
probably $10,000,000. In a country of great industries
like this it ought to be easy to distribute the burdens of
taxation without making them anywhere bear too heavily
or too exclusively upon any one set of persons or under-
takings. What is clear is, that the industry of this genera-
tion should pay the bills of this generation.

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

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 réle 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 partic-
ular 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 be-
tween 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 gravest 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 under our
generous naturalization laws to the full freedom and op-
portunity of America, who have poured the poison of dis-
loyalty 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 wher-
ever they thought it effective for their vindictive purposes
to strike at them, and to debase our policies to the uses of
foreign intrigue. Their number 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
disgrace 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 elements of that little, but how heroic, na-
tion that in a high day of old staked its very life to free it-
self from every entanglement that had darkened the for-

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tunes of the older nations and set up a new standard here,
—that men of such origins and such free choices of alle-
giance would ever turn in malign reaction against the Gov-
ernment and people who had welcomed and nurtured them
and seek to make this proud country once more a hotbed 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 our-
selves, our own comrades and neighbors! But the ugly
and incredible thing has actually come about and we are
without adequate federal 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 crea-
tures of passion, 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 confidential
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 governments
under which they 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 nation but hig 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

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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 disloyalty. No
laws, I suppose, can reach corruptions of the mind and
heart; but I should not speak of others without also speak-
ing of these and expressing the even deeper humiliation
and scorn which every self-possessed and thoughtfully pa-
triotic American must feel when he thinks of them ‘and of
the discredit they are daily bringing 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 undertakings, their free opportunity
.to use the natural resources 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 development; from the organization and freedom and
vitality of our economic life. The domestic questions which
engaged the attention of the last Congress are more vital
to the nation in this its time of test than at any other time.
We can not 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 ac-
tion. 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 economic resources in any time of
national necessity. I take it for granted that I do not need
your authority to call into sympathetic consultation with
the directing officers of the army and navy men of recog-
nized leadership and ability from among our citizens who
are thoroughly familiar, for example, with the transporta-
tion facilities of the country and therefore competent to

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advise how they may be coérdinated when the need arises,
those who can suggest the best way in which to bring
about prompt codperation among the manufacturers of the
country, should it be necessary, and those who could assist
to bring the technical skill of the country to the aid of the
Government in the solution of particular problems of de-
fense. I only hope that if I should find it feasible to con-
stitute such an advisory body the Congress would be will-
ing 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 re-
sources of the country should be available and ready for
mobilization. It is the more imperatively necessary, there-
fore, that we should promptly devise means for doing what
we have not yet done: that we should give intelligent fed-
eral aid and stimulation to industrial and vocational edu-
cation, as we have long done in the large field of our agri-
cultural 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 com-
mittees 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 in-
strumentalities 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 arrangements to changing conditions.

Many conditions about which we have repeatedly legis-
lated are being altered from decade to decade, it is evi-
dent, under our very eyes, and are likely to change even

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more rapidly and more radically in the days immediately
ahead of us, when peace has returned to the world and the
nations of Europe once more take up their tasks of com-
merce and industry with the energy of those who must be-
stir 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 prob-
lem. The most we can do is to make certain that we have
the necessary instrumentalities of information constantly
at our service so that we may be sure that we know ex-
actly 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 trans-
portation 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 coérdinated. 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 administered are as serviceable as
they might be in the solution of the problem. It is ob-
viously 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 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 ques-
tion is not what should we undo? It is, whether there is

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anything else we can do that will supply us the 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, there-
fore, before further legislation in this field is attempted, to
look at the whole problem of codrdination 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 com-
mon 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.

Wizson’s Appresses on Mippie Western Tour, Uraine
PreparepNess For Nationat DrFeEnssz,
January 27 ro Fesruary 3, 1916

[Epvrroriau Nore: Congress had been in session nearly
two months without definite accomplishment, and the Presi-
dent undertook this speaking trip to urge citizens to “back
him up” in demands for national defense. He confessed
his own change of mind since his message to Congress in
December, 1914, and his purpose “to go out and tell my
fellow countrymen that new circumstances have arisen
which make it absolutely necessary that this country should
prepare herself, not for war, but for adequate national
defense.” He went as far west as Kansas, delivering

155
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

formal addresses in eight States. As he used the same
arguments in several speeches, there has been some con-
densation in the pages immediately following. |

Berore THE RarnwayY Business Association, New York
Ciry, January 27, 1916.

Mr. Toastmaster, Ladies and Gentlemen:

The question, it seems to me, which most demands clarifi-
cation just now is the question to which your toastmaster
has referred, the question of preparation for national de-
fense. I say that it stands in need of clarification because
it has been deeply clouded by passion and prejudice. It
is very singular that a question the elements of which are
so simple and so obvious should have been so beclouded by
the discussion of men of high motive, men of purpose as
handsome as any of us may claim and yet apparently in-
capable of divesting themselves of that sort of provincialism
which consists in thinking the contents of their own mind to
be the contents of the mind of the world. For, gentlemen,
while America is a very great Nation, while America con-
tains every element of fine force and accomplishment, Amer-
ica does not constitute the major part of the world. We live
in a world which we did not make, which we can not alter,
which we can not think into a different condition from that
which actually exists. It would be a hopeless piece of pro-
vincialism to suppose that because we think differently from
the rest of the world we are at liberty to assume that the
rest of the world will permit us to enjoy that thought with-
out disturbance.

It is a surprising circumstance, also, that men should al-
low partisan feeling or personal ambition to creep into the
discussion of this fundamental thing. How can Americans
differ about the safety of America? I, for my part, am
ambitious that America should do a greater and more dif-
ficult thing than the great nations on the other side of the

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water have done. In all the belligerent countries men with-
out distinction of party have drawn together to accomplish
a successful prosecution of the war. Is it not a more dif-
ficult and a more desirable thing that all Americans should
put partisan prepossessions aside and draw together for
the successful prosecution of peace? I covet that distine-
tion for America; and I believe that America is going to
enjoy that distinction. Only the other day the leader of
the Republican minority in the House of Representatives
delivered a speech which showed that he was ready and,
I take it for granted, that the men behind him were ready,
to forget party lines in order that all men may act with a
common mind and impulse for the service of the country;
and I want upon this first public occasion to pay my tribute
of respect and obligation to him. i

Let no man dare to say, if he would areal the truth, ‘that
the question of preparation for national defense is a ques-
tion of war or of peace. If there is one passion more deep-
seated in the hearts of our fellow countrymen than another,
it is the passion for peace. No nation in the world ever
more instinctively turned away from the thought of war
than this Nation to which we belong. Partly because in the
plentitude of its power, in the unrestricted area of its op-
portunities, it has found nothing to covet in the possession
and power of other nations. There is no spirit of aggran-
dizement in America. There is no desire on the part of any
thoughtful and conscientious American man to take one foot
of territory from any other nation in the world. I myself
share to the bottom of my heart that profound love for
peace. I have sought to maintain peace against very great
and sometimes very unfair odds. I have had many a time
to use every power that was in me to prevent such a catas-
trophe as war coming upon this country. It is not per-
missible for any man to say that anxiety for the defense of
the Nation has in it the least tinge of desire for a power
that can be used to bring on war.

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

But, gentlemen, there is something that the American
people love better than they love peace. They love the
principles upon which their political life is founded. They
are ready at any time to fight for the vindication of their
character and of their honor. They will not at any time
seek the contest, but they will at no time cravenly avoid it;
because if there is one thing that the individual ought to
fight for, and that the Nation ought to fight for, it is the
integrity of its own convictions. We can not surrender our
convictions. I would rather surrender territory than sur-
render those ideals which are the staff of life of the soul
itself.

Perhaps when you learned, as I dare say you did learn
beforehand, that I was expecting to address you on the sub-
ject of preparedness, you recalled the address which I made
to Congress something more than a year ago, in which I
said that this question of military preparedness was not a
pressing question. But more than a year has gone by since
then and I would be ashamed if I had not learned something
in fourteen months. The minute I stop changing my mind
with the change of all the circumstances of the world, I will
be a back number.

There is another thing about which I have changed my
mind. A year ago I was not in favor of a tariff board, and
I will tell you why. Then the only purpose of a tariff board
was to keep alive an unprofitable controversy. If you set
up any board of inquiry whose purpose it is to keep business
disturbed and to make it always an open question what you
are goirig to do about the public policy of the Government,
I am opposed to it; and the very men who were dinning it
into our ears that what business wanted was to be let alone
were, many of them, men who were insisting that we should
stir up a controversy which meant that we could not let
business alone. There is a great deal more opinion vocal in
this world than is consistent with logic. But the circum-
stances of the present time are these: There is going on in

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Woodrow Wilson

the world under our eyes an economic revolution. No man
understands that revolution; no man has the elements of it
clearly in his mind. No part of the business of legislation
with regard to international trade can be undertaken until
we do understand it; and members of Congress are too busy,
their duties are too multifarious and distracting to make it
possible within a sufficiently short space of time for them
to master the change that is coming. .

What I am trying to impress upon you now is that the
circumstances of the world to-day are not what they were
yesterday, or ever were in any of our yesterdays. And it
is not certain what they will be to-morrow. I can not tell
you what the international relations of this country will be
to-morrow, and I use the word literally; and I would not
dare keep silent and let the country suppose that to-morrow
was certain to be as bright as to-day. America will never
be the aggressor, America will always seek to the last point
at which her honor is involved to avoid the things which dis-
turb the peace of the world; but America does not control
the circumstances of the world, and we must be sure that
we are faithful servants of those things which we love, and
are ready to defend them against every contingency that
may affect or impair them.

And, as I was saying a moment ago, we must seek the
means which are consistent with the principles of our lives.
Jt goes without saying, though apparently it is necessary to
say it to some excited persons, that one thing that this coun-
try never will endure is a system that can be called mili-
tarism. But militarism consists in this, gentlemen: It con-
sists in preparing a great machine whose only use is for
war and giving it no use upon which to expend itself. Men
who are in charge of edged tools and bidden to prepare
them for exact and scientific use grow very impatient if they
are not permitted to use them, and I do not believe that the
creation of such an instrument is an insurance of peace.
I believe that it involves the danger of all the impulses that

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

skillful persons have to use the things that they know how
to use. ; ,

But we do not have to do that. America is always going
fo use her Army in two ways. She is going to use it for
the purposes of peace, and she is going to use it as a nucleus
for expansion into those things which she does believe in,
namely, the preparation of her citizens to take care of them-
selves. There are two sides to the question of preparation;
there is not merely the military side, there is the industrial
side; and the ideal which I have in mind is this: We ought
to have in this country a great system of industrial and vo-
cational education under Federal guidance and with Fed-
eral aid, in which a very large percentage of the youth of
this country will be given training in the skillful use and
application of the principles of science in manufacture and
business; and it will be perfectly feasible and highly desir-
able to add to that and combine with it such a training in
the mechanism and care and use of arms, in the sanitation
of camps, in the simpler forms of maneuver and organiza-
tion, as will make these same men at one and the same
time industrially efficient and immediately serviceable for
national defense. The point about such a system will be
that its emphasis will lie on the industrial and civil side
of life, and that, like all the rest of America, the use of
force will only be in the background and as the last resort.
Men will think first of their families and their daily work,
of their service in the economic ranks of the country, of
their efficiency as artisans, and only last of all of their serv-
iceability to the Nation as soldiers and men at arms. That
is the ideal of America.

But, gentlemen, you can not create such a system over-
night; you cannot create such a system rapidly. It has got
to be built up, and I hope it will be built up, by slow and
effective stages; and there is much to be done in the mean-
time. We must see to it that a sufficient body of citizens
is given the kind of training which will make them efficient

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Woodrow Wilson

now if called into the field in case of necessity. It is dis-
creditable to this country, gentlemen, for this is a country
full of intelligent men, that we should have exhibited to the
world the example we have sometimes exhibited to it, of
stupid and brutal waste of force. Think of asking men who
can be easily trained to come into the field, crude, ignorant,
inexperienced, and merely furnishing the stuff for camp
fever and the bullets of the enemy. The sanitary experience
of our Army in the Spanish-American War was merely an
indictment of America’s indifference to the manifest lessons
of experience in the matter of ordinary, careful preparation.
We have got the men to waste, but God forbid that we
should waste them. Men who go as efficient instruments of
national honor into the field afford a very handsome spec-
tacle indeed. Men who go in crude and ignorant boys only
indict those in authority for stupidity and neglect. So it
seems to me that it is our manifest duty to have a proper
citizen reserve.

I am not forgetting our National Guard. I have had
the privilege of being governor of one of our great States,
and there I was brought into association with what I am
glad to believe is one of the most efficient portions of the
National Guard of the Nation. I learned to admire the
men, to respect the officers, and to believe in the National
Guard; and I believe that it is the duty of Congress to do
very much more for the National Guard than it has ever
done heretofore. I believe that that great arm of our na-
tional defense should be built up and encouraged to the ut-
most; but, you know, gentlemen, that under the Constitu-
tion of the United States the National Guard is under the
direction of more than twoscore States; that it is not per-
mitted to the National Government directly to have a voice
in its development and organization; and that only upon
occasion of actual invasion has the President of the United
States the right to ask those men to leave their respective
States. I, for my part, am afraid, though some gentlemen

161
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differ with me, that there is no way in which that force can
be made a direct resource as a national reserve under na-
tional authority.

What we need is a body of men trained in association
with units of the Army, and a body of men organized un-
der the immediate direction of the national authority, a
body of men subject to the immediate call to arms of the
national authority, and yet men not put into the ranks of
the Regular Army; men left to their tasks of civil life, men
supplied with equipment and training, but not drawn away
from the peaceful pursuits which have made America great
and must keep her great. I am not a partisan of any one
plan. I have had too much experience to think that it is
right to so say that the plan that I propose is the only plan
that will work, because I have a shrewd suspicion that there
may be other plans that will work. What I am after, and
what every American ought to insist upon, is a body of at
least half a million trained citizens who will serve under
conditions of danger as an immediately available national
reserve... .

Art PrrtssureH, Pa., January 29, 1916.

(The Western Preparedness Tour)

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen:

I am conscious of a sort of truancy in being absent from
my duties in Washington, and yet it did seem to me to be
clearly the obligation laid upon me by the office to which
I have been chosen that, as your servant and representa-
tive, I should come and report to you upon the progress
of public affairs. . .

You know that there is a multitude of voices upon the
question of national defense, and I, for my part, am not
inclined to criticize any of the views that have been put
forth upon this important subject, because if there is one

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thing we love more than another in the United States, it is
that every man should have the privilege, unmolested and
uncriticized, to utter the real convictions of his mind. . . .

What is it that we want to defend? You do not need
to have me answer that question for you; it is your own
thought. We want to defend the life of this Nation against
any sort of interference. We want to maintain the equal
right of this Nation as against the action of all other nations,
and we wish to maintain the peace and unity of the Western
Hemisphere. Those are great things to defend, and in their
defense sometimes our thought must take a great sweep,
even beyond our own borders. Do you never stop to reflect
just what it is that America stands for? If she stands
for one thing more than another, it is for the sovereignty
of self-governing peoples, and her example, her assistance,
her encouragement, has thrilled two continents in this West-
ern World with all the fine impulses which have built up
human liberty on both sides of the water. She stands,
therefore, as an example of independence, as an example
of free institutions, and as an example of disinterested
international action in the maintenance of justice. These
are very great things to defend, and wherever they are
attacked America has at least the duty of example, has at
least the duty of such action as it is possible for her with
self-respect to take, in order that these things may not be
néglected or thrust on one side.

I am not going before audiences like this to go into the
details of the programme which has been proposed to the
Congress of the United States, because, after all, the details
do not make any difference. I believe in one plan; others
may think that an equally good plan can be substituted,
and I hope my mind is open to be convinced that it can;
but what I am convinced of and what we are all working
for is that there should be provided, not a great militant
force in this country, but a great reserve of adequate and
available force which can be called on upon occasion. I

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

have proposed that we should be supplied with at least half
a million men accustomed to handle arms and io live in
camps; and that is a very small number as compared with
the gigantic proportions of modern armies. Therefore, it
seems to me that no man can speak of proposals like that
as if they pointed in the direction of militarism. . .

For I am proposing something more than what is tem-
porary. It is my conception that as the Government of the
United States has done a great deal, though even yet prob-
ably not enough,.to promote agricultural education in this
country, it ought to do a great deal to promote industrial
education in this country, and that along with thorough-
going industrial and vocational training it is perfectly
feasible to instruct the youth of the land in the mechanism
and use of arms, in the sanitation of camps, in the more
rudimentary principles and practices of modern warfare,
and so not to bring about occasions such as we have some-
times brought about, when upon a sudden danger young-
sters were summoned by the proclamation of the President
out of every community, who came crude and green and.
raw into the service of their country—infinitely willing but
also wholly unfitted for the great physical task which was
ahead of them. No nation should waste its youth like that.
A nation like this should be ashamed to use an inefficient
instrument when it can make its instrument efficient for
everything that it needs to employ it for, and can do it
along with the magnifying and ennobling and quickening
of the tasks of peace.

But we have to create the schools and develop the schools
to do these things, and we can not at present wait for this
slow process. We must go at once to the task of training
a very considerable body of men to the use of arms and
the life of camps, and we can do so upon one condition,
and one condition only. The test, ladies and gentlemen,
of what we are proposing is not going to be the action of
Congress; it is going to be the response of the country. It

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Woodrow Wilson

is going to be the volunteering of the men to take the train-
ing and the willingness of their employers to see to it that
no obstacle is put in the way of their volunteering. It will
be up to the young men of this country and to the men
who employ them; then, and not till then, we shall know
how far it is true that America wishes to prepare itself for
national defense—not a matter of sentiment, but a matter
of hard practice.

Are the men going to come out, and are those who em-
ploy them going to facilitate their coming out? I for one
believe that they will. There are many selfish influences
at work in this country, as in every other; but when it
comes to the large view America can produce the substance
of patriotism as abundantly as any other country under
God’s sun. J have no anxiety along those lines, and I
have no anxiety along the lines of what Congress is going
to do. You elect men to Congress who have opinions, and
it is not strange that they should have differing opinions.
I am not jealous of debate. If what I propose can not
stand debate, then something ought to be substituted for it
which can. And I am not afraid that it is going to be all
debate. I am not afraid that nothing is going to come
out of it. I am not afraid that we shall fail to get out of
it the most substantial and satisfactory results. Certainly
when I talk a great deal myself I am not going to be jealous
of the other man’s having a chance to talk also. We are
talking, I take it, in order to get at the very final analysis
of the case, the final proof and demonstration of what we
ought to do.

My own feeling, ladies and gentlemen, is that it is a
pity that this is a campaign year. I hope, with the chair-
man of the meeting, that the question of national prepara-
tion for defense will not by anybody be drawn into cam-
paign uses or partisan aspects. There are many differences
between Democrats and Republicans, honest differences
of opinion and of conviction, but Democrats do not differ

165
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

from Republicans upon the question of the Nation’s safety,
and no man ought to draw this thing into controversy in
order to make party or personal profit out of it. I am ready
to acknowledge that men on the other side politically are
just as deeply and just as intelligently interested in this
question as I am, of course, and I shall be ashamed of any
friends of mine who may take any different view of it.

I want you to realize just what is happening, not in
America, but in the rest of the world. It is very hard to
describe it briefly. It is very hard to describe it in quiet
phrases. The world is on fire, and there is tinder every-
where. The sparks are liable to drop anywhere, and some-
where there may be material which we can not prevent from
bursting into flame. The influence of passion is everywhere
abroad in the world. It is not strange that men see red
in such circumstances. What a year ago was incredible
has now happened and the world is so in the throes of this
titanic struggle that no part of it is unaffected.

You know what is happening. You know that by a kind
of improvidence which should be very uncharacteristic of
America we have neglected for several generations to pro-
vide the means to carry our own commerce on the seas,
and, therefore, being dependent upon other nations for
the most part to carry our commerce, we are dependent
upon other nations now for the movement of our commerce
when other nations are caught in the grip of war. So that
every natural impulse of our peaceful life is embarrassed
and impeded by the circumstances of the time, and wherever
there is contact there is apt to be friction. Wherever the
ordinary rules of commerce at sea and of international re-
lationship are thrust aside or ignored, there is danger of
the more critical kind of controversy. Where nations are
engaged as many nations are now engaged, they are pecu-
liarly likely to be stubbornly steadfast in the pursuit of
the purpose which is the main purpose of the moment;
and so, while we move among friends, we move among

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friends who are preoccupied, preoccupied with an exigent
matter which is foreign to our own life, foreign to our own
policy, but which nevertheless inevitably affects our own
life and our own policy. While a year ago it seemed im-
possible that a struggle upen so great a scale should last
a whole twelvemonth, it has now lasted a year and a half
and the end is not yet, and all the time things have grown
more and more difficult to handle.

It fills me with a very strange feeling sometimes, my
fellow citizens, when it seems to be implied that I am not
the friend of peace. If these gentlemen could have sat with
me reading the dispatches and handling the questions which
arise every hour of the twenty-four, they would have known
how infinitely difficult it had been to maintain the peace
and they would have believed that I was the friend of
peace. But I also know the difficulties, the real dangers,
dangers not about things that I can handle, but about things
‘that the other parties handle and I can not control.

It amazes me to hear men speak as if America stood alone
in the world and could follow her own life as she pleased.
We are in the midst of a world that we did not make and
can not alter ; its atmospheric and physical conditions are the
conditions of our own life also, and therefore, as your re-
sponsible servant, I must tell you that the dangers are in-
finite and constant. I should feel that I was guilty of an
unpardonable omission if I did not go out and tell my fellow
countrymen that new circumstances have arisen which make
it absolutely necessary that this country should prepare
herself, not for war, not for anything that smacks in the
least of aggression, but for adequate national defense. . . .

What I want you to do is this: I do not want you merely
to listen to speeches. I want you to make yourselves vocal.
I want you to let everybody who comes within earshot of
it know that you are a partisan for the adequate preparation
of the United States for national defense. I have come
to ask you not merely to go home and say, “The President

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seems to be a good fellow and to mean what he says’; I
want you to go home determined that within the whole circle
of your influence the President, not as a partisan, but as
the representative of the national honor, shall be backed
up by the whole force that is in the Nation. . . .

At Cievetann, Ouro, January 29, 1916.
(The Western Preparedness Tour)

Mr. President and Fellow Citizens:

I suppose that from the first America has had one pe-
culiar and particular mission in the world. Other nations
have grown rich, my fellow citizens, other nations have been
as powerful as we in material resources in comparison with
the other nations of the world, other nations have built up
empires and exercised dominion; we are not peculiar in any
of these things, but we are peculiar in this, that from the
first we have dedicated our force to the service of justice
and righteousness and peace. We have said: ‘Our chief
interest is not in the rights of property, but in the rights
of men; our chief interest is in the spirits of men that they
might be free, that they might enjoy their lives unmolested
so long as they observed the just rules of the game, that
they might deal with their fellowmen with their heads erect,
the subjects and servants of no man; the servants only of
the principles upon which their lives rested.” And Amer-
ica has done more than care for her own people and think
of her own fortunes in these great matters. She has said
ever since the time of President Monroe that she was the
champion of the freedom and the separate sovereignty of
peoples throughout the Western Hemisphere. She is trustee
for these ideals and she is pledged, deeply and permanently
pledged, to keep these momentous promises.

She not only, therefore, must play her part in keeping
this conflagration from spreading to the people of the

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United States; she must also keep this conflagration from
spreading on this side of the sea. These are matters in
which our very life and our whole pride are embedded and
rooted, and we can never draw back from them. And I,
my fellow citizens, because of the extraordinary office with
which you have intrusted me, must, whether I will or not,
be your responsible spokesman in these great matters. It
is my duty, therefore, when impressions are deeply borne
in upon me with regard to the national welfare to speak
to you with the utmost frankness about them, and that is
the errand upon which I have come away from Wash-
ington.

For my own part, I am sorry that these things fall within
the year of a national political campaign. They ought to
have nothing whatever to do with politics. The man who
brings partisan feeling into these matters and seeks par-
tisan advantage by means of them is unworthy of your
confidence. I am sorry that upon the eve of a campaign
we should be obliged to discuss these things, for fear they
might run over into the campaign and seem to constitute
a part of it. Let us forget that this is a year of national
elections. That is neither here nor there. The thing to
do now is for all men of all parties to think along the same
lines and do the same'things and forget every difference
that may have divided them.

And what ought they to do? In the first place, they
ought to tell the truth. There have been some extraordinary
exaggerations both of the military weakness and the mili-
tary strength of this country. Some men tell you that we
have no means of defense and others tell you that we
have sufficient means of defense, and neither statement is
true. Take, for example, the matter of our coast defenses.
It is obvious to every man that they are of the most vital
importance to the country. Such coast defenses as we have
are strong and admirable, but we have not got coast de-
fenses in enough places. Their quality is admirable, but

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their quantity is insufficient. The military authorities of
this country have not been negligent; they have sought
adequate appropriations from Congress, and in most in-
stances have obtained them, so far as we saw the work in
hand that it was necessary to do, and the work that they
have done in the use of these appropriations has been ad-
mirable and skillful work. Do not let anybody deceive
you into supposing that the Army of the United States,
so far as it has had opportunity, is in any degree unworthy
of your confidence.

And the Navy of the United States. You have been told
that it is the second in strength in the world. I am sorry
to say that experts do not agree with those who tell you
that. Reckoning by its actual strength, I believe it to be
one of the most efficient navies in the world, but in strength
it ranks fourth, not second. You must reckon with the
fact that it is necessary that that should be our first arm of
defense, and you ought to insist that everything should be
done that it is possible for us to do to bring the Navy up
to an adequate standard of strength and efficiency.

Where we are chiefly lacking in preparation is on land
and in the number of men who are ready to fight. Not the
number of fighting men, but the number of men who are
ready to fight. Some men are born troublesome, some men
have trouble thrust upon them, and other men acquire
trouble. I think I belong to the second class. But the
characteristic desire of America is not that she should have
a great body of men whose chief business is to fight, but
a great body of men who know how to fight and are ready
to fight when anything that is dear to the Nation is threat-
ened. You might have what we have, millions of men who
had never handled arms of war, who are mere material for
shot and powder if you put them in the field, and America
would be ashamed of the inefficiency of calling such men to
defend the Nation. What we want is to associate in train-
ing with the Army of the United States men who will vol-

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unteer for a sufficient length of time every year to get a
rudimentary acquaintance with arms, a rudimentary skill
in handling them, a rudimentary acquaintance with camp
life, a rudimentary acquaintance with military drill and
discipline; and we ought to see to it that we have men of
that sort in sufficient number to constitute an initial army
when we need an army for the defense of the country.

I have heard it stated that there are probably several
million men in this country who have received a sufficient
amount of military drill either here or in the countries in
which they were born and from which they have come to
us. Perhaps there are, nobody knows, because there is
no means of counting them; but if there are so many, they
are not obliged to come at our call; we do not know who
they are. That is not military preparation. Military*prep-
aration consists in the existence of such a body of men
known to the Federal authorities, organized provisionally
by the Federal authorities, and subject by their own choice
and will to the immediate call of the Federal authorities.

We have no such body of men in the United States ex-
cept the National Guard. Now, I have a very great respect
for the National Guard. I have been associated with one
section of that guard in one of the great States of the
Union, and I know the character of the officers and the
quality of the men, and I would trust them unhesitatingly
both for skill and for efficiency, but the whole National
Guard of the United States falls short of 130,000 men. It
is characterized by a very great variety of discipline and
efficiency as between State and State, and it is by the Con-
stitution itself put under. authority of more than two score
State executives. The President of the United States has
not the right to call on these men except in the case of
actual invasion, and, therefore, no matter how skillful
they are, no matter how ready they are, they are not the
instruments for immediate National use. I believe that the
Congress of the United States ought to do, and that it will

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do, a great deal more for the National Guard than it ever
has done, and everything ought to be done to make it a model
military arm.

But that is not the arm that we are immediately inter-
ested in. We are interested in making certain that there
are men all over the United States prepared, equipped, and
ready to go out at the call of the National Government
upon the shortest possible notice. You will ask me, “Why
do you say the shortest possible notice?” Because, gentle-
men, let me tell you very solemnly you can not afford to
postpone this thing. I do not know what a single day may
bring forth. I do not wish to leave you with the impression
that I am thinking of some particular danger; I merely
want to leave you with this solemn impression, that I
know that we are daily treading amidst the most intricate
dangers, and that the dangers that we are treading amongst
are not of our making and are not under our control, and
that no man in the United States knows what a single week
or a single day or a single hour may bring forth. These
are solemn things to say to you, but I would be unworthy
of my office if I did not come out and tell you with abso-
lute frankness just exactly what I understand the situation
to be.

I do not wish to hurry the Congress of the United States.
These things are too important to be put through without
very thorough sifting and debate and I am not in the least
jealous of any of the searching processes of discussion.
That is what free people are for, to understand what they
are about and to do what they wish to do only if they un-
derstand what they are about. But it is impossible to dis-
cuss the details of plans in great bodies, unorganized bodies,
of men like this audience, for example. All that I can do
in this presence is to tell you what I know of the necessi-
ties of the case, and to ask you to stand back of the execu-
tive authorities of the United States in urging upon those
who make our laws as early and effective action as possible.

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America is not afraid of anybody. I know that I ex-
press your feeling and the feeling of all our fellow citizens
when I say that the only thing I am afraid of is not being
ready to perform my duty. I am afraid of the danger of
shame; I am afraid of the danger of inadequacy; I am
afraid of the danger of not being able to express the great
character of this country with tremendous might and ef-
fectiveness whenever we are called upon to act in the field
of the world’s affairs.

For it is character we are going to express, not power
merely. The United States is not in love with the ag-
gressive use of power. It despises the aggressive use of
power. There is not a foot of territory belonging to any
other nation which this Nation covets or desires. There
is not a privilege which we ourselves enjoy that we would
dream of denying any other nation in the world. If there
is one thing that the American people love and believe in
more than another it is peace and all the handsome things
that belong to peace. I hope that you will bear me out
in saying that I have proved that I am a partisan of peace.
I would be ashamed to be belligerent and impatient when
the fortunes of my whole country and the happiness of
all my fellow countrymen were involved. But I know that
peace is not always within the choice of the Nation, and I
want to remind you, and remind you very solemnly, of the
double obligation you have laid upon me. I know you have
laid it upon me because I am constantly reminded of it in
conversation, by letter, in editorial, by means of every voice
that comes to me out of the body of the Nation. You have
laid upon me this double obligation: “We are relying upon
you, Mr. President, to keep us out of this war, but we are
relying upon you, Mr. President, to keep the honor of the
Nation unstained.”

Do you not see that a time may come when it is im-
possible to do both of these things? Do you not see that
if I am to guard the honor of the Nation, I am not pro-

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tecting it against itself, for we are not going to do any-
thing to stain the honor of our own country. I am pro-
tecting it against things that I cannot control, the action
of others. And where the action of others may bring us
I cannot foretell. You may count upon my heart and reso-
lution to keep you out of the war, but you must be ready
if it is necessary that I should maintain your honor. That
is the only thing a real man loves about himself. Some men
who are not real men love other things about themselves,
but the real man believes that his honor is dearer than his
life; and a nation is merely all of us put together, and the
Nation’s honor is dearer than the Nation’s comfort and the
Nation’s peace and the Nation’s life itself.

Avr Mitwavxkesg, Wis., January 31, 1916.
(The Western Preparedness Tour)

Mr. Chairman and Fellow Citizens:

I need not inquire whether the citizens of Milwaukee
and Wisconsin are interested in the subject of my errand.
The presence of this great body in this vast hall sufficiently
attests your interest, but I want at the outset to remove
a misapprehension that I fear may exist in your mind.
There is no sudden crisis; nothing new has happened; I
am not out upon this errand because of any unexpected situ--
ation. I have come to confer with you upon a matter upon
which it would, in any circumstances, be necessary for us
to confer when all the rest of the world is on fire and our
own house is not fireproof. Everywhere the atmosphere
of the world is thrilling with the passion of a disturbance
such as the world has never seen before, and it is wise,
in the words just uttered by your chairman, that we should
see that our own house is set in order and that everything
is done to make certain that we shall not suffer by the
general conflagration.

There were some dangers to which this Nation seemed

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at the outset of the war to be exposed, which, I think I
can say with confidence, are now passed and overcome.
America has drawn her blood and her strength out of al-
most all the nations of the world. It is true of a great
many of us that there lies deep in our hearts the recollec-
tion of an origin which is not American. We are aware
that our roots, our traditions, run back into other national
soils. There are songs that stir us; there are some far-
away historical recollections which engage our affections
and stir our memories. We can not forget our forbears;
we can not altogether ignore the fact of our essential blood
relationship; and at the outset of this war it did look as
if there were a division of domestic sentiment which might
lead us to some errors of judgment and some errors of
action; but I, for one, believe that danger is passed. .

I have at no time supposed that the men whose voices
seemed to contain the threat of division amongst us were
really uttering the sentiments even of those whom they
pretended to represent. I for my part have no jealousy
of family sentiment. I have no jealousy of that deep af-
fection which runs back through long lineage. It would
be a pity if we forget the fine things that our ancestors
have done. But I also know the magic of America; I also
know the great principles which thrill men in the singular
body politic to which we belong in the United States. I
know the impulses which have drawn men to our shores.
They have not come idly; they have not come without con-
scious purpose to be free; they have not come without vol-
untary desire to unite themselves with the great nation on
this side of the sea; and I know that whenever the test
comes every man’s heart will be first for America. It was
principle and affection and ambition and hope that drew
men to these shores, and they are not going to forget the
errand upon which they came and allow America, the home
of their refuge and hope, to suffer by any forgetfulness
on their part. And so the trouble makers have shot their

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bolt, and it has been ineffectual. Some of them have been
vociferous; all of them have been exceedingly irresponsible.
Talk was cheap, and that was all it cost them. They did
not have to do anything. But you will know without my
telling you that the man who for the time being you have
charged with the duties of President of the United States
must talk with a deep sense of responsibility, and he must
remember, above all things else, the fine traditions of his
office which some men seem to have forgotten. There is no
precedent in American history for any action of aggression
on the part of the United States or for any action which
might mean that America is seeking to connect herself with
the controversies on the other side of the water. Men who
seek to provoke us to such action have forgotten the tradi-
tions of the United States, but it behooves those with whom
you have entrusted office to remember the traditions of the
United States and to see to it that the actions of the Gov-
ernment are made to square with those traditions. . . .
Our thoughts are concentrated upon our own affairs and
our own relations to the rest of the world, but the thoughts
of the men who are engaged in this struggle are concen-
trated upon the struggle itself, and there is daily and hourly
danger that they will feel themselves constrained to do
things which are absolutely inconsistent with the rights of
the United States. They are not thinking of us. I am
not criticizing them for not thinking of us. I dare say if I
were in their place neither would I think of us. They be-
lieve that they are struggling for the lives and honor of
their nations, and that if the United States puts its interests
in the path of this great struggle, she ought to know be-
forehand that there is danger of very serious misunder-
standing and difficulty. So that the very uncalculating,
unpremeditated, one might almost say accidental, course
of affairs, may touch us to the quick at any moment, and I
want you to realize that, standing in the midst of these
difficulties, I feel that I am charged with a double duty

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of the utmost difficulty. In the first place, I know that you
are depending upon me to keep this Nation out of the war.
So far I have done so, and I pledge you my word that, God
helping me, I will if it is possible. But you have laid an-
other duty upon me. You have bidden me see to it that
nothing stains or impairs the honor of the United States,
and that is a matter not within my control; that depends
upon what others do, not upon what the Government of
the United States does. Therefore, there may at any mo-
ment come a time when I can not preserve both the honor
and the peace of the United States. Do not exact of me
an impossible and contradictory thing, but stand ready and
insistent that everybody who represents you should stand
ready to provide the necessary means for maintaining the
honor of the United States.

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

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The Constitution of the United States makes the Presi-
dent the Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the
Nation, but I do not want a big Army subject to my per-
sonal command. If danger comes, I want to turn to you
and the rest of my fellow countrymen and say, “Men, are
you ready?” and I know what the response will be. I know
that there will spring up out of the body of the Nation a
great host of free men, and I want those men not to be
mere targets for shot’ and shell. I want them to know
something of the arms they have in their hands. I want
them to know something about how to guard against the
diseases that creep into camps, where men are unaccus-
tomed to live. I want them to know something of what the
orders mean that they will be under when they enlist under
arms for the Government of the United States. I want
them to be men who can comprehend and easily and intelli-
gently step into the duty of national defense. That is the
reason that I am urging upon the Congress of the United
States at any rate the beginnings of a system by which
we may give a very considerable body of our fellow citizens
the necessary training... .

It is being very sedulously spread abroad in this country
that the impulse back of all this is the desire of men who
make the materials of warfare to get money out of the
Treasury of the United States. I wish the people that say
that could see meetings like this. Did you come here for
that purpose? Did you come here because you are inter-
ested to see some of your fellow citizens make money out
of the present situation? Of course you did not. I am
ready to admit that probably the equipment of those men
whom we are training will have to be bought from some-
body, and I know that if the equipment is bought, it will
have to be paid for; and I dare say somebody will make
some money out of it. It is also true, ladies and gentlemen,
that there are men now, a great many men, in the belligerent
countries who are growing rich out of the sale of the ma-

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terials needed by the armies of those countries. If the
Government itself does not manufacture everything that
an army needs, somebody has got to make money out of
it, and I for my part have been urging the Congress of the
United States to make the necessary preparations by which
the Government can manufacture armor plate and muni-
tions, so that, being in the business itself and having the
ability to manufacture all it needs, if it is put upon a busi-
ness basis, it can at any rate keep the price that it pays
within moderate and reasonable limits. The Government
of the United States is not going to be imposed upon by
anybody, and you may rest assured, therefore, that while I
believe you prefer that private capital and private initia-
tive should bestir themselves in these matters, it is also
possible, and I assure you that it is most likely, that the
Government of the United States will have adequate means
of controlling this matter very thoroughly indeed. There
need be no fear on that side. Let nobody suppose that this
is a money-making agitation. I would for one be ashamed
to be such a dupe as to be engaged in it if it had any sus-
picion of that about it, but I am not as innocent as I look;
and I believe that I can say for my colleagues in Washing-
ton that they are just as watchful in such matters as you
would desire them to be.

And there is another misapprehension that I do not
wish you to entertain. Do not suppose that there is any
new or sudden or recent inadequacy on the part of this
Government in respect of preparation for national defense.
I have heard some gentlemen say that we had no coast
defenses worth talking about. Coast defenses are not nowa-
days advertised, you understand, and they are not visible
to the naked eye, so that if you passed them and nothing
exploded, you would not know they were there. The coast
defenses of the United States, while not numerous enough,
are equipped in the most modern and efficient fashion. You
are told that there has been some sort of neglect about

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the Navy. There has not been any sort of neglect about
the Navy. We have been slowly building up a Navy which
in quality is second to no navy in the world. The only thing
it lacks is quantity. In size it is the fourth navy in the
world, though I have heard it said by some gentlemen in
this very region that it was the second. In fighting force,
though not in quality, it is reckoned by experts to be the
fourth in rank in the world; and yet when I go on board
those ships and see their equipment and talk with their offi-
cers I suspect that they could give an account of themselves
which would raise them above the fourth class. It reminds
me of that very quaint saying of the old darky preacher,
“The Lord says unto Moses, come fourth, and he came fifth
and lost the race.”” But I think this Navy would not come
fourth in the race, but higher.

What we are proposing now is not the sudden creation
of a Navy, for we have a splendid Navy, but the definite
working out of a program ‘by which within five years we
shall bring the Navy to a fighting strength Which otherwise
might have taken eight or ten years; along exactly the
same lines of development that have been followed and fol-
lowed diligently and intelligently for at least a decade past.
There is no sudden panic, there is no sudden change of
plan; all that has happened is that we now see that we
ought more rapidly and more thoroughly than ever before
to do the things which have always been characteristic of
America. For she has always been proud of her Navy and
has always been addicted to the principle that her citizen-
ship must do the fighting on land. We are working out
American principle a little faster, because American pulses
are beating a little faster, because the world is in a whirl,
because there are incalculable elements of trouble abroad
which we cannot control or alter. I would be derelict to
the duty which you have laid upon me if I did not tell you
that it was absolutely necessary to carry out our principles
in this matter now and at once... .

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Av Cuicaco, Iuu., January 31, 1916.

(The Western Preparedness Tour)

Mr. Chairman and Fellow Citizens:

A year ago, though the war in Europe had then been
six months in progress, I take it it would have seemed in-
credible to all of us that the storm should continue to gather
in intensity instead of spending its force. I suppose that
twelve months ago no one could have predicted the ex-
traordinary way in which the violence of the struggle has
increased from month to month; and the difficulties involved
by reason of that war have also increased beyond all cal-
culation. A year ago it did seem as if America might rest
secure without very great anxiety and take it for granted
that she would not be drawn into this terrible maelstrom,
but those first six months was merely the beginning of the
struggle. Another year has been added, and now no man
can confidently say whether the United States will be drawn
into the struggle or not. Therefore, it is. absolutely nec-
essary that we should take counsel together as to what it is
necessary that we should do... .

Have you not realized how all the world seems to have
been constantly conscious from the beginning of this struggle
that America was, so to say, the only audience before whom
this terrible plot was being worked out; how everybody
engaged in the struggle has seemed to turn to America for
moral judgments concerning it; how each side in the titanic
struggle has appealed to us to adjudge their enemies in the
wrong; how there has been no tragical turn in the course
of events that America has not been called on for some sort
of protest or expression of opinion? And so those of us
who are charged with the responsibility of affairs have
realized very intensely that there was a certain sense in
which America was looked to to keep even the balance of
the whole world’s thought.

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And America was called upon to do something very much
more than that even; profoundly difficult, if not impossible,
though that be, she was called upon to assert in times of
war the standards of times of peace. There is an old say-
ing that the laws are silent in the presence of war. Alas,
yes; not only the civil laws of individual nations but also
apparently the law that governs the relation of nations
with one another must at times fall silent and look on in
dumb impotency. And yet it has been assumed throughout
this struggle that the great principles of international law
and of international comity had not been suspended, and
the United States, as the greatest and most powerful of the
disengaged nations, has been looked to to hold high the
standards which should govern the relationship of nations
to each other.

I know that on the other side of the water there has been
a great deal of cruel misjudgment with regard to the rea-
sons why America has remained neutral. Those who look
at us at a distance, my fellow citizens, do not feel the
strong pulses of ideal principle that are in us. They do not
feel the conviction of America, that her mission is a mission
of peace, and that righteousness can be maintained as a
standard in the midst of arms. They do not realize that
back of all our energy by which we have built up great
material wealth and created great material power we are
a body of idealists, much more ready to lay down our lives
for a thought than for a dollar. They suppose, some of
them, that we are holding off because we can make money
while others aré dying, the most cruel misunderstanding that
any nation has ever had to face; so wrong that it seems
almost useless to try to correct it, because it shows that
the very fundamentals of our life are not comprehended
and understood.

I need not tell you, my fellow citizens, that we have not
held off from this struggle from motives of self-interest,
unless it be considered self-interest to maintain our posi-

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tion as the trustees of the moral judgment of the world.
We have believed, and I believe, that we can serve even
the nations at war better by remaining at peace and holding
off from this contest than we could possibly serve them in
any other way. Your interest, your sympathy, your affec-
tions may be engaged on the one side or the other, but no
matter which side they are engaged on it is your duty even
to your affections in this great affair to stand off and not
let this Nation be drawn into the war. Somebody must keep
the great stable foundations of the life of nations untouched
and undisturbed. Somebody must keep the great economic
processes of the world of business alive. Somebody must
see to it that we stand ready to repair the enormous damage
and the incalculable losses which will ensue from this war,
and which it is hardly credible could be repaired if every
great nation in the world were drawn into the contest. Do
you realize how nearly it has come about that every great
nation in the world has been drawn in? The flame has
touched even our own continent by drawing in our Canadian
neighbors to the north of us, and, except for the South
American Continent, there is not one continent upon the
whole surface of the world to which this flame has not
spread; and when I see some of my fellow citizens spread
tinder where the sparks are falling, I wonder what their
ideal of Americanism is... .

Look at the task that is assigned to the United States,
to assert the principles of law in a world in which the prin-
ciples of law have broken down—not the technical prin-
ciples of law, but the essential principles of right dealing
and humanity as between nation and nation. Law is a very
complicated term. It includes a great many things that do
not engage our affections, but at the basis of the things
that we are now dealing with lie the deepest affections of
the human heart, the love of life, the love of righteousness,
the love of fair dealing, the love of those things that are
just and of good report. The things that are rooted in

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our very spirit are the stuff of the law that I am talking
about now.

We may have to assert these principles of right and of
humanity at any time. What means are available? What
force is at the disposal of the United States to assert these
things? The force of opinion? Opinion, I am sorry to
say, my fellow citizens, did not bring this war on, and I
am afraid that opinion can not stay its progress. This
war was brought on by rulers, not by the people; and I
thank God that there is no man in America who has the
authority to bring war on without the consent of the people.
No man for many a year yet can trace the real sources of
this war, but this thing we know, that opinion did not bring
it on and that the force of opinion, at any rate the force of
American opinion, is not going to stop it.

I admire the hopeful confidence of those of our fellow
citizens who believe that American opinion can stop it,
but, being somewhat older than some of them, and having
run through a rather wide gamut of experience, I am pre-
vented from sharing their hopeful optimism. I would not
belittle the influences of opinion, least of all the influences
of American opinion—it is very influential—but it will not
stop this overwhelming flood. And, if not the force of
opinion, what force has America available to stop the flood
from overflowing her own fair area?

We have one considerable arm of force, a very consider-
able arm of force, namely, the splendid Navy of the United
States. I am told by the experts, to whose judgment I
must defer in these matters, that the Navy of the United
States, in respect of its enumerated force, ranks only fourth
among the navies of the world. I indulge myself in the
opinion that in quality it ranks very much higher than
fourth place. The United States has never been negligent
of its Navy, despite what some gentlemen may say; least
of all has it been negligent in recent years. Three years
ago there were 182 vessels in commission in that Navy;

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there are now 288. Three dreadnoughts and fifteen subor-
dinate craft will be added within a month or two. There
have been added six thousand capable sailors to the ranks
of the enlisted men of that Navy. The Congress of the
United States in the last three years has poured out more
money than was poured out on the average in any previous
years in the history of the United States for the mainte-
nance and upbuilding of the United States Navy; has spent
forty-four million dollars a year as contrasted with a pre-
vious average of not more than thirty-three and a half mil-
lion. All the subsidiary arms of the service have been built
up. Three years ago there were four officers assigned the
duty connected with aviation, and they did not have a single
available—at any rate usable—craft at their service; now
there are thirty-seven airships, 121 commissioned officers,
and a large number of non-commissioned officers and a suf-
ficient force of enlisted men in the school of practice at
Pensacola; and that is only the beginning, because the Sixty-
third Congress, the last Congress, was the first to make a
specific appropriation for aviation in connection with the
Navy.

We have given to the present fleet of the United States
an organization such as it never had before, I am told by
Admiral Fletcher, and we have made preparations for im-
mediate war, so far as the Navy is concerned. The trouble
is not with the quality or the organization of the existing
Navy; it is merely that we have followed plans piecemeal,
¢a little bit at a time, now in this direction, now in that di-
rection; that we have never had a plan thought out to cover
a number of years in advance; that we have never set our-
selves a definite goal of equipment and set our resolution
to attain that goal within a reasonable length of time. The
plans that are being proposed to the present Congress,
and which the present Congress will adopt, are plans to
remedy this piecemeal treatment of the Navy and bring it
to its highest point of efficiency by steady plans carried out

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from month to month and year to year. It is going to cost
a good deal of money, and I find that the difficulty with
some members of Congress is, not what ought to be done
about the Navy, but what they are going to tax in order
to get the money... .

But what Army have we available? I can tell you, be-
cause it has been necessary for us to take care of the pa-
trolling of a very long southern border between us and
Mexico. We have not men enough in the United States
Army for the routine work of peace, and the increase in
the Regular Army that is being proposed to the present
Congress is intended only to bring the Regular Army up
to an adequate peace establishment. I say that that is all
that is being proposed with regard to the Regular Army.
The United States has never, my fellow citizens, depended
upon the Regular Army to conduct its wars. It has depended
upon the Volunteers of the United States, and it has never
been disappointed either in their numbers or in their qual-
ity. But modern warfare is very different from what war-
fare used to be. Warfare has changed so within the span
of a single life that it is nothing less than brutal to send
raw recruits into the trenches and into the field... .

What we wish is a definite citizen reserve of men trained
to arms to a sufficient extent to make them quickly trans-
formable into a fighting force, organized under the imme-
diate direction of the United States, subject to a definite
pledge to serve the United States, and pledged to obey im-
mediately the call of the President when Congress au-
thorizes him to call them to arms. We do not want men
to devote the greater part of their time to training in arms.
We want men whose occupation and passion and habit is
peace, because they are the only men who can carry into
the field the spirit of America as contrasted with the spirit
of the professional soldier. I would not have you for a
moment understand me as detracting from the character
and reputation of the professional soldier as we know him

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Woodrow Wilson

in the United States. I have dealt with him; he is as good
an American as I am. He has a degree of intelligence and
of devotion to his duty which commands my entire admira-
tion. But the spirit of every profession is different from
the spirit of the community.

I have been asked by adestionins friends in Washing-
ton whether I thought a sufficient number of men would
volunteer for the training or not. Why, if they did not,
it is not the America that you and I know; something has
happened. They have said, “Do you suppose that the men
who employ young men Would give them leave to take
this training?’ I say, “Certainly I suppose it; I know it.”
Because I know that the patriotism of America is not a
name and an empty boast, but a splendid reality. If they
did not do it, I should be ashamed of America, and I never
expect to see the day when America gives me the slightest
reason to be ashamed of her. I am sorry for the skeptics
who believe that the response would not be tremendous;
not grudging, but overflowing in its abundant strength.
And it is to prove that that we want to try the plans that
are before the present Congress.

You will remind me of the great National Guard of the
country; but how great is it, ladies and gentlemen? There
are one hundred million people in this country and there
are only 129,000 men in the National Guard, and those
129,000 men are under the direction, by the constitutional
arrangement of our system, of the governments of more
than two score States. The President of the United States
is not at liberty to call them out of their States except upon
the occasion of actual invasion of the territory of the United
States. We are not now thinking of invasion of the terri-
tory of the United States. That is not what is making us
anxious. We are not asking ourselves, “Shall we be pre-
pared to defend our own shores and our own homes?” Is
that all that we stand for, to keep the door securely shut
against enemies? Certainly not. What of the great trus-

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teeship we have set up for liberty of government and na-
tional independence in the whole Western Hemisphere?
What of the pledges back of that great principle that has
been ours and guided our foreign affairs ever since the day
of President Monroe? We stand pledged to see that both
the continents of America are left free to be used by their
peoples as those peoples choose to use them, under a prin-
ciple of national popular sovereignty as absolute and un-
challenged as our own. And at this very moment, as I am
speaking to you, the Americas are drawing together upon
that handsome principle of reciprocal respect and reciprocal
defense... .

Art Des Mornes, Iowa, Fesruary 1, 1916.
(The Western Preparedness Tour)

Mr. Chairman, Your Excellency, and Fellow Citizens:

Some one who does not know our fellow citizens quite as
well as he ought to know them told me that there was a
certain degree of indifference and lethargy in the Middle
West with regard to the defense of the Nation. I said, “I
do not believe it, but I am going out to see’; and I have
seen. I have seen what I expected to see—great bodies
of serious men, great bodies of earnest women, coming to-
gether to show their profound interest in the objects of this
visit of mine. I know, therefore, that it is my privilege
to address those who will realize the spirit of responsibility
in which I speak to them.

My fellow citizens, it would be easy, if I permitted my-
self to do so, to draw a picture of the present situation of
the world which would deeply stir your feelings and per-
haps deeply excite your apprehension, but you would not
think that it was right for your Chief Magistrate to speak
any word of excitement whatever. I want you to believe
that in what.I say to you I am endeavoring as far as ex-
temporaneous speech will permit to weigh every word that

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Woodrow Wilson

I say. I said a moment ago that you know the errand upon
which I have come to you, but do you know the reasons why
I have undertaken that errand? There are some very
conclusive and imperative reasons. Some of our fellow
citizens are seeking to darken counsel upon this great mat-
ter; not I hope and believe out of wrong motives, but cer-
tainly I believe out of mistaken conceptions of the duty
and interest of America.

On the one hand, there is a considerable body of men
who are trying to stir the very sort of excitement in this
country upon which every true, well-balanced American
ought to frown. There are actually men in America who
are preaching war, who are preaching the duty of the
United States to do what it never would before, seek en-
tanglement in the controversies which have arisen on the
other side of the water—abandon its habitual and tradi-
tional policy and deliberately engage in the conflict which
is now engulfing the rest of the world. I do not know
what the standards of citizenship of these gentlemen may
be. I only know that I for one can not subscribe to those
standards. I believe that I more truly speak the spirit of
America when I say that that spirit is a spirit of peace.
Why, no voice has ever come to any public man more
audibly, more unmistakably, than the voice of this great
people has come to me, bearing this impressive lesson, “We
are counting upon you to keep this country out of war.”
And I call you to witness, my fellow countrymen, that I
have spent every thought and energy that has been vouch-
safed me in order to keep this country out of war. It can
not be disclosed now, perhaps it can never be disclosed,
how anxious and difficult that task has been, but my heart
has been in it. I have not grudged a single burden that
has been thrown upon me with that end in view, for I knew
that not only my own heart, but the heart of all America,
was in the cause of peace.

Yet, my fellow citizens, there are some men amongst

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us preaching peace who go much further than I can go.
Not further than I can go in the sentiment of peace; not
further than truth warrants them in going in interpreting
the desire and sentiment of America, but further than I can
follow them, further, I believe, than you can follow them,
in preaching the doctrine of peace at any price and in any
circumstances. There is a price which is too great to pay
for peace, and that price can be put in one word. One can
not pay the price of self-respect. One can not pay the
price of duties abdicated, of glorious opportunities neg-
lected, of character, national character left without vindi-
cation and exemplification in action. America has a char-
acter as distinct as the character of any individual amongst
us. We read that character in every page of her singulaz
and glorious history. It is written in invisible signs which,
nevertheless, our spirits can decipher upon the very folds
of the flag which is the emblem of our national life.

The gentlemen who are out-and-out pacifists are making
one fundamental mistake. That is not a mistake about the
sentiments of America, but a mistake about the circum-
stances of the world. America does not constitute the world.
In many of her sentiments and predilections she does not
represent or influence the world. The dangers to our peace
do not come any longer from within our own borders. I
could not have said that a few months ago. Passion was
astir in this country. There was a clash of sympathies and
a heat of passion which made our air tense and made men
hold their breath for fear some of our fellow countrymen
would forget that their first loyalty was to America and
only their second loyalty to the ancient affections which
bound them, and honorably bound them, to some older coun-
try and polity. But those dangers have passed. America
has regained her self-possession. Men are now ready to
feel and to act in common in the great cause of a common
national life, and no influence within America is going to
disturb the peace of America.

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Woodrow Wilson

But America can not be an ostrich with its head in the
sand. America can not shut itself out from the rest of the
world, because all the dangers at this present moment, and
they are many, come from her contacts with the rest of the
world. Those contacts are going to be largely determined.
by other nations and not determined by ourselves. I have
not come to tell you that there is any danger to our na-
tional life from anything that your Government may do or
your Congress propase. I have come to tell you that there
is danger to our national life from what other nations may
do. And let me say, ladies and gentlemen, that I would
not speak of other nations in a spirit of criticism. Not
only would it not become me to do so, as your spokesman
and representative, but I would not be interpreting my real
feeling if I did so. Every nation now engaged in the
titanic struggle on the other side of the water believes, with
an intensity of conviction that can not be exaggerated, that
it is fighting for its rights, and in most instances that it is
fighting for its life; and we must not be too critical of the
men who lead those nations. . .

What is America expected to do? She is expected to do
nothing less than keep law alive while the rest of the world
burns. You know that there is no international tribunal,
my fellow citizens. I pray God that if this contest have
no other result, it will at least have the result of creating
an international tribune and producing some sort of joint
guarantee of peace on the part of the great nations of the
world. But it has not yet done that, and the only thing,
therefore, that keeps America out of danger is that to some
degree the understandings, the ancient and honorable un-
derstandings, of nations with regard to their relations to
one another and to the citizens of one another are to some
extent still observed and followed. And whenever there
is a departure from them, the United States is called upon
to intervene, to speak its voice of protest, to speak its voice
of insistence.

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

Do you want it to be only a voice of insistence? Do you
want the situation to be such that all that the President
can do is to write messages; to utter words of protest? If
these breaches of international law which are in daily
danger of occurring should touch the very vital interests
and honor of the United States, do you wish to do nothing
about it? Do you wish to have all the world say that the
flag of the United States, which we love, can be stained
with impunity? Why, to ask the question is to answer it.
I know that there is not a man or a woman in the hearing
of my voice who would wish peace at the expense of the
honor of the United States... .

My fellow citizens, you may be called upon any day to
stand behind me to maintain the honor of the United States.
And how are you going to do it? There are two ways of
doing it. One is the careless, easy-going, wasteful way
in which we have done these things hitherto. You say,
“There are plenty of fighting men in the United States;
there are unexhausted and inexhaustible material resources
in the United States; nobody could do more than put us at
a disadvantage for a little while.” Yes; there are plenty
of fighting men in the United States; but do they know
how modern war is conducted? Do they know how to guard
themselves against disease in the camp? Do they know
what the discipline of organization is? Shall we send the
whole body of those men who first volunteer to be butch-
ered because they did not know how to make themselves
immediately ready for the battlefield and the trench; be-
cause they did not know anything about the terrible vicis-
situdes and disciplines of modern battle?

Why, war has been transformed almost within the mem-
ory of men. The mere mustering of volunteers is not war.
Mere bodies of men are not an army; and we have neither
the men nor the equipment for the men if they should be
called out. It would take time to make an army of them
—perhaps a fatal length of time—and it would take a long

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Woodrow Wilson

time to provide them with the absolute necessities of war-
fare. America is not going to sacrifice her youth after
that fashion. America is going to prepare for war by
preparing citizens who know what war means and how
war can be conducted. It is going to increase its standing:
army up to the point of efficiency for the present uses for:
which it is needed, and it is going to put back of that army
a great body of peaceful men, following their daily pur-
suits, knowing that their own happiness and the happiness
of everybody they love depends upon peace, who, never-
theless, at the call of their country, will know how imme-
diately to make themselves into an army and to come out
and face an enemy in a fashion which will show that Amer-
ica can neither be daunted nor taken by surprise. . . .

