UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO 3 1822 02464 6879 GAUSS LI' ':?Y DC- SAN ,0 riiiiiiiffiiiiiiir 3 1822024646879 General Editor LINDSAY TODD DAMON, A.B. Professor of English in Brown University ADDISON The Sir Roger De Cmerley Papers ABBOTT 35c ADDISON AND STEELE Selections from The Taller and The Spec- tator ABBOTT 35c ,33ncid of Virgil ALUNSOK 40c BROWNING Selected Poems REYNOLDS 40c BUNYAN The Pilgrim's Progress LATHAM 30c BURKE Speech on Conciliation vrtih America DENNEY 30c CARLYLE Essay on Burns AITON 25c CHAUCER Selections CREENLAW 40c COLERIDGE The Ancient Mariner \ LOWELL- Vision of Sir Launfal f 1 vo ^ Mo ^ 25c COOPER The Last of the Mohicans LEWIS 40c COOPER The Spy DAMON 40c DANA Two Years Beforelhe Mast WESTCOTT 45c DEFOEi Robinson Crusoe HASTINGS 40c DE QUINCEY jgan O j A.TC ana Selections MOODY 25c DE QUINCEY The Flight of a Tartar Tribe riiENca 25c DICKENS A Christmas Carol, etc. BROADCS 35c DICKENS A Tale of Two Cities BALDWIN 45c DICKENS David Copperfleld BALDWIN 50c DRYDEN Palamon and Arclte COOK 25c EMERSON Essays and Addresses HEYDRICK 35c English Poems From POPE, GRAY, GOLDSMITH, COLERIDGE, BYRON. MACAULAY, ARNOLD and others -SCUDDER 45c English Popular Ballads HART 40c Familiar Letters GREENLAW 40c FRANKLIN Autobiograyhv GRUTIN 35c GASKELL (Mrs.) Cranford HANCOCK 35c GEORGE ELIOT Silas Marner HANCOCK 35c GEORGE ELIOT The Mill on the Flout WARD 45c GOLDSMITH The Vicar of Watefleld MORTON 30c HAWTHORNE The House of the Seven Gables HERHICK 40c HAWTHORNE Twice-Told Tales HERRICK AN:> BRUERE 45c HUGHES Tom Brown's School Days DE MILLE 40c IRVING if/ao/ Goldsmith KRAPP 40c IRVING The Stetch Bool KRAPP 40c IRVING Ta.'.3 of a Traveller and parts of The Sketch Boot KRAPP 45c LAMB Essays oj Vila BENEDICT 33c LONGFELLOW Narrative Poems POWELL 40c LOWELL Vision of Sir Launfal See Coleridge. MACAULAY Essays on Addlson and Jtktuon NEWCOMER 35c MACAULAY Essays on Clive and Hastings NEWCOMER 35c MACAULAY Goldsmith, Frederic The Great, Madame D'Arblay NEW- COMEB 35c MACAULAY Essays on Milton and Addison NEWCOMER 35c MILTON L' Allegro, II Penseroso, Comut, and Lycidas NEILSON 30c MILTON Paradise Lost, Books I and II F ABLET 30c Old Testament Narratives RHODES 40c PALGRAVE Golden Treasury NEWCOMER 40c PARKMAN The Oregon Trail MACDONALD 40c POE Poems and Tales, Selected NEWCOMER 35c POPE Homer's Iliad, Books I. VI. XXII. XXIV CRESST AND MOODT 25c RUSKIN Sesame and Lilies Lno 25c SCOTT Itanhoe SIMONDS 45c SCOTT Quentln Durward SDIONDS 45c SCOTT Lady of the Late MOODT 35c SCOTT Lay of the Last Minstrel MOODT AND WILLABD 25c SCOTT Marmion MOODY'AND WILLABD 35c SHAKSPERE The Netlson Edition Edited by W. A. NEILSON. each. .30c As You Lite It Macbeth Hamlet Mldsummer-NtghCs Dream Henry V Romeo and Juliet Julius Caesar The Tempest Twelfth Nithl SHAKSPERE Merchant of Venice LOVETT 30o SOUTHEY Life of Nelson WESTCOTT 40c STEVENSON Inland Voyage and Travels with a D-mtev LEONABD. 35c STEVENSON Kidnapped LEONABD 35c STEVENSON Treasure Island BBOADUS 30c TENNYSON Selected Poems RETNOLDS 4c TENNYSON The Princess hief mourner at a funeral. But is there not danger that it will be valued at more than its worth if denied, and that some illegitimate way will be sought to make up for the want of it? Men who have a voice in public affairs are at once affiliated with one or other of the great parties between which society is divided, merge their individual hopes and opinions in its safer, because more generalized, hopes and opinions, are dis- ciplined by its tactics, and acquire, to a certain degree, the orderly qualities of an army. They no longer belong to a class, but to a body corporate. Of one thing, at least, we may be certain, that, under whatever method of helping things to go wrong man's wit can contrive, those who have the divine right to govern will be found to govern, in the end, and that the highest privilege to which the majority of man- kind can aspire is that of being governed by those Democracy Lowell 41 wiser than they. Universal suffrage has in the United States sometimes been made the instrument of incon- siderate changes, under the notion of reform, and this from a misconception of the true meaning of popular government. One of these has been the sub- stitution in many of the states of popular election for official selection in the choice of judges. The same system applied to military officers was the source of much evil during our civil war, and, I believe, had to be abandoned. 39 But it has been also true that on all great questions of national policy a reserve of prudence and discretion has been brought out at the critical moment to turn the scale in favor of a wiser decision. An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run. It is, perhaps, true that, by effacing the principle of passive obedience, democracy, ill understood, has slackened the spring of that ductility to discipline which is essential to "the unity and married calm of States." But I feel assured that experience and necessity will cure this evil, as they have shown their power to cure others. And under what frame of policy have evils ever been remedied till they became intolerable, and shook men out of their indolent indifference through their fears? We are told that the inevitable result of democracy is to sap the foundations of personal independence, to weaken the principle of authority, to lessen the respect due to eminence, whether in station, virtue, or genius. If these things were so, society could not hold together. Perhaps the best forcing-house of robust 42 Democracy Today individuality would be where public opinion is inclined to be most overbearing, as he must be of heroic temper who should walk along Piccadilly 40 at the height of the season in a soft hat. As for authority, it is one of the symptoms of the time that the religious reverence for it is declining everywhere, but this is due partly to the fact that statecraft is no longer looked upon as a mystery, but as a business, and partly to the decay of superstition, by which I mean the habit of respecting what we are told to respect rather than what is respectable in itself. There is more rough and tumble in the American democracy than is altogether agreeable to people of sensitive nerves and refined habits, and the people take their political duties lightly and laughingly, as is, perhaps, neither unnatural nor unbecoming in a young giant. Democracies can no more jump away from their own shadows than the rest of us can. They no doubt sometimes make mistakes and pay honor to men who do not deserve it. But they do this because they believe them worthy of it, and though it be true that the idol is the measure of the worshipper, yet the worship has in it the germ of a nobler religion. But is it democracies alone that fall into these errors? I, who have seen it proposed to erect a statue to Hudson, 41 the railway king, and have heard Louis Napoleon 42 hailed as the savior of society by men who certainly had no democratic associations or leanings, am not ready to think so. But democracies have like- wise their finer instincts. I have also seen the wisest statesman and most pregnant speaker of our genera Democracy Lowell 43 tion, a man of humble birth and ungainly manners, of little culture beyond what his own genius supplied, become more absolute in power than any monarch of modern times through the reverence of his country- men for his honesty, his wisdom, his sincerity, his faith in God and man, and the nobly humane sim- plicity of his character. And I remember another whom popular respect enveloped as with a halo, the least vulgar of men, the most austerely genial, and the most independent of opinion. Wherever he went he never met a stranger, but everywhere neighbors and friends proud of him as their ornament and decoration. Institutions which could bear and breed such men as Lincoln and Emerson had surely some energy for good. No, amid all the fruitless turmoil and miscarriage of the world, if there be one thing steadfast and of favorable omen, one thing to make optimism distrust its own obscure distrust, it is the rooted instinct in men to admire what is better and more beautiful than themselves. The touchstone of political and social institutions is their ability to supply them with worthy objects of this sentiment, which is the very tap-root of civilization and progress. There would seem to be no readier way of feeding it with the elements of growth and vigor than such an organization of society as will enable men to respect themselves, and so to justify them in respecting others. Such a result is quite possible under other condi- tions than those of an avowedly democratical Consti- tution. For I take it that the real essence of democ- 44 Democracy Today racy was fairly enough defined by the First Napoleon when he said that the French Revolution meant "la carriere ouverte aux talents" a clear pathway for merit of whatever kind. 43 I should be inclined to paraphrase this by calling democracy that form of society, no matter what its political classification, in which every man had a chance and knew that he had it. If a man can climb, and feels himself encouraged to climb, from a coalpit to the highest position for which he is fitted, he can well afford to be indifferent what name is given to the government under which he lives. The Bailli of Mirabeau, uncle of the more famous tribune of that name, wrote in 1771 : ' ' The English are, in my opinion, a hundred times more agitated and more unfortunate than the very Algerines them- selves, because they do not know and will not know till the destruction of their overswollen power, which I believe very near, whether they are monarchy, aris- tocracy, or democracy, and wish to play the part of all three." England has not been obliging enough to fulfill the Bailli 's prophecy, and perhaps it was this very carelessness about the name, and concern about the substance of popular government, this skill in getting the best out of things as they are, in utilizing all the motives which influence men, and in giving one direction to many impulses, that has been a prin- cipal factor of her greatness and power. Perhaps it is fortunate to have an unwritten constitution, 44 for men are prone to be tinkering the work of their own hands, whereas they are more willing to let time and circumstance mend or modify what time and circum- Democracy Lowell 45 stances have made. All free governments, whatever their name, are in reality governments by public opinion, and it is on the quality of this public opin- ion that their prosperity depends. It is, therefore, their first duty to purify the element from which they draw the breath of life. With the growth of democracy grows also the fear, if not the danger, that this atmosphere may be corrupted with poison- ous exhalations from lower and more malarious levels, and the question of sanitation becomes more instant and pressing. Democracy in its best sense is merely the letting in of light and air. Lord Sherbrooke, 45 with his usual epigrammatic terseness, bids you educate your future rulers. But would this alone be a suffi- cient safeguard? To educate the intelligence is to enlarge the horizon of its desires and wants. And it is well that this should be so. But the enterprise must go deeper and prepare the way for satisfying those desires and wants in so far as they are legiti- mate. What is really ominous of danger to the exist- ing order of things is not democracy (which, properly understood, is a conservative force), but the Socialism, which may find a fulcrum in it. If we cannot equalize conditions and fortunes 46 any more than we can equalize the brains of men and a very sagacious per- son has said that "where two men ride of a horse one must ride behind" we can yet, perhaps, do something to correct those methods and influences that lead to enormous inequalities, and to prevent their growing more enormous. It is all very well to pooh- pooh Mr. George 47 and to prove him mistaken in his 46 Democracy Today political economy. I do not believe that land should be divided because the quantity of it is limited by nature. Of what may this not be said? A fortiori, we might on the same principle insist on a division of human wit, for I have observed that the quantity of this has been even more inconveniently limited. Mr. George himself has an inequitably large share of it. But he is right in his impelling motive; right, also, I am convinced, in insisting that humanity makes a part, by far the most important part, of political economy ; and in thinking man to be of more concern and more convincing than the longest columns of figures in the world. For unless you: include human nature in your addition, your total is sure to be wrong and your deductions from it fallacious. Communism means barbarism, but Socialism means, or wishes to mean, cooperation and community of interests, sympathy, the giving to the hands not so large a share as to the brains, but a larger share than hitherto in the wealth they must combine to produce means, in short, the practical application of Chris- tianity to life, and has in it the secret of an orderly and benign reconstruction. State Socialism would cut off the very roots in personal character self-help, forethought, and frugality which nourish and sus- tain the trunk and branches of every vigorous Com- monwealth. I do not believe in violent changes, nor do I expect them. Things in possession have a very firm grip. 48 One of the strongest cements of society is the convic- tion of mankind that the state of things into which Democracy Lowell 47 they are born is a part of the order of the universe, as natural, let us say, as that the sun should go round the earth. It is a conviction that they will not sur- render except on compulsion, and a wise society should look to it that this compulsion be not put upon them. For the individual man there is no radical cure, outside of human nature itself, for the evils to which human nature is heir. The rule will always hold good that you must Be your own palace or the world's your gaol. But for artificial evils, for evils that spring from want of thought, thought must find a remedy some- where. There has been no period of time in which wealth has been more sensible of its duties than now. It builds hospitals, it establishes missions among the poor, it endows schools. It is one of the advantages of accumulated wealth, and of the leisure it renders possible, that people have time to think of the wants and sorrows of their fellows. But all these remedies are partial and palliative merely. It is as if we should apply plasters to a single pustule of the smallpox with a view of driving out the disease. The true way is to discover and to extirpate the germs. As society is now constituted these are in the air it breathes, in the water it drinks, in things that seem, and which it has always believed, to be the most innocent and healthful. The evil elements it neglects corrupt these in their springs and pollute them in their courses. Let us be of good cheer, however, remembering that the misfortunes hardest to bear are those which never' 48 Democracy Today come. The world has outlived much, and will outlive a great deal more, and men have contrived to be happy in it. It has shown the strength of its con- stitution in nothing more than in surviving the quack medicines it has tried. In the scales of the destinies brawn will never weigh so much as brain. Our heal- ing is not in the storm or in the whirlwind, it is not in monarchies, or aristocracies, or democracies, but will be revealed by the still small voice that speaks to the conscience and the heart, prompting us to a wider and wiser humanity. THE MESSAGE OF WASHINGTON GROVER CLEVELAND [DELIVERED AT CHICAGO, FEBRUARY 22, 1907] In furtherance of the high endeavor of your organ- ization, it would have been impossible to select for observance any other civic holiday having as broad and fitting a significance as this. It memorizes the birth of one whose glorious deeds are transcendently above all others recorded in our national annals ; and, in memorizing the birth of Washington, it commem- orates the incarnation of all the virtues and all the ideals that made our nationality possible, and gave it promise of growth and strength. It is a holiday that belongs exclusively to the American people. All that Washington did was bound up in our national life, and became interwoven with the warp of our national destiny. The battles he fought were fought for American liberty, and the victories he won gave us national independence. His example of unselfish consecration, 1 and lofty patriotism made manifest, as in an open book, that those virtues were conditions not more vital to our nation's beginning than to its development and durability. His faith in God, and the fortitude of his faith, taught those for whom he wrought that the surest strength of nations comes from the support of God's almighty arm. His uni- versal and unaffected sympathy with those in every sphere of American life, his thorough knowledge of . 49 50 Democracy Today existing American conditions, and his wonderful fore- sight of conditions yet to be, coupled with his power- ful influence in the councils of those who were to make or mar the fate of an infant nation, made him a tremendous factor in the construction and adoption of the constitutional chart by which the course of the aewly launched republic could be safely sailed. And it was he who first took the helai, and demonstrated, for the guidance of all who might succeed him, how and in what spirit and intent the 'responsibilities of our chief magistracy should be discharged. If your observance of this day were intended to make more secure the immortal fame of Washington, or to add to the strength and beauty of his imperish- able monument built upon a nation's affectionate remembrance, your purpose would be useless. Wash- ington has no need of you. But in every moment, from the time he drew his sword in the cause of American independence to this hour, living or dead, the American people have needed him. It is not important now, nor will it be in all the coming years, to remind our countrymen that Washington has lived, and that his achievements in his country's service are above all praise. But it is important and more important now than ever before that they should clearly apprehend and adequately value the virtues and ideals of which he was the embodiment, and that they should realize how essential to our safety and perpetuity are the 'consecration and patriotism which he exemplified. The American people need today the example and teachings of Washington no less than The Message of Washington 51 those who fashioned our nation needed his labors and guidance; and only so far as we commemorate his birth with a sincere recognition of this need can our commemoration be useful to the present generation. It is, therefore, above all things, absolutely essential to an appropriately commemorative condition of mind that there should be no toleration of even the shade of a thought that what Washington did and said and wrote, in aid of the young American republic have become in the least outworn, or that in these later days of material advance and development they may be merely pleasantly recalled with a sort of affectionate veneration, and with a kind of indulgent and loftily courteous concession of the value of Washington's example and precepts. These consti- tute the richest of all our crown jewels; and, if we disregard them or depreciate their value, we shall be no better than "the base Indian who threw a pearl away richer than all his tribe." 2 They are full of stimulation to do grand and noble things, and full of lessons enjoining loyal adherenca to public duty. But they teach nothing more impres- sive and nothing more needful by way of recalling our countrymen to a faith which has become some- what faint and obscured than the necessity to national beneficence and the people 's happiness of the homely, simple, personal virtues that grow and thrive in the hearts of men who, with high intent, illustrate the goodness there is in human nature. Three months before his inauguration as first President of the republic which he had done so much 52 to create, Wasnington wrote a letter to Lafayette, 3 his warm friend and revolutionary ally, in which he expressed his unremitting desire to establish a general system of policy which, if pursued, would "ensure permanent felicity to the commonwealth"; and he added these words: "I think I see a path as clear and as direct as a ray of light, which leads to the attainment of that object. Nothing but harmony, honesty, industry, and frugality is necessary to make us a great and happy people. Happily, the present posture of affairs, and the prevailing disposition of my countrymen promise to cooperate in establishing those four great and essential pillars of public felicity. ' ' It is impossible for us to be in accord with the spirit which should pervade this occasion if we fail to realize the momentous import of this declaration, and if we doubt its conclusiveness or its application to any stage of our national life, we are not in sym- pathy with a proper and improving observance of the birthday of George Washington. Such considerations as these suggest the thought that this is a time for honest self-examination. The question presses upon us with a demand for reply that will not be denied : Who among us all, if our hearts are purged of misleading impulses and our minds freed from per- verting pride, can be sure that today the posture of affairs and the prevailing disposition of our country- men cooperate in the establishment and promotion of harmony, honesty, industry, and frugality? The Message of Washington 53 When Washington wrote that nothing but these was necessary to make us a great and happy people, he had in mind the harmony of American brotherhood and unenvious good will, the honesty that insures against the betrayal of public trust and hates devious ways and conscienceless practices, the industry that recognizes in faithful work and intelligent endeavor abundant promise of well-earned competence and provident accumulation, and the frugality which out- laws waste and extravagant display as plunderers of thrift and promoters of covetous discontent. The self-examination invited by this day's com- memoration will be incomplete and superficial if we are not thereby forced to the confession that there are signs of the times which indicate a weakness and relaxation of our hold upon these saving virtues. When thus forewarned, it is the height of recreancy for us obstinately to close our eyes to the needs of the situation, and refuse admission to the thought that evil can overtake us. If we are to deserve security, and make good our claim to sensible, patriotic Amer- icanism, we will carefully and dutifully take our bearings, and discover, if we can, how far wind and tide have carried us away from safe waters. If we find that the wickedness of destructive agita- tors and the selfish depravity of demagogues have stirred up discontent and strife where there should be peace and harmony, and have arrayed against each other interests which should dwell together in hearty cooperation; if we find that the old standards of sturdy, uncompromising American honesty have 54 Democracy Today become so corroded and weakened by a sordid atmos- phere that our people are hardly startled by crime in high places and shameful betrayals of trust every- where ; if we find a sadly prevalent disposition among us to turn from the highway of honorable industry into shorter crossroads leading to irresponsible and worthless ease; if we find that widespread wasteful- ness and extravagance have discredited the wholesome frugality which was once the pride of Americanism we should recall Washington's admonition that har- mony, industry, and frugality are "essential pillars of public felicity, ' ' and forthwith endeavor to change our course. To neglect this is not only to neglect the admonition of Washington, but to miss or neglect the conditions which our self-examination has made plain to us. These conditions demand something more from us than warmth and zest in the tribute we pay to Wash- ington, and something more even than acceptance of his teachings, however reverent our acceptance may be. The sooner we reach a state of mind which keeps constantly before us, as a living, active, impelling force, the truth that our people, good or bad, harmon- ious or with daggers drawn, honest or unscrupulous, industrious or idle, constitute the source of our nation's temperament and health, and that the traits and faults of our people must necessarily give quality and color to our national behavior, the sooner we shall appreciate the importance of protecting this source from unwholesome contamination. And the sooner The Message of Washington 55 all of us honestly acknowledge this to be an individual duty that cannot be shifted or evaded, and the more thoroughly we purge ourselves from influences that hinder its conscientious performance, the sooner will our country be regenerated and made secure by the saving power of good citizenship. It is our habit to affiliate with political parties. Happily, the strength and solidity of our institutions can safely withstand the utmost freedom and activity of political discussion so far as it involves the adop- tion of governmental policies or the enforcement of good administration. But they cannot withstand the frenzy of hate which seeks, under the guise of political earnestness, to blot out American brotherhood, and cunningly to persuade our people that a crusade of envy and malice is no more than a zealous insistence upon their manhood rights. Political parties are exceedingly human; and they more easily fall before temptation than individuals, by so much as partisan success is the law of their life, and because their responsibility is impersonal. It is easily recalled that political organizations have been quite willing to utilize gusts of popular prejudice and resentment; and I believe they have been known, as a matter of shrewd management, to encourage voters to hope for some measure of relief from economic abuses, and yet to "stand pat" on the day appointed for realization. We have fallen upon a time when it behooves every thoughtful citizen, whose political beliefs are based on reason and who cares enough for his manliness 56 Democracy Today and duty to save them from barter, to realize that the organization of the party of his choice needs watch- ing, and that at times it is not amiss critically to observe its direction and tendency. This certainly ought to result in our country 's gain ; and it is only partisan impudence that condemns a member of a political party who, on proper occasion, submits its conduct and the loyalty to principle of its leaders to a Court of Review, over which his conscience, his reason and his political understanding preside. I protest that I have not spoken in a spirit of pessimism. I have and enjoy my full share of the pride and exultation which our country's material advancement so fully justifies. Its limitless resources, its astonishing growth, its unapproachable industrial development, and its irrepressible inventive genius have made it the wonder of the centuries. Neverthe- less, these things do not complete the story of a people truly great. Our country is infinitely more than a domain affording to those who dwell upon it immense material advantages and opportunities. In such a country we live. But I love to think of a glorious nation built upon the will of free men, set apart for the propagation and cultivation of humanity's best ideal of a free government, and made ready for the growth and fruitage of the highest aspirations of patriotism. This is the country that lives in us. I indulge in no mere figure of speech when I say that our nation, the immortal spirit of our domain, lives in us in our hearts and minds and consciences. There it must find its nutriment or die. This thought The Message of Washington 57 more than any other presents to our minds the impressiveness and responsibility of American citizen- ship. The land we live in seems to be strong and active. But how fares the land that lives in us ? Are we sure that we are doing all we ought to keep it in vigor and health ? Are we keeping its roots well sur- rounded by the fertile soil of loving allegiance, and are we furnishing them the invigorating moisture of unselfish fidelity? Are we as diligent as we ought to be to protect this precious growth against the poison that must arise from the decay of harmony and honesty and industry and frugality; and are we sufficiently watchful against the deadly, burrowing pests of consuming greed and cankerous cupidity? Our answers to these questions make up the account of our stewardship as keepers of a sacred trust. The land we live in is safe as long as we are duti- fully careful of the land that lives in us. But good intentions and fine sentiments will not meet the emergency. If we would bestow upon the land that lives in us the care it needs, it is indispensable that we should recognize the weakness of our human nature, and our susceptibility to temptations and influences that interfere with a full conception of our obligations; and thereupon we should see to it that cupidity and selfishness do not blind our consciences or dull our efforts. From different points of view I have invited you to consider with me what obligations and responsibil- ities rest upon those who in this country of ours are entitled to be called good citizens. The things I 58 Democracy Today pointed out may be trite. I know I have spoken in the way of exhortation rather than with an attempt to say something new and striking. Perhaps you have suspected, what I am quite willing to confess, that, behind all that I have said, there is in my mind a sober conviction that we all can and ought to do more for the country that lives in us than it has been our habit to do; and that no better means to this end are at hand than a revival of pure patriotic affec- tion for our country for its own sake, and the accep- tance, as permanent occupants in our hearts and minds, of the virtues which Washington regarded as all that was necessary to make us a great and happy people, and which he declared to be "the great and essential pillars of public felicity" harmony, hon- esty, industry, and frugality. OUE RESPONSIBILITIES AS A NATION THEODORE ROOSEVELT [INAUGURAL ADDRESS DELIVERED AT WASHINGTON, MARCH 4, 1905] JNO people on earth have more cause to be thankful than ours, and this is said reverently, in no spirit of boastfulness in our own strength, but with gratitude to the Giver of Good, who has blessed us with the conditions which have enabled us to achieve so large a measure of well-being and of happiness. To us as a people it has been granted to lay the foundations of our national life in a new continent. We are the heirs of the ages, and yet we have had to pay few of the penalties which in old countries are exacted by the dead hand of a bygone civilization. We have not been obliged to fight for our existence against any alien race; and yet our life has called for the vigor and effort without which the manlier and hardier virtues wither away. Under such conditions it would be our own fault if we failed ; and the success which we have had in the past, the success which we confi- dently believe the future will bring, should cause in us no feeling of Tainglory, but rather a deep and abiding realization of all which life has offered us; a full acknowledgment of the responsibility which is ours; and a fixed determination to show that under a free government a mighty people can thrive best, 59 60 . Democracy Today alike as regards the things of the body and the things of the soul. Much has been given to us, and much will right- fully be expected from us. We have duties to others and duties to ourselves; and we can shirk neither. We have become a great nation, forced by the fact of its greatness into relations with the other nations of the earth ; and we must behave as beseems a people with such responsibilities. Toward all other nations, large and small, our attitude must be one of cordial and sincere friendship. We must show not only in our words but in our deeds that we are earnestly, desirous of securing their good will by acting toward them in a spirit of just and generous recognition of all their rights. But justice and generosity in a nation, as in an individual, count most when shown not by x .he weak but by the strong. While ever careful to refrain from wronging others, we must be no less insistent that we are not wronged ourselves. We wish peace ; but we wish the peace of justice, the peace of righteousness. We wish it because we think it is right and not because we are afraid. No weak nation that acts manfully and justly should ever have cause to fear us, and 1 no strong power should ever be able to single us out as a subject for insolent aggression. Our relations with the other Powers of the world are import-ant ; but still more important are our rela- tions among ourselves. Such growth in wealth, in population, and in power as this nation has seen during the century and a quarter of its national life Our Responsibilities as a Nation 61 is inevitably accompanied by a like growth in the problems which are ever before every nation that rises to greatness. Power invariably means both responsibility and danger. Our forefathers faced cer- tain perils which we have outgrown. We now face other perils, the very existence of which it was impos- sible that they should foresee. Modern life is both complex and intense, and the tremendous changes wrought by the extraordinary industrial development of the last half century are felt in every fiber of our social and political being. Never before have men tried so vast and formidable an experiment as that of administering the affairs of a continent under the form of a democratic republic. The conditions which have told for our marvelous material well-being, which have developed to a very high degree our energy, self-reliance, and individual initiative, have also brought the care and anxiety inseparable from the accumulation of great wealth in industrial centers. Upon the success of our experiment much depends; not only as regards our own welfare, but as regards the welfare of mankind. If we fail, the cause of free self-government throughout the world will rock to its foundations ; and therefore our responsibility is heavy, to ourselves, to the world as it is today, and to the generations yet unborn. There is no good reason why we should fear the future but there is every reason why we should face it seriously, neither hiding from ourselves the gravity of the problems before us nor fearing to approach these problems with the unbend- ing, unflinching purpose to solve them aright. 62 Democracy Today Yet, after all, though the problems are new, though the tasks set before us differ from the tasks set before our fathers who founded and preserved this Republic, the spirit in which these tasks must be undertaken and these problems faced, if our duty is to be well done, remains essentially unchanged. We know that self-government is difficult. We know that no people needs such high traits of character as that people which seeks to govern its affairs aright through the freely expressed will of the freemen who compose it. But we have faith that we shall not prove false to the memories of the men of the mighty past. They did their work, they left us the splendid heritage we now enjoy. We in our turn have an assured confidence that we shall be able to leave this heritage unwasted and enlarged to our children and our children's children. To do so we must show, not merely in great crises, but in the everyday affairs of life, the qualities of practical intelligence, of courage, of hardihood and endurance, and above all the power of devotion tD a lofty ideal, which made great the men who founded this Republic in the days of Washington, which made great the men who preserved this Republic in the days of Abraham Lincoln. THE MEANING OF THE DECLARATION OP INDEPENDENCE WOODROW WILSON [DELIVERED AT INDEPENDENCE HALL, JULY 4, 1914] We are assembled to celebrate the one hundred and thirty-eighth anniversary of the birth of the United States. I suppose that we can more vividly realize the circumstances of that birth standing on this historic spot than it would be possible to realize them any- where else. The Declaration of Independence was written in Philadelphia; it was adopted in this historic building by which we stand. I have just had the privilege of sitting in the chair of the great man who presided over the deliberations of those who gave the declaration to the world. 1 My hand rests at this moment upon the table upon which the declara- tion was signed. We can feel that we are almost in the visible and tangible presence of a great historic transaction. Have you ever read the Declaration of Independ- ence or attended with close comprehension to the real character of it when you have heard it read ? If you have, you will know that it is not a Fourth of July oration. The Declaration of Independence was a document preliminary to war. It was a vital piece of practical business, not a piece of rhetoric ; and if you will pass beyond those preliminary passages which we are accustomed to quote about the rights of men 63 64 Democracy Today and read into the heart of the document you will see that it is very express and detailed, that it consists of a series of definite specifications concerning actual public business of the day. Not the business of our day, for the matter with which it deals is past, but the business of that first revolution by which the Nation was set up, the business of 1776. Its general statements, its general declarations can not mean any- thing to us unless we append to it a similar specific body of particulars as to what we consider the essen- tial business of our own day. Liberty does not consist, my fellow citizens, in mere general declarations of the rights of man. It consists in the translation of those declarations into definite action. Therefore, standing here where the declara- tion was adopted, reading its businesslike sentences, we ought to ask ourselves what there is in it for us. There is nothing in it for us unless we can translate it into the terms of our own conditions and of our own lives. We must reduce it to what the lawyers call a bill of particulars. It contains a bill of partic- ulars, but the bill of particulars of 1776. If we would keep it alive, we must fill it with a bill of particulars of the year 1914. The task to which we have constantly to readdress ourselves is the task of proving that we are worthy of the men who drew this great declaration 2 and know ' what they would have done in our circumstances. Patriotism consists in some very practical things practical in that they belong to the life of every day, that they wear no extraordinary distinction about them, that they are connected with commonplace duty. Meaning of the Declaration of Independence 65 The way to be patriotic in America is not only to love America but to love the duty that lies nearest to our hand and know that in performing it we are serving our country. There are some gentlemen in Washing- ton, for example, at this very moment who are show- ing themselves very patriotic in a way which does not attract wide attention but seems to belong to mere everyday obligations. The Members of the House and Senate who stay in hot Washington to maintain a quorum of the Houses and transact the all-important business of the Nation are doing an act of patriotism. I honor them for it, and I am glad to stay there and stick by them until the work is done. It is patriotic, also, to learn what the facts of our national life are and to face them with candor. I have heard a great many facts stated about the present business condition 3 of this country, for example a great many allegations of fact, at any rate, but the allegations do not tally with one another. And yet 1 know that truth always matches with truth ; and when I find some insisting that everything is going wrong and others insisting that everything is going right, and when I know from a wide observation of the gen- eral circumstances of the country taken as a whole that things are going extremely well, I wonder what those who are crying out that things are wrong are trying to do. Are they trying to serve the country, or are they trying to serve something smaller than the country ? Are they trying to put hope into the hearts of the men who work and toil every day, or are they trying to plant discouragement and despair in those 66 Democracy Today hearts? And why do they cry that everything is wrong and yet do nothing to set it right? If they love America and anything is wrong amongst us, it is their business to put their hand with ours to the task of setting it right. When the facts are known and acknowledged, the duty of all patriotic men is to accept them in candor and to address themselves hope- fully and confidently to the common counsel which is necessary to act upon them wisely and in universal concert. I have had some experiences in the last fourteen months which have not been entirely reassuring. It was universally admitted, for example, my fellow citi- zens, that the banking system of this country needed reorganization. We set the best minds that we could find to the task of discovering the best method of reor- ganization. 