\ 
 
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IN OUR 
 FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 MESSAGES AND ADDRESSES TO 
 THE CONGRESS AND THE PEOPLE 
 MARCH 5, 1917, TO APRIL 6, 1918 
 
 BY 
 WOODROW WILSON 
 
 PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 NEW AND ENLARGED EDITION 
 
 Frontispiece from drawing by 
 WILFRID MUIR EVANS 
 
 HARPER i^ BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 
 
 NEW YORK AND LONDON 
 
Kvv 
 
 1IST, 1 
 
 Books by 
 WOODROW WILSON 
 
 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 WHY WE ARE AT WAR. 16mo 
 
 A HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 
 
 Profusely illustrated. 5 volumes. 8vo 
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 GEORGE WASHINGTON. Illustrated. 8vo 
 Popular Edition 
 
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 ON BEING HUMAN 
 
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 THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
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 HARPER -& BROTHERS, NEW YORK 
 
 ir.i^iOilVU 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 chap. page 
 
 Introduction to New and Enlarged Edition v 
 
 Foreword vii 
 
 I. The Second Inaugural Address .... i 
 
 {March 5, 191 7) 
 
 II. We Must Accept War 9 
 
 {Message to the Congress^ April 2, 1917) 
 
 III. A State of War 26 
 
 {The President's Proclamation of April 6, 
 1917) 
 
 IV. "Speak, Act and Serve Together" ... 32 
 
 {Message to the American People, April 15 ^ 
 1917) 
 
 V. The Conscription Proclamation .... 40 
 
 {May 18, 1917) 
 
 VI. Conserving the Nation's Food .... 49 
 
 {May 19, 1917) 
 
 VII. An Answer to Critics 54 
 
 {May 22, 1917) 
 
 VIII. Memorial Day Address 56 
 
 {May JO, 1917) 
 
 IX. A Statement to Russia 59 
 
 {June 9, 1917) 
 
 X. Flag-day Address 64 
 
 {June 14, 1917) 
 
 XI. An Appeal to the Business Interests . 76 
 
 {July II, 1917) 
 
 384016 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 XII. Reply to the Pope 83 
 
 (August 27, ip/7) 
 
 XIII. A Message to Teachers and School 
 
 Officers 89 
 
 {September 30, 1917) 
 
 XIV. Woman Suffrage Must Come Now . . 92 
 
 {October 25, 1917) 
 
 XV. The Thanksgiving Day Proclamation . 96 
 
 {November 7, 1917) 
 
 XVI. Labor Must Bear Its Part 99 
 
 {November 12, 1917) 
 
 XVII. Address to the Congress 112 
 
 {December 4, 1917) 
 
 XVIII. Proclamation of War Against Austria- 
 
 Hungary 130 
 
 {December 12, 1917) 
 
 XIX. The Government Takes Over the Rail- 
 
 roads 134 
 
 {A Statement by the President, December 
 26, 1917) 
 
 XX. Government Operation of Railroads . 143 
 
 {Address to the Congress, January 4, 191 8) 
 
 XXI. The Terms of Peace 150 
 
 {January 8, 1918) 
 
 XXII. Four Basic Peace Principles .... 162 
 
 {Address to the Congress, February 11, 
 1918) 
 
 XXIII. "Force, Force to the Utmost" .... 174 
 
 {An Address Delivered by the President 
 at Baltimore on the Evening of April 
 6, 1918, on the Opening of the Third 
 Liberty Loan Campaign) 
 
 Appendix 183 
 
INTRODUCTION TO NEW AND 
 ENLARGED EDITION 
 
 It is gratifying in a sense which is higher 
 than purely practical considerations to record 
 the immediate welcome given to this volume. 
 This has led to a new edition at a very early 
 date. It has been possible to take advantage 
 of this and to add two addresses, ' ' Four Basic 
 Peace Principles," the address to the Congress 
 of February ii, 19 18, and ''Force, Force to 
 the Utmost," the address delivered at Balti- 
 more on the opening of the Third Liberty 
 Loan Campaign, April 6, 1918. The present 
 volume, therefore, contains all the important 
 addresses of the first year of our righteous 
 war for liberty. 
 
 On April 14th the New York Sun in its 
 interesting Book Section presented a remark- 
 able symposium offering the opinions of dis- 
 tinguished men and women of letters as to 
 **The new book that interested me most." 
 
 With his customary felicity of phrase, that 
 incisive and brilliant essayist and novelist, 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 Meredith Nicholson, uttered his decision in 
 these words: 
 
 To name the best book of a given period is a serious 
 matter. In these iron years imaginative Hterature is 
 bound to suffer. There have been good novels in the 
 past twelve months, but none that may be classed with 
 the books of all time. There have been good poems, but 
 no single poem has sprung to the front rank. There 
 have been admirable essays, but this department has 
 not been greatly enriched by the addition of volumes 
 that will carry far into the future. And we are making 
 history, not writing it. 
 
 Great novels and great verse interpreting these clang- 
 ing times must wait a little. In scanning the shelf of 
 newest books for a candidate for immortality my eye_ 
 falls upon one volume that will, I believe, outlive every 
 other book of the past year. Its literary merit is the 
 highest; it is addressed to the minds and the consciences 
 not only of the American people but of every civilized 
 man and woman on the globe. 
 
 There is no savage in the utmost island of the farthest 
 sea but is in some manner affected by the book that lies 
 open before me. Here we have in every sense a piece of 
 world literature, the production, under the most trying 
 circumstances, of an American scholar, patriot, and 
 statesman. Here we have democracy interpreted for 
 all the children of men, and between the covers of this 
 book there are phrases that are already indehbly written 
 "in the very alphabet of memory." 
 
 The book I refer to is In Our First Year of War (Har- 
 pers), a volume of messages and addresses to the Amer- 
 ican Congress and the people, and the author is Wood- 
 row Wilson, sometime president of Princeton University 
 and now, by the grace of God, President of the United 
 States. 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 This book opens with the second inaugural 
 address and contains the President's messages 
 and addresses since the United States was 
 forced to take up arms against Germany. 
 These pages may be said to picture not only 
 official phases of the great crisis, but also the 
 highest significance of liberty and democracy 
 and the reactions of President and people to 
 the great developments of the times. The 
 second Inaugural Address with its sense of 
 solemn responsibility serves as a prophecy as 
 well as prelude to the declaration of war and 
 the message to the people which followed so 
 soon. 
 
 The extracts from the Conscription Procla- 
 mation, the messages on Conservation and the 
 Fixing of Prices, the Appeal to Business In- 
 terests, the Address to the Federation of Labor 
 and the Railroad messages present the solid 
 every-day realities and the vast responsibili- 
 ties of war-time as they affect every Amer- 
 ican. These are concrete messages which 
 should be at hand for frequent reference, 
 just as the uplift and inspiration of lofty 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 appeals like the Memorial Day and Flag Day 
 addresses should be a constant source of in- 
 spiration. There are also the clarifying and 
 vigorous definitions of American purpose af- 
 forded in utterances like the statement to 
 Russia, the reply to the communication of 
 the Pope, and, most emphatically, the Presi- 
 dent's restatement of War Aims on January 
 8th. These and other state papers from the 
 early spring of 191 7 to January, 19 18, have 
 a significance and value in this collected form 
 which has been attested by the many re- 
 quests that have come to Harper & Brothers, 
 as President Wilson's publishers, for a war vol- 
 ume of the President's messages to follow Why 
 We Are At War. 
 
 As a matter of course, the President has been 
 consulted in regard to the plan of publication, 
 and the conditions which he requested have 
 been observed. For title, arrangement, head- 
 ings, and like details the publishers are respon- 
 sible. They have held the publication of the 
 President's words of enlightenment and inspi- 
 ration to be a public service. And they think 
 that there is no impropriety in adding that in 
 the case of this book, and Why We Are At 
 War] the American Red Cross receives all 
 author's royalties. 
 
 In the case of the former book the evolution 
 of events which led to war was illustrated in 
 messages from January to April 15th. In the 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 preparation of this book, which begins with the 
 second inaugural, it has seemed desirable to 
 present practically all the messages of war- 
 time, and therefore three papers are included 
 which appeared in the former and smaller book, 
 in addition to the eighteen messages and 
 addresses which have been collected for this 
 volume. 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR 
 OF WAR 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR 
 OF WAR 
 
 THE SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS 
 {March 5, 191T) 
 
 My Fellow-citizens, — The four years 
 which have elapsed since last I stood in this 
 place have been crowded with counsel and 
 action of the most vital interest and conse- 
 quence. Perhaps no equal period in our his- 
 tory has been so fruitful of important reforms 
 in our economic and industrial life or so full 
 of significant changes in the spirit and purpose 
 of our political action. We have sought very 
 thoughtfully to set our house in order, correct 
 the grosser errors and abuses of our industrial 
 life, liberate and quicken the processes of our 
 national genius and energy, and lift our politics 
 to a broader view of the people's essential in- 
 terests. It is a record of singular variety and 
 
f;^iVi3N 'QUR/FIKST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 singular distinction. But I shall not attempt 
 to review it. It speaks for itself and will be of 
 increasing influence as the years go by. This 
 is not the time for retrospect. It is time, 
 rather, to speak our thoughts and purposes 
 concerning the present and the immediate 
 future. 
 
 A COSMOPOLITAN EPOCH AT HAND 
 
 Although we have centered counsel and 
 action with such unusual concentration and 
 success upon the great problems of domestic 
 legislation to which we addressed ourselves 
 four years ago, other matters have more and 
 more forced themselves upon our attention, 
 matters lying outside our own life as a nation 
 and over which we had no control, but which, 
 despite our wish to keep free of them, have 
 drawn us more and more irresistibly into their 
 own current and influence. 
 
 It has been impossible to avoid them. They 
 have affected the life of the whole world. 
 They have shaken men everywhere with a pas- 
 sion and an apprehension they never knew 
 before. It has been hard to preserve calm 
 counsel while the thought of our own people 
 swayed this way and that under their influence. 
 We are a composite and cosmopolitan people. 
 We are of the blood of all the nations that 
 are at war. The currents of our thoughts as 
 well as the currents of our trade run quick at 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 3 
 
 all seasons back and forth between us and 
 them. The war inevitably set its mark from 
 the first alike upon our minds, our industries, 
 our commerce, our politics, and our social 
 action. To be indifferent to it or independent 
 of it was out of the question. 
 
 And yet all the while we have been conscious 
 that we were not part of it. In that con- 
 sciousness, despite many divisions, we have 
 drawn closer together. We have been deeply 
 wronged upon the seas, but we have not 
 wished to wrong or injure in return;, have re- 
 tained throughout the consciousness of stand- 
 ing in some sort apart, intent upon an interest 
 that transcended the immediate issues of the 
 war itself. As some of the injuries done us 
 have become intolerable, we have still been 
 clear that we wished nothing for ourselves 
 that we were not ready to demand for all 
 mankind, — ^fair dealing, justice, the freedom to 
 live and be at ease against organized wrong. 
 
 It is in this spirit and with this thought that 
 we have grown more and more aware, more 
 and more certain that the part we wished to 
 play was the part of those who mean to vin- 
 dicate and fortify peace. We have been 
 obliged to arm ourselves to make good our 
 claim to a certain minimum of right and of 
 freedom of action. We stand firm in armed 
 neutrality since it seems that in no other way 
 we can demonstrate what it is we insist upon 
 
4 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 and cannot forego. We may even be drawn 
 on, by circumstances, not by our own pur- 
 pose or desire, to a more active assertion of 
 our rights as we see them and a more imme- 
 diate association with the great struggle itself. 
 But nothing will alter our thought or our 
 purpose. They are too clear to be obscured. 
 They are too deeply rooted in the principles 
 of our national life to be altered. We desire 
 neither conquest nor advantage. We wish 
 nothing that can be had only at the cost of 
 another people. We have always professed un- 
 selfish purpose and we covet the opportunity 
 to prove that our professions are sincere. 
 
 THE SPIRIT OF CO-OPERATION 
 
 There are many things still to do at home, 
 to clarify our own politics and give new vi- 
 tality to the industrial processes of our own 
 life, and we shall do them as time and oppor- 
 tunity serve; but we realize that the greatest 
 things that remain to be done must be done 
 with the whole world for stage and in co- 
 operation with the wide and universal forces 
 of mankind, and we are making our spirits 
 ready for those things. They will follow in 
 the immediate wake of the war itself and will 
 set civilization up again. We are provincials 
 no longer. The tragical events of the thirty 
 months of vital turmoil through which we 
 have just passed have made us citizens of the 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 5 
 
 world. There can be no turning back. Our 
 own fortunes as a nation are involved, whether 
 we would have it so or not. 
 
 And yet we are not the less Americans on 
 that account. We shall be the more American 
 if we but remain true to the principles in which 
 we have been bred. They are not the prin- 
 ciples of a province or of a single continent. 
 We have known and boasted all along that 
 they were the principles of a liberated man- 
 kind. These, therefore, are the things we 
 shall stand for, whether in war or in peace : 
 
 OUR NATIONAL PLATFORM 
 
 That all nations are equally interested in the 
 peace of the world and in the political stability 
 of free peoples, and equally responsible for 
 their maintenance; 
 
 That the essential principle of peace is the 
 actual equality of nations in all matters of 
 right or privilege; 
 
 That peace cannot securely or justly rest 
 upon an armed balance of power; 
 
 That Governments derive all their just 
 powers from the consent of the governed and 
 that no other powers should be supported by 
 the common thought, purpose or power of the 
 family of nations; 
 
 That the seas should be equally free and 
 safe for the use of all peoples, under rules set 
 up by common agreement and consent, and 
 
6 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 that, so far as practicable, they should be ac- 
 cessible to all upon equal terms; 
 
 That national armaments should be limited 
 to the necessities of national order and domes- 
 tic safety; 
 
 That the community of interest and of power 
 upon which peace must henceforth depend im- 
 poses upon each nation the duty of seeing to 
 it that all influences proceeding from its own 
 citizens meant to encourage or assist revolu- 
 tion in other states should be sternly and 
 effectually suppressed and prevented. 
 
 A UNITY OF PURPOSE AND ACTION 
 
 I need not argue these principles to you, my 
 fellow-countrymen: they are your own, part 
 and parcel of your own thinking and your own 
 motive in affairs. They spring up native 
 amongst us. Upon this as a platform of pur- 
 pose and of action we can stand together. 
 
 And it is imperative that we should stand 
 together. We are being forged into a new 
 unity amidst the fires that now blaze through- 
 out the world. In their ardent heat we shall, 
 in God's providence, let us hope, be purged of 
 faction and division, purified of the errant 
 humors of party and of private interest, and 
 shall stand forth in the days to come with a 
 new dignity of national pride and spirit. Let 
 each man see to it that the dedication is in 
 his own heart, the high purpose of the nation 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 7 
 
 in his own mind, ruler of his own will and 
 desire. 
 
 I stand here and have taken the high and 
 solemn oath to which you have been audience 
 because the people of the United States have 
 chosen me for this august delegation of power 
 and have by their gracious judgment named 
 me their leader in affairs. I know now what 
 the task means. I realize to the full the re- 
 sponsibility which it involves. I pray God I 
 may be given the wisdom and the prudence 
 to do my duty in the true spirit of this great 
 people. I am their servant and can succeed 
 only as they sustain and guide me by their 
 confidence and their counsel. The thing I 
 shall count upon, the thing without which 
 neither counsel nor action will avail, is the 
 unity of America — an America united in feel- 
 ing, in purpose, and in its vision of duty, of 
 opportunity, and of service. We are to beware 
 of all men who would turn the tasks and the 
 necessities of the nation to their own private 
 profit or use them for the building up of private 
 power; beware that no faction or disloyal 
 intrigue break the harmony or embarrass the 
 spirit of our people ; beware that our Govern- 
 ment be kept pure and incorrupt in all its 
 parts. United alike in the conception of otir 
 duty and in the high resolve to perform it in 
 the face of all men, let us dedicate ourselves 
 
 to the great task to which we must now set our 
 2 
 
8 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 hand. For myself I beg your tolerance, your 
 countenance, and your united aid. The shad- 
 ows that now lie dark upon our path will soon 
 be dispelled and we shall walk with the light 
 all about us if we be but true to ourselves — 
 to ourselves as we have wished to be known in 
 the counsels of the world a'nd in the thought 
 of all those who love liberty and justice and 
 the right exalted. 
 
II 
 
 WE MUST ACCEPT WAR 
 (Message to the Congress, April 2, igij) 
 
 Gentlemen of the Congress, — I have 
 called the Congress into extraordinary session 
 because there are serious, very serious, choices 
 of policy to be made, and made immediately, 
 which it was neither right nor constitution- 
 ally permissible that I should assume the re- 
 sponsibility of maldng. 
 
 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 restraints of law or of 
 humanity and use its submarines to sink every 
 vessel that sought to approach either the ports 
 of Great Britain and Ireland or the western 
 coasts of Europe or any of the ports controlled 
 by the enemies of Germany within the Med- 
 iterranean. 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 
 
10 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 commanders of its undersea craft in conformity 
 with its promise then given to us that passen- 
 ger-boats should not be sunk, and that due 
 warning would be given to all other vessels 
 which its submarines might seek to destroy- 
 when no resistance was offered or escape at- 
 tempted, and care taken that their crews were 
 given at least a fair chance to save their lives 
 in their open boats. 
 
 The precautions taken were meager and hap- 
 hazard enough, as was proved in distressing 
 instance after instance in the progress of the 
 cruel and unmanly business, but a certain 
 degree of restraint was observed. 
 
 Germany's ruthless policy 
 
 The new policy has swept every restriction 
 aside. Vessels of every kind, whatever their 
 flag, their character, their cargo, their destina- 
 tion, 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 belHgerents. Even hospital-ships and ships 
 carrying relief to the sorely bereaved and 
 stricken people of Belgium, though the latter 
 were provided with safe conduct through the 
 proscribed areas by the German Government 
 itself and were distinguished by unmistakable 
 marks of identity, have been sunk with the 
 same reckless lack of compassion or of principle. 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR ii 
 
 I was for a little while unable to believe that 
 such things would, in fact, be done by any 
 Government that had hitherto subscribed to 
 the humane practices of civilized nations. 
 International law had its origin in the attempt 
 to set up some law which would be respected 
 and observed upon the seas, where no nation 
 had right of dominion, and where lay the 
 free highways of the world. By painful 
 stage after stage has that law been built up 
 with meager enough results, indeed, after all 
 was accomplished that could be accom- 
 plished, but always with a clear view at 
 least of what the heart and conscience of 
 mankind demanded. 
 
 This minimum of right the German Govern- 
 ment has swept aside under the plea of retalia- 
 tion 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 em- 
 ploying them without throwing to the winds 
 all scruples of humanity or of respect for the 
 understandings that were supposed to underlie 
 the intercourse of the world. 
 
 I am not now thinking of the loss of property 
 involved, immense and serious as that is, but 
 only of the wanton and wholesale destruction 
 of the lives of non-combatants, men, women 
 and children engaged in pursuits which have 
 always, even in the darkest periods of modern 
 history, been deemed innocent and legitimate. 
 
12 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 Property can be paid for ; the lives of peace- 
 ful and innocent people cannot be. 
 
 GERMAN WARFARE AGAINST MANKIND 
 
 The present German warfare against com- 
 merce is a warfare against mankind. It is a 
 war against all nations. American ships have 
 been sunk, American lives taken, in ways which 
 it has stirred us very deeply to learn of, but 
 the ships and people of other neutral and 
 friendly nations have been sunk and over- 
 whelmed in the waters in the same way. There 
 has been no discrimination. The challenge is 
 to all manldnd. Each nation must decide 
 for itself how it will meet it. The choice 
 we make for ourselves must be made with 
 a moderation of counsel and a temperateness 
 of judgment befitting our character and our 
 motives as a nation. We must put excited 
 feeling away. 
 
 Our motive will not be revenge or the vic- 
 torious 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 neu- 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 13 
 
 trality, it now appears, is impracticable. Be- 
 cause submarines are in effect outlaws when 
 used as the German submarines have been 
 used against merchant shipping, it is impossi- 
 ble to defend ships against their attacks as the 
 law of nations has assumed that merchantmen 
 would defend themselves against privateers or 
 cruisers, visible craft giving chase upon the 
 open sea. 
 
 It is common prudence in such circum- 
 stances, grim necessity, indeed, to endeavor to 
 destroy them before they have shown their 
 own intention. They must be dealt with upon 
 sight, if dealt with at all. 
 
 The German Government denies the right 
 of neutrals to use arms at all within the areas 
 of the sea which it has proscribed, even in the 
 defense of rights which no modem publicist 
 has ever before questioned their right to de- 
 fend. The intimation is conveyed that the 
 armed guards which we have placed on our 
 merchant-ships will be treated as beyond the 
 pale of law and subject to be dealt with as 
 pirates would be. 
 
 Armed neutrality is ineffectual enough at 
 best ; in such circumstances and in the face of 
 such pretensions it is worse than ineffectual; 
 it is likely to produce what it was meant to 
 prevent; it is practically certain to draw us 
 into the war without either the rights or the 
 effectiveness of belligerents. 
 
14 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 There is one choice we cannot make, we are 
 incapable of making: we will not choose the 
 path of submission and suffer the most sacred 
 rights of our nation and our people to be ig- 
 nored or violated. The wrongs against which 
 we now array ourselves are not common 
 wrongs; they reach out to the very roots of 
 human life. 
 
 BELLIGERENCY THRUST UPON US 
 
 With a profound sense of the solemn and 
 even tragical character of the step I am taking 
 and of the grave responsibilities which it in- 
 volves, but in unhesitating obedience to what 
 I deem my constitutional duty, I advise that 
 the Congress declare the recent course of the 
 Imperial German Government to be in fact 
 nothing less than war against the Government 
 and people of the United States. That it 
 formally accept the status of belligerent which 
 has thus been thrust upon it and that it take 
 immediate steps not only to put the country 
 in a more thorough state of defense, but also 
 to exert all its power and employ all its re- 
 sources to bring the Government of the Ger- 
 i^an Empire to terms and end the war. 
 
 WHAT THIS WILL INVOLVE 
 
 What this will involve is clear. It will in- 
 volve the utmost practicable co-operation in 
 counsel and action with the Governments now 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 15 
 
 at war with Germany, and as incident to that 
 the extension to those Governments of the 
 most Hberal financial credits in order that our 
 resources may so far as possible be added to 
 theirs. 
 
 It will involve the organization and mobili- 
 zation 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 submarines. 
 
 It will involve the immediate addition to the 
 armed forces of the United States already pro- 
 vided for by law in case of war at least 500,000 
 men, who should, in my opinion, be chosen 
 upon the principle of universal liability to 
 service, and also the authorization of sub- 
 sequent additional increments of equal force 
 so soon as they may be needed and can be 
 handled in training. 
 
 It will involve also, of course, the granting 
 of adequate credits to the Government, sus- 
 tained, I hope, so far as they can equitably be 
 sustained by the present generation, by well- 
 conceived taxation. I say sustained so far as 
 may be equitable by taxation because it seems 
 to me that it would be most unwise to base 
 
i6 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 the credits which will 'now be necessary en- 
 tirely on money borrowed. 
 
 It is our duty, I most respectfully urge, 
 to protect our people so far as we may 
 against the very serious hardships and evils 
 which would be likely to arise out of the 
 inflation which would be produced by vast 
 loans. 
 
 In carrying out the measures by which these 
 things are to be accomplished we should keep 
 constantly in mind the wisdom of interfering 
 as little as possible in our own preparation 
 and in the equipment of our own military 
 forces with the duty — for it will be a very 
 practical duty — of supplying the nations 
 already at war with Germany with the 
 materials which they can obtain only from 
 us or by our assistance. They are in the 
 field and we should help them in every way 
 to be effective there. 
 
 I shall take the liberty of suggesting, through 
 the several executive departments of the Gov- 
 ernment, for the consideration of your com- 
 mittees measures for the accomplishment of 
 the several objects I have mentioned. I hope 
 that it will be your pleasure to deal with them 
 as having been framed after very careful 
 thought by the branch of the Government 
 upon which the responsibility of conducting 
 the war and safeguarding the nation will most 
 directly fall. 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 17 
 
 OUR MOTIVES AND OBJECTS 
 
 While we do these things, these deeply mo- 
 mentous 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 beHeve that the thought 
 of the nation has been altered or clouded by 
 them. 
 