Art Topeka, Kans., Fesruary 2, 1916.
(The Western Preparedness Tour)

Mr. Chairman, Your Excellency, Fellow Citizens:

I was told before I came here, and I read in one of your
papers this morning, that Kansas was not in sympathy with
any policy of preparation for national defense. I do not
believe a word of it. I long ago learned to distinguish be-
tween editorial opinion and popular opinion. Moreover,
having been addicted to books, I happened to have read
the history of Kansas, and if there is any place in the world
fuller of fight than Kansas I would like to hear of it; any
other place fuller of fight on the right lines. Kansas is
not looking for trouble, but Kansas has made trouble for
everybody that interfered with her liberties or her rights,
and if I were to pick out one place which was likely to
wince first and get hot first about invasion of the essential
principles of American liberty I certainly would look to
Kansas among the first places in the country. If Kansas
is opposed or has been opposed to the policy of prepara-
tion for. national defense, it has been only because some~

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

body has misrepresented that policy, and Kansas does not
know what it is.

What is the issue? Why, of course, there are some men
going about proposing great military establishments for
America, but you have not heard anybody connected with
the administration who did. You have not heard anybody
in any responsible position who could carry his plan out
who did. The singular thing about this situation is that
the loudest voices have been the irresponsible voices. It is
easy to talk and to say what ought to be done when you
know that you do not have to do it. Nobody in authority,
nobody in a position to lead the policy of the country, has
proposed great military armaments, and nobody who really
understands the history or shares the spirit of America
could or would propose great military establishments
for America. But I have heard of men in Kan-
sas who owned their own firearms and knew how to
use them, and if there is any place in the Union more than
another where you ought to understand what it is to be
ready to take care of yourselves, this is the place. All that
anybody in authority has proposed is that America should
be put in such a position that her free citizens should know
how to take care of themselves and their country when the
occasion arose.

We have been proposing only a very moderate increase
in the standing army of the country because it is already
too small for the routine uses of peace. I have not had
soldiers enough to patrol the border between here and
Mexico. I have not had soldiers enough for the ordinary
services of the Army, and there are many things that it has
been impossible for me to do which it was my duty to do,
because there were not men to do them with. You are
not, I am sure, going to be jealous of an increase of the
Army merely sufficient to enable the Executive to carry
out his constitutional responsibilities. Over and above that
we have proposed this, that a sufficient number of men out

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Woodrow Waiison

of the ranks of the civil pursuits of the country should be
trained in the use and keeping of arms, in the sanitation
of camps, in the maneuvers of the field, and in military
organization; to be ready and pledged to be ready, if the
call should come upon act of Congress, to unite their force
with the little force of the Army itself and make a great
multitude of armed men who were ready to vindicate the
rights of America.

Is there anything inconsistent with the traditions of
Kansas or with the true traditions of America in a proposal
like that? The very essence of American tradition is con-
tained in the proposal. Every constitution of every State
in the Union forbids the State legislature to abridge the
right of its citizens to carry arms. At the very outset the
makers of our very institutions realized that the force of
the Nation must dwell in the homes of the Nation. I do
not mean the moral force merely; I mean the physical force
also. They realized that every man must be allowed not
only to have a vote, but, if he wanted to, to have a gun too,
so that when the voices of peace did not suffice, the voices
of force would prevail; knowing that great bodies of men
do not use force to usurp their own liberties, but to de-
clare and vindicate their liberties, and that there will be no
collusion among free men to upset free institutions; that,
whereas cliques and coteries and professional groups may
conceive it to be of their interest to interfere with the peace-
ful life of the country, the general body of citizens would
never so conceive it.

What we are asking is this, that the Nation supply arms
for those of the Nation who are ready, if occasion should
arise, to come to the national defense, and that it should do
this without withdrawing them from their pursuits .of in-
dustry and of peace, in order that America should know
that in the fountains from which she always draws her
strength there welled up the inexhaustible resources of
American manhood. This is not a military policy; this is

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

a policy of adequate preparation for national defense, and
‘any man who represents it in any other light must either
be ignorant or is consciously misrepresenting the facts. . . .

The spirit of America would hold any Executive back,
would hold any Congress back, from any action that had the
least taint of aggression upon it. We are not going to
invade any nation’s territory. We are not going to covet
any nation’s possessions. We are not going to invade any
nation’s rights. But suppose, my fellow countrymen, some
nation should invade our rights. What then? What would
Kansas think? What would Kansas do then? What would
America, speaking by the voice of Kansas or any other State
in the Union, think and do then? I have come here to tell
you that the difficulties of our foreign policy, the delicate
questions of our foreign relationships, do not diminish either
in number or in delicacy and difficulty, but, on the contrary,
daily increase in number and in intricacy and in danger,
and I would be derelict to my duty to you if I did not deal
with, you in these matters with the utmost candor and tell
you what it may be necessary to use the force of the United
States to do.

For one thing, it may be necessary to use the force of the
United States to vindicate the right of American citizens
everywhere to enjoy the protection of international law.
There is nothing you would be quicker to blame me for than
neglecting to safeguard the rights of Americans, no mat-
ter where they might be in the world. There are perfectly
clearly marked rights guaranteed by international law which
every American is entitled to enjoy, and America is not
going to abide the habitual or continued neglect of those
rights. Perhaps not being as near the ports as some other
Americans, you do not travel as much and you do not realize
the infinite number of legitimate errands upon which Ameri-
cans travel—errands of commerce, errands of relief, er-
rands of business for the Government, errands of every sort
which make America useful to the world. Americans do

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Woodrow Wilson

not travel to disturb the world; they travel to quicken the
processes of the interchange of life and of goods in the
world, and their travel ought not to be impeded by a reck-
less disregard of international obligation.

There is another thing that we ought to safeguard, and
that is our right to sell what we produce in the open neu-
tral markets of the world. Where there is a blockade, we
recognize the right to blockade; where there are the ordi-
nary restraints created by a state of war, we ought to recog-
nize those restraints; but the world needs the wheat off of
the Kansas fields and off the other great flowering acres of
the United States, and we have a right to supply the rest
of the world with the products of those fields. We have a
right to send food to peaceful populations wherever the
conditions of war make it possible to do so under the ordi-
nary rules of international law. We have a right to sup-
ply them with our cotton to clothe them. We have a right
to supply them with our manufactured products.

We have made some mistakes, my fellow citizens. For
several generations past we have so neglected our merchant
marine that one of the difficulties we are struggling against
has nothing to do with international questions. We have not
got the American ships to send the goods in, and we have
got to get them. I am going to ask you to follow the for-
tunes of the so-called shipping bill in the present Congress
and make suggestions to your Congressmen as to the abso-
lute necessity of getting your wheat and your other prod-
ucts out of the ports and upon the high seas where they
can go, and shall go, under the protection of the laws of the
Dnited States.

But that is a mere parenthesis. Aside from that, so far
as there are vehicles to carry our trade, we have the right
to extend our trade for the assistance of the world. For
we have not been selfish in this neutral attitude of ours. I
resent the suggestion that we have been selfish, desiring
merely to make money. What would happen if there were

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no great nation disengaged from this terrible struggle?
What would happen if every nation were consuming its sub-
stance in war? What would happen if no nation stood
ready to assist the world with its finances and to supply it
with its food? We are more indispensable now to the na-
tions at war by the maintenance of our peace than we could
possibly be to either side if we engaged in the war, and
therefore there is a moral obligation laid upon us to keep
out of this war if possible. But by the same token there is
a moral obligation laid upon us to keep free the courses of
our commerce and of our finance, and I believe that Amer-
ica stands ready to vindicate those rights.

But there are rights higher than either of those, higher
than the rights of individual Americans outside of America,
higher and greater than the rights of trade and of com-
merce. I mean the rights of mankind. We have made
ourselves the guarantors of the rights of national sover-
eignty and of popular sovereignty on this side of the water
in both the continents of the Western Hemisphere. You
would be ashamed, as I would be ashamed, to withdraw one
inch from that handsome guarantee; for it is a handsome
guarantee. We have nothing to make by it, unless it be that
we are to make friendships by it, and friendships are the
best usury of any sort of business. So far as dollars and
cents and material advantage are concerned we have noth-
ing to make by the Monroe doctrine. We have nothing to
make by allying ourselves with the other nations of the
Western Hemisphere in order to see to it that no man from -
outside, no government from outside, no nation from out-
side attempts to assert any kind of sovereignty or undue
political influence over the peoples of this continent.

America knows that the only thing that sustains the Mon-
roe doctrine and all the inferences that flow from it is her
own moral and physical force. The Monroe doctrine is not
part of international law. The Monroe doctrine has never
been formally accepted by any international agreement. The

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Monroe doctrine merely rests upon the statement of the
United States that if certain things happen she will do cer-
tain things. So, nothing sustains the honour of the United
States in respect of these long-cherished and long-admired
promises except her own moral and physical force.

Do you know what has interfered more than anything
else with the peaceful relations of the United States with
the rest of the world? The incredulity of the rest of the
world when we have made statement of our sincere unsel-
fishness in these matters! The greatest surprise the world
ever had, politically speaking, was when the United States
withdrew from Cuba. We said, “We are fighting this war
for the sake of the Cubans, and when it is over we are going
to turn Cuba over to her own people”; and statesmen in
every capital in Europe smiled behind their hand. They
said, “What! that great rich island lying directly south of
the foot of your own Florida! plant your flag there and then
haul it down?” Some Americans even said, “We will never
raise the flag of the United States anywhere and then haul
it down.” And then, when the American people saw that
the time had come when her promises were to be fulfilled,
down came that fluttering emblem of our sovereignty, and
we were more honored in its lowering than we had been in
its hoisting. The American people feel the same way about
the Philippines, though the rest of the world does not yet
believe it. We are trustees for the Filipino people, and just
so soon as we feel that they can take care of their own af-
fairs without our direct interference and protection, the flag
of the United States will again be honored by the fulfill-
ment of a promise. That flag stands for honor, not for
advantage. That flag stands for the rights of mankind, no
matter where they be, no matter what their antecedents, no
matter what the race involved; it stands for the absolute
right to political liberty and free self government, and wher-
ever it stands for the contrary American traditions have
begun to be forgotten.

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But, my friends, the world does not understand that yet.
It has. got to have a few more demonstrations like the dem-
onstration in Cuba; it has got to have a few more vindica-
tions of the American name. When those vindications have
come, I believe that nothing but peace will ever reign be-
tween the United States and the nations of the rest of the
world. For every man who minds his own business is sure
of peace. Every man who respects his own character and
observes the rights of others is sure of peace. And every
nation that makes right its guide and honor its principle is
sure of peace. But until these things are believed of us we
must be ready with the hand of force to hold others off from
the invasion of any right which we hold sacred.

I have come to you with the utmost confidence that the
moment you understood the issue, all differences of party,
all differences of individual judgment, all differences of
point of view would fall away, and like true Americans we
should all stand shoulder to shoulder in a common cause—
America first and her vindication the sacred law of our
life. For it is only upon the most solemn orecasions that I
would appeal to you as I have been appealing to-day. The
final test of the validity, the strength, the irresistible force
of the American ideal, has come. . . .

At Kansas Crry, Mo., Fesruary 2, 1916.
(The Western Preparedness Tour)

Mr. Chairman and Fellow Citizens:

I would not have come away from Washington had I not
believed that there was a stronger compulsion of conscience
to acquaint you with the state of affairs than there was to
remain during this week at the place of guidance. You
will know without my describing it to you what the task
assigned me has been. It has been the task of keeping the
scales so poised from day to day that no man should throw
into one scale or the other any makeweight which would im-

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peril the peace of the United States; for I have felt that
you were depending upon your Government to keep you out
of this turmoil which is disturbing the rest of the world.
You are counting upon me to do more than keep you out of
trouble, however. You are counting upon me to see to it
that the rights of citizens of the United States, wherever
they might be, are respected by everybody. You have
counted upon me to see that your energies should be released
also along the channels of trade in order that you might
serve the world as the only Nation disengaged and ready to
serve it. You have expected me to see that the rest of the
world permitted America thus to express and exercise her
human and legitimate energy.

I have come out to ask you what there was behind me in
this task. . . . Itis necessary, my fellow citizens, that
I should ask you this question, because I do-not know how
long the mere word and insistence of your Government will
prevail to maintgin your honor and the dignity and power
of the Nation. There may come a time—I pray God it may
never come, but it may in spite of everything we do, come
upon us, and come of a sudden—when I shall have to ask:
“I have had my say; who stands back of me? Where is the
force by which the majesty and right of the United States
are to be maintained and asserted?” I take it that there
may in your own conviction come a time when that might
and force must be vindicated and asstered. You are not
willing that what your Government says should be ignored.

I have seen editorials written in more than one part of
the United States sneering at the number of notes that were
being written from the State Department to foreign Gov-
ernments, and asking, “Why does not the Government act?”
And in those same papers I have seen editorials against the
preparation to do anything whatever effective if those notes
are not regarded. Is that the temper of the United States?
It may be the temper of some editorial offices, but it is not
the temper of the people of the United States.

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

I came out upon this errand from Washington, and see
what happened. Before I started everybody knew what er-
rand I was bound on. I expected to meet quiet audiences
and explain to them the issues of the day, and what did I
meet? At every stop of the train multitudes of my fellow
citizens crowded out, not to see the President of the United
States merely—he is not much to look at—but to declare
their ardent belief in the majesty of the Government which
he stands for and for the time being represents, and to de-
clare in one fashion or another, if it were only by cheers,
that they stood ready to do their duty in the hour of need.
I have been thrilled by the experiences of these few days,
and I shall go back to Washington and smile at anybody who
tells me that the United States is not wide awake. But,
gentlemen, crowds at the stations, multitudes in great audi-
ence halls, cheers for the Government, the display—the ar-
dent display, as from the heart—of the emblem of our Na-
tion, the Stars and Stripes, only express the spirit of the
Nation; they do not express the organized force of the Na-
tion. And while I know, and knew before I left Washing-
ton, what the spirit of the people was, I have come out to
ask them what their organization is and what they intend to
make it.

Modern wars are not won by mere numbers. They are
not won by mere enthusiasm. They are not won by mere
national spirit. They are won by the scientific conduct of
war, the scientific application of irresistible force. And
what is there behind the President of the United States?
Well, in the first place, there is a Navy, which, for my part,
I am very proud of; a Navy, which for its numbers, ship by
ship, man by man, officer by officer, I believe to be the equal
of any navy in the world. But look at the great sweep
of our coasts. Mind you, this war has engaged all the rest
of the world outside of South America and the portion of
North America occupied by the United States, and if this
flame begins to creep in on us, it may, my fellow citizens,

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creep in toward both coasts, and here are thousands upon
thousands of miles of coast. Do you know that the great
sweep from the canal up the coast to Alaska is something
like half the circumference of the world? Do you remem-
ber the great reaches of sea from the canal up to the St.
Lawrence River? Do you know the bays, the inviting har-
bors, the great cities which cluster upon those coasts? And
do you think that a Navy that ranks only fourth in the
world in force is enough to defend the coasts and make se-
cure the territory of a great continent like this?

We have been interested in our Navy for a great many
years, and we have been slowly building it up to excellent
force, but we have done it piecemeal and a little at a time.
There has been a party in Congress that was for a little
Navy, as well as a party in Congress that was for a big
Navy, and it seemed to me a sort of theoretical situation as
to whether we wanted a Navy to be proud of or not. No
nation ought to wish either an Army or Navy to be proud
of, to make a display with, to make a toy of. It is the arm
of force which must lie back of every sovereignty in the
world, and the Navy of the United States must now be as
rapidly as possible brought to a state of efficiency and of
numerical strength which will make it practically impreg-
nable to the navies of the world. The fighting force of the
Navy now is splendid, and I should expect very great
achievements from the fine officers and trained men that
constitute it, but it is not big enough; it is not numerous
enough; it is incomplete. It must be completed, and what
the present administration is proposing is that we limit the
number of years to five within which we shall complete a
definite program which will make that Navy adequate for
the defense of both coasts.

But, on land what stands behind the President, if he
should have to act in your behalf to enforce the demands of
the United States for respect and right? An Army so small
that I have not had men enough to patrol the Mexican bor-

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der. The Mexican border is a very long border, I admit;
it runs the whole southern length of Texas and the whole
southern length of New Mexico and Arizona besides, and
that is a great strip of noble territory. But what is that
single border to the whole extent and coast of the United
States? I have not had men enough to prevent bandits from
raiding across the border of Mexico into the United States.
It has been a very mortifying circumstance indeed. I have
been tempted to advise Congress to help Texas build up its
little force of Texas Rangers; and now, if you please, be-
cause I am asking the Congress to give the Government an
Army adequate to the uses of peace, to the uses of the mo~-
ment, some gentlemen go about and prate of military estab-
lishments. They see phantoms, they dream dreams. Mili-
tarism in the United States springing out of any of the
proposals of this administration is—why, a man must have
a very strong imagination indeed to conceive any such non-
sense as that! I am not asking, the administration is not
asking, to be backed by any bigger standing Army than is
necessary for the uses of the moment, but it is asking this:

Do you remember the experiences of the Spanish-Ameri-
can war? That was not much of a war, was it? It did
not last very long. . .. What happened? You sent thou-
sands of men to their death because they were ignorant.
_ They did not get any farther than the camps in Florida.
They did not get on the water even, much less get to Cuba,
and they died in the camps like flies, of all sorts of camp
diseases, of all sorts of diseases that come from the igno-
rance of medical science and camp sanitation. Splendid boys,
boys fit, with a little training, to make an invincible army,
but sent to their death by miserable disease, the soil of
which was ignorance, helpless ignorance. Why, the percen-
tage of our loss in that war by disease in the camp was
greater than the percentage of the loss of the Japanese by
disease and battle together in their war with Russia.

It is a very mortifying thing. There is not any place in

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Woodrow Wilson

the world where medical science is more nobly studied or
more adequately applied than in the United States, but we
poured crude, ignorant, untrained boys into the ranks of
those armies and they died before they got sight of an
enemy. Do you want to repeat that? And while that is
going on what may happen? What sort of disaster may
come to you while you are trying to make an army out of ab-
solutely raw material? Why, it seems almost ridiculous to
state how little the present administration is asking for. It
is asking that you give it something that is not mere raw
material out of which to begin to make an army when it is
absolutely necessary to make an army. It is asking that
five hundred thousand men be asked to volunteer to take a
little training every year for three years, not more than two
or three months out of the year, in order that when volun-
teers are called for in the case of war we may have men, at
least five hundred thousand of them, who know something
about the use of arms, something about the sanitation of
camps, something about the organization and discipline of
war in the field and in the trenches. That is all that we
are asking for at the present time, and if there is any criti-
cism to be made upon it, it is that it is too little, not too
much.

There are men in Congress asking, “Can you get the five
hundred thousand men? Will they volunteer?” Why, I
believe you could get them out of any one State in the
Union. You could almost get five thousand of them out
of this audience. But, ladies and gentlemen, do not forget
that that is not all there is to this problem. Suppose that I
knew that back of the insistence, of the United States upon
its rights was a great navy that ranked first in the world
and a body of men trained to arms adequate, at any rate,
to fend off any initial disaster to the United States while
we were making a greater army ready. That would be
only the beginning. There are other things that we have
been very much concerned about in Washington and that we

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are taking steps to attend to. The railroads of this country
have never been drawn into the counsels of the Government,
never until recently, in such fashion as to make plans for
coordinating all of them, to transport troops and transport
provisions and transport munitions in such a way as to
be the effective arteries of the red blood and energy of the
Nation; never until recently, though we are now beginning
to do it, for we called the business men and the engineers
of the country into counsel to say, “What are the resources
of manufacture in this country, and how can we coordinate
them and put them into cooperation, so that there will be
no waste of time, no duplication of effort, and no failure
to get every part of the machinery into operation should we
need to use them in times of war?” We are taking counsel
with regard to that now; but, mark you, the munitions of
war are made in this country almost exclusively near the
borders of the country, and for the most part upon the At-
lantic seaboard, and any initial disaster to the force of the
United States might put the greater part of them, if not
all of them, in the possession of an enemy. So that you
see the circle of my argument leads right back to the neces-
sity for a force of men who can prevent an initia] disaster,
so that there will be no first failure, no first invasion, no
first disaster.

Did you ever hear more momentous things spoken of than
these? Did it ever before occur to you that you must put
more than the authority of words into the mouths of men
who speak for you? I have been wringing my heart and
straining every energy of mind that I have to preserve the
honor and integrity and peace of the United States, but-
think of what must lie at the back of my thought. I know
what you want me to do. I would be ashamed if I did not
use the utmost powers that are in me to do it. But suppose
that some morning I should have to turn to you and say,
“Fellow citizens, I have done as much as I can; now I must
ask you to back me up with the force of the Nation.” And

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Woodrow Wilson

suppose that I should know before I said it that I had not
told you what that meant, as I am telling you to-night. Sup-
pose that I had not warned you of what was involved. Sup-
pose that I had not challenged you in a moment of peace
to make ready. Do not suppose, however, that I am afraid
that it is not going to be done. I would not do the injus-
tice that that implication would involve to the gallant men
upon the Hill yonder in Washington who make the laws of
the Nation. They are going to do a good deal of debating,
but they are going to deliver the goods. Do not misunder-
stand me; I do not mean that I can oblige them to deliver
the goods; they are going to deliver the goods because you
want them delivered.

I am a believer not only in some of the men who talk,
though not all of them, but also in that vast body of my
fellow citizens who do not do any talking. I would a great
deal rather listen to the still, small voice that comes out
of the great body of the Nation than to all the vocal orators
in the land. But there are times when I must come out and
say, “Do not let the voice be too small and too still’; when
I must come out and say, “Fellow citizens, get up on your
hind legs and talk and tell the people who represent you,
wherever they are—in your State Capital or in your Na-
tional Capital—what it is that the Nation desires and de-
mands.” The thing that everybody is listening for in a
democracy is the tramp, tramp, tramp of the facts and the
people. ...

I am anxious, therefore, my fellow citizens, that you
should look at the hot stuff of war before you touch it; that
you should be cool; that you should apply your hard busi-
ness sense to the proposition, “Shall we be caught unaware
and do a scientific job like tyros and ignoramuses? Or shall
we be ready? Shall we know how to do it, and when it is
necessary to do it; shall we do it to the queen’s taste?” I
know what the answer of America is, but I want jit to be
unmistakably uttered, and I want it to be uttered now. Be-

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

cause, speaking with all solemnity, I assure you that there
is not a day to be lost; not, understand me, because of any
new or specially critical matter, but because I-can not tell
twenty-four hours at a time whether there is going to be
trouble or not. And whether there is or not does not depend
upon what I do or what I say, or upon what any man in
the United States does or says. It depends upon what for-
eign governments do; what the commanders of ships at sea
do; what those in charge of submarines do; what those
who are conducting blockades do. Upon the judgment of
a score of men, big and little, hang the vital issues of
peace or war for the United States... .

This month should not go by without something decisive
being done by the people of the United States by way of
preparation of the arms of self-vindication and defence. . . .

I am going away from here reassured beyond even the
hope that I entertained when I came here; and yet I want
to beg of you that you do not let the impressions of this
hour die with the hour. Let every man and woman in this
place go out of here with the feeling that he must concen-
trate his influence from this moment until the thing is ac-
complished upon making certain the security and adequacy
of national defence. Because, if America suffer, all the
world loses its equipoise. Madness has entered into every-
thing, and that serene flag which we have thrown to the
breeze upon so many occasions as the beckoning finger of
hope to those who believe in the rights of mankind will
itself be stained with the blood of battle, and staggering
here and there among its foes will lead men to wonder
where the star of America has gone and why America has
allowed herself to be embroiled when she might have car-
ried that standard serenely forward to the redemption of
the affairs of mankind. I beg of you to stand by your
Government with your minds as well as your hearts, and let
us redeem America by applying our judgments to the whole-
some process of national defence.

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: Woodrow Wilson

Ar Sr. Louis, Mo., Fesruary 3, 1916.
(The Western Preparedness Tour)

Mr. Chairman and Fellow Citizens:

I came into the Middle West to find something, and I
found it. I was told in Washington that the Middie West
had a different feeling from the portions of the country that
lie upon either coast, and that it was indifferent to the ques-
tion of preparation for national defence. I knew enough
of the Middle West of this great continent to know that
the men who said that did not know what they were talking
about. I knew the spirit of America to dwell as much in this
great section of the country as in any other section of it,
and I knew that the men of these parts loved the honor
and safety of America as much as Americans everywhere
love it and are ready to stand by it. I did not come out
to find out how you felt or what you thought, but to tell
you what was going on. I came out in order that there
might be an absolute clarification of the issues which are
involved in the questions immediately confronting us, be-
cause I, for one, have an absolute faith in the readiness of
America to act upon the facts just as soon as America
knows what the facts are.

The facts are very easily and briefly stated. What is the
situation? The situation is that America is at peace with
all the world and desires to remain at peace with all the
world. And it is not a shallow peace; it is a genuine peace,
based upon some of the most fundamental influences of in-
ternational intercourse. America is at peace with all the
world because she entertains a real friendship for all the
nations of the world. It is not, as some have mistakenly
supposed, a peace based upon self-interest. It is a peace
based upon some of the most generous sentiments that char-
acterize the human heart.

You know, my fellow citizens, that this Nation is a com-
posite Nation. It has a genuine friendship for all the na-

209
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

tions of the world because it is drawn from all the na-
tions of the world. The blood of all the great national
stocks runs, and runs red and strong, in the veins of Amer-
ica, and America understands what the genuine ties of
friendship and affection are. It would tear the heartstrings
of America to be at war with any of the great nations of
the world. Our peace is not a superficial peace. Our peace
is not based upon the mere conveniences of our national life.
If great issues were involved which it was our honorable ob-
ligation to defend, we should not be at peace, but would
plunge into any struggle that was necessary in order to de-
fend the honor and integrity of the Nation; but we believe,
my fellow citizens, that we can show our friendship for the
world and our devotion to the principles of humanity better
and more effectively by keeping out of this struggle than
by getting into it. ...

The danger is not from within, gentlemen; it is from
without, and I am bound to tell you that that danger is
constant and immediate, not because anything new has hap-
pened, nat because there has been any change in our inter-
national relationships within recent weeks or months, but
because the danger comes with every turn of events. Why
gentlemen, the commanders of submarines have their in-
structions, and those instructions are consistent for the
most part with the law of nations, but one reckless com-
mander of a submarine, choosing to put his private inter-
pretation upon what his government wishes him to do,
might set the world on fire. There are not only govern-
ments to deal with, but the servants of governments; there
are not only the contacts of politics, but also those infinitely
varied contacts which come from the mere movement of
mankind, the quiet processes of the everyday world. There
are cargoes of cotton on the seas; there are cargoes of
wheat on the seas; there are cargoes of manufactured arti-
cles on the seas; and every one of those cargoes may be
the point of ignition, because every cargo goes into the field

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of fire, goes where there are flames which no man can con-
trol.

I know the spirit of America to be this: We respect other
nations and absolutely respect their rights so long as they
respect our rights. We do not claim anything for ourselves
which they would not in like circumstances claim for them-
selves. Every statement of right that we have made is
grounded upon the previous utterances of their own public
men and their own judges. There is no dispute about the
rights of nations under the understandings of international
law. America has drawn no fine points. America has raised
no novel issue. America has merely asserted the rights of
her citizens and her Government upon what is written plain
upon all the documents of international intercourse. There-
fore America is not selfish in claiming her rights; she is
merely standing for the rights of mankind when the life of
mankind is being disturbed by an unprecedented war be-
tween the greatest nations of the world. Some of these days
we shall be able to call the statesmen of the older nations
to witness that it was we who kept the quiet flame of inter-
national principle burning upon its altars while the winds
of passion were sweeping every other altar in the world.
Some of these days they will look back with gratification
upon the steadfast allegiance of the United States to those
principles of action which every man loves when his temper
is not upset and his judgment not disturbed... .

I am ready to make every allowance for both sides, for,
having pledged myself, as your chairman has reminded you,
to maintain, if it be possible for me to maintain, the peace
of the United States, I have thereby pledged myself to think
as far as possible from the point of view of the other side
as well as from the point of view of America. I want the
record of the conduct of this administration to be a record
of genuine neutrality and not of pretended neutrality.

You know the circumstances of the time. You know how
one group of belligerents is practically shut off by circum-

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stances over which we have no control from the. ordinary
commerce of the world. - You know, therefore, how the
spirit of America has not been able to express itself ade-
quately in both directions. But I believe that the people
of America are genuinely neutral. I believe that their de-
sire is to stand in unprejudiced judgment upon what is
going on; not that they would arrogate to themselves the
right to utter rebuking judgment upon any nation, but that
they are holding themselves off to assist neither side in
what is wrong, and to countenance both sides in what they
are doing for the legitimate defense of their national honor.

The fortunate circumstance of America, my fellow coun-
trymen, is that it desires nothing but a free field and no
favor. Our security is in the purity of our motives. The
minute we get an impure motive we are going to, deserve
to be insecure. The minute we desire what we have no
right to, then we are going to get into trouble and ought to
get into trouble. But, my fellow citizens, while we know
our own hearts and know our own desires, it does not
follow that other nations and other governments understand
our purpose and our principle of action. These are days of
infinite prejudice and passion, because they are days of
war. It is said by an old maxim that amidst war the law
is silent. It is also true that amidst war the judgment is
silent. Men press forward towards their object with a cer-
tain degree of blind recklessness, and they are apt to excite
their passion particularly against those who in any way
stand in their way. Therefore, this is the situation that I
have come to remind you of, for you need merely to have it
stated to see it: The peace of the world, including Amer-
ica, depends upon the aroused passion of other nations
and not upon the motives of the United States. It is for
that reason that I have come to call you to a consciousness
of the necessity for preparing this country for anything that
may happen.

Here is the choice, and I do not see how any prudent man

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Woodrow Wilson

could doubt which side of the alternative to take: Either
we shall stand still and wait for the necessity for immediate
national defence to come and then call for raw volunteers
who for the first few months would be impotent as against
a trained and experienced enemy, or we shall adopt the
ancient American principle that the men of the country shall
immediately be made ready to take care of their own Gov-
ernment. You have either got to make the men of this
Nation in sufficient number ready to defend the Nation
against initial disaster, or you have got to take the risk of
initial disaster. Think of the cruelty, think of the stupidity,
of putting raw levies of inexperienced men into the modern
field of battle! We are not asking for armies; we are ask-
ing for a trained citizenship which will act in the spirit
of citizenship and not in the spirit of military establish-
ments. If anybody is afraid of a trained citizenship in
America he is afraid also of the spirit of America itself. I
do not want to command a great army under the authority
granted me by the Constitution to be Commander in Chief
of the Army and Navy of the United States; I want to com-
mand the confidence and support of my fellow citizens.

Of course you will back me up and come to my assist-
ance if I need you, but will you come knowing what you are
about, or will you not? Will you come knowing the charac-
ter of the arms that you carry in your hands, knowing some-
thing of the discipline of organization, knowing something
of how to take care of yourselves in camp, knowing some-
thing of all those things that it is necessary to know so as
not to throw human life away? It is handsome, my fellow
citizens, to sacrifice human life intelligently for something
greater than life itself, but it is not handsome for any cause
whatever to throw human life away.

The plans now laid before the Congress of the United
States are merely plans not to throw the life of American
youth away. Those plans are going to be adopted. I am
not jealous and you are not jealous of the details; no man

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

ought to be confident that his judgment is correct about the
details; no man ought to say to any legislative body, “You
must take my plan or none at all’”—that is arrogance and
stupidity—but we have the right to insist, and I believe that
it will not be necessary to insist, that we get the essential
thing; that is to say, a principle, a system, by which we can
secure a trained citizenship, so that if it becomes necessary
to defend the Nation the first line of defence on land will
be an adequate and intelligent line of defence.

I say “on land” because America apparently has never
been jealous of armed men if they are only at sea. America
also knows that you can not send volunteers to sea unless
you want to’send them to the bottom. The modern fight-
ing ship, the modern submarine, every instrument of mod-
ern naval warfare must be handled by experts. America
has never debated or disputed that proposition, and all that
we are asking for now is that a sufficient number of experts
and a sufficient number of vessels be at our disposal. The
vessels we have are manned by experts. There is not a
better service in the world than that of the American Navy.
But no matter how skilled and capable the officers or de-
voted the men, they must have ships enough, and we are
going to give them ships enough. We have been doing it
slowly and leisurely and good-naturedly, as we are accus-
tomed to do everything in times of peace, but now we must
get down to business and do it systematically. We must
lay down a programme and then steadfastly carry it out
and complete it. There are no novelties about the pro-
gramme. All the lines of it are the lines already estab-
lished, only drawn out to their legitimate conclusion, and
drawn out so that they will be completed within a cal-
culable length of time.

[It will be noticed that President Wilson grew more positive in
his own convictions as the speaking tour progressed. He not only
pleaded for “a great navy that ranked first in the world” (at
Kansas City), and for a volunteer army of 500,000 men “to take
a little training every year for three years”; but he also urged

21h
Woodrow Wilson

haste, for “no man knows what danger a single week or a single
day or a single hour may bring forth” (Cleveland address).

A naval program of vast proportions had previously been agreed
upon by the Administration, recommended to and ultimately
adopted by Congress. But the details of an army system the
President left to the legislative body, he finding it impossible to
endorse any one of several plans proposed. Congress, after long
deliberation, passed a bill federalizing the State militia and
authorizing an increase in the regular army. The real strength of
the armed forces of the United States remained unchanged until
the country was drawn into the European War—fourteen months
after the President’s “preparedness” tour—when a selective con-
scription system was adopted in order to raise immediately a large
army.]

PRESIDENT WILSON AND THE EUROPEAN WAR

[Included in the pages immediately following are the more im-
portant of the diplomatic notes which were sent from Washington
to European governments, upon matters affecting the interests
of neutrals. President Wilson himself guided the foreign policies
of the nation; and, although the notes are signed by his Secretary
of State—first Mr. Bryan and later Mr. Lansing—they not only
express the President’s views and decisions, but frequently are
from his own pen.]

WILSON ASKS BELLIGERENT NATIONS TO GOVERN THEIR OPERA-
TIONS AND CONDUCT BY THE DECLARATION OF LONDON
[The Declaration of London, laying down the rules that were to

govern the signatory Nations in the conduct of war, blockade,

definitions of contraband and treatment of neutral shipping, was
signed in London February 26, 1909, by the United States, Great

Britain, Germany, Austria-Hungary, France, Russia, Italy, Japan,

Holland, and Spain. President Wilson sent the following identical

note to all the belligerent European Nations as soon as war

began:]

DEPARTMENT OF STATE,
Wasuineton, August 6, 1914, 1 p. M.

Mr. Bryan instructs Mr. Page to inquire whether the
British Government is willing to agree that the laws of na-
val warfare as laid down by the Declaration of London of

215
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

1909 shall be applicable to naval warfare during the pres-
ent conflict in Europe provided that the Governments with
whom Great Britain is or may be at war also agree to such
application. Mr. Bryan further instructs Mr. Page to
state that the Government of the United States believes that
an acceptance of these laws by the belligerents would pre-
vent grave misunderstanding which may arise as to the re-
lations between neutral powers and the belligerents. Mr.
Bryan adds that it is earnestly hoped that this inquiry may
receive favorable consideration.

[August 13 Austria-Hungary replied in the affirmative. August
22 the German government did the same. Great Britain replied
that she would adopt “generally the rules of the Declaration, .
subject to certain modifications.” Following this, the British and
French governments issued steadily enlarging definitions and lists
of contraband and made such other radical modifications of the
Declaration, that the United States withdrew its proposal in the
following notes:]

DepartMENT oF StaTE,
Wasuinaton, October 22, 1914.

Yo Ambassador W. H. Page (London):

Inasmuch as the British Government consider that the
conditions of the present European conflict make it impos-
sible for them to accept without modification the Declara-
tion of London, you are requested to inform His Majesty’s
Government that in the circumstances the Government of
the United States feels obliged to withdraw its suggestion
that the Declaration of London be adopted as a temporary
code of naval warfare to be observed by belligerents and
neutrals during the present war; that therefore this Gov-
ernment will insist that the rights and duties of the United
States and its citizens in the present war be defined by the
existing rules of international law and the treaties of the
United States irrespective of the provisions of the Declara-
tion of London; and that this Government reserves to it-
self the right to enter a protest or demand in each case

216
HVoodrow Wilson

in which those rights and duties so defined are violated or
their free exercise interfered with by the authorities of
His Britannic Majesty's Government.

Lansine.

Department oF Stare,
Wasuineaton, October 24, 1914.

To the Ambassadors in Germany and Austria-Hungary:

Referring to Department’s August 6, 1 p. m., and Em-
bassy’s October 22, relative to the Declaration of London,
Mr. Lansing instructs Mr. Gerard to inform the German
Government that the suggestion of the department to bellig-
erents as to the adoption of declaration for sake of uni-
formity as to a temporary code of naval warfare during
the present conflict has been withdrawn because some of the
belligerents are unwilling to accept the declaration without
modifications and that this Government will therefore in-
sist that the rights and duties of the Government and citi-
zens of the United States in the present war be defined by
existing rules of international law and the treaties of the
United States without regard to the provisions of the dec-
laration and that the Government of the United States re-
serves to itself the right to enter a protest or demand in
every case in which the rights and duties so defined are vio-.
lated or their free exercise interfered with by the authori-
ties of the belligerent governments.

Witson’s Apprat to THE AMERICAN PEOPLE FOR
NEvUTRALITY

(A Proclamation—August 19, 1914.)
My Fellow Countrymen:

I suppose that every thoughtful man in America has asked
himself, during these last troubled weeks, what influence

217
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

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 safe-
guard 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 impartiality 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 pub-
lic meetings do and say, upon what newspapers and maga-
zines 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 va-
riety 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 momen-
tous struggle. It will be easy to excite passion and diffi-
cult to allay it. Those responsible for exciting it 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 Government
should unite them as Americans all, bound in honor and
affection to think first of her and her interests, may be di-
vided in camps of hostile opinion, hot against each other, in-
volved 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 im-

218
Woodrow Wilson

partial 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 transac-
tion 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 Ameri-
can 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 Na-
tion that neither sits in judgment upon others nor is dis-
turbed in her own counsels and which keeps herself fit
and free to do what is honest and disinterested 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?

Wiuson’s Repry to Bextiicerents’ DecLaRATIONS OF
Maritime War Zones

[November 3, 1914, Great Britain declared the entire North Sea
a war-zone. February 14, 1915, Germany declared the waters
surrounding the British Isles and the whole English Channel a
war-zone and announced that, in retaliation for Great Britain’s
violations of maritime rules of war, all enemy merchant vessels
found in the zone would be destroyed after February 18. Naviga-
tion in the waters north of the Shetland Islands, and in the
eastern part of the North Sea, and in a zone thirty miles wide

219
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

along the Dutch coast was expressly declared as being outside of
this danger zone. Neutral vessels were warned that though
German submarine commanders had orders to refrain from all
violence against neutral shipping, Great Britain’s misuse of neutral
flags made the conditions dangerous. ;

In response, the United States'sent the following communica-
tions to German and Great Britain:]

DEPARTMENT OF STATE,
Wasuincton, February 10, 1915.

To Ambassador Gerard (Berlin):

Please address a note immediately to the Imperial Ger-
man Government to the following effect:

The Government of the United States, having had its
attention directed to the proclamation of the German Ad-
miralty 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 merchant 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 maritime 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 earnestly, 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 be-

220
Woodrow Wilson

fore action is taken the critical situation in respect of 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 proclamation, 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 Gov-
ernment that the sole right of a belligerent in dealing 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 Gov-
ernment is reluctant to believe that the Imperial Govern-
ment of Germany in this case contemplates it as possible.
The suspicion that enemy ships are using neutral flags im-
properly can create no just presumption that all ships
traversing a prescribed area are subject to the same sus-
picion. 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 Ger-
man Government very respectfully that the Government of
the United States is open to none of the criticisms for un-
neutral action to which the German Government believe
the governments of certain of 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 belligerent na-
tions in the present war which operate to restrain neutral

221

3
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

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 untoward effects up-
on American shipping which the accepted principles of in-
ternational law do not justify; and that it, therefore, re-
gards 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 destroy on the
high seas an American vessel or the lives of American citi-
zens, it would be difficult for the Government of the United
States to view the act in any other light than as an in-
defensible 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 accountability
for such acts of their naval authorities and to take any
steps it might be necessary to take to safeguard American
lives and property and to secure to American citizens the
full enjoyment of their acknowledged 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 mis-
understanding may arise and no circumstance occur that
might even cloud the intercourse of the two Governments,
expresses the confident hope and expectation that the Im-
perial German Government can and will give assurance 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

222
Woodrow Wilson

delimited in the proclamation of the German Admiralty.
It is added for the information of the Imperial Govern-
ment that representations have been made to His Britannic
Majesty’s Government in respect to the unwarranted use
of the American flag for the protection of British ships.

Bryan.

DepaRTMENT oF Strate,
Wasuineron, February 10, 1915.
To Ambassador W. H. Page (London):

The department has been advised of the Declaration of
the German Admiralty on February fourth, indicating that
the British Government had on January thirty-first ex-
plicitly authorized the use of neutral flags on British mer-
chant vessels presumably for the purpose of avoiding recog-
nition by German naval forces. The department’s atten-
tion has also been directed to reports in the press that the
captain of the Lusitania, acting upon orders or information
received from the British authorities, raised the American
flag as his vessel approached the British coasts, in order
to escape anticipated attacks by German submarines. To-
day’s press reports also contain an alleged official state-
ment of the Foreign Office defending the use of the flag of
a neutral country by a belligerent vessel in order to escape
capture or attack by an enemy.

Assuming that the foregoing ‘reports are true, the Gov-~
ernment of the United States, reserving for future con-
sideration the legality and propriety of the deceptive use
of the flag of a neutral power in any case for the purpose
of avoiding capture, desires very respectfully to point out
to His Britannic Majesty’s Government the serious conse-
quences which may result to American vessels and Ameri-
can citizens if this practice is continued.

The occasional use of the flag of a neutral or an enemy
under the stress of immediate pursuit and to deceive an

228
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

approaching enemy, which appears by the press ‘reports
to be represented as the precedent and justification used
to support this action, seems to this Government a very
different thing from an explicit sanction by a belligerent
government for its merchant ships generally to fly the flag
of a neutral power within certain portions of the high seas
which are presumed to be frequented with hostile warships.
The formal declaration of such a policy of general misuse
of a neutral’s flag jeopardizes the vessels of the neutral
visiting those waters in a peculiar degree by raising the
presumption that they are of belligerent nationality re-
gardless of the flag which they may carry.

In view of the announced purpose of the German Ad-
miralty to engage in active naval operations in certain de-
limited sea areas adjacent to the coasts of Great Britain
and Ireland, the Government of the United States would
view with anxious solicitude any general use of the flag of
the United States by British vessels traversing those waters.
A policy such as the one which His Majesty’s Government
is said to intend to adopt would, if the declaration of the
German Admiralty is put in force, it seems clear, afford
no protection to British vessels, while it would be a serious
and constant menace to the lives and vessels of American
citizens.

The Government of the United States, therefore, trusts
that His Majesty’s Government will do all in their power
to restrain vessels of British nationality from the deceptive
use of the flag of the United States in the sea area defined
in the German declaration, since such practice would greatly
endanger the vessels of a friendly power navigating those
waters and would even seem to impose upon the Govern-
ment of Great Britain a measure of responsibility for the
loss of American lives and vessels in case of an attack by a
German naval force.

Please present a note to Sir Edward Grey in the sense
of the foregoing and impress him with the grave concern

224
Woodrow Wilson

which this Government feels in the circumstances in regard
to the safety of American vessels and lives in the war zone
declared by the German Admiralty.

You may add that this Government is making earnest
representations to the German Government in regard to
the danger to American vessels and citizens if the declara-
tion of the German Admiralty is put into effect.

Bryan.

Tue Secrerary oF State to AmsBassapor W. H. Paar
[Lonpon ]

The same to Ambassador Gerard (Berlin).

DepartTMENT oF State,
Wasuineton, February 20, 1915.

You will please deliver to Sir Edward Grey the following
identic note which we are sending England and Germany:

In view of the correspondence which has passed between
this Government and Great Britain and Germany respec-
tively, 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

225
Fi

Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

merely venturing to take the liberty which it hopes may be
accorded a sincere friend desirous of embarrassing neither
nation involved and of serving, if it may, the common in-
terests of humanity. The course outlined is offered in the
hope that it may draw forth the views and elicit the sug-
gestions of the British and Gernian Governments on a mat-
ter 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 Government planting them and be so constructed as
to become harmless if separated from their moorings.

2. That neither will use submarines to attack merchant 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 control without interference on the part of the
German Government, of the receipt and distribution of such im-
portations, 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 noncombatants 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 purpose; 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 commodities will not
be interfered with or detained by British authorities if consigned
to agencies designated by the United States Government in Ger-
many for the receipt and distribution of such cargoes to licensed
German retailers for distribution solely to the noncombatant
population.

226 :
Woodrow Wilson

In submitting this proposed basis of agreement this Gov-
ernment does not wish to be understood as admitting 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 Gov-
ernment.

Bryan.

[February 28, 1915, Germany agreed to the suggested rules prac-
tically in entirety. March 13, 1915, Great Britain declared that
it did not understand from the German reply that submarine prac-
tices would be abandoned, The note recited other German offenses
against humanity and upheld the British blockade,]

THE Secretary or Stare To Ampassapor Pace [Lonpon]

Same note sent to Ambassador Sharp (Paris).

DEPARTMENT OF STATE,
Wasurineton, March 5, 1915.

In regard to the recent communications received from the
British and French Governments concerning restraints upon
commerce with Germany, please communicate with the Brit-
ish foreign office in the sense following:

The difficulty of determining action upon the British and
French declarations of intended retaliation upon commerce
with Germany lies in the nature of the proposed 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 incoming,
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 regardless of the character
of its cargo may be condemned, is not asserted.

The language of the declaration is “the British and

227
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

French Governments will, therefore, hold themselves free
to detain and take into port ships carrying goods of pre-
sumed enemy destination, ownership, or origin. 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 treatment
of ships and cargoes as if no blockade existed. The two
together present a proposed course of action previously un-
known 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 con-
traband are to be applied to cargoes detained. The rule
covering noncontraband articles carried in neutral bottoms
is that the cargoes 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 noncontraband 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 declaration. Under
the rules governing enemy exports only goods owned by
enemy subjects in enemy bottoms are subject to seizure and
condemnation. Yet by the declaration 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 has been a ground for forfeiture except in

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5 Woodrow Wilson

case a blockade 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 international law would it rest?
And upon what rule if no blockade is declared and main-
tained could the cargo of a neutral ship sailing out of a
German port be condemned? 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 especially so if this
action by the belligerents can be construed to be a blockade.
It would certainly create a serious state of affairs if, for
example, an Americaa 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.

Bryan.

Wizson’s Communications To Great Brirain Azour RE-
STRAINTS ON TRADE AND His Note DENouncING
THE British NortuH Sea Biocxkape as “In-
EFFECTIVE, ILLHGAL AND INDEFENSIBLE”

[Four and one-half months after the beginning of the European
war, Wilson sent the note of December 26, 1914, to Great Britain
reciting the grievances of American merchants and declaring that
the United States “is reluctantly forced to the conclusion that the
present policy of His Majesty’s Government toward neutral ships
and cargoes exceeds the manifest necessity of a belligerent and
constitutes restrictions upon the rights of American citizens on

229
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

the high seas which are not justified by the rules of international
law or required under the principle of self-preservation.”

The British replies were long and complicated, citing American
trade statistics and alleging precedents established by Federal
maritime operations in the Civil War.

March 30, 1915, a second American note answered many of
these subtly-argued points and declared that a recent “Order in
Council” constituted “a practical assertion of unlimited belligerent
rights over neutral commerce, and an almost unqualified denial
of the sovereign rights of the nations now at peace.”

A correspondence followed, marked by British communications
still more complex than the early ones and extremely voluminous.
President Wilson finally summed up the American contention in
the following comprehensive note, answering British notes of
January 7, February 10, June 22, July 23, July 31, August 2
and August 6, 1915.]

DEPARTMENT OF STATE,
Wasuineton, October 21, 1915.

To Ambassador W. H. Page (London):

I desire that you present a note to Sir Edward Grey in
the sense of the following:

This Government has delayed answering the earlier of
these notes in the hope that the announced purpose of His
Majesty’s Government “‘to exercise their belligerent rights
with every possible consideration for the interest of neu-
trals” and their intention of “removing all causes of avoid-
able delay in dealing with American cargoes” and of caus-
ing “the least possible amount of inconvenience to persons
engaged in legitimate trade,” as well as their “assurances
to the United States Government that they would make it
their first aim to minimize the inconveniences” resulting
from the “measures taken by the Allied Governments,”
would in practice not unjustifiably infringe upon the neu-
tral rights of American citizens engaged in trade and com-
merce. It is, therefore, a matter of regret that this hope
has not been realized, but that, on the contrary, inter-
ferences with American ships and cargoes destined in
good faith to neutral ports and lawfully entitled to pro-
ceed have become increasingly vexatious, causing Ameri-

250
Woodrow Wilson

can shipowners and American merchants to complain to
this Government of the failure to take steps to prevent
an exercise of belligerent power in contravention of their
just rights. As the measures complained of proceed di-
rectly from orders issued by the British Government, are
executed by British authorities, and arouse a reasonable
apprehension that, if not resisted, they may be carried to
an extent even more injurious to American interests, this
Government directs the attention of His Majesty's Gov-
ernment to the following considerations:

[Here followed a denial of the correctness of deductions drawn
from trade statistics as to the injury to American foreign trade,
and (1) objection to the seizure of cargoes on suspicion, and
their detention while the British government looked for evidence
to support the suspicion (2) insistence that international usage
permitted only a search at sea and not a deviation of vessels from
their course in order to carry them into a port for search (3) a
denial that American practice in this respect during the Civil War
justified the British proceedings (4) denial of the British claim
that modern conditions made search at sea impracticable, and a
statement from American naval experts that the “facilities for
boarding and inspection of modern ships are in fact greater than
in former times” (5) objections to a demand for evidence of
innocent voyage beyond the papers of the ship and the goods
found on board, and a repetition of the American objection to
the practice of seizing and detaining ships “on mere suspicion
while efforts are made to obtain evidence from extraneous sources
to justify the detention.” (6) Repudiation of the British claim
that the American seizure of the Bermuda in the Civil War (a
famous case cited frequently by Great Britain) was in any sense
similar to the British practices.

The British contention that greatly increased imports of neutral
countries adjoining Great Britain’s enemies raised a presumption
that they were intended for sale to the belligerents, was charac-
terized as not laying down a “just or legal rule of evidence. Such
a presumption is too far from the facts and offers too great oppor-
tunity for abuse by a belligerent, who could, if the rule were
adopted, entirely ignore neutral rights on the high seas and prey
with impunity on neutral commerce.” On this subject the note
continued :]

Great Britain cannot expect the United States to sub-
mit to such manifest injustice or to permit the rights of
its citizens to be so seriously impaired. . . . When

231
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

goods are clearly intended to become incorporated in the
mass of merchandise for sale in a neutral country, it
is an unwarranted and inquisitorial proceeding to detain
shipments for examination as to whether those goods are
ultimately destined for the enemy’s country or use. What-
ever may be the conjectural conclusions to be drawn from
trade statistics, which, when stated by value, are of un-
certain evidence as to quantity, the United States main-
tains the right to sell goods into the general stock of a
neutral country, and denounces as illegal and unjustifiable
any attempt of a belligerent to interfere with that right on
the ground that it suspects that the previous supply of such
goods in the neutral country, which the imports renew or
replace, has been sold to an enemy. That is a matter with
which the neutral vendor has no concern and which can
in no way affect his rights of trade. Moreover, even if
goods listed as conditional contraband are destined to an
enemy country through a neutral country, that fact is not
in itself sufficient to justify their seizure. . . . Relying
upon the regard of the British Government for the princi-
ples of justice so frequently and uniformly manifested prior
to the present war, this Government anticipates that the
British Government will instruct their officers to refrain
from these vexatious and illegal practices.

The British note of July 23, 1915, appears i confirm
the intention indicated in the note of March 15, 1915, to
establish a blockade so extensive as to prohibit trade with
Germauy or Austria-Hungary, even through the ports of
neutral countries adjacent to them. Great Britain, how-
ever, admits that it should not, and gives assurances that
it will not, interfere with trade with the countries con-
tiguous to the territories of the enemies of Great Britain.
Nevertheless, after over six months’ application of the
“blockade” order, the experience of American citizens has
convinced the Government of the United States that Great
Britain has been unsuccessful in her efforts to distinguish

282
Woodrow Wilson

between enemy and neutral trade. Arrangements have been
made to create in these neutral countries special consignees,
or consignment corporations, with power to refuse shipments
and to determine when the state of the country’s resources
requires .the importation of new commodities. American
commercial interests are hampered by the intricacies of
these arrangements, and many American citizens justly
complain that their bona fide trade with neutral countries
is greatly reduced as a consequence, while others assert
that their neutral trade, which amounted annually to a
large sum, has been entirely interrupted.

While the United States Government was at first in-
clined to view with leniency the British measures which
were termed in the correspondence but not in the Order
in Council of March 11 a “blockade,” because of the as-
surances of the British Government that inconvenience to
neutral trade would be minimized, this Government is now
forced to the realization that its expectations were based
on a misconception of the intentions of the British Govern-
ment. . . . In the circumstances now developed it feels
that it can no longer permit the validity of the alleged
blockade to remain unchallenged.

The Declaration of Paris in 1856, which has been uni-
versally recognized as correctly stating the rule of inter-
national law as to blockade, expressly declares that “‘block-
ades, in order to be binding, must be effective; that is to
say, maintained by force sufficient really to prevent access
to the coast of the enemy. .

[Here followed detailed statements that the German coasts were
open to trade with the Scandinavian countries, that German naval
vessels cruised freely both in the North Sea and the Baltic and
took prizes, and that the British Government itself had issued
certain orders that showed the ineffectiveness of the blockade.

Referring to the incidental blockade of neutral ports, the Ameri-
can note said:]

It is a matter of common knowledge that Great Britain
exports and re-exports large quantities of merchandise to

233
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Holland, whose ports, so
far as American commerce is concerned, she regards as
blockaded. In fact, the British note of August 13 itself
indicates that the British exports of many articles, such
as cotton, lubricating oil, tobacco, cocoa, coffee, rice, wheat
flour, barley, spices, tea, copra, etc., to these countries
have greatly exceeded the British exports for the corre-
sponding period of 1914. The note also shows that there
has been an important British trade with these countries
in many other articles, such as machinery, beef, butter, cot-
ton waste, etc.

Finally, there is no better settled principle of the law
of nations than that which forbids the blockade of neutral
ports in time of war. The Declaration of London, though
not regarded as binding upon the signatories because not
ratified by them, has been expressly adopted by the British
Government without modification as to blockade in the
British Order in Council of October 29, 1914. Article 18
of the Declaration declares specifically that “The block-
ading forces must not bar access to neutral ports or coasts.”

[Here followed citations from authorities and «a quotation from

Sir Edward Grey’s own earlier definitions of blockade, as well as
prize court decisions, after which the note said:]

Without mentioning the other customary elements of
a regularly imposed blockade, such as notification of the
particular coast line invested, the imposition of the penalty
of confiscation, etc., which are lacking in the present Brit-
ish “blockade” policy, it need only be pointed out that,
measured by the universally conceded tests above set forth,
the present British measures cannot be regarded as con-
stituting a blockade in law, in practice, or in effect.

It is incumbent upon the United States Government,
therefore, to give the British Government notice that the
blockade, which they claim to have instituted under the
Order in Council of March 11, cannot be recognized as
a legal blockade by the United States.

234
Woodrow Wilson

Since the Government of Great Britain has laid much
emphasis on the ruling of the Supreme Court of the United
States in the Springbok case, that goods of contraband
character seized while going to the neutral port of Nassau,
though actually bound for the blockaded ports of the south,
were subject to condemnation, it is not inappropriate to
direct attention to the British view of this case in England
prior to the present war, as expressed by Sir Edward Grey
in his instructions to the British delegates to the London
Conference in 1908:

It is exceedingly doubtful whether the decision of the Supreme
Court was in reality meant to cover a case of blockade running in
which no question of contraband arose. Certainly if such was the
intention, the decision would pro tanto be in conflict with the
practice of the British courts. His Majesty’s Government sees no

reason for departing from that practice, and you should endeavor
to obtain general recognition of its correctness.

It may be pointed out also that the circumstances sur-
rounding the Springbok case were essentially different from
those of the present day. The ports of the Confederate
States were effectively blockaded by the naval forces of
the United States, though no neutral ports were closed,
and a continuous voyage through a neutral port required
an all-sea voyage terminating in an attempt to pass the
blockading squadron.

[The demand of Great Britain that aggrieved American citizens
should seek redress in British prize-courts instead of through
diplomatic channels, was refused with the following argument:]

They (the cases) result from acts committed by the
British naval authorities upon the high seas, where the
jurisdiction over neutral vessels is acquired solely by inter-
national law. Vessels of foreign nationality, flying a neu-
tral flag and finding their protection in the country of that
flag, are seized without facts warranting a reasonable sus-
picion that they are destined to blockaded ports of the
enemy or that their cargoes are contraband. The officers

2865
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

appear to find their justification in the Orders in Council

and regulations of the British Government, in spite of the

fact that in many of the present cases the Orders in Coun-
cil and the regulations are themselves complained of as
contrary to international law. ‘Yet the very courts which,
it is said, are to dispense justice to dissatisfied claimants
are bound by the Orders in Council. . . . How can
a tribunal fettered by municipal enactments declare itself
emancipated from their restrictions and at liberty to apply
the rules of international law with freedom? The very
laws and regulations which bind the court are now mat-
ters of dispute between the Government of the United
States and that of His Britannic Majesty. . . . There
is, furthermore, a real and far-reaching injury for which
prize courts offer no means of reparation. It is the dis-
astrous effect of the methods of the allied Governments
upon the general right of the United States to enjoy its
international trade free from unusual and arbitrary limita-
tions imposed by belligerent nations. Unwarranted delay
and expense in bringing vessels into port for search and
investigation upon mere suspicion has a deterrent effect
upon trade ventures, however lawful they may be, which
cannot be adequately measured in damages. . . .
There is another ground why American citizens cannot
submit their wrongs arising out of undue detentions and
seizures to British prize courts for reparation. It is the
manner in which British courts obtain jurisdiction of such
cases. . . . Municipal regulations in violation of tlie
international rights of another nation cannot be extended
to the vessels of the latter on the high seas so as to justify
a belligerent nation bringing them into its ports, and,
having illegally brought them within its territorial jurisdic-
tion, compelling them to submit to the domestic laws of
that nation. Jurisdiction obtained in such a manner is
contrary to those principles of justice and equity which all
nations should respect. . . . The Government of the

236
Woodrow Wilson

United States has, therefore, viewed with surprise and con-
cern the attempt of His Majesty’s Government to confer
upon the British prize courts jurisdiction by this illegal
exercise of force. 2

This Government is advised that vessels and cargoes
brought in for examination are released only upon con-
dition that costs and expenses incurred in the course of
such unwarranted procedure, such as pilotage, unlading
costs, etc., be paid by the claimants or on condition that
they sign a waiver of right to bring claims against the
British Government for these exactions. This Government
is loath to believe that such ungenerous treatment will
continue to be accorded American citizens by the Govern-
ment of His Britannic Majesty, but in order that the posi-
tion of the United States Government may be clearly
understood, I take this opportunity to inform Your Ex-
cellency that this Government denies that the charges inci-
dent to such detentions are rightfully imposed upon inno-
cent trade or that any waiver of indemnity exacted from
American citizens under such conditions of duress can
preclude them from obtaining redress through diplomatic
channels or by whatever other means may be open to
them. . . .