4 But we met with hardly anything but criticism from the bankers of the country; we met with hardly anything but resistance from the major- ity of those at least who spoke at all concerning the matter. And yet so soon as that act was passed there was a universal chorus of applause, and the very men who had opposed the measure joined in that applause. If it was wrong the day before it was passed, why was it right the day after it was passed ? Where had been the candor of criticism not only, but the concert of counsel which makes legislative action vigorous and safe and successful ? It is not patriotic to concert measures against one another; it is patriotic to concert measures for one another. Meaning of the Declaration of Independence 67 In one sense the Declaration of Independence has lost its significance. It has lost its significance as a declaration of national independence. Nobody outside of America believed when it was uttered that we could make good our independence; now no- body anywhere would dare to doubt that we are independent and can maintain our independence. As a declaration of independence, therefore, it is a mere historic document. Our independence is a fact so stupendous that it can be measured only by the size and energy and variety and wealth and power of one of the greatest nations in the world. But it is one thing to be independent and it is another thing to know what to do with your independence. It is one thing to come to your majority and another thing to know what you are going to do with your life and your energies ; and one of the most serious questions for sober-minded men to address themselves to in the United States is this : What are we going to do with the influence and power of this great Nation? Are we going to play the old role of using that power for our aggrandizement and material benefit only ? You know what that may mean. It may upon occasion mean that we shall use it to make the people of other nations suffer in the way in which we said it was intol- erable to suffer when we uttered our Declaration of Independence. The Department of State at Washington is con- stantly called upon to back up the commercial enter- prises and the industrial enterprises of the United States in foreign countries, and it at one time went 68 Democracy Today so far in that direction that all its diplomacy came to be designated as "dollar diplomacy." It was called upon to support every man who wanted to earn anything anywhere if he was an American. But there ought to be a limit to that. There is no man who is more interested than I am in carrying the enterprise of American business men to every quarter of the globe. I was interested in it long before I was sus- pected of being a politician. I have been preaching it year after year as the great thing that lay in the future for the United States, to show her wit and skill and enterprise and influence in every country in the world. But observe the limit to all that which is laid upon us perhaps more than upon any other nation in the world. We set this Nation up, at any rate we professed to set it up, to vindicate the rights of men. We did not name any differences between one race and another. We did not set up any barriers against any particular people. We opened our gates to all the world and said, "Let all men who wish to be free come to us and they will be welcome." We said, ' ' This independence of ours is not a selfish thing for our own exclusive private use. It is for every- body to whom we can find the means of extending it. ' ' We can not with that .oath taken in our youth, we can not with that great ideal set before us when we were a young people and numbered only a scant 3,000,000, take upon ourselves, now that we are 100,- 000,000 strong, any other conception of duty than we then entertained. If American enterprise in foreign countries, particularly in those foreign countries which Meaning of the Declaration of Independence 69 are not strong enough to resist us, takes the shape of imposing upon and exploiting the mass of the people of that country it ought to be checked and not encour- aged. I am willing to get anything for an American that money and enterprise can obtain except the sup- pression of the rights of other men. I will not help any man buy a power which he ought not to exercise over his fellow beings. 5 You know, my fellow countrymen, what a big ques- tion there is in Mexico. Eighty-five per cent of the Mexican people have never been allowed to have any genuine participation in their own Government or to exercise any substantial rights with regard to the very land they live upon. All the rights that men most desire have been exercised by the other fifteen per cent. Do you suppose that that circumstance is not sometimes in my thought ? I know that the American people have a heart that will beat just as strong for those millions in Mexico as it will beat, or has beaten, for any other millions elsewhere in the world, and that when once they conceive what is at stake in Mex- ico they will know what ought to be done in Mexico. I hear a great deal said about the loss of property in Mexico and the loss of the lives of foreigners, and I deplore these things with all my heart. Undoubtedly, upon the conclusion of the present disturbed condi- tions in Mexico those who have been unjustly deprived of their property or in any wise unjustly put upon ought to be compensated. Men's individual rights have no doubt been invaded, and the invasion of those rights has been attended by many deplorable circum- 70 Democracy Today stances which ought sometime, in the proper way, to be accounted for. But back of it all is the struggle of a people to come into its own, and while we look upon the incidents in the foreground let us not forget the great tragic reality in the background which towers above the whole picture. A patriotic American is a man who is not niggardly and selfish in the things that he enjoys that make for human liberty and the rights of man. He wants to share them with the whole world, and he is never so proud of the great flag under which he lives as when it comes to mean to other people as well as to him- self a symbol of hope and liberty. I would be ashamed of this flag if it did anything outside America that we would not permit it to do inside of America. The world is becoming more complicated every day, my fellow citizens. No man ought to be foolish enough to think that he understands it all. And, therefore, I am glad that there are some simple things in the world. One of the simple things is principle. Hon- esty is a perfectly simple thing. It is hard for me to believe that in most circumstances when a man has a choice of ways he does not know which is the right way and which is the wrong way. No man who has chosen the wrong way ought even to come into Inde- pendence Square; it is holy ground which he ought not to tread upon. He ought not to come where immortal voices have uttered the great sentences of such a document as this Declaration of Independence upon which rests the liberty of a whole nation. Meaning of the Declaration of Independence 71 And so I say that it is patriotic sometimes to prefer the honor of the country to its material interest. Would you rather be deemed by all the nations of the world incapable of keeping your treaty obligations in order that you might have free tolls for American ships ? 6 The treaty under which we gave up that right may have been a mistaken treaty, but there was no mistake about its meaning. When I have made a promise as a man I try to keep it, and I know of no other rule permissible to a nation. The most distinguished nation in the world is the nation that can and will keep its promises even to its own hurt. And I want to say parenthetically that I do not think anybody was hurt. I cannot be enthusi- astic for subsidies to a monopoly, but let those who are enthusiastic for subsidies ask themselves whether they prefer subsidies to unsullied honor. The most patriotic man, ladies and gentlemen, is sometimes the man who goes in the direction that he thinks right even when he sees half the world against him. It is the dictate of patriotism to sacrifice yourself if you think that that is the path of honor and of duty. Do not blame others if they do not agree with you. Do not die with bitterness in your heart because you did not convince the rest of the world, but die happy because you believe that you tried to serve your coun- try by not .selling your soul. Those were grim days, the days of 1776. Those gentlemen did not attach their names to the Declaration of Independence on this table expecting a holiday on the next day, and that 4th of July was not itself a holiday. They at- 72 Democracy Today tached their signatures to that significant document knowing that if they failed it was certain that every one of them would hang for the failure. They were committing treason in the interest of the liberty of 3,000,000 people in America. All the rest of the world was against them and smiled with cynical incredulity at the audacious undertaking. Do you think that if they could see this great Nation now they would regret anything that they then did to draw the gaze of a hostile world upon them? Every idea must be started by somebody, and it is a lonely thing to start anything. Yet if it is in you, you must start it if you have a man's blood in you and if you love the country that you profess to be working for. I am sometimes very much interested when I see gentlemen supposing that popularity is the way to success in America. The way to success in this great country, with its fair judgments, is to show that you are not afraid of anybody except God and His final verdict. If I did not believe that, I would not believe in democracy. If I did not believe that, I would not believe that people can govern themselves. If I did not believe that the moral judgment would be the last judgment, the final judgment, in the minds of men as well as the tribunal of God, I could not believe in popular government, But I do believe these things, and, therefore, I earnestly believe in the democracy not only of America but of every awakened people that wishes and intends to govern and control its own affairs. It is very inspiring, my friends, to come to this Meaning of the Declaration of Independence 73 that may be called the original fountain of independ- ence and liberty in America and here drink draughts of patriotic feeling which seem to renew the very blood in one's veins. Down in Washington some- times when the days are hot and the business presses intolerably and there are so many things to do that it does not seem possible to do anything in the way it ought to be done, it is always possible to lift one's thought above the task of the moment and, as it were, to realize that great thing of which we are all parts, the great body of American feeling and American principle. No man could do the work that has to be done in Washington if he allowed himself to be sepa- rated from that body of principle. He must make himself feel that he is a part of the people of the United States, that he is trying to think not only for them, but with them, and then he can not feel lonely. He not only can not feel lonely but he can not feel afraid of anything. My dream is that as the years go on and the world knows more and more of America it will also drink at these fountains of youth and renewal ; that it also will turn to America for those moral inspirations which lie at the basis of all freedom ; that the world will never fear America unless it feels that it is engaged in some enterprise which is inconsistent with the rights of humanity; and that America will come into the full light of the day when all shall know that she puts human rights above all other rights and that her flag is the flag not only of America but of humanity. What other great people has devoted itself to this 74 Democracy Today exalted ideal ? To what other nation in the world can all eyes look for an instant sympathy that thrills the whole body politic when men anywhere are fighting for their rights? I do not know that there will ever be a declaration of independence and of grievances for mankind, but I believe that if any such document is ever drawn it will be drawn in the spirit of the American Declaration of Independence, and that America has lifted high the light which will shine unto all generations and guide the feet of mankind to the goal of justice and liberty and peace. THE AMERICAN OF FOREIGN BIRTH WOODROW WILSON [ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE A GATHERING OF RECENTLY NATURALIZED CITIZENS AT CONVENTION HALL, PHILADELPHIA, MAY 10, 1915] MR. MAYOR, FELLOW CITIZENS : It warms my heart that you should give me such a reception; but it is not of myself that I wish to think tonight, but of those who have just become citizens of the United States. This is the only country in the world which experi- ences this constant and repeated rebirth. Other coun- tries depend upon the multiplication of their own native people. This country is constantly drinking strength out of new sources by the voluntary associa- tion 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 it is being con- stantly renewed from generation to generation by the same process by which it was originally created. It is as if humanity had determined to see to it that this great Nation, founded for the benefit of humanity, should not lack for the allegiance of the people of the world. You have just taken an oath of allegiance to the United States. Of allegiance to whom? Of allegi- ance to no one, unless it be God certainly not of alle- giance to those who temporarily represent this great 75 76 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 utter- ance 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 seek- ing to perpetuate what you intended to leave behind in them. I certainly would not be one even to sug- gest that a man cease to love the home of his birth and the nation of his origin these things are very sacred and ought not to be put out of our hearts but it is one thing to love the place where you were born and it is another thing to dedicate yourself to the place to which you go. You can not dedicate yourself to America unless you become in every respect and with every purpose of your will thorough Americans. You can not become thorough Americans if you think of yourselves in groups. America does not consist of groups. A man who thinks of himself as belonging to a particular national group in America The American of Foreign Birth 11 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. Human- ity 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 debase. We came to America, either ourselves or in the persons of our ancestors, to better the ideals of men, to make them see finer things than they had seen before, to get rid of the things that divide and to make sure of the things that unite. It was but an historical accident no doubt that this great country was called the "United States"; yet I am very thankful that it has that word "United" in its title, and the man who seeks to divide man from man, group from group, interest from interest in this great Union is striking at its very heart. It is a very interesting circumstance to me, in think- ing 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 78 Democracy Today 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 before- hand. But remember this: If we had grown at all poor in the ideal, you had 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 enter- prise. Just because you brought dreams with you, America is more likely to realize dreams such as you brought. You are enriching us if you came expect- ing us to be better than we are. See, my friends, what that means. It means that Americans must have a consciousness different from the consciousness of every other nation in the world. I am not saying this with even the slightest thought of criticism of other nations. You know how it is with a family. A family gets centered on itself if it is not The American of Foreign Birth 79 careful and is less interested in the neighbors than it is in its own members. So a nation that is not con- stantly renewed out of new sources is apt to have the narrowness and prejudice of a family; whereas, America must have this consciousness, that on all sides it touches elbows and touches hearts with all the nations 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 influence of the world and strife is not. There is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight. There is such a thing as a nation being so right that it does not need to convince others by force that it is right. You have come into this great Nation voluntarily seeking something that we have to give, and all that we have to give is this: We can not exempt you from work. No man is exempt from work anywhere in the world. We can not exempt you from the strife and the heartbreaking burden of the struggle of the day that is common to mankind everywhere ; we can not exempt you from the loads that you must carry. We can only make them light by the. spirit in which they are carried. That is the 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 Washington to meet this great company of newly ad- mitted citizens, I could not decline the invitation. I ought not to be away from Washington, and yet I feel 80 Democracy Today 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-citizens a long time or a short time, and drink, as it were, out of the common fountains with them and go back feel- ing 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. AMERICA FIRST WOODROW WILSON [ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE DAUGHTERS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, WASHINGTON, D. C., OCTOBER 11, 1915] Again it is my very great privilege to welcome you to the City of Washington and to the hospitalities of the Capital. May I admit a point of ignorance? I was surprised to learn that this association is so young, and that an association so young should devote itself wholly to memory I can not believe. For to me the duties to which you are consecrated are more than the duties and the pride of memory. There is a very great thrill to be had from the memories of the American Revolution, but the Ameri- can 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 81 82 Democracy Today 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. These things were consciously in their minds as they framed the great Government which was born out of the American Revolution; and every time we gather to perpetuate their memories it is incumbent upon us that we should be worthy of recalling them and that we should endeavor by every means in our power to emulate their example. The American Revolution was the birth of a nation ; it was the creation of a great free republic based upon traditions of personal liberty which theretofore had been confined to a single little island, but which it was purposed should spread to all mankind. And the singular fascination of American history is that it has been a process of constant re-creation, of making over again in each generation the thing which was conceived at first. You know how peculiarly neces- sary 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 continuity of blood; it is easy in a single family to remember the origins of the race and the purposes of its organ- ization ; but it is not so easy when that race is con- stantly being renewed and augmented from other sources, from stocks that did not carry or originate the same principles. America First 83 So from generation to generation strangers have had to be indoctrinated with the principles of the American family, and the wonder and the beauty of it all has been that the infection has been so generously easy. For the principles of liberty are united with the principles of hope. Every individual, as well as every Nation, wishes to realize the best thing that is in him, the best thing that can be conceived out of the materials of which his spirit is constructed. It has happened in a way that fascinates the imagination that we have not only been augmented by additions from outside, but that we have been greatly stimulated by those additions. Living in the easy prosperity of a free people, knowing that the .sun had always been free to shine upon us and prosper our under- takings, 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 indulging ourselves after a fashion that did not belong to the ascetic de- votion of the early devotees of those great principles. Strangers came to remind us of what we had promised ourselves and through ourselves had promised man- 84 Democracy Today kind. All men came to us and said, "Where is the bread of life with which you promised to feed us, and have you partaken of it yourselves ? ' ' For my part, I believe that the constant renewal of this people out of foreign stocks has been a constant source of reminder to this people of what the inducement was that was offered to men who would come and be of our number. Now we have come to a time of special stress and test. There never was a time when we needed more clearly to conserve the principles of our own patriot- ism than this present time. The rest of the world from which our polities were drawn seems for the time in the crucible and no man can predict what will come out of that crucible. We stand apart, unem- broiled, conscious of our own principles, conscious of what we hope and purpose, so far as our powers per- mit, for the world at large, and it is necessary that we should consolidate the American principle. Every political action, every social action, should have for its object in America at this time to challenge the spirit of America ; to ask that every man and woman who thinks first of America should rally to the stand- ards of our life. There have been some among us who have not thought first of America, who have thought to use the might of America in some matter not of America's origination. They have forgotten that the first duty of a nation is to express its own individual principles in the action of the family of nations and not to seek to aid and abet any rival or contrary ideal. Neutrality is a negative word. It is a word that America First 85 does not express what America ought to feel. America has a heart and that heart throbs with all sorts of intense sympathies, 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, believ- ing that America stands apart in its ideals, it ought not to allow itself to be drawn, so far as its heart is concerned, into anybody's quarrel. 1 Not because it does not understand the quarrel, not because it does not in its head assess the merits of the controversy, but because America has promised the world to stand apart and maintain certain principles of action which are grounded in law and in justice. We are not try- ing 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 ac- cepted principles of international law, only upon those things which remind nations of their duties to each other, and, deeper than that, of their duties to man- kind and to humanity. America has a great cause which is not confined to the American continent. It is the cause of human- ity itself. I do not mean in anything that I say even, to imply a judgment 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 chal- lenge you to assist all of us who are trying to make America more than ever conscious of her own princi- ples and her own duty. I look forward to the neces- sity in every political agitation in the years which 86 Democracy Today 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 sufficient intensity and af- fection the American ideal. But the number of such is, I am sure, not large. Those who would seek to represent them are very vocal, but they are not very influential. Some of the best stuff of America has come out of foreign lands, and some of the best stuff in America is in the men who are naturalized citizens of the United States. I would not be afraid upon the test of "America first" to take a census of all the foreign-born citizens of the United States, for I know that the vast majority of them came here because they believed in America ; and their belief in America has made them better citizens than some people who were born in America. They can say that they have bought this privilege with a great price. They have left their homes, they have left their kindred, they have broken all the nearest and dearest ties of human life in order to come to a new land, take a new rootage, begin a new life, and so by self-sacrifice express their confidence in a new principle ; whereas, it cost us none of these things. We were born into this privilege; we were rocked and cradled in it ; we did nothing to create it ; and it is, therefore, the greater duty on our part to do a great deal to enhance it and preserve it. America First 87 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 coun- tries stand on one side and all those that are for America first, last, and all the time on the other side. Now, you can do a great deal in this direction. When I was a college officer I used to be very much opposed to hazing; not because hazing: is not whole- some, but because sophomores are poor judges. I remember a very dear friend of mine, a professor of ethics on the other side of the water, was asked if he thought it was ever justifiable to tell a lie. He said Yes, he thought it was sometimes justifiable to lie; "but," he said, "it is so difficult to judge of the justi- fication that I usually tell the truth." I think that ought to be the motto of the sophomore. There are freshmen who need to be hazed, but the need is to be judged by such nice tests that a sophomore is hardly old enough to determine them. But the world can determine them. We are not freshmen at college, but we are constantly hazed. I would a great deal rather be obliged to draw pepper up my nose than to observe the hostile glances of my neighbors. I would a great deal rather be beaten than ostracized. I would a great deal rather endure any sort of physical hard- ship if I might have the affection of my fellow-men. We constantly discipline our fellow-citizens by having an opinion about them. That is the sort of discipline we ought now to administer to everybody who is not to the very core of his heart an American. Just have 88 Democracy Today an opinion about him. and let him experience the at- mospheric effects of that opinion ! And I know of no body of persons comparable to a body of ladies for creating an atmosphere of opinion ! I have myself in part yielded to the influences of that atmosphere, though it took me a long time to determine how I was going to vote in New Jersey. 2 So it has seemed to me that my privilege this after- noon was not merely a privilege of courtesy, but the real privilege of reminding you for I am sure I am doing nothing more of the great principles which we stand associated to promote. I for my part rejoice that we belong to a country in which the whole busi- ness of government is so difficult. We do not take orders from anybody ; it is a universal communication of conviction, the most subtle, delicate, and difficult of processes. There is not a single individual's opin- ion that is not of some consequence in making up the grand total, and to be in this great cooperative effort is the most stimulating thing in the world. A man standing alone may well misdoubt his own judgment. He may mistrust his own intellectual processes; he may even wonder if his own heart leads him right in matters of public conduct; but if he finds his heart part of the great throb of national life, there can be no doubt about it. If that is his happy circumstance, then he may know that he is part of one of the great forces of the world. I would not feel any exhilaration in belonging to America if I did not feel that she was something more than a rich and powerful nation. I should not America First 89 feel proud to be in some respects and for a little while her spokesman if I did not believe that there was some- thing else than physical force behind her. I believe that the glory of America is that she is a great spirit- ual conception and that in the spirit of her institutions dwells not only her distinction but her power. The one thing that the world cannot permanently resist is the moral force of great and triumphant convictions. THE SCHOOL OF CITIZENSHIP WOODROW WILSON [ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE CITIZENSHIP CONVEN- TION, WILSON NORMAL SCHOOL BUILDING, WASHINGTON, D. C., JULY 13, 1916.] I have come here for the simple purpose of express- ing my very deep interest in what these conferences are intended 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 nations 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 attend, which is furnished by the life of the com- munities 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 receive, something ideal in the laws which they would 90 The School of Citizenship 91 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 con- ferences 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. I have never been among those who felt comfortable in boasting of the superiority of America over other countries. The way to cure yourself of that is to travel in other countries and find out how much of nobility and character 'and fine enterprise there is everywhere in the world. The most that America can hope to do is to show, it may be, the finest example, not the only example, of the things that ought to bene- fit and promote the progress of the world. So my interest in this movement is as much an in- terest 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 teaching, no amount of exposition of the Constitution, which I find very few persons understand, no amount of dwelling upon the 92 Democracy Today 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 fundamental ideas of American life. 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 President and a Congress and a Governor and a State Legislature and courts is that the community shall have instrumentalities by which to promote those objects. It is a cooperative organization expressing itself in this Constitution, expressing itself in these laws, intending to express 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 pun- ished by the law as instructed and guided by the law. That is the reason so many hopeful reforms come to grief. A law cannot work until it expresses the spirit of the community for which it is enacted, and if you try to enact into law what expresses only the spirit of a small coterie or of a small minority, you know, or at any rate you ought to know, beforehand that it is not going to work. 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 The School of Citizenship 93 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 main- tain a government at which the immigrant can look with the closest scrutiny 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 can- not 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 anywhere 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 promoting their own interest ; but you can show that our object is to get these people in harness 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 riew, 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 94 Democracy Today force for ideal objects and not for self-aggrandize- ment. We have been disturbed recently, my fellow-citizens, by certain symptoms which have showed themselves in our body politic. Certain men, I have never be- lieved a great number, born in other lands, have in recent months thought more of those lands than they have of the honor and interest of the government under which they are now living. They have even gone so far as to draw apart in spirit and in organiza- tion from the rest of us to accomplish some special object of their own. 1 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 citizen, 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, 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. The School of Citizenship 95 No man has ever risen to the real 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 in- fluence upon others unless we practice them also. This process of Americanization is going to be a pro- cess 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 fel- low-citizens, to represent ideal things than to repre- sent anything else. It is easy to lose your temper, and hard to keep it. It is easy to strike and some- times very difficult to refrain from striking, and I think you will agree with me that we are most justi- fied in being proud of doing the things that are hard to do and not the things that are easy. You do not settle things quickly by taking what seems to be the quickest way to settle them. You may make the com- plication just that much the more profound and in- extricable, and, therefore, what I believe America should exalt above everything else is the sovereignty of thoughtfulness and sympathy and vision as against the grosser impulses of mankind. No nation can live without vision, and no vision will exalt a nation except the vision of real liberty and real justice and purity of conduct. ABRAHAM LINCOLN WOODROW WILSON [ADDRESS DELIVERED ON THE OCCASION OF THE ACCEPT- ANCE BY THE WAR DEPARTMENT OF THE GIFT TO THE NATION OF THE LINCOLN BIRTHPLACE FARM AT HODGENVTLLE, KENTUCKY, SEPTEMBER 4, 1916.] No more significant memorial could have been pre- sented to the nation than this. It expresses so much of what is singular and noteworthy in the history of the country ; it suggests so many of the things that we prize most highly in our life and in our system of government. How eloquent this little house within this shrine is of the vigor of democracy! There is nowhere in the land any home so remote, so humble, that it may not contain the power of mind and heart and conscience to which nations yield and history sub- mits its processes. Nature pays no tribute to aristoc- racy, subscribes to no creed of caste, renders fealty to no monarch or master of any name or kind. Genius is no snob. It does not run after titles or seek by preference the high circles of society. It affects humble company as well as great. It pays no special tribute to universities or learned societies or conven- tional standards of greatness, but serenely chooses its own comrades, its own haunts, its own cradle even, and its own life and adventure and of training. Here Abraham Lincoln 97 is proof of it. This little hut was the cradle of one of the great sons of men, a man of singular, delightful, vital genius who presently emerged upon the great stage of the nation 's history, gaunt, shy, ungainly, but dominant and majestic, a natural ruler of men, him- self inevitably the central figure of the great plot. No man can explain this, but every man can see how it demonstrates the vigor of democracy, where every door is open, in every hamlet and countryside, in city ^nd 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 explain where this man got his great heart that seemed to comprehend all mankind in its catholic and benignant sympathy, the mind that sat enthroned behind those brooding, melancholy eyes, whose vision swept many an horizon which those about him dreamed not of, that mind that comprehended what it had never seen, and understood the language of affairs with the ready ease of one to the manner born, or that nature which seemed in its varied rich- ness 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 hf^ prepared and in circumstances amidst which they an the least expected. This is a place alike of mysterj and of reassurance. 98 Democracy Today It is likely that in a society ordered otherwise than our own Lincoln could not have found himself or the path of fame and power upon which he walked serenely to his death. In this place it is right that we should remind ourselves of the solid and striking facts upon which our faith in democracy is founded. Many another man besides Lincoln has served the nation in its highest places of counsel and of action whose origins were as humble as his. Though the greatest example of the universal energy, richness, stimulation, and force of democracy, he is only one example among many. The permeating and all-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 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 any- where between beginning and end, no lack of natural sequence anywhere. Nothing really incredible hap- pened. 