 I have exactly the same thing in mind now 
 that I had in mind when I addressed the Senate 
 on the 2 2d of January last; the same that I 
 had in mind when I addressed the Congress 
 on the 3d of February and on the 26th of 
 February. 
 
 Our object now, as then, is to vindicate 
 the principles of peace and justice in the life 
 of the world as against selfish and autocratic 
 power and to set up amongst the really free and 
 self -governed peoples of the world such a con- 
 cert of purpose and of action as will henceforth 
 insure the observance of those principles. 
 
 Neutrality is no longer feasible or desirable 
 where the peace of the world is involved and 
 the freedom of its peoples, and the menace to 
 that peace and freedom lies in the existence 
 of autocratic Governments backed by organ- 
 ized force which is controlled wholly by their 
 will, not by the will of their people. We have 
 
i8 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 seen the last of neutrality in such circum- 
 stances. 
 
 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 peo- 
 ple. We have no feeling toward them but one 
 of sympathy and friendship. It was not upon 
 their impulse that their Government acted in 
 entering this war. It was not with their pre- 
 vious knowledge or approval. 
 
 It was a war determined upon as wars used 
 to be determined upon in the old, unhappy 
 days when peoples were nowhere consulted 
 by their rulers and wars were provoked and 
 waged in the interest of dynasties or of little 
 groups of ambitious men who were accus- 
 tomed to use their fellow - men as pawns and 
 tools. 
 
 Self -governed nations do not fill their neigh- 
 bor states with spies or set the course of 
 intrigue to bring about some critical post- 
 ure of affairs which will give them an op- 
 portunity to strike and make conquest. Such 
 designs can be successfully worked only under 
 cover and where no one has the right to ask 
 questions. 
 
 Cunningly contrived plans of deception or 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 19 
 
 aggression, carried, it may be, from generation 
 to generation, can be worked out and kept 
 from the light only within the privacy of 
 courts or behind the carefully guarded con- 
 fidences of a narrow and privileged class. They 
 are happily impossible where public opinion 
 commands and insists upon full information 
 concerning all the nation's affairs. 
 
 PEACE THROUGH FREE PEOPLES 
 
 A steadfast concert for peace can never be 
 maintained except by a partnership of demo- 
 cratic nations. Nq [autocratic Government 
 could be trusted to keep faith within it or ob- 
 serve 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 man- 
 kind to any narrow interest of their own. 
 
 Does not every American feel that assur- 
 ance has been added to our hope for the future 
 peace of the world by the wonderful and heart- 
 ening things that have been happening within 
 the last few weeks in Russia? 
 
 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, 
 
20 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 in all the intimate relationships of her people 
 that spoke their natural instinct, their habitual 
 attitude toward life. 
 
 Autocracy that crowned the summit of her 
 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 ; and now it has been shaken 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 con- 
 vince us that the Prussian autocracy was not 
 and could never be our friend is that from the 
 very outset of the present war it has filled our 
 unsuspecting communities and even our offices 
 of Government with spies and set criminal 
 intrigues everywhere afoot against our na- 
 tional unity of council, our peace within and 
 without, our industries and our commerce. 
 
 Indeed, it is now evident that its spies were 
 here even before the war began, and it is, un- 
 happily, not a matter of conjecture, but a fact 
 proved in our courts of justice, that the in- 
 trigues which have more than once come per- 
 ilously near to disturbing the peace and dislo- 
 cating the industries of the country have been 
 carried on at the instigation, with the support, 
 and even under the personal direction, of offi- 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 21 
 
 cial agents of the Imperial German Govern- 
 ment accredited to the Government of the 
 United States. 
 
 Even in checking these things and trying to 
 extirpate them we have sought to put the most 
 generous interpretation possible upon them 
 because we knew that their source lay, not in 
 any hostile feeling or purpose of the German 
 people toward us (who were, no doubt, as 
 ignorant of them as we ourselves were), but 
 only in the selfish designs of a Government 
 that did what it pleased and told its people 
 nothing. But they have played their part in 
 serving to convince us at last that that Govern- 
 ment entertains no real friendship for us and 
 means to act against our peace and security at 
 its convenience. That it means to stir up 
 enemies against us at our very doors the inter- 
 cepted note to the German Minister at Mexico 
 City is eloquent evidence. 
 
 A CHALLENGE OF HOSTILE PURPOSE 
 
 We are accepting this challenge of hostile 
 purpose because we know that in such a Gov- 
 ernment, following such methods, we can never 
 have a friend; and that in the presence of its 
 organized power, always lying in wait to ac- 
 complish we know not what purpose, there 
 can be no assured security for the democratic 
 Governments of the world. 
 
 We are now about to accept the gage of 
 
22 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 battle with this natural foe to liberty, and 
 shall, if necessary, spend the whole force of the 
 nation to check and nullify its pretensions and 
 its power. We are glad, now that we see the 
 facts with no veil of false pretense about them, 
 to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the 
 world and for the liberation of its peoples, 
 the 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 political 
 liberty. 
 
 We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire 
 no conquest, no dominion. We seek no in- 
 demnities for ourselves, no material compen- 
 sation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. 
 We are but one of the champions of the rights 
 of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those 
 rights have been made as secure as the faith 
 and the freedom of the nation 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, con- 
 duct our operations as belligerents without 
 passion and ourselves observe with proud 
 punctilio the principles of right and of fair 
 play we profess to be fighting for. 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 23 
 
 I have said nothing of the Governments al- 
 lied with the Imperial Government of Germany 
 because they have not made war upon us or 
 challenged us to defend our right and our 
 honor. 
 
 The Austro-Hungarian Government has in- 
 deed avowed its unqualified indorsement and 
 acceptance of the reckless and lawless sub- 
 marine warfare adopted now without disguise 
 by the Imperial German Government, and it 
 has therefore not been possible for this Govern- 
 ment to receive Count Tarnowski, the am- 
 bassador recently accredited to this Govern- 
 ment by the Imperial and Royal Government 
 of Austria-Hungary; but that Government 
 has not actually engaged in warfare against 
 citizens of the United States on the seas, and 
 I take the liberty, for the present at least, of 
 postponing a discussion of our relations with 
 the authorities at Vienna. 
 
 OPPOSITION TO THE GERMAN GOVERNMENT 
 FRIENDSHIP TOWARD THE GERMAN PEOPLE 
 
 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 ani- 
 mus, not in enmity toward a people or with the 
 desire to bring any injury or disadvantage 
 
24 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 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 of inti- 
 mate relations of mutual advantage between 
 us — ^however hard it may be for them, for the 
 time being, to believe that this is spoken from 
 our hearts. We have borne with their present 
 Government through all these bitter months 
 because of that friendship — exercising a pa- 
 tience and forbearance which would otherwise 
 have been impossible. 
 
 We shall, happily, still have an opportunity 
 to prove that friendship in our daily attitude 
 and actions toward the millions of men and 
 women of German birth and native sympathy 
 who live amongst us and share our life, and 
 we shall be proud to prove it toward all who 
 are, in fact, loyal to their neighbors and to the 
 Government in the hour of test. They are, 
 most of them, as true and loyal Americans as 
 if they had never known any other fealty or 
 allegiance. They will be prompt to stand with 
 us in rebuking and 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 stem repression; but, if 
 it lifts its head at all, it will lift it only here 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 25 
 
 and there and without countenance except 
 from a lawless and malignant few. 
 
 RIGHT MORE PRECIOUS THAN PEACE 
 
 It is a distressing and oppressive duty, gen- 
 tlemen of the Congress, which I have per- 
 formed in thus addressing you. There are, it 
 may be, many months of fiery trial and sacri- 
 fice ahead of us. It is a fearful thing to lead 
 this great, peaceful people into war, into the 
 most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civili- 
 zation itself seeming to be in the balance. 
 But the right is more precious than peace, and 
 we shall fight for the things which we have 
 always carried nearest our hearts — for de- 
 mocracy, for the right of those who submit to 
 authority to have a voice in their own govern- 
 ments, for the rights and liberties of small 
 nations, for a universal dominion of right by 
 such a concert of free peoples as shall bring 
 peace and safety to all nations and make the 
 world itself at last free. 
 
 To such a task we can dedicate our lives 
 and our fortunes, everything that we are and 
 everything that we have, with the pride of 
 those who know that the day has come when 
 America is privileged to spend her blood and 
 her might for the principles that gave her 
 birth and happiness and the peace which she 
 has treasured. God helping her, she can do no 
 other. 
 
Ill 
 
 A STATE OF WAR 
 (The Presidents Proclamation of April 6, igif) 
 
 Whereas, the Congress of the United States, 
 in the exercise of the constitutional authority 
 vested in them, have resolved by joint resolu- 
 tion of the Senate and House of Representa- 
 tives, bearing date this day, that a state of war 
 between the United States and the Imperial 
 German Government, which has been thrust 
 upon the United States, is hereby formally 
 declared; 
 
 Whereas, It is provided by Section 4067 of 
 the Revised Statutes as follows : 
 
 Whenever there is declared a war between the United 
 States and any foreign nation or Government, or any 
 invasion or predatory incursion is perpetrated, attempted 
 or threatened against the territory of the United States 
 by any foreign nation or Government, and the President 
 makes public proclamation of the event, all natives, 
 citizens, denizens or subjects of a hostile nation or Gov- 
 ernment being male of the age of fourteen years and 
 upward who shall be within the United States and not 
 actually naturalized shall be liable to be apprehended, 
 restrained secured and removed as alien enemies. 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 27 
 
 The President is authorized in any such 
 event, by his proclamation thereof or other 
 public acts, to direct the conduct to be ob- 
 served on the part of the United States tow- 
 ard the aliens who become so Hable; the 
 manner and degree of the restraint to which 
 they shall be subject and in what cases and 
 upon what security their residence shall be 
 permitted and to provide for the removal of 
 those who, not being permitted to reside within 
 the United States, refuse or neglect to depart 
 therefrom, and to establish any such regula- 
 tions which are found necessary in the prem- 
 ises and for the public safety; 
 
 Whereas, By Sections 4068, 4069, and 4070 
 of the Revised Statutes further provision is 
 made relative to alien enemies; 
 
 Now, therefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, Presi- 
 dent of the United States of America, do 
 hereby proclaim to all whom it may concern 
 that a state of war exists between the United 
 States and the Imperial German Government, 
 and I do specially direct all officers, civil or 
 military, of the United States that they exer- 
 cise vigilance and zeal in the discharge of the 
 duties incident to such a state of war, and I 
 do, moreover, earnestly appeal to all American 
 citizens that they, in loyal devotion to their 
 country, dedicated from its foundation to the 
 principles of liberty and justice, uphold the 
 laws of the land and give midivided and will- 
 
28 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 ing support to those measures which may be 
 adopted by the constitutional authorities in 
 prosecuting the war to a successful issue and 
 in obtaining a secure and just peace ; 
 
 And acting under and by virtue of the au- 
 thority vested in me by the Constitution of 
 the United States and the said sections of the 
 Revised Statutes: 
 
 I do hereby further proclaim and direct that 
 the conduct to be observed on the part of the 
 United States toward all natives, citizens, deni- 
 zens or subjects of Germany, being male, of 
 the age of fourteen years and upward, who 
 shall be within the United States and not act- 
 ually naturalized, who for the purpose of this 
 proclamation and under such sections of the 
 Revised Statutes are termed alien enemies, 
 shall be as follows : 
 
 All alien enemies are enjoined to preserve the peace 
 toward the United States and to refrain from crime 
 against the public safety and from violating the laws of 
 the United States and of the States and Territories 
 thereof, and to refrain from actual hostility or giving in- 
 formation, aid or comfort to the enemies of the United 
 States, and to comply strictly with the regulations which 
 are hereby or which may be from time to time promul- 
 gated by the President, and so long as they shall conduct 
 themselves in accordance with law they shall be undis- 
 turbed in the peaceful pursuit of their lives and occupa- 
 tions and be accorded the consideration due to all 
 peaceful and law-abiding persons, except so far as re- 
 strictions may be necessary for their own protection and 
 for the safety of the United States, and toward such alien 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 29 
 
 enemies as conduct themselves in accordance with law 
 all citizens of the United States are enjoined to preserve 
 the peace and to treat them with all such friendUness as 
 may be compatible with loyalty and allegiance to the 
 United States. 
 
 And all alien enemies who fail to conduct themselves 
 as so enjoined, in addition to all other penalties pre- 
 scribed by law, shall be liable to restraint or to give 
 security or to remove and depart from the United States 
 in the manner prescribed by Sections 4069 and 4070 of 
 the Revised Statutes and as prescribed in the regulations 
 duly promulgated by the President, 
 
 And, pursuant to the authority vested in 
 me, I hereby declare and establish the follow- 
 ing regulations, which I find necessary in the 
 premises and for the public safety : 
 
 First. An alien enemy shall not have in his possession 
 at any time or place any firearms, weapons or imple- 
 ment of war, or component parts thereof; ammimition, 
 Maxim or other silencer, arms or explosives or material 
 used in the manufacture of explosives. 
 
 Second. An aHen enemy shall not have in his possession 
 at any time or place, or use or operate, any aircraft 
 or wireless apparatus, or any form of signaling device, 
 or any form of cipher code or any paper, document 
 or book written or printed in cipher, or in which there 
 may be invisible writing. 
 
 Third. All property found in the possession of an alien 
 enemy in violation of the foregoing regulations shall be 
 subject to seizure by the United States. 
 
 Fourth. An alien enemy shall not approach or be 
 found within one-half of a mile of any Federal or State 
 fort, camp, arsenal, aircraft station. Government or 
 naval vessel, navy-yard, factory or workshop for the 
 
30 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 manufacture of munitions of war or of any products for 
 the use of the army or navy. 
 
 Fifth. An aUen enemy shall not write, print or publish 
 any attack or threat against the Government or Con- 
 gress of the United States, or either branch thereof, or 
 against the measures or policy of the United States, or 
 against the persons or property of any person in the 
 military, naval or civil service of the United States, or 
 of the States or Territories, or of the District of Columbia, 
 or of the municipal governments therein. 
 
 Sixth. An alien enemy shall not commit or abet any 
 hostile acts against the United States, or give informa- 
 tion, aid or comfort to its enemies. 
 
 Seventh. An aUen enemy shall not reside in or con- 
 tinue to reside in, to remain in or enter any locality 
 which the President may from time to time designate 
 by an executive order as a prohibitive area in which 
 residence by an alien enemy shall be found by him 
 to constitute a danger to the public peace and safety 
 of the United States except by permit from the Presi- 
 dent and except under such limitations or restrictions 
 as the President may prescribe. 
 
 Eighth. An alien enemy whom the President shall 
 have reasonable cause to believe to be aiding or about to 
 aid the enemy, or to be at large to the danger of the 
 public peace or safety of the United States, or to have 
 violated or to be about to violate any of these regulations, 
 shall remove to any location designated by the President 
 by executive order, and shall not remove therefrom with- 
 out permit, or shall depart from the United States if so 
 required by the President. 
 
 Ninth. No alien enemy shall depart from the United 
 States until he shall have received such permit as the 
 President shall prescribe, or except under order of a 
 Coiurt, Judge or Justice, under Sections 4069 and 4070 
 of the Revised Statutes. 
 
 Tenth. No alien enemy shall land in or enter the 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 31 
 
 United States except under such restrictions and at such 
 places as the President may prescribe. 
 
 Eleventh. If necessary to prevent violation of the 
 regulations, all alien enemies will be obliged to register. 
 
 Twelfth. An alien enemy whom there may be reason- 
 able cause to believe to be aiding or about to aid the 
 enemy, or to be at large to the danger of the public^ 
 peace or safety, or who violates or who attempts to 
 \dolate or of whom there is reasonable grounds to believe 
 that he is about to violate any regulation to be promul- 
 gated by the President or any criminal law of the United 
 States or of the States or Territories thereof, will be 
 subject to summary arrest by the United States, by the 
 United States Marshal or his deputy or such other offi- 
 cers as the President shall designate, and to confinement 
 in such penitentiary, prison, jail, military camp, or other 
 place of detention as may be directed by the President. 
 
 This proclamation and the regulations herein 
 contained shall extend and apply to all land 
 and water, continental or insular, in any way 
 within the jurisdiction of the United States. 
 
IV 
 
 "SPEAK, ACT AND SERVE TOGETHER" 
 {Message to the American People, April is, iQi?) 
 
 My Fellow Countrymen, — ^The entrance 
 of our own beloved country into the grim and 
 terrible wa r for democra cy, and human rights 
 which has shaken the world creates so many- 
 problems of national life and action which call 
 for immediate consideration and settlement 
 that I hope you will permit me to address to 
 you a few words of earnest counsel and appeal 
 with regard to them. 
 
 We are rapidly putting our navy upon an 
 effective war footing and are about to create 
 and equip a great army, but these are the sim- 
 plest parts of the great task to which we have 
 addressed ourselves. There^s not a single self- 
 ish element, so far as fcan see, in~tEe~cause 
 we are fighting for. We are fighting for what 
 we believe and wish to be the rights of man- 
 kind and for the future peace and security of 
 the world. To do this great thing worthily and 
 successfully we must devote ourselves to the 
 service without regard to profit or material ad- 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 33 
 
 vantage and with an energy and intelligence 
 that will rise to the level of the enterprise 
 itself. We must realize to the full how great 
 the task is and how many things, how many 
 kinds and elements of capacity and service and 
 self-sacrifice it involves. 
 
 WHAT WE MUST DO 
 
 These, then, are the things we must do, and 
 do well, besides fighting — the things without 
 which mere fighting would be fruitless : 
 
 We must supply abundant food for ourselves 
 and for our armies and our seamen, not only, 
 but also for a large part of the nations with 
 whom we have now made common cause, in 
 whose support and by whose sides we shall be 
 fighting. 
 
 We must supply ships by the hundreds out 
 of our shipyards to carry to the other side of 
 the sea, submarines or no submarines, what 
 will every day be needed there, and abundant 
 materials out of our fields and our mines and 
 our factories with which not only to clothe 
 and equip our own forces on land and sea, but 
 also to clothe and support our people, for 
 whom the gallant fellows under arms can no 
 longer work; to help clothe and equip the 
 armies with which we are co-operating in Eu- 
 rope, and to keep the looms and manufacto- 
 ries there .in raw material; coal to keep the 
 fires going m ships at sea and in the furnaces 
 
34 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 of hundreds of factories across the sea; steel 
 out of which to make arms and ammunition 
 both here and there ; rails for womout railways 
 back of the fighting fronts; locomotives and 
 rolling-stock to take the place of those every 
 day going to pieces; mules, horses, cattle for 
 labor and for military service ; everything with 
 which the people of England and France and 
 Italy and Russia have usually supplied them- 
 selves, but cannot now afford the men, the 
 materials or the machinery to make. 
 
 GREATER EFFICIENCY 
 
 It is evident to every thinking man that our 
 industries, on the farms, in the shipyards, in 
 the mines, in the factories, must be made more 
 prolific and more efficient than ever, and that 
 they must be more economically managed, and 
 better adapted to the particular requirements 
 of our task than they have been; and what I 
 want to say is that the men and the women 
 who devote their thought and their energy to 
 these things will be serving the country and 
 conducting the fight for peace and freedom 
 just as truly and just as effectively as the men 
 on the battle-field or in the trenches. The in- 
 dustrial forces of the country, men and women 
 alike, will be a great national, a great interna- 
 tional, service army — a notable and honored 
 host engaged in the service of the nation and 
 the world, the efficient friends and saviors of 
 
 /' 
 / 
 
 / 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 35 
 
 free men everTwhere. Thousands, nay, hun- 
 dreds of thousands, of men otherwise Hable to 
 military service will of right and of necessity 
 be excused from that service and assigned to 
 the fundamental sustaining work of the fields 
 and factories and mines, and they will be as 
 much part of the great patriotic forces of the 
 nation as the men under fire. 
 
 I take the liberty, therefore, of addressing 
 this word to the farmers of the country and to 
 all who work on the farms : The supreme need 
 of our own nation and of the nations with 
 which we are co-operating is an abundance of 
 supplies, and especially of foodstuffs. The im- 
 portance of an adequate food-supply, especially 
 for the present year, is superlative. Without 
 abundant food, alilce for the armies and the 
 peoples now at war, the whole great enterprise 
 upon which we have embarked will break down 
 and fail. The world's food reserves are low. 
 Not only during the present emergency, but 
 for some time after peace shall have come, 
 both our own people and a large proportion of 
 the people of Europe must rely upon the har- 
 vests in America. 
 
 THE RESPONSIBILITY OP THE FARMERS 
 
 Upon the farmers of this country, therefore, 
 in large measure rest the fate of the war and 
 the fate of the nations. May the nation not 
 count upon them to omit no step that will in- 
 
36 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 crease the production of their land or that will 
 bring about the most effectual co-operation 
 in the sale and distribution of their products? 
 The time is short. It is of the most imperative 
 importance that everything possible be done, 
 and done immediately, to make sure of large 
 harvests. I call upon young men and old alike 
 and upon the able-bodied boys of the land to 
 accept and act upon this duty — to turn in 
 hosts to the farms and make certain that no 
 pains and no labor is lacking in this great 
 matter. 
 
 I particularly appeal to the farmers of the 
 South to plant abundant foodstuffs, as well as 
 cotton. They can show their patriotism in no 
 better or more convincing way than by resist- 
 ing the great temptation of the present price 
 of cotton and helping, helping upon a great 
 scale, to feed the nation and the peoples every- 
 where who are fighting for their liberties and 
 for our own. The variety of their crops will be 
 the visible measure of their comprehension of 
 their national duty. 
 
 The Government of the United States and 
 the Governments of the several States stand 
 ready to co-operate. They win do everything 
 possible to assist farmers in securing an ade- 
 quate supply of seed, an adequate force of la- 
 borers when they are most needed, at harvest- 
 time, and the means of expediting shipments 
 of fertilizers and farm machinery, as well as 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 37 
 
 of the crops themselves when harvested. The 
 course of trade shall be as unhampered as it 
 is possible to make it, and there shall be no 
 unwarranted manipulation of the nation's food- 
 supply by those who handle it on its way to 
 the consumer. This is our opportunity to 
 demonstrate the efficiency of a great democ- 
 racy, and we shall not fall short of it ! 
 
 THE DUTY OF MIDDLEMEN 
 
 This let me say to the middlemen of every 
 sort, whether they are handling our foodstuffs 
 or the raw materials of manufacture or the 
 products of our mills and factories : The eyes 
 of the country will be especially upon you. 
 This is your opportunity for signal service, 
 efficient and disinterested. The country ex- 
 pects you, as it expects all others, to forego 
 unusual profits, to organize and expedite ship- 
 ments of supplies of every kind, but especially 
 of food, with an eye to the service you are 
 rendering and in the spirit of those who enlist 
 in the ranks, for their people, not for them- 
 selves. I shall confidently expect you to de- 
 serve and win the confidence of people of every 
 sort and station. 
 
 THE MEN OF THE RAILWAYS 
 
 To the men who run the railways of the 
 country, whether they be managers or opera- 
 tive employees, let me say that the railways are 
 
38 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 the arteries of the nation's life and that upon 
 them rests the immense responsibility of seeing 
 to it that those arteries stiff er no obstruction 
 of any kind, no inefficiency or slackened power. 
 To the merchant let me suggest the motto, 
 "Small profits and quick service," and to the 
 shipbuilder the thought that the life of the war 
 depends upon him. The food and the war 
 supplies must be carried across the seas, no 
 matter how many ships are sent to the bottom. 
 The places of those that go down must be sup- 
 plied, and supplied at once. To the miner let 
 me say that he stands where the farmer does: 
 the work of the world waits on him. If he 
 slackens or fails, armies and statesmen are 
 helpless. He also is enlisted in the great Ser- 
 vice Army. The manufacturer does not need 
 to be told, I hope, that the nation looks to him 
 to speed and perfect every process ; and I want 
 only to remind his employees that their service 
 is absolutely indispensable and is counted on 
 by every man who loves the country and its 
 liberties. 
 
 Let me suggest also that every one who cre- 
 ates or cultivates a garden helps, and helps 
 greatly, to solve the problem of the feeding of 
 the nations; and that every housewife who 
 practises strict economy puts herself in the 
 ranks of those who serve the nation. This is 
 the time for America to correct her unpardon- 
 able fault of wastefulness and extravagance. 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 39 
 
 Let every man and every woman assume the 
 duty of careful, provident use and expenditure 
 as a public duty, as a dictate of patriotism 
 which no one can now expect ever to be ex- 
 cused or forgiven for ignoring. 
 