I believe it has been conclusively shown that the methods
employed by Great Britain to obtain evidence of enemy
destination of cargoes bound for neutral ports and to im-
pose a contraband character upon such cargoes are without
justification; that the blockade, upon which such methods
are partly founded, is ineffective, illegal, and indefensible;
that the judicial procedure offered as a means of reparation
for an international injury is inherently defective for the
purpose; and that in many cases jurisdiction is asserted in
violation of the law of nations. The United States, there-
fore, cannot submit to the curtailment of its neutral rights
by these measures, which are admittedly retaliatory, and
therefore illegal, in conception and in nature, and intended

237
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

to punish the enemies of Great Britain for alleged illegali-
ties on their part. The United States might not be in a
position to object to them if its interests and the interests
of all neutrals were unaffected by them, but, being affected,
it cannot with complacence suffer further subordination of
its rights to the plea that the exceptional geographic posi-
tion of the enemies of Great Britain require or justify op-
pressive and illegal practices.

The Government of the United States desires, therefore,
to impress most earnestly upon His Majesty’s Govern-
ment that it must insist that the relations between it and
His Majesty’s Government be governed, not by a policy
of expediency, but by those established rules of interna-
tional conduct upon which Great Britain in the past has
held the United States to account when the latter nation
was a belligerent engaged in a struggle for national exist-
ence. It is of the highest importance to neutrals not only
of the present day but of the future that the principles of
international right be maintained unimpaired. :

This task of championing the integrity of neutral rights,
which have received the sanction of the civilized world
against the lawless conduct of belligerents arising out of
the bitterness of the great conflict which is now wasting the
countries of Europe, the United States unhesitatingly as-
sumes, and to the accomplishment of that task it will devote
its energies, exercising always that impartiality which from
the outbreak of the war it has sought to exercise in its rela-
tions with the warring nations.

Rospert Lansina.

238
Woodrow Wilson

Witson’s First Note ro GerMANY oN SINKING OF THE
“LUSITANIA”

[May 7, 1915, the Cunard steamship Lusitania, bound to England

from New York, was torpedoed by a German submarine off

Kinsale Head, Ireland, and sank almost immediately, causing the
loss of more than 1,000 lives. President Wilson’s note was:]

DepartMENT or State,

Wasuinaton, May 18, 1915.
To Ambassador Gerard:

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 of American rights on the high seas which culmi-
nated in the torpedoing and sinking of the British steam-
ship Lusitania on May 7, 1915, by which over 100 Ameri-
can 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 under-
standing 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, con-
stitute 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 matters
of international right, and particularly with regard to the
freedom of the seas; having learned to recognize the Ger-
man views and the German influence in the field of inter-

289
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

national obligation as always engaged upon the side of
justice and humanity; and having understood the instruc-
tions of the Imperial German Government to its naval com-
manders to be upon the same plane of humane action pre-
scribed by the naval codes of other nations, the Government
of the United States was loath to believe—it cannot now
bring itself to believe—that these acts, so absolutely con-
trary 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 Government 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 vindi-
cate 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 be-
yond the ordinary methods of warfare at sea, in the procla-
mation of a war zone from which they have warned neutral
ships to keep away. This Government has already taken
occasion to inform the Imperial German Government that
it cannot admit the adoption of such measures or such a
warning of danger to operate as in any degree an abbrevia-
tion of the rights of American shipmasters or of American
citizens bound on lawful errands as passengers on merchant
ships of belligerent nationality; and that it must hold the
Imperial German Government to a strict accountability for
any infringement of those rights, intentional or incidental.
It does not understand the Imperial German Government
to question those rights. It assumes, on the contrary, that

240
Woodrow Wilson

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, cannot
lawfully or rightfully be put in jeopardy by the capture
or destruction of an unarmed merchantman, and recognize
also, as all other nations do, the obligation to take the usual
precaution 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 hu-
manity, which all modern opinion regards as impera ‘ve.
It is practically impossible for the officers of a subma.ine
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 cannot put a prize crew on board
of her, they cannot sink her without leaving her crew and
all on board of her to the mercy of the sea in her small
boats. These facts it is understood 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 re-
ceived. Manifestly submarines cannot be used against mer-
chantmen, 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

241
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

rights in what should be the well-justified confidence that
their lives will not be endangered by acts done in clear vio-
lation of universally acknowledged international obliga-
tions, and certainly in the confidence that their own Gov-
ernment 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 zones 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 sot 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 Im-
perial German Embassy at Washington addressed 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 pos-
sibly be accepted as an excuse or palliation for that act or
as an abatement of the responsibility for its commission.
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 cannot believe that the commanders of the vessels
which committed these acts of lawlessness did so except
under a misapprehension of the orders issued by the Im-
perial German naval authorities. It takes it for granted
that, at least within the practical possibilities of every such
ease, the commanders even of submarines were expected tr

242
Woodrow Wilson

do nothing that would involve 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 ex-
pects, 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 with-
out 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 Ger-
man 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 be-
tween the United States and the Kingdom 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, cannot justify or excuse a practice, the natural
and necessary effect of which is to subject neutral nations
and neutral persons to new and immeasurable 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 citi-
zens and of safeguarding their free exercise and enjoyment.

Bryan.

248
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

Witson’s Seconp anp Tuirp Notes To GERMANY ON SINK-
Inc or “Lusrrania” anp OrHer ATTACKS ON
American Lire anp Property aT Sea

[Germany’s reply (May 28, 1915) to the first note was conciliatory
but unsatisfactory. It set up the contention that the Lusitania
had been armed. It alleged also that the rapid sinking was due
not to the torpedo, but to the explosion of ammunition. The note
asked for permission to reserve a final statement pending the
American reply to these and several other points of contention.
On June 1 followed Germany’s explanation of attacks on the
American cargo-steamships Gulflight and Cushing. The American
reply was:]

DepaRTMENT oF State,

Wasuineton, June 9, 1915.

To Ambassador Gerard (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 Govy-
ernment concerning the attacks on the American steamers
Cushing and Gulflight. I am now instructed by my Gov-
ernment to communicate the following reply:

The Government of the United States notes with gratifi-
cation the full recognition by the Imperial German Govern-
ment, in discussing the cases of the Cushing and the
Gulflight, 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 air craft 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 it requests,

aL
Woodrow Wilson

full information concerning the attack on the steamer
Cushing.

With regard to the sinking of the steamer Falaba, by
which an American citizen lost 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 circum-
stances. 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. Noth-
ing but actual forcible resistance or continued efforts to
escape by flight when ordered to stop for the purpose of
visit on the part of the merchantman has ever been held to
forfeit the lives of her passengers or crew. The Govern-
ment 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 himself 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 Lusi-
tania, adverts at some length to certain information whick
the Imperial German Government has received with regarc.
to the character and outfit of that vessel, and Your Ex-
cellency expresses the fear that this information may not
have been brought to the attention of the Government of
the United States. It is stated in the note that the Lusi-
tania was undoubtedly equipped with masked guns, supplied
with trained gunners and special ammunition, transporting

246
Woodrow Wilson d

troops from Canada, carrying a cargo not permitted under
the laws of the United States to a vessel also carrying pas-
sengers, and serving, in virtual effect, as an auxiliary to
the naval forces of Great Britain. Fortunately, these are
matters concerning which the Government of the United
States is in a position to give the Imperial German Govern-
ment 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 performed that duty and enforced its statutes with
scrupulous vigilance through its regularly constituted offi-
cials. It is able, therefore, to assure the Imperial German
Government that it has been misinformed. If the Imperial
German Government should deem itself to be in possession
of convincing evidence that the officials of the Government
of the United States did not perform these duties with
thoroughness, the Government of the United States sin-
cerely 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 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

246
Woodrow Wilson

cases, principles which lift it, as the Imperial German
Government will no doubt be quick to recognize and ac-
knowledge, out of the class of ordinary subjects of diplo-
matic 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 thou-
sand souls who had no part or lot in the conduct of the
war, was torpedoed and sunk without so much as a chal-
lenge or a warning, and that men, women, and children
were sent to their death in circumstances unparalleled in
modern warfare. The fact that more than one hundred
American citizens were among those who perished 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 Government of the
United States conceives that it has incurred in this tragic
occurrence, and to the indisputable principle upon which
that responsibility rests. The Government of the United
States is contending for something much greater than mere
rights of property or privilegés of commerce. It is con-
tending for nothing less high and sacred than the rights
of humanity, which every Government honors itself in re-
specting and which no Government is justified in resigning
on behalf of those under its care and authority. Only her
actual resistance to capture or refusal to stop when ordered
to do so for the purpose 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 principle the Government of the United States under-
stands 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

247
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

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 intimation
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 Govern-
ment of Great Britain by which the character and condi-
tions of the war upon the sea may be changed. The Gov-
ernment 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 justification for
the past acts of its commanders at sea, the Government of
the United States confidently looks to see the justice and
humanity of the Government of Germany vindicated 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 Government
on the 15th of May, and relies in these representations upon
the principles of humanity, the universally recognized
understandings of international law, and the ancient friend-
ship of the German nation.

The Government of the United States cannot admit that
the proclamation of a war zone from which neutral ships

248
Woodrow Wilson

have been warned to keep away may be made to operate
as in any degree an abbreviation of the rights either of
American shipmasters or of American citizens bound on
lawful errands as passengers on merchant ships of bel-
ligerent nationality. It does not understand the Imperial
German Government to question those rights. It under-
stands it, also, to accept as established beyond question
the principle that the lives of noncombatants cannot law-
fully or rightfully be put in jeopardy by the capture or
destruction 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 there-
fore deems it reasonable to expect that the Imperial Ger-
man Government will adopt the measures necessary to put
these principles into practice in respect of the safeguarding
of American lives and American ships, and asks for assur-
ances that this will be done.
Rosert Lansina.

[Germany’s reply (July 8) was increasingly conciliatory, but
remained unsatisfactory on the main issue. It dwelt on Great
Britain’s illegal blockade and offered to grant complete immunity
to passenger ships under the control of the American Government
and distinguished by special marks. The Americgn reply was:]

DeparTMENT oF StaTE,
Wasuincon, July 21, 1915.

To Ambassador Gerard (Berlin):

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 consideration of
the Government of the United States, and it regrets to be
obliged to say that it has found it very unsatisfactory,
because it fails to meet the real differences between the two

249
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

Governments and indicates no way in which the accepted
principles of law and humanity may be applied in the grave
matter in cotroversy, but proposes, on the contrary, ar-
rangements 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 Government
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 prin-
ciple that the high seas are free, that the character and
cargo of a merchantman must first be ascertained before
she can lawfully be seized or destroyed, and that the lives
of non-combatants may in no case be put in jeopardy un-
less the vessel resists or seeks to escape after being sum-
moned to submit to examination; for a belligerent act of
retaliation is per se an act beyond the law, and the de-
fense 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 neutral 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 can not discuss the policy of the Gov-
ernment of Great Britain with regard to neutral trade ex-
cept 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

250
Woodrow Wilson

naval commanders. Illegal 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 hu-
manity, are manifestly indefensible when they deprive neu-
trals of their acknowledged rights, particularly when they
violate the right to life itself. If a belligerent can not
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 dictate that the practice be discontinued. If per-
sisted in it would in such circumstances constitute an un-
pardonable 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 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 can not
have had in view when the existing rules of international
law were formulated, and it is ready to make every reason-
able allowance for these novel and unexpected aspects of
war at sea; but it can not consent to abate any essential or
fundamental right of its people because of a mere altera-
tion 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 obligation of
belligerents to find a way to adapt the new circumstances
to them.

The events of the past two months have clearly indicated
that it is possible and practicable to conduct such sub-
marine 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 possi-
bility by German naval commanders. It is manifestly pos-
sible, therefore, to lift the whole practice of submarine

261
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

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 retaliation
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 can not believe that the
Imperial Government will longer refrain from disavowing
the wanton act of its naval commander in sinking the Lusi-
tania or from offering reparation for the American lives
lost, so far as reparation can be made for a needless destruc-
tion of human life by an illegal act. -

The Government of the United States, while not in-
different to the friendly spirit in which it is made, can not
accept the suggestion of the Imperial German Government
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 times of calmer counsels every na-
tion 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 co-operation of the Imperial German
Government at this time when co-operation 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

262
Woodrow Wilson

even before the present war ends. It can be. The Govern-
ment of the United States not only feels obliged to insist
upon it, by whomsoever violated or ignored, in the protec-
tion of its own citizens, but is also deeply interested in
seeing it made practicable between the belligerents them-
selves, 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
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 contraven-
tion of those rights must be regarded by the Government
of the United States, when they affect American citizens,
as deliberately unfriendly.

Lansina.

Germany Promises Tuat Liners SHatt Nor Be Sunk
Witnout WarNING

[Soon after the third note on the submarine issue, Germany
conveyed to the United States Government its decision to modify
submarine warfare to remove American causes of offense.

August 19, 1915, the White Star liner Arabic, bound from Liver-
pool to New York, was torpedoed and sunk off Fastnet with the
loss of some lives, including Americans. August 24, 1915, while
the investigation still was unfinished, the German Ambassador in
Washington promised full satisfaction. September 1 the German
Ambassador informed the State Department officially that before
the Arabic sinking, and as a result of the American contentions
in the Lusitania case, German submarine commanders had been
instructed to attack no liners without warning. October 5 the
Ambassador stated to the American Government that the orders
had been made so stringent that a recurrence was out of the
question. October 20 Germany forwarded certified copies of the
Official examination of the submarine’s crew. The consensus of

253
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

these was that while the submarine was sinking a British cargo
vessel which she had captured, a large steamship (not known by
them at the time to be the Arabic,) approached as if to ram.
The testimony of the Arabic’s officers was positively that there had
been no intention of attacking the submarine, which they declared
had not been seen by them. The testimony also developed the
fact that the Arabic, which had sighted the sinking cargo steamer
first from a distance of about 7 miles, had approached to a distance
estimated variously as 3 miles to 1144 miles, and that she began a
zig-zag course at a distance of about 4 miles,

October 5 (before these papers reached America) Germany
informed the United States that while the submarine commander
had believed that the Arabic had approached to ram him, the
German government did not doubt the good faith of the Arabic’s
officers in their: testimony and that, therefore, the attack on the
liner was a violation of instructions, that the act was regretted
and disavowed, and that indemnity would be paid for the American
lives lost. October 20 this declaration was repeated.

November 7 the Italian steamship Ancona was sunk by an
Austrian submarine in the Mediterranean and on December 6,
1915, President Wilson sent the following note to Austria:]

Wiuson’s Nore to Austria on Ancona AFFAIR
DEPARTMENT oF STATE,
Wasuineton, December 6, 1915.
To Ambassador Penfield (Vienna):

Please deliver a note to the Minister of Foreign Affairs,
textually as follows:

Reliable information obtained from American and other
survivors who were passengers on the steamship Ancona
shows that on Nov. 7 a submarine flying the Austro-Hun-
garian flag fired a solid shot toward the steamship, that
thereupon the Ancona attempted to escape, but, being over-
hauled by the submarine, she stopped, that after a brief
period and before the crew and passengers were all able
to take to the boats the submarine fired a number of shells
at the vessel and finally torpedoed and sank her while there
were yet many persons on board, and that by gunfire and
foundering of the vessel a large number of persons lost their
lives or were seriously injured, among whom were citizens
of the United States.

254,
Woodrow Wilson

The public statement of the Austro-Hungarian Admiralty

has been brought to the attention of the Government of the
United States and received careful consideration. This
»statement substantially confirms the principal declaration
of the survivors, as it admits that the Ancona, after being
shelled, was torpedoed and sunk while persons were still
on board.

The Austro-Hungarian Government has been advised,
through the correspondence which has passed between the
United States and Germany, of the attitude of the Govern-
ment of the United States as to the use of submarines in
attacking vessels of commerce, and the acquiescence of Ger-
many in that attitude, yet with full knowledge on the part
of the Austro-Hungarian Government of the views of the
Government of the United States as expressed in no un-
certain terms to the ally of Austria-Hungary, the com-
mander of the submarine which attacked the Ancona failed
to put in a place of safety the crew and passengers of the
vessel which they purposed to destroy because, it is pre-
sumed, of the impossibility of taking it into port as a prize
of war.

The Government of the United States considers that the
commander violated the principles of international law and.
of humanity by shelling and torpedoing the Ancona before
the persons on board had been put in a place of safety or
even given sufficient time to leave the vessel. The conduct
of the commander can only be characterized as wanton
slaughter of defenseless noncombatants, since at the time
when the vessel was shelled and torpedoed she was not, it
appears, resisting or attempting to escape, and no other
reason is sufficient to excuse such an attack, not even the
possibility of rescue.

The Government of the United States is forced, there-
fore, to conclude either that the commander of the sub-
marine acted in violation of his instructions or that the
Imperial and Royal Government failed to issue instruc-

266
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

tions to the commanders of its submarines in accordance
with the law of nations and the principles of humanity. The
Government of the United States is unwilling to believe the
latter alternative and to credit the Austro-Hungarian Gov-
ernment with an intention to permit its submarines to de-
stroy the lives of helpless men, women and children. It
prefers to believe that the commander of the submarine com-
mitted this outrage without authority and contrary to
the general or special instructions which he had re-
ceived.

As the good relations of the two countries must rest upon
a common regard for law and humanity, the Government
of the United States cannot be expected to, dc otherwise
than to demand that the Imperial and Royal Government
denounce the sinking of the Ancona as an illegal and in-
defensible act; that the officer who perpetrated the deed be
punished, and that reparation by the payment of an
indemnity be made for the citizens of the United
States who were killed or injured by the attack on the
vessel.

The Government of the United States expects that the
Austro-Hungarian Government, appreciating the gravity of
the case, will accede to its demand promptly, and it rests
this expectation on the belief that the Austro-Hungarian
Government will not sanction or defend an act which is
condemned by the world as inhumane and barbarous, which
is abhorrent to all civilized nations, and which has caused
the death of innocent American citizens.

Lansine.

[The Austrian reply was eminently unsatisfactory and asked for
more specifications and proofs, but after some irritating corre-
spondence announced that the commander of the submarine had
been punished.

March 24, 1916, the British channel steamer Sussex, bound from
Folkestone, England, to Dieppe, France, was torpedoed and after
full investigation the United States sent the following communica-
tion to Germany:]

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Woodrow Wilson

Witson’s Note on Sussex AFFAIR AND oN GENERAL SUB-
MARINE Warrare Acatnst MERCHANT SHIPS

DEpPaRTMENT oF STATE,
Wasuinaton, April 18, 1916.
To Ambassador Gerard (Berlin):

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 submarines, and
particularly in regard to the disastrous explosion which on
March 24, last, wrecked the French steamship Sussex in
the English Channel. I have now the honor to deliver,
under instruction from my Government, the following re-
ply 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 Government
has drawn from that information it regards as confirmed
by the circumstances set forth in Your Excellency’s note
of the 10th instant. On the 24th of March, 1916, at about
2.50 o’clock in the afternoon, the unarmed steamer Sussez,
with 825 or more passengers on board, among whom were
a number of American citizens, was torpedoed while cross-
ing 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, including citizens of the United
States, were killed or injured.

A careful, detailed, and scrupulously impartial investiga-
tion by naval and military officers of the United States has
conclusively established the fact that the Sussex was tor-
pedoed without warning or summons to surrender and that

257
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

the torpedo by which she was struck was of German manu-
facture. In the view of the Government of the United
States these facts from the first made the conclusion that
the torpedo was fired by a German submarine unavoidable.
It now considers that conclusion substantiated by the state-
ments of Your Excellency’s note. A full statement of the
facts upon which the Government of the United States has
based its conclusion is inclosed.

The Government of the United States, after having given
careful consideration to the note of the Imperial Govern-
ment of the 10th of April, regrets to state that the impres-
sion made upen it by the statements, and proposals con-
tained in that note is that the Imperial Government has
failed to appreciate the gravity of the situation 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 practice 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 vio-
lated 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 ade-
quate 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 ex-
amples of the inhumanity of submarine warfare as the com-
manders 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

258
Woodrow Wilson

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 destinations 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.

The Imperial Government will recall that when, in Feb-
ruary, 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 bel-
ligerent, to keep out of the waters thus proscribed or to
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 constant gross and
palpable violations of the accepted law of nations, par-
ticularly if submarine craft were to be employed as its
instruments, inasmuch as the rules prescribed by that law,
rules founded on the principles 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 ves-
sels. 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 that no
right to close any part of the high seas could lawfully be
asserted by the Imperial Government in the circumstances
then existing. The law of nations in these matters, upon
which the Government of the United States based that pro-
test, is not of recent origin or founded upon merely arbi-
trary principles 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

259
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

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, and assuring -
the Government 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 noncombatants.

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 Govy-
‘ernment of the United States, the commanders of the Im-
perial Government’s undersea vessels have carried on prac-
tices of such ruthless destruction which have made it more
.and more evident as the months have gone by that the Im-
perial 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 Government 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 permitted its undersea com-
manders to disregard those assurances with entire impunity.
_As recently as February last it gave notice that it would
regard all armed merchantmen 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 mer-
'chantmen attacked have been warned and summoned to
: surrender before being fired on or torpedoed; sometimes
.their passengers and crews have been vouchsafed the poor

260
Woodrow Wilson

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 noncom-
batants, passengers, and crew have been destroyed whole-
sale and in a manner which the Government of the United
States can not but regard as wanton and without the slight-
est color of justification, 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 circum-
stances of an unprecedented war and to be guided by senti-
ments of very genuine friendship for the people and Gov-
ernment of Germany. It has accepted the successive ex-
planations and assurances of the Imperial Government 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 made every allowance for unpre-
cedented conditions and has been willing to wait until the
facts became unmistakable and were susceptible of only one
interpretation.

261
Presidential Messages, Addresses and Staie Papers

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 commerce, is,
of necessity, because of the very character of the vessels
employed and the very methods of attack which their em-
ployment of course involves, utterly incompatible with the
principles of humanity, the long-established and incontro-
vertible 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 ves-
sels of commerce by the use of submarines without regard
to what the Government of the United States must consider
the sacred and indisputable rules of international law and
the universally recognized dictates of humanity, the Gov-
ernment of the United States is at last forced to the con-
clusion 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 sub-
marine warfare against passenger and freight-carrying ves-
sels, the Government of the United States can have no
choice but to sever diplomatic relations with the 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.

Lansina.

{April 19, 1916, the President appeared before Congress and
delivered the following address (Special Message) :]

Wizson’s Appress To Conaress ON THE Sussex AFFAIR

Gentlemen of the Congress:
A situation has arisen in the foreign relations of the

262
Woodrow Wilson

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, par-
ticularly if submarine craft were to be employed as its
instruments, inasmuch as the rules prescribed by that law,
rules founded upon principles of humanity and established
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
that 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 government. The law of na-
tions in these matters, upon which the Government of the
United States based its protest, is not of recent origin or
founded upon merely arbitrary principles set up by con-
vention. It is based, on the contrary, upon manifest and
imperative principles of humanity and has long been estab-
lished with the approval and by the express assent of all
civilized nations.

Notwithstanding the earnest protest of our Government,
the Imperial German Government at once proceeded to
carry out the policy it had announced. It expressed the
hope that the dangers involved, at any rate the dangers to

268
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

neutral vessels, would be reduced to a minimum by the in-
structions which it had issued to its submarine commanders,
and assured 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 non-com-
batants.

What has actually happened in the year which has since
elapsed has shown that those hopes were not justified, 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 pro-
test of this Government, the commanders of German under-
sea 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 en-
counter them, in a way that has grown more and more ruth-
less, 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 neu-
tral ownership bound from neutral port to neutral port,
have been destroyed along with vessels of belligerent owner-
ship in constantly increasing numbers. Sometimes the mer-
chantman attacked has been warned and summoned to
surrender before being fired on or torpedoed; sometimes
passengers or crews have been vouchsafed the poor se-
curity of being allowed to take to the ship’s boats before
she was sent to the bottom. But again and again no warn-
ing has been given, no escape even to the ship’s boats al-
lowed to those on board. What this Government foresaw
must happen has happened. Tragedy has followed trag-
edy on the seas in such fashion, with such attendant cir-
cumstances, as to make it grossly evident that warfare of
such a sort, if warfare it be, can not be carried on without

264
Woodrow Wilson

the most palpable violation of the dictates alike of right and
of humanity. Whatever the disposition and intention of
the Imperial German Government, it has manifestly 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 neu-
tral governments of the world that it had reason to be-
lieve that the Government of Great Britain had armed all
merchant vessels of British ownership and had given them
decret orders to attack any submarine of the enemy they
might encounter upon the seas, and that the Imperial Ger-
man Government felt justified in the circumstances in treat-
ing all armed merchantmen of belligerent 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 merchantmen to carry arms for pro-
tection and to use them to repel attack, although to use
them, in such circumstances, at their own risk; but the
Imperial German Government claimed the right to set these
understandings aside in circumstances which it deemed ex-
traordinary. 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 operation of its submarines carried the plain implica-
tion that at least vessels which were not armed would still
be exempt from destruction without warning and that per-
sonal safety would be accorded their passengers and crews;
but even that limitation, if it was ever practicable to ob-
serve 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 commanders

265
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

to disregard those assurances with entire impunity. Great
liners like the Lusitania and the Arabic and mere ferry-
boats 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-combatants, 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
nationalities 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 at-
tacked and destroyed has grown month by month until the
ominous toll has mounted into the hundreds.

One of the latest and most shocking instances of this
method of warfare was that of the destruction of the French
cross channel steamer Sussez. It must stand forth, as the
sinking of the steamer Lusitania did, as so singularly trag-
ical and unjustifiable as to constitute a truly terrible ex-
ample of the inhumanity of submarine warfare as the com-
manders of German vessels have for the past twelvemonth
been conducting it. If this instance stood alone, some ex-
planation, some disavowal by the German Government,
some evidence of criminal mistake or wilful disobedience
on the part of the commander 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 Gov-
ernment 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

266
Woodrow Wilson

patient. At every stage of this distressing experience of
tragedy after tragedy in which its own citizens were in-
volved it has sought to be restrained from any extreme
course of action or of protest by a thoughtful consideration
of the extraordinary circumstances of this unprecedented
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 suc-
cessive explanations and assurances of the Imperial German
Government as given in entire sincerity and good faith, and
has hoped, even against hope, that it would prove to be pos-
sible for the German Government so to order and control
the acts of its naval commanders as to square its policy with
the prineiples of humanity as embodied in the law of na-
tions. 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 pas-
senger ships. It has therefore become painfully evident
that the position which this Government took at the very
outset is inevitable, namely, that the use of submarines for
the destruction of an enemy’s commerce is of necessity, be-
cause of the very character of the vessels employed and the
very methods of attack which their employment of course
involves, incompatible with the principles of humanity, the
long established and incontrovertible rights of neutrals, and
tthe sacred immunities of noncombatants.

I have deemed it my duty, therefore, to say to the Im-
perial German Government that if it is still its purpose
to prosecute relentless and indiscriminate warfare against
vessels of commerce by the use of submarines, notwith-
standing the now demonstrated impossibility of conducting

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

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
abandonment of its present methods of warfare against.
passenger 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
spokesman 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 Ger-
man 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 justice of our
demands and meet them in the spirit in which they are
made.

[May 4, 1916, Germany in a long reply informed the American
Government that in order to avoid further offense to the United
States, it had been decided to limit the use of its effective weapon
and the German submarine commanders had been ordered to act

268
Woodrow Wilson

only in accordance with the principles of visit and search, and
that vessels were not to be sunk without first securing the lives
of their occupants unless they attempted to escape or offer resist-
ance. The note concluded with the statement that Germany
expected confidently that the United States would demand and
insist that the British Government observe the rules of international
law. To this the United States replied:]

Wixson’s Note Wuicu Crosep Susmarine ContTROVERSY

For Ning Monrus

DepartMent oF State,
Wasuinaton, May 8, 1916.

To Ambassador Gerard (Berlin):

You are instructed to deliver to the Minister of Foreign
Affairs a communication textually as follows:

“The note of the Imperial German Government under
date of May 4, 1916, has received careful consideration
by the Government of the United States. It is especially
noted, as indicating the purpose of the Imperial Govern-
ment as to the future, that it ‘is prepared to do its utmost
to confine the operations of the war for the rest of its
duration to the fighting forces of the belligerents, and
that it is determined to impose upon all its commanders
at sea the limitations of the recognized rules of international
law upon which the Government of the United States has _
insisted. Throughout the months which have elapsed since
the Imperial Government announced, on February 4, 1915,
its submarine policy, now happily abandoned, the Govern-
ment of the United States has been constantly guided and
restrained by motives of friendship in its patient efforts
to bring to an amicable settlement the critical questions
arising from that policy. Accepting the Imperial Govern-
ment’s declaration of its abandonment of the policy which
has so seriously menaced the good relations between the
two countries, the Government of the United States will
rely upon a scrupulous execution henceforth of the now
altered policy of the Imperial Government, such as will
remove the principal danger to an interruption of the good

269
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

relations existing between the United States and Ger-
many.

“The Government of the United States feels it necessary
to state that it takes it for granted that the Imperial Ger-
man Government does not intend to imply that the main-
tenance of its newly announced policy is in any way con-
tingent upon the course or result of diplomatic negotiations
between the Government of the United States and any other
belligerent Government, notwithstanding the fact that cer-
tain 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 possible misunderstanding,
the Government of the United States notifies the Imperial
Government that it cannot for a moment entertain, much
less discuss, a suggestion that respect by German naval
authorities for the rights of citizens of the United States
upon the high seas should in any way or in the slightest
degree be made contingent upon the conduct of any other
Government affecting the rights of neutrals and non-
combatants. Responsibility in such matters is single, not
joint; absolute, not relative.”

Lansine.

[Epvrrortat Note: This was the final diplomatic note in
the submarine controversy. Germany’s pledge that mer-
chant vessels would not be sunk without warning and with-
out saving human lives was observed from May 4, 1916, to
January 81,1917. Then the submarine war was renewed,
with increased disregard of neutral rights; and President
Wilson abandoned note-writing and severed diplomatic re-
lations. See page 366.]

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Woodrow Wilson

Wixson’s Appress Berore THE Leacve To Enrorce Peace,
Wasnineton, May 27, 1916

[Evrrorrau Notz: Leagues of individuals who believed
it possible to “abolish war,” or to “enforce peace,” or to
establish a “world’s court” that would adjudicate inter-
national controversies, had long been in existence. Their
activities increased as the war in Europe went on year after
year, although their proposals were not to become opera-
tive until the existing conflict was over. In the following
address President Wilson expressed his belief that the
United States would be willing to become a partner in any
feasible association of nations formed to guarantee terri-
torial integrity and political independence and to prevent
hasty wars.)

When the invitation to be here to-night 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,
towards 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 in-
terests 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

271

.
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

the globe, has of necessity engulfed many a fair province
of right that lies very near to us. Our own rights as a Na-
tion, the liberties, the privileges, and the property of our
people have been profoundly affected. We are not mere dis-
connected 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 again. And when it does come to an end
we shall be as much concerned as the nations at war to
see peace assume an aspect of permanence, give promise ‘of
days from which the anxiety of uncertainty shall be lifted,
bring some assurance that peace and war shall always here-
after be reckoned part of the common interest of mankind.
We are participants, whether we would or not, in the life
of the world. The interests of all nations are our own
also. We are partners with the rest. What affects man-
kind is inevitably our affair as well as the affairs of the na-
tions of Europe and of Asia.

One observation on the causes of the present war we are
at liberty to make, and to make it may throw some light
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, without warning
to the world, without discussion, without any of the deliber-
ate movements of counsel with which it would seem natural
to approach so stupendous 4 contest. It is probable that
if it had been foreseen just what would happen, just what
alliances would be formed, just what forces arrayed against
one another, those who brought the greatest contest on
would have been glad to substitute conference for force.
If we ourselves had been afforded some opportunity to ap-
prise the belligerents of 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

272
Woodrow Wilson

might have averted the struggle would have been con-
sidered worth weighing and regarding.

And the lesson which the shock of being taken by sur-
prise in a matter so deeply vital to all the nations of the
world has made poignantly clear is, that the peace of the
world must henceforth depend upon a new and more whole-
some 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 oc-
casion in the past been offenders against the law of diplo-
macy 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 neces-
sity and set forward the thinking of the statesmen 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 na-
tions, 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 aggression; that henceforth alli-
ance 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 peo-
ples and of mankind. The nations of the world have be-

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

come each other’s neighbors. It is to their interest that they
should understand each other. In order that they may un-
derstand each other, it is imperative that they should agree
to cooperate in a common cause, and that they should so
act that the guiding 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 another
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 constitutes a
chief part of the passionate conviction of America.

We believe these fundamental things: First, that every
people has a right 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 na-
tions.

So sincerely do we believe in these things that I am
sure that I speak the mind and wish of the people of Amer-
ica 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 itself
that any other nation has. We are willing, on the contrary,
to limit ourselves along with them to a prescribed course

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Woodrow Wilson

of duty and respect for the rights of others which will check
any selfish passion of our own, as it will check any aggres-
sive 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 set-
tlement 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. Sec-
ond, an universal association of the nations to maintain the
inviolate security of the highway of the seas for the com-
mon and unhindered use of all the nations of the world, and
to prevent any war begun either contrary to treaty cove-
nants or without warning and full submission of the causes
to the opinion of the world—a virtual guarantee of ter-
ritorial integrity and political independence.

But I did not come here, let me repeat, to discuss a pro-
gramme. I came only to avow a creed and give expression
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 interest 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
coiamon peace. God grant that the dawn of that day of
frank dealing and of settled peace, concord, and cooperation
may be near at hand! ;

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

Witson’s Appress Berore THE Press Crus, New York,
June 80, 1916

{An informal talk on the Mexican crisis. The American Pun-
itive Expedition—sent across the border in March, in a vain at-
tempt to catch the bandit Villa—had been attacked by Mexican
Government troops at Carrizal, and the National Guard had been
ordered to the border to assist the Regular Army. Rumors of
armed intervention in Mexico were insistent.]

I realize that I have done a very imprudent thing; I
have come to address this thoughtful company of men with-
out any preparation whatever. ... As a matter of fact, I
have been absorbed by the responsibilities which have been
so frequently referred to here to-night, and that preoccupa-
tion has made it impossible for me to forecast even what you
would like to hear me talk about. ...

Mr. Colby said something that was among the few things
I had forecast to say myself. He said that there are certain
things which really it is useless to debate, because they go
as a matter of course.

Of course it is our duty to prepare this Nation to take
care of its honor and of its institutions. Why debate any
- part of that, except the detail, except the plan itself, which
is always debatable?

Of course it is the duty of the Government, which it will
never overlook, to defend the territory and people of this
country. It goes without saying that it is the duty of the
administration to have constantly in mind with the utmost
sensitiveness every point of national honor.

But, gentlemen, after you have said and accepted these
obvious things your program of action is still to be formed.
When will you act and how will you act?

The easiest thing is to strike. The brutal thing is the
impulsive thing. No man has to think before he takes ag-
gressive action; but before a man really conserves the
honor by realizing the ideals of the Nation he has to think
exactly what he will do and how he will do it.

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Woodrow Wilson

Do you think the glory of America would be enhanced
by a war of conauest in Mexico? Do you think that any
act of violence by a powerful nation like this against a
weak and distracted neighbor would reflect distinction upon
the annals of the United States?

Do you think that it is our duty to carry self-defense
to the point of dictation in the affairs of another people?
The ideals of America are written plain upon every page of
American history.

And I want you to know how fully I realize whose ser-
vant I am. I do not own the Government of the United
States, even for the time being. I have no right in the use
of it to express my own passions.

I have no right to express my own ambitions for the de-
velopment of America if those ambitions are not coincident
with the ambitions of the Nation itself.

And I have constantly to remind myself that I am not
the servant of those who wish to enhance the value of their
Mexican investments, but that I am the servant of the rank
and file of the people of the United States.

I get a great many letters, my fellow citizens, from im-
portant and influential men in this country, but I get a
great many other letters. I get letters from unknown men,
from humble women, from people whose names have never
been heard and will never be recorded, and there is but one
prayer in all of these letters: “Mr. President, do not allow
anybody to persuade you that the people of this country
want war with anybody.”

I got off a train yesterday, and as I was bidding good-
by to the engineer he said, in an undertone, “Mr. President,
keep out of Mexico.” And if one man has said that to me
a thousand have said it to me as I have moved about the
country.

If I have opportunity to engage them further in conver-
sation, they say, “Of course, we know that you can not
govern the circumstances of the case altogether, and it may

277
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

be necessary, but for God’s sake do not do it unless it is
necessary.”

I am for the time being the spokesman of such people,
gentlemen. I have not read history without observing that
the greatest forces in the world and the only permanent
forces are the moral forces.

We have the evidence of a very competent witness, name-
ly, the first Napoleon, who said that as he looked back in the
last days of his life upon so much as he knew of human
history he had to record the judgment that force had never
accomplished anything that was permanent.

Force will not accomplish anything that is permanent,
I venture to say, in the great struggle which is now going
on on the other side of the sea. The permanent things
will be accomplished afterwards, when the opinion of man-
kind is brought to bear upon the issues, and the only thing
that will hold the world steady is this same silent, insistent,
all-powerful opinion of mankind.

Force can sometimes hold things steady until opinion
has time to form, but no force that was ever exerted, except
in response to that opinion, was ever a conquering and pre-
dominant force.

I think the sentence in American history that I myself am
proudest of is that in the introductory sentences of the
Declaration of Independence, where the writers say that a
due respect for the opinion of mankind demands that they
state the reasons for what they are about to do.

I venture to say that a decent respect for the opinion
of mankind demanded that those who started the present
European war should have stated their reasons; but they
did not pay any heed to the opinion of mankind, and the
reckoning will come when the settlement comes.

So, gentlemen, I am willing, no matter what my personal
fortunes may be, to play for the verdict of mankind. Per-
sonally, it will be a matter of indifference to me what the
verdict on the 7th of November is, provided I feel any de-

278
Woodrow Wilson

gree of confidence that when a later jury sits I shall get
their judgment in my favor. Not in my favor personally—
what difference does that make?—but in my favor as an
honest and conscientious spokesman of a great nation.

Witson’s ADDRESSES AT THE SaLEsMANSHIP CoNGRESS,
Detroit, Jury 10, 1916

[Continuing his plea, made in earlier addresses, for ex-
pansion of American foreign trade, and commending recent
legislation enacted by Congress. ]

Mr. Chairman, Ladies, and Gentlemen:

It is with a great deal of gratification that I find myself
facing so interesting and important a company as this.
You will readily understand that I have not come here to
make an elaborate address, but I have come here to express
my interest in the objects of this great association, and to
congratulate you on the opportunities which are immediately
ahead of you in handling the business of this country.

These are days of incalculable change, my fellow citizens.
It is impossible for anybody to predict anything that is cer-
tain, in detail, with regard to the future either of this coun-
try or of the world in the large movements of business; but
one thing is perfectly clear, and that is that the United
States will play a new part, and that it will be a part of
unprecedented opportunity and of greatly increased respon-
sibility.

The United States has had a very singular history in re-
spect of its business relationships with the rest of the world.
I have always believed, and I think you have always be-
lieved, that there is more business genius in the United
States than anywhere else in the world; and yet America
has apparently been afraid of touching too intimately the
great processes of international exchange. America, of all

279
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

countries in the world, has been timid; has not until re-
cently, has not until within the last two or three years, pro-
vided itself with the fundamental instrumentalities for play-
ing a large part in the trade of the world. America, which
ought to have had the broadest vision of any nation, has
raised up an extraordinary number of provincial thinkers,
men who thought provincially about business, men who
thought that the United States was not ready to take her
competitive part in the struggle for the peaceful conquest
of the world. For anybody who reflects philosophically
upon the history of this country, that is the most amazing
fact about it.

But the time for provincial thinkers has gone by. We
must play a great part in the world whether we choose it
or not. Do you know the significance of this single fact,
that within the last year or two we have, speaking in large
terms, ceased to be a debtor nation and become a creditor
nation? We have more of the surplus gold of the world
than we ever had before, and our business hereafter is to
be to lend and to help and to promote the great peaceful
enterprises of the world. We have got to finance the world
in some important degree, and those who finance the world
must understand it and rule it with their spirits and with
their minds. We can not cabin and confine ourselves any
longer, and so J said that I came here to congratulate you
upon the great réle that lies ahead of you to play. This is
a salesmanship congress, and hereafter salesmanship will
have to be closely related in its outlook and scope to states-
manship, to international statesmanship. It will have to be
touched with an intimate comprehension of the conditions
of business and enterprise throughout the round globe, be-
cause America will have to place her goods by running her
intelligence ahead of her goods. No amount of mere push,
no amount of mere bustling, or, to speak in the western
language, no amount of mere rustling, no amount of mere
active enterprise, will suffice.

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Woodrow Wilson

There have been two ways of doing business in the world
outside of the lands in which the great manufactures have
been made. One has been to try to force the tastes of the
manufacturing country on the country in which the markets
were being sought, and the other way has been to study the
tastes and needs of the countries where the markets were
being sought and suit your goods to those tastes and needs;
and the latter method has beaten the former method. If
you are going to sell carpets, for example, in India, you
have got to have as good taste as the Indians in the patterns
of the carpets, and that is going some. If you are going
to sell things in tropical countries, they must, rather ob-
viously, be different from those which you sell in cold and
arctic countries. You cannot assume that the rest of the
world is going to wear or use or manufacture what you
wear and use and manufacture. Your raw materials must
be the raw materials that they need, not the raw materials
that you need. Your manufactured goods must be the
manufactured goods which they desire, not those which
other markets have desired. So your business will keep
pace with your knowledge, not of yourself and of your
manufacturing processes, but of them and of their commer-
cial needs. That is statesmanship, because that is relating:
your international activities to the conditions which exist.
in other countries.

If we can once get what some gentlemen are so loath to
give us, a merchant marine! The trouble with some men
is that they are slow in their minds. They do not see; they
do not know the need, and they will not allow you to point
it out to them. If we can once get in a position to deliver
our own goods, then the goods that we have to deliver will
be adjusted to the desires of those to whom we deliver them,
and all the world will welcome America in the great field
of commerce and manufacture.

I was trying to expound in another place the other day
the long way and the short way to get together. The long

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way is to fight. I hear some gentlemen say that they want
to help Mexico, and the way they propose to help her is to
overwhelm her with force. That is the long way to help
Mexico as well as the wrong way. After the fighting you
have a nation full of justified suspicion and animated by
well-founded hostility and hatred, and then will you help
them? Then will you establish cordial business relation-
ships with them? Then will you go in as neighbors and
enjoy their confidence? On the contrary, you will have
shut every door as if it were of steel against you. What
makes Mexico suspicious of us is that she does not believe
as yet that we want to serve her. She believes that we want
to possess her, and she has justification for the belief in
the way in which some of our fellow-citizens have tried to
exploit her privileges and possessions. For my part, I will
not serve the ambitions of these gentlemen, but I will try
to serve all America, so far as intercourse with Mexico is
concerned, by trying to serve Mexico herself. There are
some things that are not debatable. Of course, we have
to defend our border. That goes without saying. Of course,
we must make good our own sovereignty, but we must re-
spect the sovereignty of Mexico. I am one of those—I have
sometimes suspected that there were not many of them—
who believe, absolutely believe, the Virginia Bill of Rights,
which was the model of the old bill of rights, which says
that a people has a right to do anything they please with
their own country and their own government. I am old-
fashioned enough to believe that, and I am going to stand
by that belief. (That is for the benefit of those gentlemen
who wish to butt in.)

Now, I use that as an illustration, my fellow citizens.
What do we all most desire when the present tragical con-
fusion of the world’s affairs is over? We desire perma-
nent peace, do we not? Permanent peace can grow in only
one soil. That is the soil of actual good will, and good will
can not exist without mutual comprehension.

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Woodrow Wilson

This, then, my friends, is the simple message that I bring
you. Lift your eyes to the horizons of business; do not
look too close at the little processes with which you are
concerned, but let your thoughts and your imaginations run
abroad throughout the whole world, and with the inspiration
of the thought that you are Americans and are meant to
carry liberty and justice and the principles of humanity
wherever you go, go out and sell goods that will make the
world more comfortable and more happy, and convert them
to the principles of America.

[A later address the same day, at luncheon]

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen:

I am glad to find myself in Detroit and face to face with
the men who have played the principal part in giving it
distinction throughout the country and throughout the world.
Looking about among you, I see that it is true in this mat-
ter, as in others, that the only men fit for such a job are
young men and men who never grow old. There is the
liveliness of youth in the eyes even of those of you who have
shared with me the painful parting with the hirsute appen-
dage. . . . I have always been inclined to believe that the
business of the world was best understood by those men
who were in the struggle for maintenance not only, but for
success. The man who knows the strength of the tide is the
man who is swimming against it, not the man who is floating
with it. The man who is immersed in the beginnings of
business, who is trying to get his foothold, who is trying to
get other men to believe in him and lend him money and
trust him to make profitable use of that money, is the man
who knows what the business conditions in the United States
are, and I would rather take his counsel as to what ought
to be done for business than the counsel of any established
captain of industry. The captain of industry is looking
backward and the other man is looking forward. The con-

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

ditions of business change with every generation; change
with every decade; are now changing at an almost breath-
less pace, and the men who have made good are not feeling
the tides as the other men are feeling them.

So I invite your thoughts, in what I sincerely believe to
be an entirely nonpartisan spirit, to the democracy of busi-
ness. An act was recently passed in Congress that some
of the most intelligent business men of this country earn-
estly opposed—men whom I knew, men whose character I
trusted, men whose integrity I absolutely believed in. I
refer to the Federal Reserve Act, by which we intended to
take, and succeeded in taking credit out of the control of a
small number of men and: making it available to everybody
who had real commercial assets, and the very men who op-
posed that act, and opposed it conscientiously, now admit
that it saved the country from a ruinous panic when the
stress of war came on, and that it is the salvation of every
average business man who is in the midst of the tides that
I have been trying to describe. ...

The suspicion is beginning to dawn in many quarters that
the average man knows the business necessities of the coun-
try just as well as the extraordinary man does. I believe in
the ordinary man. If I did not believe in the ordinary man
I would move out of a democracy and, if I found an en-
durable monarchy, I would live in it. The very conception
of America is based upon the validity of the judgments of
the average man, and I call you to witness that there have
not been many catastrophes in American history. I call
you to witness that the average judgments of the voters of
the United States have been sound judgments. I call you
to witness that this great impulse of the common opinion
has been a lifting impulse, and not a depressing impulse.
What is the object of associations like that which is gath-
ered here to-day, this Salesmanship Congress? The moral
of it is that a few men can not determine the interests of
a large body of men, and that the only way to determine

284,
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them and advance them is to have a representative assem-
bly chosen by themselves get together and take common
counsel regarding them.

I never went into a committee of any kind upon any im-
portant public matter, or private matter so far as that is
concerned, that I did not come out with an altered judg-
ment and knowing much more about the matter than when
I went in; and not only knowing much more, but knowing
that the common judgment arrived at was better than I
could have suggested when I went in. That is the universal
experience of candid men. If it were not so, there would
be no object in congresses like this. Yet whenever we at-
tempt legislation, we find ourselves in this case: We are
not in the presence of the many who can counsel wisely,
but we are in the presence of the few who counsel too nar-
rowly, and the means by which we have been trying to break
away from that is not by excluding these gentlemen who
constituted the narrow circles of advice, but by associating
them with hundreds of thousands of their fellow citizens.

I have had some say that I was not accessible to them,
and when I inquired into it I found they meant that I did
not personally invite them. They did not know how to
come without being invited, and they did not care to come
if they came upon the same terms with everybody else,
knowing that everybody else was welcome whom I had the
time to confer with.

Am I telling you things unobserved by you? Do you not
know that these things are true? And do you not believe
with me that the affairs of the Nation can be better con-
ducted upon the basis of general counsel than upon the
basis of special counsel? Men are colored and governed by
their occupations and their surroundings and their habits.
If I wanted to change the law radically, I would not consult
a lawyer. If I wanted to change business methods radi-
cally, I would not consult a man who had made a conspicu-
ous success by using the present methods that I wanted to

285
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Paper.

change. Not because I would distrust these men, but be-
cause I would know that they would not change their think-
ing over night, that they would have to go through a long
process of reacquaintance with the circumstances of the
time, the new circumstances of the time, before they could
be converted to my point of view. You get a good deal
more light on the street than you do in the closet. You get
a good deal more light by keeping your ears open among
the rank and file of your fellow citizens than you do in
any private conference whatever. I would rather hear what
the men are talking about on the trains and in the shops
and by the fireside than hear anything else, because I want
guidance and I know I could get it there, and what I am
constantly asking is that men should bring me that coun-
sel, because I am not privileged to determine things inde-
pendently of this counsel. I am your servant, not your
ruler.

One thing that we are now trying to convert the small
circles to that the big circles are already converted to is
that this country needs a merchant marine and ought to
get one. I have found that I had a great deal more resist-
ance when I tried to help business than when I tried to in-
terfere with it. I have had a great deal more resistance
of counsel, of special counsel, when I tried to alter the
things that are established than when I tried to do any-
thing else. We call ourselves a liberal nation, whereas, as
a matter of fact, we are one of the most conservative na-
tions in the world. If you want to make enemies, try to
change something. You know why it is. To do things to-
day exactly the way you did them yesterday saves think-
ing. It does not cost you anything. You have acquired the
habit; you know the routine; you do not have to plan any-
thing, and it frightens you with a hint of exertion to learn
that you will have to do it a different way to-morrow. Un-
til I became a college teacher, I used to think that the young
men were radical, but college boys are the greatest conserva-

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tives I ever tackled in my life, largely because they have
associated too much with their fathers. What you have to
do with them is to take them up upon some visionary height
and show them the map of the world as it is. Do not let
them see their father’s factory. Do not let them see their
father’s countinghouse. Let them see the great valleys teem-
ing with laborious people. Let them see the great struggle
of men in realms they never dreamed of. Let them see the
great emotional power that is in the world, the great am-
bitions, the great hopes, the great fears. Give them some
picture of mankind, and then their father’s business and
every other man’s business will begin to fall into place.
They will see that it is an item and not the whole thing;
and they will sometimes see that the item is not properly
related to the whole, and what they will get interested in
will be to relate the item to the whole, so that it will form
part of the force, and not part of the impediment.

This country, above every country in the world, gentle-
men, is meant to lift; it is meant to add to the forces that
improve. It is meant to add to everything that betters the
world, that gives it better thinking, more honest endeavor, a
closer grapple of man with man, so that we will all be
pulling together like one irresistible team in a single harn-
ess. That is the reason why it seemed wise to substitute
for the harsh processes of the law, which merely lays its
hand on your shoulder after you have sinned and threatens
you with punishment, some of the milder and more helpful
processes of counsel. That is the reason the Federal Trade
Commission was established—so that men would have some
place where they could take counsel as to what the law was
and what the law permitted; and also take counsel as to
whether the law itself was right and advice had not better
be taken as to its alteration. The processes of counsel are
only the processes of accommodation, not the processes of
punishment. Punishment retards but it does not lift up.
Punishment impedes but it does not improve. And we ought

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

to substitute for the harsh processes of the law, wherever
we can, the milder and gentler and more helpful processes
of counsel.

It has been a very great grief to some of us, year after
year, year after year, to see a fundamental thing like the
fiscal policy of the Government with regard to duties on
imports made a football of politics. Why, gentlemen, party
politics ought to have nothing to do with the question of
what is for the benefit of the business of the United States,
and that is the reason we ought to have a tariff commission,
and, I may add, are going to have a tariff commission. But,
then, gentlemen, the trouble will be upon me. The provis-
ion as it stands makes it obligatory upon me not to choose
more than half the commission from any one political party.
The bill does not undertake to say how many political par-
ties there are. That just now is a delicate question. But
I am forbidden to take more than two of the same variety,
and yet the trouble about that is I would like to find men
for that commission who were of no one of the varieties. I
would like to find men who would find out the circumstances
of American business, particularly as it changes and is go-
ing to change with perplexing rapidity in the years imme-
diately ahead of us, without any regard whatever to the
interest of any party whatever, so that we should be able
to legislate upon the facts and upon the large economic as-
pects of those facts without stopping to think which party
it was going to hurt and which party it was going to bene-
fit. But almost everybody in this country wears a label of
some kind, and under the law I suppose I will have to
turn them around and see how they are labeled, how they
are branded; and that is going to be a very great blow to
my spirit and a very great test of my judgment. I hope,
after the results are achieved, ,vu will judge me leniently,
because my desire would be not to have a bipartisan but an
absolutely nonpartisan commission of men who really ap-
plied the tests of scientific analysis of the facts and no

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other tests whatever to the conclusions that they arrived
at... .

I believe that Americans can manufacture goods better
than anybody else; that they can sell goods as honestly as
anybody else; that they can find out the conditions and
meet the conditions of foreign business better than anybody
else, and I want to see them given a chance right away, and
they will be whether I want them to be or not. We have
been trying to get ready for it. The national banks of the
United States, until the recent Currency Act, were held back
by the very terms of the law under which they operated
from some of the most important international transactions.
To my mind that is one of the most amazing facts of our
commercial history. The Congress of the United States
was not willing that the national banks should have a latch-
key and go away from home. They were afraid they would
not know how to get back under cover, and banks from
other countries had to establish branches where American
bankers were doing business, to take care of some of the
most important processes of international exchange. That
is nothing less than amazing, but it is not necessary any
longer. It never was necessary; it was only thought to
be necessary by some eminently provincial statesmen. We
are done with provincialism in the statesmanship of the
United States, and we have got to have a view now and a
horizon as wide as the world itself. And when I look
around upon an alert company like this, it seems to me
in my imagination they are almost straining at the leash.
They are waiting to be let loose upon this great race that is
now going to challenge our abilities. For my part, I shall
look forward to the result with absolute and serene confi-
dence, because the spirit of the United States is an inter-
national spirit, if we conceive it right. This is not the
home of any particular race of men. This is not the home
of any particular set of political traditions. This is a
home the doors of which have been opened from the first

289
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers :
to mankind, to everybody who loved liberty, to everybody
whose ideal was equality of opportunity, to everybody whose
heart was moved by the fundamental instincts and sympa-
thies of humanity. That is America, and now it is as if
the nations of the world, sampled and united here, were in
their new union and new common understanding turning
about to serve the world with all the honest processes of
business and of enterprise. I am happy that I should be
witnessing the dawn of the day when America is indeed to
come into her own.

Presipent Wiuson’s ADDRESS ON CITIZENSHIP

(At a Citizenship Convention, Washington, July 13, 1916)

[For a long period before the war in Europe, the tide of emigra-
tion toward the United States had grown ever stronger. The
census of 1910 showed 6,646,000 foreign-born adult male residents.
As the war progressed there was much talk about some of these
so-called “hyphenated” Americans; and many thousands had awak-
ened in them a desire to complete the formalities of obtaining
American citizenship. This is the third of President Wilson’s
addresses on citizenship and “America First”—see also pages 108
and 114.]

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen:

I have come here for the simple purpose of expressing
my very deep interest in what these conferences are in-
tended to attain. It is not fair to the great multitudes of
hopeful men and women who press into this country from
other countries that we should leave them without that
friendly and intimate instruction which will enable them
very soon after they come to find out what America is like
at heart and what America is intended for among the na-
tions of the world.

I believe that the chief school that these people must
attend after they get here is the school which all of us

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attend, which is furnished by the life of the communities
in which we live and the nation to which we belong. It
has been a very touching thought to me sometimes to think
of the hopes which have drawn these people to America.
I have no doubt that many a simple soul has been thrilled
by that great statue standing in the harbor of New York
and seeming to lift the light of liberty for the guidance of
the feet of men; and I can imagine that they have expected
here something ideal in the treatment that they will re-
ceive, something ideal in the laws which they would have
to live under, and it has caused me many a time to turn
upon myself the eye of examination to see whether there
burned in me the true light of the American spirit which
they expected to find here. It is easy, my fellow-citizens,
to communicate physical lessons, but it is very difficult to
communicate spiritual lessons. America was intended to
be a spirit among the nations of the world, and it is the
purpose of conferences like this to find out the best way
to introduce the newcomers to this spirit, and by that very
interest in them to enhance and purify in ourselves the
thing that ought to make America great and not only ought
to make her great, but ought to make her exhibit a spirit
unlike any other nation in the world. . . .

So my interest in this movement is as much an interest
in ourselves as in those whom we are trying to Americanize,
because if we are genuine Americans they cannot avoid the
infection; whereas, if we are not genuine Americans, there
will be nothing to infect them with, and no amount of teach-
. ing, no amount of exposition of the Constitution—which I
find very few persons understand—no amount of dwelling
upon the idea of liberty and of justice will accomplish the
object we have in view, unless we ourselves illustrate the
idea of justice and of liberty. My interest in this move-
ment is, therefore, a two-fold interest. I believe it will
assist us to become self-conscious in respect of the funda-
mental ideas of American life.