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 perma nently 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 signifi- cance, 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 Abraham Lincoln 99 rest of us, was put through the discipline of the world, a very rough and exacting discipline for him, an indispensable discipline for every man who would know what he is about in the midst of the world's affairs ; but his spirit got only its schooling there. It did not derive its character or its vision from the experiences which brought it to its full revelation. The test of every American must always be, not where he is, but what he is. That, also, is of the. essence of democracy, and is the moral of which this place is most gravely expressive. We would like to think of men like Lincoln and Washington 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 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 inti- mate stories that are told of him, the narratives of nearby friends, the sketches at close quarters, in which those who had the privilege of being associated 100 Democracy Today with him have tried to depict for us the very man himself ' ' in his habit as he lived ' n ; but I have nowhere found a real intimate of Lincoln's. I nowhere get the impression in any narrative or rem- iniscence that the writer had in fact penetrated to the heart of his mystery, or that any man could penetrate to the heart of it. That brooding spirit had no real familiars. I get the impression that it never spoke out in complete self -revelation, and that it could not reveal itself completely to anyone. It was a very lonely spirit that looked out from underneath those shaggy brows and comprehended men without fully communing with them, as if, in spite of all its genial efforts at comradeship, it dwelt apart, saw its visions of duty where no man looked on. There is a very holy and very terrible isolation for the conscience of every man who seeks to read the destiny in affairs for others as well as for himself, for a nation as well as for individuals. That privacy no man can intrude upon. That lonely search of the spirit for the right perhaps no man can assist. This strange child of the cabin kept company with invisible things, was born into no intimacy but that of its own silently assemb- ling and deploying thoughts. I have come here today, not to utter a eulogy on Lincoln; 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 Abraham Lincoln 101 age to age be rekindled? For these hopes must con- stantly be rekindled, and only those who live can rekindle them. The only stuff that can retain the life-giving heat is the stuff of living hearts. And the hopes of mankind cannot be kept alive by words merely, by constitutions and 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 privi' leges 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 nurtures us. A WORLD LEAGUE FOR PEACE 1 WOODROW WILSON [ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE SENATE OP THE UNITED STATES, JANUARY 22, 1917.] On the 18th of December last I addressed an identic note to the Governments of the nations now at war, requesting them to state, more definitely than they had yet been stated by either group of belligerents, the terms upon which they would deem it possible to make peace. I spoke on behalf of humanity and of the rights of all neutral nations like our own, many of whose most vital interests the war puts in constant jeopardy. The Central Powers united in a reply which stated merely that they were ready to meet their antagonists in conference to discuss terms of peace. The Entente Powers have replied much more defi- nitely and have stated, in general terms, indeed, but with sufficient definiteness to imply details, the arrangements, guarantees, and acts of reparation which they deem to be the indispensable conditions of a satisfactory settlement. We are that much nearer a definite discussion of the peace which shall end the present war. We are that much nearer the discussion of the international con- cert which must thereafter hold the world at peace. 102 A World League for Peace 103 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 man- kind, 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 obligations, to disclose to you, without reserve, the thought and purpose that have been taking form in my mind in regard to the duty of our Government in these days to come when it will be necessary to lay afresh and upon a new plan the foun- dations of peace among the nations. It is inconceivable that the people of the United States should play no part in that great enterprise. To take part in such a service will be the opportunity for which they have sought to prepare themselves by the very principles and purposes of their polity and the approved practices of their Government, ever since the days when they set up a new nation in the high and honorable hope that it might in all that it was and did show mankind the way to liberty. They cannot, in honor, withhold the service to which they are now about to be challenged. They do not wish to withhold it. But they owe it to themselves and to the other nations of the world to state the con- ditions under which they will feel free to render it. That service is nothing less than this to add their 104 Democracy Today authority and their power to the authority and force of other nations to guarantee peace and justice throughout the world. Such a settlement cannot now be long postponed. It is right that before it comes this Government should frankly formulate the condi- tions upon which it would feel justified in asking our people to approve its formal and solemn adherence to a league for peace. I am here to attempt to state those conditions. The present war must first be ended ; but we owe it to candor and to a just regard for the opinion of man- kind to say that so far as our participation in guaran- tees 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 mankind ; not merely a peace that will serve the several interests and immediate aims of the nations engaged. We shall have no voice in determining what those terms shall be, but we shall, I feel sure, have a voice in determining whether they shall be made lasting or not by the guarantees of a universal covenant, and our judgment upon what is fundamental and essen- tial as a condition precedent to permanency should be spoken now, not afterward, when it may be too late. No covenant of cooperative peace that does not include the peoples of the New World can suffice to keep the future safe against war, and yet there is only 105 one sort of peace that the peoples of America could join in guaranteeing. The elements of that peace must be elements that engage the confidence and satisfy the principles of the American Governments, elements consistent with their political faith and the practical convictions which the peoples of America have once for all embraced and undertaken to defend. I do not mean to say that any American Govern- ment 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, what- ever they might be. I only take it for granted that mere terms of peace between the belligerents will not satisfy even the belligerents themselves. 2 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 in 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 determine whether it is a peace for which such a guar- antee can be secured. The question upon which the whole future peace and policy of the world depends is this: 106 Democracy Today 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, 3 who will guarantee, who can guarantee, the stable equilibrium of the new arrangement ? Only a tranquil Europe can 'be a stable Europe. There must be not only a balance of power, but a community of power; not organized rivalries, but an organized common peace. Fortunately, we have received very explicit assur- Lnces on this point. The statesmen of both of the groups of nations now arrayed against one another have said, in terms that could not be misinterpreted, that it was no part of the purpose they had in mind to crush their antagonists. But the implications of these assurances may not be equally clear to all may not be the same on both sides of the water. I think it will be serviceable if I attempt to set forth what we understand them to be. They imply, first of all, that it must be a peace without victory. It is not pleasant to say this. I beg that I may be permitted to put my own interpre- tation upon it and that it may be understood that no other interpretation was in my thought. 4 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 humil- iation, under duress, at an intolerable sacrifice, and would leave a sting, a resentment, a bitter memory, 107 upon which terms of peace would rest, not per- manently, but only as upon quicksand. Only a peace between equals can last ; only a peace the very principle of which is equality and a common participation in a common benefit. The right state of mind, the right feeling between nations, is as neces- sary for a lasting peace as is the just settlement of questions of territory or of racial and national alle- giance. 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, be- tween those that are powerful and those that are weak. 5 Bight 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 ordinary peaceful and legitimate devel- opment of the peoples themselves. But no one asks or expects any thing more than an equality of rights. Mankind is looking now for freedom of life, not for equipoises of power. And there is a deeper thing involved than even equality of rights among organized nations. No peace can last, or ought to last, which does not recog- nize and accept the principle that Governments derive all their just powers from the consent of the gov- erned, 6 and that no right anywhere exists to hand 108 Democracy Today people about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were property. I take it for granted, for instance, if I may venture upon a single example, that statesmen everywhere are agreed that there should be a united, independent, and autonomous Poland, and that henceforth invio- lable 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 indispensable 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 affections or the convictions of mankind. The ferment of spirit of whole populations will fight subtly and constantly against it, and all the world will sympathize. The world can be at peace only if its life is stable, and there can be no stability where the will is in rebellion, where there is not tranquillity of spirit and a sense of justice, of freedom, and of right. So far as practicable, moreover, every great people now struggling toward a full development of its re- sources and of its powers should be assured a direct A World League for Peace 109 outlet to the great highways of the sea. Where this cannot be done by the cession of territory, it can no doubt be done by the neutralization of direct rights of way under the general guarantee which will assure the peace itself. With a right comity of arrangement no nation need be shut away from free access to the open paths of the world 's commerce. And the paths of the sea must alike in law and in fact be free. The freedom of the seas is the sine qua non of peace, equality, and cooperation. 7 No doubt a somewhat radical reconsideration of many of the rules of international practice hitherto sought to be established may be necessary in order to make the seas indeed free and common in practically all circumstances for the use of mankind, but the motive for such changes is convincing and compelling. There can be no trust or intimacy between the peoples of the world without them. The free, constant, unthreatened intercourse of nations is an essential part of the process of peace and of development. It need not be difficult to define or to secure, the freedom of the seas if the Governments of the world sincerely desire to come to an agreement concerning it. It is a problem closely connected with the limita- tion of naval armaments and the cooperation of the navies of the world in keeping the seas at once free and safe. And the question of limiting naval arma- ments opens the wider and perhaps more difficult question of the limitation of armies and of all pro- grams of military preparation. 110 ^Democracy Today Difficult and delicate as these questions are, they must be faced with the utmost candor and decided in a spirit of real accommodation if peace is to come with healing in its wings and come to stay. Peace cannot be had without concession and sacrifice. There can be no sense of safety and equality among the na- tions if great preponderating armies are henceforth to continue here and there to be built up and main- tained. 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 arm- aments, whether on land or sea, is the most immedi- ately 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 among 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 speak- ing 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 program of liberty ? A World League for Peace 111 I would fain believe that I am speaking for the silent mass of mankind everywhere who have as yet had no place or opportunity to speak their real hearts out concerning the death and ruin they see to have come already upon the persons and the homes they hold most dear. And in holding out the expectation that the people and Government of the United States will join the other civilized nations of the world in guaranteeing the permanence of peace upon such terms as I have named, I speak with the greater boldness and confi- dence 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 Mon- roe as the doctrine of the world; 8 that no nation should seek to extend its policy over any other nation or people, but that every people should be left free to determine its own policy, its own way of development, unhindered, unthreatened, unafraid, the little along with the great and powerful. I am proposing that all nations henceforth avoid entangling alliances which would draw them into com- petitions 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 en- tangling alliance in a concert of power. When all unite to act in the same sense and with the same pur- pose, all act in the common interest and are free to 112 Democracy Today live their own lives under a common protection. I am proposing government by the consent of the governed; that freedom of the seas which in inter- national conference after conference representatives of the United States have urged with the eloquence of those who are the convinced disciples of liberty; and that moderation of armaments which makes of armies and navies a power for order merely, not an instrument of aggression or of selfish violence. These are American principles, American policies. "We can stand for no others. And they are also the principles and policies of forward-looking men and women everywhere, of every modern nation, of every enlightened community. They are the principles of mankind, and must prevail. 9 MESSAGE TO CONGRESS WOODROW WILSON [DELIVERED BEFORE CONGRESS FEBRUARY 3, 1917, ON THE OCCASION OF SEVERING DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS WITH GERMANY.] The Imperial German Government, on the 31st of January, announced to this Government and to the Governments of the other neutral nations that on and after the first day of February, the present month, it would adopt a policy with regard to the use of sub- marines against all shipping seeking to pass through certain designated areas of the high seas to which it is clearly my duty to call your attention. Let me remind the Congress that on the 18th of April last, in view of the sinking on the 24th of March of the cross-Channel 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 German 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 uni- 113 114 Democracy Today /ersally recognized dictates of humanity, the Government of the United States is at last forced to the conclusion that there is but one course it can pursue. Unless the German Government should now immediately declare and effect an abandonment of its present methods of submarine warfare against passenger and freight-carrying vessels the Government of the United States can have no choice but to sever diplomatic relations with the German Empire altogether. In reply to this declaration the German Govern- ment gave this Government the following assurances: The German Government is prepared to do its utmost to con- fine the operations of war for the rest of its duration to the fighting forces of the belligerents, thereby insuring the freedom of the seas, a principle upon which the German Government believes, now as before, to be in agreement with the Government of the United States. The German Government, guided by this idea, notifies the Government of the 'United States that the German naval forces have received the following orders: In accordance with the general principles of visit and search and destruction of merchant vessels recognized by international law, such vessels, both within and without the area declared as naval war zone, shall not be sunk without warning and without saving human lives, unless these ships attempt to escape or offer resistance. But neutrals cannot expect that Germany, forced to fight for her existence, shall, for the sake of neutral interest, restrict the use of an effective weapon if her enemy is permitted to con- tinue to apply at will methods of warfare violating the rules of international law. Such a demand would be incompatible with the character of neutrality, and the German Government is con- vinced that the Government of the United States does not think of making such a demand, knowing that the Government of the United States has repeatedly declared that it is determined to restore the principle of the freedom of the seas from whatever Barter it has been violated. Message to Congress 115 To this the Government of the United States replied on the 8th of May, accepting, of course, the assur- ances given, but adding : The Government of the United States feels it necessary to state that it takes it for granted that the Imperial German Government does not intend to imply that the maintenance of its newly announced policy is in any way contingent upon the course or result of diplomatic negotiations between the Govern- ment of the United States and any other belligerent Govern- ment, notwithstanding the fact that certain passages in the Imperial Government 's note of the 4th instant might appear to be susceptible to 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. Eesponsibility in such matters is single, not joint ; absolute, not relative. To this note of the 8th of May the Imperial Ger- man Government made no reply. On the 31st of January, the Wednesday of the present week, the German Ambassador handed to the Secretary of State, along with a formal note, a mem- orandum which contains the following statement : The Imperial Government, therefore, does not doubt that the Government of the United States will understand the situation thus forced upon Germany by the Entente Allies ' brutal methods of war and by their determination to destroy the Central Powers, and that tihe Government of the United States will further realize that the now openly disclosed intentions of the Entente Allies give back to Germany the freedom of action which she 116 Democracy Today reserved in her note addressed to the Government of the United States on May 4, 1916. Under these circumstances Germany will meet the illegal measures of her enemies by forcibly preventing after February 1, 1917, in a zone around Great Britain, France, Italy, and in the eastern Mediterranean all navigation, that of neutrals included, from and to France, etc. All ships met within the zone will be sunk. I think that you will agree with me that, in view of this declaration, which suddenly and without prior intimation of any kind deliberately withdraws the solemn assurance given in the Imperial Government's note of the 4th of May, 1916, this Government has no alternative consistent with the dignity and honor of the United States but to take the course which, in its note of the 18th of April, 1916, it announced that it would take in the event that the German Government did not declare and effect an abandonment of the methods of submarine warfare which it was then em- ploying and to which it now purposes again to resort. I have, therefore, directed the Secretary of State to announce to his Excellency the German ambassa- dor that all diplomatic relations between the United States and the German Empire are severed, and that the American ambassador at Berlin will immediately be withdrawn, and, in accordance with this decision, to hand to his Excellency his passports. Notwithstanding this unexpected action of the Ger- man Government, this sudden and deeply deplorable renunciation of its assurances, given this Government at one of the most critical moments of tension in the relations of the two Governments, I refuse to believe Message to Congress 117 that it is the intention of the German authorities to do in fact what they have warned us they will feel at liberty to do. I cannot bring myself to believe that they will indeed pay no regard to the ancient friendship between their people and our own or to the solemn obligations which have been exchanged between them and destroy American ships and take the lives of American citizens in the wilful prosecu- tion of the ruthless naval program they have announced their intention to adopt. Only actual overt acts on their part can make me believe it even now. If this inveterate confidence on my part in the so- briety and prudent foresight of their purpose should unhappily prove unfounded, if American ships and American lives should, in fact, be sacrified by their naval commanders in heedless contravention of the just and reasonable understandings of international law and the obvious dictates of humanity, I shall take the liberty of coming again before the Congress to ask that authority be given me to use any means that may be necessary for the protection of our seamen and our people in the prosecution of their peaceful and legitimate errands on the high seas. I can do nothing less. I take it for granted that all neutral Govern- ments will take the same course. I do not desire any hostile conflict with the Imperial German Government. We are the sincere friends of the German people and earnestly desire to remair at peace with the Government which speaks for them. We shall not believe that they are hostile to us until 118 Democracy Today we are obliged to believe it; and we purpose nothing more than the reasonable defense of the undoubted rights of our people. We wish to serve no selfish ends. We seek merely to stand true alike in thought and in action to the immemorial principles of our people which I sought to express in my address to the Senate only two weeks ago seek merely to vindicate our right to liberty and justice and an unmolested life. These are 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. REQUEST FOR A GRANT OF POWER WOODROW WILSON [MESSAGE TO THE CONGRESS, FEBRUARY 26, 1917. J I have again asked the privilege of addressing you because we are moving through critical times, during which it seems to me to be my duty to keep in close touch with the Houses of Congress so that neither counsel nor action shall run at cross-purposes be- tween us. On the 3d of February I officially informed you of the sudden and unexpected action of the Imperial German Government in declaring its intention to disregard the promises it had made to this Govern- ment in April last and undertake immediate subma- rine operations against all commerce, whether of bel- ligerents or of neutrals, that should seek to approach Great Britain and Ireland, the Atlantic coasts of Europe, or the harbors of the eastern Mediterranean, and to conduct those operations without regard to the established restrictions of international practice, with- out regard to any considerations of humanity, even, which might interfere with their object. That policy was forthwith put into practice. It has now been in active exhibition for nearly four weeks. Its practical results are not fully disclosed. The commerce of other neutral nations is suffering severely, but not, perhaps, very much more severely 119 120 Democracy Today than it was already suffering before the 1st of Febru- ary, when the new policy of the Imperial Government was put into operation. We have asked the cooperation of the other neutral Governments to prevent these depredations, but I fear none of them has thought it wise to join us in any common course of action. Our own commerce has suffered, is suffering, rather in apprehension than in fact, rather because so many of our ships are timidly keeping to their home ports than because American ships have been sunk. Two American vessels have been sunk, the Housa- tonic and the Lyman M. Law. The case of the Hous- atonic, which was carrying foodstuffs consigned to a London firm, was essentially like the case of the Frye, in which, it will be recalled, the German Government admitted its liability for damages, and the lives of the crew, as in the case of the Frye, were safeguarded with reasonable care. The case of the Law, which was carrying lemon-box staves to Palermo, disclosed a ruthlessness of method which deserves grave condemnation, but was accom- panied by no circumstances which might not have been expected at any time in connection with the use of the submarine against merchantmen as the Ger- man Government has used it. In sum, therefore, the situation we find ourselves in with regard to the actual conduct of the German submarine warfare against commerce and its effects upon our own ships and people is substantially the same that it was when I addressed you on the 3d of Request for Grant of Power 121 February, except for the tying up of our shipping in our own ports because of the unwillingness of our ship-owners to risk their vessels at sea without insur- ance or adequate protection, and the very serious congestion of our commerce which has resulted, a con- gestion 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 expressions of purpose on the part of the German press and the German authorities which have increased rather than lessened the impression that if our ships and our people are spared it will be because of fortu- nate circumstances or because the commanders of the German submarines which they may happen to encounter exercise an unexpected discretion and restraint, rather than because of the instructions under which those commanders are acting. It would be foolish to deny that the situation is fraught with the gravest possibilities and dangers. No thoughtful man can fail to see that the necessity for definite actim may come at any time, if we are in fact, and not in word merely, to defend our ele- mentary rights as a neutral nation. It would be most imprudent to be unprepared. 122 Democracy Today 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 lim- itation, 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 author- ity which I may need at any moment to exercise. No doubt I already possess that authority without special warrant of law by the plain implication of my con- stitutional duties and powers, but I prefer in the present circumstances not to act upon general impli- cation. 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 defend our commerce and the lives of our people in the midst of the present trying circumstances with discretion, but with clear and steadfast purpose. Only the method and the extent remain to be chosen upon the occasion, if occasion should indeed arise. Since it has unhappily proved impossible to safe- guard our neutral rights by diplomatic means against the unwarranted infringements they are suffering at the hands of Germany, there may be no recourse but to armed neutrality, which we shall know how to maintain and for which there is abundant American precedent. Request for Grant of Power 123 It is devoutly to be hoped that it will not be neces- sary to put armed forces 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 anxious that the people of the nations at war also should understand and not mistrust us. I hope that I need give no further proofs and assur- ances than I have already given throughout nearly three years of anxious patience that I am the friend of peace, and mean to preserve it for America so long as I am able. I am not now proposing or contemplating war, or any steps that lead to it. I merely request that you will accord me by your own vote and definite bestowal the means and the authority to safeguard in practice the right of a great people, who are at peace and who are desirous of exercising none but the rights, of peace, to follow the pursuit of peace in quietness and good-will rights recognized time out of mind by all the civilized nations of the world. No course of my choosing or of theirs will lead to war. War can come only by the wilful acts and ag- gressions of others. You will understand why I can make no definite proposals or forecasts of action now, and must ask for your supporting authority in the most general terms. The form in which action may become nec- essary cannot vet be foreseen. I believe that the 124 Democracy Today people will be willing to trust me to act with restraint, with prudence, and in the true spirit of amity and good faith that they have themselves displayed throughout these trying months; and it is in that belief that I request that you will authorize me to supply our merchant-ships with defensive arms should that become necessary, and with the means of using them, and to employ any other instrumentalities or methods that may be necessary and adequate to pro- tect our ships and our people in their legitimate and peaceful pursuits of the seas. I request also that you will grant me at the same time, along with the powers I ask, a sufficient credit to enable me to provide adequate means of protection where they are lacking, including adequate insurance against the present war risks. I have spoken of our commerce and of the legitimate errands of our people on the seas, but you will not be misled as to my main thought, the thought that lies beneath these phrases and gives them dignity and weight. . It is not of material interest merely that we are thinking. It is, rather, of fundamental human rights, chief of all the right of life itself. I am 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 funda- mental 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 protection which mankind has sought to throw Request for Grant of Power 125 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 labor which ministers to their sustenance. We are speaking of no selfish material rights, but of rights which our hearts support, and whose found- ation is that righteous passion for justice upon which all law, all structures alike of family, of state, and of mankind must rest, and 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. WAR MESSAGE WOODROW WILSON [ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE CONGRESS, APRIL 2, 1917.] I have called the Congress into extraordinary ses- sion because there are serious, very serious, choices of policy to be made, and made immediately, which it vas neither right nor constitutionally permissible 1 that I should assume the responsibility of making. On the 3d of February last I officially laid before you the extraordinary announcement of the Imperial German Government that on and after the first day of February it was its purpose to put aside all re- straints of law or of humanity and use its submarines to sink every vessel that sought to approach either the ports of Great Britain and Ireland or the western coasts of Europe or any of the ports controlled by the enemies of Germany within the Mediterranean. 2 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 3 that passenger-boats should not be sunk, and that due warning would be given to all other vessels which its submarines might seek to destroy where no resistance was offered or escape attempted, and care taken that their crews 126 "War Message 127 were given at least a fair chance to save their lives in their open boats. The precautions taken were meager and haphazard enough, as was proved in distressing instance after instance in the progress of the cruel and unmanly business, but a certain degree of restraint was ob- served. 4 The new policy has swept every restriction aside. Vessels of every kind, whatever their flag, their char- acter, their cargo, their destination, their errand, have been ruthlessly sent to the bottom without warning, and without thought of help or mercy for those on board, the vessels of friendly neutrals along with those of belligerents. Even hospital-ships and ships carry- ing relief to the sorely bereaved and stricken people of Belgium, 5 though the latter were provided with safe conduct through the proscribed areas by the Ger- man Government itself and were distinguished by un- mistakable marks of identity, have been sunk with the same reckless lack of compassion or of principle. I was for a little while unable to believe that such things would, in fact, be done by any Government that had hitherto subscribed to the humane practices of civilized nations. International law had its origin in the attempt to set up some law which would be respected and observed upon the seas, where no nation had right of dominion, and where lay the free high- ways of the world. By painful stage after stage has that law been built up with meager enough results, indeed, after all was accomplished that could be ac- complished, but always with a clear view at least of 128 Democracy Today what the heart and conscience of mankind demanded. This minimum 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 thinking of the loss JL property in- volved, immense and serious as that is, but only of the wanton and wholesale destruction of the lives of non- combatants, men, women, and children engaged in pursuits which have always, even in the darkest periods of modern history, 6 been deemed innocent and legitimate. Property can be paid for ; the lives of peaceful and innocent people cannot be. The present German warfare against commerce is a warfare against mankind. It is a war against all nations. American ships have been sunk, 7 American lives taken, 8 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 dis- crimination. The challenge is to all mankind. Each nation must decide for itself how it will meet it. 9 The choice we make for ourselves must be made with a moderation of counsel and a temperateness of judg- ment befitting our- character and our motives as a Nation. We must put excited feeling away. War Message 129 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 26th of February last I thought that it would suffice to assert our neutral rights with arms, our right to use the seas against unlawful interference, our right to keep our people safe against unlawful violence. But armed neutrality, it now appears, is impracticable. Because submarines are in effect outlaws when used as the German submarines have been used against merchant shipping, it is impossible to defend ships against their attacks as the law of nations has assumed that mer- chantmen would defend themselves against privateers or cruisers, visible craft giving chase upon the open sea. It is common prudence in such circumstances, grim necessity, indeed, to endeavor to destroy them before they have shown their own intention. They must be dealt with upon sight, if dealt with at all. The German Government denies the right of neu- trals to use arms at all within the areas of the sea which it has proscribed, even in the defense of rights which no modern publicist has ever before questioned their right to defend. The intimation is conveyed that the armed guards which we have placed on our merchant-ships will be treated as beyond the pale of law and subject to be dealt with as pirates would be. Armed neutrality is ineffectual enough at best; in such circumstances and in the face of such pre- 130 Democracy Today tensions it is worse than ineffectual ; it is likely to pro- duce 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 inca- pable of making : we will not choose the path of sub- mission and suffer the most sacred rights of our nation and our people to be ignored or violated. 10 The wrongs against which we now array ourselves are not com- mon wrongs; they reach out to the very roots of human life. With a profound sense of the solemn and even tragical character of the step I am taking and of the grave responsibilities which it involves, but in unhes- itating 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. 11 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 Ger- man Empire to terms and end the war. What this will involve is clear. It will involve the utmost practicable cooperation in counsel and action with the Governments now at war with Germany, and as incident to that the extension to those Governments of the most liberal financial credits in order that our resources may so far as possible be added to theirs. War Message 131 It will involve the organization and mobilization of all the material resources of the country to supply the materials of war and serve the incidental needs of the nation in the most abundant and yet the most economical and efficient way possible. It will involve the immediate full equipment of the navy in all respects, but particularly in supplying it with the best means of dealing with the enemy's sub- marines. It will involve the immediate addition to the armed forces of the United States already provided for by law in case of war at least 500,000 men, who should, in my opinion, be chosen upon the principle of uni- versal liability to service, and also the authorization of subsequent additional increments of equal force so soon as they may be needed and can be handled in training. It will involve also, of course, the granting of ade- quate credits to the Government, sustained, I hope, so far as they can equitably be sustained by the pres- ent generation, by well-conceived taxation. I say sus- tained 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. 132 Democracy Today In carrying out the measures by which these things are to be accomplished we should keep constantly in mind the wisdom of interfering as little as possible in our own preparation and in the equipment of our own military forces with the duty for it will be a very practical duty of supplying the nations already at war with Germany with the materials which they can obtain only from us or by our assistance. They are in the field and we should help them in every way to be effective there. 12 I shall take the liberty of suggesting, through the several executive departments of the Government, for the consideration of your committees measures for the accomplishment of the several objects I have men- tioned. 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 safe- guarding the nation will most directly fall. While we do these things, these deeply momentous things, let us be very clear and make very clear to all the world what our motives and our objects are. My own thought has not been driven from its habitual and normal course by the unhappy events of the last two months, and I do not believe that the thought of the nation has been altered or clouded by them. I have exactly the same thing in mind now that I had in mind when I addressed the Senate on the 22d of January last ; the same that I had in mind when I addressed the Congress on the 3d of February and on the 26th of February. War Message 133 Our object now, as then, is to vindicate the princi- ples of peace and the justice in the life of the world as against selfish and autocratic power and to set up amongst the really free and self-governed peoples of the world such a concert of purpose and of action as will henceforth insure the observance of those prin- ciples. 