 THE SUPREME TEST 
 
 In the hope that this statement of the needs 
 of the nation and of the world in this hour of 
 supreme crisis may stimulate those to whom it 
 comes and remind all who need reminder of 
 the solemn duties of a time such as the world 
 has never seen before, I beg that all. editors 
 and publishers everywhere will give as promi- 
 nent publication and as wide circulation as 
 possible to this appeal. I venture to suggest 
 also to all advertising agencies that they would 
 perhaps render a very substantial and timely 
 service to the country if they would give it 
 widespread repetition. And I hope that clergy- 
 men will not think the theme of it an unworthy 
 or inappropriate subject of comment and hom- 
 ily from their pulpits. 
 
 The supreme test of the nation has come. 
 We must all speak, act and serve together. 
 
 4 "^' ' ' '^ 
 
V 
 
 THE CONSCRIPTION PROCLAMATION 
 (May j8, 1917) 
 
 Whereas, Congress has enacted and the Pres- 
 ident has on the i8th day of May, 191 7, ap- 
 proved a law which contains the following 
 provisions : 
 
 Section 5. That all male persons between 
 the ages of twenty-one and thirty, both inclu- 
 sive, shall be subject to registration in accord- 
 ance with regulations to be prescribed by the 
 President, and upon proclamation by the Presi- 
 ident or other pubHc notice given by him or 
 by his direction, stating the time and place of 
 such registration, it shall be the duty of all 
 persons of the designated ages, except officers 
 and enlisted men of the Regular Army, the 
 Navy and the National Guard and Naval Mi- 
 litia while in the service of the United States, 
 to present themselves for and submit to regis- 
 tration under the provisions of this act. 
 
 And every such person shall be deemed to 
 have notice of the requirements of this act 
 upon the publication of said proclamation or 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 41 
 
 other notice as aforesaid given by the President 
 or by his direction. 
 
 THE PENALTY FOR FAILURE 
 
 And any person who shall wilfully fail or 
 refuse to present himself for registration or to 
 submit thereto as herein provided, shall be 
 guilty of a misdemeanor and shall, upon con- 
 viction in the District Court of the United 
 States having jurisdiction thereof, be punished 
 by imprisonment for not more than one year, 
 and shall thereupon be duly registered. 
 
 Provided, that in the call of the docket pref- 
 erence shall be given, in courts trying the same, 
 to the trial of criminal proceedings under this 
 act. 
 
 Provided, further, that persons shall be sub- 
 ject to registration as herein provided who 
 shall have attained their twenty-first birthday 
 and who shall not have attained their thirty- 
 first birthday on or before the day set for the 
 registration, and all persons so registered shall 
 be and remain subject to draft into the forces 
 hereby authorized unless exempted or excused 
 therefrom, as in this act provided. 
 
 Provided, further, that in the case of tempo- 
 rary absence from actual place of legal resi- 
 dence of any person liable to registration as 
 provided herein, such registration may be made 
 by mail under regulations to be prescribed by 
 the President. 
 
42 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 THE WORK OF REGISTRATION 
 
 Section 6. That the President is hereby au- 
 thorized to utilize the service of any or all de- 
 partments and any or all officers or agents of 
 the United States and of the several States, 
 Territories and the District of Columbia and 
 subdivisions thereof, in the execution of this 
 act, and all officers and agents of the United 
 States and of the several States, Territories 
 and subdivisions thereof, and of the District of 
 Columbia, and all persons designated or ap- 
 pointed under regulations prescribed by the 
 President, whether such appointments are made 
 by the President himself or by the Governor or 
 other officer of any State or Territory to per- 
 form any duty in the execution of this act, are 
 hereby required to perform such duty as the 
 President shall order or direct, and all such 
 officers and agents and persons so designated 
 or appointed shall hereby have full authority 
 for all acts done by them in the execution of 
 this act, by the direction of the President. 
 Correspondence in the execution of this act 
 may be carried in penalty envelopes bearing 
 the frank of the War Department. 
 
 NEGLECT OF DUTY AND FRAUD 
 
 Any person charged, as herein provided, with 
 the duty of carrying into effect any of the pro- 
 visions of this act or the regulations made or 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 43 
 
 directions given thereunder who shall fail or 
 neglect to perform such duty, and any person 
 charged with such duty or having and exercis- 
 ing any authority under said act, regulations 
 or directions, who shall knowingly make or be 
 a party to the making of any false or incorrect 
 registration, physical examination, exemption, 
 enlistment, enrolment or muster. 
 
 And any person who shall make or be a party 
 to the making of any false statement or certifi- 
 cate as to the fitness or liability of himself or 
 any other person for service under the provi- 
 sions of this act, or regulations made by the 
 President thereunder, or otherwise evades or 
 aids another to evade the requirements of this 
 act or of said regulations, or who, in any man- 
 ner, shall fail or neglect fully to perform any 
 duty required of him in the execution of this act, 
 shall, if not subject to military law, be guilty 
 of a misdemeanor and upon conviction in the 
 District Court of the United States having ju- 
 risdiction thereof be punished by imprisonment 
 for not more than one year, or, if subject to 
 military law, shall be tried by court martial 
 and suffer such punishment as a court martial 
 may direct. 
 
 A CALL TO GOVERNORS 
 
 Now, therefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, Presi- 
 dent of the United States, do call upon the 
 Governor of each of the several States and 
 
44 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 Territories, the Board of Commissioners of 
 the District of Columbia and all officers 
 and agents of the several States and Terri- 
 tories, of the District of Columbia, and of 
 the counties and municipalities therein, to 
 perform certain duties in the execution of 
 the foregoing law, which duties will be com- 
 municated to them directly in regulations of 
 even date herewith. 
 
 And I do further proclaim and give notice 
 to all persons subject to registration in the 
 several States and in the District of Columbia, 
 in accordance with the above law, that the 
 time and place of such registration shall be 
 between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. on the 5th day 
 of June, 191 7, at the registration place in the 
 precinct wherein they have their permanent 
 homes. 
 
 Those who shall have attained their twenty- 
 first birthday and who shall not have attained 
 their thirty-first birthday on or before the day 
 here named are required to register, excepting 
 only officers and enlisted men of the Regular 
 Army, the Navy, the Marine Corps and the 
 National Guard and Naval Militia while in 
 the service of the United States, and officers 
 in the Officers' Reserve Corps and enlisted men 
 in the enlisted Reserve Corps while in active 
 service. In the Territories of Alaska, Hawaii 
 and Porto Rico a day for registration will be 
 named in a later proclamation. 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 45 
 
 REGISTRATION BY MAIL 
 
 And I do hereby charge those who, through 
 sickness, shall be unable to present them- 
 selves for registration that they apply on or 
 before the day of registration to the County 
 Clerk of the county where they may be for- 
 instructions as to how they may be registered 
 by agent. 
 
 Those who expect to be absent on the day 
 named from the counties in which they have 
 their permanent homes may register by mail, 
 but their mailed registration cards must reach 
 the places in which they have their perma- 
 nent homes by the day named herein. They 
 should apply as soon as practicable to the 
 County Clerk of the county wherein they may 
 be for instructions as to how they may accom- 
 plish their registration by mail. 
 
 In case such persons as, through sickness or 
 absence, may be unable to present themselves 
 personally for registration shall be sojourning 
 in cities of over 30,000 population, they shall 
 apply to the City Clerk of the city wherein 
 they may be sojourning rather than to the 
 Clerk of the county. 
 
 The Clerks of counties and of cities of over 
 30,000 population, in which numerous applica- 
 tions from the sick and from non-residents are 
 expected, are authorized to establish such sub- 
 agencies and to employ and deputize such cler* 
 
46 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 ical force as may be necessary to accommodate 
 these applications. 
 
 THE WHOLE NATION AN ARMY 
 
 The Power against which we are arrayed has 
 sought to impose its will upon the world by 
 force. To this end it has increased armament 
 until it has changed the face of war. In the 
 sense in which we have been wont to think of 
 armies there are no armies in this struggle, 
 there are entire nations armed. 
 
 Thus, the men who remain to till the soil 
 and man the factories are no less a part of the 
 army that is in France than the men beneath 
 the battle flags. 
 
 It must be so with us. It is not an army 
 that we must shape and train for war — ^it is a 
 Nation. To this end our people must draw 
 close in one compact front against a common 
 foe. But this cannot be if each man pursues 
 a private purpose. All must pursue one pur- 
 pose. The Nation needs all men, but it needs 
 each man, not in the field that will most pleas- 
 ure him, but in the endeavor that will best 
 serve the common good. 
 
 Thus, though a sharpshooter pleases to op- 
 erate a trip-hammer for the forging of great 
 guns, and an expert machinist desires to march 
 with the flag, the Nation is being served only 
 when the sharpshooter marches and the ma- 
 chinist remains at his levers. The whole Na- 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 47 
 
 tion must be a team, in which each man shall 
 play the part for which he is best fitted. 
 
 NOT A DRAFT OP THE UNWILLING 
 
 To this end Congress has provided that the 
 Nation shall be organized for war by selection, 
 that each man shall be classified for service in 
 the place to which it shall best serve the gen- 
 eral good to call him. 
 
 The significance of this cannot be overstated. 
 It is a new thing in our history and a landmark 
 in our progress. It is a new manner of accept- 
 ing and vitalizing our duty to give ourselves 
 with thoughtful devotion to the common pur- 
 pose of us all. It is in no sense a conscription 
 of the unwilling. It is, rather, selection from 
 a Nation which has volunteered in mass. 
 
 It is no more a choosing of those who shall 
 march with the colors than it is a selection of 
 those who shall serve an equally necessary and 
 devoted purpose in the industries that lie be- 
 hind the battle-lines. 
 
 The day here named is the time upon which 
 all shall present themselves for assignment to 
 their tasks. It is for that reason destined to 
 be remembered as one of the most conspicuous 
 moments in our history. It is nothing less 
 than the day upon which the manhood of the 
 country shall step forward in one soHd rank in 
 defense of the ideals to which this Nation is 
 consecrated. It is important to those ideals, 
 
48 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 no less than to the pride of this generation in 
 manifesting its devotion to them, that there be 
 no gaps in the. ranks. 
 
 DAY OF PATRIOTIC DEVOTION 
 
 It is essential that the day be approached in 
 thoughtful apprehension of its significance and 
 that we accord to it the honor and the mean- 
 ing that it deserves. Our industrial need pre- 
 scribes that it be not made a technical holiday, 
 but the stern sacrifice that is before us urges 
 that it be carried in all our hearts as a great 
 day of patriotic devotion and obligation, when 
 the duty shall lie upon every man, whether he 
 is himself to be registered or not, to see to it 
 that the name of every male person of the des- 
 ignated ages is written on these lists of honor. 
 
 In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my 
 hand and caused the seal of the United States 
 to be affixed. 
 
 Done at the city of Washington this i8th 
 day of May, in the year of our Lord, 191 7, and 
 of the independence of the United States of 
 America the one hundred and forty-first. 
 
 By the President : 
 
 Robert Lansing, 
 
 Secretary of State. 
 
VI 
 
 CONSERVING THE NATION'S FOOD 
 {May IQ, 1917) 
 
 It is very desirable, in order to prevent mis- 
 understanding or alarms and to assure co-op- 
 eration in a vital matter, that the country 
 should understand exactly the scope and pur- 
 pose of the very great powers which I have 
 thought it necessary, in the circumstances, to 
 ask the Congress to put in my hands with re- 
 gard to our food-supplies. 
 
 Those powers are very great, indeed, but 
 they are no greater than it has proved neces- 
 sary to lodge in the other Governments which 
 are conducting this momentous war, and their 
 object is stimulation and conservation, not ar- 
 bitrary restraint or injurious interference with 
 the normal processes of production. They are 
 intended to benefit and assist the farmer and all 
 those who play a legitimate part in the prepara- 
 tion, distribution and marketing of foodstuffs. 
 
 A SHARP LINE OF DISTINCTION 
 
 It is proposed to draw a sharp line of dis- 
 tinction between the normal activities of the 
 
so IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 Government, represented in the Department 
 of Agriculture, in reference to food production, 
 conservation and marketing, on the one hand, 
 and the emergency activities necessitated by 
 the war, in reference to the regulation of food 
 distribution and consumption, on the other. 
 
 All measures intended directly to extend the 
 normal activities of the Department of Agri- 
 culture, in reference to the production, conser- 
 vation and the marketing of farm crops, will 
 be administered, as in normal times, through 
 that department; and the powers asked for 
 over distribution and consumption, over ex- 
 ports, imports, prices, purchase and requisition 
 of commodities, storing and the like, which 
 may require regulation during the war, will be 
 placed in the hands of a Commissioner of Food 
 Administration, appointed by the President 
 and directly responsible to him. 
 
 THE END TO BE ATTAINED 
 
 The objects sought to be served by the leg- 
 islation asked for are: Full inquiry into the 
 existing available stocks of foodstuffs and into 
 the costs and practices of the various food pro- 
 ducing and distributing trades ; the prevention 
 of all unwarranted hoarding of every kind, and 
 of the control of foodstuffs by persons who are 
 not in any legitimate sense producers, dealers 
 or traders ; the requisition, when necessary for 
 public use, of food supplies and of the equip- 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 51 
 
 ment necessary for handling them properly; 
 the licensing of wholesome and legitimate mix- 
 tures and milling percentages, and the prohi- 
 bition of the unnecessary or wasteful use of 
 foods. 
 
 Authority is asked also to establish prices, 
 but nc^t in order to limit the profits of the 
 farmcis, but only to guarantee to them, when 
 necessary, a minimum price, which will insure 
 them a profit where they are asked to attempt 
 new crops, and to secure the consumer against 
 extortion by breaking up corners and attempts 
 at speculation when they occur, by fixing tem- 
 porarily a reasonable price at which middle- 
 men must sell. 
 
 THE FIXING OF PRICES 
 
 I have asked Mr. Herbert Hoover to under- 
 take this all-important task of food adminis- 
 tration. He has expressed his willingness to do 
 so, on condition that he is to receive no pay- 
 ment for his services, and that the whole of the 
 force under him, exclusive of clerical assistance, 
 shall be employed, as far as possible, upon the 
 same volunteer basis. 
 
 He has expressed his confidence that this 
 difficult matter of food administration can be 
 successfully accomplished through the vol- 
 untary co-operation and direction of legiti- 
 mate distributers of foodstuffs and with the 
 help of the women of the country. 
 
52 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 Although it is absolutely necessary that un- 
 questionable powers shall be placed in my 
 hands, in order to insure the success of this 
 administration of the f ood-suppHes of the coun- 
 try, I am confident that the exercise of those 
 powers will be necessary only in the few cases 
 where some small and selfish minority proves 
 unwilling to put the Nation's interests above 
 personal advantage, and that the whole coun- 
 try will heartily support Mr. Hoover's efforts 
 by supplying the necessary volunteer agencies 
 throughout the country for the intelligent con- 
 trol of food consumption, and securing the 
 co-operation of the most capable leaders of the 
 very interests most directly affected, that the 
 exercise of the powers deputed to him will rest 
 very successfully upon the good- will and co-op- 
 eration of the people themselves, and that the 
 ordinary economic machinery of the country 
 will be left substantially undisturbed. 
 
 NO FEAR OF BUREAUCRACY 
 
 The proposed food administration is intended, 
 of course, only to meet a manifest emergency 
 and to continue only while the war lasts. Since 
 it will be composed for the most part of volun- 
 teers, there need be no fear of the possibility 
 of a permanent bureaucracy arising out of it. 
 
 All control of consumption will disappear 
 when the emergency has passed. It is with 
 that object in view that the Administration 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 53 
 
 considers it to be of pre-eminent importance 
 that the existing associations of producers and 
 distributers of foodstuffs should be mobilized 
 and made use of on a volunteer basis. The 
 successful conduct of the projected food ad- 
 ministration, by such means, will be the finest 
 possible demonstration of the willingness, the 
 ability and the efficiency of democracy and of 
 its justified reHance upon the freedom of indi- 
 vidual initiative. 
 
 The last thing that any American could con- 
 template with equanimity would be the intro- 
 duction of anything resembling Prussian au- 
 tocracy into the food control of this country. 
 
 It i^ of vital interest and importance to every 
 man who produces food and to every man who 
 takes part in its distribution that these policies, 
 thus Liberally administered, should succeed and 
 succeed altogether. It is only in that way that 
 we can prove it to be absolutely unnecessary 
 to resort to the rigorous and drastic measures 
 which have proved to be necessary in some of 
 the European countries. 
 
VII 
 
 AN ANSWER TO CRITICS 
 {May 22, 1917) 
 
 In the following letter, addressed to Repre- 
 sentative Hefiin, Democrat, of Alabama, Presi- 
 dent Wilson replies to criticisms regarding his 
 position with regard to the war and its objects : 
 
 It is incomprehensible to me how any frank 
 or honest person could doubt or question my 
 position with regard to the war and its ob- 
 jects. I have again and again stated the very 
 serious and long-continued wrongs which the 
 Imperial German Government has perpetrated 
 against the rights, the commerce and the citi- 
 zens of the United States. The list is long and 
 overwhelming. No Nation that respected it- 
 self or the rights of humanity could have borne 
 those wrongs any longer. 
 
 Our objects in going into the war have been 
 stated with equal clearness. The whole of the 
 conception which I take to be the conception 
 of our fellow-countrymen with regard to the 
 outcome of the war and the terms of its settle- 
 ment, I set forth with the utmost explicitness 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 55 
 
 in an address to the Senate of the United States 
 on the 2 2d of January last. Again, in my mes- 
 sage to Congress on the 2d of April last, those 
 objects were stated in unmistakable terms. 
 
 I can conceive no purpose in seeking to be- 
 cloud this matter except the purpose of weak- 
 ening the hands of the Government and mak- 
 ing the part which the United States is to play 
 in this great struggle for human Hbeirty an in- 
 efficient and hesitating part. 
 
 We have entered the war for our own rea- 
 sons and with our own objects clearly stated, 
 and shall forget neither the reasons nor the 
 objects. There is no hate in our hearts for 
 the German people, but there is a resolve 
 which cannot be shaken even by misrepre- 
 sentation, to overcome the pretensions 5f the 
 autocratic Government which acts upon pur- 
 poses to which the German people have never 
 consented. 
 
 5 
 
VIII 
 
 MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS 
 {May 30, 1917) 
 
 In one sense the great struggle into which we 
 have now entered is an American struggle, 
 because it is in defense of American honor and 
 American rights, but it is something even 
 greater than that; it is a WQrld__struggle^^It 
 is the struggle of men who love liberty every" 
 where, and in this cause America will show 
 herself greater than ever because she will rise 
 to a greater thing. 
 
 The program has conferred an unmerited 
 dignity upon the remarks I am going to make 
 by calling them an address, because I am 
 not here to deliver an address [said the Presi- 
 dent]. I am here merely to show in my offi- 
 cial capacity the sympathy of this great Gov- 
 ernment with the object of this occasion, and 
 also to speak just a word of the sentiment that 
 is in my own heart. 
 
 Any memorial day of this sort is, of course, 
 a day touched with sorrowful memory, and 
 yet I for one do not see how we can have any 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 57 
 
 thought of pity for the men whose^ memory we 
 honor to-day. I do not pity them. I envy 
 them, rather, because their great work for lib- 
 erty is accompHshed, and we are in the midst 
 of a work unfinished, testing our strength where 
 their strength already has been tested. 
 
 A HERITAGE FROM THE DEAD 
 
 There is a touch of sorrow, but there is a 
 touch of reassurance also in a day Hke this, 
 because we know how the men of America 
 have responded to the call of the cause of lib- 
 erty, and it fills our mind with a perfect asstu*- 
 ance that that response will come again in equal 
 measures, with equal majesty and with a result 
 which will hold the attention of all mankind. 
 
 When you reflect upon it, these men who 
 died to preserve the Union died to preserve 
 the instrument which we are now using to 
 serve the world — a free nation espousing the 
 cause of himian liberty. In one sense the 
 great struggle into which we have now entered 
 is an American struggle, because it is in the 
 sense of American honor and American rights, 
 but it is something even greater than that; 
 it is a world struggle. It is a struggle of men 
 who love liberty everywhere ; and in this cause 
 America will show herself greater than ever 
 because she will rise to a greater thing. 
 
 We have said in the beginning that we 
 planned this great Government that men who 
 
S8 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 wish freedom might have a place of refuge and 
 a place where their hope could be realized, 
 and now, having established such a Govern- 
 ment, having preserved such a Government, 
 having vindicated the power of such a Gov- 
 ernment, we are saying to all mankind, "We 
 did not set this Government up in order that 
 we might have a selfish and separate liberty, 
 for we are now ready to come to your assist- 
 ance and fight out upon the fields of the 
 world the cause of human liberty." 
 
 America's full fruition 
 
 In this thing America attains her full dig- 
 nity and the full fruition of her great purpose. 
 
 No man can be glad that such things have 
 happened as we have witnessed in these last 
 fateful years, but perhaps it may be permitted 
 to us to be glad that we have an opportunity 
 to show the principles which we profess to be 
 living — ^principles which live in our hearts — 
 and to have a chance by the pouring out of otu- 
 blood and treasure to vindicate the things 
 which we have professed. For, my friends, 
 the real fruition of life is to do the things we 
 have said we wished to do. There are times 
 when words seem empty and only action seems 
 great. Such a time has come, and in the 
 providence of God America will once more 
 have an opportunity to show to the world that 
 she was born to serve mankind. 
 
IX 
 
 A STATEMENT TO RUSSIA 
 {June 9t 1917) 
 
 In view of the approaching visit of the Amer- 
 ican delegation to Russia to express the deep 
 friendship of the American people for the people 
 of Russia and to discuss the best and most 
 practical means of co-operation between the 
 two peoples in carrying the present struggle 
 for the freedom of all peoples to a successful 
 consummation, it seems opportune and appro- 
 priate that I should state again, in the light of 
 this new partnership, the objects the United 
 States has had in mind in entering the war. 
 Those objects have been very much beclouded 
 during the past few weeks by mistaken and 
 misleading statements, and the issues at stake 
 are too momentous, too tremendous, too sig- 
 nificant for the whole human race to permit 
 any misinterpretations or misunderstandings, 
 however slight, to remain uncorrected for a 
 moment. 
 
 The war has begun to go against Germany, 
 and in their desperate desire to escape the in- 
 
6o IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 evitable ultimate defeat, those who are in au- 
 thority in Germany are using every possible 
 instrumentality, are making use even of the 
 influence of groups and parties among their 
 own subjects to whom they have never been 
 just or fair, or even tolerant, to promote a 
 propaganda on both sides of the sea which will 
 preserve for them their influence at home and 
 their power abroad, to the undoing of the very 
 men they are using. 
 
 AMERICA SEEKS NO CONQUEST 
 
 The position of America in this war is so 
 clearly avowed that no man can be excused 
 for mistaking it. She seeks no material profit 
 or aggrandizement of any kind. She is fight- 
 ing for no advantage or selfish object of her 
 own, but for the liberation of peoples every- 
 where from the aggressions of autocratic force. 
 The ruling classes in Germany have begun of 
 late to profess a like liberality and justice of 
 purpose, but only to preserve the power they 
 have set up in Germany and the selfish advan- 
 tages which they have wrongly gained for them- 
 selves and their private projects of power all 
 the way from Berlin to Bagdad and beyond. 
 Government after Government has, by their 
 influence, without open conquest of its terri- 
 tory, been linked together in a net of intrigue 
 directed against nothing less than the peace 
 and liberty of the world. The meshes of that 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 6i 
 
 intrigue must be broken, but cannot be broken 
 unless wrongs already done are undone; and 
 adequate measures must be taken to prevent 
 it from ever again being rewoven or repaired. 
 
 Of course the Imperial German Government 
 and those whom it is using for their own undo- 
 ing are seeking to obtain pledges that the war 
 will end in the restoration of the status quo 
 ante. It was the status quo ante out of which 
 this iniquitous war issued forth, the power of 
 the Imperial German Government within the 
 empire and its widespread domination and in- 
 fluence outside of that empire. That status 
 must be altered in such fashion as to prevent any- 
 such hideous thing from ever happening again. 
 
 THE PRINCIPLES THAT ARE INVOLVED 
 
 We are fighting for the liberty, self-govern- 
 ment and the undictated development of all 
 peoples, and every feature of the settlement 
 that concludes this war must be conceived and 
 executed for that purpose. Wrongs must first 
 be righted and then adequate safeguards must 
 be created to prevent their being committed 
 again. We ought not to consider remedies 
 merely because they have a pleasing and sonor- 
 ous sound. Practical questions can be settled 
 only by practical means. Phrases will not ac- 
 complish the result. Effective readjustments 
 will; and whatever readjustments are neces- 
 sary must be made. 
 