291
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

When you ask a man to be loyal to a government,‘if he
comes from some foreign countries, his idea is that he is
expected to be loyal to a certain set of persons like a ruler
or a body set in authority over him, but that is not the
American idea. Our idea is that he is to be loyal to certain
objects in life, and that the only reason he has a Presi-
dent and a Congress and a Governor and a State Legisla-
ture and courts is that the community shall have instru-
mentalities by which to promote those objects. It is a
coéperative organization expressing itself in this Consti-
tution, expressing itself in these laws, intending to ex-
press itself in the exposition of those laws by the courts;
and the idea of America is not so much that men are to be
restrained and punished by the law as instructed and
guided by the law. . . . The object of the law is that
there, written upon these pages, the citizen should read
the record of the experience of this state and nation; what
they have concluded it is necessary for them to do because
of the life they have lived and the things that they have
discovered to be elements in that life.

So that we ought to be careful to maintain a govern-
ment at which the immigrant can look with the closest
serutiny and to which he should be at liberty to address
this question: “You declare this to be a land of liberty
and of equality and of justice; have you made it so by your
law?’? We ought to be able in our schools, in our night
schools and in every other method of instructing these
people, to show them that that has been our endeavor. We
cannot conceal from them long the fact that we are just as
human as any other nation, that we are just as selfish, that
there are just as many mean people amongst us as any-
where else, that there are just as many people here who
want to take advantage of other people as you can find
in other countries, just as many cruel people, just as many
people heartless when it comes to maintaining and promot-
ing their own interest; but you can show that our object is

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Woodrow Wilson

to get these people in harmless and see to it that they
do not do any damage and are not allowed to indulge
the passions which would bring injustice and calamity
at last upon a nation whose object is spiritual and not
material.

America has built up a great body of wealth. America
has become, from the physical point of view, one of the
most powerful nations in the world, a nation which if it
took the pains to do so, could build that power up into one
of the most formidable instruments in the world, one of the
most formidable instruments of force, but which has no
other idea than to use its force for ideal objects and not for
self-aggrandizement.

We have been disturbed recently, my fellow-citizens, by
certain symptoms which have showed themselves in our
body politic. Certain men—I have never believed a great
number—born in other lands, have in recent months thought
more of those lands than they have of the honor and in-
terest of the government under which they are now living.
They have even gone so far as to draw apart in spirit and
in organization from the rest of us to accomplish some
special object of their own. I am not here going to utter
any criticism of these people, but I want to say this, that
such a thing as that is absolutely incompatible with the
fundamental idea of loyalty, and that loyalty is not a self-
pleasing virtue. I am not bound to be loyal to the United
States to please myself. I am bound to be loyal to the
United States because I live under its laws and am its citi-
zen, and whether it hurts me or whether it benefits me,
I am obliged to be loyal. Loyalty means nothing unless
it has at its heart the absolute principle of self-sacrifice.
Loyalty means that you ought to be ready to sacrifice every
interest that you have, and your life itself, if your country
calls upon you to do so, and that is the sort of loyalty which
ought to be inculcated into these newcomers, that they are
not to be loyal only so long as they are pleased, but that,

298
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State “avers

having once entered into this sacred relationship, they are
bound to be loyal whether they are pleased or not; and that
loyalty which is merely self-pleasing is only self-indulgence
and selfishness. No man has ever risen to the rea/ stature
of spiritual manhood until he has found that it is finer to
serve somebody else than it is to serve himself.

These are the conceptions which we ought to teach the
newcomers into our midst, and we ought to realize that the
life of every one of us is part of the schooling, and that we
cannot preach loyalty unless we set the example, that we
cannot profess things with any influence upon others unless
we practice them also. This process of Americanization
is going to be a process of self-examination, a process of
purification, a process of rededication to the things which
America represents and is proud to represent. And it takes
a great deal more courage and steadfastness, my fellow-
‘citizens, to represent ideal things than to represent any-
thing else.

 

Witson’s Spzciat Appress (Mzssacr) on THE THREATENED
RarztRoaD STRIKE aND THE Ercut-Hovur Law

(Delivered before Congress in Special Session, 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 > year. The

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Woodrow Wilson

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 reconsidered, 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 between the parties.
The means provided by law for the mediation of the con-
troversy 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 entirety to arbitration, along with
certain questions of readjustment 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 arbitra-
tion, especially if any of their established privileges were
by that means to be drawn again in question. The law
in the matter put no compulsion upon them. The four
hundred 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 tor the fourth of
September next. It affects the men who man the freight
trains on practically every railway in the country. The
freight service throughout the United States must stand still
until their places are filled, if, indeed, it should prove pos-
sible 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 occupation will be thrown
out of employment, countless thousands will in all likeli-
hood 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 ac~
commodation or settlement has been found.

295
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

Just so soon as it became evident that mediation under
the existing law had failed and that arbitration had been
rendered impossibie 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 media-
tion, 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 representative
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.

It seemed to me, in considering the subject-matter of the
controversy, that the whole spirit of the time and the pre-
ponderant 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 experience would,
it seemed to me, be in its favor, whether there was arbitra-
tion 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

296
Woodrow Wilson

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 legislation. The Court
has held that it would not undertake to form a judgment
upon forecasts, but could base its action only upon actual
experience; that it must be supplied with facts, not with
calculations and opinions, however 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 con-
jecture. 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 ad-
ministration 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

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practical certainty that they will be ultimately obliged to
accept the eight-hour day by the concerted action of organ-
ized 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, 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 Presi-
dent. 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 suddenly 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, because it involved incal-
culable 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 industrial
disputes; but matters have come to a sudden crisis in this

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particular dispute and the country had been caught un-
provided 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,
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 rep-
resentatives 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 situations 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 circum-
stances of the case, who even refused to admit the circum-
stances 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 noth-
ing undone that we can do to safeguard the life and in-
terests of the nation. In the spirit of such a purpose, I
earnestly recommend the following legislation:

First, immediate provision for the enlargement and ad-
ministrative reorganization of the Interstate Commerce

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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 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 Presi-
dent of a small body of men to observe the actual results
in experience of the adoption of the eight-hour day in rail-
way transportation alike for the men and for the railroads;
its effects in the matter of operating costs, in the applica-
tion of the existing practices and agreements to the new
conditions, and in all other practical aspects, with the pro-
vision that the investigators shall report their conclusions
to the Congress at the earliest possible date, but without
recommendation as to legislative 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 expendi-
tures by the railroads as may have been rendered necessary
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 arbitration of
such controversies as the present by adding to it a pro-
vision that in case the methods of accommodation now pro-
vided for should fail, a full public investigation of the merits
of every such dispute shall be instituted and completed

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before a strike or lockout may lawfully be attempted.

And, sixth, the lodgement in the hands of the Executive
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 authority to draft
into the military service of the United States such train
crews and administrative officials as the circumstances re-
quire 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 essen-
tial matter of national defense. At the present moment
circumstances render this duty particularly obvious. Al-
most the entire military force of the nation is stationed
upon the Mexican border to guard our territory against
hostile raids. It must be supplied, and steadily supplied,
with whatever it needs for its maintenance 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 transportation 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.

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 extended

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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.
[Eprrortat Note: In response to this Address, Congress passed
the Adamson bill, and the President signed it on September 3. It
enacted into law only two of the recommendations—the eight-hour
day and the authorization of a commission to study the matter and
report to Congress. The eight-hour law provides for a standard
eight-hour work day for railway train employees, and for payment
for overtime at not less than the pro-rata rate. The railway em-
ployees had demanded time and one-half for all overtime. The
opposition contended that the effect of the law was not to shorten
hours of work, but rather to increase wages. The statute was,
however, upheld by the Supreme Court, by a 5 to 4 decision.]

Witson Accepts His RenominaTion

(Address delivered at Long Branch, N. J.,
September 2, 1916.)

[Eprrortat Notre: President Wilson and Vice-President
Marshall had been renominated by acclamation in the Dem-
ocratic National Convention at St. Louis, on June 15, 1916.
Five days earlier the Republican National Convention at
Chicago had chosen Charles Evans Hughes, of New York,
for President, and Charles Warren Fairbanks, of Indiana,
for Vice-President.

The formal notification ceremonies were held at the Presi-
dent’s summer home. United States Senator Ollie M.
James, of Kentucky, made the notification speech.]

Senator James, Gentlemen of the Notification Committee,
Fellow-Citizens:

I cannot accept the leadership and responsibility which
the National Democratic Convention has again, in such
generous fashion, asked me to accept without first express-

802
Woodrow Wilson

ing my profound gratitude to the party for the trust it
reposes in me after four years of fiery trial in the midst
of affairs of unprecedented difficulty, and the keen sense
of added responsibility with which this honour fills (I had
almost said burdens) me as I think of the great issues of
national life and policy involved in the present and imme-
diate future conduct of our Government. I shall seek, as
I have always sought, to justify the extraordinary confi-
dence thus reposed in me by striving to purge my heart
and purpose of every personal and of every misleading
party motive and devoting every energy I have to the serv-
vice of the nation as a whole, praying that I may continue
to have the counsel and support of all forward-looking men
at every turn of the difficult business.

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

Boasting is always an empty business, which pleases no-
body but the boaster, and I have no disposition to boast
of what the Democratic Party has accomplished. It has
merely done its duty. It has merely fulfilled its explicit
promises. But there can be no violation of good taste in
calling attention to the manner in which those promises
have been carried out or in adverting to the interesting
fact that many of the things accomplished were what the
opposition party had again and again promised to do but
had left undone. Indeed that is manifestly part of the
business of this year of reckoning and assessment. There
is no means of judging the future except by assessing the
past. Constructive action must be weighed against de-

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structive comment and reaction. The Democrats either
have or have not understood .he varied interests of the
country. The test is contained in the record.

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

The Republican party was put out of power because of
failure, practical failure and moral failure; because it had
served special interests and not the country at large; be-
cause, under the leadership of its preferred and established
guides, of those who still make its choices, it had lost touch
with the thoughts and the needs of the nation and was
living in a past age and under a fixed illusion, the illusion
of greatness. It had framed tariff laws based upon a fear
of foreign trade, a fundamental doubt as to American skill,
enterprise, and capacity, and a very tender regard for the
profitable privileges of those who had gained control of
domestic markets and domestic credits; and yet had enacted |
anti-trust laws which hampered the very things they meant
to foster, which were stiff and inelastic, and in part unin-
telligible. It had permitted the country throughout the
long period of its control to stagger from one financial
crisis to another under the operation of a national banking
law of its own framing which made stringency and panic
certain and the control of the larger business operations of
the country by the bankers of a few reserve centres in-
evitable; had made as if it meant to reform the law but
had faint-heartedly failed in the attempt, because it could
not bring itself to do the one thing necessary to make the
reform genuine and effectual, namely, break up the control
of small groups of bankers. It had been oblivious, or
indifferent, to the fact that the farmers, upon whom the
country depends for its food and in the last analysis for

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its prosperity, were without standing in the matter of com-
mercial credit, without the protection of standards in their
market transactions, and without systematic knowledge of
the markets themselves; that the labourers of the country,
the grea; army of men who man the industries it was pro-
fessing tc father and promote, carried their labour as a
mere commodity to market, were subject to restraint by
novel and drastic process in the courts, were without as-
surance of compensation for industrial accidents, without
federal assistance in accommodating labour disputes, and
without national aid or advice in finding the places and the
industries in which their labour was most needed. The
country had no national system of road construction and
development. Little intelligent attention was paid to the
army, and not enough to the navy. The other republics of
America distrusted us, because they found that we thought
first of the profits of American investors and only as an
afterthought of impartial justice and helpful friendship.
Its policy was provincial in all things; its purposes were
out of harmony with the temper and purpose of the people
and the timely development of the nation’s interests.

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

The tariff has been revised, not on the principle of re-
pelling foreign trade, but upon the principle of encouraging
it, upon something like a footing of equality with our own
in respect of the terms of competition, and a Tariff Board
has been created whose function it wili be to keep the rela-
tions of American with foreign business and industry under
constant observation, for the guidance alike of our business
men and of our Congress. American energies are now
directed towards the markets of the world.

The laws against trusts have been clarified by definition,

'

805
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

with a view to making it plain that they were not directed
against big business but only against unfair business and
the pretense of competition where there was none; and a
Trade Commission has been created with powers of guid-
ance and accommodation which have relieved business men
of unfounded fears and set them upon the road of hopeful
and confident enterprise.

By the Federal Reserve Act the supply of currency at
the disposal of active business has been rendered elastic,
taking its volume, not from a fixed body of investment
securities, but from the liquid assets of daily trade; and
these assets are assessed and accepted, not by distant groups
of bankers in control of unavailable reserves, but by bank-
ers at the many centres of local exchange who are in touch
with lecal conditions everywhere.

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

The Interstate Commerce Commission has been reor-
ganized to enable it to perform its great and important
functions more promptly and more efficiently. We have
created, extended and improved the service of the parcels
post.

So much we have done for business. What other party
has understood the task so well or executed it so intelli-
gently and energetically? What other party has attempted
it at all? The Republican leaders, apparently, know of
no means of assisting business but “protection.” How to
stimulate it and put it upon a new footing of energy and
enterprise they have not suggested. ~

For the farmers of the country we have virtually created
commercial credit, by means of the Federal Reserve Act
and the Rural Credits Act. They now have the standing

806
Woodrow Wilson

of other business men in the money market. We have
successfully regulated speculation in “futures” and estab-
lished standards in the marketing of grains. By an intelli-
gent Warehouse Act we have assisted to make the standard
crops available as never before both for systematic mar-
keting and as a security for loans from the banks. We
have greatly added to the work of neighborhood demon-
stration on the farm itself of improved methods of cultiva-
tion, and, through the intelligent extension of the functions
of the Department of Agriculture, have made it possible
for the farmer to Jearn systematically where his best mar-
kets are and how to get at them.

The workingmen of America have been given a veritable
emancipation, by the legal recognition of a man’s labour
as part of his life, and not a mere marketable commodity ;
by exempting labour organizations from processes of the
courts which treated their members like fractional parts
of mobs and not like accessible and responsible individuals ;
by releasing our seamen from involuntary servitude; by
making adequate provision for compensation for industrial
accidents; by providing suitable machinery for mediation
and conciliation in industrial disputes; and by putting the
Federal Department of Labor at the disposal of the work-
ingman when in search of work.

We have effected the emancipation of the children of the
country by releasing them from hurtful labour. We have
instituted a system of national aid in the building of high-
roads such as the country has been feeling after for a cen-
tury. We have sought to equalize taxation by means of
an equitable income tax. We have taken the steps that
ought to have been taken at the outset to open up the re-
sources of Alaska. We have provided for national defense
upon a scale never before seriously proposed upon the
responsibility of an entire political party. We have driven
the tariff lobby from cover and obliged it to substitute solid
argument for private influence.

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

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

These things must profoundly disturb the thoughts and
confound the plans of those who have made themselves
believe that the Democratic Party neither understood nor
was ready to assist the business of the country in the great
enterprises which it is its evident and inevitable destiny
to undertake and carry through. The breaking up of the
lobby must especially disconcert them; for it was through
the lobby that they sought and were sure they had found
the heart of things. The game of privilege can be played
successfully by no other means.

This record must equally astonish those who feared that
the Democratic Party had not opened its heart to compre-
hend the demands of social justice. We have in four years
come very near to carrying out the platform of the Pro-
gressive Party as well as our own; for we also are pro-
gressives.

There is one circumstance connected with this programme
which ought to be very plainly stated. It was resisted
at every step by the interests which the Republican Party
had catered to and fostered at the expense of the country,
and these same interests are now earnestly praying for a
reaction which will save their privileges,—for the restora-
tion of their sworn friends to power before it is too late
to recover what they have lost. They fought with par-
ticular desperation and infinite resourcefulness the reform
of the banking and currency system, knowing that to be
the citadel of their control; and most anxiously are they
hoping and planning for the amendment of the Federal
Reserve Act by the concentration of control in a single
bank which the old familiar group of bankers can keep
under their eye and direction. But while the “big men”
who used to write the tariffs and command the assistance

808
Woodrow Wilson

of the Treasury have been hostile,—all but a few with
vision,—the average business man knows that he has been
delivered, and that the fear that was once every day in his
heart, that the men who controlled credit and directed
enterprise from the committee rooms of Congress would
crush him, is there no more, and will not return,—unless
the party that consulted only the “big men” should return
to power,—the party of masterly inactivity and cunning
resourcefulness in standing pat to resist change.

The Republican Party is just the party that cannot meet
the new conditions of a new age. It does not know the
way and it does not wish new conditions. It tried to break
away from the old leaders and could not. They still select
its candidates and dictate its policy, still resist change,
still hanker after the old conditions, still know no methods
of encouraging business but the old methods. When it
changes its leaders and its purposes and brings its ideas
up to date it will have the right to ask the American people
to give it power again; but not until then. A new age, an
age of revolutionary change, needs new purposes and new
ideas.

In foreign affairs we have been guided by principles
clearly conceived and consistently lived up to. Perhaps
they have not been fully comprehended because they have
hitherto governed international affairs only in theory, not
in practice. They are simple, obvious, easily stated, and
fundamental to American ideals.

We have been neutral not only because it was the fixed
and traditional policy of the United States to stand aloof
from the politics of Europe and because we had had no
part either of action or of policy in the influences which
brought on the present war, but also because it was mani-
festly our duty to prevent, if it were possible, the indefinite
extension of the fires of hate and desolation kindled by that
terrible conflict and seek to serve mankind by reserving
our strength and our resources for the anxious and difficult

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

days of restoration and healing which must follow, when
peace will have to build its house anew.

The rights of our own citizens of course became involved:
that was inevitable. Where they did this was our guiding
principle: that property rights can be vindicated by claims
for damages when the war is over, and no modern nation
can decline to arbitrate such claims; but the fundamental
rights of humanity cannot be. The loss of life is irrepa-
rable. Neither can direct violations of a nation’s sover-
eignty await vindication in suits for damages. The nation
that violates these essential rights must expect to be checked
and called to account by direct challenge and resistance.
It at once makes the quarrel in part our own. These are
plain principles and we have never lost sight of them or de-
parted from them, whatever the stress or the perplexity
of circumstance or the provocation to hasty resentment.
The record is clear and consistent throughout and stands
distinct and definite for anyone to judge who wishes to
know the truth about it.

The seas were not broad enough to keep the infectior
of the conflict out of our own politics. The passions and
intrigues of certain active groups and combinations of
men amongst us who were born under foreign flags injected
the poison of disloyalty into our own most critical affairs,
laid violent hands upon many of our industries, and sub-
jected us to the shame of divisions of sentiment and pur-
pose in which America was contemned and forgotten. It
is part of the business of this year of reckoning and settle-
ment to speak plainly and act with unmistakable purpose
in rebuke of these things, in order that they may be forever
hereafter impossible. I am the candidate of a party, but
T am above all things else an American citizen. I neither
seek the favour nor fear the displeasure of that small alien
element amongst us which puts loyalty to any foreign power
before loyalty to the United States.

While Europe was at war our own continent, one of our

10
Woodrow Wilson

own neighbours, was shaken by revolution. In that matter,
too, principle was plain and it was imperative that we
should live up to it if we were to deserve the trust of any
real partisan of the right as free men see it. We have pro-
fessed to believe, and we do believe, that the people of
small and weak states have the right to expect to be dealt
with exactly as the people of big and powerful states would
be. We have acted upon that principle in dealing with the
people of Mexico.

Our recent pursuit of bandits into Mexican territory was
no violation of that principle. We ventured to enter Mex-
ican territory only because there were no military forces
in Mexico that could protect our border from hostile attack
and our own people from violence, and we have committed
there no single act of hostility or interference even with
the sovereign authority of the Republic of Mexico herself.
It was a plain case of the violation of our own sovereignty
which could not wait to be vindicated by damages and for
which there was no other remedy. The authorities of
Mexico were powerless to prevent it.

Many serious wrongs against the property, many irrepa-
rable wrongs against the persons, of Americans have been
committed within the territory of Mexico herself during
this confused revolution, wrongs which could not be effectu-
ally checked so long as there was no constituted power in
Mexico which was if a position to check them. We could
not act directly in that matter ourselves without denying
Mexicans the right to any revolution at all which disturbed
us and making the emancipation of her own people await
our own interest and convenience.

For it is their emancipation that they are seeking,—
blindly, it may be, and as yet ineffectually, but with pro-
found and passionate purpose and within their unquestion-
able right, apply what true American principle you will,—
any principle that an American would publicly avow. The
people of Mexico have not been suffered to own their own

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

country or direct their own institutions. Outsiders, men
out of other nations and with interests too often alien to
their own, have dictated what their privileges‘and opportu-
nities should be and who should control their land, their
lives, and their resources,—some of them Americans, press-
ing for things they could never have got in their own coun-
try. The Mexican people are entitled to attempt their
liberty from such influences; and so long as I have any-
thing to do with the action of our great Government I
shall do everything in my power to prevent anyone stand-
ing in their way. I know that this is hard for some per-
sons to understand; but it is not hard for the plain people
of the United States to understand. It is hard doctrine
only for those who wish to get something for themselves
out of Mexico. There are men, and noble women, too, not
a few, of our own people, thank God! whose fortunes are
invested in great properties in Mexico who yet see the
case with true vision and assess its issues with true Ameri-
can feeling. The rest can be left for the present out of the
reckoning until this enslaved people has had its day of
struggle towards the light. I have heard no one who was
free from such influences propose interference by the
United States with the internal affairs of Mexico. Cer-
tainly no friend of the Mexican people has proposed it.

The people of the United States are capable of great
sympathies and a noble pity in dealing with problems of
this kind. As their spokesman and representative, I have
tried to act in the spirit they would wish me show. The
people of Mexico are striving for the rights that are funda-
mental to life and happiness,—fifteen million oppressed
men, overburdened women, and pitiful children in virtual
bondage in their own home of fertile lands and inexhausti-
ble treasure! Some of the leaders of the revolution may
often have been mistaken and violent and selfish, but the
revolution itself was inevitable and is right. The unspeak-
able Huerta betrayed the very comrades he served, traitor-

$12
Woodrow Wilson

ously overthrew the government of which he was a trusted
part, impudently spoke for the very forces, that had driven
his people to. the rebellion with which he had pretended
to sympathize. The men who overcame him and drove him
out represent at least the fierce passion of reconstruction
which lies at the very heart of liberty; and so long as they
represent, however imperfectly, such a struggle for deliv-
erance, I am ready to serve their ends when I can. So
long as the power of recognition rests with me the Govern-
ment of the United States will refuse to extend the hand
of welcome to any one who obtains power in a sister re-
public by treachery and violence. No permanency can be
given the affairs of any republic by a title based upon in-
trigue and assassination. I declared that to be the policy
of this Administration within three weeks after I assumed
the presidency. I here again vow it. I am more inter-
ested in the fortunes of oppressed men and pitiful women
and children than in any property rights whatever. Mis-
takes I have no doubt made in this perplexing business,
but not in purpose or object.

More is involved than the immediate destinies of Mexico
and the relations of the United States with a distressed
and distracted people. All America looks on. Test is now
being made of us whether we be sincere lovers of popular
liberty or not and are indeed to be trusted to respect na-
tional sovereignty among our weaker neighbours. We have
undertaken these many years to play big brother to the
republics of this hemisphere. This is the day of our test
whether we mean, or have ever meant, to play that part
for our own benefit wholly or also for theirs. Upon the
outcome of that test (its outcome in their minds, not in
ours) depends every relationship of the United States with
Latin America, whether in politics or in commerce and en-
terprise. These are great issues and lie at the heart of the.
gravest tasks of the future, tasks both economic and polit-
ical and very intimately inwrought with many of the most.

818
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

vital of the new issues of the politics of the world. The
republics of America have in the last three years been
drawing together in a new spirit of accommodation, mutual
understanding, and cordial cooperation. Much of the poli-
tics of the world in the years to come will depend upon
their relationships with one another. It is a barren and
provincial statesmanship that loses sight of such things!

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

It is not a future to be afraid of. It is, rather, a future
to stimulate and excite us to the display of the best powers
that are in us. We may enter it with confidence when we
are sure that we understand it,—and we have provided
ourselves already with the means of understanding it.

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

There must be a just and settled peace, and we here in
America must contribute the full force of our enthusiasm
and of our authority as a nation to the organization of
that peace upon world-wide foundations that cannot easily
be shaken. No nation should be forced to take sides in any

SIL
Woodrow Wilson

quarrel in which its own honour and integrity and the for-
tunes of its own people are not involved; but no nation
can any longer remain neutral as against any wilful dis-
turbance of the peace of the world. The effects of war
can no longer be confined to the areas of battle. No nation
stands wholly apart in interest when the life and interests
of all nations are thrown into confusion and peril. If hope-
ful and generous enterprise is to be renewed, if the healing
and helpful arts of life are indeed to be revived when
peace comes again, a new atmosphere of justice and friend-
ship must be generated by means the world has never tried
before. The nations of the world must unite in joint guar-
antees that whatever is done to disturb the whole world’s
life must first be tested in the court of the whole world’s
opinion before it is attempted.

These are the new foundations the world must build for
itself, and we must play our part in the reconstruction, gen-
erously and without too much thought of our separate in-
terests. We must make ourselves ready to play it intelli-
gently, vigorously and well.

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

Besides contributing our ungrudging moral and practical
support to the establishment of peace throughout the world
we must actively and intelligently prepare ourselves to do
our full service in the trade and industry which are to sus-
tain and develop the life of the nations in the days to come.

We have already been provident in this great matter and
supplied ourselves with the instrumentalities of prompt ad-
justment. We have created, in the Federal Trade Com-
mission, 2 means of inquiry and of accommodation in the
field of commerce which ought both to coordinate the en-

815
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

terprises of our traders and manufacturers and to remove
the barriers of misunderstanding and of a too technical
interpretation of the law. In the new Tariff Commission
we have added another instrumentality of observation and
adjustment which promises to be immediately serviceable.
The Trade Commission substitutes counsel and accommo-
dation for the harsher processes of legal restraint, and the
Tariff Commission ought to substitute facts for prejudices
and theories. Our exporters have for some time had the
advantage of working in the new light thrown upon foreign
markets and opportunities of trade by the intelligent in-
quiries and activities of the Bureau of Foreign and Domes-
tic Commerce which the Democratic Congress so wisely
created in 1912. The tariff Commission completes the ma-
chinery by which we shall be enabled to open up our legis-
lative policy to the facts as they develop.

We can no longer indulge our traditional provincialism.
We are to play a leading part in the world drama whether
we wish it or not. We shall lend, not borrow; act for our-
selves, not imitate or follow; organize and initiate, not
peep about merely to see where we may get in.

We have already formulated and agreed upon a policy
of law which will explicitly remove the ban now supposed
to rest upon cooperation amongst our exporters in seeking
and securing their proper place in the markets of the world.
The field will be free, the instrumentalities at hand. It
will only remain for the masters of enterprise amongst
us to act in energetic concert, and for the Government of
the United States to insist upon the maintenance through-
out the world of those conditions of fairness and of even-
handed justice in the commercial dealings of the nations
with one another upon which, after all, in the last analysis,
the peace and ordered life of the world must ultimately
depend.

At home also we must see to it that the men who plan
and develop and direct our business enterprises shall enjoy

816
Woodrow Wilson

definite and settled conditions of law, a policy accommo-
dated to the freest progress. We have set the just and nec-
essary limits. We have put all kinds of unfair competition
under the ban and penalty of the law. We have barred
monopoly, These fatal and ugly things being excluded, we
must now quicken action and facilitate enterprise by every
just means within our choice. There will be peace in the
business world, and, with peace, revived confidence and life.

We ought both to husband and to develop our natural
resources, our mines, our forests, our water power. I wish
we could have made more progress than we have made in
this vital matter; and I call once more, with the deepest
earnestness and solicitude, upon the advocates of a careful
and provident conservation, on the one hand, and the
advocates of a free and inviting field for private capital,
on the other, to get together in a spirit of genuine accom-
modation and agreement and set this great policy forward
at once.

We must hearten and quicken the spirit and efficiency
of labour throughout our whole industrial system by every-
where and in all occupations doing justice to the labourer,
not only by paying a living wage but also by making all
the conditions that surround labour what they ought to be.
And we must do more than justice. We must safeguard
life and promote health and safety in every occupation in
which they are threatened or imperilled. That is more than
justice, and better, because it is humanity and economy.

We must coordinate the railway systems of the country
for national use, and must facilitate and promote their de-
velopment with a view to that coordination and to their
better adaptation as a whole to the life and trade and de-
fense of the nation. The life and industry of the country
can be free and unhampered only if these arteries are open,
efficient, and complete.

Thus shall we stand ready to meet the future as circum-
stance and international policy effect their unfolding,

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

whether the changes come slowly or come fast and without
preface.

I have not spoken explicitly, Gentlemen, of the platform
adopted at St. Louis; but it has been implicit in all that I
have said. I have sought to interpret its spirit and mean-
ing. The people of the United States do not need to be
assured now that that platform is a definite pledge, a
practical programme. We have proved to them that our
promises are made to be kept.

We hold very definite ideals. We believe that the energy
and initiative of our people have been too narrowly coached
and superintended ; that they should be set free, as we have
set them free, to disperse themselves throughout the nation;
that they should not be concenirated in the hands of a few
powerful guides and guardians, as our opponents have
again and again, in effect if not in purpose, sought to con-
centrate them. We believe, moreover,—who that looks
about him now with comprehending eye can fail to believe?
—that the day of Little Americanism, with its narrow
horizons, when methods of “protection” and industrial nur-
sing were the chief study of our provincial statesmen,
are past and gone and that a day of enterprise has at
last dawned for the United States whose field is the wide
world.

We hope to see the stimulus of that new day draw all
America, the republics of both continents, on to a new life
and energy and initiative in the great affairs of peace. We
are Americans for Big America, and rejoice to look for-
ward to the days in which America shall strive to stir the
world without irritating it or drawing it on to new antag-
onisms, when the nations with which we deal shall at last
come to see upon what deep foundations of humanity and
justice our passion for peace rests, and when all mankind
shall look npon our great people with a new sentiment of
admiration, friendly rivalry and real affection, as upon a

3818
Woodrow Wilson

people who, though keen to succeed, seeks always to be at
once generous and just and to whom humanity is dearer
than profit or selfish power.

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

Presipenr Wirson’s ADDRESS oN LINCOLN

(At the Formal Acceptance of the Lincoln Memorial, Built
Over the Log-Cabin Birthplace at Hodgenville, Ky.,
September 4, 1916)

No more significant memorial could have been presented
to the nation than this. It expresses so much vi 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 elo-
quent 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 and 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 prefer-
ence the high circles of society. It affects humble com-
pany as well as great. It pays no special tribute to uni-
versities or learned societies or conventional 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 singu-
lar, delightful, vital genius who presently emerged upon
the great stage of the nation’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

319
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

can explain this, but every man can see how it demon-
strates the vigor of democracy, where every door is open,
in every hamlet 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 soundness do not ex-
plain where this man got his great heart that seemed to
comprehend all mankind in its catholic and benignant sym-
pathy, the mind that sat enthroned behind those brooding,
melanche!y eyes, whose vision swept many an horizon which
those about him dreamed not of, that mind that compre-
hended 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 our-
selves of the solid and striking facts upon which our faith
in democracy is founded. Many another man besides Lin-
coln 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, stim-
ulation, and force of democracy, he is only one example
among many. The permeating and all-pervasive virtue of
the freedom which challenges us in America to make the
most of every gift and power we possess every page of our

820
Woodrow Witson

history serves to emphasize and illustrate. 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 any-
where. Nothing really incredible happened. Lincoln 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 imagination. It
is the spirit always that is sovereign. Lincoln, 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 Tinealn and Washing-
ton as typical Americans, but no man can be typical who
is so unusual as these great men were. It was typical 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 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

821
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

will only keep the door open for them always, and a hearty
welcome—after we have recognized 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 privi-
lege 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 reminiscence that
the writer had in fact penetrated to the heart of his mys-
tery, or that any man could penetrate to the heart of it.
That brooding spirit had no real familiars. I get the im-
pression 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 him-
self, 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.

I have come here today, not to utter a eulogy on Lin-
coln; he stands in need of none, but to endeavor to interpret
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 rekindled? For these
hopes must constantly be rekindled, and only those who

O22
Woodrow Wilson

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 con-
stitutions and doctrines of right and codes of liberty. The
object of democracy 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 compulsion 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 mankind, ready to
give our very lives for the freedom and justice and spir-
itual exaltation of the great nation which shelters and nur-
tures us.

Witson’s Appress at THE WomaN SuFFRAGE CONVENTION,
Atiantic Ciry, N. J., SEPTEMBER 8, 1916

[The movement for woman suffrage had made great advances
within recent years; and in the approaching election women were
to vote in twelve States—seven more than in the previous Presi-
dential contest. Mr. Hughes, the Republican candidate, had given
unqualified approval of the suffrage movement, but President
Wilson had displeased one faction by adhering to a belief that
suffrage was a question each State should settle for itself. Thus
he had supported woman suffrage in his own State of New Jersey,
but had refused to support a movement for the adoption of a
woman suffrage amendment to the Federal Constitution. ]

Madam President, Ladies of the Association:

The astonishing thing about the movement which you
represent is, not that it has grown so slowly, but that it has
grown so rapidly. No doubt for those who have been a
long time in the struggle, like your honored president, it

328
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

seems a long and arduous path that has been trodden, but
when you think of the cumulating force of this movement
in recent decades, you must agree with me that it is one of
the most astonishing tides in modern history. Two gener-
ations ago, no doubt Madam President will agree with me in
saying, it was a handful of women who were fighting this
cause. Now it is a, great multitude of women who are
fighting it.

And there are some interesting historical connections
which I would like to attempt to point out to you. One of
the most striking facts about the history of the United
States is that at the outset it was a lawyers’ history. Almost
all of the questions to which America addressed itself, say
a hundred years ago, were legal questions, were questions of
method, not questions of what you were going to do with
your Government, but questions of how you were going to
constitute your Government—how you were going to bal-
ance the powers of the States and the Federal Government,
how you were going to balance the claims of property
against the processes of liberty, how you were going to
make your governments up so as to balance the parts
against each other so that the legislature would check the
executive, and the executive the legislature, and the courts
both of them put together. The whole conception of gov-
ernment when the United States became a Nation was a
mechanical conception of government, and the mechanical
conception of government which underlay it was the New-
tonian theory of the universe. If you pick up the Federal-
ist, some parts of it read like a treatise on astronomy instead
of a treatise on government. They speak of the centrifugal
and the centripetal forces, and locate the President some-
where in a rotating system. The whole thing is a calcu-
lation of power and an adjustment of parts. There was a
time when nobody but a lawyer could know enough to run
the Government of the United States, and a distinguished
English publicist once remarked, speaking of the com-

824,
Woodrow Wilson

plexity of the American Government, that it was no proof
of the excellence of the ‘American Constitution that it had
been successfully operated, because the Americans could
run any constitution. But there have been a great many
technical difficulties in running it.

And then something happened. A great question arose
in this country which, though complicated with legal ele-
ments, was at bottom a human question, and nothing but a
question of humanity. That was the slavery question. And
is it not significant that it was then, and then for the first
time, that women became prominent in politics in America?
Not many women; those prominent in that day were so
few that you can name them over in a brief catalogue, but,
nevertheless, they then began to play a part in writing,
not only, but in public speech, which was a very novel part
for women to play in America. After the Civil War had
settled some of what seemed to be the most difficult legal
questions of our system, the life of the Nation began not
only to unfold, but to accumulate. Life in the United
States was a comparatively simple matter at the time of the
Civil War. There was none of that underground struggle
which is now so manifest to those who look only a little
way beneath the surface. The pressure of low wages, the
agony of obseure and unremunerated toil, did not exist in
America in anything like the same proportions that they
exist now.

‘And as our life has unfolded and accumulated, as the
contacts of it have become hot, as the populations have
assembled in the cities and the cool spaces of the country
have been supplanted by the feverish urban areas, the
whole nature of our political questions has been altered.
They have ceased to be legal questions. They have more
and more become social questions, questions with regard to
the relations of human beings to one another—not merely
their legal relations, but their moral and spiritual relations
to one another. ‘This has been most characteristic of

526
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

American life in the last few decades, and as these ques-
tions have assumed greater and greater prominence, the
movement which this association represents has gathered
cumulative force. So that, if anybody asks himself, ‘‘What
does this gathering force mean,” if he knows anything about
the history of the country, he knows that it means some-
thing that has not only come to stay, but has come with
conquering power.

I get a little impatient sometimes about the discussion
of the channels and methods by which it is to prevail. It
is going to prevail, and that is a very superficial and ignor-
ant view of it which attributes it to mere social unrest. It
is not merely because the women are discontented. It is
because the women have seen visions of duty, and that is
something which we not only cannot resist, but, if we be
true Americans, we do not wish to resist. America took
its origin in visions of the human spirit, in aspirations for
the deepest sort of liberty of the mind and of the heart,
and as visions of that sort come up to the sight of those
who are spiritually minded in America, America comes
more and more into her birthright and into the perfection
of her development.

So that what we have to realize in dealing with forces of
this sort is that we are dealing with the substance of life
itself. I have felt as I sat here tonight the wholesome con-
tagion of the occasion. Almost every other time that I
ever visited Atlantic City, I came to fight somebody. I
hardly know how to conduct myself when I have not come
to fight against anybody, but with somebody. I have come
to suggest, among other things, that when the forces of
nature are steadily working and the tide is rising to meet
the moon, you need not be afraid that it will not come to
its flood. We feel the tide; we rejoice in the strength of
it; and we shall not quarrel in the long run as to the method
of it. Because, when you are working with masses of men
and organized bodies of opinion, you have got to carry the

326
Woodrow Wilson

organized body along. The whole art and practice of gov-
ernment consists, not in moving individuals, but in moving
masses. It is all very well to run ahead and beckon, but,
after all, you have got to wait for the body to follow. I
have not come to ask you to be patient, because you have
been, but I have come to congratulate you that there was a
force behind you that will beyond any peradventure be
triumphant, and for which you can afford a little while to
wait.

Presipent Witson’s ADDRESS ON THE RELATION OF THE
Unrtrep States To THE Business oF THE WoRLD

(Delivered before the Grain Dealers’ Association, Balti-
more, September 25, 1916)

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen:

It is a matter of sincere gratification to me that I can
come and address an association of this sort, and yet I
feel that there is a certain drawback to the present occa-
sion. That drawback consists of the fact that it occurs in
the midst of a political campaign. Nothing so seriously
interrupts or interferes with the sober and sincere consid-
eration of public questions as a political campaign. I want
to say to you at the outset that I believe in party action,
but that I have a supreme contempt for partisan action;
that I believe that it is necessary for men to concert meas-
ures together in organized coéperation by party, but that
whenever party feeling touches any one of the passions
that work against the general interest, it is altogether to
be condemned. Therefore, I feel that on occasions like
this we should divest ourselves of the consciousness that we
are in the midst of a political campaign. ‘

What I have come to say to you today, iherefors I
would wish to say in an atmosphere from which all the
vapors of passion have been cleared away, for I want to

827
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

speak to you about the business situation of the world, so
far as America is concerned. I am not going to take the
liberty of discussing that business situation from the spe-
cial point of view of your association, because I know that
I would be bringing coals to Newcastle. I know that I am
speaking to men who understand the relation of the grain
business to the business of the world very much better than
I do; and I know that it is true that, except under very
unusual circumstances such as have existed in the imme-
diate past, the export of grain from this country has been
a diminishing part of our foreign commerce rather than an
increasing part; that the increase of our own population—
the decrease in proportion to that increase, of our produc-
tion of grains—has been rendering the question of foreign
markets less important, though still very important, than it
was in past generations, so far as the dealing in grain is
concerned. I also remember, however, that we have only
begun in this country the process by which the full produc-
tion of our agricultural acreage is to be obtained. The
agricultural acreage of this country ought to produce twice
what it is now producing, and under the stimulation and in-
struction which have recently been characteristic of agri-
cultural development I think we can confidently predict
that within, let us say, a couple of decades, the agricul-
tural production of this country will be something like
double, whereas, there is no likelihood that the population
of this country will be doubled within the same period.
You can look forward, therefore, it seems to me, with some
degree of confidence to an increasing, and perhaps a rap-
idly increasing, volume of the products in which you deal.

But, as I have said, I have not come to discuss that. I
have come to discuss the general relation of the United
States to the business of the world in the decades immedi-
ately ahead of us. We have swung out, my fellow citizens,
into a new business era in America. I suppose that there is
no man connected with your association who does not re-

828
Woodrow Wilson

member the time when the whole emphasis of American
business discussion was laid upon the domestic market. I
need not remind you how recently it has happened that our
attention has been extended to the markets of the world;
much less recently, I need not say, in the matters with
which you are concerned than in the other export interests
of the country. But it happened that American production,
not only in the agricultural field and in mining and in all
the natural products of the earth, but also in manufacture,
increased in recent years to such a volume that American
business burst its jacket. It could not any longer be taken
care of within the field of the domestic markets; and when
that began to disclose itself as the situation, we also became
aware that American business men had not studied foreign
markets, that they did not know the commerce of the world,
and that they did not have the ships in which to take their
proportionate part in the carrying trade of the world; that
our merchant marine had sunk to a negligible amount, and
that it had sunk to its lowest at the very time when the
tide of our exports began to grow in most formidable
volume.

One of the most interesting circumstances of our business
history is this: The banking laws of the United States—I
mean the Federal banking laws—did not put the national
banks in a position to do foreign exchange under favorable
conditions, and it was actually true that private banks, and
sometimes branch banks drawn out of other countries,
notably out of Canada, were established at our chief ports
to do what American bankers ought to have done. It was
as if America was not only unaccustomed to touching all
the nerves of the world’s business, but was disinclined to
touch them, and had not prepared the instrumentality by
which it might take part in the great commerce of the round
globe. Only in very recent years have we been even
studying the problem of providing ourselves with the instru-
mentalities.

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

Not until the recent legislation of Congress known as the
Federal Reserve Act were thé federal banks of this country
given the proper equipment through which they could assist
American commerce, not only in our own country, but in
any part of the world where they chose to set up branch
institutions. British banks had been serving British mer-
chants all over the world, German banks had been serving
German merchants all over the world, and no national bank
of the United States had been serving American merchants
anywhere in the world except in the United States. We
had, as it were, deliberately refrained from playing our
part in the field in which we prided ourselves that we were
most ambitious and most expert, the field of manufacture
and of commerce. All that is past, and the scene has been
changed by the events of the last two years, almost sud-
denly, and with a completeness that almost daunts the plan-
ning mind. Not only when this war is over, but now,
America has her place in the world and must take her
place in the world of finance and commerce upon a scale
that she never dreamed of before.

My dream is that she will take her place in that great
field in a new spirit which the world has never seen before;
not the spirit of those who would exclude others, but the
spirit of those who would excel others. I want to see
America pitted against the world, not in selfishness, but
in brains. .

What instrumentalities have we provided ourselves with
in order that we may be equipped with knowledge? There
has been an instrumentality in operation for four or five
years of which, strangely enough, American business men
have only slowly become aware. Some four or five years
ago the Congress established, in connection with the de-
partment which was then the Department of Commerce and
Labor( now the Department of Commerce) a Bureau of
Foreign and Domestic Commerce, and one of the advan-
tages which the American Government has derived from

330
Woodrow Wilson

that bureau is that it has been able to hire brains for much
less than the brains were worth. It is in a way a national
discredit to us, my fellow citizens, that we are paying
studious men, capable of understanding anything and of
conducting any business, just about one-third of what they
could command in the field of business; and it is one of the
admirable circumstances of American life that they are
proud to serve the Government on a pittance. There are
such men in the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Com-
merce. They have been studying the foreign commerce of
this country as it was never studied before, and have been
making reports so comprehensive and so thorough that they
compare to their great advantage with the reports of any
similar bureau of any other government in the world, and
I have found to my amazement that some of the best of
those reports seem never to have been read. . .

And then, in addition to that, there was redently qrewied
the Federal Trade Commission. It is hard to describe the
functions of that commission; all I can say is that it has
transformed the Government of the United States from
being an antagonist of business into being a friend of busi-
ness. A few years ago American business men—TI think
you will corroborate this statement—took up their morning
paper with some degree of nervousness to see what the Gov-
ernment was doing to them. I ask you if you take up the
morning paper now with any degree of nervousness? And
I ask you if you have not found, those of you who have
dealt with it all, the Federal Trade Commission to be put
there to show you the way in which the Government can
help you and not the way in which the Government can
hinder you?

But that is not the matter that I am most interested in.
It has always been a fiction—I don’t know who invented
it or why he invented it—that there was a contest between
the law and business. There has always been a contest in
every government between the law and bad business, and I

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

do not want to see that contest softened in any way; but
there has never been any contest between men who intended
the right thing and the men who administered the law.
But what I want to speak about is this: One of the functions
of the Federal Trade Commission is to inquire with the
fullest powers ever conferred upon a similar commission in
this country into all the circumstances of American busi-
ness for the purpose of doing for American business ex-
actly what the Department of Agriculture has so long and
with increasing efficiency done for the farmer, inform the
American business man of every element, big and little,
with which it is his duty to deal. Here are created search-
ing eyes of inquiry to do the very thing that it was impera-
tively necessary and immediately necessary that the coun-
try should do—look upon the field of business and know
what was going on!

And then, in the third place, you know that we have just
now done what it was common sense to do about the tariff.
We have not put this into words, but I do not hesitate to
put it into words: We have admitted that on the one side
and on the other we were talking theories and managing
policies without a sufficient knowledge of the facts upon
which we were acting, and, therefore, we have established
what is intended to be a non-partisan Tariff Commission to
study the conditions with which legislation has to deal in
the matter of the relations of American with foreign busi-
ness transactions. Another eye created to see the
facts!. . . The Tariff Commission is going to look for
the facts no matter who is hurt. We are creating one after
another the instrumentalities of knowledge, so that the
business men of this country shall know what the field of
the world’s business is and deal with that field upon that
knowledge.

Then, when the knowledge is obtained, what are we going
to do? One of the things that interests me most about an
association of this sort is that the intention of it is that

332
Woodrow Wilson

the members should share a common body of information,
and that they should concert among themselves those oper-
ations of business which are beneficial to all of them; that,
instead of a large number of dealers in grain acting sepa-
rately and each fighting for his own hand, you are willing
to come together and study the problem as if you were
partners and brothers and codperators in this field of busi-
ness. That has been going on in every occupation in the
United States of any consequence. . . . We must codper-
ate in the whole field of business, the Government with the
merchant, the merchant with his employee, the whole body
of producers with the whole body of consumers, to see that
the right things are produced in the right volume and find
the right purchasers at the right place, and that, all work-
ing together, we realize that nothing can be for the indi-
vidual benefit which is not for the common benefit.

You know that there was introduced in the House of
Representatives recently a bill, commonly called the Webb.
bill, for the purpose of stating it as the policy of the law
of the United States that nothing in the anti-trust laws
now existing should be interpreted to interfere with the’
proper sort of codperation among exporters. The foreign
field is not like the domestic field. The foreign field is full
of combinations meant to be exclusive. The anti-trust laws
of the United States are intended to prevent any kind of
combination in the United States which shall be exclusive
of new enterprises within the United States, any combina-
tion which shall set up monopoly in America; but the ex-
port business is a very big business, a very complicated
business, a very expensive business, and it ought to be pos-
sible, and it will be possible and legal, for men engaged in
exporting to get together and manage it in groups, so that
they can manage it at an advantage instead of at a disad-
vantage as compared with foreign rivals. Not for the pur-
pose of exclusive and monopolistic combination, but for the
purpose of codperation, and there is a very wide difference

888
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

there. I for myself despise monopoly, and I have an en-
thusiasm for codperation. By codperation I mean working
along with anybody who is willing to work along with you
under definite understandings and arrangements which will
constitute a sound business programme. There can be no
jealousy of that, and if there had been time, I can say with
confidence that this bill, which passed the House of Repre-
sentatives, would have passed the Senate of the United
States also. So that any obstacle that ingenious lawyers
may find in the anti-trust laws will be removed.. . .
And then there must be codperation, not only between the
Government and the business men, but between business
men. Shippers must codperate, and they ought to be study-
ing right now how to codperate. There are a great many
gentlemen in other countries who can show them how! They
ought to look forward, particularly, to caring for this mat-
ter, that they have vehicles in which to carry their goods.
We must address ourselves immediately and as rapidly as
possible to the re-creation of a great American merchant
marine. Our present situation is very like this: Suppose
that a man who had a great department store did not have
any delivery wagons and depended upon his competitors in
the same market to deliver his goods to his customers. You
know what would happen. They would deliver their own
goods first and quickest, and they would deliver yours only
if yours were to be delivered upon the routes followed by
their wagons. That is an exact picture of what is taking
place in our foreign trade at this minute. Foreign vessels
carry our goods where they, the foreign vessels, happen to
be going, and they carry them only if they have room in
addition to what they are carrying for other people. You
can not conduct trade that way. That is conducting trade
on sufferance. That is conducting trade on an “if you
please.” That is conducting trade on the basis of service
the point of view of which is not your advantage. There-
fore, we can not lose any time in getting delivery wagons.

334
Woodrow Wilson

There has been a good deal of discussion about this re-
cently, and it has been said, “The Government must not
take any direct part in this. You must let private capital
do it,” and the reply was, “All right, go ahead.” “Oh, but
we will not go ahead unless you help us.” We said, “Very
well, then, we will go ahead, but we will not need your
help, because we do not want to compete where you are
already doing the carrying business, but where you are not
doing the carrying business and it has to be done for some
time at a loss. We will undertake to do it at a loss until that
route is established, and we will give place to private capital
whenever private capital is ready to take the place.” That
sounds like a very reasonable proposition. “We will carry
your goods one way when we have to come back empty the
other way and lose money on the voyage, and when there
are cargoes both ways and it is profitable to carry them, we
shall not insist upon carrying them any longer.”

And it is absolutely necessary now to make good our
new connections. Our new connections are with the great
‘and rich Republics to the south of us. For the first time
in my recollection they are beginning to trust and believe
in us and want us, and one of my chief concerns has been
to see that nothing was done that did not show friendship
and good faith on our part. You know that it used to be
the case that if you wanted to travel comfortably in your
own person from New York to a South American port, you
had to go by way of England or else stow yourself away in
some uncomfortable fashion in a ship that took almost as
long to go straight, and within whose bowels you got in
such a temper before you got there that you did not care
whether she got there or not. The great interesting geo-
graphical fact to me is that by the opening of the Panama
Canal there is a straight line south from New York through
the canal to the western coast of South America, which
hitherto has been one of the most remote coasts in the
world so far as we were concerned. The west coast of

335
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

South America is now nearer to us than the eastern coast of
South America ever was, though we have the open Atlantic
upon which to approach the east coast. Here is the loom
all ready upon which to spread the threads which can be
worked into a fabric of friendship and wealth such as we
have néver known before! ...

We have got to have the knowledge, we have got to have
the cooperation, and then back of all that has got to lie
what America has in abundance and only has to release, that
is to say, the self-reliant enterprise.

There is only one thing I have ever been ashamed of
about in America, and that was the timidity and fearfulness
of Americans in the presence of foreign competitors. I
have dwelt among Americans all my life and am an intense
absorbent of the atmosphere of America, and I know by
personal experience that there are as effective brains in
America as anywhere in the world. An American afraid to
pit American business men against any competitors any-
where! Enterprise, the shrewdness which Americans have
shown, the knowledge of business which they have shown,
all these things are going to make for that peaceful and
honorable conquest of foreign markets which is our reason-
able ambition. . .

[Epvrror1tat Note: The election on November 7 resulted
in the choice of Woodrow Wilson for a second term, with
276 votes in the Electoral College to 255 for Charles E.
Hughes, the Republican candidate. In addition to the solid
South, the President carried most of the West and several
States in the East. The principal Democratic claim for
support was that Wilson had “kept us out of war.” |

386
Woodrow FVilson

Witson’s Fourtu Annuat Appress to Concress
(Delivered in Joint Session, December 5, 1916)

Gentlemen of the Congress:

In fulfilling at this time the duty laid upon me uy 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 prac-
tice, which I hope has been acceptable to you, of leaving
to the reports of the several heads of the executive depart-
ments the elaboration of the detailed needs of the public
service and confine myself to those matters of more gen-
eral 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 recom-
mend 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 locomo-
tive engineers, conductors, and trainmen.

I then recommended:

First, immediate provision for the enlargement and ad-
ministrative reorganization of the Interstate Commerce
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

887
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

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 Presi-
dent of a small body of men to observe the actual results
in experience of the adoption of the eight-hour day in rail-
way transportation alike for the men and for the railroads.

Fourth, explicit approval by the Congress of the consid-
eration by the Interstate Commerce Commission of an in-
crease of freight rates to meet such additional expenditures
by the railroads as may have been rendered necessary 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 arbitration 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 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
of such portions and such rolling stock of the railways of
the country as may be required for military use and to op-
erate them for military purposes, with authority to draft.
into the military service of the United States such train
crews and administrative officials as the circumstances re-
quire for their safe and efficient use.

The second and third of these recommendations the Con-
gress immediately acted on: it established the eight-hour

338
Woodrow Wilson

day as the legal basis of work and wages in train service
and it authorized the appointment of a commission to ob-
serve 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 neces-
sary to renew. The power of the Interstate Commerce
Commission to grant an increase of rates on the ground re-
ferred 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 disputes,
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 earnestly 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 matters
would find it hard, I believe, to excuse a failure to act upon
these grave matters or any unnecessary postponement of
action upon them.

Not only does the Interstate Commerce Commission
now find it practically impossible, with its present member-
ship 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 perfected as
an administrative instrument.

The country cannot and should not consent to remain
any longer exposed to profound industrial disturbances for

38389
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

lack of additional means of arbitration and conciliation
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 uninterrupted 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 ad-
ministrative efficiency which argues its own case in the mere
-statement of it. With regard to one of its items, the in-
crease in the efficiency of the Interstate Commerce Commis-
sion, 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 Con-
gress 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 te
leave. To pass a law which forbade or prevented the in-
dividual 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. But the proposal that
the operation of the railways of the country shall not be
stopped or interrupted by the concerted action of organ-
ized 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 concerted action of powerful
bodies of men shall not be permitted 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 con-
ciliation or arbitration. I can see nothing in that prornsi-

3840
Woodrow Wilson

tion but the justifiable safeguarding by society of the nec.
essary processes 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 re-
gard 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 pro-
moting 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 Practices Act. I
need not labor my advice that these measures be enacted
into law. Their urgency lies in the manifest circumstances
which render their adoption at this time not only oppor-
tune but necessary. Even delay would seriously jeopard
the interests of the country and of the government.

Immediate passage of the bill to regulate the expendi-
ture 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 impor-
tant 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 expenditure 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

S41
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

now with facts for guidance and without suspicion of parti-
san 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 enterprise of
building up our export trade. That enterprise will pres-
ently, will immediately assume, has indeed already as-
sumed, a magnitude unprecedented in our experience. 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 present laws. We should
clear away all legal obstacles and create a basis of un-
doubted law for it which will give freedom without permit-
ting unregulated license. The thing must be done now, be-
cause the opportunity is here and may escape us if we
hesitate or delay.

The argument for the proposed amendments of the or-
ganic law of Porto Rico is brief and conclusive. The pres-
ent 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 sat-
isfied. 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 vocational
and industrial education which is of vital importance to the
whole country because it concerns a matter, too long neg-
lected, upon which the thorough industrial preparation of
the country for the critical years of economic development
immediately ahead of us in very large measure depends.
May T not urge its early and favourable consideration by
the House of Representatives and its early enactment into

542
Woodrow Wilson

law? It contains plans which affect all interests and all
parts of the country, and I am sure that there is no legis-
lation 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 nec-
essary that I should speak. Some practicable basis of
agreement concerning them will no doubt be found and ac-
tion taken upon them.

Inasmuch as this is, Gentlemen, probably the last occa-
sion J shall have to address the Sixty-fourth Congress, I
hope that you will permit me to say with what genuine
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 labour in such company. I take the
liberty of congratulating you upon the completion of a rec-
ord of rare serviceableness and distinction.

Witson’s Note tro THE BE.iiceRENT GOVERNMENTS,
Suacestinc Tuat Respective Peace Terms
BE STATED

[Eprrorrat Note: On December 12, 1916, Germany had
made formal proposal “to enter forthwith into peace nego-
tiations.” For more than two years the Teutonic Allies had
maintained unbroken their line in France and Belgium, and
were then also in possession of Poland, Serbia, Montenegro,
and half of the newest belligerent country, Rumania. The
Entente Powers each rejected the German peace proposal
as insincere, arrogant, and a proof of weakness. President
Wilson, however, as head of the leading neutral nation—

848
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

believed the occasion opportune for making certain peace
proposals of his own, which he was understood to have for-
mulated some time previously. His note, sent to all the
belligerents, is as follows :]

Department of State,
Washington, D. C., Dec. 18, 1916.

The President directs me to send you the following com-
munication to be presented immediately to the Minister of
Foreign Affairs of the Government to which you are accred-
ited: /

The President of the United States has instructed me to
suggest to the [here is inserted a designation of the Gov-
ernment addressed] a course of action with regard to the
present war, which he hopes that the 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 representative 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 ne-
cessity to determine how best to safeguard those interests if
the war is to continue.

[The third paragraph of the note as sent to the four Central
Powers—Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey, and Bulgaria—is as
follows:]

The suggestion which I am instructed to make the Presi-
dent has long had it in mind to offer. He is somewhat em-
barrassed to offer it at this particular time, because it may
now seem to have been prompted by a desire to play a part
in connection with the recent overtures of the Central Pow-
ers. It has, in fact, been in no way suggested by them in
its origin, and the President would have delayed offering it
until those overtures had been independently answered but
for the fact that it also concerns the questions of peace and
may best be considered in connection with other proposals

344
Woodrow Wilson

which have the same end in view. The President can only
beg that his suggestion be considered entirely on its own
merits and as if it had been made in other circumstances.
fe third paragraph of the note as sent to the ten Entente
Allies—Great Britain, France, Italy, Japan, Russia, Belgium,
Montenegro, Portugal, Rumania, and Serbia—is as follows:]

The suggestion which I am instructed to make the Presi-
dent has long had it in mind to offer. He is somewhat em-
barrassed to offer it at this particular time, because 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 President would have de-
layed 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 connection with other proposals
which have the same end in view. The President can only
beg that his suggestion be considered entirely on its own
merits and as if it had been made in other circumstances.

[Thenceforward the note proceeds identically to all the powers,
as follows:] ;

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 indiffercnt
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 in-
strumentality. One way will be as acceptable to him as
another, if only the great object he has in mind be 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

845
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

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 recurrence of wars like this and against
aggression or selfish interference of any kind. Each would
be jealous of the formation of any more rival leagues to
preserve an uncertain balance of power amid multiplying
suspicions; 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 pres-
ent war upon terms which will certainly safeguard the in-
dependence, the territorial integrity, and the political 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 Gov-
ernments now at war. Their interest, moreover, in the
means to be adopted to relieve the smaller and weaker peo-
ples 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 ac-
complishment 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 interest 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
mations, now exceedingly hard to endure, be rendered alto-
gether intolerable, and lest, more than all, an injury be done
civilization itself which can never be atoned for or repaired.