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 free- dom lies in the existence of autocratic Governments 13 backed by organized force which is controlled wholly by their will, not by the will of their people. We have seen the last of neutrality in such circumstances. We are at the beginning of an age in which it will be insisted that the same standards of conduct and of responsibility for wrong done shall be observed among nations and their Governments that are observed among the individual citizens of civilized states. We have no quarrel with the German people. We have no feeling toward them but one of sympathy and friendship. It was not upon their impulse that their Government acted in entering this war. 14 It was not with their previous knowledge or approval. 15 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 16 or little groups of ambitious men who were accustomed to use their fellow-men as pawns and tools. 134 Democracy Today Self-governed nations do not fill their neighbor 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. 17 Such designs can be successfully worked only under cover and where no one has the right to ask questions. Cunningly contrived plans of deception or aggres- sion, carried, it may be, from generation to genera- tion, can be worked out and kept from the light only within the privacy of courts or behind the carefully guarded confidences of a narrow and privileged class. They arc happily impossible where public opinion commands and insists upon full information concern- ing all the nation's affairs. A steadfast concert for peace can never be main- tained except by a partnership of democratic nations. No autocratic Government could be trusted to keep faith within it or observe its covenants. It must be a league of honor, a partnership of opinion. Intrigue would eat its vitals away, the plottings of inner circles who could plan what they would and render account to no one would be a corruption seated at its very heart. Only free peoples can hold their purpose and their honor steady to a common end and prefer the interests of mankind to any narrow interest of their own. 18 Does not every American feel that assurance has been added to our hope for the future peace of the world by the wonderful and heartening things that have been happening within the last few weeks in Russia ? War Message 135 Russia was known by those who know it best to have been always in fact democratic at heart, in all the vital habits of her thought, in all the intimate relation- ships of her people that spoke their natural instinct, their habitual attitude toward life. Autocracy that crowned the summit of her political structure, long as it had stood and terrible as was the reality of its power, was not in fact Russian in origin, in character or purpose ; 19 and now it has been shaken off and the great, generous Russian people have been added, in all their native majesty and might, to the forces that are fighting for freedom in the world, for justice and for peace. Here is a fit partner for a League of Honor. One of the things that have served to convince us that the Prussian autocracy was not and could never be our friend is that from the very outset of the pres- ent war it has filled our unsuspecting communities and even our offices of Government with spies and set criminal intrigues everywhere afoot against our na- tional unity of council, our peace within and without, our industries and our commerce. 20 Indeed, it is now evident that its spies were here even before the war began, and it is, unhappily, not a matter of conjecture, but a fact proved in our courts of justice, that the intrigues which have more than once come perilously near to disturbing the peace and dislocating the industries of the country have been carried on at the instigation, with the support, and even under the personal direction, of official 136 Democracy Today agents of the Imperial German Government accred- ited to the Government of the United States. Even in checking these things and trying to extir- pate 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 pur- pose of the German people toward us (who were, no doubt, as ignorant of them as we ourselves were), but only in the selfish designs of a Government that did what it pleased and told its people nothing. But they have played their part in serving to con- vince us at last that that Government entertains no real friendship for us and means to act against our peace and security at its convenience. 21 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. 22 We are accepting this challenge of hostile purpose because we know that in such a Government, follow- ing such methods, we can never have a friend; and that in the presence of its organized power, always lying in wait to accomplish we know not what pur- pose, there can be no assured security for the demo- cratic Governments of the world. 23 We are now about to accept the gage of battle with this natural foe to liberty, and shall, if necessary, spend the whole force of the nation to check and nul- lify its pretensions and its power. We are glad, now that we see the facts with no veil of false pretense about them, to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its peoples, the War Message 137 German people included; for the rights of nations great and small and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and of obedience. The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the trusted foundations of polit- ical liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the cham- pions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of nations can make them. Just because we fight without rancor and without selfish objects, seeking nothing for ourselves but what we shall wish to share with all free peoples, we shall, I feel confident, conduct our operations as belliger- ents without passion and ourselves observe with proud punctilio the principles of right and of fair play we profess to be fighting for.* 4 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 pur right and our honor. The Austro-Hungarian Government has indeed avowed its unqualified indorsement and acceptance of the reckless and lawless submarine warfare 25 adopted now without disguise by the Imperial German Govern- ment, and it has therefore not been possible for this Government to receive Count Tarnowski, the ambas- sador recently accredited to this Government by the 138 Democn>- y Today Imperial and Royal Government of Austro-Hungary ; but that Government has not actually engaged in warfare against citizens of the United States on the seas, and I take the liberty, for the present at least, of postponing a discussion of our relations with the authorities at Vienna. We enter this war only where we are clearly forced into it because there are no other means of defending our rights. It will be all the easier for us to conduct ourselves as belligerents in a high spirit of right and fairness because we act without animus, not in enmity toward a people or with the desire to bring any injury or dis- advantage upon them, but only in armed opposition to an irresponsible Government which has thrown aside all considerations of humanity and of right and is running amuck. "We are, let me say again, the sincere friends of the German people, and shall desire nothing so much as the early re-establishment oi intimate relations of mutual advantage between us, however hard it may be for them, for the time being, tc 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. 26 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 War Messaged 139 share our life, and we shall be proud to prove it to- ward all who are, in fact, loyal to their neighbors and to the Government in the hour of test. They are, most of them, as true and loyal Americans as if they had never known any other fealty or allegiance. They will be prompt to stand with us in rebuking and restraining the few who may be of a different mind and purpose. If there should be disloyalty it will be dealt with with a firm hand of stern repression j 27 but, if it lifts its head at all, it will lift it only here and there and without countenance except from a law- less and malignant few. It is a distressing and oppressive duty, gentlemen of the Congress, which I have performed in thus ad- dressing you. There are, it may be, many months of fiery trial and sacrifice ahead of us. It is a fearful thing to lead this great, peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civiliza- tion itself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts 28 for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free. To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our for- tunes, 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 140 Democracy Today blool and her might for the principles that gave her birtli and happiness and the peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no other. 29 FLAG DAY ADDRESS WOODROW WILSON [ADDRESS DELIVERED AT WASHINGTON, D. c., ON FLAG DAY, JUNE 14, 1917.] We meet to celebrate Flag Day because this flag which we honor and under which we serve is the emblem of our unity, our power, our thought and purpose as a nation. It has no other character than that which we give it from generation to generation. The choices are ours. It floats in majestic silence above the ho^s that execute those choices, whether in peace or in war. And yet, though silent, it speaks to us, speaks to us of the past, of the men and women who went before us and of the records they wrote upon it. We celebrate the day of its birth ; and from its birth until now it has witnessed a great his- tory, 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 unaccustomed thing? For something for which it has never sought the fire before? Amer- ican armies were never before sent across the seas. 141 142 Democracy Today Why are they sent now? For same new purpose, for which this great flag has never been carried before, or for some old, familiar, heroic purpose for which it has seen men, its own men, die on every battlefield upon which Americans have borne arms since the Revolution? These are questions which must be answered. We are Americans. We in our turn serve America, and can serve her with no private purpose. We must use her flag as she has always used it. We are ac- countable at the bar of history and must plead in utter frankness what purpose it is we seek to serve. It is plain enough how we were forced into the war. The extraordinary insults and aggressions of the Imperial German Government left us no self- respecting choice but to take up arms in defense of our rights as a free people and of our honor as a sovereign government. The military masters of Germany denied us the right to IDC 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 and sought to draw our own citizens from their allegiance, and some of those agents were men connected with the offi'cial Embassy of the German Government itself here in our own Capital. 1 They sought by violence to destroy our industries and arrest our commerce. 2 They tried to incite Mexico to take up arms against us and to draw Japan into a hostile alliance with Flag Day Address 143 her, and that, not by indirection, but by direct suggestion from the Foreign Office in Berlin. 3 They impudently denied us the use of the high seas and repeatedly executed their threat that they would send to their death any of our people who ventured to approach the coasts of Europe. 4 And many of our own people were corrupted. 5 Men began to look upon their own neighbors with suspicion and to wonder in their hot resentment and surprise whether there was any community in which hostile intrigue did not lurk. What great nation in such 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 our- selves 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. 6 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. 7 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. 144 Democracy Today 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, women, and children of tike blood and frame as themselves, for whom gov- ernments 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 instruments of domina- tion. 8 Their purpose has long been avowed. The statesmen of other nations, to whom that purpose was incredible, 9 paid little attention ; regarded what German professors expounded in their classrooms and German writers set forth to the world as the goal of German policy as rather the dream of minds detached from practical affairs, as preposterous pri- vate conceptions of German destiny, than as the actual plans of responsible rulers; but the rulers of Germany themselves knew all the while what con- crete plans, what well advanced intrigues lay back of what the professors and the writers were saying, and were glad to go forward unmolested, 10 filling the thrones of Balkan states with German princes, 11 put- ting German officers at the service of Turkey to drill her armies 12 and make interest with her govern- ment, developing plans of sedition and rebellion in India and Egypt, setting their fires in Persia. 13 The demands made by Austria upon Servia were a mere Flag Day Address 145 single step 14 in a plan which compassed Europe and Asia, from Berlin to Bagdad. 15 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 become part of the central German Empire, absorbed and dominated by the same forces and influences that had originally cemented the German states themselves. The dream had its heart at Berlin. It could have had a heart nowhere else! 10 It rejected the idea of solidarity of race entirely. The choice of peoples played no part in it at all. It contemplated binding together racial and political units which could be kept together only by force, Czechs, Magyars, Croats, Serbs, Rouman- ians, Turks, Armenians, the proud states of Bo- hemia and Hungary, the stout little commonwealths of the Balkans, the indomitable Turks, the subtle peoples of the East. 17 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 revolution. 18 146 Democracy Today 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 Berlin's dictation ever since the war began. Its people now desire peace, but cannot have it until leave is granted from Ber- lin. 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 themselves, and the guns of German warships lying in the harbor at Constanti- nople remind Turkish statesmen every day that they have no choice but to take their orders from Berlin. 19 From Hamburg to the Persian Gulf the net is spread. Is it not easy to understand the eagerness for peace that has been manifested from Berlin ever since the snare was set and sprung? Peace, peace, peace has been the talk of her Foreign Office for now a year and more; not peace upon her own ini- tiative, 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 Govern- ment would be willing to accept. 20 Flag Da/y Address 147 That government has other valuable pawns in its hands besides those I have mentioned. It still holds a valuable part of Prance, 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. 21 The military masters under whom Germany is bleeding see very clearly to what point Fate has brought them. If tiiey 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 en- tered their hearts. They have but one chance to perpetuate their military power or even their con- trolling political influence. If they can secure peace now with the immense advantages still in their hands which they have up to this point apparently gained, they will have justified themselves before the German people : they will have gained by fore what they promised to gain by it: an immense ex- pansion 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 accountable to the people themselves will be set up in Germany as it 148 Democracy Today has been in England, in the United States, in France, and in all the great countries of the modern time except Germany. If they succeed they are safe and Germany and the world are undone; if they fail Germany is saved and the world will be at peace, [f 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. 22 Do you not now understand the new intrigue, 23 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 peo- ples and the self-government of nations; for they see what immense strength the forces of justice and of liberalism are gathering out of this war. They are employing liberals in their enterprise. They are using men, in Germany and without, as their spokes- men whom they have hitherto despised and op- pressed, using them for their own destruction, Socialists, 24 the leaders of labor, the thinkers they have hitherto sought to silence. Let them once succeed and these men, now their tools, will be ground to powder beneath the weight of the great military empire they will have set up; the revolutionists in Russia will be cut off from all succor or cooperation in western Europe and a counter revolution fostered Flag Day Address 149 and supported ; Germany herself will lose her chance of freedom; and all Europe will afm for the next, the final struggle. The sinister intrigue is being no less actively con- ducted in this country than in Russia and in every country in Europe to which the agents and dupes of the Imperial German Government can get access. That government has many spokesmen here, in places high and low. They have learned discretion. They keep within the law. It is opinion they utter now, not sedition. They proclaim the liberal pur- poses of their masters; declare this a foreign war which can touch America with no danger to either her lands or her institutions; set England at the center of the stage and talk of her ambition to assert economic dominion throughout the world; appeal to our ancient tradition of isolation in the politics of the nations ; and seek to undermine the government with false professions of loyalty to its principles. But they will make no headway. The false betray themselves always in every accent. It is only friends and partisans of the German Government whom we have already identified who utter these thinly disguised disloyalties. The facts are patent to all the world, and nowhere are they more plainly seen than in the United States, where we are accus- tomed 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 150 Democracy Today for the peoples who live upon it and have made it their own, the German people themselves included; and that with us rests the choice to break through all these hypocrisies and patent cheats and masks of brute force and help set the world free, or else stand aside and let it be dominated a long age through by sheer weight of arms and the arbitrary choices of self-constituted masters, by the nation which can maintain the biggest armies and the most irresistible armaments, a power to which the world has afforded no parallel and in the face of which political freedom must wither and perish. For us there is but one choice. We have made it. Woe be to the man or group of men that seeks to stand in our way in this day of high resolution when every principle we hold dearest is to be vindicated and made secure for the salvation of the nations. We are ready to plead at the bar of history, and our flag shall wear a new luster. Once more we shall make good with our lives and fortunes the great faith to which we were born, and a new glory shall shine in the face of our people. REPLY TO THE POPE WOODROW WILSON WASHINGTON, D. C., AUGUST, 27, 1917. To His HOLINESS BENEDICTUS XV., POPE: In acknowledgment of the communication of your Holiness to the belligerent peoples, dated Aug. 1, 1917, the President of the United States requests me to transmit the following reply: Every heart that has not been blinded and hard- ened 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 persua- sively 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. The 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 con- cert of nations based upon an acceptance of the principle of arbitration; that by a similar concert freedom of the seas be established; and that the 151 152 Democracy Today territorial claims of France and Italy, the perplex- ing problems of the Balkan States, and the restitu- tion of Poland be left to such conciliatory adjust- ments as may be possible in the new temper of such a peace, due regard being paid to the aspirations of the peoples whose political fortunes and affiliations will be involved. It is manifest that no part of this program can be successfully carried out unless the restitution of the status quo ante furnishes a firm and satisfactory basis for it. The object of this war is to deliver the free peoples of the world from the menace and the actual power of a vast military establishment con- trolled by an irresponsible Government which, hav- ing secretly planned to dominate the world, pro- ceeded 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 international action and honor; which chose its own time for the war; delivered its blow fiercely and suddenly; stopped at no barrier either of law or of mercy; swept a whole continent within the tide of blood not the blood of soldiers only, but the blood of innocent women and children also and of the 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 Reply to the Pope 153 that the history of the rest of the world is no longer left to its handling. To deal with such a power by way of peace upon the plan proposed by his Holiness the Pope would, so far as we can see, involve a recuperation of its strength and a renewal of its policy ; would make it necessary to create a permanent hostile combination of nations against the German people, who are its instruments; and would result in abandoning the new-born Russia to the intrigue, the manifold subtle interference, and the certain counter-revolution which would be attempted by all the malign influ- ences to which the German Government has of late accustomed the world. Can peace be based upon a restitution of its power or upon any word of honor it could pledge in a treaty of settlement and accom- modation ? Responsible statesmen must now everywhere see, if they never saw before, that no peace can rest securely upon political or economic restrictions meant to benefit some nations and cripple or embarrass others, upon vindictive action of any sort, or any kind of revenge or deliberate injury. The Amer- ican people have suffered intolerable wrongs at the hands of the Imperial German Government, but they desire no reprisals 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 free- 154 Democracy Today dom and security and self-government and to a par- ticipation upon fair terms in the economic oppor- tunities of the world, the German people of course included if they will accept equality and not seek domination. The test, therefore, of every plan of peace is this : Is it based upon the faith of all the peoples involved or merely upon the word of an ambitious and intrig- uing Government, on the one hand, and of a group of free peoples on the other? This is the 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 advan- tage of any kind. We believe that the intolerable wrongs done in this war by the furious and brutal power of the Imperial German Government ought to be repaired, but not at the expense of the sover- eignty of any people rather a vindication of the sovereignty both of those that are weak and of those that are strong. Punitive damages, the dismember- ment of empires, the establishment of selfish and exclusive economic leagues, we deem inexpedient and in the end worse than futile, no proper basis for a peace of any kind, least of all for an endur- ing peace. That must be based upon justice and fairness and the common rights of mankind. We cannot take the word of the present rulers of Germany as a guarantee of anything that is to Reply to the Pope 155 endure, unless explicitly supported by such con- clusive evidence of the will and purpose of the Ger- man people themselves as the other peoples of the world would be justified in accepting. Without such guarantees treaties of settlement, agreements for disarmament, covenants to set up arbitration in the place, of force, territorial adjustments, reconsti- tutions of small nations, if made with the German Government, no 'man, no nation could now depend on. We must await some new evidence of the pur- poses of the great peoples of the Central Powers. God grant it may be given soon and in a way to restore the confidence of all peoples everywhere in the faith of nations and the possibility of a coven- anted peace. EGBERT LANSING, Secretary of State of the United States of America. WHY WE ARE AT WAR FRANKLIN K. LANE Why are we fighting Germany? The brief answer is that ours is a war of self-defense. We did not wish to fight Germany. She made the attack upon us; not on our shores, but on our ships, our lives, our rights, our future. For two years and more we held to a neutrality that made us apologists for things which outraged man's common sense of fair play and humanity. At each new offense the inva- sion of Belgium, the killing of civilian Belgians, the attacks on Scarborough and other defenseless towns, the laying of mines in neutral waters, the fencing off of the seas and on and on through the months we said: "This is war archaic, uncivilized war, but war! All rules have been thrown away: all nobility ; man has come down to the primitive brute. And while we can not justify we will not intervene. It is not our war." Then why are we in? Because we could not keep out. The invasion of Belgium, which opened the war, led to the invasion of the United States by slow, steady, logical steps. Our sympathies evolved into a conviction of self-interest. Our love of fair play ripened into alarm at our own peril. We talked in the language and in the spirit of good faith and sincerity, as honest men should talk, until we discovered that our talk was construed as 156 Why We Are at War 157 cowardice. And Mexico was called upon to invade us. We talked as men would talk who cared alone for peace and the advancement of their own mate- rial interests, until we discovered that we were thought to be a nation of mere money makers, devoid of all character until, indeed, we were told that we could not walk the highways of the world without permission of a Prussian soldier; that our ships might not sail without wearing a striped uniform 1 of humiliation upon a narrow path af national sub- servience. We talked as men talk who hope for honest agreement, not for war, until we found that the treaty torn to pieces at Liege was but the sym- bol of a policy that made agreements worthless against a purpose that knew no word but success. And so we came into this war for ourselves. It is a war to save America to preserve self-respect, to justify our right to live as we have lived, not as some one else wishes us to live. In the name of freedom we challenge with ships and men, money, and an undaunted spirit, that word "Verboten" which Germany has written upon the sea and upon the land. For America is not the name of so much territory. It is a living spirit, born in travail, grown in the rough school of bitter experiences, a living spirit which has purpose and pride, and con- science knows why it wishes to live and to what end, knows how it comes to be respected of the world, and hopes to retain that respect by living on with the light of Lincoln's love of man as its Old and New Testament. It is more precious that this 158 Democracy Today America should live than that we Americans should live. And this America, as we now see, has been challenged from the first of this war by the strong arm of a power that has no sympathy with our pur- pose and will not hesitate to destroy us if the law that we respect, the rights that are to us sacred, or the spirit that we have, stand across her set will to make this world bow before her policies, backed by her organized and scientific military system. The world of Christ a neglected but not a rejected Christ has come again face to face with the world of Mahomet, who willed to win by force. With this background of history and in this sense, then, we fight Germany Because of Belgium invaded, outraged, enslaved, impoverished Belgium. We can not forget Liege, Louvain, and Cardinal Mercier. Translated into terms of American history, these names stand for Bunker Hill, Lexington, and Patrick Henry. . Because of France invaded, desecrated France, a million of whose heroic sons have died to save the land of Lafayette. Glorious golden France, the pre- server of the arts, the land of noble spirit the first land to follow our lead into republican liberty. Because of England from whom came the laws, traditions, standards of life, and inherent love of liberty which we call Anglo-Saxon civilization. We defeated her once upon the land and once upon the sea. 2 But Australia, New Zealand, Africa, and Can- ada are free because of what we did. And they are with us in the fight for the freedom of the seas. Why We Are at War 159 Because of Russia New Russia. She must not be overwhelmed now. Not now, surely, when she is just born into freedom. Her peasants must have their chance; they must go to school to Washing- ton, to Jefferson, and to Lincoln until they know their way about in this new, strange world of gov- ernment by the popular will. Because of other peoples, with their rising hope that the world may be freed from government by the soldier. We are fighting Germany because she sought to terrorize us and then to fool us. We could not believe that Germany would do what she said she would do upon the seas. We still hear the piteous cries of children coming up out of the sea where the Lusitania went down. And Germany has never asked forgiveness of the world. We saw the Sussex sunk, crowded with the sons and daughters of neutral nations. We saw ship after ship sent to the bottom ships of mercy bound out of America for the Belgian starving ; ships carrying the Red Cross and laden with che wounded of all nations; ships carrying food and clothing to friendly, harmless, terrorized peoples; ships flying the Stars and Stripes sent to the bottom hundreds of miles from shore, manned by American seamen, murdered against all law, with- out warning. We believed Germany's pro'mise that she would respect the neutral flag and the rights of neutrals, 160 Democracy Today and we held our anger and outrage in check. But now we see that she was holding us off with fair promises until she could build her huge fleet of sub- marines. 3 For when spring came she blew her prom- ise into the air, just as at the beginning she had torn up that "scrap of paper." 4 Then we saw clearly that there was but one law for Germany her will to rule. We are fighting Germany because she violated our confidence. Paid German spies filled our cities. Offi- cials of her Government, received as the guests of this Nation, lived with us to bribe and terrorize, defying our law and the law of nations. We are fighting Germany because while we were yet her friends the only great power that still held hands off she sent the Zimmennann note, 5 calling to her aid Mexico, our southern neighbor, and hoping to lure Japan, our western neighbor, into war against this Nation of peace. The nation that would do these things proclaims the gospel that government has no conscience. And this doctrine can not live, or else democracy must die. For the nations of the world must keep faith. There can be no living for us in a world where the state has no conscience, no reverence for the things of the spirit, no respect for international law, no mercy for those who fall before its force. What an unordered world ! Anarchy ! The anarchy of rival wolf packs! We are fighting Germany because in this war feu- dalism 6 is making its last stand against on-coming Why We Are at War 161 democracy. We see it now. This is a war against an old spirit, an ancient, outworn spirit. It is a war against feudalism the right of the castle on the hill to rule the village below. It is a war for democracy the right of all to be their own masters. Let Germany be feudal if she will, but she must not spread her system over the world that has outgrown it. Feudalism plus science, thirteenth century plus twentieth this is the religion of the mistaken Ger- many that has linked itself with the Turk ; that has, too, adopted the method of Mahomet. "The state has no conscience. " " The state can do no wrong. ' ' 7 With the spirit of the fanatic she believes this gos- pel and that it is her duty to spread it by force. With poison gas that makes living a hell, with sub- marines that sneak through the seas to slyly murder noncombatants, with dirigibles that bombard men and women while they sleep, with a perfected sys- tem of terrorization that the modern world first heard of when German troops entered China, 8 Ger- man feudalism is making war upon 'mankind. Let this old spirit of evil have its way and no man will live in America without paying toll to it in man- hood and in money. This spirit might demand Can- ada from a defeated, navyless England, and then our dream of peace on the north would be at an end. We would live, as France has lived for forty years, in haunting terror. America speaks for the world in fighting Ger- many. Mark on a map those countries which are Germany's allies and you will mark but four, run- 162 Democracy Today rung from the Baltic through Austria and Bulgaria to Turkey. All the other nations the whole globe around are in arms against her or are unable to move. There is deep meaning in this. We fight with the world for an honest world in which nations keep their word, for a world in which nations do not live by swagger or by threat, for a world in which men think of the ways in which they can conquer the common cruelties of nature instead of inventing more horrible cruelties to inflict upon the spirit and body of man, for a world in which the ambition or the philosophy of a few shall not make miserable all mankind, for a world in which the man is held more precious than the machine, the system, or the state. THE DUTIES OF THE CITIZEN ELIHU ROOT [ADDRESS DELIVERED AT CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, SEPTEMBER 14, 1917] The declaration of war between the United States and Germany completely changed the relations of all the inhabitants of this country to the subject of peace and war. Before the declaration everybody had a right to discuss in private and in public the question whether the United States should carry on war against Ger- many. Everybody had a right to argue that there was no sufficient cause for war, that the consequences of war would be worse than the consequences of continued peace, that it would be wiser to submit to the aggressions of Germany against American rights, that it would be better to have Germany suc- ceed than to have the allies succeed in the great con- flict. Everybody holding these views had a right by expressing them to seek to influence public opinion and to affect the action of the President and the Con- gress, to whom the people of the country by their constitution have entrusted the power to determine whether the United States shall or shall not make war. But the question of peace or war has now been decided by the President and Congress, the sole 163 164 Democracy Today authorities which had the right to decide, the lawful authorities upon whom rested the duty to decide. The question no longer remains open. It has been deter- mined and the United States is at war with Germany. The power to make such a decision is the most essential, vital, and momentous of all the powers of government. No nation can maintain its independ- ence or protect its citizens against oppression or con- tinue to be free which does not vest the power to make that decision in some designated authority, or which does not recognize the special and imperative duties of citizenship in time of war following upon such a decision lawfully made. One of the cardinal objects of the Union which formed this nation was to create a lawful authority whose decision and action upon this momentous ques- tion should bind all the states and all the people of every state. The constitution under which we have lived for one hundred and thirty years declares : ' ' We, the people of the United States, in order to ... provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this constitution." 1 The constitution so ordained vests in Congress the power to declare war, to raise and support armies, to provide and maintain a navy, 2 and it vests in the Pres- ident the power to command the army and navy. 3 The power in this instance was exercised not sud- denly or rashly, but advisedly, after a long delay and discussion, and patience under provocation, after The Duties of the Citizen 165 repeated diplomatic warnings to Germany known to the whole country, after clear notice by breach of diplomatic relations with Germany that the question was imminent, after long opportunity for reflection and discussion following that notice, and after a for- mal and deliberate presentation by the President to Congress of the reasons for action in an address which compelled the attention not of Congress alone but of all Americans and of all the world and which must forever stand as one of the great state papers of mod- ern times. The decision was made by overwhelming majorities of both houses of Congress. 4 When such a decision has been made the duties and therefore the rights of all the people of the country immediately change. It becomes their duty to stop discussion upon the question decided, and to act, to proceed immediately to do everything in their power to enable the govern- ment of their country to succeed in the war upon which the country has entered. It is a fundamental necessity of government that it shall have the power to decide great questions of policy and to act upon its decision. In order that there shall be action following a deci- sion once- made, the decision must be accepted. Dis- cussion upon the question must be deemed closed. A nation which declares war and goes on discussing whether it ought to have declared war or not is impo- tent, paralyzed, imbecile, and earns the contempt of mankind and the certainty of humiliating defeat and subjection to foreign control. 