62 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 But they must follow a principle, and that 
 principle is plain: 
 
 No people must be forced under sovereignty 
 under which it does not wish to live. 
 
 No territory must change hands except for 
 the purpose of securing those who inhabit it a 
 fair chance of life and liberty. 
 
 No indemnities must be insisted on except 
 those that constitute payment for manifest 
 wrongs done. 
 
 No readjustments of power must be made 
 except such as will tend to secure the future 
 peace of the world and the future welfare and 
 happiness of its peoples. 
 
 And then the free peoples of the world must 
 draw together in some common covenant, some 
 genuine and practical co-operation, that will in 
 effect combine their force to secure peace and 
 justice in the dealings of nations with one 
 another. The brotherhood of mankind must 
 no longer be a fair but empty phrase; it must 
 be given a structure of force and reality. The 
 nations must realize their common life and ef- 
 fect a workable partnership to secure that life 
 against the aggressions of autocratic and self- 
 pleasing power. 
 
 For these things we can affora to pour out 
 blood and treasure. For these are the things we 
 have always professed to desire, and unless we 
 pour out blood and treasure now and succeed, 
 we may never be able to tmite or show con- 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 63 
 
 quering force again in the great cause of hu- 
 man liberty. The day has come to conquer or 
 submit. If the forces of autocracy can divide 
 us, they will overcome us ; if we stand together, 
 victory is certain and the liberty which victory 
 will secure. 
 
 We can afford, then, to be generous, but we 
 cannot afford then or now to be weak or omit 
 any single guarantee of justice and security. 
 
X 
 
 FLAG-DAY ADDRESS 
 {June 14, 1 917) 
 
 My Fellow-citizens, — We meet to cele- 
 brate Flag Day because this flag which we 
 honor and under which we serve is the emblem 
 of our unity, our power, our thought and pur- 
 pose as a nation. It has no other character 
 than that which we give it from generation to 
 generation. The choices are ours. It floats 
 in majestic silence above the hosts that exe- 
 cute 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 wit- 
 nessed a great history, has floated on high the 
 symbol of great events, of a great plan of life 
 worked out by a great people. We are about 
 to carry it into battle, to lift it where it will 
 draw the fire of our enemies. We are about to 
 bid thousands, hundreds of thousands, it may 
 be millions, of our men — the young, the strong, 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 65 
 
 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? American armies were never be- 
 fore sent across the seas. Why are they sent 
 now? For some new purpose, for which this 
 great flag has never been carried before, or for 
 some old, familiar, heroic purpose for which it 
 has seen men, its own men, die on every battle- 
 field 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 al- 
 ways used it. We are accountable at the bar 
 of history and must plead in utter frankness 
 what purpose it is we seek to serve. 
 
 WHY WE ARE AT WAR 
 
 It is plain enough how we were forced into 
 the war. The extraordinary insults and ag- 
 gressions 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 be neutral. They filled our unsus- 
 pecting communities with vicious spies and 
 conspirators and sought to corrupt the opinion 
 
66 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 of our people in their own behalf. When they 
 found that they could not do that, their agents 
 diligently spread sedition among us and sought 
 to draw our own citizens from their allegiance 
 — and some of those agents were men con- 
 nected with the official embassy of the Ger- 
 man Government itself here in our own capital. 
 They sought by violence to destroy our own 
 industries and arrest our commerce. They 
 tried to incite Mexico to take up arms against 
 us and to draw Japan into a hostile alliance 
 with her — and that, not by indirection, but by 
 direct suggestion from the Foreign Office in Ber- 
 lin. They impudently denied us the use of the 
 seas and repeatedly executed their threat that 
 they would send to their death anyof oiu* people 
 who ventured to approach the coasts of Eu- 
 rope. And many of our own people were cor- 
 rupted. Men began to look upon their own 
 neighbors with suspicion and to wonder, in 
 their hot resentment and surprise, whether 
 there was any community in which hostile in- 
 trigue did not lurk. What great nation, in 
 such circumstances, would not have taken up 
 arms? Much as we had desired peace, it was 
 denied us, and not of our own choice. This 
 flag under which we serve would have been 
 dishonored had we withheld our hand. 
 
 But that is only part of the story. We 
 know now as clearly as we knew before we 
 were ourselves engaged that we axe not the 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR Gj 
 
 enemies of the German people and that they 
 are not our enemies. They did not originate 
 or desire this hideous war or wish that we 
 should be drawn into it; and we are vaguely 
 conscious that we are fighting their cause, as 
 they will some day see it, as well as our own. 
 They are themselves in the grip of the same 
 sinister power that has now at last stretched 
 its ugly talons out and drawn blood from us. 
 The whole world is at war because the whole 
 world is in the grip of that power and is trying 
 out the great battle which shall determine 
 whether it is to be brought under its mastery 
 or fling itself free. 
 
 THE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE CONFLICT 
 
 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 like blood and frame as them- 
 selves, for whom governments existed and in 
 whom governments had their life. They have 
 regarded them merely as serviceable organiza- 
 tions 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 
 domination. Their purpose has long been 
 avowed. The statesmen of other nations, to 
 
68 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 whom that purpose was incredible, paid Httle 
 attention; regarded what German professors 
 expounded in their class-rooms and German 
 writers set forth to the world as the goal of 
 German policy as rather the dream of minds 
 detached from practical affairs, as preposterous 
 private conceptions of German destiny, than as 
 the actual plans of responsible rulers; but the 
 rulers of Germany themselves knew all the 
 while what concrete plans, what well-advanced 
 intrigues, lay back of what the professors and 
 the writers were saying, and were glad to go 
 forward unmolested, filling the thrones of Bal- 
 kan states with German princes, putting Ger- 
 man officers at the service of Turkey to drill 
 her armies and make interest with her Gov- 
 ernment, developing plans of sedition and re- 
 bellion in India and Egypt, setting their fires 
 in Persia. The demands made by Austria upon 
 Serbia were a mere single step in a plan which 
 compassed Europe and Asia, from BerHn to 
 Bagdad. They hoped those demands might 
 not arouse Europe, but they meant to press 
 them whether they did or not, for they thought 
 themselves ready for the final issue of arms. 
 
 THE PLAN OF CONQUEST 
 
 Their plan was to throw a broad belt of Ger- 
 man military power and political control across 
 the very center of Europe and beyond the Med- 
 iterranean into the very heart of Asia; and 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 69 
 
 Austria-Hungary was to be as much their tool 
 and pawn as Serbia or Bulgaria or Turkey or 
 the ponderous states of the East. Austria- 
 Hungary, indeed, was to become part of the 
 central German Empire, absorbed and domi- 
 nated by the same forces and influences that 
 had originally cemented the German states 
 themselves. The dream had its heart at Ber- 
 lin. It could have had a heart nowhere else! 
 It rejected the idea of solidarity of race entirely. 
 The choice of peoples played no part in it at 
 all. It contemplated binding together racial 
 and political units which could be kept together 
 only by force — Czechs, Magyars, Croats, Serbs, 
 Rumanians, Turks, Armenians — the proud 
 states of Bohemia and Hungary, the stout little 
 commonwealths of the Balkans, the indomi- 
 table Turks, the subtile peoples of the East. 
 These peoples did not wish to be united. They 
 ardently desired to direct their own affairs, 
 would be satisfied only by undisputed inde- 
 pendence. 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. But the German military states- 
 men 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 
 
70 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 mercy. It has acted, not upon its own initia- 
 tive 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 Berlin. The so- 
 called Central Powers are, in fact, but a single 
 Power. Serbia is at its mercy, should its 
 hand be but for a moment freed. Bulgaria 
 has consented to its will, and Rumania 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 Constantinople remind 
 Turkish statesmen every day that they have 
 no choice but to take their orders from Berlin. 
 From Hamburg to the Persian Gulf the net is 
 spread. 
 
 THE TALK OF PEACE 
 
 Is it not easy to understand the eagerness 
 for peace that has been manifested from Berlin 
 ever since the snare was set and sprung? 
 Peace, peace, peace has been the talk of her 
 Foreign Office for now a year and more; not 
 peace upon her own initiative, but upon the 
 initiative of the nations over which she now 
 deems herself to hold the advantage. A little 
 of the talk has been public, but most of it has 
 been private. Through all sorts of channels it 
 has come to me, and in all sorts of guises, but 
 never with the terms disclosed which the Ger- 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 71 
 
 man Government would be willing to accept. 
 That Government has other valuable pawns 
 in its hands besides those I have mentioned. 
 It still holds a valuable part of France, though 
 with slowly relaxing grasp, and practically the 
 whole of Belgium. Its armies press close upon 
 Russia and overrun Poland at their will. It 
 cannot go farther; it dare not go back. It 
 wishes to close its bargain before it is too late, 
 and it has little left to offer for the pound of 
 flesh it will demand. 
 
 The military masters under whom Germany 
 is bleeding see very clearly to what point Fate 
 has brought them. If they fall back or are 
 forced back an inch, their power both abroad 
 and at home will fall to pieces like a house of 
 cards. It is their power at home they are 
 thinking about now more than their power 
 abroad. It is that power which is trembling 
 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 controlling political influence. If they 
 can secure peace now, with the immense ad- 
 vantages still in their hands which they have 
 up to this point apparently gained, they will 
 have justified themselves before the German 
 people; they will have gained by force what 
 they promised to gain by it — an immense ex- 
 pansion of German power, an immense enlarge- 
 ment of German industrial and commercial 
 
 6 
 
72 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 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 them- 
 selves will be set up in Germany, as it has been 
 in England, in the United States, in France, 
 and in all the great countries of the modem 
 time except Germany. If they succeed they 
 are safe and Germany and the world are un- 
 done; if they fail Germany is saved and the 
 world will be at peace. If they succeed, Amer- 
 ica 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. 
 
 THE PRESENT AIM OP GERMANY 
 
 Do you not now understand the new intrigue, 
 the intrigue for peace, and why the masters of 
 Germany do not hesitate to use any agency 
 that promises to effect their purpose, the de- 
 ceit of the nations? Their present particular 
 aim is to deceive all those who throughout the 
 world stand for the rights of peoples and the 
 self-government of nations; for they see what 
 immense strength the forces of justice and of 
 liberalism are gathering out of this war. They 
 are employing liberals in their enterprise. They 
 are using men, in Germany and without, as 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 73 
 
 their spokesmen whom they have hitherto de- 
 spised and oppressed, using them for their own 
 destruction — sociaUsts, the leaders of labor, 
 the thinkers they have hitherto sought to si- 
 lence. Let them once succeed and these men, 
 now their tools, will be ground to powder be- 
 neath the weight of the great military empire 
 they will have set up; the revolutionists in 
 Russia will be cut off from all succor or co- 
 operation in western Europe and a counter 
 revolution fostered and supported; Germany 
 herself will lose her chance of freedom ; and all 
 Europe will arm for the next, the final struggle. 
 The sinister intrigue is being no less actively 
 conducted in this country than in Russia, and 
 in every country in Europe to which the agents 
 and dupes of the Imperial German Govern- 
 ment 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 Eng- 
 land at the center of the stage and talk of her 
 ambition to assert economic dominion through- 
 out 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. 
 
74 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 THIS IS A PEOPLES* WAR 
 
 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 no- 
 where are they more plainly seen than in the 
 United States, where we are accustomed to 
 deal with facts and not with sophistries; and 
 the great fact that stands out above all the rest 
 is that this is a Peoples' War, a war for free- 
 dom and justice and self-government amongst 
 all the nations of the world, a war to make the 
 world safe for the peoples who live in it and 
 have made it their own, the German people 
 themselves included; and that with us rests 
 the choice to break through all these hypocri- 
 sies 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 na- 
 tion 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 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 75 
 
 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 bom, and a new 
 glory shall shine in the face of our people. 
 
XI 
 
 AN APPEAL TO THE BUSINESS INTERESTS 
 {July II, 1917) 
 
 My Fellow-countrymen, — The Govern- 
 ment is about to attempt to determine the 
 prices at which it will ask you henceforth to 
 furnish various supplies which are necessary 
 for the prosecution of the war, and various 
 materials which will be needed in the indus- 
 tries by which the war must be sustained. 
 
 We shall, of course, try to determine them 
 justly and to the best advantage of the nation 
 as a whole. But justice is easier to speak of 
 than to arrive at, and there are some consid- 
 erations which I hope we shall keep steadily in 
 mind while this particular problem of justice 
 is being worked out. 
 
 I therefore take the liberty of stating very 
 candidly my own view of the situation and 
 of the principles which should guide both 
 the Government and the mine -owners and 
 manufacturers of the country in this difficult 
 matter, 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 77 
 
 PATRIOTISM AND PROFITS APART 
 
 A just price must, of course, be paid for 
 everything the Government buys. By a just 
 price I mean a price which will sustain the in- 
 dustries concerned in a high state of efficiency, 
 provide a living for those who conduct them, 
 enable them to pay good wages, and make pos- 
 sible the expansions of their enterprises, which 
 will from time to time become necessary as 
 the stupendous undertakings of this great war 
 develop. 
 
 We could not wisely or reasonably do less 
 than pay such prices. They are necessary for 
 the maintenance and development of industry; 
 and the maintenance and development of in- 
 dustry are necessary for the great task we have 
 in hand. 
 
 But I trust that we shall not surround the 
 matter with a mist of sentiment. Facts are 
 our masters now. We ought not to put the 
 acceptance of such prices on the ground of 
 patriotism. Patriotism has nothing to do 
 with profits in a case like this. Patriotism 
 and profits ought never in the present circum- 
 stances to be mentioned together. 
 
 It is perfectly proper to discuss profits as a 
 matter of business, with a view to maintaining 
 the integrity of capital and the efficiency of 
 labor in these tragical months, when the lib- 
 erty of free men everywhere and of industry 
 
78 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 itself trembles in the balance, but it would be 
 absurd to discuss them as a motive for helping 
 to serve and save our country. 
 
 Patriotism leaves profits out of the question. 
 In these days of our supreme trial, when we 
 are sending hundreds of thousands of our young 
 men across the seas to serve a great cause, no 
 true man who stays behind to work for them 
 and sustain them by his labor will ask himself 
 what he is personally going to make out of 
 that labor. 
 
 No true patriot will permit himself to take 
 toll of their heroism in money or seek to grow 
 rich by the shedding of their blood. He will 
 give as freely and with as unstinted self-sacri- 
 fice as they. When they are giving their lives, 
 will he not at least give his money? 
 
 I hear it insisted that more than a just 
 price, more than a price that will sustain 
 our industries, must be paid; that it is 
 necessary to pay very liberal and imusual 
 profits in order to ** stimulate production," 
 that nothing but pecuniary rewards will do — 
 rewards paid in money, not in the mere 
 liberation of the world. 
 
 IS A BRIBE NECESSARY? 
 
 I take it for granted that those who argue 
 thus do not stop to think what that means. 
 Do they mean that you must be paid, must be 
 bribed, to make your contribution, a contribu- 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 79 
 
 tion that costs you neither a drop of blood, 
 nor a tear, when the whole world is in travail 
 and men everywhere depend upon and call to 
 you to bring them out of bondage and make 
 the world a fit place to live in again amidst 
 peace and justice? 
 
 Do they mean that you will exact a price, 
 drive a bargain, with the men who are endur- 
 ing the agony of this war on the battlefield, in 
 the trenches, amid the lurking dangers of the 
 sea, or with the bereaved women and pitiful 
 children, before you will come forward to do 
 your duty and give some part of your life, in 
 easy, peaceful fashion, for the things we are 
 fighting for, the things we have pledged our 
 fortunes, our lives, our sacred honor, to vindi- 
 cate and defend — liberty and justice and fair 
 dealing and the peace of nations ? 
 
 Of course you will not. It is inconceivable. 
 Your patriotism is of the same self-denying 
 stuff as the patriotism of the men dead or 
 maimed on the fields of France, or else it is no 
 patriotism at all. Let us never speak, then, of 
 profits and of patriotism in the same sentence, 
 but face facts and meet them. Let us do 
 sound business, but not in the midst of a 
 mist. 
 
 Many a grievous burden of taxation will 
 be laid on this Nation, in this generation 
 and in the next, to pay for this war; let 
 us see to it that for every dollar that is 
 
8o IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 taken from the people's pockets it shall be 
 possible to obtain a dollar's worth of the 
 sound stuffs they need. 
 
 HIGH FREIGHTS AID GERMANY 
 
 Let us for a moment turn to the ship-owners 
 of the United States and the other ocean car- 
 riers whose example they have followed, and 
 ask them if they realize what obstacles, what 
 almost insuperable obstacles, they have been 
 putting in the way of the successful prosecu- 
 tion of this war by the ocean freight rates they 
 have been exacting. 
 
 They are doing everything that high freight 
 charges can do to make the war a failure, to 
 make it impossible. I do not say that they 
 realize this or intend it. 
 
 The thing has happened naturally enough, 
 because the commercial processes which we are 
 content to see operate in ordinary times have 
 without sufficient thought been continued into 
 a period where they have no proper place. I 
 am not questioning motives. I am merely 
 stating a fact, and stating it in order that 
 attention may be fixed upon it. 
 
 The fact is that those who have fixed war 
 freight rates have taken the most effective 
 means in their power to defeat the armies en- 
 gaged against Germany. When they realize 
 this we may, I take it for granted, count upon 
 them to reconsider the whole matter. It is 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 8i 
 
 high time. Their extra hazards are covered by 
 war-risk insurance. 
 
 THE LAW TO DEAL WITH OFFENDERS 
 
 I know, and you know, what response to 
 this great challenge of duty and of opportu- 
 nity the riation will expect of you; and I know 
 what response you will make. Those who do 
 not respond, who do not respond in the spirit 
 of those who have gone to give their lives for 
 us on bloody fields far away, may safely be left 
 to be dealt with by opinion and the law — ^for 
 the law must, of course, command those 
 things. 
 
 I am dealing with the matter thus publicly 
 and frankly, not because I have any doubt or 
 fear as to the result, but only in order that, in 
 all our thinking and in all our dealings with 
 one another we may move in a perfectly clear 
 air of mutual understanding. 
 
 And there is something more that we must 
 add to our thinking. The public is now as 
 much part of the Government as are the Army 
 and Navy themselves. The whole people, in 
 all their activities, are now mobilized and in 
 service for the accomplishment of the Nation's 
 task in this war. It is in such circumstances 
 impossible justly to distinguish between indus- 
 trial purchases made by the Government and 
 industries. And it is just as much our duty 
 to sustain the industries of the country, all the 
 
82 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 industries that contribute to its life, as it is 
 to sustain our forces in the field and on the sea. 
 We must make the prices to the public the 
 same as the prices to the Government. 
 
 PRICES MEAN VICTORY OR DEFEAT 
 
 Prices mean the same thing everywhere now. 
 They mean the efficiency or the inefficiency of 
 the Nation, whether it is the Government that 
 pays them or not. They mean victory or de- 
 feat. They mean that America will win her 
 place once for all among the foremost free Na- 
 tions of the world, or that she will sink to 
 defeat and become a second-rate Power alike 
 in thought and action. This is a day of her 
 reckoning, and every man among us must per- 
 sonally face that reckoning along with her. 
 
 The case needs no arguing. I assume that 
 I am only expressing your own thoughts— 
 what must be in the mind of every true man 
 when he faces the tragedy and the solemn 
 glory of the present war, for the emancipa- 
 tion of mankind. I summon you to a great 
 duty, a great privilege, a shining dignity and 
 distinction. 
 
 I shaU expect every man who is not a slacker 
 to be at my side throughout this great enter- 
 prise. In it no man can win honor who thinks 
 of himself. 
 
XII 
 
 REPLY OF THE UNITED STATES TO THE COM- 
 MUNICATION OF THE POPE TO THE BELLIG- 
 ERENT GOVERNMENTS 
 
 {August 27, IQ17) 
 
 To His Holiness Benedictus XV., Pope. 
 
 In acknowledgment of the communication 
 of Your Holiness to the belligerent peoples, 
 dated August i, 191 7, the President of the 
 United States requests me to transmit the 
 following reply : 
 
 Every heart that has not been blinded and 
 hardened by this terrible war must be touched 
 by this moving appeal of His Holiness, the 
 Pope, must feel the dignity and force of the 
 humane and generous motives which prompted 
 it, and must fervently wish that we might take 
 the path of peace he so persuasively points 
 out. But it would be folly to take it if it does 
 not, in fact, lead to the goal he proposes. Our 
 response must be based upon the stem facts 
 and upon nothing else. It is not a mere ces- 
 sation of arms he desires; it is a stable and 
 enduring peace. This agony must not be gone 
 
84 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 through with again, and it must be a matter 
 of very sober judgment what will insure us 
 against it. 
 
 THE PROPOSAL FROM THE VATICAN 
 
 His Holiness, in substance, proposes that we 
 return to the status quo ante hellufHy and that 
 then there be a general condonation, disarma- 
 ment, and a concert of nations based upon an 
 acceptance of the principle of arbitration ; that 
 by a similar concert freedom of the seas be 
 established; and that the territorial claims of 
 France and Italy, the perplexing problems of 
 the Balkan states, and the restitution of Po- 
 land be left to such conciliatory adjustments as 
 may be possible in the new temper of such a 
 peace, due regard being paid to the aspira- 
 tions 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 res- 
 titution of the status quo ante furnishes a firm 
 and satisfactory basis for it. The object of 
 this war is to deliver the free peoples of the 
 world from the menace and the actual power 
 of a vast military establishment controlled by 
 an irresponsible Government, which, having 
 secretly planned to dominate the world, pro- 
 ceeded to carry the plan out without re- 
 gard either to the sacred obligations of treaty 
 or the long-established practices and long- 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 85 
 
 cherished principles of international action and 
 honor; which chose its own time for the war; 
 deHveredits 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 tem- 
 porary zest to the domination of its purpose; 
 but it is our business to see to it that the his- 
 tory 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 instru- 
 ments; and would result in abandoning the 
 new-bom Russia to the intrigue, the manifold 
 subtle interference, and the certain counter- 
 revolution which wotild be attempted by all 
 the malign influences to which the German 
 Government has of late accustomed the world. 
 Can peace be based upon a restitution of its 
 
86 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 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 restric- 
 tions meant to benefit some nations and cripple 
 or embarrass others, upon vindictive action of 
 any sort, or any kind of revenge or deliberate 
 injury. The American people have stiffered 
 intolerable wrongs at the hands of the Imperial 
 German Government, but they desire no re- 
 prisal upon the German people, who have 
 themselves suffered all things in this war which 
 they did not choose. They believe that peace 
 should rest upon the rights of peoples, not the 
 rights of governments — the rights of peoples 
 great or small, weak or powerful — their equal 
 right to freedom and security and self-govern- 
 ment and to a participation upon fair terms in 
 the economic opportunities of the world, the 
 German people, of course, included, if they will 
 accept equality and not seek domination. 
 
 The test, therefore, of every plan of peace 
 is this: Is it based upon the faith of all the 
 peoples involved or merely upon the word of 
 an ambitious and intriguing Government on 
 the one hand, and of a group of free peoples 
 on the other ? This is a test which goes to the 
 root of the matter; and it is the test which 
 must be applied. 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 87 
 
 THE TEST THAT MUST BE APPLIED 
 
 The purposes of the United States in this 
 war are known to the whole world, to every 
 people to whom the truth has been permitted 
 to come. They do not need to be stated again. 
 We seek no material advantage of any kind. 
 We believe that the intolerable wrongs done in 
 this war by the furious and brutal power of the 
 Imperial German Government ought to be re- 
 paired, 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 dam- 
 ages, the dismemberment of empires, the es- 
 tablishment of selfish and exclusive economic 
 leagues, we deem inexpedient and in the end 
 worse than futile, no proper basis for a peace 
 of any kind, least of all for an enduring peace. 
 That must be based upon justice and fairness 
 and the common rights of mankind. 
 