846
Woodrow Wilson :

The President therefore feels altogether justified in sug-
gesting an immediate opportunity for a comparison of views
as to the terms which must precede those ultimate arrange-
ments 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 toward undefined ends by slow attrition
until the one group of belligerents or the other is exhausted;
if million after million of human lives must continue to
be offered up until on the one side or the other there are
no more to offer; if resentments must be kindled that can
never cool and despairs engendered from which there can
be no recovery, 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 disturb-
ing effects. And yet the concrete objects for which it is
being waged have never been definitively 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 guaranties, what political or terri-
torial changes or readjustments, 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

347
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

s

the permanent concord of the nations a hope of the imme-
diate future, a concert of nations immediately practicable.

The President is not proposing peace; he is not even
offering mediation. He is merely proposing that soundings
be taken in order that we may learn, the neutral 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 understood by all
concerned, and he confidently hopes for a response which
will bring a new light into the affairs of the world.

LansIna.

[The President’s suggestion in the foregoing note—that an early
‘occasion be sought to call out from the nations at war an avowal
of their respective views as to peace terms—was answered first
by Germany, which reiterated its own proposal of a meeting of
delegates at a neutral place. The reply of the Entente Allies
came from France, on January 10. It expressed a belief that the
time had not yet arrived when they could secure a peace which
would be of lasting benefit to Europe. The note went on, how-
ever, to state the general war aims of the Entente, including the
restoration of Belgium, Serbia, and Montenegro, with indemnities;
the evacuation of invaded portions of France, Russia, and Ru-
mania, with reparation; and the reorganization of Europe, based
upon nationalities.

On January 22, 1917, the President appeared before the Senate
and gave expression to his views regarding the part the United
States should play when peace comes in Europe. His address is
as follows:]

 

Present Witson’s Appress to tHE Unirep States
Senarez, on Essentian Terms or Peace in Evrore

[Delivered on January 22, 1917]

Gentlemen of the Senate:

On the eighteenth of December last I addressed an iden-
tic note to the governments of the nations now at war re-

848
Woodrow Wilson

questing them to state, more definitely than they had yet
been stated by either group of belligerents, the terms upon
which they would deem * possible to make peace. I spoke
on behalf of humanity and of the rights of all neutral na-
tions like our own, mary of whose most vital interests the
war puts in constant jeopardy. The Central Powers united
in a reply which stat:d :~erely that they were ready to meet
their antagonists in vonference to discuss terms of peace.
The Entente Powers have replied much more definitely and
have stated, in general terms, indeed, but with sufficient
definiteness to imply details, the arrangements, guarantees,
and acts of reparation w'.ich they deem to be the indispen-
sable conditions of a satisfactory settlement. We are that
much nearer a definite discussion of the peace which shall
end the present war. We are that much nearer the dis-
cussion 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 catastrophe
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
with me in the final determination of our international obli-
gations, 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 principles and
purposes of their polity and the approved practices of their
Government ever since the days when they set up a new

849
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

nation in the high and honourable hope that it might in all
that it was and did show mankind the way to liberty. They
cannot in honour withold 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 auth-
ority 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 postponed. It is
right that before it comes this Government should frankly
formulate the conditions upon which it would feel justified
in asking oar people to approve its formal and solemn ad-
herence 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
candour and to a just regard for the opinion of mankind to
say that, so far as our participation in guarantees of future
peace is concerned, it makes a great deal of difference in
what way and upon what terms it is ended. The treaties
and agreements which bring it to an end must embody
terms which will create a peace that is worth guaranteeing
and preserving, a peace that will win the approval of man-
kind, not merely a peace that will serve the several interests
and immediate aims of the nation’ 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 univer-
sal 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 codperative peace that does not include
the peoples of the New World can suffice to keep the future
safe against war; and yet there is only one sort of peace
that the peoples of America could join in guaranteeing.

850
Woodrow Wilson

The elements of that peace must be elements that engage
the confidence and satisfy the principles of the American
governments, elements consistent with their political faith
and with the practical convictions which the peoples of
America have once for all embraced and undertaken to
defend.

I do not mean to say that any American government
would throw any obstacle in the way of any terms of peace
the governments now at war might agree upon, or seek to
upset them when made, whatever they might be. I only
take it for granted that mere terms of peace between the
belligerents will not satisfy even the belligerents them-
selves. 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
endure, it must be a peace made secure by the organized
major force of mankind.

The terms of the immediate peace agreed upon will de-
termine whether it is a peace for which such a guarantee
can be secured. The question upon which the whole future
peace and policy of the world 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 struggle for
a new balance of power, who will guarantee, who can guar-
antee, the stable equilibrium of the new arrangement? Only
a tranquil Europe can be a stable Europe. There must
be, nota balance of power, but a community of power;
not organized rivalries, but an organized common 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

851
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

of the purpose they had in mind to crush their antagonists.
But the implications of these assurances may not be equally
clear to all—may not be the same on both sides of the
water. I think it will be serviceable if I attempt to set
forth what we understand them to be.

They imply, first of all, that it must be a peace 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, 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 partici-
pation 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 terri-
tory 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 individual 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 or-
dinary peaceful and legitimate development of the peoples
themselves. But no one asks or expects 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

352
Woodrow Wilson

of right among organized nations. No peace can last, or
ought to last, which does not recognize and accept the prin-’
ciple that governments derive all their just powers from
the consent of the governed, and that no right anywhere
exists to hand peoples about from sovereignty to sover-
eignty 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 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 indis-
pensable—because I wish frankly to uncover realities. Any
peace which does not recognize and accept this principle
will inevitably be upset. It will not rest upon the affec-
tions or the convictions of mankind. The ferment of spirit
of whole populations will fight subtly and constantly against
it, and all the world will sympathize. The world can be
at peace only if its life is stable, and there can be no sta-
bility where the will is in rebellion, where there is not tran-
quillity 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 resources 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 gen-
eral guarantee which will assure the peace itself. With

353
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

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 non of
peace, equality, and codperation. 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-
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, constant,
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 codperation 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 accom-
- modation if peace is to come with healing in its wings, and
come to stay. Peace cannot be had without concession and
sacrifice. There can be no sense of safety and equality
among the nations if great preponderating 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 arma-
ments, whether on land or sea, is the most immediately

354
Woodrow Wilson

and intensely practical question connected with the future .
fortunes of nations and of mankind.

I have spoken upon these great matters without reserve
and with the utmost explicitness because it has seemed to
me to be necessary if the world’s yearning desire for peace
was anywhere to find free voice and utterance. 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 be-
lieve 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
homs they hold most dear.

Ana in holding out the expectation that the people and
Government of the United States will join the other civil-
ized nations of the world in guaranteeing the permanence
of peace upon such terms as I have named I speak with
the greater boldness and confidence because it is clear to
every man who can think that there is in this promise no
breach in either our traditions or our policy as a nation,
but a 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 development, unhindered, unthreatened, un-
afraid, the little along with the great and powerful.

355
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

I am proposing that all nations henceforth avoid en-
tangling alliances which would draw them into competitions
of power; catch them in a net of intrigue and selfish rivalry,
and disturb their own affairs with influences 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 con-
ference 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 arma-
ments which makes of armies and navies a power for order
merely, not an instrument of aggression or of selfish vio-
lence.

These are American principles, American policies. We
could stand for no others. And they are also the principles
and policies of forward looking men and women every-
where, of every modern nation, of every enlightened com-
munity. They are the principles of mankind and must
prevail.

 

Presipent Witson’s Seconp Veto or an ImMicRaATION-
Restriction Briiu

[Evrroriau Nore: A bill seeking to restrict immigration
by imposing a reading test, in any language, had again
come to the President for approval—a similar measure hav-
ing been vetoed on January 28, 1915 (see page 94).]

To the House of Representatives:

I very much regret to return this bill (H. R. 10384, “An
act to regulate the immigration of aliens to, and ihe resi-

356
'

Woodrow Wilson

dence of aliens in, the United States”) without my signa-
ture. In most of the provisions of the bill I should be very
glad to concur, but I cannot rid myself of the conviction
that the literacy test constitutes a radical change in the
policy of the Nation which is not justified in principle. It
is not a test of character, of quality, or of personal fitness,
but would operate in most cases merely as a penalty for lack
of opportunity in the country from which the alien seeking
admission came. The opportunity to gain an education is
in many cases one of the chief opportunities sought by the
immigrant in coming to the United States, and our experi-
ence in the past has not been that the illiterate immigrant
is as such an undesirable immigrant. Tests of quality and
of purpose cannot be objected to on principle, but tests of
opportunity surely may be.

Moreover, even if this test might be equitably insisted
on, one of the exceptions proposed to its application in-
volves a provision which might lead to very delicate and
hazardous diplomatic situations. The bill exempts from the
operation of the literacy test “all aliens who shall prove to
the satisfaction of the proper immigration officer or to the
Secretary of Labor that they are seeking admission to the
United States to avoid religious persecution in the country
of their last permanent residence, whether such persecution
be evidenced by overt acts or by laws or governmental reg-
ulations that discriminate against the alien or the race to
which he belongs because of his religious faith.” Such a
provision, so applied and administered, would oblige the
officer concerned in effect to pass judgment upon the laws
and practices of a foreign Government and declare that they
did or did not constitute religious persecution. This would,
to say the least, be a most invidious function for any admin-
istrative officer of this Government to perform, and it is not
only possible, but probable, that very serious questions of
international justice and comity would arise between this
Government and the Government or Governments thus

867
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

officially condemned should its exercise be attempted. I
dare say that these consequences were not in the minds of
the proponents of this provision, but the provision sepa-
rately and in itself renders it unwise for me to give my
assent to this legislation in its present form.

® Wooprow WILson.
Tue Wurre Hovss, January 29, 1917.

[Immigration legislation was not then a pressing topic; for
with the outbreak of war in Europe the number of immigrants
admitted into the United States had decreased from 1,200,000
annually to 300,000. Favoring restrictive legislation were those
who argued that when war was ended vast numbers would rush to
the United States. Opposed to such legislation were many who
maintained that a Europe under reconstruction would absorb all
the energies of its populations, and others expressed anxiety over
the growing scarcity of common labor in the United States.

But Congress was overwhelmingly in favor of the legislation, and
the bill was promptly passed over President Wilson’s veto. ‘Thus
a literacy test was finally imposed on immigrants, in accordance
with the recommendations of an Immigration Commission, after
vetoes by Presidents Cleveland, Taft, and Wilson.]

a

 

Witson’s Appress to Concress Fortowina GEerRMany’s
RENEWAL OF SuBMARINE War Aaainst MercuHant
Suips—Anp ANNOUNCING THE SEVERANCE OF
Diptomatic RELations

(Delivered in Joint Session, February 8, 1917)

[The diplomatic correspondence which had preceded this crisis
will be found in the pages ending with 270.] ,
Gentlemen of the Congress:

The Imperial German Government on the thirty-first of
January announced to this Government and to the govern-
ments of the other neutral nations that on and after the

368
Woodrow Wilson

first day of February, the present month, it would adopt a
policy with regard to the use of submarines against all ship-
ping seeking to pass through certain designated areas of
the high seas to which it is clearly my duty to call your
attention.

Let me remind the Congress that on the 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:

If it is still the purpose of the Imperial Government to prose-
cute relentless and indiscriminate warfare against vessels of com-
merce by the use of submarines without regard to what the
Government of the United States must consider the sacred and
indisputable rules of international law and the universally recog-
nized 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 imme-
diately declare and effect an abandonment of its present methods
of submarine warfare against passenger and freight-carrying
vessels, the Government of the United States can have no choice
but to sever diplomatic relations with the German Empire
altogether.

In reply to this declaration the Imperial German Govern-
ment gave this Government the following assurance:

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

The German Government, guided by this idea, notifies the Gov-
ernment of the United States that the German 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.

359
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State. Papers

“But,” it added, “neutrals can not expect that Germany,
forced to fight for her existence, shall, for the sake of neu-
tral interest, restrict the use of an effective weapon if her
enemy is permitted to continue to apply at will methods
of warfare violating the rules of international law. Such
a demand would be incompatible with the character of neu-
trality, and the German Government is convinced that
the Government of the United States does not think of
making such a demand, knowing that the Government of
the United States has repeatedly declared that it is deter-
mined to restore the principle of the freedom of the seas,
from whatever quarter it has been violated.”

To this the Government of the United States replied on
the eighth of May, accepting, of course, the assurances
given, but adding,

The Government of the United States feels it necessary to state
that it takes it for granted that the Imperial German Govern-
ment 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 negotiations between the Government of the
United States and any other belligerent Government, notwithstand-
ing 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 possible misunder-
standing, the Government of the United States notifies the Imperial
Government that it cannot for a moment entertain, much less
diseuss, 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 Sec-
retary of State, along with a formal note, a memorandum
which contains the following statement:

The Imperial Government, therefore, does not doubt that the
Government of the United States will understand the situation

360
Woodrow Wilson

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

ive 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 meas-
ures of her enemies by forcibly preventing after February 1, 1917,
in a zone around Great Britain, France, Italy, and in the Eastern
Mediterranean all navigation, 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 intimation
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 alternative consistent
with the dignity and honour 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 abandon-
ment 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 an-
nounce to His Excellency the German Ambassador that all
diplomatic relations between the United States and the
German Empire are severed, and that the American Am-
bassador 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 German
Government, this sudden and deeply deplorable renuncia-
tion of its assurances, given this Government at one of the
most critical moments of tension in the relations of the
two governments, I refuse to believe that it is the intention
of the German authorities to do in fact what they have
warned us they will feel at liberty to do. I cannot bring

361
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers-

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 be-
tween them and destroy American ships and take the
lives of American citizens in the wilful prosecution of the
ruthless naval programme they have announced their in-
tention 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 under-
standings 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 sea-
men 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 prrerneny: 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 peo-
ple. We wish to serve no selfish ends. We seek merely
to stand true alike in thought and in action to the immemo-
rial 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 unmo-
lested 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!

862
Woodrow Wilson

Witson’s Appress To Conaress Requesting AUTHORITY TO
Arm Mercuant Suips

(Delivered ‘in Joint Session, February 26, 1917)

Gentlemen of the Congress:

I have again asked the privilege of addressing you be-
cause 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 German
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 com-
merce, whether of belligerents or of neutrals, that should
seek to approach Great Britain and Ireland, the Atlantic
coasts of Europe, or the harbours of the eastern Mediter-
ranean, and to conduct those operations without regard to
the established restrictions of international practice, with-
out regard to any considerations of humanity even which
might interfere with their object. That policy was forth-
with 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 oper-
ation. We have asked the cooperation of the other neutral
governments to prevent these depredations, but so far none
of them has thought it wise to join us in any common course
of action. Our own commerce has suffered, is suffering,
rather in apprehension than in fact, rather because so many
of our ships are timidly keeping to their home ports than
because American ships have been sunk.

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

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 Fry, 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
Fry, were safeguarded with reasonable care. The case of
the Law, which was carrying lemon-box staves to Palermo,
disclosed a ruthlessness of method which deserves grave
condemnation, but was accompanied by no circumstances
which might not have been expected at any time in con-
nection 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 submarine war-
fare 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 protection, and the very
serious congestion of our commerce which has resulted, a
congestion which is growing rapidly more and more serious
every day. This in itself might presently accomplish, in
effect, what the new German submarine 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 commanders would in fact avoid has
not occurred.

But, while this is happily true, it must be admitted that
there have been certain additional indications and expres-
sions of purpose on the part of the German press and the
German authorities which have increased rather than les-
sened 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

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Woodrow Wilson

they may happen to encounter exercise an unexpected dis-
cretion 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 thoughtful man can fail to
see that the necessity for definite action may come at any
time, if we are in fact, and not in word merely, to defend
our elementary rights as a neutral nation. It would be
most imprudent to be unprepared.

I cannot in such circumstances be unmindful of the fact
that the expiration of the term of the present Congress
is immediately at hand, by constitutional limitation; and
that it would in all likelihood require an unusual length
of time to assemble and organize the Congress which is to
succeed it. I feel that I ought, in view of that fact, to
obtain from you full and immediate assurance of the au-
thority which I may need at any moment to exercise. No
doubt I already possess that authority without special war-
rant of law, by the plain implication of my constitutional
duties and powers; but I prefer, in the present circum-
stances, not to act upon general implication. I wish to feel
that the authority and the power of the Congress are behind
me in whatever it may become necessary for me to do. We
are jointly the servants of the people and must act together
and in their spirit, so far as we can divine and interpret it.

No one doubts what it is our duty to do. We must de-
fend 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 occa-
sion should indeed arise. Since it has unhappily proved
impossible to safeguard our neutral rights by diplomatic
means against the unwarranted infringements they are suf-
fering at the hands of Germany, there may be no recourse
but to armed neutrality, which we shall know how to main-
tain and for which there is abundant American precedent.

865
 

Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

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 nearest my heart
and would wish to exhibit in everything I do. I am anx-
ious that the people of the nations at war also should un-
derstand and not mistrust us. I hope that I need give no
further proofs and assurances than I have already given
throughout nearly three years of anxious patience that I
am the friend of peace and mean to preserve it for Amer-
ica so long as I am able. I am not now proposing or con-
templating war or any steps that need lead to it. I merely
request that you will accord me by your own vote and defi-
nite bestowal the means and the authority to safeguard in
practice the right of a great people who are at peace and
who are desirous of exercising none but the rights of peace
to follow the pursuits of peace in quietness and good will—
rights recognized time out of mind by all the civilized na-
tions 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.

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 fore-
seen. I believe that the people will be willing to trust me
to act with restraint, with prudence, and in the true spirit
of amity and good faith that they have themselves dis-.
played 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 neces-
sary and adequate to protect our ships and our people in
their legitimate and peaceful pursuits on the seas. I ze-

366
Woodrow Wilson

quest also that you will grant me at the same time, along
with the powers I ask, a sufficient credit to enable me to
provide adequate means of protection where they are lack-
ing, including adequate insurance against the present war
risks,

I have spoken of our commerce and of the legitimate
errands of our people on the seas, but you will not be misled
as to my main thought, the thought that lies beneath these
phrases and gives them dignity and weight. It is not of
material 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 civilization. My
theme is of those great principles of compassion and of pro-
tection which mankind has sought to throw about human
lives, the lives of non-combatants, the lives of men who are
peacefully at work keeping the industrial processes of the
world quick and vital, the lives of women and children and
of those who supply the labour which ministers to their.
sustenance. We are speaking of no selfish material rights
but of rights which our hearts support and whose founda-
tion is that righteous passion for justice upon which all
law, all structures alike of family, of state, and of mankind
must rest, as upon the ultimate base of our existence and
our liberty. I cannot imagine any man with American
principles at his heart hesitating to defend these things.

[A bill embodying the President’s recommendations was imme-
diately introduced in both houses; but the proposal to confer upon
‘him authority “to employ any other instrumentalities or methods
that may be necessary” met with objection, which caused theewhole
measure to fail of passage during the week that remained before
the expiration of the Sixty-fourth Congress on March 4.

Upon the failure of the bill, President Wilson called the Sixty-

fifth Congress in special session. Meanwhile the Administration
decided that it possessed authority to arm ships for defense.]

867
WOODROW WILSON’S SECOND INAUGURAL
ADDRESS

My Fellow Citizens:

The four years which have elapsed since last I stood
in this place have been crowded with counsel and action of
the most vital interest and consequence. Perhaps no equal
period in our history has been so fruitful of important re-
forms in our economic and industrial life or so full of
significant changes in the spirit and purpose of our politi-
cal action. We have sought very thoughtfully to set our
house in order, correct the grosser errors and abuses of our
industrial life, liberate and quicken the processes of our
national genius and energy, and lift our politics to a broader
view of the people’s essential interests. It is a record of
singular variety and singular distinction. But I shall not
attempt to review it. It speaks for itself and will be of
increasing influence as the years go by. This is not the
time for retrospect. It is time, rather, to speak our thoughts
and purposes concerning the present and the immediaté
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 them-
selves 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 af-
fected 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

368
Woodrow Wilson

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 seasons
back and forth between us and them. The war inevitably
set its mark from the first alike upon our minds, our indus-
tries, 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 con-
sciousness 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 in-
tolerable 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 dem-
onstrate what it is we insist upon and cannot forego. We
may even be drawn on, by circumstances, 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.

869
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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

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 oppor-
tunity serve; but we realize that the greatest things that
remain to be done must be done with the whole world for
stage and in codperation with the wide and universal forces
of mankind, and we are making our spirits ready for those
things. They will follow in the immediate wake of the war
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 prin-
ciples 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;

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
consent of the governed and that no other powers should.
be supported by the common thought, purpose, or power
of the family of nations.

3870
Woodrow Wilson

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 proceeding from
its own citizens meant to encourage or assist revolution in
other states should be sternly and effectually suppressed
and prevented.

I need not argue these principles to you, my fellow coun-
trymen: they are your own, part and parcel of your own
thinking and your own motive in affairs. They spring up
native amongst us. Upon this as a platform of purpose
and of action we can stand together.

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

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 delegation
of power and have by their gracious judgment: named me
their leader in affairs. I know now what the task means.
I realize to the full the responsibility which it involves.
I pray God I may be given the wisdom and the prudence
to do my duty in the true spirit of this great people. I am
their servant and can succeed only as they sustain and

871
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

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 in-
trigue break the harmony or embarrass the spirit of our
people; beware that our Government be kept pure and in-
corrupt 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
tolerance, your countenance, and your united aid. The
shadows 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.
Wasuineaton, March 5, 1917

Witson’s Appress To Coneress ADVISING THAT GERMANY’S
Course Be Decrarep War Acainst THE Unitep States

(Delivered in Joint Session, April 2, 1917)

[The newly elected Congress had been called in special session
by President Wilson (see page 365). Neither Democrats nor Re-
publicans had a clear majority in the House, but the Democrats
obtained sufficient independent support to establish control. The
President appeared in the evening of the first day of the special
session, and made the following address:]

Gentlemen of the Congress:
I have called the Congress into extraordinary session
because there are serious, very serious, choices of policy to

872
Woodrow Wilson

be made, and made immediately, which it was neither right
nor constitutionally permissible that I should assume 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 Mediter-
ranean. 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 somewhat restrained
the commanders of its undersea craft in conformity with its
promise then given to us that passenger boats should not be
sunk and that due warning would be given to.all other ves-
sels 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 enough, as was proved in distressing
instance after instance in the progress of the cruel and un-
manly business, but a certain degree of restraint was ob-
served. 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 be-
reaved and stricken people of Belgium, though the latter
were provided with safe conduct through the proscribed
areas by the German Government itself and were distin-
guished by unmistakable marks of identity, have been sunk
with the same reckless lack of compassion or of principle.

878
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

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 observed upon the
seas, where no nation had right of dominion and where
lay the free highways of the world. By painful stage
after stage has that law been built up, with meagre enough
results, indeed, after all was accomplished that could be ac-
complished, but always with a clear view, at least, of what
the heart and conscience of mankind demanded. This mini-
mum of right the German Government has swept aside
under the plea of retaliation and necessity and because it
had no weapons which it could use at sea except these
which it is impossible to employ as it is employing them
without throwing to the winds all scruples of humanity or
of respect for the understandings that were supposed to
underlie the intercourse of the world. I am not now think-
ing of the loss of property involved, immense and serious
as that is, but only of the wanton and wholesale destruc-
tion of the lives of non-combatants, men, women, and
children, engaged in pursuits which have always, even in
the darkest periods of modern history, been deemed inno-
cent and legitimate. Property can be paid for; the lives
of peaceful 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 people
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 mankind.
Each nation“must decide for itself how it will meet it. The
choice we make for ourselves must be made with a modera-
tion of counsel and a temperateness of judgment befitting

87h
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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 ef-
fect 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
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 circum-
stances, grim necessity indeed, to endeavour 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
pretensions it is worse than ineffectual; it is likely only
to produce what it was meant to prevent; it is practically
certain to draw us into the war without either the rights or
the effectiveness of belligerents. 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-

S75
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

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 German
Government to be in fact nothing less than war against
the government and people of the United States; that it
formally accept the status of belligerent which has thus
been thrust upon it; and that it take immediate steps not
only to put the country in a more thorough state of defense
but also to exert all its power and employ all its resources
to bring the Government of the German Empire to terms
and end the war.

What this will involve is clear. It will involve the ut-
most practicable cooperation in counsel and action with the
governments now at war with Germany, and, as incident 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 organiza-'
tion and mobilization of all the material resources of the
country to supply the materials of war and serve the inci-
dental needs of the nation in the most abundant and yet
the most economical and efficient way possible. It will in-
volve the immediate full equipment of the navy in all re-
spects but particularly in supplying it with the best means
of dealing with the enemy’s submarines. It will involve the
immediate addition to the armed forces of the United States
already provided for by law in case of war 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 incre-
ments of equal force so soon as they may be needed and can
be handled in training. I~ will involve also, of course, the

876
Woodrow Wilson

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 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 prep-
aration 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 con-
sideration of your committees, measures for the accomplish-
ment 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 cour.-
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

877.
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

mind when I addressed the Congress on the third of Febru-
ary and on the twenty-sixth of February. Our object now,
as then, is to vindicate the principles of peace and justice
in the life of the world as against selfish and autocratic
power and to set up amongst the really free and self-gov-
erned 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 las: of neu-
trality in such circumstances. We are at the beginning
of an age in which it will be insisted that the same stand-
ards of conduct and 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 towards them but one of sympathy and friend-
ship. 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 consulted by their rulers and
wars were provoked and waged in the interest of dynasties
or of little groups of ambitious men who were accustomed
to use their fellow men as pawns and tools. Self-governed
nations do not fill their neighbour states with spies or set
the course of intrigue to bring about some critical posture
of affairs which will give them an opportunity to strike and
make conquest. Such designs can be successfully worked
out only under cover and where no one has the right to ask
questions. Cunningly contrived plans of deception or ag-
gression, carried, it may be, from generation to generation,
can be worked out and kept from the light only within the

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Woodrow Wilson

privacy of courts or behind the carefully guarded confi-
dences of a narrow and privileged class. They are hap-
pily impossible where public opinion commands 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 honour,
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 corrup-
tion seated at its very heart. Only free peoples can hold
their purpose and their honour 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 towards
life. The autocracy that crowned the summit of her po-
litical structure, long as it had stood and terrible as 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 naive majesty and might to the forces that are fighting
for freedom in the world, for justice, and for peace. Here
is a fit partner for a League of Honour.

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-

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where afoot against our national unity of counsel, our
peace within and without, our industries and our commerce.
Indeed it is now evident that its spies were here even be-
fore the war began; and it is unhappily not a matter of
conjecture but a fact proved in our courts of justice that
the intrigues which have more than once come perilously
near to disturbing the peace and dislocating the industries
of the country have been carried on at the instigation,
with the support, and even under the personal direction of
official agents of the Imperial Government accredited to
the Government of the United States. 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 towards us (who
were, no doubt, as ignorant of them as we ourselves were),
but only in the selfish designs of a Government that did
what it pleased and told its people nothing. But they have
played their part in serving to convince us at last that that
Government entertains no real friendship for us and means
to act against our peace and security at its convenience.
That it means to stir up enemies against us at our very
doors the intercepted note to the German Minister at
Mexico City is eloquent evidence.

We are accepting this challenge of hostile purpose be-
cause we know that in such a government, following such
methods, we can never have a friend; and that in the pres-
ence of its organized power, always lying in wait to accom-
plish we know not what purpose, there can be no assured
security for the democratic governments of the world. We
are now about to accept gauge of battle with this natural
foe to liberty and shall, if necessary, spend the whole force
of the nation to check and nullify its pretensions and its
power. We are glad, now that we see the facts with no
veil of false pretence about them, to fight thus for the
ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its

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peoples, the German peoples included: for the rights of
nations great and small and the privilege of men every-
where to choose their way of life and of obedience. The
world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must
be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty.
We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest,
no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no
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 confi-
dent, conduct our operations as belligerents without passion
and ourselves observe with proud punctilio the principles
of right and of fair play we profess to be fighting for.

I have said nothing of the governments allied with the
Imperial Government of Germany because they have not
made war upon us or challenged us to defend our right
and our honour. The Austro-Hungarian Government has,
indeed, avowed its unqualified endorsement and acceptance
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 Ambassador recently ac-
credited to this Government by the Imperial and Royal
Government of Austria-Hungary; but that Government has
not actually engaged in warfare against citizens of the
United States on the seas, and I take the liberty, for the
present at least, of postponing a discussion of our relations
with the authorities at Vienna. We enter this war only
where we are clearly forced into it because there are no
other means of defending our rights.

It will be all the easier for us to conduct ourselves ag

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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 disadvantage upon
them, but only in armed opposition to an irresponsible gov-
ernment which has thrown aside all considerations of hu-
manity 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-establish-
ment of intimate relations of mutual advantage between
us,—however hard it may be for them, for the time being,
to believe that this is spoken from our hearts. We have
borne with their present government through all these bitter
months because of that friendship,—exercising a patience
and forbearance which would otherwise have been impos-
sible. 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 live amongst us and share our life, and we
shall be proud to prove it towards all who are in fact loyal
to their neighbours and to the Government in the hour of
test. They are, most of them, as true and loyal Americans
as if they had never known any other fealty or allegiance.
They will be prompt to stand with us in rebuking and re-
straining the few who may be of a different mind and
purpose. If there should be disloyalty, it will be dealt
with with a firm hand of stern repression; but, if it lifts
its head at all, it will lift it only here and there and without
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 sacri-
fice ahead of us. It is a fearful thing to lead this great
peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disas-
trous 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

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nearest our hearts, for democracy, for the right of those
who submit to authority to have a voice in their own gov-
ernments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for
a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peo-
ples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make
the world itself at last free. To such a task we can dedi-
cate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and
everything that we have, with the pride of those who know
that the day has come when America is privileged to spend
her blood and her might for the principles that gave her
birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured.
God helping her, she can do no other.

[The President’s recommendation—that “Congress declare the
recent course of the Imperiai German Government to be in fact
nothing less than war against the government and people of the
United States”—was immediately carried out. The address was
made on the evening of April 2. On April 4 the Senate adopted
the war resolution, by vote of 82 to 6. The House completed its
action at 3 a. m. on the morning of April 6, by vote of 373 to 50;
and shortly after noon on that day President Wilson attached his
signature. ]

ProciaMATIon oF State oF War aNnp or ALIEN ENEMY
Reaurations, Aprit 6, 1917

Whereas the Congress of the United States in the exer-
cise of the constitutional authority vested in them have
resolved, by joint resolution of the Senate and House of
Representatives bearing date this day “That the state of
war between the United States and the Imperial German
Governmént which has been thrust upon the United States
is hereby formally declared:

Whereas it is provided by Section four thousand and
sixty-seven of the Revised Statutes, as follows:

Whenever there is declared a war between the United States
and any foreign nation or government, or any invasion of preda-

tory incursion is perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against
the territory of the United States, by any foreign nation or gov-

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

ernment, and the President makes public proclamation of the
event, all natives, citizens, denizens, or subjects of the hostile
nation or government, being males of the age of fourteen years
and upwards, who shall be within the United States, and not ac-
tually naturalized, shall be liable to be apprehended, restrained,
secured, and removed, as alien enemies. The President is author-
ized, in any such event, by his proclamation thereof, or other public
act ,to direct the conduct to be observed, on the part of the United
States, toward the aliens who become so liable; the manner and
degree of the restraint to which they shall be subject, and in what
cases, and upon what security their residence shall be permitted,
and to provide for the removal of those who, not being permitted
to reside within the United States, refuse or neglect to depart
therefrom; and to establish any other regulations which are found
necessary in the premises and for the public safety;

Whereas. by Sections four thousand and sixty-eight, four
thousand and sixty-nine, and four thousand and seventy, of
the Revised Statutes, further provision is made relative to
alien enemies;

Now, therefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, President of the
United States of America, do hereby proclaim to all whom
it may concern that a state of war exists between the United
States and the Imperial German Government; and I do
specially direct all officers, civil or military; of the United
States that they exercise vigilance and zeal in the discharge
of the duties incident to such a state of war; and I do,
moreover, earnestly appeal to all American citizens that
they, in loyal devotion to their country, dedicated from its
foundation to the principles of liberty and justice, uphold
the laws of the land, and give undivided and willing sup-
port to those measures which may be adopted by the con-
stitutional authorities in prosecuting the war to a successful
issue and in obtaining a secure and just peace;

And, acting under and by virtue of the authority vested
in me by the Constitution of the United States and the
said sections of the Revised Statutes, I do hereby further
proclaim and direct that the conduct to be observed on the
part of the United States towards all natives, citizens, deni-
zens, or subjects of Germany, being males of the age of

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fourteen years and upwards, who shall be within the United
States and not actually naturalized, who for the purpose of
this proclamation and under such sections of the Revised
Statutes are termed alien enemies, shall be as follows:

All alien enemies are enjoined to preserve the peace
towards the United States and to refrain from crime against
the public safety, and from violating the laws of the United
States and of the States and Territories thereof, and to
refrain from actual hostility or giving information, aid or
comfort to the enemies of the United States, and to comply
strictly with the regulations which are hereby or which may
be from time to time promulgated by the President; and so
long as they shall conduct themselves in accordance with
law, they shall be undisturbed in the peaceful pursuit of
their lives and occupations and be accorded the considera-
tion due to all peaceful and law-abiding persons, except so
far as restrictions may be necessary for their own pro-
tection and for the safety of the United States; and towards
such alien enemies as conduct themselves in accordance with
law, all citizens of the United States are enjoined to pre-
serve the peace and to treat them with all such friendliness
as may be compatible with loyalty and allegiance to the
United States

And all alien enemies who fail to conduct themselves
as so enjoined, in addition to all other penalties prescribed
by law, shall be liable to restraint, or to give security, or
to remove and depart from the United States in the manner
prescribed by Sections four thousand and sixty-nine and
four thousand and seventy of the Revised Statutes, and as:
prescribed in the regulations duly promulgated by the
President;

And pursuant to the authority vested in me, I hereby
declare and establish the following regulations, which I find.
necessary in the premises and for the public safety:

(1) An alien enemy shall not have in his possession, at any
time or place, any firearm, weapon, or implement of war, or com--

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

‘ponent part thereof, ammunition, maxim or other silencer, bomb
or explosive or material used in the manufacture of explosives;

(2) An alien enemy shall not have in his possession at any
time or place or use or operate any aircraft or wireless apparatus,
or any form of signalling device, or any form of cipher code, or
any paper, document or book written or printed in cipher or
in which there may be invisible writing. /

(3) All property found in the possession of an alien enemy in
violation of the foregoing regulations shall be subject to seizure
by the United States;

(4) An alien enemy shall not approach or be found within
one-half of a mile of any Federal or State fort, camp, arsenal,
aircraft station, Government or naval vessel, navy yard, factory,
or workshop for the manufacture of munitions of war or of any
products for the use of the army or navy;

(5) An alien enemy shall not write, print, or publish any attack
or threats against the Government or Congress of the United
States, or either branch thereof, or against the measures or policy
of the United States, or against the person or property of any
person in the military, naval, or civil service of the United States,
or of the States or Territories, or of the District of Columbia,
or of the municipal governments therein;

(6) An alien enemy shall not commit or abet any hostile act
against the United States, or give information, aid, or comfort
to its enemies;

(7) An alien enemy shall not reside in or continue to reside in,
to remain in, or enter any locality which the President may from
time to time designate by Executive Order as a prohibited area
in which residence by an alien enemy shall be found by him to
constitute a danger to the public peace and safety of the United
States, except by permit from the President and except under
such limitations or restrictions as the President may prescribe;

(8) An alien enemy whom the President shall have reasonable
cause to believe to be aiding or about to aid the enemy, or to be
at large to the danger of the public peace or safety of the United
States, or to have violated or to be about to violate any of these
regulations, shall remove to any location designated by the Presi-
dent by Executive Order, and shall not remove therefrom without
a permit, or shall depart from the United States if so required
by the President;

(9) No alien enemy shall depart from the United States until
he shall have received such permit as the President shall prescribe,
or except under order of a court, judge, or justice, under Sec-
tions 4069 and 4070 of the Revised Statutes;

(10) No alien enemy shall land in or enter the United States,
except under such restrictions and at such places as the President
may prescribe;

(11) If necessary to prevent violations of these regulations, all
alien enemies will be obliged to register;

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Woodrow Wilson

(12) An alien enemy whom there may be reasonable cause to
believe to be aiding or about to aid the enemy, or who may be
at large to the danger of the public peace or safety, or who vio-
lates or attempts to violate, or of whom there is reasonable ground
to believe that he is about to violate, any regulation duly promul-
gated by the President, or any criminal law of the United States,
or of the States or Territories thereof, will be subject to summary
arrest by the United States Marshal, or his deputy, or such other
officer as the President shall designate, and to confinement in such
penitentiary, prison, jail, military camp, or other place of deten-
tion as may be directed by the President.

This proclamation and the regulations herein contained
shall extend and apply to all land and water, continental or
insular, in any way within the jurisdiction of the United
States.

In witness wHereor, I have hereunto set my hand and caused
the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this sixth day of April, in the
year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and seventeen, and
of the independence of the United States the one hundred and
forty-first.

Wooprow Wi1son.

Wixson’s Appress to His Fetntow-CountryMEN oN Ways
to SERvE THE Nation Durine THE War

(A Proclamation, 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 efficient war
footing and are about to create and equip a great army,
but these are the simplest parts of the great task to which

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

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 security
of the world. To do this great thing worthily and success-
fully 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, be-
sides fighting,—the things without which mere fighting
would be fruitless:

We must supply abundant food for ourselves and for
our armies and our seamen not only, but also for a large
part of the nations with whom we have now made common
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 lon-
ger work, to help clothe and equip the armies with which we
are cooperating in Europe, and to keep the looms and manu-
factories there in raw material; coal to keep the fires going
in ships at sea and in the furnaces of hundreds of factories
across the sea; steel out of which to make arms and ammu-
nition 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

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and Russia have usually supplied themselves but cannot
now afford the men, the materials, or the machinery to make.

It is evident to every thinking man that our industries,
on the farms, in the shipyards, in the mines, in the factories,
must be made more prolific and more efficient than ever
and that they must be more economically managed and
better adapted to the particular requirements 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 con-
ducting the fight for peace and freedom just as truly and
just as effectively as the men 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 of 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 cooperating is an abundance of
supplies, and especially of food stuffs. The importance 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
have come both our own people and a large proportion of
‘he people of Europe must rely upon the harvests in

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

America. Upon the farmers of this country, 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 production of their land or
that will bring about the most effectual cooperation in the
sale and distribution of their products? The time is short.
It is of the most imperative importance that everything pos-
sible be done and 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 food stuffs as well as cotton. They can
show their patriotism in no better or more convincing way
than by resisting the great temptation of the present 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 cooperate. They
will do everything possible to assist farmers in securing 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 unwarranted manipulation
of the nation’s food supply by those who handle it on its
way to the consumer. This is our opportunity to demon-
strate the efficiency of a great Democracy and we shall not
fall short of it!

This let me say to the middlemen of every sort, whether
they are handling our food stuffs or our raw materials

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Woodrow Wilson

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 disin-
terested. The country expects you, as it expects all others,
to forego unusual profits, to organize and expedite ship-
ments 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 de-
serve 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 de-
pends upon him. The food and the war supplies must be
carried across the seas no matter how many ships are sent
to the bettom. 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 manufacturer 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 cul-
tivates a garden helps, and helps greatly, to solve the prob-
lem 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 for America

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

to correct her unpardonable fault of wastefulness and ex-
travagance. 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 forgiven 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 stimu-
late those to whom it comes and remind all who need re-
minder of the solemn duties of a time such as the world
has never seen before, I beg that all editors and publishers
everywhere will give as prominent publication and as wide
circulation as possible to this appeal. I venture 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 J 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!

Wooprow Wixson.

Presipent Wiison’s Appress at DrpicaTION oF THE RED
Cross Burtpinc, Wasuineron, May 12, 1917

Mr. Chairman, Mr. Secretary, Ladies and Gentlemen:

It gives me a very deep gratification as the titular head
of the American Red Cross to accept in the name of .that
association this significant and beautiful gift, the gift of
the Government and of private individuals who have con-
ceived their duty in a noble spirit and upon a great scale.
It seems to me that the architecture of the building to which
the Secretary of War, Mr. Baker, alluded suggests some-
thing very significant. There are few buildings in Wash-

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Woodrow Wilson

ington more simple in their lines and in their ornamenta-
tion than the beautiful building we are dedicating this eve-
ning. It breathes a spirit of modesty and seems to adorn
duty with its proper garment of beauty. It is significant
that it should be dedicated to the women who serve to allevi-
ate suffering and comfort those who were in need during
our Civil War, because their thoughtful, disinterested, self-
sacrificing devotion is the spirit which should always illus-
trate the services of the Red Cross.

The Red Cross needs at this time more than it ever needed
before the comprehending support of the American people
and all the facilities which could be placed at its disposal to
perform its duties adequately and efficiently. I believe that
the American people perhaps hardly yet realize the sacri-
fices and sufferings that are before them. We thought the
scale of our Civil War was unprecedented, but in compari-
son with the struggle into which we have now entered the
Civil War seems almost insignificant in its proportions and
in its expenditure of treasure and of blood. And, there-
fore, it is a matter of the greatest importance that we should
at the outset see to it that the American Red Cross is
equipped and prepared for the things that lie before it.
It will be our instrument to do the works of alleviation
and of mercy which will attend this struggle. Of course,
the scale upon which it shall act will be greater than _
the scale of any other duty that it has ever attempted to
perform.

It is in recognition of that fact that the American Red
Cross has just added to its organization a small body of
men whom it has chosen to call its War Council—not be-
cause they are to counsel war, but because they are to serve
in this special war those purposes of counsel which have
become so imperatively necessary. Their first duty will be
to raise a great fund out of which to draw the resources
for the performance of their duty, and I do not believe that
it will be necessary to appeal to the American people to re-

893
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

spond to their call for funds, because the heart of this coun-
try is in this war, and if the heart of the country is in the
war, its heart will express itself in the gifts that will be
poured out for these humane purposes.

I say the heart of the country is in this war because it
would not have gone into it if its heart had not been pre-
pared for it. It would not have gone into it if it had not
first believed that here was an opportunity to express the
character of the United States. We have gone in with no
special grievance of our own, because we have always said
that we were the friends and servants of mankind. We
look for no profit.” We look for no advantage. We will ac-
cept no advantage out of this war. We go because we be-
lieve that the very principles upon which the American
Republic, was founded are now at stake and must be vindi-
cated. In such a contest, therefore, we shall not fail to
respond to the call to service that comes through the in-
strumentality of this particular organization.

And I think it not inappropriate to say this: There will
be many expressions of the spirit of sympathy and mercy
and philanthropy, and I think that it is very necessary that
we should not disperse our activities in those lines too much;
that we should keep constantly in view the desire to have
the utmost concentration and efficiency of effort, and I hope
that most, if not all of the philanthropic activities of this
war may be exercised if not through the Red Cross, then
through some already-constituted and experienced organiza-
tion. This is no war for amateurs. This is no war for mere
spontaneous impulse. It means grim business on every side
of it, and it is the mere counsel of prudence that in our
philanthropy, as well as in our fighting, we should act
through the instrumentalities already prepared to our hand
and already experienced in the tasks which are going to be
assigned to them. This should be merely the expression
of the practical genius of America itself, and I believe that
the practical genius of America will dictate that the efforts

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Woodrow Wilson

in this war in this particular field should be concentrated in
experienced hands as our efforts in other fields will be.

There is another thing that is significant and delightful
to my thought about the fact that this building should be
dedicated to the memory of the women both of the North
and of the South. It is a sort of landmark of the unity to
which the people have been brought so far as any old ques-
tion which tore our hearts in days gone by is concerned;
and I pray God that the outcome of this struggle may be
that every other element of difference amongst us will be
obliterated and that some day historians will remember these
momentous years as the years which made a single people
out of the great body of those who call themselves Ameri-
cans. The evidences are already many that this is happen-
ing. The divisions which were predicted have not occurred
and will not occur. The spirit of this people is already
united and when effort and suffering and sacrifice have
completed the union men will no longer speak of any lines
either of race or of association cutting athwart the great
body of this nation. So that I feel that we are now begin-
ning the processes which will some day require another
beautiful memorial erected to those whose hearts uniting,
united America.

[The President’s statement that “we have gone in (into the war)

with no special grievance of our own” was later clarified by him as
meaning that our grievance was the same as that of other neutrals.]

PRESIDENT Witson’s ProcLaMATION OF THE SELECTIVE
Drarr Act, May 18, 1917

[Epvrrorntra, Nore: In the President’s war address to
Congress, on April 2, he had recommended an “immediate
addition to the armed forces of the United States
chosen upon the principle of universal liability to service.”
After full debate in both branches—with many members

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urging that the voluntary system be tried—Congress passed
a Selective Draft Act, which President Wilson signed on
May 18 and immediately proclaimed as follows :]

Whereas, Congress has enacted and the President has on
the 18th day of May, one thousand nine hundred and sev-
enteen, approved a law, which contains the following pro-
visions:

Sscrion 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 President: And upon
proclamation by the President or other public notice given by him
or by his direction stating the time and place of such registra-
tion, 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 National Guard and Naval Militia while in the service of
the United States, to present themselves for and submit to regis-
tration under the provisions of this act: And every such person
shall be deemed to have notice of the requirements of this act
upon the publication of said proclamation or other notice as afore-
said, given by the President or by his direction: And any person
who shall willfully fail or refuse to present himself for registra-
tion 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 im-
prisonment 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; provided, further, that persons shall
be subject to registration as herein provided, who shall have at-
tained their twenty-first birthday and who shall not have attained
their thirty-first birthday on or before the day set for the regis-
tration; and all persons so registered shall be and remain subject
to draft into the forces hereby authorized unless excepted or ex~
cused therefrom as in this act provided. :

[Here the President also quoted sections of the law relating to
the duties of registration officials.]

Now, Therefore, 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 Colum-
bia, and the counties and municipalities therein, to perform

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Woodrow Wilson

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 persons
subject to registration in the several States and in the Dis-
trict 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 fifth day of June, 1917, at the registra-
tion place in the precinct wherein they have their per-
manent homes. Those who shall have attained their twenty-
first birthday 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 en-
listed men in the Enlisted Reserve Corps while in active
service. In the territories of Alaska, Hawaii, and Porto
Rico a day for registration will be named in a later procla-
mation.

[Here followed detailed instructions for registration of those
sick or absent from their counties.]

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 the soil and man
the factories are no less a part of the army that is France
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 pursues a private purpose. All must pursue one pur-
pose. A nation needs all men; but it needs each man, not

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

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 provided that the nation shall be organ-
ized for war by selection; that each man shall be classified
for service in the place to which it shall best serve the gen-
eral 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 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 important to those ideals
no less than to the pride of this generation 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

3.98
Woodrow Wilson

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.

Wooprow Wi1son.

By the President:

Roszert Lansina, Secretary of State.

Presipent Witson’s Outrnine or THE Foop ApDMINISs-
TRATION Program, May 19, 1917

[Eprrorran Nore: In all countries there had been
diminishing food supplies due to poor harvests, reduced
man power, abnormal consumption by' armies, and the
creation of vast reserve stores for the military. One of
the chief ways in which the United States could help its
European Allies was that of furnishing foodstuffs. Amer-
ican farmers had planted increased acreage and Congress
was framing legislation to prevent speculation, hoarding,
and waste. |

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

899
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

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 pow-
ers 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 arbitrary restraint or
injurious interference with the normal processes of pro-
duction. They are intended to benefit and assist the
farmer and all those who play a legitimate part in the
preparation, distribution, and marketing of foodstuffs.

It is proposed to draw a sharp line of distinction between
the normal activities of the Government represented in the
Department of Agriculture in reference to food produc-
tion, conservation, and marketing, on the one hand, and the
emergency activities necessitated by the war in reference
to the regulation of food distribution and consumption, on
the other. All measures intended directly to extend the
normal activities of the Department of Agriculture in ref-
erence 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, 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 Administra-
tion, 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 various
food-producing and distributing trades; the prevention of
all unwarranted hoarding of every kind and of the control
of foodstuffs by persons who are not in any legitimate sense
producers, dealers, or traders; the requisitioning when nec-

400
Woodrow Wilson

essary for the public use of food supplies and of the equip-
ment necessary for handling them properly; the licensing
of wholesome and legitimate mixtures and milling percent-
ages, and the prohibition of the unnecessary or wasteful
use of foods.

Authority is asked also to establish prices, but not jn
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 break-
ing up corners and attempts at speculation, when they occur,
by fixing temporarily a reasonable price at which middle-
men must sell.

I have asked Mr. Herbert Hoover to undertake this all-
important task of food administration. He has expressed
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 em-
ployed, so far as possible, upon the same volunteer basis.
He has expressed his confidence that this difficult matter
of food administration can be successfully accomplished
through the voluntary co-operation and direction of legiti-
mate distributers of foodstuffs and with the help of the
women of the country.

Although it is absolutely necessary that unquestionable
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. Hooveyr’s efforts by sup-
plying the necessary volunteer agencies throughout the
country for the intelligent control of food consumption and
securing the co-operation of the most capable leaders of

401
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

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 them-
selves, and that the ordinary economic machinery of the
country will be left substantially undisturbed.

-The proposed food administration is intended, of course,
only to meet a manifest emergency and to continue only
while the war lasts. Since it will be composed, 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 Administra-
tion considers it to be of pre-eminent importance that the
existing associations of producers and distributers of food-
stuffs should be mobilized and made use of on a volunteer
basis. The successful conduct of the projected food ad-
ministration by such means will be the finest possible dem-
onstration of the willingness, the ability, and the efficiency
of democracy, and of its justified reliance upon the freedom
of individual initiative. The last thing that any American
could contemplate with equanimity would be the introduc-
tion of anything resembling Prussian autocracy into the
food control in this country.

It is of vital interest and importance to every man who
produces food and to every man who takes part in its dis-
tribution that these policies thus liberally administered
should succeed, and succeed altogether. It is only in that
way that we can prove it to be absolutely unnecessary to re-
sort to the rigorous and drastic measures which have proved
to be necessary in some of the European countries.

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Woodrow Wilson

Emsarco ProciaMATIONs

[Eprrortan Nore: A law approved June 16, 1917, had
empowered the President, at his discretion, to prohibit ex-
port of various commodities except under regulations or
licenses. This was chiefly to keep supplies from reaching
the enemy through neutral countries, and to furnish means
for persuading neutrals to release in exchange commodities
required by the Allies. The President issued several Em-
bargo proclamations, the first being dated July 9. They
each contained a long citation from the law itself and still
longer lists of commodities and countries affected. Ac-
companying these formal proclamations were explanatory
statements by the President, which follow:]

Wasuinerton, D. C., July 9, 1917.

In controlling by license the export of certain indis-
pensable commodities from the United States, the Govern-
ment has first and chiefly in view the amelioration of the
food conditions which have arisen or are likely to arise in
our own country before new crops are harvested. Not
only is the conservation of our prime food and fodder sup-
plies a matter which vitally concerns our own people, but
the retention of an adequate supply of raw materials is
essential to our program of military and naval construction
and the continuance of our necessary domestic activities.
We shall therefore similarly safeguard all our fundamental
supplies.

It is obviously the duty of the United States in liberating
any surplus products over and above our own domestic
needs, to consider first the necessities of all the nations
engaged in war against the Central Empires. As to neutral
nations, however, we also recognize our duty. The Gov-
ernment does not wish to hamper them. On the contrary,
it wishes and intends, by all fair and equitable means, to
co-operate with them in their difficult task of adding from

408
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

our available surpluses to their own domestic supply and
of meeting their pressing necessities or deficits. In con-
sidering the deficits of food supplies the Government means
only to fulfill its obvious obligation to assure itself that
neutrals are husbanding their own resources and that our
supplies will not become available, either directly or in-
directly, to feed the enemy.
Woovrow WItson.

[This first proclamation applied to all countries, but related
only to fuels, food grains, feed, fertilizers, meats and fats, iron
and steel, arms and ammunition. The second proclamation made
some additions to the list, and also prohibited the export—to the
enemy and to European neutrals—of practically all articles of

commerce. The explanatory statement accompanying the second
proclamation follows:] | ,

August 27, 1917.

The purpose and effect of this proclamation is not ex-
port prohibition, but merely export control. It is not the
intention to interfere unnecessarily with our foreign trade;
but our own domestic needs must be adequately safeguarded
and there is the added duty of meeting the necessities of
all the nations at war with the Imperial German Govern-
ment. (

After these needs are met, it is our wish and intention
to minister to the needs of the neutral nations as far as
our resources permit. This task will be discharged with-
out other than the very proper qualification that the libera-
tion of our surplus products shall not be made the occasion
of benefit to the enemy, either directly or indirectly.

The two lists have been prepared in the interests of
facility and expediency. The first list, applicable to the
enemy and his allies and to the neutral countries of Europe,
brings under control practically all articles of commerce,
while the second list, applicable to all the other countries
of the world, makes only a few additions to the list of
commodities controlled by the proclamation of July 9, 1927.

404
Woodrow Wilson

It is obvious that a closer supervision and control of ex-
ports is necessary with respect to those European neutrals
within the sphere of hostilities than is required for those
countries further removed. ;

The establishment of these distinctions will simplify the
administrative processes and enable us to continue our
policy of minimizing the interruption of trade.

No licenses will be necessary for the exportation of coin,
bullion, currency and evidences of indebtedness until re-
quired by regulations to be promulgated by the Secretary
of the Treasury in his discretion. Woomeaw Winsar,

[By a proclamation of September 7, the free export of coin,
bullion, and currency—permitted in the paragraph above—was also
prohibited except under regulations prescribed by the Treasury.]

Presipent Witson’s Messace ro Russia

(Delivered to the Provisional Government on May 26,
1917; made public at Washington on June 9.).

[Eprroria, Notre: This was written two months after
the revolution which forced the abdication of Czar Nicholas
II (March 15, 1917) and the establishment of a provisional
democratic government. Meanwhile, the Russian peasants,
workmen, and soldiers—keen to exercise their newly won
liberty—had neglected tasks associated with the active
prosecution of war; Germany and Austria had made over-
tures for a separate peace; and at best Russia seemed likely
to remain for some time an impotent ally. President Wil-
son sent a special commission to Russia, headed by Elihu
Root, and the following note was made public at about the
time of the mission’s arrival at Petrograd:]

In view of the approaching visit of the American delega-
tion to Russia to express the deep friendship of the Ameri-

405
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

can people for the people of Russia and to discuss the best
and most practical means of co-operation between the two
peoples in carrying the present struggle for the freedom of
all peoples to a successful consummation, it seems oppor-
tune 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 past few weeks by mis-
taken and misleading statements, and the issues at stake
are too momentous, too tremendous, too significant for the
whole human race to permit any misinterpretations or mis-
understandings, 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 pos-
sible instrumentality, are making use even of the influence
of groups and parties among their own subjects to whom
they have never been just or fair or even tolerant, to pro-
mote a propaganda on both sides of the sea which will pre-
serve for them their influence at home and their power
abroad, to the undoing of the very men they are using.

The position of America in this war is so clearly avowed
that no man can be excused for mistaking it. She seeks no
material profit or aggrandizement of any kind. She is fight-
ing 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 be-
gun of late to profess a like liberality and justice of pur-
pose, 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, with-
out open conquest of its territory, been linked together in a
net of intrigue directed against nothing less than the peace

406
Woodrow Wilson

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 Government and those whom it
is using for their own undoing are seeking to obtain pledges
that the war will end in the restoration of the status quo
ante. It was the status quo ante out of which this iniquitous
war issued forth, the power of the Imperial German Goy-
ernment within the Empire and its widespread domination
and influence outside of that Empire. That status must be
altered in 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 fea-
ture of the settlement that concludes this war must be
conceived and executed for that purpose. Wrongs must
first be righted, and then adequate safeguards must be
created to prevent their being committed again. We ought
not to consider remedies merely because they have a pleas-
ing and sonorous sound. Practical questions can be settled
only by practical means. Phrases will not accomplish the
result. Effective readjustments will; and whatever read-
justments 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“iberty. No indemnities must
be insisted on except those that constitute payments for
manifest wrongs done. No readjustments of power must
be made except such as will tend to secure the future peace
of the world and the future welfare and happiness of its
peoples.

And then the free peeples of the world must draw to-
gether in some common covenant, some genuine and prac-

407
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

tical co-operation 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 partnership to secure that life
against the aggressions of autocratic and seif-pleasing
power.

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 treasure
now and succeed, we may never be able to unite or show
conquering force again in the great cause of human liberty.
The day has come to 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.

Wooprow Witson.

Presipent Witson’s AppRESS TO CONFEDERATE VETERANS

[At their twenty-seventh annual gathering, Washington, D. C.
au 5, 1917—the first Confederate reunion to be held in “the
orth.”]

Mr. Commander, Ladies and Gentlemen:

I esteem it a very great pleasure and a real privilege to
extend to the men who are attending this reunion the very
cordial greetings of the Government of the United States.

I suppose that as you mix with one another you chiefly
find these to be days of memory, when your thoughts go
back and recall those days of struggle in which your hearts
were strained, in which the whole nation seemed in grapple,

408
Woodrow Wilson

and I dare say that you are thrilled as you remember the
heroic things that were then done. You are glad to remem-
ber that heroic things were done on both sides, and that
men in those days fought in something like the old spirit
of chivalric gallantry. There are many memories of the
Civil War that thrill along the blood and make one proud
to have been sprung of a race that could produce such
bravery and constancy; and yet the world does not live on
memories. The world is constantly making its toilsome way
forward into new and different days, and I believe that
one of the things that contributes satisfaction to a reunion
like this and a welcome like this is that this is a day of
oblivion. There are some things that we have thankfully
buried and among them are the great passions of divi-
sion which once threatened to rend this nation in twain.
The passion of admiration we still entertain for the heroic
figures of those old days, but the passion of separation,
the passion of difference of principle, is gone—gone out
of our minds, gone out of our hearts; and one of the things
that will thrill this country as it reads of this reunion is
that it will read also of a rededication on the part of all of
us to the great nation which we serve in common,

These are days of oblivion as well as of memory; for
we are forgetting the things that once held us asunder.
Not only that, but they are days of rejoicing, because we
now at least see why this great nation was kept united,
for we are beginning to see the great world purposes which
it was meant to serve. Many men, I know, particularly of
your own generation, have wondered at some of the deal-
ings of Providence, but the wise heart never questions the
dealings of Providence, because the great, long plan as it
unfolds has a majesty about it and a definiteness of purpose,
an elevation of ideal, which we were incapable of conceiving
as we tried to work things out with our own short sight and
weak strength. And now that we see ourselves part of a
nation united, powerful, great in spirit and in purpose, we

409
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

know the great ends which God, in His mysterious provi-
dence, wrought through our instrumentality, because at the
heart of the men of the North and of the South there was
the same love of self-government and of liberty, and now we
are to be an instrument in the hands of God to see that lib-
erty is made secure for mankind.