166 Democracy Today A democracy which cannot accept its own decisions, made in accordance with its own laws, but must keep on endlessly discussing the questions already decided, has failed in the fundamental requirements of self- government; and, if the decision is to make war, the failure to exhibit capacity for self-government by action will inevitably result in the loss of the right of self-government. Before the decision of a proposal to make war, men may range themselves upon one side or the other of the question ; but after the decision in favor of war, the country has ranged itself, and the only issue left for the individual citizen is whether he is for or against his country. From that time on arguments against the war in which the country is engaged are enemy arguments. Their spirit is the spirit of rebellion against the government and laws of the United States. Their effect is to hinder and lessen that popular support of the government in carrying on the war which is nec- essary to success. Their manifest purpose is to pre- vent action by continuing discussion. They encourage the enemy. They tend to introduce delay and irresolution into our own councils. The men who are speaking and writing and printing argu- ments against the "war now, and against everything which is being done to carry on the war, are render- ing more effective service to Germany than they ever could render in the field with arms in their hands. The purpose and effect of what they are doing is so plain that it is impossible to resist the conclusion that The Duties of the Citizen 167 the greater part of them are at heart traitors to the United States and wilfully seeking to bring about the triumph of Germany and the humiliation and defeat of their own country. Somebody has to decide where armies are to fight, whether our territory is to be defended by waiting here until we are attacked or by going out and attack- ing the enemy before they get here. The power to make that decision and the duty to make it rest under the constitution of this country with the President as commander-in-chief. When the President has decided that the best way to beat Germany is to send our troops to France and Belgium, that is the way the war must be carried on, if at all. I think the decision was wise. Others may think it unwise. But, when the decision has been made, what we think is immaterial. The commander-in-chief, with all the advice and all the wisdom he can command, has decided when and where the American army is to move. The army must obey, and all loyal citizens of the country will do their utmost to make that move- ment a success. Anybody who seeks by argument or otherwise to stop the execution of the order sending troops to France and Belgium is simply trying to prevent the American government from carrying on the war suc- cessfully. He is aiding the enemies of his country, and if he understands what he is really doing, he is a traitor at heart. 168 Democracy Today It is beyond doubt that many of the professed paci- fists, the opponents of the war after the war has been entered upon, the men who are trying to stir up resist- ance to the draft, the men who are inciting strikes in the particular branches of production which are nec- essary for the supply of arms and munitions of war, are intentionally seeking to aid Germany and defeat the United States. As time goes on and the character of these acts becomes more and more clearly manifest, all who con- tinue to associate with them must come under the same condemnation as traitors to their country. There are doubtless some who do not understand what this struggle really is. Some who were born here resent interference with their comfort and pros- perity, and the demands for sacrifice which seem to them unnecessary, and they fail to see that the time has come when, if Americans are to keep the inde- pendence and liberty which their fathers won by suf- fering and sacrifice, they in their turn must fight again for the preservation of that independence and liberty. There are some born abroad who have come to this land for a greater freedom and broader opportunities, and have sought and received the privileges of Amer- ican citizenship, who are swayed by dislike for some ally or by the sympathies of German kinship, and fail to see that the time has come for them to make good the obligations of their sworn oaths of naturalization. This is the oath that the applicant for citizenship makes : The Duties of the Citizen 169 ' ' That he will support the constitution of the United States, and that he absolutely and entirely renounces all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, poten- tate, state, or sovereignty; that he will support and defend the constitution and laws of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and bear true faith and allegiance to the same." All these naturalized citizens who are taking part in this obstruction to our government in the conduct of the war are false to their oaths, are forfeiting their rights of citizenship, are repudiating their honorable obligations, are requiting by evil the good that has been done them in the generous and unstinted hos- pitality with which the people of the United States have welcomed them to the liberty and the opportuni- ties of this free land. We must believe that in many cases this is done because of failure to understand what this war really is. This is a war of defense. It is perfectly described in the words of the constitution which established this nation: "To provide for the common defense" and "To secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity." The national defense demands not merely force, but intelligence. It requires foresight, consideration of the policies and purposes of other nations, understand- ing of the inevitable or probable consequences of the acts of other nations, judgment as to the time when successful defense may be made, and when it will be too late, and prompt action before it is too late. 170 Democracy Today By entering this war in April, the United States availed itself of the very last opportunity to defend itself against subjection to German power before it was too late to defend itself successfully. For many years we have pursued our peaceful course of internal development protected in a variety of ways. We were protected by the law of nations to which all civilized governments have professed their allegiance. So long as we committed no injustice our- selves we could not be attacked without a violation of that law. We were protected by a series of treaties under which all the principal nations of the earth agreed to respect our rights and to maintain friendship with us. We were protected by an extensive system of arbitration created by or consequent upon the peace conferences at The Hague, and under which all con- troversies arising under the law and under treaties were to be settled peaceably by arbitration and not by force. We were protected by the broad expanse of ocean separating us from all great military powers, and by the bold assertion of the Monroe Doctrine that if any of those powers undertook to overpass the ocean and establish itself upon these western continents that would be regarded as dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States, and would call upon her to act in her defense. We were protected by the fact that the policy and the fleet of Great Britain were well known to support the Monroe Doctrine. We were protected by the deli- The Duties of the Citizen 171 cate balance of power in Europe which made it seem not worth while for any power to engage in a conflict here at the risk of suffering from its rivals there. All these protections were swept away by the war which began in Europe in 1914. The war was begun by the concerted action of Germany and Austria the invasion of Serbia on the east by Austria and the invasion of Luxembourg and Belgium on the west by Germany. Both invasions were in violation of the law of nations, and in violation of the faith of treaties. Everybody knew that Russia was bound in good faith to come to the relief of Serbia, that France was bound by treaty to come to the aid of Russia, that England was bound by treaty to come to the aid of Belgium, so that the invasion of these two small states was the beginning of a general European war. These acts, which have drenched the world with blood, were defended and justified in the bold avowal of the German government that the interests of the German state were superior to the obligations of law and the faith of treaties, 5 that no law or treaty was binding upon Germany which it was for the interest of Germany to violate. All pretense of obedience to the law of nations and of respect for solemn promises was thrown off; and, in lieu of that systeifc of lawful and moral restraint upon power which Christian civilization has been building up for a century was reinstated the cynical philosophy of Frederick the Great, the greatest of the Hohenzollerns, who declares: 172 Democracy Today 1 ' Statesmanship can be reduced to three principles : First, to maintain your power, and, according to cir- cumstances, to extend it. Second, to form an alliance only for your own advantage. Third, to command fear and respect, even in the most disastrous times. ' ' Do not be ashamed of making interested alliances from which you yourself can derive the whole advan- tage. Do not make the foolish mistake of not break- ing them when you believe your interests require it. ' ' Above all, uphold the following maxim : To despoil your neighbors is to deprive them of the means of injuring you. "When he is about to conclude a treaty with some foreign power, if a sovereign remembers he is a Chris- tion, he is lost. ' ' From 1914 until the present, in a war waged by Germany with a revolting barbarity unequaled since the conquests of Genghis Khan, 6 Germany has violated every rule agreed upon 'by civilized nations in mod- ern times to mitigate the barbarities of war or to pro- tect the rights of noncombatants and neutrals. She had no grievance against Belgium except that Bel- gium stood upon her admitted rights and refused to break the faith of her treaties by consenting that the neutrality of her territory should be violated to give Germany an avenue for the attack upon France. She has taken possession of the territory of Belgium and subjected her people to the hard yoke of a brutal soldiery. She has extorted vast sums from her peace- ful cities. She has burned her towns and battered down her noble churches. She has stripped the Bel- The Duties of the Citizen 173 gian factories of their machinery and deprived them of the raw material of manufacture. She has carried away her workmen by tens of thou- sands into slavery, and her women into worse than slavery. She has slain peaceful noncombatants by the hundred, undeterred by the helplessness of age, of infancy, or of womanhood. She has done the same in northern France, in Poland, in Serbia, in Roumania. In all of these countries women have been outraged by the thousand, by tens of thousand, and who ever heard of a German soldier being punished for rape, or robbery, or murder? These revolting outrages upon humanity and law are not the casual incidents of war, but are the results of a settled policy of fright- fulness answering to the maxim of the Great Fred- erick to ' ' command respect through fear. ' ' Why were these things done by Germany? The answer rests upon the accumulated evidence of Ger- man acts and German words so conclusive that no pre- tense can cover it, no sophistry can disguise it. The answer is that this war was begun and these crimes against humanity were done because Germany was pursuing the hereditary policy of the Hohenzollerns and following the instincts of the arrogant military caste which rules Prussia, to grasp the over-lordship of the civilized world and establish an empire in which she should play the role of ancient Eome. They were done because Prussian militarism still pursues the policy of power through conquest, of aggrandizement through force and fear, which in little more than two centuries has brought the puny mark 174 Democracy Today of Brandenburg 7 with its million and a half of people to the control of a vast empire the greatest armed force of the modern world. It now appears beyond the possibility of doubt that this war was made by Germany pursuing a long and settled purpose. For many years she has been pre- paring to do exactly what she has done with a thor- oughness, a perfection of plans, and a vastness of pro- vision in men, munitions, and supplies never before equaled or approached in human history. She brought the war on when she chose, because she chose, in the belief that she could conquer the earth, nation by nation. All nations are egotistical, all peoples think most highly of their own qualities, and regard other peo- ples as inferior ; but the egotism of the ruling class of Prussia is beyond all example and it is active and aggressive. They believe that Germany is entitled to rule the world by virtue of her superiority in all these qualities which they include under the term "kultur," and by reason of her power to compel submission by the sword. That belief does not evaporate in theory. It is translated into action, and this war is the action which results. This belief of national superiority and the right to assert it everywhere is a tradition from the Great Frederick. 8 It has been instilled into th^ minds of the German people through all the universities and schools. It has been preached from her pulpits and taught by her philosophers and historians. It has been maintained by her government and it will never The Duties of the Citizen 175 cease to furnish the motive for the people of Prussia so long as German power enables the military auto- cracy of Prussia to act upon it with success. Plainly, if the power of the German government is to continue, America can no longer look for protection to the law of nations or the faith of treaties or the instincts of humanity or the restraints of modern civilization. Plainly, also, if we had stayed out of the war and Germany had won there would no longer have been a balance of power in Europe or a British fleet to sup- port the Monroe Doctrine and protect America. Does any one indulge in the foolish assumption that Germany would not then have extended her lust for power by conquest to the American continent? Let him consider what it is for which the nations of Europe have been chiefly contending for centuries past. It has been for colonies. It has been to bring the unoccupied or weakly held spaces of the earth under their flags and their political control, in order to increase their trade and their power. Spain, Holland, Portugal, England, France, have all had their turn, and have covered the earth with their possessions. For thirty years Germany, the last comer, has been pressing forward with feverish activ- ity the acquisition of stations for her power on every coast and every sea, restive and resentful because she has been obliged to take what others have left. Europe, Asia, and Africa have been taken up. The Americas alone remain. Here in the vast and unde- 176 Democracy Today fended spaces of the new world, fraught with poten- tial wealth incalculable, Germany could "find a place in the sun," to use her emperor's phrase; Germany could find her ' ' liberty of national evolution, ' ' to use his phrase again. Every traditional policy, every instinct of predatory Prussia, would urge her into this new field of aggrandizement. What would prevent? The Monroe doctrine? Yes. But what is the Monroe doctrine as against a nation which respects only force unless it can be maintained by force ? We already know how the German govern- ment feels about the Monroe doctrine. Bismarck declared it to be a piece of colossal impu- dence; and, when President Roosevelt interfered to assert the doctrine for the protection of Venezuela, the present kaiser declared that if he then had a larger navy he would have taken America by the scruff of the neck. 9 If we had stayed out of the war, and Germany had won, we should have had to defend the Monroe doc- trine by force or abandon it ; and if we abandoned it there would have been a German naval base in the Caribbean commanding the Panama canal, depriving us of that strategic line which unites our eastern and western coasts, and depriving us of the protection the expanse of ocean once gave, and an America unable or unwilling to protect herself against the establish- ment of a German naval base in the Caribbean would lie at the mercy of Germany, and subject to Ger- many's orders. The Duties of the Citizen 177 America's independence would be gone unless she was ready to fight for it, and her security would thenceforth be not a security of freedom, but only a security purchased by submission. But if America had stayed out of the war and Ger- many had won, could we have defended the Monroe doctrine? Could we have maintained our independ- ence? For an answer to that question consider what we have been doing since the 2d of April last, when war was declared. Congress has been in continuous session passing with unprecedented rapidity laws containing grants of power and of money unexampled in our history. The executive establishment has been straining every nerve to prepare for war. The ablest and strongest leaders of industrial activity have been called from all parts of the country to aid the government. The people of the country have generously responded with noble loyalty and enthusiasm to tht call for the surrender of money and of customary rights, and the supply of men to the service of the, country. Nearly half a year has passed, and still we are no'j ready to fight. I am not blaming the government. It was inevitable. Preparation for modern war can- not be made briefly or speedily. It requires time long periods of time; and the more peaceful and unprepared for war a democracy is the longer is the time required. It would have required just as long for America to prepare for war if we had stayed out of this war and 178 Democracy Today Germany had won and we had undertaken to defend the Monroe doctrine or to defend our coasts when we had lost the protection of the Monroe doctrine. Month after month would have passed with no adequate army ready to fight, just as these recent months have pasced. But what would Germany have been doing in* the meantime? How long would it have been before our attempts at preparation would have been stopped by German arms? A country that is forced to defend itself against the aggression of a military autocracy always prepared for war must herself be prepared for war beforehand or she never will have the opportunity to prepare. The history, the character, the avowed principles of action, the manifest and undisguised purposes of the German autocracy made it clear and certain that if America stayed out of the great war, and Germany won, America would forthwith be required to defend herself and would be unable to defend herself against the same lust for conquest, the same will to dominate the world, which has made Europe a bloody shambles. When Germany did actually apply her principles of action to us, and by the invasion of Belgium she violated the solemn covenant she has made with us 10 to observe the law of neutrality established for the pro- tection of peaceful states, when she had arrogantly demanded that American commerce should surrender its lawful right of passage upon the high seas under penalty of destruction, when she had sunk American ships and sent to their death hundreds of American citizens, peaceful men, women, and children, when the The Duties of the Citizen 179 Gulflight and the Falaba, and the Persia and the Arabic and the Sussex and the Lusitania had been torpedoed without warning in contempt of law and of humanity, when the German embassy at Washing- ton had been found to be the headquarters of a vast conspiracy of corruption within our country inciting sedition and concealing infernal machines in the car- goes of our ships and blowing up our factories with the workmen laboring in them, and when the govern- ment of Germany had been discovered attempting to incite Mexico and Japan to form a league with her to attack us and to bring about a dismemberment of our territory, then the question presented to the American people was not what shall be done regarding each of these specific aggressions taken by itself, but what shall be done by America to defend her commerce, her territory, her citizens, her independence, her liberty, her life as a nation against the continuance of assaults already begun by that mighty and conscienceless power which had swept aside every restraint and every principle of Christian civilization and was seek- ing to force upon a subjugated world the dark and cruel rule of a barbarous past. The question was how shall peaceful and unpre- pared and liberty loving America save herself from subjection to the military power of Germany. There was but one possible answer. There was but one chance for rescue and that was to act at once while the other democracies of the world were still main- taining their liberty against the oppressor, to prepare at once while the armies and the navies of England 180 Democracy Today and France and Italy and Russia and Roumania were holding down Germany so that she could not attack us while our preparation was but half accomplished, to strike while there were allies loving freedom like ourselves to strike with us, to do our share to prevent the German kaiser from acquiring that domination over the world which would have left us without friends to aid us, without preparation, and without the possibility of successful defense. The instinct of the American democracy which led it to act when it did arose from. a long delayed and reluctant consciousness still vague and half expressed, that this is no ordinary war which the world is wag- ing. It is no contest for petty policies and profits. It is a mighty and all-embracing struggle between two conflicting principles of human right and human duty. It is a conflict between the divine right of kings to govern mankind through armies and nobles and the right of the peoples of the earth to toil and endure and aspire to govern themselves by law in the free- dom of individual manhood. It is the climax of the supreme struggle between autocracy and democracy. No nation can stand aside and be free from its effects. The two systems cannot endure together in the same world. If autocracy triumphs, military power lustful of dominion, supreme in strength, intolerant of human rights, holding itself superior to law, to morals, to faith, to compassion, will crush out the free democ- racies of the world. If autocracy is defeated and The Duties of the Citizen 181 nations are compelled to recognize the rules of law and of morals, then and then only will democracy be safe. To this great conflict for human rights and human liberty America has committed herself. There can be no backward step. There must be either humiliating and degrading submission or terrible defeat or glori- ous victory. It was no human will that brought us to this pass. It was not the President. If was not Con- gress. It was not the press. It was not any political party. It was not any section or part of our people. It was that in the providence of God the mighty forces that determine the destinies of mankind beyond the control of human purpose have brought to us the time, the occasion, the necessity, that this peaceful people so long enjoying the blessings of liberty and justice for which their fathers fought and sacrificed shall again gird themselves for conflict, and with all the forces of manhood nurtured and strengthened by liberty offer again the sacrifice of possessions and of life itself, that this nation may still be free, that the mission of American democracy shall not have failed, that the world shall be free. WHAT DEMOCRACY MEANS WOODROW WILSON [ADDRESS BEFORE THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR DELIVERED AT BUFFALO, NEW YORK, NOV. 12, 1917] I esteem it a great privilege and a real honor to be thus admitted to your public councils. When your executive committee paid me the compliment of invit- ing 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 draw- ing not only of the energies but of the minds of the cation together. I thought that it was a welcome opportunity for disclosing to you some of the thoughts that have been gathering in my mind during the last momentous months. I am introduced to you as the president of the United States, and yet I would be pleased if you would put the thought of the office into the background and regard me as one of your fellow citizens who has come here to speak not the words of authority but 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 182 What Democracy Means 183 world conception and act upon a new platform ele- vated above the ordinary affairs of life, elevated to where men have views of the long destiny of man- kind. I think that in order to realize just what this moment of counsel is, it is very desirable that we should remind ourselves just how this war came about and just what it is for. You can explain most wars very simply, but the explanation of this is not so 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 his- tory. And the thing that needs to be explained is why Germany started the war. Eemember what the position of Germany in the world was as enviable a position as any nation has ever occupied. The whole world stood at admiration of her wonderful intellectual and material achieve- ments, and all the intellectual men of the world went to school to her. As a university man I have been surrounded by men trained in Germany, men who had resorted to Germany because nowhere else could they get such thorough and searching training, particu- larly in the principles of science and the principles that underlie modern material achievements. Her men of science had made her industries per- haps the most competent industries in the world, and 184 Democracy Today 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 man who traded in those markets feared Germany because of her effective and almost irresistible com- petition. She had a place in the sun. Why was she not satis- fied ? 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 extraordinary pace of American advancement. We show with pride the statistics of the increase of our industries and of the population of our cities. Well, those statistics did not match the recent statistics of Germany. Her old cities took on youth, grew faster than any American city ever grew ; her old industries opened their eyes and saw a new world and went out for its conquest; and yet the authorities of Germany were not satisfied. You have one part of the answer to the question why she was not satisfied in her methods of competi- tion. There is no important industry in Germany upon which the government has not laid its hands to direct it, and when necessity arise, control it. You have only to ask any man whom you meet, who is familiar with the conditions that prevailed before the war in the matter of international compe- tition, to find out the methods of competition which the German manufacturers and exporters used under the patronage and support of the government of Ger- many. 1 You will find that they were the same sorts of What Democracy Means 185 competition that we have tried to prevent by law within our own borders. If they could not sell their goods cheaper than we could sell ours at a profit to themselves, they could get a subsidy from the government which made 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 few of you have thought much about the Berlin to Bagdad railway. 2 The Berlin to Bagdad railway was constructed in order to run the threat of force down the flank of the industrial undertakings of half a dozen other countries, so that when German competition came in it would not be resisted too far because there was always the possibility of getting German armies into the heart of that country quicker than any other armies could be got there. Look at the map of Europe now. 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. Those are deeply interesting subjects to us and to them, but they are not talking about the heart of the matter. 186 Democracy Today Take the map and look at it. Germany has abso- lute control of Austria-Hungary, practical control of the Balkan states, control of Turkey, control of Asia Minor. I saw a map in which the whole thing was printed in appropriate black the other day and the black stretched all the way from Hamburg to Bagdad the bulk of German power inserted into the heart of the world. If it can keep that she has kept all that her dreams contemplated when the war began. If she can keep that, her power can disturb the world as long as she keeps it, always provided, for I feel bound to put this proviso in, always provided the present influences that control the German government continue to con- trol 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. 3 Power cannot be used with concentrated force against free peoples if it is used by free people. You know how many intimations come to us from one of the central powers that it is more anxious for peace than the chief central power; and you know that it means that the people in that central power know that if the war ends as it stands, they will in effect themselves be vassals of Germany, notwithstand- ing that their populations are compounded with all the people of that part of the world, and notwith- standing the fact that they do not wish in their pride 187 and proper spirit of nationality to be so absorbed and dominated. Germany is determined that the political power oi the world shall belong to her. There have been such ambitions before. They have been in part realized. But never before have those ambitions been based upon so exact and precise and scientific a plan of domination. May I not say that it is amazing to me that any group of people should be so ill-informed as to sup- pose, as some groups in Russia apparently suppose, that any reforms planned in the interest of the people can live in the presence of a Germany powerful enough to undermine or overthrow them by intrigue or force? Any body of free men that compounds with the present German government is compounding for its own destruction. But that is not the whole of the story. Any man in America, or anywhere else, who supposes that the free industry and enterprise of the world can continue if the Pan-German plan is achieved and German power fastened upon the world is as fatuous as the dreamers of Russia. What I am opposed to is not the feeling of the pacifists, but their stupidity. My heart is with them, but my mind has a contempt for them. I want peace, but I know how to get it, and they do not. You will notice that I sent a friend of mine, Colonel House, to Europe, 4 who is as great a lover of peace as any man in the world ; but I did not send him on a peace mission ; I sent him to take part in a conference as to how the war was to be won ; and he knows, as I 188 Democracy Today know, that this is the way to get peace, if you want it for more than a few minutes. All of this is a preface to the conference that I referred to with regard to what we are going to do. If we are true friends of freedom our own or any- body else's we will see that the power of this coun- try and the productivity of this country is raised to its absolute maximum and that absolutely nobody is allowed to stand in the way of it. When I say that nobody is allowed to stand in the way, I don't mean that they shall be prevented by the power of the government, but by the power of the American spirit. Our duty, if we are to do this great thing and show America to be what we believe her to be, the greatest hope and energy of the world, then we must stand together night and day until the job is finished. While we are fighting for freedom we must see, among other things, that labor is free ; and that means a number of interesting things. It means not only that we must do what we have declared our purpose to do see that the conditions of labor are not ren- dered more onerous by the war but also that we shall see to it that the instrumentalities by which the con- ditions 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, What Democracy Means 189 and his statesmanlike sense of what is to be done. I like to lay my mind alongside of a mind that knows how to pull in harness. The horses that kick over the traces will have to be put in a corral. Now, to "stand the ground" means that nobody must interrupt the processes of our energy, if the interruption can possibly be avoided without the abso- lute invasion of freedom. To put it concretely that means this : Nobody has a right to stop the processes of labor until all the methods of conciliation and set- tlement 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 of my own experience not only but of the experience of others, when I say that you are reason- able in- a larger number of cases than the capitalists. I am not saying these things to them personally yet, because I haven't had a chance. But in order' to clear the atmosphere and come down to business every- body on both sides has got to transact business, and the 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 with a man much more radically when he isn't in the room than I can when he is in the room, because then the awkward thing is that he can come back at me and answer what I say. It is always dan- gerous for a man to have the floor entirely to himself. And, therefore, we must insist in every instance that 190 Democracy Today 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 say- ing of an Englishman of a past generation, Charles Lamb. He was with a group of friends and he spoke very harshly of some man who was not present. I ought to say that Lamb stuttered a little. And one of his friends said, ''Why, Charles, I didn't know that you knew so and so ? " ' ' 0, " he said, ' ' I don 't. I can 't hate a man I know. ' ' There is a great deal of human nature, of very pleas- ant human nature, in that saying. It is hard to hate a man you know. I must admit, parenthetically, that there are some politicians whose methods I do not believe in, but they are jolly good fellows, and if they only would not talk the wrong kind of politics with me I would love to be with them. And so it is all along the line in serious matters and things less serious. We are all of the same clay and spirit and we can get together if we desire to get together. Therefore, my counsel to you is this : Let us show ourselves Americans by showing that we do not want to go off in separate camps or groups by ourselves, but that we want to cooperate with all other classes and all other groups in a common enter- prise which is to release the spirits of the world from bondage. I would be willing to set that up as the final test of an American. That is the meaning of democracy. What Democracy Means 191 I have been very much distressed, my fellow citi- zens, by some of the things that have happened recently. The mob spirit is displaying itself here and there in this country. 5 I have sympathy with what some men are saying, but I have no sympathy with the men that take their punishment into their own hands ; and I want to say to every man who does join such a mob that I do not recognize him as worthy of the free institutions of the United States. There are some organizations 6 in this country whose object is anarchy and the destruction of law, but I would not meet their efforts by making myself a part- ner in destroying 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. And so I want to utter my earnest protest against any manifestation of the spirit of lawlessness anywhere or in any cause. Why, gentlemen, look what it means. We claim to be the greatest democratic people in the world, and democracy means first of all that we can govern our- selves. If our men have not self-control, then they are not capable of that great thing which we call demo- cratic government. A man who takes the law into his own hands is not the right man to cooperate in any form of orderly development of law and institu- tions. And some of the processes by which the strug- gle between capital and labor is carried on are processes that come very near to taking the law into your own hands. 192 Democracy Today I do not mean, for a moment to compare them with what I have just been speaking of, but I want you to see that they are mere gradations of the manifesta- tions of the unwillingness to cooperate, and the fun- damental lesson of the whole situation is that we must not only take common counsel but that we must yield to and obey common counsel. Not all of the instru- mentalities for this are at hand. I am hopeful that in the very near future new instrumentalities may be organized by which we can see to it that various things that are now going on shall not go on. There are various processes of the dilution of labor and the unnecessary substitution of labor and bidding in distant markets and unfairly upsetting the whole competition of labor which ought not to go on I mean now on the part of employers and we must interject into this some instrumentality of cooperation 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 to have such an instrumentality origin- ated upon that occasion, if necessary. And so, my fellow citizens, the reason that I came away from Washington is that I sometimes get lonely down there. There are so many people in Washington who know things that are not so, and there are so few people in Washington who know anything about what the people of the United States are thinking, I have to come away to get reminded of the rest of the country; I have to come away and talk to men who What Democracy Means 193 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. SECOND WAR MESSAGE WOODROW WILSON [ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE CONGRESS, DECEMBER 4, 1917.] Eight months have elapsed since I last had the honor of addressing you. They have been months crowded with events of immense and grave signifi- cance 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 immediate means of accomplishing the objects we shall hold always in view. I shall not go back to debate the causes of the war. The intolerable wrongs done and planned against us by the sinister masters of Germany have long since become too grossly obvious and odious to every true American to need to be rehearsed. But I shall ask you to consider again and with very grave scrutiny our objectives and the measures by which we mean to attain them ; for the purpose of discussion here in this place is action and our action must move straight toward definite ends. Our object is, of course, to win the war, and we shall not slacken or suffer ourselves to be diverted until it is won. But it is worth while 194 Second War Message 195 asking and answering the question, When shall we consider the war won? From one point of view it is not necessary to broach this fundamental matter. I do not doubt that the American people know what the war is about and what sort of an outcome they will regard as a realization of their purpose in it. As a nation we are united in spirit and intention. I pay little heed to those who tell me otherwise. I hear the voices of dissent who does not? I hear the criticism and the clamor of the noisily thought- less and troublesome. I also see men here and there fling themselves in impotent disloyalty against the calm, indomitable power of the. nation. I hear men debate peace who understand neither its nature nor the way in which we may attain it, with uplifted eyes and unbroken spirits. But I know that none of these speaks for the nation. They do not touch the heart of anything. They may safely be left to strut their uneasy hour and be forgotten. But from another point of view I believe that it is necessary to say plainly what we here at the seat of action consider the war to be for and what part we mean to play in the settlement of its searching issues. We are the spokesmen of the American people and they have a right to know whether their purpose is- ours. They desire peace by the overcoming of evil, by the defeat once and for all of the sinister forces that interrupt peace and render it impossible, and they wish to know how closely our thought runs with theirs and what action we propose. They are impa- 196 Democracy Today tient with those who desire peace by any sort of compromise deeply and indignantly impatient but they will be equally impatient with us if we do not make it plain to them what our objectives are and what we are planning for in seeking to make conquest of peace by arms. I believe that I speak for them when I say two things: First, that this intolerable Thing of which the masters of Germany have shown us the ugly face, this menace of combined intrigue and force, which we now see so clearly as the German power, a Thing with- out conscience or honor or capacity for covenanted peace, must be crushed, and if it be not utterly brought to an end, at least shut out from the friendly intercourse of the nations; and, second, that when this Thing and its power are indeed defeated and th time comes that we can discuss peace when the Ger- man 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 henceforth be the bases of law and of covenant for the life of the world we shall be willing and glad to pay the full price for peace and pay it ungrudgingly. We know what that price will be. It will be full, impartial justice justice done at every point and to every nation that the final settlement must affect, our enemies as well as our friends. 