 THE GERMAN RULERS CANNOT BE TRUSTED 
 
 We cannot take the word of the present rul- 
 ers of Germany as a guaranty of anything that 
 is to endure, unless explicitly supported by 
 such conclusive evidence of the will and pur- 
 pose of the German people themselves as the 
 other peoples of the world would be justified 
 in accepting. Without such guarantees treaties 
 
 of settlement, agreements for disarmament, 
 
 7 
 
88 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 covenants to set up arbitration in the place of 
 force, territorial adjustments, reconstitutions 
 of small nations, if made with the German 
 Government, no man, no nation could now 
 depend on. We must await some new evi- 
 dence of the purposes of the great peoples of 
 the Central Powers. God grant it may be 
 given soon, and in a way to restore the confi- 
 dence of all peoples ever3rwhere in the faith of 
 nations and the possibility of a covenanted 
 peace. 
 
 Robert Lansing, 
 
 Secretary of State of the United States of 
 America. 
 
XIII 
 
 A MESSAGE TO TEACHERS AND SCHOOL 
 
 OFFICERS 
 
 (Septetnbet 30, 1917) 
 
 The war is bringing to the minds of our 
 people a new appreciation of the problems of 
 national life and a deeper understanding of the 
 meaning and aims of democracy. Matters 
 which heretofore have seemed commonplace 
 and trivial are seen in a truer light. The ur- 
 gent demand for the production and proper 
 distribution of food and other national re- 
 sources has made us aware of the close de- 
 pendence of individual on individual and na- 
 tion on nation. The effort to keep up social 
 and industrial organizations, in spite of the 
 withdrawal of men for the army, has revealed 
 the extent to which modem life has become 
 complex and specialized. 
 
 These and other lessons of the war must be 
 learned quickly if we are intelligently and suc- 
 cessfully to defend our institutions. When the 
 war is over we must apply the wisdom which 
 
90 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 we have acquired in purging and ennobling the 
 life of the world. 
 
 THE COMMON SCHOOL HAS A PART TO PLAY 
 
 In these vital tasks of acquiring a broader 
 view of human possibiHties the common school 
 must have large part. I urge that teachers 
 and other school officers increase materially the 
 time and attention devoted to instruction bear- 
 ing directly on the problems of community and 
 national life. 
 
 Such a plea is in no way foreign to the spirit 
 of American public education or of existing 
 practices. Nor is it a plea for a temporary 
 enlargement of the school program appropri- 
 ate merely to the period of the war. It is a 
 plea for a realization in public education of the 
 new emphasis which the war has given to the 
 ideals of democracy and to the broader con- 
 ceptions of national life. 
 
 In order that there may be definite material 
 at hand with which the schools may at once 
 expand their teachings, I have asked Mr. 
 Hoover and Commissioner Claxton to organ- 
 ize the proper agencies for the preparation and 
 distribution of suitable lessons for the element- 
 ary grades and for the high-school classes. 
 Lessons thus suggested will serve the double 
 purpose of illustrating in a concrete way what 
 can be undertaken in the schools and of stimu- 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 91 
 
 lating teachers in all parts of the country to 
 formulate new and appropriate materials drawn 
 directly from the commimities in which they 
 live. 
 
 WooDRow Wilson. 
 
XIV 
 
 WOMAN SUFFRAGE MUST COME NOW 
 {October 23, igi7) 
 
 The President received at the White House 
 a delegation from the New York State Woman 
 Suffrage Party. Answering the address made 
 by the chairman, Mrs. Norman de R. White- 
 house, the President spoke as follows: 
 
 Mrs. Whitehouse and Ladies, — It is with 
 great pleasure that I receive you. I esteem it 
 a privilege to do so. I know the difficulties 
 which you have been laboring under in New 
 York State, so clearly set forth by Mrs. White- 
 house, but in my judgment those difficulties 
 cannot be used as an excuse by the leaders of 
 any party or by the voters of any party for 
 neglecting the question which you are pressing 
 upon them. Because, after all, the whole 
 world now is witnessing a struggle between two 
 ideals of government. It is a struggle which 
 goes deeper and touches more of the founda- 
 tions of the organized life of men than any 
 struggle that has ever taken place before, and 
 no settlement of the questions that lie on the 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 93 
 
 surface can satisfy a situation which requires 
 that the questions which lie underneath and at 
 the foundation should also be settled and 
 settled right. I am free to say that I think 
 the question of woman suffrage is one of those 
 questions which lie at the foundation. 
 
 The world has witnessed a slow political 
 reconstruction, and men have generally been 
 obliged to be satisfied with the slowness of the 
 process. In a sense it is wholesome that it 
 should be slow, because then it is solid and 
 sure. But I believe that this war is going so 
 to quicken the convictions and the conscious- 
 ness of mankind with regard to political ques- 
 tions that the speed of reconstruction will be 
 greatly increased. And I believe that just be- 
 cause w^e are quickened by the questions of 
 this war, we ought to be quickened to give 
 this question of woman suffrage our immediate 
 consideration. 
 
 NOW IS THE TIME TO ACT 
 
 As one of the spokesmen of a great party, 
 I would be doing nothing less than obeying the 
 mandates of that party if I gave my hearty 
 support to the question of woman suffrage 
 which you represent, but I do not want to 
 speak merely as one of the spokesmen of a 
 party. I want to speak for myself, and say 
 that it seems to me that this is the time for the 
 States of this Union to take this action. I 
 
94 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 perhaps may be touched a Httle too much by 
 the traditions of our poHtics, traditions which 
 lay such questions almost entirely upon the 
 States, but I want to see communities declare 
 themselves quickened at this time and show 
 the consequence of the quickening. 
 
 I think the whole country has appreciated 
 the way in which the women have risen to this 
 great occasion. They not only have done what 
 they have been asked to do, and done it with 
 ardor and efficiency, but they have shown a 
 power to organize for doing things of their own 
 initiative, which is quite a different thing, and 
 a very much more difficult thing, and I think 
 the whole country has admired the spirit and 
 the capacity and the vision of the women of 
 the United States. 
 
 It is almost absurd to say that the country 
 depends upon the women for a large part of 
 the inspiration of its life. That is too obvious 
 to say; but it is now depending upon the 
 women also for suggestions of service, which 
 have been rendered in abundance and with the 
 distinction of originality. I, therefore, am very 
 glad to add my voice to those which are urging 
 the people of the great State of New York to 
 set a great example by voting for woman suf- 
 frage. It would be a pleasure if I might utter 
 that advice in their presence. Inasmuch as 
 I am bound too close to my duties here to 
 moko that possible, I am glad to have th§ 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 95 
 
 privilege to ask you to convey that message 
 to them. 
 
 It seems to me that this is a time of privi- 
 lege. All otir principles, all our hearts, all our 
 purposes, are being searched ; searched not only 
 by our own consciences, but searched by the 
 world ; and it is time for the people of the States 
 of this country to show the world in what prac- 
 tical sense they have learned the lessons of 
 democracy — that they are fighting for democ- 
 racy because they beheve it, and that there is 
 no application of democracy which they do not 
 believe in. 
 
 I feel, therefore, that I am standing upon 
 the firmest foundations of the age in bidding 
 godspeed to the cause which you represent and 
 in expressing the ardent hope that the people 
 of New York may realize the great occasion 
 which faces them on Election Day and may 
 respond to it in noble fashion. 
 
XV 
 
 THE THANKSGIVING DAY PROCLAMATION 
 {November 7, iQiT) 
 
 It has long been the honored custom of our 
 people to turn in the fruitful autumn of the 
 year in praise and thanksgiving to Almighty 
 God for His many blessings and mercies to us 
 as a Nation. That custom we can follow now, 
 even in the midst of the tragedy of a world 
 shaken by war and immeasurable disaster, in 
 the midst of sorrow and great peril, because 
 even amidst the darkness that has gathered 
 about us we can see the great blessings God 
 has bestowed upon us ; blessings that are bet- 
 ter than mere peace of mind and prosperity of 
 enterprise. 
 
 We have been given the opportunity to serve 
 mankind as we once served ourselves in the 
 great day of our declaration of independence, 
 by taking up arms against a tyranny that 
 threatened to master and debase men every- 
 where and joining with other free peoples in 
 demanding for all the nations of the world 
 what we then demanded and obtained for our- 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 97 
 
 selves. In this day of the revelation of our 
 duty not only to defend our rights as a Nation, 
 but to defend also the rights of free men 
 throughout the world, there has been vouch- 
 safed us in full and inspiring measure the reso- 
 lution and spirit of united action. We have 
 been brought to one mind and purpose. A 
 new vigor of common counsel and common 
 action has been revealed in us. 
 
 We should especially thank God that, in 
 such circumstances, in the midst of the great- 
 est enterprise the spirits of men have ever 
 entered upon, we have, if we but observe a 
 reasonable and practicable economy, abun- 
 dance with which to supply the needs of those 
 associated with us as well as our own. 
 
 A new light shines about us. The great 
 duties of a new day awaken a new and greater 
 national spirit in us. We shall never again be 
 divided or wonder what stuff we are made of. 
 
 And while we render thanks for these things, 
 let us pray Almighty God that in all humble- 
 ness of spirit we may look always to Him for 
 guidance; that we may be kept constant in the 
 spirit and purpose of service ; that by His grace 
 our minds may be directed and our hands 
 strengthened, and that in His good time lib- 
 erty and security and peace and the comrade- 
 ship of a common justice may be vouchsafed 
 all the nations of the earth. 
 
 Wherefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, President of 
 
98 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 the United States of America, do hereby desig- 
 nate Thursday, the 29th day of November 
 next, as a day of thanksgiving and prayer, and 
 invite the people throughout the land to cease 
 upon that day from their ordinary occupations 
 and in their several homes and places of wor- 
 ship to render thanks to God, the Great Ruler 
 of nations. 
 
XVI 
 
 LABOR MUST BEAR ITS PART 
 {November 12, 1917) 
 
 In his address before the American Federa- 
 tion of Labor, assembled in convention at 
 Buffalo, New York, the President spoke as 
 follows: 
 
 Mr. President, Delegates of the Amer- 
 ican Federation op Labor, Ladies and 
 Gentlemen, — I esteem it a great privilege 
 and a real honor to be thus admitted to your 
 public councils. When your executive com- 
 mittee paid me the compliment of inviting me 
 here I gladly accepted the invitation, because 
 it seems to me that this, above all other times 
 in your history, is the time for common coun- 
 sel, for the drawing not only of the energies, 
 but of the minds of the nation together. I 
 thought that it was a welcome opportunity for 
 disclosing to you some of the thoughts that 
 have been gathering in my mind during the 
 last momentous months. 
 
 I am introduced to you as the President of 
 the United States, and yet I would be pleased 
 if you would put the thought of the office into 
 
loo IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 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 nobil- 
 ity of a great national and world conception 
 and act upon a new platform elevated above 
 the ordinary affairs of life, elevated to where 
 men have views of the long destiny of mankind. 
 I think that in order to realize just what 
 this moment of counsel is, it is very desirable 
 that we should remind ourselves just how this 
 war came about and just what it is for. You 
 can explain most wars very simply, but the 
 explanation of this is not so simple. Its roots 
 run deep into all the obscure soils of history, 
 and, in my view, this is the last decisive issue 
 between the old principles of power and the 
 new principles of freedom. 
 
 GERMANY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE WAR 
 
 The war was started by Germany. Her 
 authorities deny that they started it, but I am 
 willing to let the statement I have just made 
 await the verdict of history. The thing that 
 needs to be explained is why Germany started 
 the war. Remember what the position of Ger- 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR loi 
 
 many in the world WciS-^ias' en viable a' position 
 as any nation has ever occupied. The whole 
 world stood at admiration of her wonderful 
 intellectual and material achievements, and all 
 the intellectual men of the world went to school 
 to her. As a university man I have been sur- 
 rounded by men trained in Germany, men 
 who had resorted to Germany because nowhere 
 else could they get such thorough and search- 
 ing training, particularly in the principles of 
 science and the principles that underlie modem 
 material achievements. 
 
 Her men of science had made her indus- 
 tries perhaps the most competent industries in 
 the world, and the label, "Made in Germany,'* 
 was a guarantee of good workmanship and 
 of sound material. She had access to all the 
 markets of the world, and every other man 
 who traded in those markets feared Germany 
 because of her effective and almost irresistible 
 competition. She had a place in the sun. Why 
 was she not satisfied? What 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 sta- 
 tistics of Germany. Her old cities took on 
 
102 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 youth, grew faster than any American cities 
 ever grew; her old industries opened their eyes 
 and saw a new world and went out for its con- 
 quest, 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 meth- 
 ods of competition. There is no important in- 
 dustry in Germany upon which the Govern- 
 ment had not laid its hands to direct it and, 
 when necessity arose, 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 inter- 
 national competition to find out the methods 
 of competition which the German manufactur- 
 ers and exporters used under the patronage 
 and support of the Government of Germany. 
 You will find that they were the same sorts of 
 competition that we have decided 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 any- 
 how; and the conditions of competition were 
 thus controlled in large measure by the German 
 Government itself. 
 
 But that did not satisfy the German Gov- 
 ernment. All the while there was lying be- 
 hind its thought, in its dreams of the future, a 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 103 
 
 political control which would enable it, in the 
 long run, to dominate the labor and the in- 
 dustry of the world. 
 
 SUCCESS BY AUTHORITY 
 
 They were not content with success by su- 
 perior achievement; they wanted success by 
 authority. I suppose very few of you have 
 thought much about the Berlin to Bagdad rail- 
 way. The Berlin to Bagdad railway was con- 
 structed 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. Ger- 
 many, 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. 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 provision in — always provided the 
 present influences that control the German 
 Government continue to control it. 
 
 I believe that the spirit of freedom can get 
 
I04 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 into the hearts of Germans and find as fine a 
 welcome there as it can find in any other 
 hearts. But the spirit of freedom does not 
 suit the plans of the Pan-Germans. Power 
 cannot be used with concentrated force against 
 free peoples if it is used by free people. You 
 know how many intimations come to us from 
 one of the Central Powers that it is more 
 anxious for peace than the chief Central Power, 
 and you know that it means that the people in 
 that Central Power know that if the war ends 
 as it stands, they will in effect themselves be 
 vassals of Germany, notwithstanding that their 
 populations are compounded with all the people 
 of that part of the world, and notwithstanding 
 the fact that they do not v/ish, in their pride 
 and proper spirit of nationality, to be so 
 absorbed and dominated. 
 
 THE POLITICAL POWER OP THE WORLD 
 
 Germany is determined that the political 
 power of the world shall belong to her. There 
 have been such ambitions before. They have 
 been in part realized. But never before have 
 those ambitions been based upon so exact and 
 precise and scientific a plan of domination. 
 
 May I not say it is amazing to me that any 
 group of people should be so ill informed as to 
 suppose, as some groups in Russia apparently 
 suppose, that any reforms planned in the in- 
 terest of the people can live in the presence of 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 105 
 
 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 com- 
 pounding 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, who is as 
 great a lover of peace as any man in the world ; 
 but I did not send him on a peace mission. I 
 sent him to take part in a conference as to how 
 the war was to be won. And he knows, as I 
 know, that that is the way to get peace if you 
 want it for more than a few minutes. 
 
 If we are true friends of freedom — our own 
 or anybody else's — ^we will see that the power 
 of this country and the productivity of this 
 country is raised to its absolute maximum and 
 that absolutely nobody is allowed to stand in 
 the way of it. 
 
 When I say that nobody ought to be al- 
 
io6 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 lowed to stand in the way, I don't mean that 
 they shall be prevented by the power of 
 Government, but by the power of the Ameri- 
 can 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 in the 
 world, then we must stand together night and 
 day until the job is finished. 
 
 LABOR MUST BE FREE 
 
 While we are fighting for freedom we must 
 see, among other things, that labor is free, and 
 that means a number of interesting things. It 
 means not only that we must do what we have 
 declared our purpose to do — ^see that the con- 
 ditions of labor are not rendered more oner- 
 ous 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 
 pleasiire 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 ad- 
 miration of his patriotic courage, his large 
 vision, his statesman-Hke sense and 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 together" means that no- 
 body must interrupt the processes of our en- 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 107 
 
 ergy if the interruption can possibly be avoided 
 without the absolute invasion of freedom. To 
 put it concretely, that means this : Nobody has 
 a right to stop the processes of labor until all 
 the methods of conciliation and settlement 
 have been exhausted, and I might as well say 
 right here that I am not talking to you alone. 
 You sometimes stop the courses of labor, but 
 there are others who do the same. I am speak- 
 ing of my own experience when I say that you 
 are reasonable in a larger number of cases than 
 the capitalists. 
 
 I am not saying these things to them per- 
 sonally yet, because I haven't had a chance. 
 But they have to be said, not in any spirit of 
 criticism. 
 
 But, in order to clear the atmosphere and 
 come down to business, everybody on both 
 sides has got to transact business, and the 
 settlement is never impossible when both sides 
 want to do the square and right thing. More- 
 over, 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 dangerous for a man 
 to have the floor entirely to himself. And, 
 therefore, we must insist in every instance that 
 the parties come into each other's presence and 
 
loS IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 there discuss the issues between them, and not 
 separately in places which have no communi- 
 cation with each other. 
 
 I 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 harshly of some man who was 
 not present. I ought to say that Lamb stut- 
 tered a little bit. And one of his friends said, 
 *'Why, Charles, I didn't know that you knew 
 So-and-so?" * 'Oh," he said, ** I don't. I can't 
 hate a man I know." 
 
 There is a great deal of human nature, of 
 very pleasant human nature, in that saying. 
 It is hard to hate a man you know. I may 
 admit, parenthetically, that there are some 
 politicians whose methods I do not at all be- 
 lieve in, but they are jolly good fellows, and if 
 they 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. 
 
 AMERICANS MUST CO-OPERATE 
 
 Therefore my counsel to you is this : Let us 
 show ourselves Americans by showing that we 
 do not want to go off in separate camps or 
 groups by ourselves, but that we want to co- 
 operate with all other classes and all other 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 109 
 
 groups in a common enterprise, which is to 
 release the spirits of the worid from bondage. 
 I would be willing to set that up as the final 
 test of an American. That is the meaning of 
 democracy. 
 
 I have been very much distressed, my fel- 
 low-citizens, by some of the things that have 
 happened recently. The mob spirit is display- 
 ing itself here and there in this country. I 
 have no sympathy with what some men are 
 saying, but I have no sympathy with the men 
 that take their punishment into their own 
 hands; and I want to say to every man who 
 does join such a mob that I recognize him as 
 unworthy of the free institutions of the United 
 States. 
 
 There are some organizations in this coun- 
 try whose object is anarchy and the destruc- 
 tion of the law. I despise and hate their pur- 
 pose 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 ourselves. If 
 our men have not self-control, then they are 
 not capable of that great thing which we call 
 
no IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 democratic government. A man who takes the 
 law into his own hands is not the right man to 
 co-operate in any form of orderly development 
 of law and institutions. 
 
 And some of the processes by which the 
 struggle between capital and labor is carried 
 on are processes that come very near to taking 
 the law into your own hands. I do not mean 
 for a moment to compare them with what I 
 have just been speaking of, but I want you to 
 see that they are mere gradations of the mani- 
 festations of the unwillingness to co-operate. 
 The fundamental lesson of the whole situation 
 is that we must not only take common counsel, 
 but that we must yield to and obey common 
 counsel. Not all of the instrumentalities for 
 this are at hand. 
 
 BETTER CONDITIONS MAY BE 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 bid- 
 ding in different markets and unfairly upset- 
 ting 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 co-operation by which 
 the fair thing will be done all around. 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR in 
 
 I am hopeful that some such instrumen- 
 talities 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, originated upon 
 that occasion, if necessary. 
 
 And so, my fellow-citizens, the reason that 
 I came away from Washington is that I some- 
 times 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 Wash- 
 ington who know anything about what the 
 people of the United States are thinking about. 
 I have to come away to get reminded of the 
 rest of the country. I have come away and 
 talk to men who are up against the real thing 
 and say to them, I am with you if you are 
 with me. 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 American people. 
 
XVII 
 
 ADDRESS TO CONGRESS 
 {December 4, 1917) 
 
 Gentlemen of the Congress, — Eight 
 months have elapsed since I last had the honor 
 of addressing you. They have been months 
 crowded with events of immense and grave sig- 
 nificance for us. I shall not imdertake to detail 
 or even to summarize these events. The prac- 
 tical 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, 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 113 
 
 our objectives and the measures by which we 
 mean to attain them; for the purpose of discus- 
 sion 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 di- 
 verted until it is won. But it is worth while 
 asking and answering the question, When shall 
 we consider the war won? 
 
 From one point of view it is not necessary to 
 broach this fundamental matter. I do not 
 doubt that the American people know what 
 the war is about, and what sort of an outcome 
 they will regard as a realization of their pur- 
 pose in it. As a nation we are united in spirit 
 and intention. 
 
 I pay little heed to those who tell me 
 otherwise. I hear the voices of dissent — 
 who does not? I hear the criticism and 
 the clamor of the noisily thoughtless and 
 troublesome. I also see men here and there 
 fling themselves in impotent disloyalty against 
 the calm, indomitable power of the Nation. 
 I hear men debate peace who understand 
 neither its nature nor the way in which we 
 may attain it, with uplifted eyes and un- 
 broken spirits. But I know that none of 
 these speaks for the Nation. They do not 
 touch the heart of anything. They may 
 safely be left to strut about their uneasy 
 hour and be forgotten. 
 
114 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 WHAT WE ARE FIGHTING FOR 
 
 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 settle- 
 ment of its searching issues. We are the spokes- 
 men of the American people, and they have a 
 right to know whether their purpose is ours. 
 They desire peace by the overcoming of evil, 
 but the defeat once and for all of the sinister 
 forces that interrupt peace and render it im- 
 possible, and they wish to know how closely 
 our thought runs with theirs and what action 
 we propose. They are impatient with those 
 who desire peace by any sort of compromise — 
 deeply and indignantly impatient — but they 
 will be equally impatient with us if we do not 
 make it plain to them what our objectives are 
 and what we are planning for in seeking to 
 make conquest of peace by arms. 
 
 I believe that I speak for them when I say 
 two things : First, that this intolerable Thing of 
 which the masters of Germany have shown us 
 the ugly face, this menace of combined intrigue 
 and force, which we now see so clearly as the 
 German power, a Thing without conscience or 
 honor or capacity for covenanted peace, must 
 be crushed, and, if it be not utterly brought 
 to an end, at least shut out from the friendly 
 intercourse of the nations; and, second, that 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 115 
 
 when this Thing and its power are indeed de- 
 feated and the time comes that we can discuss 
 peace — when the German people have spokes- 
 men 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 settle- 
 ment must affect, our enemies as well as our 
 friends. 
 
 You catch with me the voices of humanity 
 that are in the air. They grow daily more 
 audible, more articulate, more persuasive, and 
 they come from the hearts of men everywhere. 
 They insist that the war shall not end in vin- 
 dictive action of any kind; that no nation or 
 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 contribu- 
 tions, no punitive indemnities." 
 
 THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA LED ASTRAY 
 
 Just because this crude formula expresses the 
 instinctive judgment as to the right of plain 
 
ii6 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 men everywhere, it has been made diligent use 
 of by the masters of German intrigue to lead 
 the people of Russia 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 patronage of its real friends. 
 Let it be said again that autocracy must first 
 be shown the utter futility of its claims to 
 power or leadership in the modern world. It 
 is impossible to apply any standard of justice 
 so long as such forces are unchecked and un- 
 defeated as the present masters of Germany 
 command. Not until that has been done can 
 right be set up as arbiter and peacemaker 
 among the nations. But when that has been 
 done — as, God willing, it assuredly will be — 
 we shall at last be free to do an unprecedented 
 thing, and this is the time to avow our purpose 
 to do it. We shall be free to base peace on 
 generosity and justice, to the exclusion of all 
 selfish claims to advantage, even on the part 
 of the victors. 
 
 Let there be no misunderstanding. Our 
 present and immediate task is to win the war, 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 117 
 
 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 coun- 
 sel to carry their advice elsewhere. We will 
 not entertain it. 
 
 JUSTICE AND REPARATION 
 
 We shall regard the war only as won 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 estab- 
 lished a power over other lands and peoples 
 than their own — over the great empire of Aus- 
 tria-Hungary, over hitherto free Balkan states, 
 over Turkey, and within Asia — which must be 
 relinquished. 
 
 Germany's success by skill, by industry, by 
 knowledge, by enterprise, we did not grudge 
 or oppose, but admired rather. She had built 
 up for herself a real empire of trade and influ- 
 ence, secured by the peace of the world. We 
 were content to abide the rivalries of manufact- 
 ure, science and commerce that were involved 
 for us in her success, and stand or fall as we had 
 
ii8 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 or did not have the brains and the initiative 
 to surpass her. But at the moment when she 
 had conspicuously won her triumphs of peace 
 she threw them away to estabHsh in their 
 stead what the world will no longer permit to 
 be established — military and political domi- 
 nation by arms, by which to oust where she 
 could not excel the rivals she most feared and 
 hated. 
 