As I came along the streets a few minutes ago my heart
was full of the thought that this is Registration Day. Will
you not support me in feeling that there is some significance
in this coincidence, that this day, when I come to welcome
you to the national capital, is a day when men young as you
were in those old days, when you gathered together to fight,
are now registering their names as evidence of this great
idea, that in a democracy the duty to serve and the privi-
lege to serve falls upon all alike? There is something very
fine, my fellow-citizens, in the spirit of the volunteer, but
deeper than the volunteer spirit is the spirit of obligation.
There is not a man of us who must not hold himself ready
to be summoned to the duty of supporting the great Gov-
ernment under which we live. No really thoughtful and
patriotic man is jealous of that obligation. No man who
really understands the privilege and the dignity of being
an American citizen quarrels for a moment with the idea
that the Congress of the United States has the right to call
upon whom it will to serve the nation. These solemn lines
of young men going to-day all over the Union to places of
registration ought to be a signal to the world, to those who
dare flout the dignity and honor and rights of the United
States, that all her manhood will flock to that standard
under which we all delight to serve, and that he who chal-
lenges the rights and principles of the United States chal-
denges the united strength and devotion of a nation.

There are not many things that one desires about war,
my fellow-citizens, but you have come through war, you
know how you have been chastened by it, and there comes a
time when it is good for a nation to know that it must sacri-

410
Woodrow Wilson

fice if need be everything that it has to vindicate the prin-
ciples which it professes. We have prospered with a sort
of heedless and irresponsible prosperity. Now we are
going to lay all our wealth, if necessary, and spend all our
blood, if need be, to show that we were not accumulating
that wealth selfishly, but were accumulating it for the serv-
ice of mankind. Men all over the world have thought of
the United States as a trading and money-getting people,
whereas we who have lived at home know the ideals with
which the hearts of this people have thrilled; we know the
sober convictions which have lain at the basis of our life all
the time, and we know the power and devotion which can
be spent in heroic ways for the service of those ideals that
we have treasured. We have been allowed to become strong
in the Providence of God that our strength might be used
to prove, not our selfishness, but our greatness, and if there
is any ground for thankfulness in a day like this, I am
thankful for the privilege of self-sacrifice, which is the only
privilege that lends dignity to the human spirit. . . .

Witson’s Frac Day Appress
Wasuincton, D. C., June 14, 1917.

[Evrroriat Note: As a piece of literary composition and
of lofty conception, this speech has been held to take rank
with the President’s peace address to the Senate on Jan-
uary 22 and his war message to Congress on April 2.]

My Fellow Citizens:

We meet to celebrate Flag Day because this flag which
we honor and under which we serve is the emblem of our
unity, our power, our thought and purpose as a nation. It
has no other character than that which we give it from
generation to generation. The choices are ours. It floats

411
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

in majestic silence above the hosts that execute those
choices, whether in peace or in war. And yet, though silent,
it speaks to us—speaks to us of the past, of the men and
women who went before us and of the records they wrote
upon it. We celebrate the day of its birth; and from its
pirth until now it has witnessed a great history, has floated
on high the symbol of great events, of a great plan of life
worked out by a great people. We are about to carry it into
battle, to lift it where it will draw the fire of our enemies.
We are about to bid thousands, hundreds of thousands, it
may be millions, of our men, the young, the strong, the
capable men of the nation, to go forth and die beneath it on
fields of blood far away—for what? For some unaccus-
‘ttomed thing ? For soriething for which it has never sought
the fire before? American armies were never before sent
across the seas. Why are they sent now? For some new
purpose, for which this great flag has never been carried
before, or for some old, familiar, heroic purpose for which
it has seen men, its own men, die on every battlefield upon
which Americans have borne arms since the Revolution?

These are questions which must be answered. We are
Americans. We in our turn serve America, and can serve
her with no private purpose. We must use her flag as
she has always used it. We are accountable at the bar of
history and must plead in utter frankness what purpose it is
we seek to serve.

It is plain enough how we were forced into the war. The
extraordinary insults and aggressions of the Imperial Ger-
man Government left us no self-respecting choice but to
take up arms in defense of our rights as a free people and
of our honor as a sovereign government. The military mas-
ters of Germany denied us the right to be neutral. They
filled our unsuspecting communities with vicious spies and
conspirators and sought to corrupt the opinion of our people
in their own behalf. When they found that they could not
do that, their agents diligently spread sedition amongst us

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Woodrow Wilson

and sought to draw our own citizens from their allegiance—
and some of those agents were men connected with the
official Embassy of the German Government itself here in
our own capital. They sought by violence to destroy our
industries and arrest our commerce. They tried to incite
Mexico to take up arms against us and to draw Japan into
a hostile alliance with her—and that, not by indirection,
but by direct suggestion from the Foreign Office in Berlin.
They impudently denied us the use of the high seas and re-
peatedly executed their threat that they would send to their
death any of our people who ventured to approach the
coasts of Europe. And many of our own people were cor-
rupted. Men began to look upon their own neighbors with
suspicion and to wonder in their hot resentment and sur-
prise whether there was any community in which hostile
intrigue did not lurk. What great nation in such circum-
stances would not have taken up arms? Much as we had
desired peace, it was denied us, and not of our own choice.
This flag under which we serve would have been dishonored
had we withheld our hand.

But that is only part of the story. We know now as
clearly as we knew before we were ourselves engaged that
we are not the enemies of the German people and that they
are not our enemies. They did not originate or desire this
hideous war or wish that we should be drawn into it; and
we are vaguely conscious that we are fighting their cause,
as they will some day see it, as well as our own. They are
themselves in the grip of the same sinister power that has
now at last stretched its ugly talons out and drawn blood
from us. The whole world is at war because the whole
world is in the grip of that power and is trying out the
great battle which shall determine whether it is to be
brought under its mastery or fling itself free.

The war was begun by the military masters of Germany,
who proved to be also the masters of Austria Hungary.
These men have never regarded nations as peoples, men,

418
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

women, and children of like blood and frame as themselves,
for whom governments existed and in whom governments
had their life. They have regarded them merely as serv-
iceable organizations which they could by force or intrigue
bend or corrupt to their own purpose. They have regarded
the smaller states, in particular, and the peoples who could
be overwhelmed by force, as their natural tools and instru-
ments of domination. Their purpose has long been avowed.
The statesmen of other nations, to whom that purpose was
incredible, paid little attention; regarded what German pro-
fessors expounded in their classrooms and German writers
set forth to the world os the goal of German policy as
rather the dream of minds detached from practical affairs,
as preposterous private conceptions of German destiny,
than as the actual plans of zesponsible rulers; but the rulers
of Germany themselves knew all the while what concrete
plans, what well advanced intrigues lay back of what the
professors and the writers were saying, and were glad to
go forward unmolested, filling the thrones of Balkan states
with German princes, putting German officers at the service
of Turkey to drill her armies anc make interest with her
government, developing plans of sedition and rebellion in
India and Egypt, setting their fires in Persia. The de-
mands made by Austria upon Servia were a mere single step
in a plan which compassed Europe and Asia, from Berlin
to Bagdad. They hoped those demands might not arouse
Europe, but they meant to press them whether they did or
not, for they thought themselves ready for the final issue
of arms.

Their plan was to throw a broad belt of German military
power and political control across the very center of
Europe and beyond the Mediterranean into the heart of
Asia; and Austria-Hungary was to be as much their tool and
pawn as Servia or Bulgaria or Turkey or the ponderous
states of the East. Austria~-Hungary, indeed, was to be-
come part of the central German Empire, absorbed and

414
Woodrow Wilson

dominated by the same forces and influences that had orig-
inally cemented the German states themselves. The dream
had its heart at Berlin. It could have had a heart no-
where else! It rejected the idea of solidarity of race en-
tirely. The choice of peoples played no part in it at all.
It contemplated binding together racial and political units
which could be kept together only by force—Czechs, Mag-
yars, Croats, Serbs, Roumanians, Turks, Armenians—the
proud states of Bohemia and Hungary, the stout little com-
monwealths of the Balkans, the indomitable Turks, the
subtle peoples of the East. These peoples did not wish to
be united. They ardently desired to direct their own affairs,
would be satisfied only by undisputed independence. They
could be kept quiet only by the presence or the constant
threat of armed men. They would live under a common
power only by sheer compulsion and await the day of revo-
lution. But the German military statesmen had reckoned
with all that and were ready to deal with it in their own
way.

And they have actually carried the greater part of that
amazing plan into execution! Look how things stand.
Austria is at their mercy. It has acted, not upon its own
initiative or upon the choice of its own people, but at Ber-
lin’s dictation ever since the war began. Its people now
desire peace, but cannot have it until leave is granted from
Berlin. The so-called Central Powers are in fact but a
single Power. Servia is at its mercy, should its hands be
but for a moment freed. Bulgaria has consented to its will,
and Roumania is overrun. The Turkish armies, which
Germans trained, are serving Germany, certainly not them-
selves, and the guns of German warships lying in the har-
bor at Constantinople remind Turkish statesmen every day
that they have no choice but to take their orders from Ber-
lin. From Hamburg to the Persian Gulf the net is spread.

Is it not easy to understand the eagerness for peace that
has been manifested from Berlin ever since the snare was

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

“set and sprung? Peace, peace, peace has been the talk of
her Foreign Office for now a year and more; not peace upon
her own initiative, but upon the initiative of the nations
over which she now deems herself to hold the advantage.
A little of the talk has been public, but most of it has been
private. Through all sorts of channels it has come to me,
and in all sorts of guises, but never with the terms disclosed
which the German Government would be willing to accept.
That government has other valuable pawns in its hands
besides those I have mentioned. It still holds a valuable
part of France, though with slowly relaxing grasp, and
practically the whole of Belgium. Its armies press close
upon Russia and overrun Poland at their will. It cannot go
further; it dare not go back. It wishes to close its bargain
before it is too late and it has little left to offer for the
pound of flesh it will demand.

The military masters under whom Germany is bleeding
see very clearly to what point Fate has brought them. If
they fall back or are forced back an inch, their power both
abroad and at home will fall to pieces like a house of cards.
It is their power at home they are thinking about now more
than their power abroad. It is that power which is trem~
bling under their very feet; and deep fear has entered their
hearts. They have but one chance to perpetuate their mili-
tary power or even their controlling political influence. If
they can secure peace now with the immense advantages
still in their hands which they have up to this point appar-
ently gained, they will have justified themselves before the
German people; they will have gained by force what they
promised to gain by it: an immense expansion of German
power, an immense enlargement of German industrial and
commercial opportunities. Their prestige will be secure,
and with their prestige their political power. If they fail,
their people will thrust them aside; a government account-
able to the people themselves will be set up in Germany as
it has been in England, in the United States, in France, and

416
Woodrow Wilson

in all the great countries of the modern time except Ger-
many. If they succeed they are safe and Germany and the
world are undone; if they fail Germany is saved and the
world will be at peace. If they succeed, America will fall
within the menace. We and all the rest of the world must
remain armed, as they will remain, and must make ready for
the next step in their aggression; if they fail, the world
may unite for peace and Germany may be of the union.

Do you not now understand the new intrigue, the intrigue
for peace, and why the masters of Germany do not hesitate
to use any agency that promises to effect their purpose, the
deceit of the nations? Their present particular aim is to
deceive all those who throughout the world stand for the
rights of peoples and the self-government of nations; for
they see what immense strength the forces of justice and
of liberalism are gathering out of this war. They are em-
ploying liberals in their enterprise. They are using men, in
Germany and without, as their spokesmen whom they have
hitherto despised and oppressed, using them for their own
destruction—socialists, the leaders of labor, the thinkers
they have hitherto sought to silence. Let them once suc-
ceed and these men, now their tools, will be ground to pow-
der beneath the weight of the great military empire they
will have set up; the revolutionists in Russia will be cut off
from all succor or co-operation in western Europe and a
counter revolution fostered and supported ; Germany herself
will lose her chance of freedom; and all Europe will arm
for the next, the final struggle.

The sinister intrigue is being no less actively conducted
in this country than in Russia and in every country in
Europe to which the agents and dupes of the Imperial Ger-
man Government can get access. That government has
many spokesmen here, in places high and low. They have
learned discretion. They keep within the law. It is opinion
they utter now, not sedition. They proclaim the liberal
purposes of their masters; declare this a foreign war which

417
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

can touch America with no danger to either her lands or
her institutions; set England at the centre of the stage and
talk of her ambition to assert economic dominion throughout
the world; appeal to our ancient tradition of isolation in the
politics of the nations; and seek to undermine the govern-
ment with false professions of loyalty to its principles.

But they will make no headway. The false betray them-
selves always in every accent. It is only friends and parti-
sans of the German Government whom we have already
identified who utter these thinly disguised loyalties. The
facts are patent to all the world, and nowhere are they
more plainly seen than in the United States, where we are
accustomed to deal with facts and not with sophistries; and
the great fact that stands out above all the rest is that this
is a People’s War, a war for freedom and justice and self-
government amongst all the nations of the world, a war to
make the world safe for the peoples who live upon it and
have made it their own, the German peoples themselves in-
cluded; and that with us rests the choice to break through
all these hypocrisies and patent cheats and masks of
brute force and help set the world free, or else stand aside
and let it be dominated a long age through by sheer weight
of arms and the arbitrary choices of self-constituted mas-
ters, by the nation which can maintain the biggest armies
and the most irresistible armaments—a power to which the
world has afforded no parallel and in the face of which
political freedom must wither and perish.

For us there is but one choice. We have made it. Woe
be to the man or group of men that seeks to stand in our
way in this day of high resolution when every principle we
hold dearest is to be vindicated and made secure for the
salvation of the nations. We are ready to plead at the bar
of history, and our flag shall wear a new lustre. Once more
we shall make good with our lives and fortunes the great
faith to which we were born, and a new glory shall
shine in the face of our people.

418
Woodrow Wilson

Presipent Witson’s Greetine To FRANCE,
*
on Bastite Day, Jury 14, 1917

On this anniversary of the birth of democracy in France,
I offer on behalf of my countrymen and on my own behalf,
fraternal greetings as befit the strong ties that unite our
peoples, who to-day stand shoulder to shoulder in defense
of liberty in testimony of the steadfast purpose of our
two countries to achieve victory for the sublime cause of
the rights of the people against oppression. The lesson
of the Bastile is not lost to the world of free peoples.
May the day be near when on the ruins of the dark strong-
hold of unbridled power and conscienceless autocracy, the
nobler structure, upbuilt, like your own great republic, on
the eternal foundation of peace and right, shall arise to
gladden an enfranchised world,

Presipent Witson’s WELCOME TO THE SPECIAL
AMBASSADOR FROM JAPAN, Viscount Isuu,
Avuaust 23, 1917

Mr. Ambassador:

It is with a sense of deep satisfaction that I receive from
your hand the letters whereby you are accredited as the
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Japan
on special] mission to the United States. It is a pleasure
to accept through you from your imperial sovereign con-
gratulations on the entrance of the United States into the
great conflict which is now raging.

The present struggle is especially characterized by the
development of the spirit of co-operation throughout the
greater part of the world for the maintenance of the rights
of nations and the liberties of individuals.. I assure your
Excellency that, standing, as our countries now do, asso-
ciated in this great struggle for the vindication of justice,

419
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

there will be developed those closer ties of fellowship which
must come from the mutual sacrifice of life and property.
May the efforts now being exerted by an indigant humanity
lead, at the proper time, to the complete establishment of
justice and to a peace which will be both permanent and
serene.

I trust your Excellency will find your sojourn among us
most agreeable and I should be gratified if you would be
so good as to make known to his Imperial Majesty my best
wishes for his welfare, for that of your wonderful country,
and for the happiness of its people.

I am most happy to accord you recognition in your high
capacity.

Wizson’s Mzssacz To THE Russian NationaL CouNnciL
Auaust 27, 1917

[The path of the new republic had continued to be difficult, and

at times it seemed impossible to harmonize the desires of the

various elements. Workmen, soldiers, and peasants formed their

respective councils; and these and other bodies met at Moscow
to establish fundamental principles.]

President of the National Council Assembly, Moscow:

I take the liberty to send to the members of the great
council now meeting in Moscow the cordial greetings of
their friends, the people of the United States, to express
their confidence in the ultimate triumph of ideals of democ-
racy and self-government against all enemies within and
without, and to give their renewed assurance of every ma-
terial and moral assistance they can extend to the Govern-
ment of Russia in the promotion of the common cause in
which the two nations are unselfishly united.

Woovrow WItson.

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Woodrow Wilson

Presipent Wixson’s Repty to tHE Popsr’s PEAcE
Proposats

(Evrtoriau Nore: At the beginning of the fourth year
of war, Pope Benedict had addressed an appeal to the
belligerents. His suggestions for the basis of a'just and
durable peace included disarmament, the evacuation of
Belgian and French territory, the restitution of German
colonies, and the settlement of political and territorial ques-
tions—Alsace-Lorraine, Poland, etc——in a conciliatory
spirit for the general welfare. This appeal from the Pope
reached Washington on August 15.]

Wasuineton, D. C., Aue. 27, 1917.

To His Holiness Benedictus XV., Pope:

In acknowledgment of the communication of your Holi-
ness to the belligerent peoples, dated Aug. 1, 1917, the
President of the United States requests me to transmit the
following reply:

Every heart that has not been blinded and hardened by
this terrible war must be touched by this moving appeal
of his Holiness the Pope, must feel the dignity and force
of the humane and generous motives which prompted it,
and must fervently wish that we might take the path of
peace he so persuasively points out. But it would be folly
to take it if it does not in fact lead to the goal he proposes.
Our response must be based upon the stern facts, and upon
nothing else. It is not a mere cessation of arms he desires;
it is a stable and enduring peace. This agony must not be
gone through with again, and it must be a matter of very
sober judgment what will insure us against it.

His Holiness in substance proposes that we return to the
status quo ante-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

421
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

that the territorial claims of France and Italy, the perplex-
ing problems of the Balkan States, and the restitution of
Poland be left to such conciliatory adjustments as may be
possible in the new temper of such a peace, due regard
being paid to the aspirations of the peoples whose political
fortunes and affiliations will be involved.

It is manifest that no part of this program can be suc-
cessfully carried out unless the restitution of the status
quo ante furnishes a firm and satisfactory basis for it.
The object of this war is to deliver the free peoples of
the world from the menace and the actual power of a vast
military establishment, controlled by an irresponsible Gov-
ernment, 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-estab-
lished practices and long-cherished principles of interna-
tional 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 con-
tinent within the tide of blood—not the blood of soldiers
only, but the blood of innocent women and children also
and of the helpless poor; and now stands balked, but not
defeated, the enemy of four-fifths of the world.

This power is not the German people. It is the ruthless
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 Ger-
man people, who are its instruments; and would result in

422
Woodrow Wilson

abandoning the new-born Russia to the intrigue, the mani-
fold subtle interference, and the certain counter-revolution
which would be attempted by all the malign influences to
which the German Government has of late accustomed the
world.

Can peace be based upon a restitution of its power or
upon any word of honor it could pledge in a treaty of settle-
ment 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 na-
tions 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 Governments—the
rights of peoples, great or small, weak or powerful—their
equal right to freedom and security and self-government
and to a participation upon fair terms in the economic op-
portunities of the world, the German people, of course, in-
cluded, 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 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 advantage of any kind. We
believe that the intolerable wrongs done in this war by the
furious and brutal power of the Imperial German Govern-

428
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

ment ought to be repaired, but not at the expense of the
sovereignty of any people—rather a vindication of the sov-
ereignty both of those that are weak and of those that
are strong. Punitive damages, the dismemberment of em-
pires, the establishment of selfish and exclusive economic
leagues, we deem inexpedient, and in the end worse than
futile, no proper basis for a peace of any kind, least of all
for an enduring peace. That must be based upon justice
and fairness and the common rights of mankind.

We cannot take the word of the present rulers of Ger-
many as a guarantee of anything that is to endure unless
explicitly supported by such conclusive evidence of the will
and purpose of the German people themselves as the other
peoples of the world would be justified in accepting. With-
out such guarantees treaties of settlement, agreements for
disarmament, covenants to set up arbitration iu the place of
force, territorial adjustments, reconstitutions of small na-
tions, if made with the German Government, no man, no
nation, could now depend on.

We must await some new evidence of the purposes of the
great peoples of the Central Powers. God grant it may be
given soon and in a way to restore the confidence of all
peoples everywhere in the faith of nations and the possi-
bility of a covenanted peace.

Rosert Lansina,
Secretary of State of the United States of America.

ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE Pricr To BE Pain ror WHEAT

[Enrrortan Nore: The Food Administration bill had
become a.law on August 10, 1917, and the President had ,
appointed Mr. Herbert Hoover as Food Administrator.
The first important act of this body—through a committee
of prominent citizens headed by President Harry A. Gar-

424
Woodrow Wilson

field, of Williams College—was to establish a price which
the Government would pay for wheat for itself and its
Allies. The Government being the largest purchaser, this
would tend to set the standard price. Similar committees
were to fix prices for other necessities. The President an-
nounced the recommendation of the wheat committee :]

Washington, August 80, 1917.

Section 11 of the food act provides, among other things,
for the purchase and sale of wheat and flour by the Govern-
ment, and appropriates money for the purpose. The pur-
chase of wheat and flour for our allies, and to a considerable
degree for neutral countries also, has been placed under the
control of the Food Administration. I have appointed a
committee to determine a fair price to be paid in Govern-
ment purchases. The price now recommended by that com-
mittee—$2.20 per bushel at Chicago for the basic grade—
will be rigidly adhered to by the Food Administration.

It is the hope and expectation of the Food Administration,
and my own also, that this step will at once stabilize and
keep within moderate bounds the price of wheat for all
transactions throughout the present crop year, and in con-
sequence the prices of flour and bread also. The food act
has given large powers for the control of storage and
exchange operations, and these powers will be fully exer-
cised. An inevitable consequence will be that financial
dealings can not follow their usual course. Whatever the
advantages and disadvantages of the ordinary machinery
of trade, it can not function well under such disturbed and
abnormal conditions as now exist. In its place the Food
Administration now fixes for its purchases a fair price, as
recommended unanimously by a committee representative
of all interests and all sections, and believes that thereby
it will eliminate speculation, make possible the conduct of
every operation in the full light of day, maintain the pub-
licly stated price for all, and, through economies made

425 :
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

possible by stabilization and control, better the position
of consumers also.

Mr. Hoover, at his express wish, has taken no part in the
deliberations of the committee on whose recommendation
I determine the Government’s fair price, nor has he in any
way intimated an opinion regarding that price.

°

Tue Presipent’s Messace To THE Nationat ARMY

[On September 5, the 687,000 young men in the National Army—
‘chosen by lot from among the ten million registered on June 5—
were to begin to move toward their training camps.]

Washington, D. C., Sept. 3, 1917.

To the Soldiers of the National Army:

You 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 then let us 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 and guide you!

Wooprow Wizson.

426
Woodrow Wilson

AppgaL To Scuoot CuHiLtpREN To SERVE THE CoUNTRY IN
Rep Cross Activities, SEPTEMBER 15, 1917

To the School Children of the United States:
A PROCLAMATION

The President of the United States is also President of
the American Red Cross. It is from these offices joined
in one that I write you a word of greeting at this time,
when so many of you are beginning the school year.

The American Red Cross has just prepared a Junior
Membership with School Activities, in which every pupil
in the United States can find a chance to serve our country.
The school is the natural centre of your life. Through it
you can best work in the great cause of freedom to which
we have all pledged ourselves.

Our Junior Red Cross will bring to you opportunities of
service to your community and to other communities all over
the world and guide your service with high and religious
ideals. It will teach you how to save in order that suf-
fering children elsewhere may have the chance to live. It
will teach you how to prepare some of the supplies which
wounded soldiers and homeless families lack. It will send
to you through the Red Cross Bulletins the thrilling stories
of relief and rescue. And, best of all, more perfectly than
through any of your other school lessons, you will learn
by doing those kind things under your teacher’s direction
to be the future good citizens of this great country which
we all love.

And I commend to all school teachers in the country the
simple plan which the American Red Cross has worked out
to provide for your codperation, knowing as I do that
school children will give their best service under the direct
guidance and instruction of their teachers. Is not this
perhaps the chance for which you have been looking to
give your time and efforts in some measure to meet our
national needs? Wooprow Wi1son.

427
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

APpPorINTMENT oF Commission To Apsust Lazor Disputzs,
SrepremsBer 19, 1917

[Eprroriau Nore: Strikes at large copper mines in Mon-
tana and Arizona had continued through several months,
endangering the supply for munitions; and a more recent
strike of iron and steel workers on the Pacific Coast was
halting the great shipbuilding program of the Administra-
tion. These strikes involved wage adjustments chiefly. ]

(A Memorandum for the Secretary of Labor)

I am very much interested in the labor situation in the
mountain region and on the Pacific Coast. I have listened
with attention and concern to the numerous charges of mis-
conduct and injustice that representatives both of employ-
ers and of employees have made against each other. I am
not so much concerned, however, with the manner in which
they have treated each other in the past as I am desirous
of seeing some kind of a working arrangement arrived at
for the future, particularly during the period of the war,
on a basis that will be fair to all parties concerned.

To assist in the accomplishment of that purpose I have
decided to appoint a commission to visit the localities where
disagreements have been most frequent as my personal rep-
resentatives. The commission will consist of William B.
Wilson, Secretary of Labor; Colonel J. L. Spangler of
Pennsylvania, Verner Z. Reed of Colorado, John H. Walker
of Illinois, and E. P. Marsh of Washington. Felix Frank-
furter of New York will act as Secretary of the commission.

It will be the duty of the commission to visit in each in-
stance the Governor of the State, advising him that they
are there as the personal representatives of the President,
with a view to lending sympathetic counsel and aid to the
State government in the development of a better under-
standing between laborers and employers, and also them-
selves to deal with employers and employees in a concilia-

428
Woodrow Wilson

tory spirit, seek to compose differences and allay misunder-
standing, and in any way that may be open to them to show
the active interest of the National Government in further-
ing arrangements just to both sides.

Wherever it is deemed advisable, conferences of em-
ployers and employees should be called with the purpose
of working out a mutual understanding between them which
will insure the continued operation of the industry on
conditions acceptable to both sides. The commission should
also endeavor to learn the real causes for any discontent
which may exist on either side, not by the formal process
of public hearings, but by getting into touch with workmen
and employers by the more informal process of personal
conversation.

I would be pleased to have the commission report to me
from time to time such information as may require imme-
diate attention.

Wooprow WILson.

Presipent Witson CommMEenps THE Work or Conaress,
OcrTozer 6, 1917

[The new Congress had heen called into special session on
April 2, to receive the President’s war message. It had passed
the war resolution, created a system for raising a large army by
selective conscription, framed a revenue bill of huge proportions,
and adopted other legislation relating to the war.]

The Sixty-fifth Congress, now adjourning, deserves the
gratitude and appreciation of a people whose will and pur-
pose I believe it has faithfully expressed. One cannot
examine the record of its action without being impressed by
its completeness, its courage, and its full comprehension of
a great task. The needs of the Army and the Navy have

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

been met in a way that assures the effectiveness of Ameri-
can armies, and the war-making branch of the Government
has been abundantly equipped with the powers that were
necessary to make the action of the nation effective.

I believe that it has also in equal degree, and as far as
possible in the face of war, safeguarded the rights of the
people and kept in mind the consideration of social justice
so often obscured in the hasty readjustment of such a crisis.

It seems to me that the work of this remarkable session
has not only been done thoroughly but that it has also been
done with the utmost dispatch possible in the circumstances
or consistent with a full consideration of the exceedingly
critical matters dealt with. Best of all, it has left no doubt
as to the spirit and determination of the country, but has
affirmed them as loyally and as emphatically as our fine
soldiers will affirm them on the firing line.

Wooprow WItson.

 

Procramation Dzsienatine a “Liperty Loan” Day,
OcroBer 12, 1917

[Eprrortat Nore: Participation by the United States
in the war, on a scale commensurate with its resources and
with the efforts put forth by other belligerents, required
the expenditure of vast sums of money. The United States
was not only to finance its own enormously increased army
and navy, its shipbuilding and aviation programs, but it
also undertook to advance to its allies the huge sums of
money required to pay for their war supplies purchased in
the United States. The first Liberty Loan (June, 1917),
of $2,000,000,000, had been oversubscribed. This Second
Liberty Loan, closed on October 27, attracted 9,500,000
subscribers, and $8,808,766,150 in bonds were issued. ]

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Woodrow Wilson

The Second Liberty Loan gives the people of the United
States another opportunity to lend their funds to their
Government to sustain their country at war. The might of
the United States is being mobilized and organized to strike
a mortal blow at autocracy in defense of outraged American
rights and of the cause of liberty. Billions of dollars are
required to arm, feed, and clothe the brave men who are
going forth to fight our country’s battles and to assist the
nations with whom we are making common cause against a
common foe. To subscribe to the Liberty Loan is to per-
form a service of patriotism.

Now, therefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, President of the
United States of America, do appoint Wednesday, the
twenty-fourth of October, as Liberty Day, and urge and
advise the people to assemble in their respective communi-
ties and pledge to one another and to the Government that
represents them the fullest measure of financial support.
On the afternoon of that day I request that patriotic meet-
ings be held in every city, town, and hamlet throughout
the land under the general direction of the Secretary of the
Treasury and the immediate direction of the Liberty Loan
Committees which have been organized by the Federal
Reserve Banks. The people responded nobly to the call
of the First Liberty Loan with an over subscription of more
than 50 per cent. Let the response to the second loan be
even greater and let the amount be so large that it will
serve as an assurance of unequalled support to hearten the
men who are to face the fire of battle for us. Let the result
be so impressive and emphatic that it will echo throughout
the empire of our enemy as an index of what America in-
tends to do to bring this war to a victorious conclusion.

For the purpose of participating in Liberty Day celebra-
tions all employees of the Federal Government throughout
the country whose services can be spared, may be excused
at twelve o’clock, Wednesday, the twenty-fourth of October.

Wooprow Witson.

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

Two Messages To Brazizt, on Occasion oF Its Entry
Intro THE War

[The republics of Latin America began to line up against Ger-
many soon after the United States entered the war. From April
to December, 1917, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Uruguay, Guatemala,
and Costa Rica severed diplomatic relations with the German
Government, while Cuba, Panama, and Brazil actually declared
war.]

October 30, 1917.

Dr. Wenceslao Braz, President of Brazil, Rio de Janeiro:

Allow me, speaking for the people and the Government
of the United States, to say with what genuine pleasure and
heartfelt welcome we hail the association with ourselves and
the other nations united in war with Germany of the great
Republic of Brazil. Her action in this time of crisis binds
even closer the bonds of friendship which already united |

the two Republics. Wooprow Wizson.

\

November 15, 1917.

His Excellency the President of Brazil, Rio de Janeiro:
On this anniversary of the independence of Brazil I ex-
tend to Your Excellency and the people of your great Re-
public cordial greetings. The United States has welcomed
with applause and admiration the entry of Brazil in the
great struggle which confronts us. The day you now cele-
brate marks your country’s achievements of independence.
To-day our two countries are engaged in a war for the
maintenance of world independence and for the rights
of humanity and the life of Democracy. We are both
making sacrifices for this common cause. United to Brazil
by this strong bond of Democracy and still more by an-
tagonism against a mutual foe, I hope and feel assured. that
the United States and our sister Republic of South America
will at the close of the present conflict stand even closer

together in victory. Wodiow Wren

482
Woodrow Wilson

THANKSGIVING PRocLAMATION
NovemsBer 7, 1917

It has long been the honored custom of our people to
turn in the fruitful autumn of the year in praise and thanks-
giving to Almighty God for His many blessings and mercies
to us as a nation. That custom we can follow now even in
the midst of the tragedy of a world shaken by war and
immeasurable disaster, in the midst of sorrow and great
peril, because even amidst the darkness that has gathered
about us we can see the great blessings God has bestowed
upon us, blessings that are better than mere peace of mind
and prosperity of enterprise.

We have been given the opportunity to serve mankind as
we once served ourselves ‘in the great day of our Declaration
of Independence, by taking up arms against a tyranny that
threatened to master and debase men everywhere and join-
ing with other free peoples in demanding for all the nations
of the world what we then demanded and obtained for
ourselves. In this day of the revelation of our duty not
only to defend our own rights as a nation but to defend
also the rights of free men throughout the world, there has
been vouchsafed us in full and inspiring measure the reso-
lution and spirit of united action. We have been brought
to one mind and purpose. A new vigor of common counsel
and common action has been revealed in us. We should
especially thank God that in such circumstances, in the
midst of the greatest enterprise the spirits of men have ever
entered upon, we have, if we but observe a reasonable and
practicable economy, abundance with which to supply the
needs of those associated with us as well as our own. A
new light shines about us. The great duties of a new day
awaken a new and greater national spirit in us. We shall
never again be divided or wonder what stuff we are made of.

And while we render thanks for these things let us pray
Almighty God that in all humbleness of spirit we may look

433
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

always to Him for guidance; that we may be kept constant
in the spirit and purpose of service; that by His grace
our minds may be directed and our hands strengthened; and
that in His good time liberty and security and peace and
the comradeship of a common justice may be vouchsafed
all the nations of the earth.

Wherefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, President of the United
States of America, do hereby designate Thursday, the
twenty-ninth day of November next, as a day of thanks-
giving and prayer, and invite the people throughout the
land to cease upon that day from their ordinary occupations
and in their several homes and places of worship to render
thanks to God, the great ruler of nations.

Iw witness WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the
seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done in the District of Columbia this seventh day of November
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-second,

Wooprow WiItson.
By the President:
Rosert Lansine, Secretary of -State.

Wizson’s Appress BrEFrorE THE AMERICAN FrpERATION
or Lazor, Burrato, N. Y., Novemser 12, 1917

[In this address to representatives of organized labor, the
President first describes the way in which the German Govern-
ment has gained control not only of German industries and com-
merce, but also of vital affairs in Austria-Hungary, the Balkan
states, Turkey, and Asia Minor. Then he shows the impossibility
of peace with the present German Government. Finally—with
specific reference to tension in labor circles, due to shortage of
man power, rising cost of living, and actual or threatened strikes—
the President makes a special plea that there shall be no interrup-
tion of the processes of labor, so necessary for the successful pros-
ecution of the war, until all the methods of conciliation and
settlement have been exhausted.]

484
Woodrow Wilson

Mr. President, Delegates of the American Federation of
Labor, Ladies and Gentlemen:

I esteem it a great privilege and a real honor to be thus
admitted to your public counsels. When your executive
committee paid me the compliment of 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 together not only of the
energies but of the minds of the Nation. 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 the words of counsel; the
words which men should speak to one another who wish to
be frank in a moment more critical perhaps than the history
of the world has ever yet known; a moment when it is every
man’s duty to forget himself, to forget his own interests, to
fill himself with the nobility of a great national and world
conception, and act upon a new platform elevated above the
ordinary affairs of life and lifted to where men have views
of the long destiny of mankind. I think that in order to
realize just what this moment of counsel is it is very de-
sirable 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 sim-
ple. Its roots run deep into all the obscure soils of history,
and in my view this is the last decisive issue between the
old principles of power and the new principles of freedom.

The war was started by Germany. Her 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

436
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

thing that needs to be explained is why Germany started
the war. Remember what the position of Germany in the
world was—as enviable a position as any nation has ever
occupied. The whole world stood at admiration of her won-
derful intellectual and material achievements. All the in-
tellectual 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 no-
where else could they get such thorough and searching
training, particularly in the principles of science and the
principles that underlie modern material achievement. Her
men of science had made her industries perhaps the most
competent industries of the world, and the label “Made in
Germany” was a guarantee of good workmanship and of
sound material. She had access to all the markets of the
world, and every other who traded in those markets feared
Germany because of her effective and almost: irresistible
competition. She had a “place in the sun.”

Why was she not satisfied? What 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 ex-
traordinary 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 cities ever
grew. Her old industries opened their eyes and saw a new
world and went out for its conquest. And yet the authori-
ties 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 arose, control it;
and you have only to ask any man whom you meet who is
familiar with the conditions that prevailed before the war
in the matter of national competition to find out the methods

486
Woodrow Wilson

of competition which the German manufacturer and ex-
porters used under the patronage and support of the Gov-
ernment 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 them-
selves they could get a subsidy from the Government which
made it possible to sell them cheaper anyhow, and the con-
ditions of competition were thus controlled in large measure
by the German Government itself.

But that did not satisfy the German Government. All
the while there was lying behind its thought in its dreams
of the future a political control which would enable it in
the long run to dominate the labor and the industry of the
world. They were not content with success by superior
achievement; they wanted success by authority. I suppose
very few of you have thought much about the Berlin-to-
Bagdad Railway. The Berlin-Bagdad Railway was con-
structed in order to run the threat of force down the flank
of the industrial undertakings of half a dozen other coun-
tries; so that when German competition came in it would
not be resisted too far, because there was always the pos-
sibility of getting German armies into the heart of that
country quicker than any other armies could be got there.

Look at the map of Europe now! 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 inter-
esting subjects to us and to them, but they are not talking
about the heart of the matter. Take the map and look
at it. Germany has absolute control of Austria-Hungary,
practical control of the Balkan States, control of Turkey,
control of Asia Minor. I saw a map in which the whole
thing was printed in 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

487
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

world. If she can keep that, she has kept all that her
dreams contemplated when the war began. If she can keep
that, her power can disturb the world as long as she keeps
it, always provided, for I feel bound to put this proviso in
—always provided the present influences that contro] 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 concen-
trated force against free peoples if it is used by free people.

You know how many intimations come to us from one of
the central powers 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, notwithstanding that their populations are com-
pounded of all the peoples of that part of the world, and
notwithstanding the fact that they do not wish in their
pride and proper spirit of nationality to be so absorbed and
dominated. Germany is determined that the political power
of the world shall belong to her. There have been such
ambitions before. They have been in part realized, but
never before have those ambitions been based upon so exact
and precise and scientific a plan of domination.

May I not say that it is amazing to me that any group of
persons should be so ill-informed as to suppose, as some
groups in Russia apparently suppose, that any reforms
planned in the interest of the people can live in the pres-
ence of a Germany powerful enough to undermine or over-
throw them by intrigue or force? Any body of free men
that compounds with the present German Government is
compounding for its own destruction. But that is not the
whole of the story. Any man in America or anywhere else
that supposes that the free industry and enterprise of the
world can continue if the Pan-German plan is achieved and

438
Woodrow Wilson

German power fastened upon the world is as fatuous as the
dreamers in Russia. What I am opposed to is not the feel-
ing of the pacifists, but their stupidity. My heart is with
them, but my mind has a contempt for them. I want peace,
but I know how to get it, and they do not.

You will notice that I sent a friend of mine, Col. House,
to Europe, who is as great a lover of peace as any man in
the world, but I didn’t send him on a peace mission yet. 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 have
referred to with regard to what we are going to do. If we
are true friends of freedom of our own or anybody else’s,
we will see that the power of this country and the produc-
tivity of this country is raised to its absolute maximum, and
that absolutely nobody is allowed to stand in the way of it.
When I say that nobody is allowed to stand in the way I
do not mean that they shall be prevented by the power of
the Government but by the power of the American 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—is to stand together night and day un-
til the job is finished.

While we are fighting for freedom we must see among
other things, that labor is free, and that means a number
of interesting things. It means not only that we must do
what we have declared our purpose to do, see that the con-
ditions 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 statesmanlike

489
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

sense of what has to be done. I like to lay my mind along-
side of a mind that knows how to pull in harness. The
horses that kick over the traces will have to be put in
corral,

Now, to stand together means that nobody must interrupt
the processes of our energy if the interruption can possibly
be avoided without the absolute invasion of freedom. To
put it concretely, that means this: Nobody has a right to
stop the processes of labor until all the methods of con-
ciliation and settlement have been exhausted. And I might
as well say right here that I am not talking to you alone.
You sometimes stop the courses of labor, but there are
others who do the same, and I believe that I am speaking
from my own experience not only, but from the experience
of others when I say that you are reasonable in a larger
number of cases than the capitalists. I am not saying these
things to them personally yet, because I have not had a
chance, but they have to be said, not in any spirit of criti-
cism, but in order to clear the atmosphere and come down
to business. Everybody on both sides has now got to trans-
act business, and a settlement is never impossible when
both sides want to do the square and right thing.

Moreover, a settlement is always hard to avoid when the
parties can be brought face to face. I can differ from a
man much more radically when he is not in the room than
I can when he is in the room, because then the awkward
thing is he can come back at me and answer what I say.
It is always dangerous for a man to have the floor éntirely
to himself. Therefore, we must insist in every instance
that the parties come into each other’s presence and there
discuss the issues between them and not separately in
places which have no communication with each other. I
always like to remind myself of a delightful saying of an
Englishman of the past generation, Charles Lamb. He
stuttered a little bit, and once when he was with a group
of friends he spoke very harshly of some man who was not

440
Woodrow Wilson

present. One of his friends said: “Why, Charles, I didn’t
know that you knew so and so.” ‘“O-o-oh,” he said, “I-I
d-d-don’t; I-I can’t h-h-hate a m-m-man I-I know.” Theré
is a great deal of human nature, of very pleasant human
nature, in the saying. It is hard to hate a man you know.
I may admit, parenthetically, that there are some politi-
cians whose methods I do not at all believe in, but they
are jolly good fellows, and if they only would not talk
the wrong kind of politics, I would love to be with them.

So it is all along the line, in serious matters and things
less serious. We are all of the same clay and spirit, and
we can get together if we desire to get together. There-
fore, my counsel to you is this: Let us show ourselves Amer-
icans 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 the
common enterprise which is to release the spirits of the
world from bondage. I would be willing to set that up as
the final test of an American. That is the meaning of de-
mocracy. I have been very much distressed, my fellow
citizens, by some of the things that have happened recently.
The mob spirit is displaying itself here and there in this
country. I have no sympathy with what some men are
saying, but I have no sympathy with the men who take
their punishment into their own hands; and I want to say
to every man who does join such a mob that I do not recog-
nize him as worthy of the free institutions of the United
States. There are some organizations in this country whose
object is anarchy and the destruction of law, but I would
not meet their efforts by making myself partner in destroy-
ing the law. I despise and hate their purposes 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.

So I want to utter my earnest protest against any mani-
festation of the spirit of lawlessness anywhere or in any

441
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

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 ourselves.
If our men have not self-control, then they are not capable
of that great thing which we call democratic government.
A man who takes the law into his own hands is not the right
man to cooperate in any formation or development of law
and institutions, and some of the processes by which the
struggle between capital and labor is carried on are proc-
esses that come very near to taking the law into your own
hands. I do not mean for a moment to compare it with
what I have just been speaking of, but I want you to see
that they are mere gradations in this manifestation of the
unwillingness to codperate, and that 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 coun-
sel. Not all of the instrumentalities for this are at hand.
I am hopeful that in the very near future new instrumentali-
ties may be organized by which we can see to it that various
things that are now going on ought not to go on. There are
various processes of the dilution of labor and the unneces-
sary substitution of labor and the bidding in distant mar-
kets and unfairly upsetting the whole competition of labor
which ought not to go on. I mean now on the part of em-
ployers, and we must interject into this. some instrumen-
tality of codperation by which the fair thing will be done
all around. I am hopeful that some such instrumentalities
may be devised, but whether they are or not, we must use
those that we have and upon every occasion where it is
necessary have such an instrumentality originated upon
that occasion.

So, my fellow citizens, the reason 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 who know any-
thing about what the people of the United States are think-

442
Woodrow Wilson

ing about. I have to come away and 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.

Witson’s Firtruy Annuat Messace to Concress

(Delivered before Congress in Joint Session,
December 4, 1917)

[The President here recommends that Congress extend the state
of war to include Austria-Hungary. He declares that the United
States should devote every power and resource to the immediate
task of winning the war. German power must be crushed, or shut
out from the friendly intercourse of nations; and the peoples of
Austria-Hungary, the Balkans, and Turkey must be delivered
from the domination of the Prussian military and commercial
autocracy. But the United States does not wish to rearrange the
Austro-Hungarian Empire, nor is any interference intended with
the internal affairs of the German Empire.]

Gentlemen of the Congress:

Eight months have elapsed since I last had the honor
of addressing you. They have been months crowded with
events of immense and grave significance for us. I shall
not undertake to retail or even to summarize those events.
The practical particulars of the part we have played in
them will be laid before you in the reports of the executive
departments. I shall discuss only our present outlook
upon these vast affairs, our present duties, and the imme-
diate means of accomplishing the objects we shall hold
always in view.

I shall not go back to debate the causes of the war. The
intolerable wrongs done and planned against us by the
sinister masters of Germany have long since become too

448
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

grossly obvious and odious to every true American to need
to be rehearsed. But I shall ask you to consider again and
with a very grave scrutiny our objectives and the measures
by which we mean to attain them; for the purpose of dis-
cussion here in this place is action, and our action must
move straight toward definite ends. Our object is, of
course, to win the war; and we shall not slacken or suffer
ourselves to be diverted until it is won. But it is worth
while asking and answering the question, When shall we
consider the war won?

. From one point of view it is not necessary to broach this
fundamental matter. I do not doubt that the American
people know what the war is about and what sort of an
outcome they will regard as a realization of their purpose
in it. As a Nation we are united in spirit and intention.
I pay little heed to those who tell me otherwise. I hear
the voites of dissent—who does not? I hear the criticism
and the clamor of the noisily thoughtless and troublesome.
I also see men here and there fling themselves in impotent
disloyalty against the calm, indomitable power of the Na-
tion. I hear men debate peace who understand neither its
nature nor the way in which we may attain it with up-
lifted eyes and unbroken spirits. But I know that none of
these speaks for the Nation. They do not touch the heart
of anything. They may safely be left to strut their uneasy
hour and be forgotten.

But from another point of view I believe that it is neces-
sary to say plainly what we here at the seat of action con-
sider the war to be for and what part we mean to play in
the settlement of its searching issues. We are the spokes-
men of the American people and they have a right to know
whether their purpose is ours. They desire peace by the
‘overcoming of evil, by the defeat once for all of the sinister
forces that interrupt peace and render it impossible, and
they wish to know how closely our thought runs with theirs
and what action we propose. They are impatient with those

444
Woodrow Wilson

who desire peace by any sort of compromise—deeply and
indignantly impatient—but they will be equally impatient
with us if we do not make it plain to them what our ob-
jectives are and what we are planning for in seeking to
make conquest of peace by arms.

I believe that I speak for them when I say two things:
First, that this intolerable Thing of which the masters of
Germany have shown us the ugly face, this menace of com-
bined intrigue and force which we now see so clearly as the
German power, a Thing without conscience or honor or ca-
pacity for covenanted peace, must be crushed, and if it be
not utterly brought to an end, at least shut out from the
friendly intercourse of the nations; and, second, that when
this Thing and its power are indeed defeated and the time
comes that we can discuss peace—when the German people
have spokesmen whose word we can believe and when those
spokesmen are ready in the name of their people to accept
the common judgment of the nations as to what shall hence-
| forth be the bases of law and of covenant for the life of the
world—we shall be willing and glad to pay the full price for
peace, and pay it ungrudgingly. We know what that price
will be. It will be full, impartial justice—justice done at
every point and to every nation that the final settlement
must affect our enemies as well as our friends.

You catch, with me, the voices of humanity that are in
the air. They grow daily more audible, more articulate,
more persuasive, and they come from the hearts of men
everywhere. They insist that the war shall not end in vin-
dictive action of any kind; that no nation or peoples shall
be robbed or punished because the irresponsible rulers of
a single country have themselves done deep and abominable
wrong. It is this thought that has been expressed in the
formula “No annexations, no contributions, no punitive in-
demnities.”” Just because this crude formula expresses the
instinctive judgment as to right of plain men everywhere
it has been made diligent use of by the masters of German

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

intrigue to lead the people of Russia astray—and the peo-
ple of every other country their agents could reach, in order
that a premature peace might be brought about before
autocracy has been taught its final and convincing lesson,
and the people of the world put in control of their own
destinies.

But the fact that a wrong use has been made of a just
idea is no reason why a right use should not be made of it.
It ought to be brought under the patronage of its real
friends. Let it be said again that autocracy must first be
shown the utter futility of its claims to power or leadership
in the modern world. It is impossible to apply any stand-
ard of justice so long as such forces are unchecked and
undefeated as the present masters of Germany command.
Not until that has been done can Right be set up as arbiter
and peacemaker among the nations. But when that has
been done—as, God willing, it assuredly will be—we shall
at last be free to do an unprecedented thing, and this is
the time to avow our purpose to do it. We shall be free
to base peace on generosity and justice, to the exclusion
of all selfish claims to advantage even on the part of the
victors.

Let there be no misunderstanding. Our present and im-
mediate task is to win the war, and nothing shall turn us
aside from it until it is accomplished. Every power and
resource we possess, whether of men, of money, or ma-
terials, is being devoted and will continue to be devoted
to that purpose until it is achieved. Those who desire to
bring peace about before that purpose is achieved I coun-
sel to carry their advice elsewhere. We will not entertain
it. We shall regard the war as won only when the German
people say to us, through properly accredited representa-
tives, that they are ready to agree to a settlement based
upon justice and the reparation of the wrongs their rulers
have done. They have done a wrong to Belgium which
must be repaired. They have established a power over

446
Woodrow Wilson

other lands and peoples than their own—over the great
Empire of Austria-Hungary, over hitherto free Balkan
states, over Turkey, and within Asia—which must be re-
linquished.

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

We owe it, however, to ourselves to say that we do not
wish in any way to impair or to rearrange the Austro-Hun-
garian Empire. It is no affair of ours what they do with
their own life, either industrially or politically. We do
not purpose or desire to dictate to them in any way. We
only desire to see that their affairs are left in their own
hands, in all matters, great or small. We shall hope to
secure for the peoples of the Balkan peninsula and for
the people of the Turkish Empire the right and opportunity
to make their own lives safe, their own fortunes secure
against oppression or injustice and from the dictation of
foreign courts or parties.

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

And our attitude and purpose with regard to Germany
herself are of a like kind. We intend no wrong against
the German Empire, no interference with her internal af-
fairs. We should deem either the one or the other abso-
lutely unjustifiable, absolutely contrary to the principles we
have professed to live by and to hold most sacred through-
out our life as a nation.

The people of Germany are being told by the men whom
they now permit to deceive them and to act as their masters
that they are fighting for the very life and existence of
their Empire, a war of desperate self-defense against de-
liberate aggression. Nothing could be more grossly or
wantonly false, and we must seek by the utmost openness
and candor as to our real aims to convince them of its false-
ness. We are in fact fighting for their emancipation from
fear, along with our own—from the fear as well as from
the fact of unjust attack by neighbors or rivals or schemers
after world empire. No one is threatening the existence or
the independence or the peaceful enterprise of the German
Empire.

The worst that can happen to the detriment of the Ger-
man people is this, that if they should still, after the war
is over, continue to be obliged to live under ambitious and
intriguing masters interested to disturb the peace of the
world, men or classes of men whom the other peoples of
the world could not trust, it might be impossible to admit
them to the partnership of nations which must henceforth
guarantee the world’s peace. That partnership must be a
partnership of peoples, not a mere partnership of gov-
ernments. It might be impossible, also, in such untoward
circumstances, to admit Germany to the free economic in-
tercourse which must inevitably spring out of the other
partnerships of a real peace. But there would be no ag-
gression in that; and such a situation, inevitable because of
distrust, would in the very nature of things sooner or
later cure itself, by processes which would assuredly set in.

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Woodrow Wilson

The wrongs, the very deep wrongs, committed in this
war will have to be righted. That of course. But they
cannot and must not be righted by the commission of similar
wrongs against Germany and her allies. The world will
not permit the commission of similar wrongs as a means of
reparation and settlement. Statesmen must by this time
have learned that the opinion of the world is everywhere
wide awake and fully comprehends the issues involved.
No representative of any self-governed nation will dare dis-
regard it by attempting any such covenants of selfishness
and compromise as were entered into at the Congress of
Vienna. The thought of the plain people here and every-
where throughout the world, the people who enjoy no privi-
‘lege and have very simple and unsophisticated standards
of right and wrong, is the air all governments must hence-
forth breathe if they would live. It is in the full disclosing
light of that thought that all policies must be conceived and
executed in this midday hour of the world’s life. German
rulers have been able to upset the peace of the world only
because the German people were not suffered under their
tutelage to share the comradeship of the other peoples of
the world either in thought or in purpose. They were
allowed to have no opinion of their own which might be set
up as a rule of conduct for those who exercised authority
over them. But the congress that concludes this war will
feel the full strength of the tides that run now in the hearts
and consciences of free men everywhere. Its conclusions
will run with those tides.

All these things have been true from the very beginning
of this stupendous war; and I cannot help thinking that
if they had been made plain at the very outset the sympathy
and enthusiasm of the Russian people might have been once
for all enlisted on the side of the allies, suspicion and dis-
trust swept away, and a real and lasting union of purpose
effected. Had they believed these things at the very mo-
ment of their revolution and had they been confirmed in

( £49
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers
i
\

that belief since, the sad reverses which have recently
marked the progress of their affairs toward an ordered
and stable government of free men might have been avoided.
The Russian people have been poisoned by the very same
falsehoods that have kept the German people in the dark,
and the poison has been administered by the very same
hands. The only possible antidote is the truth. It cannot
be uttered too plainly or too often.

From every point of view, therefore, it has seemed to be
my duty to speak these declarations of purpose, to add
these specific interpretations to what I took the liberty of
saying to the Senate in January. Our entrance into the’
war has not altered our attitude toward the settlement that
must come when it is over. When I said in January that
the nations of the world were entitled not only to free
pathways upon the sea but also to assured and unmolested
-access to those pathways, I was thinking, and I am think-
ing now, not of the smaller and weaker nations alone, which
‘need our countenance and support, but also of the great
and powerful nations, and of our present enemies as well
as our present associates in the war. I was thinking, and
am thinking now, of Austria herself, among the rest, as
well as of Serbia and of Poland. Justice and equality of
right can be had only at a great price. We are seeking
permanent, not temporary, foundations for the peace of
the world and must seek them candidly and fearlessly. As
always, the right will prove to be the expedient.

What shall we do, then, to push this great war of free-
dom and justice to its righteous conclusion? We must clear
away with a thorough hand all impediments to success, and
we must make every adjustment of law that will facilitate
the full and free use of our whole capacity and force as
a fighting unit.

One very embarrassing obstacle that stands in our way
is that we are at war with Germany, but not with her
allies. I therefore very earnestly recommend that the Con-

460
Woodrow Wilson

gress immediately declare the United States in a state of
war with Austria-Hungary. Does it seem strange to you
that this’should be the conclusion of the argument I have
just addressed to you? It is not. It is, in fact, the in-
evitable logic of what I have said. Austria-Hungary is
for the time being not her own mistress, but simply the
vassal of the German Government. We must face the
facts as they are and act upon them without sentiment in
this stern business. The Government of Austria-Hungary
is not acting upon its own initiative or in response to the
wishes and feelings of its own peoples, but as the instru-
ment of another nation. We must meet its force with our
own and regard the Central Powers as but one. The war
can be successfully conducted in no other way. The same
logic would lead also to a declaration of war against Turkey
and Bulgaria. They also are the tools of Germany. But
they are mere tools, and do not yet stand in the direct path
of our necessary action. We shall go wherever the neces-
sities of this war carry us, but it seems to me that we should
go only where immediate and practical considerations lead
us and not heed any others.

The financial and military measures which must be
adopted will suggest themselves as the war and its under-
takings develop, but I will take the liberty of proposing to
you certain other acts of legislation which seem to me to be
needed for the support of the war and for the release of
our whole force and energy.

It will be necessary to extend in certain particulars the
legislation of the last session with regard to alien enemies;
and also necessary, I believe, to creat a very definite and
particular control over the entrance and departnre of all
persons into and from the United States.

Legislation should be enacted defining as a criminal
offense every willful violation of the presidential proclama-
tions relating to alien enemies promulgated under section
4067 of the Revised Statutes and providing appropriate

451
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

punishment; and women as well as men should be included
under the terms of the acts placing restraints upon alien
enemies. It is likely that as time goes on many alien ene-
mies will be willing to be fed and housed at the expense of
the Government in the detention camps, and it would be the
purpose of the legislation I have suggested to confine of-
fenders among them in penitentiaries and other similar
institutions where they could be made to work as other
criminals do.

Recent experience has convinced me that the Congress
must go further in authorizing the Government to set limits
to prices. The law of supply and demand, I am sorry to say,
has been replaced by the law of unrestrained selfishness.
While we have eliminated profiteering in several branches
of industry it still runs impudently rampant in others. The
farmers, for example, complain with a great deal of justice
that, while the regulation of food prices restricts their in-
comes, no restraints are placed upon the prices of most of
the things they must themselves purchase; and similar in-
equities obtain on all sides.

It is imperatively necessary that the consideration of
the full use of the water power of the country, and also
the consideration of the systematic and yet economical de-
velopment of such of the natural resources of the country
as are still under the control of the Federal Government,
should be immediately resumed and affirmatively and con-
structively dealt with at the earliest possible moment. The
pressing need of such legislation is daily becoming more
obvious. "

The legislation proposed at the last session with regard
to regulated combinations among our exporters, in order
to provide for our foreign trade a more effective organiza-
tion and method of codperation, ought by all means to be
completed at this session.

And I beg that the members of the House of Represen-
tatives will permit me to express the opinion that it will

452
Woodrow Wilson

be impossible to deal in any but a very wasteful and ex-
travagant fashion with the enormous appropriations of the
public moneys which must continue to be made, if the war
is to be properly sustained, unless the House will consent
to return to its former practice of initiating and preparing
all appropriation bills through a single committee, in or-
der that responsibility may be centered, expenditures stand-
ardized and made uniform, and waste and duplication as
much as possible avoided.

Additional legislation may also become necessary be-
fore the present Congress again adjourns in order to effect
the most efficient co-ordination and operation of the rail-
way and other transportation systems of the country; but
to that I shall, if circumstances should demand, call the
attention of the Congress upon another occasion.