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 Second War Message 197 hearts of men every where. They insist that the war shall not end in vindictive action of any kind; that no nation or people shall be robbed or punished because the irresponsible rulers of a single country have themselves done deep and abominable wrong. It is this thought that has been expressed in the formula, ' ' No annexations, no contributions, no puni- tive indemnities." Just because this crude formula expresses the instinctive judgment as to the right of plain men everywhere it has been made diligent use of by the masters of German intrigue to lead the people of Rus- sia astray, and the people of every -other country their agents could reach, in order that a premature peace might be brought about before autocracy has been taught its final and convincing lesson and the people of the world put in control of their own destinies. But the fact that a wrong use has been made of a just idea is no reason why a right use should not be made of it. It ought to be brought under the pat- ronage of its real friends. Let it be said again that autocracy must first be shown the utter futility of its claims to power or leadership in the modern world. It is impossible to apply any standard of justice so long as such forces are unchecked and 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 198 Democracy Today 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 immediate task is to win the war, and nothing shall turn us aside from it until it is accomplished. Every power and resource we possess, whether of men, of money, or of materials, is being devoted and will continue to be devoted, to that purpose until it is achieved. Those who desire to bring peace about before that purpose is achieved, I counsel to carry their advice elsewhere. We will not entertain it. We shall regard the war as won only when the German people say to us, through properly accredited representatives, that they are ready to agree to a settlement based upon justice and the reparation of the wrongs their rulers have done. They have done a wrong to Belgium which must be repaired. They have established a power over other lands and peo- ples than their own over the great empire of Aus- tria-Hungary, over hitherto free Balkan states, over Turkey, arid within Asia which must be relinquished. Germany's success by skill, by industry, by knowl- edge, by enterprise we did not grudge or oppose, but admired rather. She had built up for herself a real empire of trade and influence, secured by the peace of the world. We were content to abide the rivalries of manufacture, science, and commerce that were in- volved for us in her success and stand or fall as we had or did not have the brains and the initiative to surpass her. Second War Message 199 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 domination by arms, by which to oust where she could not excel the rivals she most feared and hated. The peace we make must remedy that wrong. It must deliver the once fair lands and happy peoples of Belgium and northern France from the Prussian conquest and the Prussian menace, but it must also deliver the peoples of Austria-Hungary, the peoples of the Balkans, and the peoples of Turkey, alike in Europe and in Asia, from the impudent and alien domination of the Prussian military and commercial autocracy. We owe it, however, to ourselves to say that we do not wish in any way to impair or to rearrange the Austro-Hungarian empire. It is no affair of ours what they do with their own life, either industrially or politically. We do not purpose nor desire to dic- tate to them in any way. We only desire to see that their affairs are left in their own hands, in all mat- ters, great or small. We shall hope to secure for the peoples of the Balkan peninsula and for the people of the Turkish empire the right and opportunity to make their own lives safe, their own fortunes secure against oppression or injustice and from the dictation of foreign courts or parties, and our attitude and purpose with regard to Germany herself are of a like kind. We intend no wrong against the German empire, 200 Democracy Today no interference with her internal affairs. We should deem either the one or the other absolutely unjusti- fiable, 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 deliberate aggression. Nothing could be more grossly or wantonly false, and we must seek by the utmost openness and candor as to our real aims to convince them of its falseness. We are, in fact, fighting for their emancipation from fear, along with our own, from the fear as well as from the fact of unjust attack by neighbors or rivals or schemers after world empire. No one is threatening the existence or the independence or the peaceful enterprise of the German empire. The worst that can happen to the detriment of the German people is this, that if they should still, after the war is over, continue to be obliged to live under ambitious and intriguing masters interested to disturb the peace of the world, men or classes of men whom the other peoples of the world could not trust, it might be impossible to admit them to the partnership of nations which must henceforth guarantee the world's peace. That partnership must be a partner- ship of peoples, not a mere partnership of governments. It might be impossible, also, in such untoward circumstances, to admit Germany to the free economic Second War Message 201 intercourse which must inevitably spring out of the other partnerships of a real peace. But there would be no aggression in that; and such a situation, inevi- table because of distrust, would in the very nature of things sooner or later cure itself, by processes which would assuredly set in. The wrongs, the very deep wrongs, committed in this war will have to be righted. That of course. But they cannot and must not be righted by the com- misson of similar wrongs against Germany and her allies. The world will not permit the commission of similar wrongs as a means of reparation and settle- ment. Statesmen must by this time have learned that the opinion of the world is everywhere wide-awake and fully comprehends the issues involved. No repre- sentative of any self-governed nation will dare dis- regard it by attempting any such covenants of self- ishness 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 privilege and have very simple and unsophisticated standards -of right and wrong, is the air all govern- ments must henceforth 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 oeen able to upset the peace of the world only because the German people were not suffered under their tutelage, to share the comrade- ship of the other peoples of the world either in thought 202 Democracy Today 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 be- ginning of this stupendous war; and I cannot help thinking that if they had been made plain at the very outset the sympathy and enthusiasm of the Russian people might have been once for all enlisted on the side of the allies, suspicion and distrust swept away, and a real and lasting union of purpose effected. Had they believed these things at the very moment of their revolution and had they been confirmed in that belief since, the sad reverses which have recently marked the progress of their affairs toward an ordered and stable government of free men might have been avoided. The Russian people have been poisoned by the very same falsehoods that have kept the German people in the dark, and the poison has been administered by the very same hands. The only possible antidote is the truth. It cannot be uttered too plainly or too often. From every point of view, therefore, it has seemed to be my duty to speak these declarations of purpose, to add these specific interpretations to what I took the liberty of saying to the senate in January. Our entrance into the war has not altered our attitude Second War Message 203 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 1 , and I am thinking 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 think- ing, and am thinking now, of Austria herself, among the rest, as well as of Serbia and of Poland. Justice and equality of rights can be had only at a great price. We are seeking 1 permanent, not temporary, foun- dations for the peace of the world, and must seek them candidly and fearlessly. As always, the right will prove to be the expedient. What shall we do, then, to push this great war of freedom and justice to its righteous conclusion? We must clear away with a thorough hand all impedi- ments 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 congress 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 inevitable logic of what I have said. Austria-Hungary is for the time being not her 204 Democracy Today 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 busi- ness. The government of Austria-Hungary is not acting upon its own initiative or in response to the wishes and feelings of its own peoples, but as the instrument of another nation. We must meet its force with our 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 necessities of this war carry us, but it seems to me that we should go only where immediate and practical considerations lead us and not heed any others. The financial and military measures which must be adopted will suggest themselves as the war and its undertakings develop, but I will take the liberty of proposing to you certain other acts of legislation which seem to me to be needed for the support of the war and for the release of our whole force and energy. It will be necessary to extend in certain particulars the legislation of the last session with regard to alien enemies ; and also necessary, I believe, to create a very definite and particular control over the entrance and departure of all persons into and from the United States. Legislation should be enacted defining as a criminal Second War Message 205 offense every willful violation of the Presidential proclamations relating to enemy aliens promulgated under Section 4,067 of the Revised Statutes and pro- viding appropriate punishments; and women as well as men should be included under the terms of the acts placing restraints upon alien enemies. It is likely that as time goes on many alien enemies will be willing to be fed and housed at the expense of the government in the detention camps, and it would be the purpose of the legislation I have suggested to confine offenders among them in penitentiaries and other similar institu- tions where they could be made to work as other criminals do. Recent experience has convinced me that the Con- gress rnnst 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 incomes, no restraints are placed upon the prices of most of the things they must themselves purchase, and similar iniquities 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 eco- nomical development of such of the natural resources of the country as are still under the control of the Federal Government should be resumed and affirma- 206 Democracy Today tively and constructively dealt with at the earliest possible moment. The pressing need of such legis- lation is daily becoming more obvious. The Legislation proposed at the last session with regard to regulated combinations among our export- ers, in order to provide for our foreign trade a more effective organization and method of cooperation, ought by all means to be completed at this session. And I beg that the members of the House of Rep- resentatives will permit me to express the opinion that it will be impossible to deal in any way but a very wasteful and extravagant 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 order that responsibility may be centered, expendi- tures standardized and made uniform, and waste and duplication as much as possible avoided. Additional legislation may also become necessary before the present Congress adjourns in order to effect the most efficient coordination and operation of the railway and other transportation systems of the coun- try; but to that I shall, if circumstances should de- mand, call the attention of Congress upon another occasion. If I have overlooked anything that ought to be done for the more effective conduct of the war, your own counsels will supply the omission. What I am perfectly dear about is that in the present session of Second War Message 207 the Congress our whole attention and energy should be concentrated on the vigorous and rapid and suc- cessful prosecution of the great task of winning the war. "We can do this with all the greater zeal and en- thusiasm because we know that for us this is a war of high principle, debased by no selfish ambition of conquest or spoliation ; because we know, and all the world knows, that we have been forced into it to save the very institutions we live under from corruption and destruction. The purposes of the central powers strike straight at the very heart of everything we believe in ; their methods of warfare outrage every principle of humanity and of knightly honor; their intrigue has corrupted the very thought and spirit of many of our people; their sinister and secret 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 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 purpose, in which all the free peoples of the world are banded together for the vindication of right, a war for the preservation of our nation and of all that it has held dear of principle and -of purpose, that we feel ourselves doubly constrained to propose for its outcome only that which is righteous and of irreproach- able intention, for our foes as well as for our friends. The cause being just and holy, the settlement must- 208 Democracy Today be of like motive and quality. For this we can fight, but for nothing less noble or less worthy of our tradi- tions. 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. PROGRAM OF THE WORLD'S PEACE WOODROW WILSON [ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE CONGRESS JANUARY 8, 1918.] Once more, as repeatedly before, the spokesmen of the central empires have indicated their desire to dis- cuss the objects of the war and the possible bases of a general peace. Parleys have been in progress at Brest - Litovsk between Russian representatives and repre- sentatives of the central powers to which the attention of all the belligerents has been invited for the purpose of ascertaining whether it may be possible to extend these parleys into a general conference with regard to terms of peace and settlement. The Russian representatives presented not only a perfectly definite statement of the principles upon which they would be willing to conclude peace, but also an equally definite program of the concrete appli- cation of those principles. The representatives of the central powers, on their part, presented an outline of settlement which, if much less definite, seemed susceptible of liberal inter- pretation until their specific program of practical terms was added. That program proposed no concessions at all, either to sovereignty of Russia or to the preferences of the population with whose fortunes it dealt, but meant, in a word, that the central empires were to keep every 209 210 Democracy Today foot of territory their armed forces had occupied every province, every city, every point of vantage as a permanent addition to their territories and their power. It is a reasonable conjecture that the general prin- ciples of settlement which they at first suggested origi- nated 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 con- crete terms of actual settlement came from the military leaders, who have no thought but to keep what they have got. The negotiations have been broken off. The Russian representatives were sincere and in earnest. They cannot entertain such proposals of conquest and domination. The whole incident is full of significance. It is also full of perplexity. With whom are the Russian repre- sentatives dealing ? For whom are the representatives of the central empires speaking? Are they speaking for the majorities of their respective parliaments or for the minority parties that military and imperial- istic minority which has so far. dominated their whole policy and controlled the affairs of Turkey and 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 democ- racy, that the conferences they have been holding witli the Teutonic and Turkish statesmen should be held within open, not closed, doors, and all the world has been audience, as was desired. Program of the World's Peace 211 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 Germany, or to those who resist and defy that spirit and intention and insist upon conquest and subjuga- tion ? 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 cen- tral empires, they have again attempted to acquaint the world with their objects in the war and have again challenged their adversaries to say what their objects are and what sort of settlement they would deem just and satisfactory. There is no good reason why that challenge should not be responded to, and responded to with the utmost candor. "We 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 definitive 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 cen- tral powers, no uncertainty of principle, no vagueness of detail. 212 Democracy Today The only secrecy of counsel, the only lack of fear- less frankness, the only failure to make definite state- ment 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 peradventure that the objects of the vital sacrifice are part and parcel of the very life of society and that the people for whom he speaks think them right and imperative as he does. There is, moreover, a voice calling for these defini- tions of principle and of purpose which is, it seems to me, more thrilling and more compelling than any of the many moving voices with which the troubled air of the world is filled. It is the voice of the Russian people. 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 prin- ciple or in action. The 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 ; 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 Program of the World's Peace 213 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 Russia to attain their utmost hope of liberty and ordered peace. It will be our wish and purpose that the processes of peace, when they are begun, shall be absolutely open, and that they shall involve and permit henceforth no secret understandings of any kind. The day of con- quest and aggrandizement is gone by; so is also the day of secret covenants entered into in the interest of particular governments, and likely at some unlooked for moment to upset the peace of the world. It is this happy fact, now clear to the view of every public man whose thoughts do not still linger in an age that is dead and gone, which makes it possible for every nation whose purposes are consistent with 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 occurred which touched us to the quick and made the life of our own people impossible unless they were corrected and the world secured once for all against their recurrence. What we demand in this war, there- fore, is nothing peculiar to ourselves. It is that the world be made fit and safe to live in ; and particularly that it be made safe for every peace- loving nation which, like our own, wishes to live its 214 Democracy Today 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 unless justice be done to others it will not be done to us. The program of the world 's peace, therefore, is our program, and that program, the only possible pro- gram, as we see it, is this : I. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international under- standings of any kind, but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view. II. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace arid in war, except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part by international action for the enforcement of inter- national covenants. III. The removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace and associating themselves for its maintenance. IV. Adequate guaranties given and taken that na- tional armaments will be reduced to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety. V. A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interest of the popu- lations concerned must have equal weight with the Program of the World's Peace 215 equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined. VI. 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 unham- pered and unembarrassed opportunity for the inde- pendent determination of her own political develop- ment and national policy and assure her of a sincere welcome into the society of free nations under insti- tutions of her own choosing; and, more than a wel- come, assistance also of every kind that she may need and may herself desire. The treatment accorded Russia by her sister nations in the months to come will be the acid test of their good will, of their com- prehension of her needs as distinguished from their own interests, and of their intelligent and unselfish sympathy. VII. Belgium, the whole world will agree, must be evacuated and restored without any attempt to limit the sovereignty which she enjoys in common with all other free nations. No other single act will serve as this will serve to restore confidence among the nations in the laws which they have themselves set and deter- mined for the government of their relations with one another. Without this healing act the whole structure and validity of international law is forever impaired. VIII. 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 216 Democracy Today for nearly fifty years, should be righted, in order that peace may once more be made secure in the interest of all. IX. A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearly recognizable lines of nation- ality. X. The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to see safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the freest opportunity of autonomous development. XI. Roumania, Serbia, and Montenegro should be evacuated; occupied territories restored; Serbia ac- corded free and secure access to the sea ; and the rela- tions of the several Balkan states to one another deter- mined by friendly counsel along historically estab- lished lines of allegiance and nationality; and inter- national guaranties of the political and economic independence and territorial integrity of the several Balkan states should be entered into. XII. The Turkish portions of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development, and the Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a free passage to the ships and commerce of all nations under international guaranties. XIII. An independent Polish state should be erected which should include the territories inhab- ited by indisputably Polish populations, which should Program of the World's Peace 217 be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose political and economic independence and terri- torial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenant. XIV. A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guaranties of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike. In regard to these essential rectifications of .wrong and assertions of right we feel ourselves to be inti- mate partners of all the governments and peoples associated together against the imperialists. We can not be separated in interest or divided in purpose. We stand together until the end. For such arrangements and covenants we are willing to fight and to continue to fight until they are achieved ; but only because we wish the right to prevail and desire a just and stable peace such as can be secured only by removing the chief provocations to war, which this program does remove. We have no jealousy of German greatness and there is nothing in this program that impairs it. We grudge her no achievement or distinction of learning or of pacific enterprise such as have made her record very bright and very enviable. We do not wish to injure her or to block in any way her legitimate influence or power. We do not wish to fight her either with arms or with hostile arrangements of trade, if she is willing to associate herself with us and the other peace-loving nations of the world in covenants of justice and law and fair dealing. We wish her only to accept a place 218 Democracy Today of equality among the peoples of the world the new world in which we now live instead of a place of mastery. Neither do we presume to suggest to her any altera- tion or modification of her institutions. But it is 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 principle runs through the whole pro- gram 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 people of the United States could act upon no other principle, and to the vindication of this principle they are ready to devote their lives, their honor, and everything that they possess. The moral climax of this, the culminating and final war for human liberty, has come, and they are ready to put their strength, their own highest purpose, their own integrity, and devotion to the test. APPENDIX DAVID LLOYD GEORGE [ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE AMERICAN CLUB IN LONDON, APRIL 12, 1917.] I am in the happy position of being, I think, the first British Minister of the Crown who, speaking on behalf of the people of this country, can salute the American Nation as comrades in arms. I am glad; I am proud. I am glad not merely because of the stupendous resources which this great nation will bring to the succor of the alliance, but I rejoice as a democrat that the advent of the United States into this war gives the final stamp and seal to the character of the conflict as a struggle against military autocracy throughout the world. That was the note that ran through the great deliverance of President Wilson. 1 It was echoed, Sir, in your resounding words today. The United States of America have the noble tradition, never broken, of having never engaged in war except for liberty. And this is the greatest struggle for liberty that they have ever embarked upon. I am not at all surprised, when one recalls the wars of the past, that America took its time to make up its mind about the character of this struggle. In Europe most of the great wars of the past were waged for dynastic aggrandizement and conquest. No wonder when this great war started that there were some elements of suspicion still lurking in the minds of the people 219 220 Democracy Today of the United States of America. There were those who thought perhaps that Kings were at their old tricks and although they saw the gallant Republic of France fighting, they some of them perhaps regarded it as the poor victim of a conspiracy of monarchial swashbucklers. The fact that the United States of America has made up its mind finally makes it abundantly clear to the world that this is no struggle of that character, but a great fight for human liberty. They naturally did not know at first what we had endured in Europe for years from this military caste in Prussia. It never has reached the United States of America. Prussia was not a democracy. The Kaiser promises that it will be a democracy after the war. I think he is right. But Prussia not merely was not a democracy. Prussia was not a State; Prussia was an army. It had great industries that had been highly developed; a great educational system; it had its universities, it had developed its science. All these were subordinate to the one great predominant purpose, the purpose of all a conquering army which was to intimidate the world. The army was the spear-point of Prussia; the rest was merely the haft. That was what we had to deal with in these old countries. It got on the nerves of Europe. They knew what it all meant. It was an army that in recent times had waged three wars, 2 all of conquest, and the unceasing tramp of its legions through the streets of Prussia, on the parade grounds of Prussia, had got into the Prussian head. The Kaiser, when he witnessed on a grand scale his reviews, got drunk with the sound of it. 3 He deliv- ered the law to the world as if Potsdam was another Sinai, and he was uttering the law from the thunder clouds. But make no mistake. Europe was uneasy. Europe was half intimidated. Europe was anxious. Europe was appre- hensive. We knew the whole time what it meant. What we did not know was the moment it would come. This is the menace, this is the apprehension from which Europe has suffered for over fifty years.* It paralyzed the beneficent activity of all States, which ought to be devoted Meaning of America's Entrance Into the War22l to concentrating on the well-being of their peoples. They had to think about this menace, which was there constantly as a cloud ready to burst over the land. No one can tell except Frenchmen what they endured from this tyranny, patiently, gallantly, with dignity, till the hour of deliverance came. 5 The best energies of domestic science had been devoted to defending itself against the impending blow. France was like a nation which put up its right arm to ward off a blow, and could not give the whole of her strength to the great things which she was capable of. That great, bold, imaginative, fertile mind, which would otherwise have been clearing new paths for progress, was paralyzed. That is the state of things we had to encounter. The most characteristic of Prussian institutions is the Hindenberg line. What is the Hindenburg line? The Hiudenburg line is a line drawn in the territories of other people, with a warning that the inhabitants of those territories shall not cross it at the peril of their lives. That line has been drawn in Europe for fifty years. You recollect what happened some years ago in France, when the French Foreign Minister 8 was practically driven out of office by Prussian interference. Why? What had he done? He had done nothing which a Minister of an inde- pendent State had not the most absolute right to do. He had crossed the imaginary line drawn in French territory by Prussian despotism, and he had to leave. Europe, after enduring this for generations, made up its mind at last that the Hindenburg line must be drawn along the legitimate frontiers of Germany herself. There could be no other atti- tude than that for the emancipation of Europe and the -world. It was hard at first for the people of America quite to appreciate that Germany had not interfered to the same extent with their freedom, if at all. But at last they endured the same experience as Europe had been subjected to. Amer- icans were told that they were not to be allowed to cross and recross the Atlantic except at their peril. American ships were sunk without warning. American citizens were 222 Democracy Today drowned, hardly with an apology in fact, as a matter of German right. At first America could hardly believe it. They could not think it possible that any sane people should behave in that manner. And they tolerated it once, and they tolerated it twice, until it became clear that the Ger- mans really meant it. Then America acted, and acted promptly. The Hindenburg line was drawn along the shores of America, and the Americans were told they must not cross it. America said, "What is this?" Germany said, "This is our line, beyond which you must not go," and America said, "The place for that line is not the Atlantic, but on the Rhine and we mean to help you roll it up." There are two great facts which clinch the argument that this is a great struggle for freedom. The first is the fact that America -has come in. She would not have come in otherwise. The second is the Eussian revolution. When France in the eighteenth century sent her soldiers to America to fight for the freedom and independence of that land, France also was an autocracy in those days. But Frenchmen in America, once they were there their aim was freedom, their atmosphere was freedom, their inspiration was free- dom. They acquired a taste for freedom, and they took it home, and France became free. That is the story of Russia. Russia engaged in this great war for the freedom of Serbia, of Montenegro, of Bulgaria, and has fought for the freedom of Europe. They wanted to make their own country free, and they have done it. The Russian revolution is not merely the outcome of the struggle for freedom. It is a proof of the character of the struggle for liberty, and if the Russian people realize, as there is every evidence they are doing, that national discipline is not incompatible with national freedom nay, that national discipline is essential to the security of national freedom they will, indeed, become a free people. I have been asking myself the question, Why did Germany, deliberately, in the third year of the war, provoke America Meaning of America's Entrance Into the War 223 to this declaration and to this action deliberately, reso- lutely? It has been suggested that the reason was that there were certain elements in American life, and they were under the impression that they would make it impossible for the United States to declare war. That I can hardly believe. But the answer has been afforded by Marshal von Hindenburg himself, in the very remarkable interview which appeared in the press, I think, only this morning. He depended clearly on one of two things. First, that the submarine campaign would have destroyed international shipping to such an extent that England would have been put out of business before America was ready. According to his computation, America cannot be ready for twelve months. He does not know America. In the alternative, that when America is ready, at the end of twelve months, with her army, she will have no ships to transport that army to the field of battle. In von Hindenburg 's words, "America car- ries no weight," I suppose he means she has no ships to carry weight. On that, undoubtedly, they are reckoning. Well, it is not wise always to assume that even when the German General Staff, which has miscalculated so often, makes a calculation it has no ground for it. It therefore behooves the whole of the Allies, Great Britain and America in particular, to see that that reckoning of von Hindenburg is as false as the one he made about his famous line, which we have broken already. The road to victory, the guarantee of victory, the abso- lute assurance of victory is to be found in one word ships; and a second word ships; and a third word ships. And with that quickness of apprehension which characterizes your nation, Mr. Chairman, I see that they fully realize that, and today I observe that they have already made arrange- ments to build one thousand 3000-tonners for the Atlantic. I think that the German military advisers must already begin to realize that this is another of the tragic miscalculations which are going to lead them to disaster and to ruin. But you will pardon me for emphasizing that. We are a slow 224 Democracy Today people in these islands slow and blundering but we get there. You get there sooner, and that is why I am glad to see you in. But may I say that we have been in this business for three years? We have, as we generally de, tried every blunder. In golfing phraseology, we have got into every bunker. But we have got a good niblick. We are right out on the course. But may I respectfully suggest that it is worth America's while to study our blunders, so as to begin just where we are now and not where we were three years ago? That is an advantage. In war, time has as tragic a significance as it has in sickness. A step which, taken today, may lead to assured victory, taken tomorrow may barely avert disaster. All the Allies have discovered that. It was a new country for us all. It was trackless, mapless. We had to go by instinct. But we found the way, and I am so glad that you are sending your great naval and military experts here, just to exchange experiences with men who have been through all the dreary, anxious crises of the last three years. America has helped us even to win the battle of Arras. Do you know that these guns which destroyed the German trenches, shattered the barbed wire I remember, with some friends of mine whom I see here, arranging to order the machines to make those guns from America. Not all of them you got your share, but only a share, a glorious share. So that America has also had her training. She has been mak- ing guns, making ammunition, giving us machinery to pre- pare both; she has supplied us with steel, and she has got all that organization and she has got that wonderful facility, adaptability, and resourcefulness of the great people which inhabits that great continent. Ah! It was a bad day for military autocracy in Prussia when it challenged the great Eepublic of the West. We know what America can do, and we also know that now she is in it she will do it. She will wage an effective and successful war. There is something more important. She will insure a beneficent peace. I attach great importance and I am the Meaning of America's Entrance Into the War 225 last man in the world, knowing for three years what our difficulties have been, what our anxieties have been, and what our fears have been I am the last man to say that the succor which is given to us from America is not something in itself to rejoice in, and to rejoice in greatly. But I don't mind saying that I rejoice even more in the knowledge that America is going to win the right to be at the conference table when the terms of peace are being discussed. That conference will settle the destiny of nations the course of human life for God knows how many ages. It would have been tragic for mankind if America had not been there, and there with all the influence, all the power, and the right which she has now won by flinging herself into this great struggle. I can see peace coming now not a peace which will be the beginning of war; not a peace which will be an endless preparation for strife and bloodshed; but a real peace. The world is an old world. It has never had peace. It has been rocking and swaying like an ocean, and Europe poor Europe! has always lived under the menace of the sword. When this war began two-thirds of Europe were under autocratic rule. It is the other way about now, and democ- racy means peace. The democracy of France did not want war; the democracy of Italy hesitated long before they entered the war; the democracy of this country shrank from it shrank and shuddered and never would have entered the caldron had it not been for the invasion of Belgium. The democracies sought peace; strove for peace. If Prussia had been a democracy there would have been no war. Strange things have happened in this war. There are stranger things to come, and they are coming rapidly. There are times in history when this world spins so leis- urely along its destined course that it seems for centuries to be at a standstill; but there are also times when it rushes along at a giddy pace, covering the track of centuries in a year. Those are the times we are living in now. Six weeks ago Eussia was an autocracy; she now is one of the most 226 Democracy Today advanced democracies in the world. Today we are waging the most devastating war that the world has ever seen; tomorrow perhaps not a distant tomorrow war may be abolished forever from the category of human crimes. This may be something like the fierce outburst of Winter which we are now witnessing before the complete triumph of the sun. It is written of those gallant men who won that victory on Monday 7 men from Canada, from Australia, and from this old country, which has proved that in spite of its age it is not decrepit it is written of those gallant men that they attacked with the dawn fit work for the dawn! to drive out of forty miles of French soil those miscreants who had defiled it for three years. "They attacked with the dawn." Significant phrase! The breaking up of the dark rule of the Turk, which for centuries has clouded the sunniest land in the world, the freeing of Russia from an oppression which has covered it like a shroud for so long, the great declaration of President Wilson coming with the might of the great nation which he represents into the struggle for liberty are heralds of the dawn. "They attacked with the dawn, f ' and these men are marching forward in the full radiance of that dawn, and soon Frenchmen and Americans, British, Italians, Russians, yea, and Serbians, Belgians, Montenegrins, will march into the full light of a perfect day. THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES PREAMBLE We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our poster- ity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. ARTICLE I THE LEGISLATIVE DEPARTMENT The Congress : Its Divisions and Powers Section 1. All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives. The House: Its Composition and Powers Sec. 2. The House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen every second year by the people of the several states, and the electors in each state shall have the qualifica- tions requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the state legislature. No person shall be a representative who shall not have attained to the age of twenty-five years, and been seven years a citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of that state in which he shall be chosen. (Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states which may be included within this Union, according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all other persons.