 The peace we make must remedy that wrong. 
 It must deliver the once fair lands and happy 
 peoples of Belgium and northern France from 
 the Prussian conquest and the Prussian men- 
 ace, 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 domi- 
 nation 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 re- 
 arrange the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It is 
 no affair of ours what they do with their own 
 life, either industrially or politically. We do 
 not purpose nor desire to dictate to them in 
 any way. We only desire to see that their af- 
 fairs are left in their own hands, in all matters, 
 great or small. We shall hope to secure for 
 the peoples of the Balkan peninsula and for the 
 people of the Turkish Empire the right and op- 
 portunity to make their own lives safe, their 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 119 
 
 own fortunes secure against oppression or injus- 
 tice and from the dictation of foreign courts or 
 parties, and our attitude and purpose with 
 regard to Germany herself are of a like kind. 
 
 OUR ATTITUDE TOWARD GERMANY 
 
 We intend no wrong against the German Em- 
 pire, no interference with her internal affairs. 
 We should deem either the one or the other 
 absolutely unjustifiable, absolutely contrary to 
 the principles we have professed to live by and 
 to hold most sacred throughout our life as a 
 nation. 
 
 The people of Germany are being told by 
 the men whom they now permit to deceive 
 them and to act as their masters that they 
 are fighting for 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 false- 
 ness. We are, in fact, fighting for their eman- 
 cipation from fear, along with our own, from 
 the fear as well as from the fact of unjust 
 attack by neighbors or rivals or schemers after 
 world empire. No one is threatening the exist- 
 ence or the independence or the peaceful en- 
 terprise of the German Empire. 
 
 The worst that can happen to the detriment 
 of the German people is this, that if they should 
 
120 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 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 partner- 
 ship of nations which must henceforth guar- 
 antee the world's peace. That partnership 
 must be a partnership of peoples, not a mere 
 partnership of governments. 
 
 It might be impossible, also, in such untow- 
 ard circumstances, to admit Germany to the 
 free economic intercourse which must inevi- 
 tably spring out of the other partnerships of a 
 real peace. But there would be no aggression 
 in that; and such a situation, inevitable be- 
 cause of distrust, would in the very nature of 
 things sooner or later cure itself, by processes 
 which would assuredly set in. 
 
 THE RIGHTS OF THE CENTRAL POWERS 
 
 The wrongs, the very deep wrongs, com- 
 mitted in this war will have to be righted. 
 That of course. But they cannot and must 
 not be righted by the commission of similar 
 wrongs against Germany and her allies. The 
 world will not permit the commission of simi- 
 lar wrongs as a means of reparation and settle- 
 ment. Statesmen must by this time have 
 learned that the opinion of the world is every- 
 where wide awake and fully comprehends the 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 121 
 
 issues involved. No representative of any self- 
 governed nation will dare disregard it by at- 
 tempting any such covenants of seLfishness and 
 compromise as were entered into at the congress 
 of Vienna. 
 
 The thought of the plain people here and 
 everywhere throughout the world, the people 
 who enjoy no privilege and have very simple 
 and unsophisticated standards of right and 
 wrong, is the air all governments must hence- 
 forth breathe if they would live. It is in the 
 full disclosing light of that thought that all 
 policies must be conceived and executed in this 
 midday hour of the world's life. 
 
 German rulers have been able to upset the 
 peace of the world only because the German 
 people were not suffered, under their tutelage, 
 to share the comradeship of the other peoples 
 of the world either in thought or in purpose. 
 They were allowed to have no opinion of their 
 own which might be set up as a rule of conduct 
 for those who exercised authority over them. 
 But the congress that concludes this war will 
 feel the full strength of the tides that run now 
 in the hearts and consciences of free men every- 
 where. Its conclusions will run with those 
 tides. 
 
 All these things have been true from the very 
 beginning of this stupendous war; and I can- 
 not help thinMng that if they had been made 
 plain at the very outset the sympathy and en- 
 
122 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 thusiasm of the Russian people might have 
 been once for all enlisted on the side of the 
 AlHes, suspicion and distrust swept away, and 
 a real and lasting union of purpose effected. 
 Had they believed these things at the very mo- 
 ment of their revolution, and had they been 
 confirmed in that belief since, the sad reverses 
 which have recently marked the progress of 
 their affairs toward an ordered and stable gov- 
 ernment of free men might have been avoided. 
 
 TRUTH AS THE ANTIDOTE 
 
 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 declara- 
 tions of purpose, to add these specific interpre- 
 tations to what I took the liberty of saying to 
 the Senate in January. Our entrance into the 
 war has not altered our attitude toward the 
 settlement that must come when it is over. 
 When I said in January that the nations of 
 the world were entitled not only to free path- 
 ways upon the sea, but also to assured and un- 
 molested access to those pathways, I was 
 thinking, and I am thinking now, not of the 
 smaller and weaker nations alone, which need 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 123 
 
 our countenance and support, but also of the 
 great and powerful nations, and of our present 
 enemies as well as our present associates in the 
 war. I was thinking, and am thinking now, 
 of Austria herself, among the rest, as well as 
 of Serbia and of Poland. Justice and equal- 
 ity of rights can be had only at a great price. 
 We are seeking permanent, not temporary, 
 foundations for the peace of the world, and 
 must seek them candidly and fearlessly. As 
 always, the right will prove to be the expedient. 
 What shall we do, then, to push this great 
 war of freedom and justice to its righteous con- 
 clusion ? We must clear away with a thorough 
 hand all impediments to success, and we must 
 make every adjustment of law that will facili- 
 tate the full and free use of our whole capacity 
 and force as a fighting unit. 
 
 THE WAR AGAINST AUSTRIA 
 
 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 ear- 
 nestly recommend that the Congress immedi- 
 ately declare the United States in a state of 
 war \/ith Austria-Hungary. Does it seem 
 strange to you that this should be the conclu- 
 sion of the argument I have just addressed to 
 you? It is not. It is, in fact, the inevitable 
 logic of what I have said. Austria-Hungary is 
 for the time being not her own mistress, but 
 
124 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 simply the vassal of the German Government. 
 We must face the facts as they are and act 
 upon them without sentiment in this stem 
 business. 
 
 The Government of Austria-Hungary is not 
 acting upon its own initiative or in response to 
 the wishes and feelings of its own peoples, but 
 as the instrument of another nation. We must 
 meet its force with our 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. 
 
 A STRICTER GRIP ON ENEMY ALIENS 
 
 The financial and military measures which 
 must be adopted will suggest themselves as the 
 war and its undertakings develop, but I will 
 take the Hberty 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 par- 
 ticulars the legislation of the last session with 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 125 
 
 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 offense every wilful violation of the 
 Presidential proclamations relating to enemy 
 aliens promulgated under Section 4067 of the 
 Revised Statutes and providing appropriate 
 punishment ; and women as well as men shoiild 
 be included under the terms of the acts placing 
 restraints upon ahen enemies. It is likely that 
 as time goes on many ahen 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 institutions, 
 where they could be made to work as other 
 criminals do. 
 
 A FURTHER LIMITING OF PRICES 
 
 Recent experience has convinced me that 
 the Congress must go further in authorizing 
 the Government to set limits to prices. The 
 law of supply and demand, I am sorry to say, 
 has been replaced by the law of unrestrained 
 selfishness. While we have eliminated profit- 
 eering in several branches of industry, it still 
 runs impudently rampant in others . The farm- 
 ers, for example, complain with a great deal 
 
126 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 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 
 inequities obtain on all sides. 
 
 It is imperatively necessary that the con- 
 sideration of the full use of the water power of 
 the country, and also the consideration of the 
 systematic and yet economical development of 
 such of the natural resources of the country 
 as are still under the control of the Federal 
 Government, should be resumed and affirma- 
 tively and constructively dealt with at the 
 earliest possible moment. The pressing need 
 of such legislation is daily becoming more 
 obvious. 
 
 The legislation proposed at the last session 
 with regard to regulated combinations among 
 our exporters, in order to provide for oiu* for- 
 eign trade a more effective organization and 
 method of co-operation, ought by all means to 
 be completed at this session. 
 
 And I beg that the members of the House of 
 Representatives will permit me to express the 
 opinion 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 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 127 
 
 appropriation bills through a single committee, 
 in order that responsibility may be centered, 
 expenditures standardized and made uniform, 
 and waste and duplication as much as possible 
 avoided. 
 
 Additional legislation may also become nec- 
 essary before the present Congress adjourns, in 
 order to effect the most efficient co-ordination 
 and operation of the railway and other trans- 
 portation systems of the country; but to that 
 I shall, if circumstances should demand, call 
 the attention of Congress upon another occasion. 
 
 THE WINNING OF THE WAR 
 
 If I have overlooked anything that ought to 
 be done for the more effective conduct of the 
 war, your own counsels will supply the omis- 
 sion. What I am perfectly clear about is that, 
 in the present session of the Congress, our 
 whole attention and energy should be con- 
 centrated 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 
 enthusiasm because we know that for us this is 
 a war of high principle, debased by no selfish 
 ambition of conquest or spoliation; because we 
 know, and all the world knows, that we have 
 been forced into it to save the very institutions 
 we live under from corruption and destruction. 
 The purposes of the Central Powers strike 
 
128 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 straight at the very heart of everything we be- 
 lieve in ; their methods of warfare outrage every 
 principle of humanity and of knightly honor; 
 theirintriguehascorruptedtheverythoughtand 
 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 con- 
 tempt, 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, disin- 
 terested purpose, in which all the free people 
 of the world are banded together for the vindi- 
 cation 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 settle- 
 ment must be of like motive and quality. For 
 this we can fight, but for nothing less noble or 
 less worthy of our traditions. For this cause 
 we entered the war, and for this cause we will 
 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 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 129 
 
 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. 
 
XVIII 
 
 PROCLAMATION OF WAR AGAINST AUSTRIA- 
 HUNGARY 
 
 {December 12, 1917) 
 
 The President's proclamation, after citing 
 the resolution of Congress authorizing the war 
 with Austria, says : 
 
 Now, therefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, Presi- 
 dent of the United States of America, do hereby 
 proclaim to all whom it may concern that a 
 state of war exists between the United States 
 and the Imperial and Royal Austro-Hungarian 
 Government, and I do specially direct aU offi- 
 cers, civil or military, of the United States 
 that they exercise vigilance and zeal in the 
 discharge of the duties incident to such a 
 state of war. 
 
 And I do, moreover, earnestly appeal to all 
 American citizens that they, in loyal devotion 
 to their coimtry, dedicated from its foundation 
 to the principles of Hberty and justice, uphold 
 the laws of the land and give undivided and 
 willing support to those measures which may 
 be adopted by the constitutional authorities 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 131 
 
 in prosecuting the war to a successful issue 
 and obtaining a secure and just peace. 
 
 NEED ONLY OBEY THE LAWS 
 
 And, acting under and by virtue of the au- 
 thority vested in me by the Constitution of the 
 United States, and the aforesaid sections of 
 the Revised Statutes, I do hereby further pro- 
 claim and direct that the conduct to be ob- 
 served on the part of the United States toward 
 all natives, citizens, denizens or subjects of 
 Austria-Hungary, being males of the age of 
 fourteen years and upward, who shall be within 
 the United States and not actually naturalized, 
 shall be as follows : 
 
 All natives, citizens, denizens or subjects of Austria- 
 Hungary, being males of fourteen years and upward 
 who shall be within the United States and not actually 
 naturalized, are enjoined to preserve the peace toward 
 the United States and to refrain from crime against 
 the public safety and from violating the laws of the 
 United States and of the States and Territories thereof. 
 
 And to refrain from actual hostility or giving infor- 
 mation, aid or comfort to the enemies of the United 
 States. 
 
 And to comply strictly with the regulations which 
 are hereby or which may be, from time to time, promul- 
 gated by the President. 
 
 And so long as they shall conduct themselves in 
 accordance with law, they shall be undisturbed in the 
 peaceful pursuit of their lives and occupations and be 
 accorded the consideration due to all peaceful and law- 
 abiding persons, except so far as restrictions may be 
 
132 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 necessary for their own protection and for the safety 
 of the United States. 
 
 A FRIENDLY ATTITUDE IS URGED 
 
 And toward such of said persons 'as con- 
 duct themselves in accordance with law, all 
 citizens of the United States are enjoined to 
 preserve the peace and to treat them with all 
 such friendliness as may be compatible with 
 loyalty and allegiance to the United States. 
 
 And all natives, citizens, denizens or sub- 
 jects of Austria-Hungary, being males of the 
 age of fourteen years and upward, who shall 
 be within the United States and not actually 
 naturalized, who fail to conduct themselves as 
 so enjoined, in addition to all other penalties 
 prescribed by law, shall be liable to restraint 
 or to give security, or to remove and depart 
 from the United States in the manner pre- 
 scribed by Sections 4069 and 4070 of the Re- 
 vised Statutes and as prescribed in regulations 
 duly promulgated by the President : 
 
 FEW REGULATIONS 
 
 And pursuant to the authority vested in 
 me, I hereby declare and establish the follow- 
 ing regulations, which I find necessary in the 
 premises, and for the public safety: 
 
 I. No native, citizen, denizen or subject of Austria- 
 Hungary, being a male of the age of fourteen years and 
 upward and not actually naturalized, shall depart from 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 133 
 
 the United Sta±es until he shall have received such per- 
 mit as the President shall prescribe, or except under order 
 of a court, judge or justice, under Sections 4069 and 4070 
 of the Revised Statutes. 
 
 2. No such person shall land or enter the United 
 States except under such restrictions and at such places 
 as the President may prescribe. 
 
 3. Every such person, of whom there may be reason- 
 able cause to believe that he is aiding or about to aid the 
 enemy, or who may be at large to the danger of the public 
 peace or safety, or who violates or attempts to violate, 
 or of whom there is reasonable ground to believe that he 
 is about to violate any regulation duly promulgated by 
 the President, or any criminal law of the United States, 
 or of the States or Territories thereof, will be subject to 
 summary arrest by the United States Marshal or his 
 deputy, or such other officers as the President shall desig- 
 nate, and to confinement in such penitentiary, prison, 
 jail, military camp or other place of detention as may 
 be directed by the President. 
 
 This proclamation and the regulations 
 herein contained shall extend and apply to all 
 land and water, continental or insular, in any 
 way within the jurisdiction of the United 
 States. 
 
XIX 
 
 THE GOVERNMENT TAKES OVER THE 
 RAILROADS 
 
 (A Statement by the President, December 26, igi7) 
 
 I have exercised the powers over the trans- 
 portation systems of the country which were 
 granted me by the Act of Congress of Au- 
 gust, 1 91 6, because it has become imperatively 
 necessary for me to do so. 
 
 This is a war of resources no less than of 
 men, perhaps even more than of men, and it 
 is necessary for the complete mobilization of 
 our resources that the transportation systems 
 of the country should be organized and em- 
 ployed under a single authority and a simpli- 
 fied method of co-ordination which have not 
 proved possible under private management 
 and control. 
 
 The committee of railway executives who 
 have been co-operating with the Government 
 in this all-important matter have done the ut- 
 most that it was possible for them to do; have 
 done it with patriotic zeal and with great abil- 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 135 
 
 ity ; but there were differences that they could 
 neither escape nor neutralize. 
 
 IN FAIRNESS TO THE RAILROADS 
 
 Complete unity of administration in the 
 present circumstances involves upon occasion 
 and at many points a serious dislocation of 
 earnings, and the committee was, of course, 
 without power or authority to rearrange changes 
 or effect proper compensations and adjustments 
 of earnings. Several roads which were will- 
 ingly and with admirable public spirit accept- 
 ing the orders of the committee have already 
 suffered from these circumstances and should 
 not be required to suffer further. In mere 
 fairness to them the full authority of the 
 Government must be substituted. 
 
 The Government itself will thereby gain 
 an immense increase of efficiency in the 
 conduct of the war and of the innumerable 
 activities upon which its successful conduct 
 depends. 
 
 The public interest must be first served, and 
 in addition the financial interests of the Gov- 
 ernment and the financial interests of the rail- 
 ways must be brought under a common direc- 
 tion. The financial operations of the railways 
 need not then interfere with the borrowings of 
 the Government, and they themselves can be 
 
 conducted at a great advantage. 
 10 
 
136 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 INVESTORS TO BE PROTECTED 
 
 Investors in railway securities may rest as- 
 sured that their rights and interests will be as 
 scrupulously looked after by the Government 
 as they could be by the directors of the 
 several railway systems. Immediately upon 
 the reassembling of Congress I shall recom- 
 mend that these definite guarantees be given: 
 
 First, of course, that the railway properties 
 will be maintained during the period of Fed- 
 eral control in as good repair and as complete 
 equipment as when taken over by the Gov- 
 ernment, and, second, that the roads shall re- 
 ceive a net operating income equal in each case 
 to the average net income of the three years 
 preceding June 30, 191 7; and I am entirely 
 confident that the Congress will be disposed 
 in this case, as in others, to see that justice 
 is done and full security assured to the own- 
 ers and creditors of the great systems which 
 the Government must now use under its own 
 direction or else suffer serious embarrassment. 
 
 The Secretary of War and I are agreed that, 
 all the circumstances being taken into consid- 
 eration, the best results can be obtained under 
 the immediate executive direction of the Hon. 
 William G. McAdoo, whose practical experi- 
 ence peculiarly fits him for the service, and 
 whose authority as Secretary of the Treasury 
 will enable him to co-ordinate, as no other man 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 137 
 
 could, the many financial interests which will 
 be involved and which might, unless systemat- 
 ically directed, suffer very embarrassing en- 
 tanglements. 
 
 A RECOGNITION OP FACTS 
 
 The Government of the United States is the 
 only great Government now engaged in the 
 war which has not already assumed control of 
 this sort. It was thought to be in the spirit 
 of American institutions to attempt to do 
 everything that was necessary through private 
 management, and if zeal and ability and patri- 
 otic motive could have accomplished the nec- 
 essary unification of administration, it would 
 certainly have been accomplished; but no zeal 
 or abiHty could overcome insuperable obstacles 
 and I have deemed it my duty to recognize 
 that fact in all candor, now that it is demon- 
 strated, and to use without reserve the great 
 authority reposed in me. 
 
 A great national necessity dictated the ac- 
 tion, and I was therefore not at liberty to 
 abstain from it. 
 
 WooDROw Wilson. 
 
 The text of the proclamation follows : 
 
 Whereas, the Congress of the United States, in the ex- 
 ercise of the constitutional authority vested in them, by 
 joint resolution of the Senate and House of Representa- 
 tives, bearing date April 6, 191 7, resolved: 
 
138 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 **That the state of war between the United States and 
 the Imperial German Government which has thus been 
 thrust upon the United States is hereby formally de- 
 clared, and that the President be, and he is hereby, 
 authorized and directed to employ the entire naval 
 and miUtary forces of the United States and the re- 
 sources of the Government to carry on war against 
 the Imperial German Government, and to bring the 
 conflict to a successful termination, all of the re- 
 sources of the country are hereby pledged by the 
 Congress of the United States." 
 
 And by joint resolution bearing date of December 
 
 7, 191 7, resolved: 
 
 **That a state of war is hereby declared to exist between 
 the United States of America and the Imperial and 
 Royal Austro-Hungarian Government, and that the 
 President be, and he is hereby, authorized and di- 
 rected to employ the entire naval and military forces 
 of the United States and the resources of the Govern- 
 ment to carry on war against the Imperial and Royal 
 Austro-Hungarian Government, and to bring the 
 conflict to a successful termination, all the resources 
 of the country are hereby pledged by the Congress of 
 the United States." 
 
 And whereas, it is provided by Section i of the act 
 approved August 29, 1916, entitled "An act making 
 appropriations for the support of the army for the fiscal 
 year ending June 30, 191 7, and for other purposes," as 
 follows: 
 
 **The President, in time of war, is empowered, through 
 the Secretary of War, to take possession and assume 
 control of any system or systems of transportation, 
 or any part thereof, and to utilize the same, to the 
 exclusion as far as may be necessary of all other 
 traffic thereon, for the transfer or transportation of 
 troops, war material and equipment, or for such other 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 139 
 
 purposes connected with the emergency as may be 
 needful or desirable." 
 
 And whereas, it has now become necessary in the 
 national defense to take possession and assume control of 
 certain systems of transportation and to utilize the same, 
 to the exclusion as far as may be necessary of other than 
 war traffic thereon for the transportation of troops, war 
 material and equipment therefor, and for other needful 
 and desirable purposes connected with the prosecution 
 of the war. 
 
 Now, therefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, President of the 
 United States, under and by virtue of the powers vested 
 in me by the foregoing resolutions and statute, and by 
 virtue of all other powers thereto me enabling, do hereby, 
 through Newton D. Baker, Secretary of War, take pos- 
 session and assume control at 12 o'clock noon on the 
 twenty-eighth day of December, 191 7, of each and every 
 system of transportation and the appurtenances thereof 
 located wholly or in part within the boundaries of the 
 continental United States and consisting of railroads, and 
 owned or controlled systems of coastwise and inland 
 transportation, engaged in general transportation, 
 whether operated by steam or by electric power, including 
 also terminals, terminal companies and terminal associa- 
 tions, sleeping and parlor cars, private cars and private 
 car Hnes, elevators, warehouses, telegraph and telephone 
 lines and all other equipment and appurtenances com- 
 monly used upon or operated as a part of such rail or 
 combined rail and water systems of transportation, to 
 the end that such systems of transportation be utiHzed 
 for the transfer and transportation of troops, war ma- 
 terial and equipment to the exclusion so far as may be 
 necessary of all other traffic thereon, and that so far as 
 such exclusive use be not necessary or desirable, such 
 systems of transportation be operated and utilized in the 
 performance of such other services as the national interest 
 
140 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 may require and of the usual and ordinary business and 
 duties of common carriers. 
 
 It is hereby directed that the possession, control, op- 
 eration and utilization of such transportation systems 
 hereby by me undertaken shall be exercised by and 
 through William G. McAdoo, who is hereby appointed 
 and designated Director-General of Railroads. 
 
 Said director may perform the duties imposed upon 
 him, so long and to such extent as he shall determine, 
 through the boards of directors, receivers, officers and 
 employees of said systems of transportation. Until and 
 except so far as said director shall from time to time by 
 general or special orders otherwise provide, the boards 
 of directors, receivers, officers and employees of the vari- 
 ous transportation systems shall continue the operation 
 thereof in the usual and ordinary course of the business 
 of common carriers, in the names of their respective 
 companies. 
 
 Until and except so far as said director shall from 
 time to time otherwise by general or special orders deter- 
 mine, such systems of transportation shall remain subject 
 to all existing statutes and orders of the Interstate Com- 
 merce Commission, and to all statutes and orders of regu- 
 lating commissions of the various States in which said 
 systems or any part thereof may be situated. But any 
 orders, general or special, hereafter made by said director 
 shall have paramount authority and be obeyed as such. 
 
 Nothing herein shall be construed as now affecting 
 the possession, operation and control of street electric 
 passenger railways, including railways commonly called 
 interurban, whether such railways be or be not owned or 
 controlled by such railroad companies or systems. By 
 subsequent order and proclamation, if and when it shall 
 be found necessary or desirable, possession, control or 
 operation may be taken of all or any part of such street 
 railway systems, including subways and tunnels, and by 
 subsequent order and proclamation possession, control 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 141 
 
 and operation in whole or in part may also be relinquished 
 to the owners thereof of any part of the railroad systems 
 or rail and water systems, possession and control of which 
 are hereby assumed. 
 
 The director shall as soon as may be after having 
 assimied such possession and control enter upon nego- 
 tiations with the several companies looking to agree- 
 ments for just and reasonable compensation for the 
 possession, use and control of the respective properties 
 on the basis of an annual guaranteed compensation, 
 above accruing depreciation and the maintenance of 
 their properties, equivalent, as nearly as may be, to the 
 average of the net operating income thereof for the three 
 year period ending Jime 30, 1917 — ^the results of such 
 negotiations to be reported to me for such action as may 
 be appropriate and lawful. 
 
 But nothing herein contained, expressed or implied, 
 or hereafter done or suffered hereimder, shall be deemed 
 in any way to impair the rights of the stockholders, 
 bondholders, creditors and other persons having inter- 
 ests in said systems of transportation or in the profits 
 thereof, to receive just and adequate compensation for 
 the use and control and operation of their property 
 hereby assimied. 
 