If I have overlooked anything that ought to be done for
the more effective conduct of the war, your own counsels
will supply the omission. What I am perfectly clear about
is that in the present session of the Congress our whole
attention and energy should be concentrated on the vigor-
ous, rapid, and successful prosecution of the great task of
winning the war.

We can do this with all the greater zeal and enthusiasm
because we know that for us this is a war of high principle,
debased by no selfish ambition of conquest or spoliation;
because we know, and all the world knows, that we have
been forced into it to save the very institutions we live un-
der from corruption and destruction. The purposes of the
Central Powers strike straight at the very heart of every-
thing we believe in; their methods of warfare outrage every
principle of humanity and of knightly honor; their intrigue
has corrupted the very thought and spirit of many of our
people; their sinister and secret diplomacy has sought to
take our very territory away from us and disrupt the
Union of the States. Our safety would be at an end, our
honor forever sullied and brought into contempt were we

458
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

to permit their triumph. They are striking at the very
existence of democracy and liberty.

It is because it is for us a war of high, disinterested pur-
pose, in which all the free peoples of the world are banded
together for the vindication of right, a war for the preser-
vation of our nation and of all that it has held dear of prin-
ciple and of purpose, that we feel ourselves doubly con-
strained to propose for its outcome only that which is right-
eous and of irreproachable intention, for our foes as well
as for our friends. The cause being just and holy, the set-
tlement must be of like motive and quality. For this we
can fight, but for nothing less noble or less worthy of our
traditions. For this cause we entered the war and for this
cause will we battle until the last gun is fired.

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

[The President’s recommendation that “the Congress immedi-
ately declare the United States in a state of war with Austria-
Hungary” was carried out. On December 7 a joint resolution
declaring the existence of a state of war was adopted in both
Senate and House, with only one vote (Socialist) in opposition.

The reference to possible legislation to effect efficient railroad ,
co-ordination and operation proved interesting in the light of sub-
sequent events. Three weeks later the President concluded that
he had power enough to take the most radical step. On December
26 he announced that every railroad system would be taken under
Government control. On January 4 he asked Congress for legis-
lation relating to financial phases of the transfer.]

464
Woodrow Wilson

Prociamation Pracine Raitroaps UnpER GovERNMENT
ControLt, DecemBer 26, 1917

Whereas, The Congress of the United States, in the exer-
cise of the constitutional authority vested in them, by joint
resolution of the Senate and House of Representatives,
bearing date April 6, 1917, resolved:

That the state of war between the United States and the Im-
perial German Government which has thus been thrust upon the
United States is hereby formally declared, and that the President
be, and he is hereby, authorized and directed to employ the entire
naval and military forces of the United States and the resources
of the Government to carry on war against the Imperial German
Government, and to bring the conflict to a successful termination
all of the resources of the country are hereby pledged by the Con-
gress of the United States, ;

And by joint resolution, bearing date Dec. 7, 1917, re-
solved:

That a state of war is hereby declared to exist between the
United States of America and the Imperial and Royal Austro-
Hungarian Government, 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 Gov-
ernment to carry on war against the Imperial and Royal Austro-
Hungarian Government, and to bring the conflict to a successful
termination all the resources of the country are hereby pledged
by the Congress of the United States.

And, whereas, It is provided by Section 1 of the act ap-
proved Aug. 29, 1916, entitled “An Act Making Appro-
priations for the Support of the Army for the Fiscal
Year Ending June 30, 1917, and for Other Purposes,’ as
follows:

The President, in time of war, is empowered, through the Sec-
retary of War, to take possession and assume control of any sys-
tem or systems of transportation, or any part thereof, and to
utilize the same, to the exclusion as far as may be necessary of
all other traffic thereon, for the transfer or transportation of
troops, war material and equipment, or for such other purposes
connected with the emergency as may be needful or desirable.

And, whereas, It has now become necessary in the na-
tional defense to take possession and assume control of

456
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

certain systems of transportation and to utilize the same,
to the exclusion as far as may be necessary of other than
war traffic thereon, for the transportation of troops, war
material and equipment therefor, and for other needful and
desirable purposes connected with the prosecution of the
war;

Now, therefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, President of the
United States, under and by virtue of the powers vested
in me by the foregoing resolutions and statute, and by vir-
tue of all other powers thereto enabling, do hereby, through
Newton D. Baker, Secretary of War, take possession and
assume control at 12 o’clock noon on the twenty-eighth day
of December, 1917, of each and every system of transpor-
tation and the appurtenances thereof located wholly or in
part within the boundaries of the continental United States
and consisting of railroads, and owned or controlled sys-
tems of coastwise and inland transportation, engaged in
general transportation, whether operated by steam or by
electric power, including also terminals, terminal companies
and terminal associations, sleeping and parlor cars, private
cars and private car lines, elevators, warehouses, telegraph
and telephone lines, and all other equipment and appur-
tenances commonly used upon or operated as a part of
such rail or combined rail and water systems of transpor-
tation—to the end that such systems of transportation be
utilized for the transfer and transportation of troops, war
material and equipment to the exclusion so far as may be
necessary of all other traffic thereon, and that so far as
such exclusive use be not necessary or desirable, such sys-
tems of transportation be operated and utilized in the per-
formance of such other services as the national interest may
require and of the usual and ordinary business and duties
of common carriers.

It is hereby directed that the possession, control, opera-
tion, and utilization of such transportation systems hereby
by me undertaken shall be exercised by and through Wil-

456
Woodrow Wilson

liam G. McAdoo, who is hereby appointed and designated
Director General of Railroads. Said Director may per-
form the duties imposed upon him so long, and to such ex-
tent, as he shall determine, through the boards of Directors,
receivers, officers, and employes of said systems of trans-
portation. Until and except so far as said Director shall
from time to time by general or special orders otherwise
provide, the boards of Directors, receivers, officers, and
employes of the various transportation systems shall con-
tinue the operation thereof in the usual and ordinary course
of the business of common carriers in the names of their
respective companies.

Until and except so far as said Director shall from time
to time otherwise by general or special orders determine,
such systems of transportation shall remain subject to all
existing statutes and orders of the Interstate Commerce
Commission, and to all statutes and orders of regulating
commissions of the various States in which said systems
or any part thereof may be situated. But any orders,
general or special, hereafter made by said Director shall
have paramount authority and be obeyed as such.

Nothing herein shall be construed as now affecting the
possession, operation, and control of street electric pas-
senger railways, including railways commonly called inter-
urbans, whether such railways be or be not owned or con-
trolled by such railroad companies or systems. By sub-
sequent order and proclamation, if and when it shall be
found necessary or desirable, possession, control, or opera-
tion may be taken of all or any part of such street railway
systems, including subways and tunnels, and by subsequent
order and proclamation possession, control, and operation
in whole or in part may also be relinquished to the owners
thereof of any part of the railroad systems or rail and
water systems, possessions and control of which are hereby
assumed.

The Director shall, as soon as may be after having as-

467,
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Paperé

sumed such possession and control, enter upon negotiations
with the several companies looking to agreements for just
and reasonable compensation for the possession, use, and
control of the respective properties on the basis of an
annual guaranteed compensation above accruing deprecia-
tion and the maintenance of their properties, equivalent, as
nearly as may be, to the average of the net operating in-
come thereof for the three-year period ending June 30,
1917, the results of such negotiations to be reported to me
for such action as may be appropriate and lawful.

But nothing herein contained, expressed or implied, or
hereafter done or suffered hereunder shall be deemed in
any way to impair the rights.of the stockholders, bondhold-
ers, creditors, and other persons having interests in said
systems of transportation or in the profits thereof, to re-
ceive just and adequate compensation for the use and con-
trol and operation of their property hereby assumed.

Regular dividends hitherto declared, and maturing in-
terest upon bonds, debentures, and other obligations, may
be paid in due course; and such regular dividends and in-
terest may continue to be paid until and unless the said
Director shall from time to time otherwise by general or
special orders determine. And, subject to the approval
of the Director, the various carriers may agree upon and
arrange for the renewal and extension of maturing obliga-
tions.

Except with the prior written assent of said Director, no
attachment by mesne process or on execution shall be levied
on or against any of the property used by any of said trans-
portation systems in the conduct of their business as com-
mon carriers; but suits may be brought by and against said
carriers and judgments rendered as hitherto until and ex-
cept so far as said Director may, by general or special
orders, otherwise determine.

From and after 12 o’clock on said twenty-eighth day of
December, 1917, all transportation systems included in

458
Woodrow Wilson

this order and proclamation shall conclusively be deemed
within the possession of said Director, without further act
vr notice. But for the purposes of accounting said posses-
sion and control shall date from 12 o’clock midnight on
Dec. 31, 1917.

In witness wHereor, I have hereunto set my hand and caused
the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done by the President, through Newton D. Baker, Secretary
of War, in the District of Columbia, this 26th day of December,
in the year of Our Lord one thousand nine hundred and seventeen,

and of the independence of the United States the one hundred and
forty-second.

Wooprow Wi1son.
By the President:
Rosert Lawnsina, Secretary of State.
Newton D. Baker, Secretary of War.

Witson’s Appress To ConcREss, oN GovERNMENT
ADMINISTRATION OF RaILROADs

(Delivered in Joint Session, January 4, 1918)

Gentlemen of the Congress: .

I have asked the privilege of addressing you in order to
report to you that on the 28th of December last, during the
recess of the Congress, acting through the Secretary of War
cand under the authority conferred upon me by the act of
‘Congress approved August 29, 1916, I took possession and
-assumed control of the railway lines of the country and the
-systems of water transportation under their control. This
step seemed to be imperatively necessary in the interest of
the public welfare, in the presence of the great tasks of
war with which we are now dealing. As our own experience
develops difficulties and makes it clear what they are, I
have deemed it my duty to remove those difficulties wher-
ever I have the legal power to do so.

459
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

To assume control of the vast railway systems of the
country is, I realize, a very great responsibility, but to
fail to do so in the existing circumstances would have been
a much greater. I assumed the less responsibility rather
than the weightier.

I am sure that I am speaking the mind of all thoughtful
Americans when I say that it is our duty as the represen-
tatives of the nation to do everything that it is necessary
to do to secure the complete mobilization of the whole re-
sources of America by as rapid and effective means as
can be found. ‘Transportation supplies all the arteries of
mobilization. Unless it be under a single and unified
direction, the whole process of the nation’s action is
embarrassed.

It was in the true spirit of America, and it was right,
that we should first try to effect the necessary unification
under the voluntary action of those who were in charge of
the great railway properties; and we did try it. The
directors of the railways responded to the need promptly
and generously. The group of railway executives who
were charged with the task of actual coordination and
general direction performed their difficult duties with pa-
triotic zeal and marked ability, as was to have been ex-
pected, and did, I believe, everything that it was possible
for them to do in the circumstances. If I have taken the
task out of their hands, it has not been because of any
dereliction or failure on their part but only because there
were some things which the Government can do and pri-
vate management cannot. We shall continue to value most
highly the advice and assistance of these gentlemen and I
am sure we shall not find them withholding it.

It had become unmistakably plain that only under Gov-
ernment administration can the entire equipment of the
several systems of transportation be fully and unreservedly
thrown into a common service without injurious discrimi-
nation against particular properties. Only under Govern-

460
Woodrow Wilson

ment administration can an absolutely unrestricted and un-
embarrassed common use be made of all tracks, terminals,
terminal facilities and equipment of every kind. Only
under that authority can new terminals be constructed and
developed without regard to the requirements or limitations
of particular roads. But under Government administration
all these things will be possible—not instantly, but as fast
as practical difficulties, which cannot be merely conjured
away, give way before the new management.

The common administration will be carried out with as
little disturbance of the present operating organizations
and personnel of the railways as possible. Nothing will be
altered or disturbed which it is not necessary to disturb.
We are serving the public interest and safeguarding the
public safety, but we are also regardful of the interest of
those by whom these great properties are owned and glad
to avail ourselves of the experience and trained ability of
those who have been managing them.

It is necessary that the transportation of troops and of
war materials, of food and of fuel, and of everything that
is necessary for the full mobilization of the energies and
resources of the country, should be first considered, but it
is clearly in the public interest also that the ordinary activ-
ities and the normal industrial and commercial life of the
country should be interfered with and dislocated as little
as possible, and the public may rest assured that the in-
terest and convenience of the private shipper will be as
carefully served and safeguarded as it is possible to serve
and safeguard it in the present extraordinary circum-
stances.

While the present authority of the Executive suffices for
all purposes of administration, and while of course all
private interests must for the present give way to the
public necessity, it is, I am sure you will agree with me,
right and necessary that the owners and creditors of the
railways, the holders of their stocks and bonds, should

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receive from the Government an unqualified guarantee that
their properties will be maintained throughout the period
of Federal control in as good repair and as complete equip-
ment as at present, and that the several roads will receive
under Federal management such compensation as is equi-
table and just alike to their owners and to the general pub-
lic. I would suggest the average net railway operating
income of the three years ending June 30, 1917. I ear-
nestly recommend that these guarantees be given by appro-
priate legislation, and given as promptly as circumstances
permit.

I need not point out the essential justice of such guaran-
tees and their great influence and significance as elements
in the present financial and industrial situation of the coun-
try. Indeed, one of the strong arguments for assuming
control of the railroads at this time is the financial argu-
ment.

It is necessary that the values of railway securities
should be justly and fairly protected and that the large
financial operations every year necessary in connection
with the maintenance, operation and development of the
roads should, during the period of the war, be wisely re-
lated to the financial operations of the Government.

Our first duty is, of course, to conserve the common in-
terest and the common safety and to make certain that
nothing stands in the way of the successful prosecution of
the great war for liberty and justice, but it is also an obli-
gation of public conscience and of public honor that the pri-
vate interests we disturb should be kept safe from unjust
injury, and it is of the utmost consequence to the Govern-
ment itself that all great financial operations should be
stabilized and co-ordinated with the financial operations of
the Government.

No borrowing should run athwart the borrowings of the
Federal Treasury, and no fundamental industrial values
should anywhere be unnecessarily impaired.

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Woodrow Wilson

In the hands of many thousands of small investors in the
country, as well as in national banks, in insurance compa-
nies, in savings banks, in trust companies, in financial agen-
cies of every kind, railway securities, the sum total of which
runs up to some ten or eleven thousand millions, constitute
a vital part of the structure of credit, and the unques-
tioned solidity of that structure must be maintained.

The Secretary of War and I easily agreed that, in view
of the many complex interests which must be safeguarded
and harmonized, as well as because of his exceptional ex-
perience and ability in this new field of Governmental ac-
tion, the Hon. William G. McAdoo was the right man to
assume direct administrative control of this new executive
task. At our request, he consented to assume the author-
ity and duties of organizer and Director General of the new
Railway Administration. He has assumed those duties and
his work is in active progress.

It is probably too much to expect that even under the
unified railway administration which will now be possible
sufficient economies can be effected in the operation of the
railways to make it possible to add to their equipment and
extend their operative facilities as much as the present
extraordinary demands upon their use will render desirable
without resorting to the National Treasury for the funds.
If it is not possible, it will, of course, be necessary to re-
sort to the Congress for grants of money for that purpose.
The Secretary of the Treasury will advise with your com-
mittees with regard to this very practical aspect of the
matter.

For the present, I suggest only the guarantees I have
indicated and such appropriations as are necessary at the
outset of this task. I take the liberty of expressing the
hope that the Congress may grant these promptly and un-
grudgingly. We are dealing with great matters and will,
I am sure, deal with them greatly.

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

Wizson’s Appress To Conaress, Stating THE War AIMS
AND Peace Terms or THE UNITED StaTEs

(Delivered in Joint Session, January 8, 1918)

Gentlemen of the Congress:

Once more, as repeatedly before, the spokesmen of the
Central Empires have indicated their desire to discuss
the objects of the war and the possible basis of a general
peace. Parleys have been in progress at Brest-Litovsk
between Russian representatives and representatives of the
Central Powers to which the attention of all the belliger-.
ents 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 per-
fectly definite statement of the principles upon which they
would be willing to conclude peace but also an equally
definite program of the concrete application of those prin-
ciples. The representatives of the Central Powers, on
their part, presented an outline of settlement which, if
much less definite, seemed susceptible of liberal interpre-
tation until their specific program of practical terms was
added. That program proposed no concessions at all
either to the sovereignty of Russia or to the preferences
of the populations 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 occupied—every
province, every city, every point of vantage—as a perma-
nent addition to their territories and their power.

It is a reasonable conjecture that the general principles
of settlement which they at first suggested originated with
the more liberal statesmen of Germany and Austria, the
men who have begun to feel the force of their own people’s
thought and purpose, while the concrete terms of actual
settlement came from the military leaders who have no

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thought but to keep what they have got. The negotiations
have been broken off. The Russian representatives were
sincere and in earnest. They cannot entertain such pro-
posals of conquest and domination.

The whole incident is full of significance. It is also full
of perplexity. With whom are the Russian representa-
tives dealing? For whom are the representatives of the
Central Empires speaking? Are they speaking for the
majorities of their respective parliaments or for the minor-
ity parties, that military and imperialistic minority which
has so far dominated their whole policy and controlled the
affairs of Turkey and of the Balkan states which have
felt obliged to become their associates in this war?

The Russian representatives have insisted, very justly,
very wisely, and in the true spirit of modern democracy,
that the conferences they have been holding with the Teu-
tonie 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-
many, or to those who resist and defy that spirit and in-
tention and insist upon conquest and subjugation? Or
are we listening, in fact, to both, unreconciled and in open
and hopeless contradiction? These are very serious and
pregnant questions. Upon the answer to them depends
the peace of the world.

But, whatever the results of the parleys at Brest-Litovsk,
‘whatever the confusions of counsel and of purpose in the
utterances of the spokesmen of the Central Empires, they
have again attempted to acquaint the world with their ob-
jects in the war and have again challenged their adversa-
ties to say what their objects are and what sort of settle-
ment they would deem just and satisfactory. There is no
good reason why that challenge should not be responded

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

to, and responded to with the utmost candor. We did not
wait for it. Not once, but again and again, we have laid
our whole thought and purpose before the world, not in
general terms only, but each time with sufficient definition
to make it clear what sort of definite terms of settlement
must necessarily spring out of them. Within the last week
Mr. Lloyd George has spoken with admirable candor and
in admirable spirit for the people and Government of
Great Britain.

There is no confusion of counsel among the adversaries
of the Central Powers, no uncertainty of principle, no
vagueness of detail. The only secrecy of counsel, the only
lack of fearless frankness, the only failure to make definite
statement of the objects of the war, lies with Germany
and her allies. The issues of life and death hang upon
these definitions. No statesman who has the least con-
ception of his responsibility ought for a moment to permit
himself to continue this tragical and appalling outpouring
of blood and treasure unless he is sure beyond a peradven-
ture that the objects of the vital sacrifice are part and
parcel of the very life of Society and that the people for
whom he speaks think them right and imperative as he does.

There is, moreover, a voice calling for these definitions
of principle and of purpose which is, it seems to me, more
thrilling and more compelling than any of the many mov-
ing 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 subservient. They will not yield either
in principle or in action. Their conception of what is
right, of what 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;

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Woodrow Wilson

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 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 people of Rus-
sia to attain their utmost hope of liberty and ordered peace.

It will be our wish and purpose that the processes of
peace, when they are begun, shall be absolutely open and
that they shall involve and permit 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 govern-
ments 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 jus-
tice 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 oc-
curred which touched us to the quick and made the life of
our own people impossible unless they were corrected and
the world secure once for all against their recurrence.

What we demand in this war, therefore, is nothing pecul-
iar 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 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

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

unless justice be done to others it will not be done to us.
The program of the world’s peace, therefore, is our pro-
gram; and that program, the only possible program, as we
see it, is this:

1. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at,
after which there shall be no private international
understandings of any kind but diplomacy shall
proceed always frankly and in the public view.

2. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the
seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and
in war, except as the seas may be closed in whole:
or in part by international action for the enforce-
ment of international covenants.

s

8. The removal, so far as possible, of all eco-
nomic barriers and the establishment of an equal-
ity of trade conditions among all the nations
consenting to the peace and associating themselves
for its maintenance.

4. Adequate guarantees given and taken that
national armaments will be reduced to the lowest
points consistent with domestic safety.

5. A free, open-minded, and absolutely impar-
tial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon
a strict observance of the principle that in deter-
mining all such questions of sovereignty the in-
terests of the populations concerned must have
equal weight with the equitable claims of the gov-
ernment whose title is to be determined.

6. The evacuation of all Russian territory and
such a settlement of all questions affecting Russia
as will secure the best and freest cooperation of
the other nations of the world in obtaining for
her an unhampered and unembarrassed opportu-
nity for the independent determination of her

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own political development and national policy
and assure her of a sincere welcome into the
society of free nations under institutions of her
own choosing; and, more than a welcome, assist-
ance 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 com-
prehension of her needs as distinguished from
their own interests, and of their intelligent and
unselfish sympathy.

7. Belgium, the whole world will agree, must
be evacuated and restored,. without any attempt
to limit the sovereignty which she enjoys in com-
mon with all other free nations. No other single
act will serve as this will serve to restore confi-
dence among the nations in the laws which they
have themselves set and determined for the gov-
ernment of their relations with one another.
Without this healing act the whole structure and
validity of international law is forever impaired.

8. All French territory should be freed and
-the invaded portions restored, and the wrong done
to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of
Alsace-Lorraine, which has unsettled the peace
of the world for nearly fifty years, should be
righted, in order that peace may once more be
made secure in the interest of all.

9. A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy
should be effected along clearly recognizable lines
of nationality.

10. The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose
place among the nations we wish to see safe-
guarded and assured, should be accorded the
freest opportunity of autonomous development.

469
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

11. Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro should
be evacuated; occupied territories restored; Serbia
accorded free and secure access to the sea; and
the relations of the several Balkan states to one
another determined by friendly counsel along
historically established lines of allegiance and
nationality; and international guarantees of the
political and economic independence and territo-
rial integrity of the several Balkan states should
be entered into.

12. The Turkish portions of the present Otto-
man Empire should be assured a secure sover-
eignty, but the other nationalities which are now
under Turkish rule should be assured an un-
doubted security of life and an absolutely unmo-
lested opportunity of autonomous development,
and the Dardanelles should be permanently
opened as a free passage to the ships and com-
merce of all nations under international guaran-
tees.

13. An independent Polish state should be
erected which should include the territories in-
habited by indisputably Polish populations, which
should be assured a free and secure access to the
sea, and whose political and economic independ-
ence and territorial integrity should be guaran-
teed by international covenant.

14. A general association of nations must be
formed under specific covenants for the purpose
of affording mutual guarantees of political inde-
pendence and territorial integrity to great and
small] states alike.

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

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Woodrow Wilson

against the imperialists. We cannot be separated in inter-
est or divided in purpose. We stand together until the end.

For such arrangements and covenants we are willing to
fight and to continue to fight until they are achieved; but
only because we wish the right to prevail and desire a just
and stable peace such as can be secured only by removing
the chief provocations to war, which this program does
remove.

We have no jealousy of German greatness, and there is
nothing in this 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
zery 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 arrange-
ments of trade if she is willing to associate herself with us
and the other peace-loving nations of the world in cove-
nants of justice and law and fair dealing.

We wish her only to accept a place of equality among
the peoples of the world,—the new world in which we now
live,—instead of a place of mastery.

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

We have spoken now, surely, in terms too concrete to
admit of any further doubt or question. An evident prin-
ciple runs through the whole program I have outlined. It
is the principle of justice to all peoples and nationalities,
and their right to live on equal terms of liberty and safety
with one another, whether they be strong or weak.

Unless this principle be made its foundation no part
of the structure of international justice can stand. The

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

people of the United States could act upon no other prin-
ciple; and to the vindication of this principle they are
ready to devote their lives, their honor, and everything
that they possess. The moral climax of this the culmi-
nating and final war for human liberty has come, and they
are ready to put their own strength, their own highest pur-
pose, their own integrity and devotion to the test.

Presipent Wiison’s Appress to Conaeress, ANALYZING
German anp AustRIAN Peace UTtreraNces

(Delivered in Joint Session, February 11, 1918)

Gentlemen of the Congress: On the eighth of January I
had the honor of addressing you on the objects of the war
as our people conceive them. The Prime Minister of Great
Britain had spoken in similar terms on the fifth of January.
To these addresses the German Chancellor replied on the
tweny-fourth and Count Czernin, for Austria, on the same
day. It is gratifying to have our desire so promptly realized
that all exchanges of view on this great matter should be
made in the hearing of all the world.

Count Czernin’s reply, which is directed chiefly to my
own address of the eighth of January, is uttered in a very
friendly tone. He finds in my statement a sufficiently en-
couraging approach to the views of his own Government to
justify him in believing that it furnishes a basis for a more
detailed discussion of purposes by the two Governments.
He is represented to have intimated that the views he was
expressing had been communicated to me beforehand and
that I was aware of them at the time he was uttering them;
but in this I am sure he was misundetstood. I had re-
ceived. no intimation of what he intended to say. There
was, of course, no reason why he should communicate pri-

47a
Woodrow Wilson

vately with me. I am quite content to be one of his public
audience.

Count von Hertling’s reply is, I must say, very vague
and very confusing. It is full of equivocal phrases and
leads it is not clear where. But it is certainly in a very
different tone from that of Count Czernin, and apparently
of an opposite purpose. It confirms, I am sorry to say,
rather than removes, the unfortunate impression made by
what we had learned of the conferences at Brest-Litovsk.
His discussion and acceptance of our general principles
lead him to no practical conclusions. He refuses to apply
them to the substantive items which must constitute the
body of any final settlement. He is jealous of international
action and of international counsel. He accepts, he says,
the principle of public diplomacy, but he appears to insist
that it be confined, at any rate in this case, to generalities
and that the several particular questions of territory and
sovereignty, the several questions upon whose settlement
must depend the acceptance of peace by the twenty-three
states now engaged in the war, must be discussed and set-
tled, not in general council, but severally by the nations
most immediately concerned by interest or neighborhood.
He agrees that the seas should be free, but looks askance at
any limitation to that freedom by international action in
the interest of the common order. He would without re-
serve be glad to see economic barriers removed between
nation and nation, for that could in no way impede the am-
bitions of the military party with whom he seems con-
strained to keep on terms. Neither does he raise objection
to a limitation of armaménts. That matter will be settled
of itself, he thinks, by the economic conditions which must
follow the war. But the German colonies, he demands,
must be returned without debate. He will discuss with no
one but the representatives of Russia what disposition shall
be made of the people and the lands of the Baltic provinces;
with no one but the Government of France the ‘‘conditions”

478
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

under which French territory shall be evacuated; and only
with Austria what shall be done with Poland. In the de-
termination of all questions affecting the Balkan states he
defers, as I understand him, to Austria and Turkey; and
with regard to the agreements to be entered into concerning
the non-Turkish peoples of the present Ottoman Empire,
to the Turkish authorities themselves. After a settlement
all around, effected in this fashion, by individual barter
and concession, he would have no objection, if I correctly
interpret his statement, to a league of nations which would
undertake to hold the new balance of power steady against
external disturbance.

It must be evident to everyone who understands what
this war has wrought in the opinion and temper of the
world that no general peace, no peace worth the infinite
sacrifices of these years of tragical suffering, can possibly
be arrived at in any such fashion. The method the Ger-
man Chancellor proposes is the method of the Congress of
Vienna. We cannot and will not return to that. What is
at stake now is the peace of the world. What we are
striving for is a new international order based upon broad
and universal principles of right and justice,—no mere
peace of shreds and patches. Is it possible that Count von
Hertling does not see that, does not grasp it, is in fact
living in his thought in a world dead and gone? Has he
utterly forgotten the Reichstag Resolutions of the nine-
teenth of July, or does he deliberately ignore them? They
spoke of the conditions of a general peace, not of national
aggrandizement or of arrangements between state and state.
The peace of the world depends upon the just settlement
of each of the several problems to which I adverted in my
recent address to the Congress. I, of course, do not mean
that the peace of the world depends upon the acceptance
of any particular set of suggestions as to the way in which
those problems are to be dealt with. I mean only that those
problems each and all affect the whole world; that unless

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Woodrow Wilson

they are dealt with in a spirit of unselfish and unbiased
justice, with a view to the wishes, the natural connections,
the racial aspirations, the security, and the peace of mind
of the peoples involved, no permanent peace will have been
attained. They cannot be discussed separately or in cor-
ners. None of them constitutes a private or separate in-
terest from which the opinion of the world may be shut out.
Whatever affects the peace affects mankind, and nothing
settled by military force, if settled wrong, is settled at all.
It will presently have to be reopened.

Is Count von Hertling not aware that he is speaking in
the court of mankind, that all the awakened nations of the
world now sit in judgment on what every public man, of
whatever nation, may say on the issues of a conflict which
has spread to every region of the world? The Reichstag
Resolutions of July themselves frankly accepted the deci-
sions of that court. There shall be no annexations, no
contributions, no punitive damages. Peoples are not to be
handed about from one sovereignty to another by an inter-
national conference or an understanding between rivals and
antagonists. National aspirations must be respected; peo-
ples may now be dominated and governed only by their
own consent. “Self-determination” is not a mere phrase.
It is an imperative principle of action, which statesmen will
henceforth ignore at their peril. We cannot have general
peace for the asking, or by the mere arrangements of a
peace conference. It cannot be pieced together out of indi-
vidual understandings between powerful states. All the
parties to this war must join in the settlement of every
issue anywhere involved in it; because what we are seeking
is a peace that we can all unite to guarantee and maintain
and every item of it must be submitted to the common judg-
ment whether it be right and fair, an act of justice, rather
than a bargain between sovereigns.

The United States has no desire to interfere in European
affairs or to act as arbiter in European territorial disputes.

475
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

She would disdain to take advantage of any internal weak-
ness or disorder to impose her own will upon another
people. She is quite ready to be shown that the settlements
she has suggested are not the best or the most enduring.
They are only her own provisional sketch of principles and
of the way in which they should be applied. But she en-
tered this war because she was made a partner, whether
she would or not, in the sufferings and indignities inflicted
by the military masters of Germany, against the peace and
security of mankind; and the conditions of peace will touch
her as nearly as they will touch any other nation to which
is entrusted a leading part in the maintenance of civiliza-
tion. She cannot see her way to peace until the causes of
this war are removed, its renewal rendered as nearly as may
be impossible. ‘

This war had its roots in the disregard of the rights of
small nations and of nationalities which lacked the union
and the force to make good their claim to determine their
own allegiances and their own forms of political life.
Covenants must now be entered into which will render such
things impossible for the future; and those covenants must
be backed by the united force of all the nations that love
justice and are willing to maintain it at any cost. If terri-
torial settlements and the political relations of great popu-
lations which have not the organized power to resist are
to be determined by the contracts of the powerful govern-
ments which consider themselves most directly affected, as
Count von Hertling proposes, why may not economic ques-
tions also? It has come about in the altered world in which
we now find ourselves that justice and the rights of peoples
affect the whole field of international dealing as much as
access to raw materials and fair and equal conditions of
trade. Count von Hertling wants the essential bases of
commercial and industrial life to be safeguarded by common
agreement and guarantee, but he cannot expect that to be
conceded him if the other matters to be determined by the

46
Woodrow Wilson

articles on peace are not handled in the same way as items
in the final accounting. He cannot ask the benefit of com-
mon agreement in the one field without according it in the
other. I take it for granted that he sees that separate and
selfish compacts with regard to trade and the essential
materials of manufacture would afford no foundation for
peace. Neither, he may rest assured, will separate and
selfish compacts with regard to provinces and peoples.

Count Czernin seems to see the fundamental elements
of peace with clear eyes and does not seek to obscure them.
He sees that an independent Poland, made up of all the in-
disputably Polish peoples who lie contiguous to one another,
is a matter of European concern and must of course be
conceded; that Belgium must be evacuated and restored,
no matter what sacrifices and concessions that may involve;
and that national aspirations must be satisfied, even within
his own Empire, in the common interest of Europe and man-
kind. If he is silent about questions which touch the in-
terest and purpose of his allies more nearly than they touch
those of Austria only, it must of course be because he feels
constrained, I suppose, to defer to Germany and Turkey
in the circumstances. Seeing and conceding, as he does,
the essential principles involved and the necessity of can-
didly applying them, he naturally feels that Austria can
respond to the purpose of peace as expressed by the United
United States with less embarrassment than could Ger-
many. He would probably have gone much farther had it
not been for the embarrassments of Austria’s alliances and
of her dependence upon Germany.

After all, the test of whether it is possible for either
government to go any further in this comparison of views
is simple and obvious. The principles to be applied are
these:

First, that each part of the final settlement must be based
upon, the essential justice of that particular case and upon

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

such adjustments as are most likely to bring a peace that
will be permanent ;

Second, that peoples and provinces are not to be bartered
about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were mere
chattels and pawns in a game, even the great game, now
forever discredited, of the balance of power; but that

Third, every territorial settlement involved in this war
must be made in the interest and for the benefit of the popu-
lations concerned, and not as a part of any mere adjust-
ment or compromisé of claims amongst rival states; and

Fourth, that all well defined national aspirations shall
be accorded the utmost satisfaction that can be accorded
them without introducing new or perpetuating old elements
of discord and antagonism that would be likely in time to
break the peace of Europe and consequently of the world.

A general peace erected upon such foundations can be
discussed. Until such a peace can be secured we have no
choice but to go on. So far as we can judge, these prin-
ciples that we regard as fundamental are already every-
where accepted as imperative except among the spokesmen
of the military and annexationist party in Germany. If
they have anywhere else been rejected, the objectors have
not been sufficiently numerous or influential to make their
voices audible. The tragical circumstance is that this one
party in Germany is apparently willing and able to send
millions of men to their death to prevent what all the world
now sees to be just.

I would not be a true spokesman of the people of the
United States if I did not say once more that we entered
this war upon no small occasion, and that we can never
turn back from a course chosen upon principle. Our re-
sources are in part mobilized now, and we shall not pause
until they are mobilized in their entirety. Our armies are
rapidly going to the fighting front, and will go more and
more rapidly. Our whole strength will be put into this

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war of emancipation,—emancipation from the threat and
attempted mastery of selfish groups of autocratic rulers,—
whatever the difficulties and present partial delays. We are
indomitable in our power of independent action and can in
no circumstances consent to live in a world governed by
intrigue and force. We believe that our own desire for a
new international order under which reason and justice and
the common interests of mankind shall prevail is the desire
of enlightened men everywhere. Without that new order
the world will be without peace and human life will lack
tolerable conditions of existence and development. Hav-
ing set our hand to the task of achieving it, we shall not turn
back.

I hope that it is not necessary for me to add that no
word of what I have said is intended as a threat. That is not
the temper of our people. I have spoken thus only that the
whole world may know the true spirit of America—that
men everywhere may know that our passion for justice and
for self-government is no mere passion of words but a pas-
sion which, once set in action, must be satisfied. The power
of the United States is a menace to no nation or people. It
will never be used in aggression or for the aggrandizement
of any selfish interest of our own. It springs out of free-
dom and is for the service of freedom.

[Replies to this address by President Wilson were made by the
German Chancellor and the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister,
Chancellor von Hertling on February 25 declared in the Reichstag
that he could “fundamentally agree” with the four principles laid
down by the President and that peace could be discussed on such
a basis. Count Czernin—speaking on April 2 to the Vienna City
Council and “the wider public’—expressed similar agreement. Both
doubted whether President Wilson could unite his allies upon such
a basis.

Meanwhile, Germany and Austria had forced the signing of peace
treaties which wrested vast areas from Russia, under the guise of
establishing independent kingdoms and republics in voluntary asso-

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

ciation with Germany, and from Rumania under the pretext of
restoration and frontier rectifications,

President Wilson directed attention to this vital difference
between German words and German deeds, in an address upon the,
anniversary of America’s entrance into the war, as follows:]

Presipent Witson Conpremns German Peace TREATIES
Wirn Russta anp Rumanra—Anp ACCEPTS THE
German CHALLENGE oF ForcE

(An Address at Baltimore, April 6, 1918)

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 give and to do,
though in itself imperative. The people of the whole coun-
try are alive to the necessity of it, and are ready to lend
to the utmost, even where it involves a sharp skimping and
daily sacrifice to lend out of meagre earnings. They will
look with reprobation and contempt upon those who can and
will not, upon those who demand a higher rate of interest,
upon those who think of it as a mere commercial transac-
tion. 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.

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 disclosed 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 momen-
tous struggle. The man who knows least can now see
-plainly how the cause of Justice stands and what the im-
perishable thing is he is asked to invest in. Men in Amer-

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Woodrow JWilson

ica may be more sure than they ever were before that the
cause is their own, and that, if it should be lost, their
own great Nation’s place and mission in the world would
be lost with it.

I call 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 trucu-
lence, 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 aggression.
We are ready, whenever the final reckoning is made, to be
just to the German people, deal fairly with the German
power, as with all others. There can be no difference be-
tween 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 dishonour our own cause. For we ask nothing that we
are not willing to accord.

It has been with this thought that I have sought to learn
from those who spoxe for Germany whether it was 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, answered in unmistakable
terms. They have avowed that it was not justice but do-
minion and the unhindered execution of their own will.

The avowal has not come from Germany’s statesmen.
It has come from her military leaders, who are her real

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

rulers. Her statesmen have said that they wished peace,
and were ready to discuss its terms whenever their oppo-
nents were willing to sit down at the conference table with
them. Her present Chancellor has said—in indefinite and
uncertain terms, indeed, and in phrases that often seem to
deny their own meaning, but with as much plainness as he
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-Litovsk her civil-
ian delegates spoke in similar 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 allegiances. But action accompanied and followed the
profession. Their military masters, the men who act for
Germany and exhibit. her purpose in execution, proclaimed
a very different conclusion. We can not mistake what they
have done—In Russia, in Finland, in the Ukraine, in Ru-
mania. The real test of their justice and fair play has come.
From this we may judge the 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 profes-
sions are forgotten. They nowhere set up justice, but every-
where impose their power and exploit everything for their
own use and aggrandizement; and the peoples of conquered
provinces are invited to be free under their dominion!

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 divi-
sions can not overcome? If, when they have felt their check
to be final, they should propose favourable and equitable
terms with regard to Belgium and France and Italy, could
they blame us if we concluded 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

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peninsula, all the lands that Turkey has dominated and mis-
ruled, 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 the
Europe which it will overawe—an empire which will ulti-
mately master Persia, India, and the peoples of the Far
East. In such a program our ideals, the ideals of jus-
tice and humanity and liberty, the principle 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 over-
lordship of those who have the power to enforce it.

That program once carried out, America and all who
care or dare to stand with her must arm and prepare them-
selves to contest the mastery of the World, a mastery in
which the rights of common men, the rights of women and
of all who are weak, must for the time being be trodden
under foot and disregarded, and the old, age-long struggle
for freedom and right begin again at its beginning. Every-
thing that America has lived for and loved and grown
great to vindicate and bring to a glorious realization will
have fallen in utter ruin and the gates of mercy once more
pitilessly shut upon mankind!

The thing is preposterous and impossible; and yet is not
that 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 thoroughness
throughout every fair region they have touched.

What, then, are we to do? For myself, I am ready, ready
still, ready even now, to discuss a fair and just and honest

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

peace at any time that it is sincerely purposed—a peace in
which the strong and the weak shall fare alike. But the
answer, when I proposed such a peace, came from the Ger-
man commanders in Russia, and I cannot mistake the mean-
ing 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 re-
deem the world and make it fit for free men like 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 misprize what we honour and hold dear.
Germany has once more said that force, and force alone,
shall decide whether Justice and peace shall reign in the af-
fairs of men, whether Right as America conceives it or Do-
minion as she conceives 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
dominion down in the dust.

Tue Presipent’s Letter Tuat Enpep a SHIPYARD STRIKE

[Eprrorian Note: Seldom did labor troubles come to
the forefront, in spite of ever-increasing wage demands and
the vastness of industrial effort. Strikes in the copper dis-
tricts of Montana and Arizona had been brought to an end
(see page 428), and a machinists’ strike in the great muni-
tion center at Bridgeport, Conn., was later to check the
maximum flow of war supplies (see page 515). In each

484
Woodrow Wilson

case that was brought before him, the President insisted
upon the acceptance of arbitration and a prompt return to
work. The present instance involved wage demands of
carpenters in shipyards, and the following letter was sent
by the President to William L. Hutcheson, head of the
United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners :]

February 17, 1918.
General President, United Brotherhood of Carpenters and
Joiners of America, New York:

I have received your telegram of yesterday and am very
glad to note the expression of your desire as a patriotic
citizen to assist in carrying on the work by which we are
trying to save America and men everywhere who work and
are free. Taking advantage of that assurance, I feel it
to be my duty to call your attention to the fact that the
strike of the carpenters in the shipyards is in marked and
painful contrast to the action of labor in other trades and
places. Ships are absolutely necessary for the winning of
this war. No one can strike a deadlier blow at the safety
of the Nation and of its forces on the other side than by
interfering with or obstructing the shipbuilding program.
All the other unions engaged in this indispensable work
have agreed to abide by the decisions of the Shipbuilding
Wage Adjustment Board. That board has dealt fairly and
liberally with all who have resorted to it.

I must say to you very frankly that it is your duty to
leave to it the solution of your present difficulties with your
employers and to advise the men whom you represent to
return at once to work pending the decision. No body of
men have the moral right in the present circumstances of
the Nation to strike until every method of adjustment has
been tried to the limit. If you do not act upon this prin-
ciple you are undoubtedly giving aid and comfort to the
enemy, whatever may be your own conscious purpose. I
do not see that anything will be gained by my seeing you

485
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

‘
personally until you have accepted and acted upon that
principle. It is the duty of the Government to see that the
best possible conditions of labor are maintained, as it is
also its duty to see to it that there is no lawless and con-
scienceless profiteering, and that duty the Government has
accepted and will perform. Will you codperate or will you
obstruct?

Woopvrow Wizson.

Appress Openine THE Campaian in New York
For THE Seconp Rep Cross Funp,
May 18, 1918.

Mr. Chairman and Fellow-Countrymen:

I should be very sorry to think that Mr. Davison in any
degree curtailed his exceedingly interesting speech for fear
that he was postponing mine, because I am sure you lis-
tened with the same intent and intimate interest with which
I listened to the extraordinarily vivid account he gave of
the things which he had realized because he had come in
contact with them on the other side of the water. We com-
passed them with our imagination. He compassed them in
his personal experience. .

I am not come here to-night to review for you the work of
the Red Cross. I am not competent to do so, because I
have not had the time or the opportunity to follow it in
detail. I have come here simply to say a few words to
you as to what it all seems to me to mean.

It means a great deal. There are two duties with which
we are face to face. The first duty is to win the war. The
second duty, that goes hand in hand with it, is to win it
greatly and worthily, showing the real quality of our power
not only, but the real quality of our purpose and of our-
selves. Of course, the first duty, the duty that we must
keep in the foreground of our thought until it is accom-

486
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plished, is to win the war. I have heard gentlemen recently
say that we must get five million men ready. Why limit
it to five million? I have asked the Congress of the United
States to name no limit, because the Congress intends, I
am sure, as we all intend, that every ship that can carry
men or supplies shall go laden upon every voyage with
every man and every supply she can carry.

And we are not to be diverted from the grim purpose of
winning the war by any insincere approaches upon the sub-
ject of peace. I can say with a clear conscience that I
have tested those intimations and have found them insincere.
I now recognize them for what they are, an opportunity
to have a free hand, particularly in the East, to carry out
purposes of conquest and exploitation. Every proposal
with regard to accommodation in the West involves a reser-
vation with regard to the East. Now, so far as J am con-
cerned, I intend to stand by Russia as well as France. The
helpless and the friendless are the very ones that need
friends and succor, and if any man in Germany thinks
we are going to sacrifice anybody for our own sake, I tell
them now they are mistaken. For the glory of this war, my
fellow-citizens, so far as we are concerned, is that it is,
perhaps for the first time in history, an unselfish war. I
could not be proud to fight for a selfish purpose, but I can
be proud to fight for mankind. If they wish peace, let
them come forward through accredited representatives and
lay their terms on the table. We have laid ours, and they
know what they are.

But behind all this grim purpose, my friends, lies the
opportunity to demonstrate not only force, which will be
demonstrated to the utmost, but the opportunity to demon-
strate character, and it is that opportunity that we have
most conspicuously in the work of the Red Cross. Not
that our men in arms do not represent our character, for
they do, and it is a character which those who see and
realize appreciate and admire, but their duty is the duty

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

of force. The duty of the Red Cross is the duty of mercy
and succor and friendship.

Have you formed a picture in your imagination of what
this war is doing for us and for the world? In my own
mind I am convinced that not a hundred years of peace
could have knitted this Nation together as this single year
of war has knitted it together; and better even than that, if
possible it is knitting the world together. Look at the
picture! In the center of the scene, four nations engaged
against the world, and at every point of vantage, showing
that they are seeking selfish aggrandizement; and against
them, twenty-three governments, representing the greater
part of the population of the world, drawn together into»
a new sense of community of interest, a new sense of com-
munity of purpose, a new sense of unity of life. The Sec-
retary of War told me an interesting incident the other day.
He said when he was in Italy a member of the Italian
Government was explaining to him the many reasons why
Italy felt near to the United States. He said, “If you
want to try an interesting experiment, go up to any one of
these troop trains and ask in English how many of them
have been in America, and see what happens.” He tried
the experiment. He went up to a troop train and he asked,
“How many of you boys have been in America?” and he
said it seemed to him as if half of them sprang up: “Me
from San Francisco,” “Me from New York,’—all over.
There was part of the heart of America in the Italian
Army,—people that had been knitted to us by association,
who knew us, who had lived amongst us, who had worked
shoulder to shoulder with us, and now, friends of America,
were fighting for their native Italy.

Friendship is the only cement that will ever hold the
world together. And this intimate contact of the great
Red Cross with the peoples who are suffering the terrors
and deprivations of this war is going to be one of the great-
est instrumentalities of friendship that the world ever

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Woodrow Wilson

knew; and the center of the heart of it all, if we sustain it
properly, will be this land that we so dearly love.

My friends, a great day of duty has come, and duty finds
a man’s soul as no kind of work can ever find it. May I
say this: The duty that faces us all now is to serve one
another. No man can afford to make a fortune out of this
war. There are men amongst us who have forgotten that,
‘if they ever saw it. Some of you are old enough—I am
old enough—to remember men who made fortunes out of
the Civil War, and you know how they were regarded by
their fellow-citizens. That was a war to save one country.
This is a war to save the world. And your relation to the
Red Cross is one of the relations which will relieve you of
the stigma. You cannot give anything to the Govern-
ment of the United States. It will not accept it. There is
a law of Congress against accepting even services without
pay. The only thing that the Government will accept is a
loan and duties performed, but it is a great deal better to
give than to lend or to pay, and your great channel for
giving is the American Red Cross. Down in your hearts
you can not take very much satisfaction in the last analysis
in lending money to the Government of the United States,
because the interest which you draw will burn your pockets.
It is a commercial transaction; and some men have even
dared to cavil at the rate of interest, not knowing the inci-
dental commentary that that constitutes upon their
attitude.

But when you give, something of your heart, something
of your soul, something of yourself goes with the gift, par-
ticularly when it is given in such form that it never can
come back by way of direct benefit to yourself. You know
there is the old cynical definition of gratitude, as “the lively
expectation of favors to come.” Well, there is no expec-
tation of favors to come in this kind of giving. These
things are bestowed in order that the world may be a fitter
place to live in, that men may be succored, that homes may

489
¢ Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

be restored, that suffering may be relieved, that the face
of the earth may have the blight of destruction removed
from it, and that wherever force goes, there shall go mercy
and helpfulness.

And when you give, give absolutely all that you can
spare, and do not consider yourself liberal in the giving.
If you give with self-adulation you are not giving at all,
you are giving to your own vanity, but if you give until it
hurts, then your heart-blood goes into it.

Think what we have here! We call it the American Red
Cross, but it is merely a branch of a great international or-
ganization which is not only recognized by the statutes of
each of the civilized governments of the world, but is rec-
ognized by international agreement and treaty, as the
recognized and accepted instrumentality of mercy and suc-
cor. ‘And one of the deepest stains that rest upon the repu-
tation of the German Army is that they have not respected
the Red Cross. That goes to the root of the matter.
They have not respected the instrumentality they them-
selves participated in setting up as the thing which no man
was to touch because it was the expression of common hu-
manity. By being members of the American Red Cross,
we are members of a great fraternity and comradeship
which extends all over the world. This cross which these
ladies bore to-day is an emblem of Christianity itself.

It fills my imagination, ladies and gentlemen, to think
of the women all over this country who are busy to-night,
and are busy every night and every day, doing the work
of the Red Cross, busy with a great eagerness to find out
the most serviceable thing to do, busy with a forgetfulness
of all the old frivolities of their social relationships, ready
to curtail the duties of the household in order that they
may contribute to this common work that all their hearts
are engaged in and in doing which their hearts become ac-
quainted with each other. When you think of this, you
realize how the people of the United States are being

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Woodrow Wilson

drawn together into a great intimate family whose heart is
being used for the service of the soldiers not only, but for
the service of civilians where they suffer and are lost in a
maze of distresses and distractions.

You have, then, this noble picture of justice and mercy
as the two servants of liberty. For only where men are
free do they think the thoughts of comradeship, only where
they are free do they think the thoughts of sympathy, only
where they are free are they mutually helpful, only where
they are free do they realize their dependence upon one
another and their comradeship in a common interest and
common necessity. If you ladies and gentlemen could read
some of the touching despatches which come through official
channels, for even through these channels there come voices
of humanity that are infinitely pathetic; if. you could catch
some of those voices that speak the utter longing of op-
pressed and helpless peoples all over the world to hear
something like the Battle Hymn of the Republic, to hear the
feet of the great hosts of Liberty coming to set them free,
to set their minds free, set their lives free, set their chil-
dren free; you would know what comes into the heart of
those who are trying to contribute all the brains and power
they have to this great enterprise of Liberty. I summon
you to the comradeship. I summon you in this next week
to say how much and how sincerely and how unanimously
you sustain the heart of the world.

Messace to THE ItatiaN Peorpre on THE THIRD ANNI-
VERSARY OF Iraty’s ENTRANCE INTO THE War,
May 28, 1918.

I am sure that I am speaking for the people of the
United States in sending to the Italian people warm fra-
ternal greetings upon this the anniversary of the entrance
of Italy into this great war in which there is being fought

491
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

out once for all the irrepressible conflict between free self-
government and the dictation of force.

The people of the United States have looked with pro-
found interest and sympathy upon the efforts and sacrifices
of the Italian people, are deeply and sincerely interested
in the present and future security of Italy, and are glad to
find themselves associated with a people to whom they are
bound by so many personal and intimate ties in a struggle
whose object is liberation, freedom, the rights of men and
nations to live their own lives and determine their own
fortunes, the rights of the weak as well as of the strong,
and the maintenance of justice by the irresistible force of
free nations leagued together in the defense of mankind.

With ever increasing resolution and force we shall con-
tinue to stand together in this sacred common cause. Amer-
ica salutes the gallant Kingdom of Italy and bids her
Godspeed.

Wooprow Wizson.

Presipent Witson’s Appress To Coneress, oN THE NEED
For ADDITIONAL REVENUE

(Delivered in Joint Session, May 27, 1918)

[Congress had been making plans to adjourn, and the President
deemed it necessary to recommend immediate consideration of
means for increasing the national revenues to help meet huge war
expenditures. His first revenue message to Congress (September
4, 1914—see page 64) had urged an additional revenue of $100,-
000,000. Congress had not only acted favorably upon that, but in
September, 1916, had passed a measure raising $200,000,000 more.
In September, 1917, after America’s entrance into the war, Con-
gress passed a bill designed to yield $2,500,000,000 in additional
taxation, or a total national revenue of $4,000,000,000. Now, only
eight months later, the President declares that “additional rev-
enues must manifestly be provided for.” In the summer and fall
following the address printed below, Congress framed and passed a
tax bill estimated to yield $8,000,000.000 annually, or one-third of
the Government’s current war expenditures.]

492
Woodrow Wilson

Gentlemen of the Congress:

It is with unaffected reluctance that I come to ask you
to prolong your session long enough to provide more ade-
quate resources for the Treasury for the conduct of the
war. I have reason to appreciate as fully as you do how
arduous the session has been. Your labors have been se-
vere and protracted. You have passed a long series of
measures which required the debate of many doubtful
questions of judgment and many exceedingly difficult ques-
tions of principle as well as of practice. The summer is
upon us in which labor and counsel are twice arduous and
are constantly apt to be impaired by lassitude and fatigue.
The elections are at hand and we ought as soon as possible
to go and render an intimate account of our trusteeship to
the people who delegated us to act for them in the weighty
and anxious matters that crowd upon us in these days
of critical choice and action. But we dare not go to the
elections until we have done our duty to the full. These
are days when duty stands stark and naked and even with
closed eyes we know it is there. Excuses are unavailing.
We have either done our duty or we have not. The fact
will be as gross and plain as the duty itself. In such a
case lassitude and fatigue seem negligible enough. The
facts are tonic and suffice to freshen the labor.

And the facts are these: Additional revenues must mani-
festly be provided for. It would be a most unsound policy
to raise too large a proportion of them by loan, and it is
evident that the four billions now provided for by taxation
will not of themselves sustain the greatly enlarged budget
to which we must immediately look forward. We cannot
in fairness wait until the end of the fiscal year is at hand
to apprise our people of the taxes they must pay on their
earnings of the present calendar year, whose accountings
and expenditures will then be closed. We cannot get in-
creased taxes unless the country knows what they are to
be and practices the necessary economy to make them avail-

498
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

able. Definiteness, early definiteness, as to what its tasks
are to be is absolutely necessary for the successful admin-
istration of the Treasury: it cannot frame, fair and work-
able regulations in haste; and it must frame its regulations
in haste if it is not to know its exact task until the very eve
of its performance. The present tax laws are marred,
moreover, by inequities which ought to be remedied. Indis-
putable facts, every one; and we cannot alter or blink them.
To state them is argument enough.

And yet perhaps you will permit me to dwell for a mo-
ment upon the situation they disclose. Enormous loans
freely spent in the stimulation of industry of almost every
sort produce inflations and extravagances which presently
make the whole economic structure questionable and inse-
cure and the very basis of credit is cut away. Only fair,
equitably distributed taxation, of the widest incidence and
drawing chiefly from the sources which would be likely to
demoralize credit by their very abundance, can prevent in-
flation and keep our industrial system free of speculation
and waste. We shall naturally turn, therefore, I suppose,
to war profits and incomes and luxuries for the additional
taxes. But the war profits and incomes upon which the
increased taxes will be levied will be the profits and in-
comes of the calendar year 1918. It would be manifestly
unfair to wait until the early months of 1919 to say what
they are to be. It might be difficult, I should imagine, to
run the mill with water that had already gone over the
wheel.

Moreover, taxes of that sort will not be paid until the
June of next year, and the Treasury must anticipate them.
It must use the money they are to produce before it is due.
It must sell short time certificates of indebtedness. In the
autumn a much larger sale of long-time bonds must be
effected than has yet been attempted. What are the bank-
ers to think of the certificates if they do not certainly know
where the money is to come from which is to take them up?

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Woodrow Wilson

And how are investors to approach the purchase of bonds
with any sort of confidence or knowledge of their own
affairs if they do not know what taxes they are to pay and
what economies and adjustments of their business they
must effect? I cannot assure the country of a successful
administration of the Treasury in 1918 if the question of
further taxation is to be left undecided until 1919.

The consideration that dominates every other now and
makes every other seem trivial and negligible is the win-
ning of the war. We are not only in the midst of the war,
we are at the very peak and crisis of it. Hundreds of
thousands of our men, carrying our hearts with them and
our fortunes, are in the field, and ships are crowding faster
and faster to the ports of France and England with regi-
ment after regiment, thousand after thousand, to join them
until the enemy shall be beaten and brought to a reckoning
with mankind. There can be no pause or intermission.
The great enterprise must, on the contrary, be pushed with
greater and greater energy. The volume of our might
must steadily and rapidly be augmented until there can be
no question of resisting it. If that is to be accomplished,
gentlemen, money must sustain it to the utmost. Our finan-
cial program must no more be left in doubt or suffered to
lag than our ordnance program or our ship program or our
munitions program or our progam for making millions of
men ready. These others are not programs, indeed, but
mere plans upon paper, unless there is to be an unques-
tionable supply of money. ’

That is the situation, and it is the situation which cre-
ates the duty, no choice or preference of ours. There is
only one way to meet that duty. We must meet it without
selfishness or fear of consequences. Politics is adjourned.
The elections will go to those who think least of it; to
those who go to the constituencies without explanations
or excuses, with a plain record of duty faithfully and dis-
interestedly performed. I, for one, am always confident

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

that the people of this country will give a just verdict upon
the service of the men who act for them when the facts are
such that no man can disguise or conceal them. There is
no danger of deceit now. An intense and pitiless light
beats upon every man and every action in this tragic plot
of war that is now upon the stage. If lobbyists hurry to
Washington to attempt to turn what you do in the matter
of taxation to their protection or advantage, the light will
beat also upon them. There is abundant fuel for the light
in the records of the Treasury with regard to profits of
every sort. The profiteering that cannot be got at by the
restraints of conscience and love of country can be got at
by taxation. There is such profiteering now and the infor-
mation with regard to it is available and indisputable.

I am advising you to act upon this matter of taxation
now, gentlemen, not because I do not know that you can see
and interpret the facts and the duty they impose just as
well and with as clear a perception of the obligations in-
volved as I can, but because there is a certain solemn sat-
isfaction in sharing with you the responsibilities of such
atime. The world never stood in such case before. Men
never before had so clear or so moving a vision of duty.
I know that you will begrudge the work to be done here by
us no more than the men begrudge us theirs who lie in the
trenches and sally forth to their death. There is a stimu-
lating comradeship knitting us all together. And this task
to which I invite your immediate consideration will be per-
formed under favorable influences if we will look to what
the country is thinking and expecting and care nothing
at all for what is being said and believed in the lobbies of
Washington hotels, where the atmosphere seems to make
it possible to believe what is believed nowhere else.