*) The actual enumera- *Partly superseded by the Fourteenth Amendment. 228 Democracy Today tion shall be made within three years after the first meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent term of ten years, in such manner as they shall by law direct. The number of representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty thousand, but each state shall have at least one repre- sentative; and until such enumeration shall be made the state of New Hampshire shall be entitled to choose three; Massachu- setts, eight; Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, one; Connecticut, five; New York, six; New Jersey, four; Pennsyl- vania, eight; Delaware, one; Maryland, six; Virginia, ten; North Carolina, five; South Carolina, five; and Georgia, three. When vacancies happen in the representation from any state, the executive authority thereof shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies. The House of Representatives shall choose their Speaker and other officers, and shall have the sole power of impeachment. The Senate: Its Composition and Powers Sec. 3. The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two senators from each state, chosen by the legislature thereof, for six years; and each senator shall have one vote. Immediately after they shall be assembled in consequence of the first election, they shall be divided as equally as may be into three classes. The seats of the senators of the first class shall be vacated at the expiration of the second year; of the second class, at the expiration of the fourth year; of the third class, at the expiration of the sixth year, so that one-third may be chosen every second year; and if vacancies happen by resig- nation, or otherwise, during the recess of the legislature of any state, the executive thereof may make temporary appointments until the next meeting of the legislature, which shall fill such vacancies. No person shall be a senator who shall not have attained to the agr cf thirty years, and been nine years a citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of that state for which he shall be chosen. The Vice-president of the United States shall be president of the Senate, out shall have no vote, unless they be equally divided. The Constitution of the United States 229 The Senate shall choose their other officers, and also a presi- dent pro tempore, in the absence of the Vice-president, or when he shall exercise the office of President of the United States. The Senate shall have the sole power to try all impeachments ; when sitting for that purpose, they shall be on oath or affirma- tion. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside; and no person shall be convicted without the concurrence of two-thirds of the members present. Judgment in cases of impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States; but the party convicted shall, neverthless, be liable and subject to indictment, trial, judgment, and punishment accord- ing to law. Congressional Elections and Date of Assembly Sec. 4. The times, places, and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time, by law, make or alter such regulations, except as to the places of choosing senators. The Congress shall assemble at least once in every year, and such meeting shall be on the first Monday in December, unless they shall by law appoint a different day. Eules of Procedure of Senate and House Sec. 5. Each house shall be the judge of the elections, returns, and qualifications of its own members, and a majority of each shall constitute a quorum to do business; but a smaller number may adjourn from day to day, and may be authorized to compel the attendance of absent members, in such manner and under such penalties as each house may provide. Each house may determine the rules of its proceedings, punish its members for disorderly behavior, and, with the concurrence of two-thirds, expel a member. Each house shall keep a journal of its proceedings, and from time to time publish the same, excepting such parts as may in their judgment require secrecy; and the yeas and nays of the members of either house on any question shall, at the desire of one-fifth of those present, be entered on the journal. 230 Democracy Today Neither house, during the session of Congress, shall, without the consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days, nor to any other place than that in which the two houses shall be sitting. Compensation and Privileges of Members Sec. 6. The senators and representatives shall receive a com- pensation for their services, to be ascertained by law, and paid out of the treasury of the United States. They shall in all cases, except treason, felony, and breach of the peace, be privi- leged from arrest during their attendance at the session of their respective houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any speech or debate in either house, they shall not be questioned in any other place. No senator or representative shall, during the time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil office under the author- ity of the United States which shall have been created, or the emoluments whereof shall have been increased, during such time; and no person holding any office under the United States shall be a member of either house during Ihis continuance in office. Methods of Legislation Sec. 7. All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or con- cur with amendments as on other bills. Every bill which shall have passed the House of Representa- tives and the Senate shall, before it becomes a law, be presented . to the President of the United States; if he approve, he shall sign it, but if not, he shall return it, with his objections, to that house in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the objections at large on their journal, and proceed to recon- sider it. If after such reconsideration two-thirds of that house shall agree to pass the bill, it shall be sent, together with the objections, to the other house, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two-thirds of that house, it shall become a law. But in all such cases the votes of both houses shall be determined by yeas and nays, and the names of the persons voting for and against the bill shall be entered on The Constitution of the United States 231 the journal of each house respectively. If any bill shall not be returned by the President within ten days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the same shall be a law, in like manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their adjournment prevent its return, in which case it shall not be a law. Every order, resolution, or vote to which the concurrence of the Senate and House of Representatives may be necessary (except on a question of adjournment) shall be presented to the President of the United States ; and before the same shall take effect, shall be approved by him, or being disapproved by him, shall be repassed by two-thirds of the Senate and House of Representatives, according to the rules and limitations pre- scribed in the case of a bill. Powers Vested in Congress Sec. 8. The Congress shall have power: To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defenses and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts, and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States; To borrow money on the credit of the United States; To regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes; To establish a uniform rule of naturalization, and uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the United States ; To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures; To provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securi- ties and current coin of the United States; To establish post offices and post roads; ' To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by secur- ing, for limited times, to authors and inventors, the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries; To constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court; To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations; 232 Democracy Today To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water ; To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years ; To provide and maintain a navy; To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces; To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections, and repel invasions; To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states, respectively, the appointment of the officers and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress ; To exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over such district (not exceeding ten miles square) as may, by ces- sion of particular states, and the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of the government of the United States, and to exercise like authority over all places purchased by the consent of the legislature of the state in which the same stall be, for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other needful buildings; and To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof. Limits to Powers of the Federal Government Sec. 9. The migration or importation of such persons as any of the states now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a tax or duty may be imposed on such importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each person. The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be sus- pended, unless when in case of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it. No bill of attainder or P.X post facto law shall be passed. The Constitution of the United States 233 No capitation or other direct tax shall be laid, unless in pro- portion to the census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken. No tax or duty shall be laid on articles exported from any state. No preference shall be given by any regulation of commerce or revenue to the ports of one state over those of another; nor shall vessels bound to, or from, one state, be obliged to enter, clear, or pay duties in another. No money shall be drawn from the treasury but in conse- quence of appropriations made by law; and a regular statement and account of the receipts and expenditures of all public money shall be published from time to tima No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States. And no person holding any office of profit or trust under them shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state. Limits to Powers of the States Sec. 10. No state shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or con- federation; grant letters of marque and reprisal; coin money; emit bills of credit ; make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts; pass any bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts, or grant any title of nobility. No state shall, without the consent of the Congress, lay any imposts or duties on imports or exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing its inspection laws; and the net produce of all duties and imposts, laid by any state on imports or exports, shall be for the use of the treasury of the United States; and all such laws shall be subject to the revision and control of the Congress. No state shall, without the consent of Congress, lay any duty of tonnage, keep troops, or ships of war in time of peace, enter into any agreement or compact with another state, or with a foreign power, or engage in war, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent danger as will not admit of delay. 234 Democracy Today ARTICLE II THE EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT The Executive Officers; the Electoral College Section 1. The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his office during the term of four years, and, together with the Viee-President, chosen for the same term, be elected, as follows: Each state shall. appoint, in such manner as the legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole number of senators and representatives to which the state may be entitled in the Congress; but no senator or representative, or person holding an office of trust or profit under the United States, shall be appointed an elector. (The electors shall meet in their respective states and vote by ballot for two persons, of whom one at least shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves. And they shall make a list of all the persons voted for, and of the number of votes for each ; which list they shall sign and certify, and trans- mit sealed to the seat of the government of the United States, directed to the president of the Senate. The president of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Repre- sentatives, open all the certificates, and the votes shall then be counted. The person having the greatest number of votes shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of electors appointed; and if there be more than one who have such majority, and have an equal number of votes, then the House of Representatives shall immediately choose by ballot one of them for President; and if no person have a majority, then from the five highest on the list the said House shall, in like manner, choose the President. But in choosing the President the votes shall be taken by states, the representa- tion from each state having one vote ; a quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from two-thirds of the states, and a majority of all the states shall be necessary to a choice. In every case, after the choice of the President, the person having the greatest number of votes of the electors shall . The Constitution of the United States 235 be the Vice-President. But if there should remain two or more who have equal votes, the Senate shall choose from them by ballot the Vice-president.*) The Congress may determine the time of choosing the electors, <^nd the day on which they shall give their votes; which day shall be the same throughout the United States. No person except a natural-born citizen, or a citizen of the United States at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty-five years, and been fourteen years a resident within the United States. In case of the removal of the President from office, or of his death, resignation, or inability to discharge the powers and duties of the said office, the same shall devolve on the Vice- president, and the Congress may by law provide for the case of removal, death, resignation, or inability, both of the President and Vice-President, declaring what officer shall then act as President; and such officer shall act accordingly, until the disability be removed, or a President shall be elected. The president shall, at stated times, receive for his services a compensation which shall neither be increased nor diminished during the period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive within that period any other emolument from the United States, or any of them. Before he enter on the execution of his office, he shall take the following oath or affirmation: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will, to the best of my ability, pre- serve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." Powers Granted to the President SEC. 2. The President shall be commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states, when called into the actual service of the United "This paragraph was in force only from 1788 to 1803. 236 Democracy Today States; he may acquire the opinion, in writing, of the principal officer in each of the executive departments, upon any subject relating to the duties of their respective offices; and he shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in eases of impeachment. He shall have power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two-thirds of the senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the ad- vice and consent of the Senate shall appoint, ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States whose appoint- ments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by law; but the Congress may by law vest the appointment of such inferior offices as they think proper in the President alone, in the courts of law, or in the heads of de- partments. The President shall have power to fill up vacancies that may happen during the recess of the Senate, by granting commissions which will expire at the end of their next session. The President's Duties SEC. 3. He shall from time to time give to the Congress in- formation of the state of the Union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and ex- pedient; he may, on extraordinary occasions, convene both houses, or either of them, and in case of disagreement between them, with respect to the time of adjournment, he may adjourn them to such time as he shall think proper; he shall receive ambassadors and other public ministers; he shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed, and shall commission all the officers of the United States. Impeachment of Executive and Civil Officers Sec. 4. The President, Vice-president, and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeach- ment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors. The Constitution of the United States 237 AETICLE III THE JUDICIAL DEPARTMENT The Federal Courts Supreme and Inferior Section 1. The judicial power of the United States shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as* the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The judges, both of the Supreme and inferior courts, shall hold their offices during good behavior, and shall, at stated times, receive for their services a compensation which shall not be diminished during their continuance in office. Powers and Jurisdiction of the Federal Courts Sec. 2. The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made, or which shall be made, under their authority; to all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers, and consuls; to all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction; to controversies to which the United States shall be a party; to controversies between two or more states; (be- tween a state and citizens of another state*) ; between citizens of different states; between citizens of the same state claiming lands under grants of different states, and between a state, or the citizens thereof, and foreign states, citizens, or subjects. In all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers, and consuls, and those in which a state shall be a party, the Su- preme Court shall have original jurisdiction. In all the other cases before mentioned, the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with such exceptions and under such regulations as the Congress shall make. The trial of all crimes, except in cases of impeachment, shall be by jury; and such trial shall be held in the state where the said crimes shall have been committed; but when not com- mitted within any state, the trial shall be at such place or places as the Congress may by law have directed. Cancelled by the Eleventh Amendment. 238 Democracy Today Treason-. Its Nature and Punishment Sec. 3. Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court. The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason, but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture, except during the life of the person at- tained. ARTICLE IV RELATION OF THE STATE AND FEDERAL GOVERNMENTS Recognition of State Authority Section 1. Full faith and credit shall be given in each state to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state. And the Congress may, by general laws, prescribe the manner in which such acts, records, and proceedings shall be proved, and the effect thereof. Laws Eegarding Citizens of the States Sec. 2. The citizens of each state shall be entitled to aJl privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states. A person charged in any state with treason, felony, or other crime, who shall flee from justice, and be found in another state, shall, on demand of the executive authority of the state from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the state hav- ing jurisdiction of the crime. No person held to service or labor in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such sen-ice or labor may be due. Admission of States and Regulation of United States Territories Sec. 3. New states may be admitted by the Congress into this Union ; but no new state shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other state; nor any state be formed by the junction of two or more states, or parts of states, without the The Constitution of the United States 239 consent of the legislature of the states concerned as well as of the Congress. The Congress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to prejudice any claims of the United States, or of any particular state. Protection Guaranteed ~by the Federal Government Sec. 4. The United States shall guarantee to every state in this Union a republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion; and on application of the legis- lature, or of the executive (when the legislature cannot be con- vened), against domestic violence. ARTICLE V POWER AND METHOD OF AMENDING THE CONSTITUTION The Congress whenever two-thirds of both houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or, on the application of the legislature of two-thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislature of three- fourths of the several states, or by conventions in three-fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be pro- posed by the Congress; provided that no amendment which may be made prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any manner affect the first and fourth clauses in the ninth section of the first article; and that no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate. ARTICLE VI PUBLIC DEBTS; THE SUPREME LAW; OATH OF OFFICE; RELIGIOUS TEST PROHIBITED All debts contracted and engagements entered into before the adoption of this Constitution shall be as valid against the United States under this Constitution as under the confed- eration. 240 Democracy 'ioday This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding. The senators and representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and al) executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation to support this constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required a,s a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States. ARTICLE VII RATIFICATION AND ESTABLISHMENT OP THE CONSTITUTION The ratification of the conventions of nine states shall ba sufficient for the establishment of this Constitution between the states so ratifying the same. Done in convention by the unanimous consent of the states . present, the seventeenth day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-seven, and of the independence of the United States o.t America the twelfth. In witness whereof, we have hereunto subscribed our names, GEO. WASHINGTON, Deputy from Virginia. NEW HAMPSHIRE: NEW JERSEY: John Langdon William Livingston Nicholas Gil man David Br ear ley William Paterson MASSACHUSETTS: Jonathan Dayton Nathaniel Gorham PENNSYLVANIA: Rufus King Benjamin Franklin COXXECTICUT: Thomas Mifflin William Samuel Johnson Eobert Morns Roger Sherman Geor S e C1 y mer Thomas Fitzsimmons NEW YORK: James Wilson Alexander Hamilton Gouverneur Morris The Constitution of the United States 241 DELAWARE: NORTH CAROLINA: George Eeed William Blount Gunning Bedford, Jr. Eichard Dobbs Spaight John Dickinson Hugh Williamson Richard Bassett SOUTH CAROLINA: Jacob Broom John Rutledge MARYLAND: Charles Pinckney James McHenry Charles Cotesworth Daniel of St. Thomas Pinckney Jenifer Pierce Butler Daniel Carroll GEORGIA: VIRGINIA: William Few John Blair Abraham Baldwin James Madison, Jr. Attest: WILLIAM JACKSON, Secretary. AMENDMENTS Articles in addition to, and amendments of, the Constitution of the United States of America, proposed by Congress, and ratified by the legislatures of the several states pursuant to the fifth article of the original Constitution. ARTICLE I FREEDOM OP RELIGION AND SPEECH ; RIGHT OF ASSEMBLY Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the peo- ple peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. ARTICLE II RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. ARTICLE III QUARTERING OF TROOPS No soldier shall, in time of peace, be quartered in any house without the consent of the owner; nor in time of war but in a manner to be prescribed by law. 242 Democracy Today ARTICLE IV RIGHT OF SEARCH PROHIBITED The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue but upon prob- able cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. ARTICLE V RIGHT OF TRIAL BY JURY No person shall be held to answer for a capital or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war and public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life and limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against him- self, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation. ARTICLE VI RIGHTS OF ACCUSED IN CRIMINAL CASES In all criminal prosecutions the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation ; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense. ARTICLE VII SUITS AT COMMON LAW In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by -jury shall be pre- served, and no fact tried by a jury shall be otherwise re-exam- ined in any court of the United States than according to the rules of common law. The Constitution of the United States 243 AETICLE VIII BAIL AND FINES Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines im- posed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. AETICLE IX MODIFICATION OF ENUMERATED RIGHTS The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. AETICLE X POWERS RESERVED TO STATES AND THE PEOPLE The powers not delegated to the United States by the Consti- tution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people. AETICLE XI LIMITATION TO POWER OF THE FEDERAL COURTS The judicial power of the United States shall not be con- strued to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by citizens of another state, or by citizens or subjects of any foreign state. AETICLE XII NEW ELECTORAL LAW The electors shall meet in their respective states and vote by ballot for President and Vice-president, one of whom, atjeast, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves; they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as Presi- dent, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice-presi- dent ; and they shall make distinct lists of all persons voted for as President, and of all persons voted for as Vice-president, and of the number of votes for each, which lists they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the seat of the government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate; the President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Eepresentatives, open all the certificates, and the votes shall then be counted; the person having the greatest number of votes for President shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of electors ap- pointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the 244 Democracy Today persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representa- tives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the vote shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote. A quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from two- thirds of the states, and a majority of all the states shall be necessary to a choice. And if the House of Representatives shall not choose a President whenever the right of choice shall devolve upon them, before the fourth day of March next follow- ing, then the Vice-president shall act as President, as in the case of the death or other constitutional disability of the President. The person having the greatest number of votes as Vice-presi- dent shall be the Vice-president, if such number be a majority of the whole number of electors appointed; and if no person have a majority, then from the two highest numbers on the list the Senate shall choose the Vice-president. A quorum for the purpose shall consist of two-thirds of the whole number of senators, and a majority of the whole number shall be necessary to a choice. But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States. ARTICLE XIII ABOLITION OF SLAVERY Slavery and Involuntary Servitude Prohibited Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Sec. 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. ARTICLE XIV NEW LAWS MADE NECESSARY BY THE CIVIL WAE Qualifications for Citizenship Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside, No The Constitution of the United States 245 state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Apportionment of Representatives Sec. 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the sev- eral states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, representatives in Congress, the executive or judicial officers of a state, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such state. Disability for Breaking Oath of Office Sec. 3. No person shall be a senator, or representative in Congress, or elector of President or Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have-engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each house, remove such dis- ability. The Public Debt Sec. 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pen- sions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United 246 Democracy Today States nor any state shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations, and claims shall be held illegal and void. Sec. 5. Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appro- priate legislation, the provisions of this article. ARTICLE XV RIGHT OF SUFFRAGE Eight Guaranteed to All Citizens Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States, or by any state, on account of race, color, or previous condition of servi- tude. Sec. 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. ARTICLE XVI INCOME TAX The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states, and without regard to any census or enumeration. ARTICLE XVII ELECTION OF SENATORS The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote. The electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislatures. When vacancies happen in the representation of any State in the Senate, the executive authority of such State shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies: Provided, That the legislature of any State may empower the executive thereof to make temporary appointments until the people fill the vacan- cies by election as the legislature may direct. This amendment shall not be so construed as to affect tie election or term of any Senator chosen before it becomes valid as part of the Constitution. BIOGRAPHICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES ABRAHAM LINCOLN (1809-1865) The circumstances of the writing and delivery of Lincoln 's address at Gettysburg are so well known as scarcely to need recounting. The battle had been fought July 1-2-3 of 1863 and the check there sustained by the Confederacy marked the turning point in the Civil War. Lincoln's address, delivered Nov. 19, 1863, at the Dedication of the Gettysburg National Cemetery, has remained one of the most important and strik- ing documents in the history of American Democracy. His definition of our system of rule "as government of the peo- ple, by the people, for the people" has become a touchstone of one 's Americanism. The reading of this famous passage, almost universally adopted in our time, which places the emphasis on the prepo- sitions of, by, and for is incorrect in the sense that it is not that used by Lincoln himself. President John Grier Hibben of Princeton University informs the editor that one of the audience on that memorable day has assured him that the emphasis was placed by Lincoln unmistakably on the word people, which he made stronger with each repetition, ' ' govern- ment of the people, by the PEOPLE, for the PEOPLE." It ia natural that Lincoln should have done this, for to him one of the greatest advantages in our system of government was the importance and the opportunity it gave to the young citizen poor in purse and social station. This was one of the reasons why he believed slavery hostile to the spirit of democracy. He was proud to count himself one of the people. The point was brought out sharply in his speech delivered at New Haven, March 6, 1860, before his election to the Presidency. "One of the reasons why I am opposed to slavery is just this: what is the true condition of the laborer? I take it that it is best for all to leave each man free to acquire property as fast as he can. Some will get wealthy. I don't believe in a law to prevent a man from getting rich; it would do more 247 248 Democracy Today Page harm than good. So while we do not propose any war on cap- ital, we do wish to allow the humblest man an equal chance to get rich with everybody else. When one starts poor, as most of us do in the race of life, free society is such that he knows he can better his condition ; he knows that there is no fixed condition of labor for his whole life. I am not ashamed to confess that twenty-five years ago I was a hired laborer, maul- ing rails, at work on a flatboat just what might happen to any poor man's son. I want every man to have a chance and I believe a black man is entitled to it in which he can better his condition where he may look forward and hope to be a hired laborer this year and the next, work for himself afterward, and finally to hire men to work for him. That is the true system." Further light on the character of Lincoln will be found in President Wilson's address on Abraham Lincoln, pages 96-101. LINCOLN'S GETTYSBURG ADDRESS (Bold face figures refer to pages; plain figures to note num- bers in text.) 17 - 1. Lincoln with characteristic modesty little thought that his address would go down to posterity. Before its delivery he told a friend r " It is a flat failure. The people won 't like it. ' ' 18 - 2. This definition of our government may possibly have been suggested to Lincoln by a phrase of the abolitionist preacher, Theodore Parker, in a speech delivered in 1858. Parker's statement ran ' ' Democracy is direct self-government, over all the people, by all the people, for all the people.' ' Lincoln 's simpler statement is in any case more effective. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL James Bussell Lowell, 1819-1891, added to his fame as poet and essayist, the distinction of having served his country as ambassador to Spain 1876-1880, and to Great Britain, 1880- 1885. He performed a particularly useful service in interpret- ing England and the United States to each other. The address on Democracy, which shows his optimistic faith and native Americanism, was delivered during this period of his stay in England. It should be remembered that as late as 1884, Ameri- can democracy was still in European eyes on the defensive. Biographical and Explanatory Notes 249 Page 20. 1. Plato is more idealistic than Aristotle; hence "the tower of Plato." His works, with chose of Aristotle, constitute the most important body of ancient philosophy. 22. 2. Lowell, born in 1819 at Cambridge, Mass., on the edge of the open country, had seen the transformation of his section from a rural to an industrial population. The French trav- elers had brought back glowing accounts of the simple life of the American settlers and even of the American Indians. Though Lowell did not like the change he would not willingly testify against it; hence the reference to Balf-am. See Num- bers, xxii, xxiii. '6. The property qualification for suffrage, general in the early years of our government, had been abolished in Massa- chusetts at the Constitutional Convention in 1820. 