 Regular dividends hitherto declared, and maturing 
 interest upon bonds, debentures and other obligations, 
 may be paid in due course, and such regular dividends 
 and interest may continue to be paid until and unless 
 the said director shall from time to time otherwise by 
 general or special orders determine, and, subject to the 
 approval of the director, the various carriers may agree 
 upon and arrange for the renewal and extension of 
 maturing obligations. 
 
 Except with the prior written assent of said director, 
 no attachment by n:esne process or on execution shall 
 be levied on or against any of the property used by any 
 of saidtransportation systems, in the conduct of their 
 
142 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 business as common carriers; but suits may be brought 
 by and against said carriers and judgments rendered as 
 hitherto until and except so far as said director may, by 
 general or special orders, otherwise determine. 
 
 From and after 12 o'clock on said twenty-eighth day of 
 December, 191 7, all transportation systems included in 
 this order and proclamation shall conclusively be deemed 
 within the possession and control of said director without 
 further act or notice, but for the purpose of accounting 
 said possession and control shall date from 12 o'clock 
 midnight on December 31, 191 7. 
 
 In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and 
 caused the seal of the United States to be affixed. 
 
 Done by the President, through Newton D. Baker, 
 Secretary of War, in the District of Columbia, this 
 twenty -sixth day of December, in the year of our Lord 
 one thousand nine hundred and seventeen, and of Inde- 
 pendence of the United States the one hundred and 
 forty-second. 
 
 WooDRow Wilson. 
 
 Newton D. Baker, Secretary of War. 
 By the President : 
 Robert Lansing, Secretary of State. 
 
XX 
 
 GOVERNMENT OPERATION OF RAILROADS 
 {Address to the Congress, January 4, igi8) 
 
 Gentlemen of the Congress, — I have 
 asked the privilege of addressing you in order 
 to report that on the 28th of December last, 
 during the recess of Congress, acting through 
 the Secretary of War, and under the authority 
 conferred upon me by the Act of Congress ap- 
 proved August 29, 19 16, I took possession and 
 assumed control of the railway lines of the 
 coimtry and the systems of water transporta- 
 tion under their control. This step seemed to 
 be imperatively necessary in the interest of the 
 public welfare, in the presence of the great 
 tasks of war with which we are now dealing. 
 As our experience develops difficulties and 
 makes it clear what they are, I have deemed 
 it my duty to remove those difficulties wher- 
 ever I have the legal power to do so. 
 
 To assume control of the vast railway sys- 
 tems of the country is, I realize, a very great re- 
 sponsibility, but to fail to do so in the existing 
 circumstances would have been much greater. 
 
144 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 I assumed the less responsibility rather than 
 the weightier. 
 
 NEED OF UNITED DIRECTION 
 
 I am sure that I am speaking the mind of 
 all thoughtful Americans when I say that it is 
 our duty as the representatives of the nation 
 to do everything that it is necessary to do to 
 secure the complete mobilization of the whole 
 resources of America by as rapid and effective 
 a means as can be found. Transportation 
 supplies all the arteries of mobilization. Un- 
 less it be under a single and unified direction, 
 the whole process of the nation's action is 
 embarrassed. 
 
 It was in the true spirit of America, and it 
 was right, that we should first try to effect the 
 necessary unification under the voluntary ac- 
 tion of those who were in charge of the great 
 railway properties, and we did try it. The 
 directors of the railways responded to the need 
 promptly and generously. The group of rail- 
 way executives who were charged with the 
 task of actual co-ordination and general direc- 
 tion performed their difficult duties with patri- 
 otic zeal and marked ability, as was to have 
 been expected, and did, I believe, everything 
 that it was possible for them to do in the cir- 
 cumstances. If I have taken the task out of 
 their hands, it has not been because of any 
 dereHction or failure on their part, but only 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 145 
 
 because there were some things which the 
 Government can do, and private management 
 cannot. We shall continue to value most 
 highly the advice and assistance of these 
 gentlemen, and I am sure we shall not find 
 them withholding it. 
 
 It had become unmistakably plain that only 
 under Government administration can the en- 
 tire equipment of the several systems of trans- 
 portation be fully and unreservedly thrown 
 into a common service without injiuious dis- 
 crimination against particular properties ; only 
 under Government administration can abso- 
 lutely unrestricted and unembarrassed com- 
 mon use be made of all tracks, terminal facili- 
 ties and equipment of every kind. Only tmder 
 that authority can new terminals be con- 
 structed and developed without regard to the 
 requirements or limitations of particular roads. 
 But under Government administration aU these 
 things will be possible — not instantly, but as 
 fast as practical difficulties, which cannot be 
 merely conjured away, give way before the 
 new management. 
 
 AS LITTLE DISTURBANCE AS POSSIBLE 
 
 The common administration will be carried 
 out with as little disturbance of the present 
 operating organizations and personnel of the 
 railways as possible. Nothing will be altered 
 or disturbed which is not necessary to disturb. 
 
146 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 We are serving the public interest and safe- 
 guarding the public safety, but we are also 
 regardful of the interest of those by whom 
 these great properties are owned and glad to 
 avail ourselves of the experience and trained 
 ability of those who have been managing them. 
 It is necessary that the transportation of troops 
 and of war materials, of food and of fuel, and 
 of everything that is necessary for the full mo- 
 bilization of the energies and resources of the 
 country, should be first considered; but it is 
 clearly in the public interest also that the or- 
 dinary activities and the normal industrial and 
 commercial life of the country should be inter- 
 fered with and dislocated as little as possible, 
 and the public may rest assured that the inter- 
 est and convenience of the private shipper will 
 be carefully served and safeguarded as it is 
 possible to serve and safeguard it in the present 
 extraordinary circumstances. 
 
 COMPENSATION SHOULD BE GUARANTEED 
 
 While the present authority of the Execu- 
 tive suffices for all purposes of administration, 
 and while, of course, all private interests must 
 for the present give way to the public neces- 
 sity, it is, I am sure you will agree with me, 
 right and necessary that the owners and credi- 
 tors of the railways, the holders of their stocks 
 and bonds, should receive from the Govern- 
 ment an unqualified guarantee that their prop- 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 147 
 
 erties will be maintained throughout the period 
 of Federal control in as good repair and as com- 
 plete equipment as at present, and that the 
 several roads will receive, under Federal man- 
 agement, such compensation as is equitable 
 and just alike to their owners and to the gen- 
 eral public. I would suggest the average net 
 railway operating income of the three years 
 ending June 30, 191 7. I earnestly recommend 
 that these guarantees be given by appropriate 
 legislation, and given as promptly as circum- 
 stances permit. 
 
 I need not point out the essential justice of 
 such guarantees and their great influence and 
 significance as elements in the present finan- 
 cial and industrial situation of the country. 
 Indeed, one of the strong arguments for as- 
 suming control of the railroads at this time is 
 the financial argument. It is necessary that 
 the values of railway securities should be justly 
 and fairly protected, and that the largest finan- 
 cial operations every year necessary in connec- 
 tion with the maintenance, operation and de- 
 velopment of the roads should, during the 
 period of the war, be wisely related to the 
 financial operations of the Government. 
 
 Our first duty is, of course, to conserve the 
 common interest and the common safety, and 
 to make certain that nothing stands in the way 
 of the successful prosecution of the great war 
 for liberty and justice; but it is an obligation 
 
148 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 of public conscience and of public honor that 
 the private interests we disturb should be kept 
 safe from unjust injury, and it is of the utmost 
 consequence to the Government itself that all 
 great financial operations should be stabilized 
 and co-ordinated with the financial operations 
 of the Government. No borrowing should run 
 athwart the borrowings of the Federal Treas- 
 ury, and no fundamental industrial values 
 should anywhere be unnecessarily impaired. 
 In the hands of many thousands of small in- 
 vestors in the country, as well as in national 
 banks, in insurance companies, in savings 
 banks, in trust companies, in financial agen- 
 cies of every kind, railway securities — the sum 
 total of which runs up to some ten or eleven 
 thousand millions, constitute a vital part of the 
 structure of credit, and the unquestioned 
 solidity of that structure must be maintained. 
 
 SELECTION OF MCADOO AS DIRECTOR 
 
 The Secretary of War and I easily agreed 
 that, in view of the many complex interests 
 which must be safeguarded and harmonized, 
 as well as because of his exceptional experience 
 and ability in this new field of governmental 
 action, the Hon. William G. McAdoo was the 
 right man to assume direct administrative con- 
 trol of this new executive task. At our re- 
 quest, he consented to assume the authority 
 and duties of organizer and director-general of 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 149 
 
 the new railway administration. He has as- 
 sumed those duties, and his work is in active 
 progress. 
 
 It is probably too much to expect that, even 
 under the unified railway administration which 
 will now be possible, sufficient economies can 
 be effected in the operation of the railways to 
 make it possible to add to their equipment 
 and extend their operative facilities as much 
 as the present extraordinary demands upon 
 their use will render desirable, without resort- 
 ing to the national Treasury for the funds. If 
 it is not possible, it will, of course, be necessary 
 to resort to the Congress for grants of money 
 for that purpose. The Secretary of the Treas- 
 lu-y will advise with your committees with re- 
 gard to this very practical aspect of the matter. 
 For the present, I suggest only the guarantees 
 I have indicated and such appropriations as 
 are necessary at the outset of this task. 
 
 I take the liberty of expressing the hope that 
 the Congress may grant these promptly and 
 tmgrudgingly. We are dealing with great 
 matters, and will, I am sure, deal with them 
 greatly. 
 
XXI 
 
 THE TERMS OF PEACE 
 {January 8, igi8) 
 
 In an address to both Houses of Congress, 
 assembled in joint session, President Wilson 
 enunciated the war and peace program of the 
 United States in fourteen definite proposals. 
 The President spoke as follows : 
 
 Gentlemen of the Congress, — Once 
 more, as repeatedly before, the spokesmen of 
 the Central Empires have indicated their de- 
 sires to discuss the objects of the war and the 
 possible basis of a general peace. Parleys have 
 been in progress at Brest-Litovsk between Rus- 
 sian representatives and representatives of the 
 Central Powers to which the attention of all 
 the belligerents has been invited for the pur- 
 pose of ascertaining whether it may be possible 
 to extend these parleys into a general confer- 
 ence with regard to terms of peace and 
 settlement. 
 
 The Russian representatives presented not 
 only a perfectly definite statement of the prin- 
 ciples upon which they would be willing to 
 conclude peace, but also an equally definite 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 151 
 
 program of the concrete application of those 
 principles. The representatives of the Central 
 Powers, on their part, presented an outline of 
 settlement which, if much less definite, seemed 
 susceptible of liberal interpretation until their 
 specific program of practical terms was added. 
 That program proposed no concessions at all, 
 either to the sovereignty of Russia or to the 
 preferences of the population with whose fort- 
 unes it dealt, but meant, in a word, that the 
 Central Empires were to keep every foot of 
 territory their armed forces had occupied — 
 every province, every city, every point of van- 
 tage — as a permanent addition to their terri- 
 tories and their power. It is a reasonable 
 conjecture that the general principles of settle- 
 ment which they at first suggested originated 
 with the more liberal statesmen of Germany 
 and Austria, the men who have begun to feel 
 the force of their own people's thought and 
 purpose, while the concrete terms of actual 
 settlement came from the military leaders who 
 have no thought but to keep what they have 
 got. The negotiations have been broken off. 
 The Russian representatives were sincere and 
 in earnest. They cannot entertain such pro- 
 posals of conquest and domination. 
 
 SIGNIFICANCE IN PARLEYS 
 
 The whole incident is full of significance. 
 It is also full of perplexity. With whom are 
 
152 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 the Russian representatives 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 im- 
 perialistic 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 modern democracy, that the conferences 
 they have been holding with the Teutonic and 
 Turkish statesmen should be held within open, 
 not closed, doors, and all the world has been 
 audience, as was desired. 
 
 To whom have we been listening, then? 
 To those who speak the spirit and intention of 
 the resolution of the German Reichstag of the 
 gth 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 in- 
 tention and insist upon conquest and subjuga- 
 tion? Or are we listening, in fact, to both, 
 unreconciled and in open and hopeless contra- 
 diction? 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 
 coimsel and of purpose in the utterances of the 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 153 
 
 spokesmen of the Central Empires, they have 
 again attempted to acquaint the world with 
 their objects in the war and have again chal- 
 lenged their adversaries to say what their ob- 
 jects 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. 
 
 LLOYD GE0RGE*S AIMS APPROVED 
 
 Within the last week Mr. Lloyd George 
 has spoken with admirable candor and in ad- 
 mirable spirit for the people and Government 
 of Great Britain. There is no confusion of 
 counsel among the adversaries of the Central 
 Powers, no uncertainty of principle, no vague- 
 ness of detail. The only secrecy of counsel, 
 the only lack of fearless frankness, the only 
 failure to make definite statement of the ob- 
 jects of the war lies with Germany and her 
 allies. The issues of life and death hang upon 
 these definitions. No statesman who has the 
 least conception of his responsibility ought for 
 a moment to permit himself to continue this 
 
154 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 tragical and appalling outpouring of blood and 
 treasure unless he is sure beyond a peradvent- 
 ure that the objects of the vital sacrifice are 
 part and parcel of the very life of society, and 
 that the people for whom he speaks think them 
 right and imperative, as he does. 
 
 There is, moreover, a voice calling for these 
 definitions of principle and of purpose which is, 
 it seems to me, more thrilling and more com- 
 pelling 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 
 3rield either in principle or in action. Their con- 
 ception of what is right, of what it is humane 
 and honorable for them to accept, has been 
 stated with a frankness, a largeness of view, a 
 generosity of spirit and a universal human 
 sympathy which must challenge the admira- 
 tion of every friend of mankind ; and they have 
 refused to compound their ideals or desert 
 others that they themselves may be safe. 
 
 WOULD LIKE TO AID RUSSIA 
 
 They call to us to say what it is that we 
 desire — ^in what, if in anything, our purpose 
 and our spirit differ from theirs ; and I believe 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 155 
 
 that the people of the United States would 
 wish me to respond with utter simplicity and 
 frankness. Whether their present leaders be- 
 lieve 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 understand- 
 ings of any kind. The day of conquest and 
 aggrandizement is gone by; so is also the day 
 of secret covenants entered into in the interest 
 of particular governments and likely, at some 
 unlooked-for moment, to upset the peace of 
 the world. It is this happy fact, now clear 
 to the view of every public man whose 
 thoughts do not still linger in an age that 
 is dead and gone, which makes it possible 
 for every nation whose ptuposes are consist- 
 ent with justice and the peace of the world 
 to avow now, or at any other time, the objects 
 it has in view. 
 
 We entered this war because violations of 
 right had occurred which touched us to the 
 quick and made the life of our own people 
 impossible unless they were corrected and the 
 world secured once for aU against their recur- 
 rence. What we demand in this war, there- 
 
iS6 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 fore, is nothing peculiar to ourselves. It is 
 that the world be made fit and safe to live in ; 
 and particularly that it be made safe for every 
 peace-loving nation which, like our own, wishes 
 to live its own Hfe, determine its own institu- 
 tions, 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 DEFINITE PROGRAM 
 
 The program of the world's peace, there- 
 fore, is our program, and that program, the 
 only possible program, as we see it, is this: 
 
 I. Open covenants of peace, openly jar- 
 rived at, after which there shall be no private 
 international understandings of any kind, but 
 diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in 
 the pubHc view. 
 
 II. Absolute freedom of navigation upon 
 the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in 
 peace and in war, except as the seas may be 
 closed in whole or in part by international 
 action for the enforcement of international 
 covenants. 
 
 III. The removal, so far as possible, of 
 all economic barriers and the establishment of 
 an equality of trade conditions among all the 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 157 
 
 nations consenting to the peace and associating 
 themselves for its maintenance. 
 
 IV. Adequate guarantees given and taken 
 that national 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 sov- 
 ereignty the interests of the populations con- 
 cerned must have equal weight with the equi- 
 table claims of the Government whose title is 
 to be determined. 
 
 VI. The evacuation of all Russian terri- 
 tory and such a settlement of all questions 
 affecting Russia as will secure the best and 
 freest co-operation of the other nations of the 
 world in obtaining for her an unhampered and 
 unembarrassed opportunity for the indepen- 
 dent determination of her own political devel- 
 opment and national policy and assure her of 
 a sincere welcome into the society of free na- 
 tions under institutions of her own choosing; 
 and, more than a welcome, assistance also of 
 every kind that she may need and may herself 
 desire. The treatment accorded Russia by her 
 sister nations will be the acid test of their good 
 will, of their comprehension of her needs as 
 distinguished from their own interests and of 
 their intelligent and unselfish sympathy. 
 
158 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 BELGIUM MUST BE RESTORED 
 
 VII. Belgium, the whole world will agree, 
 must be evacuated and restored, without any 
 attempt to limit the sovereignty which she en- 
 joys 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 de- 
 termined for the government of their relations 
 with one another. Without this healing act 
 the whole structure and validity of interna- 
 tional 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 187 1 in 
 the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which has un- 
 settled the peace of the world for nearly fifty 
 years, should be righted, in order that peace 
 may once more be made secure in the interest 
 of aU. 
 
 IX. A readjustment of the frontiers of 
 Italy should be effected along clearly recogniz- 
 able lines of nationality. 
 
 X. The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose 
 place among the nations we wish to see safe- 
 guarded and assured, should be accorded the 
 freest opportunity of autonomous development. 
 
 XL Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro 
 should be evacuated; occupied territories re- 
 stored; Serbia accorded free and secure access 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 159 
 
 to the sea; and the relations of the several 
 Balkan states to one another determined by 
 friendly counsel along historically established 
 Hnes of allegiance and nationality; and interna- 
 tional guarantees 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 devel- 
 opment, and the Dardanelles should be per- 
 manently opened as a free passage to the ships 
 and commerce of all nations under international 
 guarantees. 
 
 INDEPENDENCE FOR POLAND 
 
 XIII. An independent Polish state should 
 be erected which should include the territories 
 inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, 
 which should be assured a freehand secure access 
 to the sea, and whose political and economic 
 independence and territorial 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 guarantees of 
 political independence and territorial integrity 
 to great and small states aHke. 
 
i6o IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 In regard to these essential rectifica- 
 tions of wrong and assertions of right, we 
 feel otirselves to be intimate 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 envi- 
 able. 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 cove- 
 nants of justice and law and fair dealing. We 
 wish her only to accept a place of equality 
 among the peoples of the world — the new world 
 in which we now live — ^instead of a place of 
 mastery. 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR i6i 
 
 Germany's spokesmen an issue 
 
 Neither do we presume to suggest to her 
 any alteration or modification of her institu- 
 tions. But it is necessary, we must frankly 
 say, and necessary as a preliminary to any in- 
 telligent dealings with her on our part, that we 
 should know whom her spokesmen speak for 
 when they speak to us, whether for the Reichs- 
 tag 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 ques- 
 tion. An evident principle runs through the 
 whole program I have outlined. It is the prin- 
 ciple of justice to all peoples and nationalities 
 and their right to live on equal terms of liberty 
 and safety with one another, whether they be 
 strong or weak. Unless this principle be made 
 its foundation, no part of the structure of in- 
 ternational justice can stand. The people of 
 the United States could act upon no other 
 principle, and to the vindication of this prin- 
 ciple they are ready to devote their lives, their 
 honor and everything that they possess. The 
 moral climax of this, the culminating and final 
 war for human liberty, has come, and they are 
 ready to put their own strength, their own 
 highest purpose, their own integrity and de- 
 votion to the test. 
 
XXII 
 
 FOUR BASIC PEACE PRINCIPLES 
 {Address to the Congress, February ii, 1918) 
 
 Gentlemen of the Congress, — On the 
 8th of January I had the honor of addressing 
 you on the objects of the war as our people 
 conceive them. The Prime Minister of Great 
 Britain had spoken in similar terms on the ist 
 of January. To these addresses the German 
 Chancellor replied on the 24th, and Count 
 Czernin for Austria on the same day. It is 
 gratifying to have our desire so promptly 
 realized that all exchanges of views on this 
 great matter should be made in the hearing 
 of all the world. 
 
 Count Czernin's reply, which is directed 
 chiefly to my own address on the 8th of Janu- 
 ary, is uttered in a very friendly tone. 
 
 He finds in my statement a sufficiently en- 
 couraging approach to the views of his own 
 Government to justify him in believing that it 
 furnishes a basis for a more detailed discussion 
 of purposes by the two Governments. 
 
 He is represented to have intimated that the 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 163 
 
 views he was expressing had been communi- 
 cated to me beforehand and that I was aware 
 of them at the time he was uttering them, but 
 in this I am sure he was misunderstood. I 
 had received no intimation of what he in- 
 tended to say. There was, of course, no 
 reason why he should communicate privately 
 with me. I am quite content to be one of the 
 public audience. 
 
 HERTLING VAGUE AND CONFUSING 
 
 Count von Hertling^s reply is, I must say, 
 very vague and very confusing. It is full of 
 equivocal phrases and leads it is not clear 
 where. But it is certainly in a very different 
 tone from that of Count Czemin, and appar- 
 ently of an opposite purpose. 
 
 It confirms, I am sorry to say, rather than 
 removes, the unfortunate impression made by 
 what we had learned of the conference of 
 Brest-Litovsk. His discussion and acceptance 
 of our general principles lead him to no prac- 
 tical conclusions. 
 
 He refuses to apply them to the substantive 
 items which must constitute the body of any 
 final settlement. He is jealous of interna- 
 tional action and of international counsel. 
 
 He accepts, he says, the principle of public 
 diplomacy, but he appears to insist that it be 
 confined, at any rate in this case, to general- 
 ities and that the several particular questions 
 
i64 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 of territory and sovereignty, the several ques- 
 tions upon whose settlement must depend 
 the acceptance of peace by the twenty-three 
 states now engaged in the war, must be dis- 
 cussed and settled, not in general council, but 
 severally by the nations most immediately 
 concerned by interest or neighborhood. 
 
 He agrees that the seas should be free, but 
 looks askance at any limitation to that freedom 
 by international action in the interest of the 
 common order. 
 
 He would without reserve be glad to see 
 economic barriers removed between nation and 
 nation, for that could in no way impede the 
 ambitions of the military party with whom he 
 seems constrained to keep on terms. Neither 
 does he raise objection to a limitation of 
 armaments. That matter will be settled of 
 itself, he thinks, by the economic conditions 
 which must follow the war. 
 
 But the German colonies, he demands, must 
 be returned without debate. 
 
 He will discuss with no one but the repre- 
 sentatives of Russia what disposition shall be 
 made of the peoples and the lands of the 
 Baltic provinces; with no one but the Govern- 
 ment of France the ** conditions " under which 
 French territory shall be evacuated ; and only 
 with Austria what shall be done with Poland. 
 
 In the determination of all questions affect- 
 ing the Balkan states he defers, as I under- 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 165 
 
 stand him, to Austria and Turkey; and with 
 regard to the agreements to be entered into 
 concerning the non-Turkish peoples of the 
 present Ottoman Empire, to the Turkish au- 
 thorities themselves. 
 
 After a settlement all around, effected in 
 this fashion, by individual barter and con- 
 cession, he would have no objection, if I 
 correctly interpret his statement, to a league 
 of nations which would undertake to hold the 
 new balance of power steady against external 
 disturbance. 
 
 GERMAN METHOD IS IMPOSSIBLE 
 
 It must be evident to every one who imder- 
 stands what this war has wrought in the 
 opinion and temper of the world that no 
 general peace, no peace worth the infinite 
 sacrifices of these years of tragical suffering, 
 can possibly be arrived at in any such fashion. 
 The method the German Chancellor proposes 
 is the method of the Congress of Vienna. We 
 cannot and will not return to that. 
 
 What is at stake now is the peace of the 
 world. What we are striving for is a new in- 
 ternational order based upon broad and uni- 
 versal principles of right and justice — no mere 
 peace of shreds and patches. 
 
 Is it possible that Count von Hertling does 
 not see that; does not grasp it; is, in fact, 
 living in his thought in a world dead and gone? 
 
i66 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 Has he utterly forgotten the Reichstag 
 resolutions of the 19th of July, or does he de- 
 liberately ignore them? They spoke of the 
 conditions of a general peace, not of national 
 aggrandizement or of arrangements between 
 state and state. 
 
 The peace of the world depends upon the 
 just settlement of each of the several problems 
 to which I adverted in my recent address to 
 the Congress. 
 