Have you not felt the spirit of the nation rise and its
thought become a single and common thought since these
eventful days came in which we have been sending our boys
to the other side? I think you must read that thought, as

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Woodrow Wilson

I do, to mean this, that the people of this country are not
only united in the resolute purpose to win this war but are
ready and willing to bear any burden and undergo any
sacrifice that it may be necessary for them to bear in order
to win it. We need not be afraid to tax them, if we lay
taxes justly. They know that the war must be paid for
and that it is they who must pay for it, and if the burden
is justly distributed and the sacrifice made a common
sacrifice from which none escapes who can bear it at all,
they will carry it cheerfully and with a sort of solemn pride.
I have always been proud to be an American, and was never
more proud than now, when all that we have said and all
that we have foreseen about our people is coming true. The
great days have come when the only thing that they ask for
or admire is duty greatly and adequately done; when their
only wish for America is that she may share the freedom
she enjoys; when a great, compelling sympathy wells up
in their hearts for men everywhere who suffer and are op-
pressed; and when they see at last the high uses for which
their wealth has been piled up and their mighty power
accumulated and, counting neither blood nor treasure now
that their final day of opportunity has come, rejoice to
spend and to be spent through a long night of suffering
and terror in order that they and men everywhere may see
the dawn of a day of righteousness and justice and peace.
Shall we grow weary when they bid us act?

 

Wizson’s Appress at Mount Vernon, Voicine tHe War
Ogsects or THE AssociaTteD ProPpLes or THE WoRLD,
Jury 4, 1918.

Genilemen 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

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

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 associations
by which we are here surrounded are the inspiriting asso-
ciations of that noble death which is only a glorious con-
summation. 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 barons at Runny-
mede, 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 under-
stood 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 centred in
the little groups of landholders and merchants and men of
‘affairs with whom they were accustomed to act, in Virginia
and the colonies to the north and south of her, but of a
people which wished to be done with classes and special
interests 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

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Woodrow Wilson

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 participation 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 privi-
lege to concert with men out of every nation what shall
make not only the liberties of America secure but the liber-
ties 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 set-
tled once for all what was settled for America in the great
age upon whose inspiration we draw to-day. This is surely
a fitting place from which calmly to look out upon our
task, that we may fortify our spirits for its accomplish-
ment. 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 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 unor-
ganized 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 disposing of their
lives and fortunes as they will, as well as of the lives and

499
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

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 associated peoples of the
world are fighting and which must be conceded them before
there can be peace:

I. The destruction of every arbitrary power anywhere
that can separately, secretly, and of its single choice disturb
the peace of the world; or, if it cannot be presently de-
stroyed, at the least its reduction to virtual impotence.

II. The settlement of every question, whether of terri-
tory, of sovereignty, of economic arrangement, or of polit-
ical relationship, upon the basis of the free acceptance of
that settlement by the people immediately concerned, and
not upon the basis of the material interest 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 principles 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 sacredly observed, no private plots or
conspiracies hatched, no selfish injuries wrought with
impunity, and a mutual trust established upon the hand-
some foundation 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

600
Woodrow Wilson

nations will check every invasion of right and serve to
make peace and justice the more secure by affording a defi-
nite tribunal of opinion to which all must submit and by
which every international readjustment that cannot be ami-
cably 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 consent
of the governed and sustained by the organized opinion of
mankind.

These great ends cannot be achieved by debating and
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 te
have been a step in the liberation of its own people as well
as of 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!

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers
An InpgerpenpeNcE Day Messaae

(Read by “Four-Minute’”’ Orators in more than Five Thou-
sand Communities, on July 4, 1918.)

You are met, my fellow-citizens, to commemorate the
signing of that Declaration of Independence which marked
the awakening of a new spirit in the lives of nations. Since
the birth of our Republic, we have seen this spirit grow.
We have heard the demand and watched the struggle for
self-government spread and triumph among many peoples.
We have come to regard the right to political liberty as the
common right of humankind. Year after year, within the
security of our borders, we have continued to rejoice in the
peaceful increase of freedom and democracy throughout
the world. And yet now, suddenly, we are confronted
with a menace which endangers everything that we have
won and everything that the world has won.

In all its old insolence, with all its ancient cruelty and
injustice, military autocracy has again armed itself against
the pacific hopes of men. Having suppressed self-govern-
ment among its own people by an organization maintained
in part by falsehood and treachery, it has set out to im-
pose its will upon its neighbors and upon us. One by one
it has compelled every civilized nation in the world either
to forego its aspirations or to declare war in their defense.
We find ourselves fighting again for our national existence.
We are face to face with the necessity of asserting anew
the fundamental right of free men to make their own laws
and choose their own allegiance, or else permit humanity
to become the victim of a ruthless ambition that is deter-
mined to destroy what it cannot master.

Against its threat the liberty-loving people of the world
have risen and allied themselves. No fear has deterred
them, and no bribe of material well-being has held them
back. They have made sacrifices such as the world has

502
. Woodrow Wilson

never known before, and their resistance in the face of
death and suffering has proved that the aim which animates
the German effort can never hope to rule the spirit of man-
kind. Against the horror of military conquest, against the
emptiness of living in mere bodily contentment, against
the desolation of becoming part of a State that knows
neither truth nor honor, the world has so revolted that
even people long dominated and suppressed by force have
now begun to stir and arm themselves.

Centuries of subjugation have not destroyed the racial
aspirations of the many distinct peoples of eastern Europe,
nor have they accepted the sordid ideals of their political
and military masters. They have survived the slow perse-
cutions of peace as well as the agonies of war and now de-
mand recognition for their just claims to autonomy and
self-government. Representatives of these races are with
you to-day, voicing their loyalty to our ideals and offering
their services in the common cause. I ask you, fellow-
citizens, to unite with them in making this our Independ-
ence Day the first that shall be consecrated to a declaration
of independence for all the peoples of the world.

ProciamaTion Pxiacina TELEGRAPH AND TELEPHONE
Systems Unprer GoveRNMENT CoNnTROL
Jury 22, 1918

[Eprroriat Note: For many years there had been ad-
vocates of Government operation and control, if not owner-
ship, of the telegraph and telephone systems of the country;
but the proposal had lacked support both in Congress and
among the people. As a war measure, however (and fol-
lowing Government operation of the railroads), it quickly
became an accomplished fact when a threatened strike of
telegraphers seemed likely to interfere with efficient “wire”

508
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

service. In both branches of Congress there were only
twenty votes in opposition to a resolution empowering the
President to take over the telegraph and telephone systems,
for the duration of the war, whenever he deemed it neces-
sary. The measure was signed on July 16, and sia days
later the President isued the following proclamation, assum-
suming control through the Postmaster General:]

By the President of the United States of America.

A PROCLAMATION
Whereas, The Congress of the United States, in the ex-
ercise of the constitutional authority vested in them, by
joint resolution of the Senate and House of Representatives,
bearing date July 16, 1918, resolved:

That the President, during the continuance of the present war,
is authorized and empowered, whenever he shall deem it necessary
for the national security or defense, to supervise or to take posses-
sion and assume control of any telegraph, telephone, marine cable,
or radio system or systems, or any part thereof, and to operate the
same in such manner as may be needful or desirable for the dura-
tion of the war, which supervision, possession, control, or operation
shall not extend beyond the date of the proclamation by the Presi-
dent of the exchange of ratifications of the treaty of peace: Pro-
vided, that just compensation shall be made for such supervision,
possession, control, or operation, to be determined by the Presi-
dent; and if the amount thereof, so determined by the President,
is unsatisfactory to the person entitled to receive the same, such
person shall be paid 75 per centum of the amount so determined
by the President and shall be entitled to sue the United States
to recover such further sum as, added to said 75 per centum, will
make up such amount as will be just compensation therefor, in
the manner provided for by Section 24, Paragraph 20, and Sec-
tion 145 of the Judicial Code: Provided, further, that nothing
in this Act shall be construed to amend. repeal, impair, or affect
existing laws or powers of the States in relation to taxation or
the lawful police regulations of the several States except wherein
such laws, powers or regulations may affect the transmission of
Government communications or the issue of stocks and bonds by
such system or systems.

And, whereas, It is deemed necessary for the national
security and defense to supervise and to take possession

504
Woodrow Wilson

and assume control of all telegraph and telephone systems
and to operate the same in such manner as may be needful
or desirable:

Now, therefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, President of the
United States, under and by virtue of the powers vested
in me by the foregoing resolution, and by virtue of all other
powers thereto me enabling, do hereby take possession and
assume control and supervision of each and every telegraph
and telephone system, and every part thereof, within the
jurisdiction of the United States, including all equipment
thereof and appurtenances thereto whatsoever and all ma-
terials and supplies.

It is hereby directed that the supervision, possession,
control and operation of such telegraph and telephone sys-
tems hereby by me undertaken shall be exercised by and
through the Postmaster General, Albert S. Burleson. Said
Postmaster General may perform the duties hereby and
hereunder imposed upon him, so long and to such extent
and in such manner as he shall determine, through the
owners, managers, boards of directors, receivers, officers,
and employees of said telegraph and telephone systems.

Until and except so far as said Postmaster General shall
from time to time by general or special orders otherwise
provide, the owners, managers, boards of directors, receiv-
ers, officers and employees of the various telegraph and.
telephone systems shall continue the operation thereof in
the usual and ordinary course of the business of said sys-
tems, in the names of their respective companies, associa-
tions, organizations, owners, or managers, as the case
may be.

Regular dividends hitherto declared, and maturing inter-
est upon bonds, debentures, and other obligations may be
paid in Cue course; and such regular dividends and interest:
may continue to be paid until and unless the said Postmas-
ter General shall, from time to time, otherwise by general
or special orders determine, and, subject to the approval of

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

said Postmaster General, the various telegraph and tele-
phone systems may determine upon and arrange for the
renewal and extension of maturing obligations.

By subsequent order of said Postmaster General super-
vision, possession, control, or operation, may be relinquished
in whole or in part to the owners thereof of any telegraph
or telephone system or any part thereof supervision, pos-
session, control, or operation of which is hereby assumed
or which may be subsequently assumed in whole or in part
hereunder.

From and after 12 o’clock midnight on the 31st day of
July, 1918, all telegraph and telephone systems included
in this order and proclamation shall conclusively be deemed
within the possession and control and under the supervision
of said Postmaster General without further act or notice.

In wiTNEss wHEREOF, I have hereunta set my hand and caused
the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done by the President, in the District of Columbia, this 22d day
of July, in the year of our Lord 1918, and of the independence
of the United States the 143d.

Wooprow Witson.
By the President:
Franx L. Pork,
Acting Secretary of State.

Tue Presipent’s DenunciaTION oF LyNcHINGS
AND THE Mos Spirit
Juty 26, 1918

My Fellow Countrymen:

I take the liberty of addressing you upon a subject which
so vitally affects the honor of the nation and the very char-
acter and integrity of our institutions that I trust you will
think me justified in speaking very plainly about it.

IT allude to the mob spirit which has recently here and
there very frequently shown its head amongst us, not in

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Woodrow Wilson ~

any single region, but in many and widely separated parts
of the country. There have been many lynchings, and
every one of them has been a blow at the heart of ordered
law and humane justice. No man who loves America, no
man who really cares for her fame and honor and character,
or who is truly loyal to her institutions, can justify mob
action while the courts of justice are open and the govern-
ments of the States and the nation are ready and able to do
their duty. We are at this very moment fighting lawless
passion. Germany has outlawed herself among the nations
because she has disregarded the sacred obligations of law
and has made lynchers of her armies. Lynchers emulate
her disgraceful example. I, for my part, am anxious to
see every community in America rise above that level with
pride and a fixed resolution which no man or set of men
can afford to despise.

We proudly claim to be the champions of democracy. If
we really are, in deed and in truth, let us see to it that we
do not discredit our own. I say plainly that every Ameri-
can who takes part in the action of a mob or gives it any
sort of countenance is no true son of this great democracy,
but its betrayer, and does more to discredit her by that
single disloyalty to her standards of law and of right than
the words of her statesmen or the ‘sacrifices of her heroic
boys in the trenches can do to make suffering peoples be-
lieve her to be their savior. How shall we commend dem-
ocracy to the acceptance of other peoples, if we disgrace
our own by proving that it is, after all, no protection to the
weak? Every mob contributes to German lies about the
United States what her most gifted liars can not improve
upon by the way of calumny. They can at least say that
such things can not happen in Germany except in times of
revolution, when law is swept away!

I therefore very earnestly and solemnly beg that the
governors of all the States, the law officers of every com-
munity, and, above all, the men and women of every com-

607
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

munity in the United States, all who revere America and
wish to keep her name without stain or reproach, will
codperate—not passively merely, but actively and watch-
fully—to make an end of this disgraceful evil. It can not
live where the community does not countenance it.

I have called upon the Nation to put its great energy
into this war and it has responded—responded with a
spirit and a genius for action that has thrilled the world.
I now call upon it, upon its men and women everywhere, to
see to it that its laws are kept inviolate, its fame untar-
nished. Let us show our utter contempt for the things that
have made this war hideous among the wars of history by
showing how those who love liberty and right and justice
and are willing to lay down their lives for them upon for-
eign fields stand ready also to illustrate to all mankind
their loyalty to the things at home which they wish to see
established everywhere as a blessing and protection to the
peoples who have never known the privileges of liberty and
self-government. I can never accept any man as a cham-
pion of liberty, either for ourselves or for the world, who
does not reverence and obey the laws of our own beloved
land, whose laws we ourselves have made. He has adopted
the standards of the enemies of his country, whom he af-
fects to despise.

Woovrow WIzson.

 

Tue Presipent Appears tro Att Persons ENGAGED IN
Coat Minina, ror New Errort ro Increase Output

Tue Wurre Houvsz, 9 August, 1918.
To All Those Engaged in Coal Mining:
The existing scarcity of coal is creating a grave danger
—in fact, the most serious which confronts us—and calls
for prompt and vigorous action on the part of both opera-

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Woodrow Wilson

tors and miners. Without an adequate supply our war
program will be retarded; the effectiveness of our fighting
forces in France will be lessened; the lives of our soldiers
will be unnecessarily endangered and their hardships in-
creased, and there will be much suffering in many homes
throughout the country during the coming winter.

I am well aware that your ranks have been seriously de-
pleted by the draft, by voluntary enlistment, and by the
demands of other essential industries. This handicap can
be overcome, however, and sufficient coal can be mined in
spite of it if every one connected with the industry, from
the highest official to the youngest boy, will give his best
work each day for the full number of work hours. The
operators must be zealous as never before to bring about
the highest efficiency of management, to establish the best
possible working conditions, and to accord fair treatment
to everybody, so that the opportunity to work at his best
may be accorded every workman. The miners should re-
port for work every day, unless prevented by unavoidable
causes, and should not only stay in the mines the full time,
but also see to it that they get more coal than ever before.

The other workers in and about the mines should work as
regularly and faithfully, so that the work of the miner may
not be retarded in any way. This will be especially neces-
sary from this time forward, for your numbers may be fur-
ther lessened by the draft, which will induct into the Army
your fair share of those not essential to industry. Those
who are drafted but who are essential will be given deferred
classification, and it is their patriotic duty to accept it.
And it is the patriotic duty of their friends and neighbors
to hold them in high regard for doing so. The only worker
who deserves the condemnation of his community is the one
who fails to give his best in this crisis; not the one who
accepts deferred classification and works regularly and dili-
gently to increase the coal output. A great task is to be
performed.

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Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

The operators and their staffs alone can not do it, nor
can the mine workers alone do it; but both parties, working
hand in hand with a grim determination to rid the country
of its greatest obstacle to winning the war, can do it. It is
with full confidence that I call upon you to assume the
burden of producing an ample supply of coal. You will,
I am sure, accept this burden and will successfully carry
it through and in so doing you will be performing a service
just as worthy as service in the trenches, and will win the
applause and gratitude of the whole nation.

Wooprow WILson.

ProcctamatTion oF THE New Sevective Drarr Act
Aveust 31, 1918

[The Government at Washington proposed to create an army of
five million men by the summer of 1919. Already there were
1,500,000 American soldiers in France, with as many more in home
training camps. The Selective Draft Act of May, 1917—see page
395—had applied to men over twenty-one and under thirty-one.
To meet the enlarged program, Congress amended the act to in-
clude “all male persons who shall have attained their eighteenth
birthday and who shall not have attained their forty-sixth birth-
day on September 12, 1918.” The President signed and pro-
claimed this revised act on August 31. After quoting extensively
from the measure and giving detailed instructions regarding reg-
istration, the proclamation ended with the following explanatory
statement:]

Fifteen months ago the men of the country from twenty-
one to thirty years of age were registered. Three months
ago, and again this month, those who have just reached
the age of twenty-one were added. It now remains to in-
clude all men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five.

This is not a new policy. A century and a quarter ago
it was deliberately ordained by those who were then respon-
sible for the safety and defense of the Nation that the duty
of military service should rest upon all able-bodied men

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Woodrow Wilson

between the ages of eighteen and forty-five. We now ac-
cept and fulfill the obligation which they established, an
obligation expressed in our national statutes from that time
until now. We solemnly purpose a decisive victory of arms
and deliberately to devote the larger part of the military
man power of the Nation to the accomplishment of that
purpose.

The younger men have from the first been ready to go.
They have furnished voluntary enlistments out of all pro-
portion to their numbers. Our military authorities regard
them as having the highest combatant qualities. Their
youthful enthusiasm, their virile eagerness, their gallant
spirit of daring make them the admiration of a!} who see
them in action. They covet not only the distinction of
serving in this great war, but also the inspiring memories
which hundreds of thousands of them will cherish through
the years to come, of a great duty and a great service for
their country and for mankind.

By the men of the older group now called upon, the op-
portunity now opened to them will be accepted with the
calm resolution of those who realize to the full the deep
and solemn significance of what they do. Having made a
place for themselves in their respective communities, having
assumed at home the graver responsibilities of life in many
spheres, looking back upon honorable records in civil and
industrial life, they will realize as perhaps no others could
how entirely their own fortunes and the fortunes of all
whom they love are put at stake in this war for right, and
will know that the very records they have made render
this new duty the commanding duty of their lives. They
know how surely this is the Nation’s war, how imperatively
it demands the mobilization and massing of all our resources
of every kind. They will regard this call as the supreme
call of their day and will answer it accordingly.

Only a portion of those who register will be called upon
to bear arms. Those who are not physically fit will be

b1L
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

excused; those exempted by alien allegiance; those who
should not be relieved of their present responsibilities;
above all, those who can not be spared from the civil and
industrial tasks at home upon which the success of our
armies depends as much as upon the fighting at the front.
But all must be registered in order that the selection for
military service may be made intelligently and with full in-
formation. This will be our final demonstration of loyalty,
democracy, and the will to win, our solemn notice to all the
world that we stand absolutely together in a common reso-
lution and purpose. It is the call to duty to which every
true man in the country will respond with pride and with
the consci-zsness that in doing so he plays his part in
vindication of a great cause at whose summons every true
heart offers its supreme service.

Tue Presment’s Lasor Day Message to Workers
AND To THE Nation at Lares,
SEPTEMBER 2, 1918

My Fellow Citizens:

Labor Day, 1918, is not like any Labor Day that we
have known. Labor Day was always deeply significant
with us. Now it is supremely significant. Keenly as we
were aware a year ago of the enterprise of life and death
upon which the nation had embarked, we did not perceive
its meaning as clearly as we do now. We knew that we
were all partners and must stand and strive together, but
we did not realize as we do now that we are all enlisted
men, members of a single army, of many parts and many
tasks, but commanded by a single obligation, our faces set
toward a single object. We now know that every tool in
every essential industry is a weapon, and a weapon wielded
for the same purpose that an army rifle is wielded—a

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Woodrow Wilson

weapon which if we were to lay down no rifle would be of
any use.

And a weapon for what? What is the war for? Why
are we enlisted? Why should we be ashamed if we were
not enlisted? At first it seemed hardly more than a war of
defense against the military aggression of Germany. Bel-
gium had been violated, France invaded, and Germany was
afield again, as in 1870 and 1866, to work out her ambitions
in Europe; and it was necessary to meet her force with
force. But it is clear now that it is much more than a war
to alter the balance of power in Europe. Germany, it is
now plain, was striking at what free men everywhere de-
sire and must have—the right to determine their own for-
tunes, to insist upon justice, and to oblige governments to
act for them and not for the private and selfish interest of
a governing class. It is a war to make the nations and
peoples of the world secure against every such power as
the German autocracy represents. It is a war of emanci-
pation. Not until it is won can men anywhere live free
from constant fear or breathe freely while they go about
their daily tasks and know that governments are their serv-
ants, not their masters.

This is, therefore, the war of all wars which labor should
support and support with all its concentrated power. The
world can not be safe, men’s lives can not be secure, no
man’s rights can be confidently and successfully asserted
against the rule and mastery of arbitrary groups and spe-
cial interests, so long as governments like that which, after
long premeditation, drew Austria and Germany into this
war are permitted to control the destinies and the daily for-. -
tunes of men and nations, plotting while honest men work,
laying the fires of which innocent men, women, and children:
are to be the fuel.

You know the nature of this war. It is a war which in-
dustry must sustain. The army of laborers at home is as
important, as essential, as the army of fighting men in the.

518
Presidential Messages, Addresses arid State Papers

far fields of actual battle. And the laborer is not only
needed as much as the soldier. It is his war. The soldier
is his champion and representative. To fail to win would
be to imperil everything that the laborer has striven for
and held dear since freedom first had its dawn and his
struggle for justice began. The soldiers at the front know
this. It steels their muscles to think of it. They are cru-
saders. They are fighting for no selfish advantage for
their own nation. They would despise anyone who fought
for the selfish advantage of any nation. They are giving
their lives that homes everywhere, as well as the homes they
love in America, may be kept sacred and safe, and men
everywhere be free as they insist upon being free. They
are fighting for the ideals of their own land—great ideals,
immortal ideals, ideals which shall light the way for all
men to the places where justice is done and men live with
lifted heads an demancipated spirits. That is the reason
they fight with solemn joy and are invincible.

Let us make this, therefore, a day of fresh comprehen-
sion not only of what we are about, and of renewed and
clear-eyed resolution, but a day of consecration also, in
which we devote ourselves without pause or limit to the
great task of setting our own country and the whole world
free to render justice to all and of making it impossible
for small groups of political rulers anywhere to disturb our
peace or the peace of the world or in any way to make tools
and puppets of those upon whose consent and upon whose
power their own authority and their own very existence
depend.

We may count upon each other. The nation is of a
single mind. It is taking counsel with no special class. It
is serving no private or single interest. Its own mind has
been cleared and fortified by these days which burn the
dross away. ‘The light of a new conviction has penetrated
to every class amongst us. We realize as we never realized
before that we are comrades, dependent on one another,

514
Woodrow Wilson

irresistible when united, powerless when divided. And so
we join hands to lead tke world to a new and better day.
Wooprow Wizson.

A Lerrer Tuat Enpep a Macuinists’ STRIKE

[Arbitration had been accepted, but the men refused to abide
by the award. The President here again—see earlier instances on
page 484-—declines to permit interruption in war industries. The
striking machinists were employed in Bridgeport, the great mu-
nition center. The letter was addressed to District Lodge No. 55,
International Association of Machinists, Bridgeport, Conn.]

Washington, September 13, 1918.
Gentlemen:

I am in receipt of your resolutions of September 6 an-
nouncing that you have begun a strike against your em-
ployers in Bridgeport, Conn. You are members of the
Bridgeport branches of the International Union of Ma-
chinists.. As such, and with the approval of the national
officers of your union, you signed an agreement to submit
the questions as to the terms of your employment to the
National War Labor Board, and to abide the award, which
in accordance with the rules of procedure approved by me
might be made.

The members of the board were not able to reach a
unanimous conclusion on all the issues presented, and as
provided in its constitution the questions upon which they
did not agree were carried before an arbitrator, the unani-
mous choice of the members of the board.

The arbitrator thus chosen has made an award which
more than 90 per cent. of the workers affected accept.
You who constitute less than 10 per cent. refuse to abide
the award, although you are the best paid of the whole
body of workers affected, and are, therefore, at least entitled
to press a further increase of wages because of the high
cost of living. But, whatever the merits of the issue, it is
closed by the award. Your strike against it is a breach of

516
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

faith calculated to reflect on the sincerity of national or-
ganized labor in proclaiming its acceptance of the principles
and machinery of the National War Labor Board.

If such disregard of the solemn adjudication of a tribunal
to which both parties submitted their claims be temporized
with, agreements become mere scraps of paper. If errors
creep into awards, the proper remedy is submission to the
award with an application for rehearing to the tribunal.
But to strike against the award is disloyalty and dishonor.

The Smith & Wesson Company, of Springfield, Mass.,
engaged in Government work, has refused to accept the
mediation of the National War Labor Board and has
flaunted its rules of decision approved by Presidential proc-
lamation. With my consent the War Department has taken
over the plant and business of the company to secure con-
tinuity in production and to prevent industrial disturbance.

It is of the highest importance to secure compliance with
reasonable rules and procedure for the settlement of in-
dustrial disputes. Having exercised a drastic remedy with
recalcitrant employers, it is my duty to use means equally
well adapted to the end with lawless and faithless em-
ployees.

Therefore, I desire that you return to work and abide
by the award. If you refuse, each of you will be barred
from employment in any war industry in the community in
which the strike occurs for a period of one year. During
that time the United States Employment Service will de-
cline to obtain employment for you in any war industry
elsewhere in the United States, as well as under the War
and Navy Departments, the Shipping Board, the Rail-
road Administration, and all other Government agencies,
and the draft boards will be instructed to reject any claim
of exemption based on your alleged usefulness on war
production.

Sincerely yours,
Wooprow WI1son.

616
Woodrow Wilson

ProctaMatTiIon ForBippING THE UsE or FoopstuFFs IN THE
Propuction oF Matt Liquors
SEPTEMBER 16, 1918

[Prohibition was fast becoming an accomplished fact through-
out the land. The movement for State-wide prohibition had not
ceased, and exactly half of the States were “dry” by mandate of
the voters. The prohibition amendment to the federal Constitu-
tion had been ratified by the legislatures of fourteen States within
eight months. The manufacture of whiskey had been forbidden
by Congress, as also had the sale of liquor after June 30, 1919.
And in the following proclamation the President exercises power
conferred on him by Congress to prohibit the use of food mate-
rials in the manufacture of beer, thus closing all breweries after
December 1, 1918.]

By the President of the United States of America:
A PROCLAMATION

Whereas, Under and by virtue of an act of Congress
entitled “An act to provide further for the national security
and defense by encouraging the production, conserving the
supply, and controlling the distribution of food products
and fuel,” approved by the President on August 10, 1917,
it is provided in section 15, among other things, as follows:

Whenever the President shall find that limitation, regulation, or
prohibition of the use of foods, fruits, food materials, or feeds in
the production of malt or vinous liquors for beverage purposes, or
that reduction of the alcoholic content of any such malt or vinous
liquors, is essential, in order to assure an adequate and continuous
supply of food, or that the national security and defense will be
subserved thereby, he is authorized, from time to time, to pre-
scribe and give public notice of the extent of the limitation, regu-
lation, prohibition, or reduction so necessitated. Whenever such
notice shall have been given and shall remain unrevoked, no per-
son shall, after a reasonable time prescribed in such notice, use
any foods, fruits, food materials, or feeds in the production of
malt or vinous liquors, or import any such liquors except under
license issued by the President and in compliance with rules and
regulations determined by him governing the production and im-
portation of such liquors and the alcoholic content thereof.

Now, therefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, President of the
United States of America, by virtue of the powers conferred

617
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

on me by said act of Congress, do hereby find and deter-
mine that it is essential, in order to assure an adequate and
continuous supply of food, in order to subserve the national
security and defense, and because of the increasing re-
quirements of war industries for the fuel productive capac-
ity of the country, the strain upon transportation to serve
such industries, and the shortage of labor caused by the
necessity of increasing the armed forces of the United
States, that the use of sugar, glucose, corn, rice, or any
other foods, fruits, food materials, and feeds in the pro-
duction of malt liquors, including near beer, for beverage
purposes be prohibited. And by this proclamation I pre-
scribe and give public notice that on and after October 1,
1918, no person shall use any sugar, glucose, corn, rice, or
any other foods, fruits, food materials, or feeds, except
malt now already made, and hops, in the production of
malt liquors, including near beer, for beverage purposes,
whether or not such malt liquors contain alcohol; and on
and after December 1, 1918, no person shall use any sugar,
glucose, corn, rice, or any other foods, fruits, food mate-
rials, or feeds, including malt, in the production of malt
‘liquors, including near beer, for beverage purposes, whether
or not such malt liquors contain alcohol.

In wirness wHereor, I have hereunto set my hand and caused
the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done in the District of Columbia, this sixteenth day of Septem-
ber in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and
eighteen, and of the independence of the United States of Amer-
ica the one hundred and forty-third.

[seaL]} Wooprow Wisson.
By the President:
Rozert Lansine,
Secretary of State.

618
Woodrow Wilson

Aw EnporseMentT oF THE Fourtu Liserty Loan
Ocroser, 1918

[Evrrortat Note: The Government was facing an esti-
mated annual war expenditure of $24,000,000,000, only
one-third of which could be raised by taxation. The re-
mainder must be borrowed. The first Liberty Loan (June,
1917) yielded $2,000,000,000; the second (October, 1917),
$3,808,766,150; the third (April-May, 1918), $4,176,516,-
000. This fourth Liberty Loan was offered during Octo-
ber, 1918, and $6,000,000,000 was asked. Following is a
message from the President to the people :]

Tue Wuire Houss,
Wasuineton, D. C.

Again the Government comes to the people of the country
with the request that they lend their money, and lend it
upon a more liberal scale than ever before, in order that
the great war for the rights of America and the liberation
of the world may be prosecuted with ever-increasing vigor
to a victorious conclusion. And it makes the appeal with
the greatest confidence because it knows that every day it
is becoming clearer and clearer to thinking men throughout
the nation that the winning of the war is an essential in-
vestment. The money that is held back now will be of lit-
tle use or value if the war is not won and the selfish mas-
ters of Germany are permitted to dictate what America
may and may not do. Men in America, besides, have from
the first until now dedicated both their lives and their for-
tunes to the vindication and maintenance of the great prin-
ciples and objects for which our Government was set up.
They will not fail now to show the world for what their
wealth was intended.

Wooprow WIi1son.

519
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

Prestpent Witson’s Appress Openinc THE New York
CAMPAIGN FoR THE FourtH Liserty Loan
SEPTEMBER 27, 1918

[The President spoke not of the Government’s appeal for a loan
of six billion dollars, but rather of the peace that must come out
of the great struggle on the battlefields of Europe. For more
than two months the Allies—reinforced by ever-increasing num-
bers of American troops—had been steadily pushing back the
German line in France and Belgium, with excursions in Palestine
and Macedonia that had shattered the Turkish army and forced
Bulgaria to lay down her arms.]

My Fellow Citizens:

I am not here to promote the loan. That will be done
—ably and enthusiastically done—by the hundreds 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 confidence is confirmed, too, by
the thoughtful and experienced coéperation of the bankers
here and everywhere, who are lending their invaluable aid
and guidance. 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 before, a vivid
sense of the great issues involved, in order that you may
appreciate and accept with added enthusiasm the grave
significance of the duty of supporting 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 to-
night to try to make it clear once more what the war
really means. You will need no other stimulation or re-
minder of your duty.

At every turn of the war we gain a fresh consciousness
of what we mean to accomplish by it. When our hope and
expectation are most excited we think more definitely than

520
Woodrow Wilson

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 which we did not determine and
which we can not alter. No statesman cr assembly cre-
ated them; no statesman 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 opponents 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 for-
tune, are involved in its sweeping processes of change and
settlement. We came into it when its character had be-
come 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 comprehension
ever since. We accepted the issues of the war as facts, not
as any group of men either here or elsewhere 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 na-
tions be suffered to determine the fortunes of peoples over
whom they have no right to rule except the right of force?

521
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

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 privilege
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 interest, but definitely and once for all and with a full
and unequivocal acceptance of the principle that the inter-
est of the weakest is as sacred 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 govern-
ments of the Central Empires, because we have dealt with
them already and have seen them deal with other govern-
ments that were parties to this struggle, at Brest-Litovsk
and Bucharest. They have convinced us that they are
without honor and do not intend justice. They observe
no covenants, accept no principle but force and their own
interest. We can not “come to terms” with them. They
have made it impossible. The German people must by this
time be fully aware that we can not 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 ex-

522
Woodrow Wilson

plicitly agreed that no peace shall be obtained by any kind
of compromise or abatement of the principles 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 implications 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 set-
tlement, 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 cove-
nants that will be efficacious. Without such an instrumen-
tality, 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 by what happens at the peace table but by
what follows.

And, as I see it, the constitution of that League of Na-
‘tions and the clear definition of its objects must be a part,
‘is in a sense the most essential part, of the peace settle-
ment itself. It cannot be formed now. If formed now it
would be merely a new alliance confined to the nations asso-
ciated against a common enemy. It is not likely that it
could be formed after the settlement. It is necessary to
guarantee the peace; and the peace can not be guaranteed
as an afterthought. The reason, to speak in plain terms

528
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

again, why it must be guaranteed is that there will be par-
ties to the peace whose promises have proved untrustworthy,
and means must be found in connection with the peace set-
tlement itself to remove that source of insecurity. It would
be folly to leave the guarantee to the subsequent voluntary
action of the Governments we have seen destroy Russia
and deceive Rumania.

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 program. These, then, are
some of the particulars, and I state them with the greater
confidence because I can state them authoritatively as rep-
resenting this Government’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
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 com-.
mon family of the League of Nations.

Fourth, and more specifically, there can be no special,,
selfish economic combinations within the League and no em-
ployment of any form of economic boycott or exclusion ex-
cept 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 entirety to the rest of
the world.

524
Woodrow Wilson

Special alliances and economic rivalries and hostilities
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 ac-
tion which we have always professed and followed. In the
same sentence in which I say that the United States will
enter into no special arrangements or understandings with
particular nations let me say also that the United States is
prepared to assume its full share of responsibility for the
maintenance of the common covenants and understandings
upon which peace must henceforth rest. We still read
Washington’s immortal warning against “entangling alli-
ances” with full comprehension and an answering purpose.
But only special and limited alliances entangle; and we rec-
ognize 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 situation
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 mind and enter-
tained 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 pur-
pose on the part of those in authority utterly, and if need
be unceremoniously, 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.

525
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

As I have said, neither I nor any other man in govern-
mental 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.

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 dis-
tinct to the thought and purpose of the peoples 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 states-
men are supposed 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 coun-
sels 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 assem-
blies 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

526
Woodrow Wilson

their governments declare to them plainly what it is, ex-
actly 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 statesmen’s terms,—only in the terms
of territorial arrangements and divisions of power, and not
in terms of broad-visioned justice and mercy and peace
and the satisfaction of those deep-seated longings of op-
pressed and distracted men and women and enslaved peo-
ples 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 spo-
ken in direct reply to the questions asked because they did
not know how searching those questions 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 misunder-
standing, if he understands the language in which it is spo-
ken 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 occa-
sion, 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 involved
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 imperatively nec-
essary in this war as was unity of command in the battle-
field; and with perfect unity of purpose and counsel will
come assurance of complete victory. It can be had in no
other way. “Peace drives” can be effectively neutralized

527
Presidential Messages, Addresses and State Papers

and silenced only by showing that every victory of the na-
tions associated against Germany brings the nations nearer
the sort of peace which will bring security and reassurance
to all peoples and make the recurrence of another such
struggle of pitiless force and bloodshed forever impossible,
and that nothing else can. Germany is constantly intimat-
ing 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.

528
INDEX

A

Recep tasne speech (renomination),

Agricultural credits (See Farm
credits)
Agriculture, Department of: Its

importance to the world, 103
Agriculture, Future development of,

328
Alaska: Railways and development
planned, 45

Jaska: Territorial government
urged, 45
Alsace-Lorraine wrong of 1871

should be righted, 469

America first, 109, 175

America, Spirit of, 115, 122, 127,
211, 291 .

America, without hampering ambi-
tions as world power, 111, 134,
168, 199, 313

American Electric Railway Associa-
tion, Address before, 97

American Federation of Labor, Ad-
dress before, 434

American system of government,
Balance of, 324; a lawyer’s gov-
ernment, 324

Americans, Disloyal (“hyphenated’’),
110, 132, 150, 293, 310

Americans, foreign born, Addresses
to, 114, 290 3

Americans, Undivided allegiance of,
110, 115, 125, 132

Anti-trust legislation (See Sherman
Anti-trust Law and Trusts and
Monopolies)

Arbitration, Failure of, in railroad
eight-hour demand,

Arbitration law, Suggested changes

in, 301; recommendations re-
newed, 339

Arbitration of war-time labor dis-
putes, 515

Arbitration treaties; Ratification
urged, 38

Army (See Defense, National)

Associated Press, Address before
members of, 108

Austria-Hungary; Diplomatic _rela-
tions interrupted, but peace main-
tained, 381 .

Austria-Hungary, Diplomatic corre-
spondence with (See War)

Austria-Hungary must be delivered
from Prussian domination, 447

Austria-Hungary must continue to
have access to sea, 450

Austria-Hungary: People must be
accorded free opportunity for au-
tonomous development, 469

Austria-Hungary, War against, ad-
vised, 451

Austro-Hungarian Empire not to be
rearranged by United States, 447

Aviation (See Defense, National)

B

Bagdad Railway, 437

Balkan States controlled by Ger-
many, 437, 447

Banking: Restrictions upon national
ane in international trade, 279,

2
Banking legislation (See Currency,
a Federal Reserve Bank Sys-
tem
Belgium must be evacuated and re-
stored, 469
Benedict, Pope, Peace proposal of,
and reply, 421
Brazil, Messages to, on its entry
into war, 432
Burleson, Albert S., appointed di-
rector of telegraph and telephone
systems, 505
Business
Not to be penalized because big
and strong, 102
Past the era of suspicion and into
era of confidence, 100
Relation of Government to, 103
Some needs of, 12 .
Spirit of American business to-
ward regulation, 93, 97
(See also Trusts, Trade Com-
mission, Corporations, Direc-
tots, Sherman Anti-Trust Law)

Cc

Central America (See Latin-Amer-

ica
Children, Co-operation of, in Red
Cross work proposed, 427
“Citizenry trained and accustomed
to arms,” 78 . P
Citizenship address at Philadelphia,
114; at Washington, 290
Coal production urged, 508
Commerce 2
International exclusive’ economic
leagues condemned, 424 2
Limitations imposed by banking
restrictions, 279, 289, 329
New fields of foreign commerce,
69, 106, 279, 328

629
INDEX

Proposal to remove restrictions on
combinations of exporters, 316,
333, 341, 452 ;

Commerce, Bureau of Foreign and

Domestic, Usefulness of, 104, 316,

330
Confederate Veterans, Addresses be-
fore, 14, 408
Congress: House should prepare ap-
propriation bills through single
committee, 453
Congress: Members and problems
of early days, 27, 31
Congress, Messages to
First Annual, 37
Second Annual, 67
Third Annual, 133
Fourth Annual, 337
Fifth Annual, 443
Currency revision, 10
German submarine
262, 358, 363, 372
German and Austrian peace ut-
terances, 472 7
Merchant ships, Arming of, 363
Mexico, 18, 59
Panama Canal tolls, 57
Railroad administration, 455
Railroad strike threat, 294
Revenue, 64, 492
Tariff, 5
Trusts and Monopolies, 47
War with Germany, 372
War aims and peace terms of the
United States, 464
Congress, Record of, during first
Wilson administration, 304
Congress, Sixty-fifth (war session),
commended, 429
Congress Hall, Philadelphia, Ad-
dress at rededication of, 27
Conservation legislation, 70, 86
Corporations
Limitations proposed on voting
tights of controlling stockhold-
ers,
Responsibility of individual offi-
cers and directors, 53
Responsibility to the public, 101
Counsel and judgment of various
kinds, 284
Cuba, Honor
from, 199
Currency legislation urged upon Con-
gress, 10, 39; benefits of new law,

D

Daughters of American Revolu-
tion, Address to, 122
Defense, National
Army expansion for war recom-
mended upon basis of universal
service, 376

controversy,

in our withdrawal

Army insufficient for routine work
of peace, 186, 194, 204

Army: Selective Draft Act, 395,
510

Army: Selective Draft, men, Mes-
sage to, 424

Army: Why limit it to five mil-
lion? 487

Aviation Development in Navy,
1

Coast defenses, Efficiency of, 179;
Lack of, 169

Industrial mobilization and ex-
pert citizen advice, 152, 206

Military training (universal, vol-
untary) recommended, 78, 129,
140, 186

Military training, advantages of,
161, 164, 178, 192, 213

Military training combined with
vocational, 160, 164

National Defense first discussed
in message, 76

National Guard commended and

changes suggested, 130, 161,
171, 187

Navy enlargement urged, 130,
140.

Navy: Fourth in quantity, second
to none in quality, 170, 180,

184

Navy: Progress of enlargement
plans, 184

Navy that ranks first in the
world, 20

Navy: Vast coast guarding task,
203

Navy: What kind of ships shall

we build? 79 3
Preparedness not a money-making
agitation, 179

Preparedness program outlined,
126; urged upon Congress,
139

Preparedness, Recognition of

pressing nature of, 158, 167,
208

Sanitary lesson of Spanish War,
204

Universal military service recom-
mended, 376 ; A

Democratic party, Praise of, 82,

Diplomatic notes to belligerent gov-
ernments, 215-270

Pires are Individual responsibility
or,

Directors: Interlocking boards con-
demned, 50

Draft legislation, 395, 510

E

Economic boycott against Germany,
after the war, a possibility, 448

580
INDEX

Economie combinations among na-
tions, 468,

Economy in Government expendi-
tures urged

Education, Vocational and indus-
trial, legislation recommended,

Eight-hour law urged for railway
operators, 294

Elections, Legislation recommended
to regulate expenditure of money

in, 341

Elections (State) of 1914, Inter-
pretation of, 8'

Embargo proclamations, 403

Employers’ liability law for railway
employees urged, 46

Exports, Regulation of, 403

F

Farm credits legislation urged upon
Congress, 40 _

Farmer, Legislation benefitting, 306

Farmer, Price-fixing for benefit of,
401, 424

Farmers, upon whom rests the fate

~_ of nations, 390

Federal Reserve Bank system cre-
ated, 10

Federal Reserve Bank system, Good
results from, 83, 284, 306

Federal Trade Commission (See
Trade Commission)

Fungaces of the Government, 64,

Financial: Address at Pan Ameri-
can Financial Congress, 119

Flag Day address, 411

Food regulation program, 399

“Force to the Utmost,” 484

France, Greeting to, on Bastile Day,
4

G

German Empire: Existence or_inde-
pendence not threatened by United
States, 448 "

German Government, Indictment of,
407, 412, 422, 445, 499, 522 _
German industrial and educational
achievement, 436, 447 ‘
German people, No quarrel with,

362, 378, 382

German scheme for world conquest,
414, 437

Germany |
Diplomatic

(See War
Diplomatic relations severed, 358
War declaration advised, 372
War proclaimed with, 383

Gettysburg reunion, Address at, 14

Gompers, Samuel, commended, 439

correspondence with

Grain Dealers’ Association, Address
before, 327 5

Grand Army of the Republic, Ad-
dress before veterans, 14

Great Britain, Diplomatic
spondence with (See War)

H

Hoover, Herbert, appointed Food
Administrator, 401
Howe, Col E. M., sent to Europe,

I

Immigration bill veto:
second, 356
Inaugural address: first, 1; second,

corre-

first, 94;

Independence Day address, 502
Taleorkne directorates condemned,

International law: How it was built

up, 374 ;
Interstate Commerce Commission,
enlargement recommended, 299,”
3

39
Ishii, Viscount, Welcome to, 419
[talian frontiers to be adjusted along
lines of nationality, 469
Italian people, Message to, 491
Italians in the American Army, 488

J

Ferees Day address at Indianapo-

is, 8

Japan’s special Ambassador, Wel-
come to, 419

Kansas as a typical American com-
munity, 193
L
Labor

Address to American Federation
of Labor, 434 ~ =

Appointment of commission to ad-
just disputes, 427

Conciliation methods versus strikes,

440

Eight-hour day advocated for
railway operators, 294

Federal employment bureau sug:
gested, 87

Labor pledges in speech accept-
ing renomination, 317 ‘

Labor record of first Wilson ad-
ministration, 307

Labor Day message, 512

Labor’s part in war, 513

Letter to carpenter strikers, 484

Letter to machinist strikers, 515

681
INDEX

Will you codperate or obstruct?
486

Lamb, Charles, quoted, 440

Latin-America: Actions taken by
various countries against Germany,
432

Latin-America, Future commercial
relations with, 32, 119, 136, 335

League of Nations an essential part
of peace settlement, 523

League to Enforce Peace, Address
before, 271 (See also Peace
League)

Liberty Loan 3
Liberty Loan Day designated, 430
Statement, 51
Speech at Baltimore, 480
Speech at New York, 520 7

Lincoln, Address on, at log-cabin
birthplace, 319 7

Lind, John, sent to Mexico as per-
sonal representative, 20 _ :

Lobby: Statement denouncing in-
sidious influence on tariff legisla-
tion, 9

Lynchings denounced, 506

M

Manhattan Club, New York, Ad-
dress at, 125 ; .
McAdoo, W. G., appointed Director-
General of Railroads, 457 _
Merchant marine (See Shipping)
Mexico
And friendship for, but not
coercion, 136
American friendship for, 18
Americans urged to leave, 25
Arms-export prohibition (by Taft)
continued, 25; removed, 55
Arms, Exports of, forbidden ex-
cept to Carranza faction, 56
Congress asked for authority to
use armed force against Huerta
(Tampico incident), 62_
Diplomatic note from Mexico, 22
How to help Mexico, 282
Huerta the unspeakable, 312
Huerta’s claim of legal govern-
ment, 23
Huerta’s elimination demanded,
21
Eyeveneen or war with Mexico,

Mexican sovereignty to be re-
spected, 2

Mexicans entitled to settle domes-
tic affairs in their own way, 62,
91, 312

Pershing armed expedition, Rea-
sons for sending, 311

Special message to Congress, 18

Special message to Congress on
the Tampico incident, 59

“Watchful waiting”
nounced, 39
Middlemen should forego unusual
profits during war, 390
Militarism, A definition of, 159
Mine labor conditions, Improvement
of, 46
Mob spirit denounced, 506
Monopolies (See Trusts and monop-
olies) ,
Monroe Doctrine, 198; should be
extended to the whole world, 355
Mount Vernon address, 497

N

National Army selected, 395

National Army, Message to, 426

National defense (See Defense)

National Guard (See Defense, Na-
tional)

Navy (See Defense, National)

a aaa Regulation of exports to,

policy an-

New York, New Haven & Hartford
aaend dissolution suit ordered,

News, True and false, 112

Newspaper editorials’ lack of influ-
ence, 92, 193, 201

Non-partisanship of modern Amer-
ican politics, 82, 90

P

Pacifists, Stupidity of, 439

Panama Canal tolls: Message to
Congress urging repeal of free-
og provision for American ships,

Pan-American Financial Congress,
Address at, 119
Party, Government by, 84, 90
Parties, Political (See Democratic,
Republicans, Politics, etc.)
Peace °
An age of peace (ante-bellum
statement), 37 "
Essential terms of world har-
mony, 348, 370, 524
League of nations to avert future
wars, 315, 350, 355, 470, 524
League to enforce peace, United
States willing to become a mem-
ber of, 274, 525
re the desire of democracies,

Peace without victory, 352
Hight is more precious than peace,

See also Peace entries under War
Peace, League to Enforce, Ad-
dress before, 271

582
INDEX

Philippines:
America as trustee for, 199
Greater measure of self-govern-
ment for, 71, 145
Natives granted control of upper
chamber, 44
Pope Benedict’s peace proposals, Re-
ply to, 421
Poland must be united, independent,
autonomous, 353,
Pelne must have access to sea, 450,
0
Political asylum for foreign refugees
should not be restricted, 95
Politics:
A definition of, 28
tadepentient voters’ sypremacy,

Non-partisanship of modern Amer-
icans, 82
“Politics is adjourned,” 495
Porto Rico, Changes in government
urged, 43, 145, 341
“Preparedness” (See Defense, Na-
tional)

Presidential primary
upon Congress, 43
Press Club, New York, Address be-
fore, 276 4
Price-fixing as part of food-regula-

tion program, 401, 424
Brig ining further recommended,

law urged

Profiteering, 489, 496

Progressive Party principles carried
out bv Democrats, 308

Prohibition legislation, 517

“Proud, Too, to fight,” 117

R
Railroads 3

Capital supervision, 51

New York, New Haven & Hart-
ford Railroad sued for dissolu-
tion of mergers, 63

Placed under Government control
and operation, 455

Presidential control proposed, over
property and men, in case o:
milttary necessity, 301, 339

Problem serious and pregsing, 154

Special message to Congress to
avert threatened strike, 294;
reference to railroad legislation
in annual message, 337

Systems must be developed and
courqmuted for national use,
1

Withdrawal of recommendation
that Congress approves increase
of freight rates to meet expense
of eight-hour day, 339”

Railroad Business Association, Ad-
dress before, 156

553

2

Red Cross

Address at dedication of Washing-
ton home, 392
Coéperation by school
Proposed, 427

Fund Speech, 486

Reélection, Thinking about, renders
reélection difficult,

Renomination, Speech accepting, 302

Republican party, Criticism of, 81,
304, 309

Resources, Natural, Development of,
45, 317, 452

Revenue: Further taxation urged,
to cover “‘preparedness’’ expendi-
tures, 146

Revenue: Special message urging
additional revenue to meet de-
crease in customs, 64

Rural credits (See Farm credits)

Russia, always democratic at heart,

children

Russia, Message to, 405 :

Russia plundered by German diplo-
macy, 482

Russia, to stand by her as well as
France, 487

Russian democracy endangered by
Germany, 439, 450, 464

Russian National Council, Message
to, 420

S

Safety at sea: Ratification of inter-
national convention urged, 73

Seleeasnip Congress, Addresses
at, 279

Seas, Freedom of (See under War)

Second Term (See Reélection)

ee diplomacy condemned, 468,

Selective principle in draft laws,
398, 509, 511

Senate, Address to,
terms of peace, 348

ae must have access to sea, 450,
470

on essential

Sherman Anti-trust law retarding
foreign commerce, 106

Sherman Anti-trust law should be
supplemented, 42, 47, 52

Shipping, Lack of, 70

Shipping legislation urged upon Con-
gress, 72

Shipping bill as remedy for extor-
tionate ocean freight rates, 8

Shipping bill as remedy for dwin-
dling merchant marine, 143, 334

South America (See Latin-America)

Southern Commercial Congress, Ad-
dress before, 32 -

Spanish War sanitary experience,

204
Strikes (see Labor)
INDEX

a

Tariff, protective (Republican), Evils
of, 7, 304

Tariff revision urged upon Congress,
5; its tendency te encourage for-
eign trade, 305

Tariff Commission
Conversion in favor of, 158
Bipartisan membership, 288
What it is expected to accom-

plish, 316, 332

Tax inequities which ought to be
remedied, 494

as to help sustain war costs,
3

Telegraph and telephone, Govern-
mental control of, 503
Thanksgiving proclamation, 433
Too proud to fight, 117
Trade (See Commerce)
Trade Commission
How it has relieved business, 306,

331
Power to investigate tariff ques-
tions, 89

Recommended to Congress, 52
Why it was established, 28, 315
Trusts and monopolies, Message to

Congress on, 47
be i controlled by Germany, 437,

Turkey: Solution of political and
race problems, 470

U

United States (See America and
Americans; also under War)

United States Chamber of Com-
merce, Address before, 103

Universal military training and
service (See Defense, National)

Vv

Veto of Immigration bill; first, 94,
second, 356
W
War

Alliances must give way to com-
mon agreement, 273

America alone at peace and keep-
ing its head, 93, 133, 181, 183

America as a belligerent, 376

America may become involved,
172, 210

America more indispensable at
peace than to either side if at
war, 198

America seeks no indemnities, no
material compensation, 381, 406

America should participate with-
out interfering with supplies
for nations already in field, 377

5384

America’s determination to use
every resource and win, 446
America’s interest in European
peace, 349

America’s objects in entering war,
406, 464

America’s part to supply food,
ships, raw and manufactured
materials, 388

America’s desire that President
should ‘‘keep us out of war,”
173, 189, 201

Ancona case, 254

Arabic case, 253

Armaments, Limitations of, 354,

371

Armed neutrality suggested, 365;
declared impracticable, 375

Austria, Note to, regarding An-
cona sinking, 254

Austria-Hungary: War declaration
advised, 451

Between governs never be-
tween peoples, 177

Brazil joins Allies, 432

British lyecraeee Notes relating
to, 225, 227, 229

British blockade declared illegal,
234; ineffective, illegal and in-
defensible, 237

Cost of, to America, 492

Cushing case, 239, 244

Declaration of London, Suggest-
ed observance of, 215

Diplomatic correspondence with
belligerents, BS a

Falaba case, 239,

Finances of United” eatin, 430

Flag: Unwarranted use of Amer-
ican emblem by British ships,

German submarine pledges, 253,

\

German words and German deeds,

Germans in the United States,
alien enemy regulations, 383, 451

Germany, Diplomatic relations sev-
ered, 358

Germany, Proclamation of state
of war with, 383

Germany, Refusal to discuss
aoe relations with,

Germany, Threat to sever diplo-
matic relatfons with,

Germany, War declaration ad-
vised, 372

Gulflight case, 239, 244

Issues, 521

Loans of United States, 430

Lusitania notes to Germany, 239,
244, 249

AMeserann ships, Arming of, 265,
INDEX

War—Continued

Merchant ships, Congress asked
for authority to arm, 363

Money necessary for ships, muni-
tions, and men, 495

Nation, not an army, trained for
war, 397

Neutral nation, Difficulties of a,
196, 310, 315 J

Neutrality appeal to Americans,
217

Neutrality no longer feasible or
desirable, 378

Objects for which it is waged,
ne for precise statement of,
34

Objects for which it is waged, A
statement of, 422 :
Objects of America in entering
war, 406, 464

Objects of associated peoples of
the world, 500, 521

Peace address (while a neutral)
to Senate, on essential terms,

348

Peace: Advantage to Germany of
premature peace, 416

Peace agreement must be guar-
anteed by German people, 424,
446, 522 :

Peace based on generosity and
justice, 446, 481, 524

Peace conference fundamentals,
477, 524

Peace formula: ‘No annexations,
no indemnities,” 445

Peace must be guaranteed by an
international force, 351

Peace proposal (while a neutral)
to belligerent governments, 343

Peace settlement of all issues must
be joined in by all parties, 475

Peace terms, 348, 407, 464

“Peace without victory,” 352

Profit from war industries should
be small, 391

Property rights can be vindicated
by damage claims rights of hu-
manity cannot, 310

Right of Americans to travel on
the seas, 196 (See also German
and submarine note references)

Right of Americans to trade with
the world, 197 (See also Brit:
ish blockade references)

Sees, Freedom of, 353, 371, 450,

Submarine, American notes pro-
testing against, 220, 239, 244,
249, 257, 269

Submarine and blockade compro-
mise proposal of United States,

Submarines ‘‘manifestly cannot
be used against merchantmen,”
241; “‘possible and practicable
to conduct such submarine op-
erations,’ 251; “use of sub-
marines for destruction of com-
merce utterly incompatible with
principles of humanity,” 262

Submarine war-zone protest to
Germany, 220

Submarine war against merchant
ships renewed by Germany, 358

Sussex case (note to Germany),
257; (address to Congress), 262

Territorial conquests and punitive
damages condemned, 407, 424

va States (See War: Ameri-
ca,

Visit-and-search principles, 221

Western Hemisphere must be kept
out, 168

Washington, George, Brief charac-

terization of, 29,

“Watchful waiting’ Mexican policy

announced, 39

Water-power development urged, 70
Wheat price determined, 424
Workmen’s compensation (See Em-
ployers’ liability)

‘World must be made ‘safe for
democracy,” 381
ilson, Woodrow,
sketch of, xi

Woman-suffrage convention, Address
at, 323

Biographical

% 5865
NOTABLE PHRASES OF PRESIDENT WILSON

If you think too much about being reélected, it is very difficult
to be worth reélecting. Page 30.

We shall not, I believe, be obliged to alter our policy of watchful
waiting. (Mewico.) Page .39.

I shall not know how to deal with other matters of even greater
delicacy and nearer consequence if you do not grant it to me in
ungrudging measure. (Repeal of provision for free tolls for
American coastwise ships through Panama Canal.) Page 59.

We must depend . . . not upon a standing army, nor yet upon
a reserve army, but upon a citizenry trained and accustomed to
arms. Page 78.

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. Page 117.

No man in the United States knows what a single week or a
single day or a single hour may bring forth. (A plea for military
preparedness, January, 1916.). Page 172.

There may at any moment come a time when I cannot preserve
both the honor and the peace of the United States. Page 177.

The United States would be constrained to hold the imperial
German Government to a strict accountability. Page 222.

The Imperial German Government will not expect the Govern-
ment of the United States to omit any word or any act necessary
to the performance of its sacred duty of maintaining the rights
of ithe United States and its citizens. Page 243.

Unless the Imperial Government should now immediately de-
clare and effect an abandonment of its present methods of sub-
marine 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.
Page 262.

The United States is willing to become a partner in any feas-
ible association of nations formed in order to realize these objects.
(The guarantee of territorial integrity and political independence,
and the prevention of hasty wars.) Page 274.
Notable Phrases of President Wilson

Property rights can be vindicated by claims for damages . .
but the fundamental rights of humanity cannot be. Page 310.

So long as the power of recognition rests with me, the Govern-
ment of the United States will refuse to extend the hand of wel-
come to anyone who obtains power in a sister republic by treachery
and violence. Page 313.

It must be a peace without victory. Page 352.

I advise that the Congress declare the recent course of the Impe-
rial German Government to be in fact nothing less than war
against the government and people of the United States. Page 376.

We have no quarrel with the German people. Page 378.

The world must be made safe for democracy. Page 381.

The right is more precious than peace. Page 382.

It is not an army that we must shape and train for war; it is
a nation. Page 393.

America in this war . . . seeks no material profit or aggran-
dizement of any kind. She is fighting . . . for the liberation
of peoples everywhere from the aggressions of autocratic force.
Page 396.

The day has come to conquer or submit. Page 408.

For us there is but one choice. We have made it. Page 418.

Balked, but not defeated, the enemy of four-fifths of the world.
(The German Government.) Page 422.

Will you codperate or obstruct? (To striking carpenters in ship-
yards.) Page 486.

Friendship is the only cement that will ever hold the world
together. Page 488.

Politics is adjourned. The elections will go to those who think
least of it. Page 495.

There can be but one issue. The settlement must be final. There
can be no compromise. No half-way decision is conceivable. Page
500.

Peoples and provinces are not to be bartered about from sov-
ereignty to sovereignty as if they were mere chattels and pawns
in a game, even the great game, now forever discredited, of the
balance of power. Page 478.

587
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

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