4. In the period of the Civil War Massachusetts paid out in bounties and bounty loans $26,000,000 and the war debt of the state at the close of the war was $15,000,000. M- 5. In the speech on Moving his Resolution for Conciliation with the Colonies, March 22, 1775, Burke says, "I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people." Select Works, Clarendon Press, 1892, Vol. I, p. 192. It is impossible to identify exactly the "French gentleman" referred to. Lowell may have been thinking of the well- known critic and historian, Taine, who satirized certain Ameri- can tendencies in his Life and Opinions of F. T. Graindorge. 6. Zola (1840-1902) was at this time (1884) the most dis- cussed novelist in France. His novels include ' ' naturalistic ' ' pictures of the worst and most depraved elements in French life. 7. Democracy was not nearly so popular in Europe in 1884 as it is at present. The excesses of the Paris Commune in 1871 had dealt a severe "blow to the idea that the people can govern themselves. The great Civil War through which we ourselves had passed had likewise discouraged enthusiasm for democracy. 250 Democracy- Today Pag* 25- 8. A species of grape louse which at this time was ruining the vineyards of France. 8a. The Boers had started a revolt in 1880 and in 1881 routed the small British force at Majuba Hill. 9. A distinguished Venetian ambassador (1507-1565). 26 - 10. Not one but many of the fathers of the church con- tested the. rights of property. The medieval church held that the taking of interest was sinful and it was this condemnation that threw money-lending as a business into the hands of the Jews. It made no distinction between usury and interest. 11. Proudhon (1809-1865), a French radical and socialist who summarily defined property as a theft in his famous volume What Is Property? published in 1840. 12. Bourdaloue (1632-1704), a famous French pulpit orator, not at all revolutionary in his general conceptions. 13. Montesquieu (1689-1755), author of The Spirit of the Laws and historically the most important of the modern polit- ical writers. His work influenced the framers of our Consti- tution and he is frequently referred to by Jefferson. National workshops (ateliers nationaux) were established in France just before the French Revolution, but Lowell is doubtless thinking about the national workshops which were founded after the Revolution of 1848 in France and which were a failure. Lowell strains his point when he attributes them to Montesquieu. He is trying to prove in this passage that most of the "heresies" attributed to American Democracy were in existence before we had declared our independence. 14. Like all the above statements, true in a measure. In the Church of the Middle Ages a career was open to young men of ability, whatever their station, far more readily than at the court or in the army from which persons not of noble birth were in most cases excluded. 15. Charles V. (1500-1555), Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in the time of Luther. More clearly than most of his contemporaries he saw the leaven of ' ' democracy " working in the reforms demanded of the church. The Reformation was a protest against outside authority in religious matters; the Biographical and Explanatory Notes 251 Page American and French Kevolutions were protests against sub- mission to authority in political matters. The refusal to submit to the rule of any power outside ourselves is the first step in democracy. The idea of "government by the consent of the governed" is fundamental to it and is frequently emphasized by President Wilson, as in the close of his A World League for Peace. Contrast this with Emperor William's attitude in Note 15 to Wilson's War Message, page 267. 16. That is, extreme poverty (Lazarus) and what it entails, slums, unsanitary conditions, criminality, are plague-spots in a state, which the existence of a very wealthy class (Dives) does not cure or compensate for. 27. 17. "Forge of the races or mother of peoples." The Brit- ish have of course been recognized as the colonizing people par excellence. 18. Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2. 19. The "rights of man," a phrase frequently used by rad- ical thinkers in France in the 18th century, became a shib- boleth of the French Revolutionists. Thomas Paine adopted it as the title of his famous reply to Burke 's Reflections on the Revolution in France. These natural rights of men are em- phasized in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Inde- pendence. Many modern political thinkers disagree with this doctrine of ' ' natural rights. ' ' 28. 20. Lowell was evidently quoting from memory the opening lines of Coleridge's Ode to France. His memory tricked him for the first line should read "The Sensual and the Dark rebel in vain." 29- 21. See Macbeth, Act II, Scenes 2 and 3. 22. An expression of despair. See I Samuel, iv, 21. 30- 23. Joseph Priestly (1733-1804), a nonconformist minister of liberal tendencies, famous in the history of science as well as of religion. He was mobbed in Birmingham in 1791 but not so much for his religious opinions as for his sympathies with the French Revolution. He spent his last years in America. " 24. The fear that democracy will reduce all to a "dead 252 Democracy Today level" has frequently been entertained. In his volume on Walt Whitman, J. A. Symonds discusses the question whether there can be any great poetry of democracy, seeing that dem- ocracies must lack the contrasts of older civilizations. The fear is groundless. 32 25. Theodore Parker, 1810-1860, an advanced New England theologian and social reformer and a courageous abolitionist. See Note 2 to Lincoln 's Gettysburg Address. 26. Dekker's beautiful linss deserve quotation. "The best of men That e'er wore earth about him, was a sufferer, A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit, The first true gentleman that ever breathed. ' ' See Thomas I)ekker, edited by Ernest Ehys. The Mermaid Series, London, 1887, page 190. 27. Perhaps more correctly Jelal-ed-din-Eumi, 1207-1273, a Persian mystic poet, author of Mathnawi. 27a. The idea that any real democracy must rest on a basis of ideals is one frequently encountered in President Wilson's speeches and admirably characterizes the American attitude. 33. 28. The belief that a democracy could only exist in a small or city-state where all citizens could assemble for deliberation, was frequently held and supported by arguments drawn from history. The Greek republics as well as the Italian republics of the late Middle Age and Eenaissance and the northern Free Cities or Communes had all been small. The Swiss repub- lics, like Geneva, were often cited and indeed Geneva was the state Rousseau had most in mind in writing his Social Con- tract. We must not forget that our immensely larger demoe racy with its universal manhood suffrage and representative government had no precedent in antiquity or indeed in modern times. 28a. The reference is vague, but Lowell is probably referring to England. Queen Victoria was also Empress of India. 29. This is an extreme statement but true in the sense that the framers of the Constitution did not wish to extend suffrage to all citizens regardless of qualifications and that they dis- Biographical and Explanatory Notes 253 age trusted unreasoning popular movements. It was for this reason that they "put as many obstacles as they could contrive, not in the way of the people's will, but of their whim." It was for this reason that they divided the functions of government into legislative, judicial, and executive. In adopting this sys- tem of "checks and balances" they were following Montes- quieu. On all this see the Constitution, Appendix. 34. 30. The French Revolution had tried to throw overboard all previous French tradition. They were to begin with the Year One, a new calendar, a new religion, an entirely new system of government based, so they thought, on reason alone and made to order. Of all these radical innovations the metric system alone survived. 31. It was quite generally held that . democracy leads to anarchy since the people are unwilling to curb themselves. Anarchy in its turn disappears before the power of some ambi- tious despot. This in rough outline was the history of the French nation from the overthrow of the monarchy to the Terror, this anarchy giving way in its turn to the supremacy of Napoleon. The same process had frequently occurred in the Greek republics and in the Italian Cities of the Renaissance. 35. 32. This paragraph makes the task of the founders of the Republic and the Framers of the Constitution seem far easier than it really was. The local state governments were very unwilling to surrender any of their rights or property and the smaller ones were jealous of the larger. Maryland had signed the Articles of Confederation only in 1781 and this first Fed- eration was altogether unsatisfactory. State legislated against state, especially in commercial matters, and there was no cen- tral authority to which all would yield. Yet it was impossible to frame a Constitution until 1787 and the difficulties encoun- tered were serious indeed. See Madison's Journal of the Con- stitutional Convention, edited by E. H. Scott, Scott, Foresman & Co., 1892. 33. The Missouri Compromise (1821) admitted Missouri as a slave state and forbade slavery in territory west of Missouri and north of 36 30', It perpetuated the situation in which 254 Democracy Today age Lincoln said the union could not exist. It made us half slave and half free. Lowell was bitterly opposed to slavery. 37- 34. Lowell's memory is again at fault, though what Carlyle said was "just as bad." In Latter Day Pamphlets I, "The Present Time," Carlyle pays his compliments to America as follows.: "Roast-goose with apple-sauce, she (America) is not much. Boast-goose with apple sauce for the poorest working man. ' ' 35. Lowell probably had in mind the Essay, Of Seditions and Troubles, though Bacon does not say this in so many words. He does say that "the rebellions of the belly are the worst.'' 36. In this matter Lowell himself was far-sighted. At the time of this address there was relatively little fear of trusts. The agitation and legislation against them became important in the next decade. 38. 37. From Pippa Passes III. The last line should read, ' ' When earth was nigher heaven than now. ' ' 39- 38. This was the objection of the English historian and political thinker, Lecky, who says, ' ' One of the great divisions of politics in our day is coming to be whether, at the last resort, the world should be governed by its ignorance or by its intelligence. According to the one party, the preponderat- ing power should be with education and property. According to the other, the ultimate source of power, the supreme right of appeal and control, belongs legitimately to the majority of the nation told by the head or in other words, to the poorest, the most ignorant, the most incapable, who are necessarily the most numerous." In opposition to this, see Whitman's Dem- ocratic Vistas where he holds that the object of democracy is not better government, but a better people, and that universal suffrage tends to raise the level of intelligence and self- respect. Lowell's answer, slightly different, follows in the next paragraph. *' 39. In volunteer regiments at the outset of the Civil War the command was often given to him who raised them; or officers, often with no or insufficient training, were elected. The system was a poor one. Biographical and Explanatory Notes 255 IPago 42. 40. Piccadilly, the thoroughfare for the promenades of the elegant and fashionable in London, so called from the picca- dill, a small stiff collar, affected by the gallants of the time of James I. 41. George Hudson, 1800-1871, one of the first "promoters" of English railways. Risen to a position of undeserved wealth and prominence, he was ruined by the discovery of frauds in his procedure. The English public turned on him; Carlyle fre- quently held him up to scorn and called him ' ' the big swollen gambler." See Latter Day Pamphlets. The project to erect a statue to him, never carried through, called forth Carlyle 'a fiercest denunciations. 42. Napoleon III, 1808-1873. Elected president of France in 1848 he made himself emperor in 1852, and retained this title until captured in the Franco-Prussian War, for the unfortunate outcome of which his lack of political foresight was largely responsible. He was a man of more ambition than character. 44. 43. This phrase is still used by French radicals and social- ists. See also Lincoln's speech at New Haven in Introduction to Lincoln, page 247. 44. The English have no written constitution. 45. 45. Eobert Lowe, Viscount Sherbrooke, 1811-1892, was a British liberal statesman and at one time Chancellor of the Exchequer. He is perhaps best known for his brilliant speeches. Though the phrase quoted has always been credited to Lowe, what he really said in the famous address in Edinburgh in 1867 was that it is necessary "to induce our masters to learn their letters. ' ' 46. It is hardly necessary to say that Lowell is speaking of the socialism of an earlier day and that his idea is imperfect. . Modern socialism does not insist on equalizing all fortunes or incomes. Advanced socialists today claim that they are work- ing to overthrow the capitalistic regime and create a ' ' coop- erative commonwealth" in which the state is employer and in which unnecessary competition is eliminated. Communism, men- tioned later (p. 46), would havp all property held in common. 256 Democracy Today Page 47. Henry George, 1839-1897, author of Progress and Pov- erty, in which he advocated the theory of taxing land exclus- ively. George did not wish land to be "divided" primarily, but to destroy private property in land, which he held should no more exist than private property in light or air. Under bis system each user of property would pay to the government a tax on his land. This land tax or "single tax" would be sufficient to cover all governmental expenses. 46 - 48. Compare this with Balzac 's statement in The Country Doctor : ' i There is something in the nature of power which makes it tend to conserve itself. ' ' STEPHEN GROVER CLEVELAND (1837-1908) Stephen Grover Cleveland was President of the United States 1885-1889 and 1893-1897. By the death of his father he was forced as a lad to make his own way in the world without the benefit of a college education. A man of simple habits, he never sought to attract attention. The quality of forceful leadership which he possessed and ever exercised in the interest of good citizenship forced him upon the attention of the country and brought him to the Presidency. His career as President was marked by independence in forming his judgments and intrepidity in the execution of judgments once formed. He never sought favor and had the high courage to follow the unpopular course. Time justified him and has proved the wisdom of his decisions. The address delivered before the Union League Club of Chi- cago has as its subject Patriotism and Holiday Observance. The introductory paragraphs deal with the observance of holi- days general and have no immediate bearing on our subject, and are thei ore omitted. The second and larger part of the speech, dea! .g with Washington and Patriotism, is given without change. THE MESSAGE OF WASHINGTON 49 - 1. Washington served during the seven years of the Revolu- tion with no expectation or hope of compensation. He was later reimbursed only for the expenditures which as com- Biographical and Explanatory Notes 257 Page mander-in-chief he had made out of his private purse. He loved his home but in this long period could visit it but twice. Fond of retirement as he was, he prepared his Farewell Address at the end of his first term (1793) and was prevailed upon to accept a second only because of the very threatening condition of our relations with France and England. Yet after his retirement when war seemed imminent with France he again, in 1798, accepted the heavy responsibility of commander-in-chief of the provisional army that was being raised. 51. 2. From Othello, Act V, scene 2. 52 - 3. The letter was written at Mount Vernon January 29, 1789. In the same letter he says, in reply to Lafayette's congratula- tions on his election, "I shall assume the task with the most unfeigned reluctance, and with a real diffidence." THEODORE EOOSEVELT (1858- ) Theodore Roosevelt, born 1858, was graduated from Harvard University in 1880. Distinguished sportsman, soldier, and man- of -letters, he was twenty- sixth President of the United States, 1901-1909. His earlier policy was an advocacy of the "Square Deal" between capital and labor with hands off except in case of unfairness on the part of either contestant. His later policy has been strongly for legislation in the interest of the wage- earner and the economically unfortunate. He was leader of the Progressive Party 1912. He is an ardent advocate of. uni- versal military training and is recognized abroad as the type of American man of action. WOODEOW WILSON (1856 ) Woodrow Wilson, born in Virginia in 1856, is the twenty- eighth President of the United States. After graduation from Princeton University, he studied and practiced law, then turned to teaching. After serving eight years as President of Prince- ton University, he was elected Governor of New Jersey 1911, and President of the United States 1913. The leader of the nation in the third great crisis in its history, he has won the confidence of the people by his patience, earnestness, and high sense of our national destiny. One of the greatest masters of 258 Democracy Today Page style in our time, his addresses are regarded both here and in Europe, as among the most important documents in the history of the world war. The earlier addresses given in this volume deal with problems of citizenship, patriotism, and democracy. The later ones are landmarks in our struggle against Germany and autocracy. THE MEANING OP THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 63 - 1. John Hancock of Massachusetts (1737-1793) was chosen president of the Continental Congress in 1775 and his name stands at the head of the signers of the Declaration. 84. 2. On the 10th of June, 1776, a committee of five was appointed to draw up the Declaration. It consisted of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston. This committee assigned the com- position to Jefferson. The draft which he brought in . was modified by omitting certain passages and articles which it was thought might weaken the force of the Colonies' case. The phraseology is very largely Jefferson's. 65 - 3. Before the outbreak of the war in Europe and for some time thereafter, there was a financial depression in the country, of which the President's opponents took advantage in order to criticize the legislative program which he was carrying into execution. M - 4. The banking and currency law, known as the Federal Reserve Act, was approved after much opposition and discus- sion, December 23, 1913. It was a constructive measure based on the work of financiers, bankers, statesmen, and economists. Under it the United States is divided into twelve districts, each with a Reserve Bank which is the center of the banking system of that district. In operation it has proved itself successful and a decided advance upon its predecessor, the National Bank- ing System. 69 - 5. At this time the President was being severely criticized for his refusal to declare war or intervene in Mexico to protect the property rights of American citizens. 71. 6. The Panama Canal Act of 1912, providing for the perma- nent government of the Canal Zone and other regulations, was Biographical and Explanatory Notes 259 Page amended in a bill signed by the President June 15, 1914, known as the "Panama Tolls Exemption Eepeal Bill." In this bill the clause which exempted American coastwise vessels from paying tolls was repealed because it was in contravention of the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty with Great Britain. The repeal of the Tolls Exemption for American coastwise vessels gave the same advantages to English and foreign vessels that our own possessed. It meant sacrificing undoubted economic advantages in the interest of maintaining good faith. AMERICA FIRST 85- 1. This paragraph, and indeed this whole address, illustrates President Wilson 's attitude in the early period of the war. He felt at that time that America was out of and above the con- flict. The reasons for the change will be plain after reading the War Message, April 2nd, 1917, page 126, and the Flag Day Address, June 14, 1917, page 141, with their notes. *8- 2. Woman Suffrage was voted upon and defeated in New Jersey October 19, 1915. THE SCHOOL OF CITIZENSHIP 94 - 1. How serious this movement was, and how it was started and fomented by agents of the German government will be plainer after reading the Flag Day Address, June 14, 1917, and the notes to its opening paragraphs. ABRAHAM LINCOLN mo- 1. Hamlet, Act III. scene 4. A WORLD LEAGUE FOR PEACE '02- 1. This address, which attracted much attention throughout the world, marks the culmination of President Wilson's earlier policy and of his efforts to establish peace between the belliger- ents without direct intervention. Even at the time of its deliv- ery, Germany, unknown to the President, was planning acts of aggression against the United States (see the Zimmermann Note, War Message, note 22). Her failure to make any satis- factory reply to the President's Note of December 18th, in which he asked the belligerents to state their peace terms, 260 Democracy Today Page showed only too plainly that her rulers were more interested in carrying out their plans for the extension of German dominion and the creation of Mittel-Europa (see Flag Day Address, notes 12-16) than they were in the establishment of any permanent peace based upon principles of right and justice. This address was directed not to the belligerents but to the American people, and its main interest lies in the fact that it presents the program for peace which the President was then willing to sanction. Its main thesis lies in its insistence that the time for a new "balance of power" (see Note 3) is past and that the peace to which we now aspire must be based upon a concert of the powers acting to guarantee liberty and justice and ready to check and curb any outlaw nation. The many Declarations of War upon Germany which followed upon her promulgation of ruthless submarine warfare seem to fore- shadow the formation of such a concert of powers. '05. 2. See Flag Day Address. 106. 3. "Balance of power" is an old phrase in political history and international law. The idea goes back to the ancients and is in principle as follows: No nation or group of nations must be allowed to become so strong as to be able to enforce their will upon the others. In order to prevent this, members of the family of nations are justified in combining against another nation or group of nations. This idea of reestablish- ing the "balance of power" lay behind the formation of many of the coalitions in modern history, those for instance against Louis XIV. and Napoleon. The theory was complicated in the last hundred years by wars waged to establish national independence. In the later period of the nineteenth century the theory was illustrated in the attempted balance between the Dual Alliance of France and Eussia and the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria, and Italy. 4. It is plain from the War Message that the President makes a distinction between the German people and their rulers. It is no less plain from the Flag Day Address that he now feels that the present rulers of Germany, her military caste, her policy of inhumanity, and her plans of conquest must be defeated. Biographical and Explanatory Notes 261 Page 107. 5. The principles set forth in this and the following para- graphs are wholly at variance with the desires and purposes of Germany as they have become plain at the end of 1917. Her contempt for the rights of small nations is only too evident in her treatment of Belgium and in her plans with respect to the smaller states of Europe as revealed in the Flag Day Address and its notes. 6. The German autocracy has never been willing to recognize this principle, of government by the consent of the governed. Prussia and the German Empire themselves are not governed in this way. (See Flag Day Address, Note 7.) Only a few years before the war the present Emperor threatened to make Alsace-Lorraine, which is still governed like a conquered pro- vince, ' ' a Prussian province. ' ' The Poles, who have been under German" rule for over a century and a quarter, are still discrimi- nated against; and it is unthinkable that in her present temper Germany would willingly found a really autonomous Poland as suggested in the next paragraph. (See Flag Day Address, Note 18.) Carrying the principles here stated by Wilson into effect would mean not only the complete nullification of Germany's plans in the war, but a reversal of her fundamental idea of social and national organization. |09 - 7. Germany, the originator of submarine warfare on neutrals, has claimed that she is fighting ' ' for the freedom of the seas. ' ' With no color of right she has already sunk, to mention but one neutral, over six hundred Norwegian vessels, and her policy has brought forth from many previously friendly nations dec- larations of war against her. (See War Message, Note 9.) The German conception of freedom of the seas was clearly exhibited in her note to us of February 1st, 1917. (Quoted in Flag Day Address, Note 4.) '" 8. The Monroe Doctrine, proclaimed in 1823, insisted that no foreign power should colonize further or attempt ' ' to extend the European system" to the Western Hemisphere. " 2 - 9. How useless it was to propose peace to Germany on these terms will be only too evident when we read President Wilson 's message to Congress, delivered less than two weeks later, sever- ing relations with Germany for the reasons there givep. 262 Democracy Today Page WAR MESSAGE All the following notes on the War Message are taken by special permission from the text of the President's Message officially annotated by the Committee on Public Information. See page 15. '26. 1. President Wilson had the sworn duty to lay the facts before Congress and recommend to it the needful action. The Constitution prescribe his duties in such emergencies. It is worthy of note that the Constitution lays the duty and power of declaring war directly upon Congress, and that it can not be evaded by Congressmen by any referendum to the voters, for which not the slightest constitutional provision is made. Congress performed this duty by voting on the war question, as requested. The vote of the Senate was 82 to 6 for war; of the House 373 to 50. Such comparative unanimity upon so momentous a question is almost unparalleled in the history of free nations. 2. The German Chancellor in announcing this repudiation of all his solemn pledges in the Imperial Parliament (Reichstag), on January 31, frankly admitted that this policy involved ' ' ruthlessness ' ' toward neutrals. ' ' When the most ruthless methods are considered the best calculated to lead us to victory and to a swift victory . . . they must be employed. . . . 3. The broken Sussex pledge. On May 4, 1916, the German government, in reply to the protest and warning of the United States following the sinking of the Sussex, gave this promise: That "merchant vessels both within and without the area declared a naval war zone shall not be sunk without warning, and without saving human lives, unless the ship attempt to escape or offer resistance." Germany added, indeed, that if Great Britain continued her blockade policy, she would have to consider ' ' a new situation. ' ' On May 8, 1916, the United States replied that it could not admit that the pledge of Germany was ' ' in the slightest degree contingent upon the conduct of any other Government ' ' (i. e., on any question of the English blockade). To this Germany made no reply at all, and under general diplomatic usage, when one nation makes a statement to another, jthe latest statement Biographical and Explanatory Notes 263 Page of the case stands as final unless there is a protest made. The promise made by Germany thus became a binding pledge. '27. 4. As to the proper usages in dealing with merchant vessels in war, here are the rules laid down some time ago for the American Navy (a fighting navy, surely), and these rules hardly differed in other navies, including the Russian and Japanese : ' ' The personnel of a merchant vessel captured as a prize . . . are entitled to their personal effects. "All passengers not in the service of the enemy, and all women and children on board such vessels should be released and landed at a convenient port at the first opportunity. "Any person in the naval service of the United States who pillages or maltreats in any manner, any person found on board a merchant vessel captured as a prize, shall be severely pun- ished." ' ' The destruction of a vessel which has surrendered without first removing its officers and crew would be an act contrary to the sense of right which prevails even between enemies in time of war. ' ' 5. The British hospital ships Asturias sunk March 20, and the Gloucester Castle. These vessels had been sunk although pro- tected by the most solemn possible of international compacts. Somewhat earlier in the war the great liner Britannic had been sunk while in service as a hospital ship, probably torpedoed by a U-boat. Since this message was written the Germans have continued their policy of murdering more wounded soldiers and their nurses by sinking more hospital ships. The Belgian relief ships referred to were probably the Camilla, Trevier, and the Feistein, but most particularly the large Norwegian steamer Storstad, sunk with 10,000 tons of grain for the starving Belgians. '28. 6. Mr. Wilson could have gone further back than ' ' modern history. ' ' Even in the most troubled period of the Middle Ages there was consistent effort to spare the lives of nonbelligerents. Thus in the eleventh century not merely did the church enjoin the ' ' truce of God" ' which ordered all warfare to cease on four days 264 Democracy Today Page of the week, but it especially pronounced its curse upon those who outraged or injured not merely clergymen and monks, but all classes of women. We also have ordinances from this ' ' dark period ' ' of history forbidding the interference with shepherds and their flocks, the damaging of olive trees, or the carrying off or destruction of farming implements. All this at a period when feudal barons are alleged to have been waging their wars with unusual ferocity. 7. The following American vessels were sunk by submarines after Germany's decree of ruthless submarine policy, January 31, 1917: February 3, 1917, H&usatonic; February 13, 1917, Lyman M. Law; 'March 2, 1917, Algonquin; March 16, 1917, Vigilancia; March 17, 1917, City of Memphis; March 17, 1917, Illinois; March 21, 1917, Healdton (claimed to have been sunk off Dutch coast, and far from the so-called "prohibited zone") ; April 1, 1917, Aztec. 8. In all, up to the declaration of war by us, 226 American citizens, many of them women and children, had lost their lives by the action of German submarines, and in most instances without the faintest color of international right. The most flagrant and horrible case was that of the Lusitania, sunk May 7, 1915, with loss of 114 American lives. 9. Practically all the civilized neutral countries of the earth have protested at the German policy. so. 10. Eight of American citizens to protection in their doings abroad and on the seas no less than at home. Decided by Supreme Court of United States. (Slaughter House Cases, 16 Wall., 36.) "Every citizen . . . may demand the care and protection of the United States when on the high seas or within the jurisdic- tion of a foreign Government." See Cooley's Principles of Constitutional Law, third edition, page 273 (standard authority). Obviously a Government which can not or will not protect its citizens against a policy of lawless murder is unworthy of respect abroad or obedience at home. The protection of the Biographical and Explanatory Notes 265 Page lives of the innocent and law-abiding is clearly the very first duty of a civilized state. 130. 11. Wars do not have to be declared in order to exist. The mere commission of warlike or unfriendly acts commences them. Thus the first serious clash in the Mexican war took place April 24, 1846. Congress "recognized" the state of war only on May 11 of that year. Already Gen. Taylor had fought two serious battles at Palo Alto and Eesaca de la Palma. Many other like cases could '2, 158 Lamb, Charles, 190 Lane, Franklin K., Why We Are at War, 156-162, 297; biog- raphy, 297 Lansing, Robert, 155, 301 Laws, international, 109 Lazarus and Dives, 26, 251 League of Honor, 134, 135 Lexington, 158 Liberty : Principles of, 83 Statue of, 83 Liege, treaty torn to pieces at, by Germany, 157 Limitation : Of armies, 109 Of navies, 109 Index 307 Lloyd George, David, America's Entrance into the War, 219- 226; biography, 302 Lincoln : Biography of, 247 Gettysburg address, 17, 248 Preserver of republic, 62 Second inaugural address, 274 Loans, vast, not desirable, 131 Louis Napoleon, 42 Lowell, James Russell : Address on Democracy, 19-48, 249 Biography, 248 Luaitania, sinking of the, 159, 179, 272, 275 Luxembourg, invasion of, 171 Lyman M. Law, sinking of the, 120, 264 "Made in Germany," 184 Mahomet, 158, 160 Massachusetts, state of, 22, 36, 249 Material resources, mobilization of, 131 Meaning of the Declaration of Independence, The, 63-74, 258 Mediterranean, Germany's sub- marine policy concerning, 126 Mercier, Cardinal, 158 Message of Washington, The, 49-58, 256 Message to Congress, 113-118 Mexico : Disorders in, fomented by Germany, 269 Loss of lives of foreigners in, 69 Loss of property of foreigners in, 69 Mexico and Japan, 142, 160, 179 Michaelis, Chancellor, 280, 288 Middle Europe, the projected, 292, 293 Military Masters of Germany : See their mistake, 147 War begun by, 144 Mines, laying of in neutral wa- ters, 156 Misprision of treason, penalty for, 273 Mob spirit, 191 Mobilization of material re- sources, 131 Monroe Doctrine : Germany's feelings concern- ing, 176 Imperilled by Germany, 177, 178, 296 Meaning of, 111, 170 Note on, 261 Supported by British fleet, 170, 175 Monroe, James, President, 111 Montesquieu, 26, 250 National workshops, 26, 250 Navagero, Bernardo, 25 Naval program, Germany's, 117 Navy, United States, equipment of, 131 Neutrality : A negative word, 84 Armed, 122, 129 Character of, 114 No longer feasible in United States, 133 Violated by Germany, 178 Neutral nation, rights as, 121 New Jersey, woman suffrage in, 88 New Zealand, 158 "Nicky" and "Willy," czar and kaiser, 281 Nippold, Professor, remarks on jingoism in Germany, 285, 286 Non-combatants, rights of, 125 308 Democracy Today Oath of Allegiance : Meaning of, 75 Quoted, 169 Objectives of America, 194 Organization of material re- sources, 131 Our Responsibilities as a Na- tion, 59-62 Paine, Thomas, 251 Palermo, 120 Panama canal, the, 176, 258 Pan-Germans, 186, 187, 287, 288, 301 Papen, von, 269, 275 Parker, Theodore, 32, 248, 252 Peace, as outlined by Germany, 146, 148 Persia, sinking of the, 179 Peter the Great, 269 "Place in the sun," Germany's, 176, 285 Plato, 20, 249 Plots, German, 276, 289 Poison gas, 161 Poland, restitution of, 108, 152 Polish language, use of forbidden by Germany, 294 Pope Benedict XV, 151 Portugal, acquisition of col- onies, 175 Potsdam, 220 Powers of the world, America's relations with, 60 Priestly, Joseph, 30, 251 Principle, American, 84 Program of the World's Peace, 209-218 Proudhon, 26, 250 Prussia : Constitution of, 266 Voters divided into three classes, 280 Prussian autocracy, 135, 145, 173, 176, 193, 220 Prussian-Poland, 294 Public moneys, appropriations of, 206 Punitive damages, not' desired by United States, 154 Red Cross ships sunk by Ger- many, 159 Reichstag : How chosen, 279 Powers of, 267 Resolutions of the, 211 Social democrats in, 286 Request for a Grant of Power, 119-125 Rights of man, 27, 34, 63, 64, 68, 73, 124, 129, 137, 180 Rights of nations, 137 Rintelin, von, conspirator, 275 Romanoff dynasty, 269 Roosevelt, Theodore : Biography of, 257 Our Responsibilities as a Na- tion, 59-62 Root, Elihu, The Duties of the Citizen, 163-181 ; biography, 298 Russia : Autocracy in, 135 Black Sea, ports of, bom- barded, 295 Democracy in, 135 Scarborough, attacks on, 156 School of Citizenship, The, 90- 95, 259 "Scrap of paper," 160 Second War Message, 194-208 Sedition, 142 Serajevo, 268, 290 Serbia : Austria's demands on, 144, 291 Invasion by Austria, 171 Service, universal liability to, 131 Index 309 Severance of diplomatic rela- tions between United States and Germany, 116 Sherbrooke, Lord, 44, 255 Socialism, meaning of, 46 Socialists, in Germany, 148, 279 Spain, acquisition of colonies, 175 Spanish succession, war of, 268 Statue of Liberty, meaning of, 83 Status of belligerent accepted by United States, 130 Status quo ante bellum, 151, 152 Stephana, sinking of the, 273 Submarine warfare : Austria-Hungary endorses Ger- many's policy, 137 Germany's policy, 113, 121, 126, 128, 160, 161 Subsidies, 71 Supply and demand, law of, 205 Sussex, sinking of the, 113, 159, 179, 262, 272, 273, 297 Tarnowski, Count, 137 Taxation, special, 131 Terrorization, Germany's system of, 161 Thane of Cawdor, 29 Tirpitz, von, 268 Treason, defined, 273 Treaty obligations, 71 Turco-German fleet, the, 295 Turk, dark rule of the, 229 Turkey : Armies drilled by Germany, 146, 288 Visited by Germarf emperor, 288 Turkish statesmen take their orders from Berlin, 146 United States: Armed forces of, addition to, 131 Driven to state of war, 130 Friendship with German peo- ple, 117, 133, 143 Gives help to allies, 132 Purposes in war, 213 Universal liability to service, 131 Universal suffrage, 41 Unwritten constitution, 44 Venezuelan dispute, 176, 299 "Verboten," 157 Vigilancia, sinking of the, 264 Vimy Ridge, battle of, 302 War: Begun by military masters of Germany, 144 For conquest, 133 Zone prescribed by Germany, 116 War message, 126-140, 262 Washington, George : Founder of the republic, 62, 266 Speech on, 49-58 Welland Canal, destruction of, plotted, 275 Why We Are at War, 156-162 Wilson, Woodrow, biography, 257 Wilson, Woodrow, addresses : America First, 81-89 American of Foreign Birth, The, 75-80 Flag Day Address, 141-150 Meaning of the Declaration of Independence, The, 63- 74 Message to Congress, 113-118 Program of the World's Peace, 209-218 Reply to the Pope, 151-155 Request for a Grant of Power, 119-125 310 Democracy Today School of Citizenship, The, 90-101 Second War Message, 194-208 War Message, 126-140 What Democracy Means, 182- 193 World League for Peace, 102- 112 Woman suffrage in New Jersey, 88, 259 World League for Peace, A, 102- 112, 259 World to be made safe for democracy, 137 Young Turk movement, 289 Zabern incident, the historic, 293 Zimmerman, Alfred, supervises Hindu plot, 290 Zimmermann note, the, 160, 270, 298 Zola, Monsieur, 24, 249 Zone, naval war, 262 War, prescribed by Germany, 116 University of California SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed. JUN 1 3 2000 JUN 1 6 RECT) DC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY A 000 928 622