 I, of course, do not mean that the peace of 
 the world depends upon the acceptance of any 
 particular set of suggestions as to the way in 
 which those problems are to be dealt with. 
 
 I mean only that those problems each and 
 all affect the whole world; that unless they 
 are dealt with in a spirit of unselfish and un- 
 biased justice, with a view to the wishes, the 
 natural connections, the racial aspirations, the 
 security and the peace of mind of the peoples 
 involved, no permanent peace will have been 
 attained. 
 
 They cannot be discussed separately or in 
 comers. None of them constitutes a private 
 or separate interest from which the opinion of 
 the world may be shut out. Whatever af- 
 fects the peace affects mankind, and nothing 
 settled by military force, if settled wrong, is 
 settled at all. It will presently have to be 
 reopened. 
 
 Is Count von Hertling not aware that he is 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 167 
 
 speaking in the court of mankind, that all the 
 awakened nations of the world now sit in 
 judgment on what every public man, of what- 
 ever nation, may say on the issues of a con- 
 flict which has spread to every region of the 
 world? The Reichstag resolutions of July 
 themselves frankly accepted the decisions of 
 that court. 
 
 There shall be no annexations, no contribu- 
 tions, no punitive damages. Peoples are not 
 to be handed about from one sovereignty to 
 another by an international conference or an 
 understanding between rivals and antagonists. 
 National aspirations must be respected; peo- 
 ples may now be dominated and governed 
 only by their own consent. 
 
 SELF-DETERMINATION VITAL ISSUE 
 
 ** Self-determination" is not a mere phrase. 
 It is an imperative principle of action, which 
 statesmen will henceforth ignore at their peril. 
 We cannot have general peace for the asking, 
 or by the mere arrangements of a peace con- 
 ference. It cannot be pieced together out of 
 individual understandings between powerful 
 states. All the parties to this war must join 
 in the settlement of every issue anywhere in- 
 volved in it; because what we are seeking is 
 a peace that we can all unite to guarantee and 
 maintain, and every item of it must be sub- 
 mitted to the common judgment whether it be 
 
i68 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 right and fair, an act of justice, rather than a 
 bargain between sovereigns. 
 
 The United States has no desire to interfere 
 in European affairs or to act as arbiter in 
 European territorial disputes. She would dis- 
 dain to take advantage of any internal weak- 
 ness or disorder to impose her own will upon 
 another people. 
 
 She is quite ready to be shown that the 
 settlements she has suggested are not the best 
 or the most enduring. They are only her own 
 provisional sketch of principles and of the 
 way in which they should be applied. But 
 she entered this war because she was made a 
 partner, whether she wotild or not, in the suf- 
 ferings and indignities inflicted by the military 
 masters of Germany against the peace and 
 security of mankind; and the conditions of 
 peace will touch her as nearly as they will 
 touch any other nation to which is intrusted a 
 leading part in the maintenance of civilization. 
 
 She cannot see her way to peace until the 
 causes of this war are removed, its renewal 
 rendered, as nearly as may be, impossible. 
 
 This war had its roots in the disregard of the 
 rights of small nations and of nationalities 
 which lacked the union and the force to make 
 good their claim to determine their own alle- 
 giances and their own forms of political Hfe. 
 Covenants must now be entered into which 
 will render such things impossible for the 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 169 
 
 future; and those covenants must be backed 
 by the united force of all the nations that love 
 justice and are willing to maintain it at any 
 cost. 
 
 If territorial settlements and the political 
 relations of great populations which have not 
 the organized power to resist are to be de- 
 termined by the contracts of the powerful 
 Governments which consider themselves most 
 directly affected, as Count von HertHng pro- 
 poses, why may not economic questions also? 
 
 peoples' rights vital as trade 
 
 It has come about in the altered world in 
 which we now find ourselves that justice and 
 the rights of peoples affect the whole field 
 of international dealing as much as access to 
 raw materials and fair and equal conditions 
 of trade. 
 
 Count von Hertling wants the essential bases 
 of commercial and industrial life to be safe- 
 guarded by common agreement and guarantee, 
 but he cannot expect that to be conceded him 
 if the other matters to be determined by the 
 articles of peace are not handled in the same 
 way as items in the final accounting. 
 
 He cannot ask the benefit of common agree- 
 ment in the one field without according it in the 
 other. 
 
 I take it for granted that he sees that 
 separate and selfish compacts with regard 
 
I70 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 to trade and the essential materials of manu- 
 facture would afford no foundation for peace. 
 Neither, he may rest assured, will separate and 
 selfish compacts with regard to provinces and 
 peoples. 
 
 Count Czemin seems to see the funda- 
 mental elements of peace with clear eyes and 
 does not seek to obscure them. He sees that 
 an independent Poland, made up of all the 
 indisputably Polish peoples who lie contiguous 
 to one another, is a matter of European con- 
 cern and must of course be conceded; that 
 Belgium must be evacuated and restored, no 
 matter what sacrifices and concessions that 
 may involve; and that national aspirations 
 must be satisfied, even within his own empire, 
 in the common interest of Europe and man- 
 kind. 
 
 If he is silent about questions which touch 
 the interest and purpose of his allies more 
 nearly than they touch those of Austria only, 
 it must, of course, be because he feels con- 
 strained, I suppose, to defer to Germany and 
 Turkey in the circumstances. 
 
 Seeing and conceding as he does the essen- 
 tial principles involved and the necessity of 
 candidly applying them, he naturally feels 
 that Austria can respond to the purpose of 
 peace as expressed by the United States with 
 less embarrassment than could Germany. He 
 would probably have gone much further had 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 171 
 
 it not been for the embarrassments of Austria's 
 alliances and of her dependence upon Ger- 
 many. 
 
 FOUR PRINCIPLES TO BE APPLIED 
 
 After all, the test of whether it is possible 
 for either Government to go any further in this 
 comparison of views is simple and obvious. 
 The principles to be applied are these: 
 
 First — That each part of the final settlement 
 must be based upon the essential justice of 
 that particular case and upon such adjust- 
 ments as are most likely to bring a peace that 
 will be permanent. 
 
 Second — That peoples and provinces are not 
 to be bartered about from sovereignty to 
 sovereignty as if they were mere chattels and 
 pawns in a game, even the great game, now 
 forever discredited, of the balance of power; 
 but that 
 
 Third — Every territorial settlement involved 
 in this war must be made in the interest and 
 for the benefit of the populations concerned, 
 and not as part of any mere adjustment or 
 compromise of claims among rival states; 
 and 
 
 Fourth — That all well-defined national as- 
 pirations shall be accorded the utmost satis- 
 faction that can be accorded them without in- 
 troducing new or perpetuating old elements 
 of discord and antagonism that would be 
 
172 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 likely in time to break the peace of Europe and 
 consequently of the world. 
 
 A general peace erected upon such founda- 
 tions can be discussed. Until such a peace 
 can be secured we have no choice but to go on. 
 
 So far as we can judge, these principles that 
 we regard as fundamental are already every- 
 where accepted as imperative except among 
 the spokesmen of the military and annexa- 
 tionist party in Germany. If they have any- 
 where else been rejected, the objectors have 
 not been sufficiently numerous or influential to 
 make their voices audible. 
 
 The tragical circumstance is that this one 
 party in Germany is apparently willing and 
 able to send millions of men to their death to 
 prevent what all the world now sees to be just. 
 
 WILL NOT TURN BACK FROM COURSE 
 
 I would not be a true spokesman of the 
 people of the United States if I did not say 
 once more that we entered this war upon no 
 small occasion, and that we can never turn 
 back from a course chosen upon principle. 
 Our resources are in part mobilized now, and 
 we shall not pause until they are mobilized in 
 their entirety. 
 
 Our armies are rapidly going to the fighting 
 front, and will go more and more rapidly. 
 
 Our whole strength will be put into this 
 war of emancipation — emancipation from the 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 173 
 
 threat and attempted mastery of selfish groups 
 of autocratic rulers — whatever the difficulties 
 and present partial delays. 
 
 We are indomitable in our power of in- 
 dependent action and can in no circumstances 
 consent to live in a world governed by intrigue 
 and force. We believe that our own desire 
 for a new international order under which 
 reason and justice and the common interests 
 of mankind shall prevail is the desire of en- 
 lightened men everyivhere. 
 
 Without that new order the world will be 
 without peace and human life will lack toler- 
 able conditions of existence and development. 
 Having set our hand to the task of achieving 
 it, we shall not turn back. 
 
 I hope that it is not necessary for me to 
 add that no word of what I have said is in- 
 tended as a threat. That is not the temper 
 of our people. 
 
 I have spoken thus only that the whole 
 world may know the true spirit of America— 
 that men everywhere may know that our 
 passion for justice and for self-government is 
 no mere passion of words, but a passion which, 
 once set in action, must be satisfied. 
 
 The power of the United States is a menace 
 to no nation or people. It will never be used 
 in aggression or for the aggrandizement of any 
 selfish interest of our own. It springs out of 
 freedom and is for the service of freedom. 
 
XXIII 
 
 "FORCE, FORCE TO THE UTMOST" 
 
 (An Address Delivered by the President at Baltimore on the 
 Evening of April 6, 1918^ on the Opening of the Third 
 Liberty Loan Campaign) 
 
 Fellow-citizens, — This is the anniversary 
 of our acceptance of Germany's challenge to 
 fight for our right to live and be free, and for 
 the sacred rights of free men everywhere. 
 The Nation is awake. There is no need to 
 call to it. We know what the war must coct, 
 our utmost sacrifice, the lives of our fittest 
 men and, if need be, all that we possess. The 
 loan we are met to discuss is one of the least 
 parts of what we are called upon to give and to 
 do, though in itself imperative. The people 1 
 of the whole country are alive to the necessity / 
 of it, and are ready to lend to the utmost, even j 
 where it involves a sharp skimping and daily 
 sacrifice to lend^t^ofmeager earnings. They 
 will look with reprobation and contempt jupon 
 those who can and will not, upon those who 
 demand a higher rate of interest, upon those 
 who think of it as a mere commercial transac- 
 tion. I have not come, therefor.e, to urge the' 
 
 >j 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 175 
 
 loan. I have come only to give you, if I can, 
 a more vivid conception of what it is for. 
 
 THE CAUSE WE ARE FIGHTING FOR MORE 
 SHARPLY REVEALED THAN EVER 
 
 The reasons for this great war, the reason 
 why it had to come, the need to fight it 
 through, and the issues that hang upon its 
 outcome, are more clearly disclosed now than 
 ever before. It is easy to see just what this 
 particular loan means because the cause we 
 are fighting for stands more sharply revealed 
 than at any previous crisis of the momentous 
 struggle. The man who knows least can now 
 see plainly how the cause of justice stands and 
 what the imperishable thing is he is asked 
 to invest in. Men in America may be more 
 sure than they ever were before that the 
 cause is their own, and that, if it should be 
 lost, their own great nation's place and mission 
 in the world would be lost with it. 
 
 I call you to witness, my fellow-countrymen, 
 that at no stage of this terrible business have 
 I judged the purposes of Germany intem- 
 perately. I should be ashamed in the presence 
 of affairs so grave, so fraught with the destinies 
 of mankind throughout all the world, to speak 
 with truculence, to use the weak language of 
 hatred or vindictive purpose. We must judge 
 as we would be judged. I have sought to learn 
 the objects Germany has in this war from the 
 
176 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 mouths of her own spokesmen, and to deal as 
 frankly with them as I wished them to deal 
 with me. I have laid bare our own ideals, 
 our own purposes, without reserve or doubtful 
 phrase, and have asked them to say as plainly 
 what it is that they seek. 
 
 WE HAVE OURSELVES PROPOSED NO INJUSTICE, 
 NO AGGRESSION 
 
 We have ourselves proposed no injustice, 
 no aggression. We are ready, whenever the 
 final reckoning is made, to be just to the 
 German people, deal fairly with the German 
 power, as with all others. There can be no 
 difference between peoples in the final judg- 
 ment, if it is indeed to be a righteous judg- 
 ment. To propose anything but justice, even- 
 handed and dispassionate justice, to Germany 
 at any time, whatever the outcome of the 
 war, would be to renounce and dishonor our 
 own cause. For we ask nothing that we are 
 not willing to accord. 
 
 It has been with this thought that I have 
 sought to learn from those who spoke for 
 Germany whether it was justice or dominion 
 and the execution of their own will upon the 
 other nations of the world that the German 
 leaders were seeking. They have answered, 
 answered in unmistakable terms. They have 
 avowed that it was not justice but dominion 
 and the unhindered execution of their own will. 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 177 
 
 AVOWAL OF DOMINION CAME NOT FROM 
 STATESMEN BUT MILITARY RULERS 
 
 The avowal has not come from Germany's 
 statesmen. It has come from her military 
 leaders, who are her real rulers. Her states- 
 men have said that they wished peace, and 
 were ready to discuss its terms whenever their 
 opponents were willing to sit down at the 
 conference table with them. Her present 
 Chancellor has said, — in indefinite and uncer- 
 tain terms, indeed, and in phrases that often 
 seem, to deny their own meaning, but with 
 as much plainness as he thought prudent, — 
 that he believed that peace should be based 
 upon the principles which we had declared 
 would be our own in the final settlement. At 
 Brest-Litovsk her civilian delegates spoke in 
 similar terms; professed their desire to con- 
 clude a fair peace and accord to the peoples 
 with whose fortunes they were dealing the 
 right to choose their own allegiances. But 
 action accompanied and followed the profes- 
 sion. Their military masters, the men who 
 act for Germany and exhibit her purpose in 
 execution, proclaimed a very different con- 
 clusion. We cannot mistake what they have 
 done — ^in Russia, in Finland, in the Ukraine, 
 in Rumania. The real test of their justice and 
 fair play has come. From this we may judge 
 the rest. They are enjoying in Russia a cheap 
 
178 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 triumph in which no brave or gallant nation 
 can long take pride. A great people, helpless 
 by their own act, lies for the time at their 
 mercy. Their fair professions are forgotten. 
 They nowhere set up justice, but everywhere 
 impose their power and exploit everything 
 for their own use and aggrandizement; and 
 the peoples of conquered provinces are invited 
 to be free under their dominion! 
 
 MIGHT DO THE SAME AT WESTERN FRONT BUT 
 FOR ARMIES THEY CANNOT OVERCOME 
 
 Are we not justified in believing that they 
 would do the same things at their western 
 front if they were not there face to face with 
 armies whom even their countless divisions 
 cannot overcome? If, when they have felt 
 their check to be final, they should propose 
 favorable and equitable terms with regard to 
 Belgium and France and Italy, could they 
 blame us if we concluded that they did so 
 only to assure themselves of a free hand in 
 Russia and the East? 
 
 Their purpose is undoubtedly to make all 
 the Slavic peoples, all the free and ambitious 
 nations of the Baltic peninsula, all the lands 
 that Turkey has dominated and misruled, sub- 
 ject to their will and ambition and build upon 
 that dominion an empire of force upon which 
 they fancy that they can then erect an empire 
 of gain and commercial supremacy — an empire 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 179 
 
 as hostile to the Americas as to the Europe 
 which it will overawe — an empire which will 
 ultimately master Persia, India, and the 
 peoples of the Far East. In such a program 
 our ideals, the ideals of justice and humanity 
 and liberty, the principle of the free self- 
 determination of nations upon which all the 
 modem world insists, can play no part. They 
 are rejected for the ideals of power, for the 
 principle that the strong must rule the weak, 
 that trade must follow the flag, whether those 
 to whom it is taken welcome it or not, that 
 the peoples of the world are to be made subject 
 to the patronage and overlordship of those 
 who have the power to enforce it. 
 
 That program once carried out, America and 
 all who care or dare to stand with her must 
 arm and prepare themselves to contest the 
 mastery of the world, a mastery in which the 
 rights of common men, the rights of women 
 and of all who are weak, must for the time 
 being be trodden underfoot and disregarded, 
 and the old, age-long struggle for freedom 
 and right begin again at its beginning. Every- 
 thing that America has Hved for and loved and 
 grown great to vindicate and bring to a 
 glorious reaHzation will have fallen in utter 
 ruin and the gates of mercy once more piti- 
 lessly shut upon mankind. 
 
 The thing is preposterous and impossible; 
 and yet is not that what the whole course and 
 
i8o IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 
 
 action of the German armies has meant wher- 
 ever they have moved? I do not wish, even in 
 this moment of utter disillusionment, to judge 
 harshly or unrighteously. I judge only what 
 the German arms have accomplished with 
 unpitying thoroughness throughout every fair 
 region they have touched. 
 
 What, then, are we to do? For myself, I 
 am ready, ready still, ready even now, to dis- 
 cuss a fair and just and honest peace at any 
 time that it is sincerely purposed — a peace in 
 which the strong and the weak shall fare aHke. 
 But the answer, when I proposed such a peace, 
 came from the German commanders in Rus- 
 sia, and I cannot mistake the meaning of the 
 answer. 
 
 HAS ONCE MORE SAID THAT FORCE, AND FORCE 
 ALONE, SHALL REIGN 
 
 I accept the challenge. I know that you 
 accept it All the world shall know that you 
 accept it. It shall ap pear in the utter sacri- 
 fice and self-forgetfulness ^^th whi di we~sEall 
 giv£ffi3feM>we fove and all that we have, to 
 redeem thej^Hd'iHdlhake it fit for free men 
 like Ourselves to live in. This now is the 
 meaning of^ITthat we do. Let everything 
 that we say, my fellow-countrymen, every- 
 thing that we henceforth plan and accomplish, 
 ring true to this response till the majesty 
 and might of our concerted power shall fill 
 
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR i8i 
 
 the thought and utterly defeat the force of 
 those who flout and misprize what we honor 
 and hold dear. Germany has once more said 
 that force, and force alone, shall decide 
 whether justice and peace shall reign in the 
 affairs of men, whether right as America 
 conceives it or dominion as she conceives it 
 shall determine the destinies of mankind. 
 There is, therefore, but one response possible 
 from us: force, force to the utmost, force 
 without stint or limit, the righteous and 
 triumphant force which shall make right the 
 law of the world, and cast every selfish domin- 
 ion down in the dust. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 STATE DEPARTMENT'S REVISED LIST OF 
 
 NATIONS AT WAR WHICH HAVE 
 
 BROKEN RELATIONS 
 
 DECLARATIONS OF WAR 
 
 The country declaring war is named first. 
 Austria — Belgium, Aug. 28, 1914. 
 Austria — ^Japan, Aug. 27, 19 14. 
 Austria — Montenegro, Aug. 9, 1914. 
 Austria — Russia, Aug. 6, 19 14. 
 Austria — Serbia, July 28, 19 14. 
 Brazil — Qermany, Oct. 26, 1917. 
 Bulgaria — Serbia, Oct. 14, 1915. 
 China — ^Austria, Aug. 14, 191 7. 
 China — Germany, Aug. 14, 1917. 
 Cuba — Germany, April 7, 191 7. 
 France — ^Austria, Aug. 13, 19 14. 
 France — Bulgaria, Oct. 16, 1915. 
 France — Germany, Aug. 3, 19 14. 
 France — ^Turkey, Nov. 5, 1914. 
 Germany — Belgiiun, Aug. 4, 1914. 
 Germany — France, Aug. 3, 1914. 
 Germany — ^Portugal, March 9, 1916. 
 Germany — ^Rumania, Sept. 14, 1916. 
 Germany — Russia, Aug. i, 1914. 
 Great Britain — ^Austria, Aug. 13, 1914. 
 
APPENDIX 183 
 
 Great Britain — Bulgaria, Oct. 15, 1915. 
 
 Great Britain — Germany, Aug. 4, 1914. 
 
 Great Britain — Turkey, Nov. 5, 1914. 
 
 Greece — Bulgaria, Nov. 28, 1916. (Provisional Govern- 
 ment.) 
 
 Greece — Bulgaria, July 2, 191 7. (Government of Alex- 
 ander.) 
 
 Greece — Germany, Nov. 28, 1916. (Provisional Gov- 
 ernment.) 
 
 Greece — Germany, July 2, 191 7. (Government of Alex- 
 ander.) 
 
 Italy — ^Austria, May 24, 1915. 
 
 Italy — Bulgaria, Oct. 19, 191 5. 
 
 Italy — Germany, Aug. 28, 1916. 
 
 Italy — ^Turkey, Aug. 21, 1915. 
 
 Japan — Germany, Aug. 28, 19 14. 
 
 Liberia — Germany, Aug. 4, 1917. 
 
 Montenegro — ^Austria, Aug. 8, 1914. 
 
 Montenegro — Germany, Aug. 9, 19 14. 
 
 Panama — Germany, April 7, 191 7. 
 
 Panama — Austria, Dec. 10, 191 7. 
 
 Portugal — Germany, Nov. 23, 19 14. (Resolutions passed 
 authorizing military intervention as ally of England.) 
 
 Portugal — Germany, May 19, 191 5. (Military aid 
 granted.) 
 
 Rumania — Austria, Aug. 27, 1916. (Allies of Austria 
 also consider it a declaration.) 
 
 Russia — Bulgaria, Oct. 19, 1915. 
 
 Russia — Turkey, Nov. 3, 19 14. 
 
 San Marino — ^Austria, May 24, 1915. 
 
 Serbia — Bulgaria, Oct. 16, 1915. 
 
 Serbia — Germany, Aug. 6, 1914. 
 
 Serbia — Turkey, Dec. 2, 1914. 
 
 Siam — Austria, July 22, 191 7. 
 
 Siam — Germany, July 22, 191 7. 
 
 Turkey — Allies, Nov. 23, 19 14. 
 
 Turkey — Rumania, Aug. 29, 1916. 
 
i84 APPENDIX 
 
 United States — ^Austria-Hungary, Dec. 7, 191 7. 
 United States — Germany, April 6, 191 7. 
 
 SEVERANCE OF DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS 
 
 Austria — ^Japan, Aug. 26, 1914. 
 
 Austria — Portugal, March 16, 19 16. 
 
 Austria — Serbia, July 26, 1914. 
 
 Austria — United States, April 8, 1917. 
 
 Bolivia — Germany, April 14, 1917. 
 
 Brazil — Germany, April 11, 1917. 
 
 China — Germany, March 14, 191 7. 
 
 Costa Rica — Germany, Sept. 21, 191 7, 
 
 Ecuador — Germany, Dec. 7, 191 7. 
 
 Egypt— Germany, Aug. 13, 1914. 
 
 France — Austria, Aug. 10, 1914. 
 
 Greece — Turkey, July 2, 191 7. (Government of Alex- 
 ander.) 
 
 Greece — ^Austria, July 2, 191 7. (Government of Alex- 
 ander.) 
 
 Guatemala — Germany, April 27, 191 7. 
 
 Haiti — Germany, June 17, 191 7. 
 
 Honduras — Germany, May 17, 191 7. 
 
 Nicaragua — Germany, May 18, 19 17. 
 
 Peru— Germany, Oct. 6, 191 7. 
 
 Turkey — United States, April 20, 191 7. 
 
 United States — Germany, Feb. 3, 1917. 
 
 Uruguay — Germany, Oct. 7, 191 7. 
 
 — From the Official Bulletin of the Committee 
 on Public Information, 
 
 POPULATION OF THE NATIONS 
 
 Austria (including Hungary) 50,000,000 
 
 Belgium 7,57i,387 
 
 Bolivia 2,520,538 
 
 Brazil 22,992,937 
 
APPENDIX i8s 
 
 Bulgaria 4,755,000 
 
 China 413,000,000 
 
 Costa Rica 427,604 
 
 Cuba 2,406,117 
 
 Ecuador 1,500,000 
 
 Egypt 12,170,000 
 
 France 39,601,509 
 
 Germany 66,715,000 
 
 Great Britain 40,834,790 
 
 Greece 5,000,000 
 
 Guatemala 2,092,824 
 
 Haiti 2,030,000 
 
 Honduras 592,675 
 
 Italy 35,598,000 
 
 Japan 53,696,358 
 
 Liberia 2,060,000 
 
 Montenegro 520,000 
 
 Nicaragua 689,891 
 
 Panama 386,891 
 
 Peru 4,500,000 
 
 Portugal 5,857,895 
 
 Rumania 7,600,000 
 
 Russia 175,137,000 
 
 San Marino 10,655 
 
 Serbia 4,600,000 
 
 Siam 6,000,000 
 
 Turkey 21,274,000 
 
 United States 102,826,309 
 
 Uruguay i,25S,9i4 
 
 THE END 
 
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