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Title: In Our First Year of the War
Messages and Addresses to the Congress and the People,
March 5, 1917 to January 6, 1918
Author: Woodrow Wilson
Illustrator: Wilfrid Muir Evans
Release Date: February 22, 2008 [EBook #24668]
Language: English
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[Illustration]
IN OUR
FIRST YEAR OF WAR
MESSAGES AND ADDRESSES TO
THE CONGRESS AND THE PEOPLE
MARCH 5, 1917, TO JANUARY 8, 1918
BY
WOODROW WILSON
PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
Frontispiece from drawing by WILFRID MUIR EVANS
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
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
Cloth
Three-quarter Calf
Three-quarter Levant
GEORGE WASHINGTON. Illustrated. 8vo
Popular Edition
WHEN A MAN COMES TO HIMSELF.
16mo. Cloth. Leather
ON BEING HUMAN
16mo. Cloth. Leather
THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 16mo. Cloth. Leather
HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
FOREWORD v
I. THE SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS 1
(_March 5, 1917_)
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 30, 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 11, 1917_)
XII. REPLY TO THE POPE 83
(_August 27, 1917_)
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 RAILROADS 134
(_A Statement by the President, December 26, 1917_)
XX. GOVERNMENT OPERATION OF RAILROADS 143
(_Address to the Congress, January 4, 1918_)
XXI. THE TERMS OF PEACE 150
(_January 8, 1918_)
APPENDIX 162
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 Proclamation, the messages on
Conservation and the Fixing of Prices, the Appeal to Business
Interests, the Address to the Federation of Labor and the Railroad
messages present the solid every-day realities and the vast
responsibilities of war-time as they affect every American. These are
concrete messages which should be at hand for frequent reference,
just as the uplift and inspiration of lofty appeals like the Memorial
Day and Flag Day addresses should be a constant source of
inspiration. There are also the clarifying and vigorous definitions
of American purpose afforded in utterances like the statement to
Russia, the reply to the communication of the Pope, and, most
emphatically, the President's restatement of War Aims on January 8th.
These and other state papers from the early spring of 1917 to
January, 1918, have a significance and value in this collected form
which has been attested by the many requests that have come to Harper
& Brothers, as President Wilson's publishers, for a war volume 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, headings, and like details the
publishers are responsible. They have held the publication of the
President's words of enlightenment and inspiration 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
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 twenty-one messages
and addresses which have been collected for this volume.
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
I
THE SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS
(_March 5, 1917_)
My Fellow-citizens,--The four years which have elapsed since last I
stood in this place have been crowded with counsel and action of the
most vital interest and consequence. Perhaps no equal period in our
history has been so fruitful of important reforms in our economic and
industrial life or so full of significant changes in the spirit and
purpose of our political action. We have sought very thoughtfully to
set our house in order, correct the grosser errors and abuses of our
industrial life, liberate and quicken the processes of our national
genius and energy, and lift our politics to a broader view of the
people's essential interests. It is a record of singular variety and
singular distinction. 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 passion and
an apprehension they never knew before. It has been hard to preserve
calm counsel while the thought of our own people swayed this way and
that under their influence. We are a composite and cosmopolitan
people. We are of the blood of all the nations that are at war. The
currents of our thoughts as well as the currents of our trade run
quick at all seasons back and forth between us and them. The war
inevitably set its mark from the first alike upon our minds, our
industries, our commerce, our politics, and our social action. To be
indifferent to it or independent of it was out of the question.
And yet all the while we have been conscious that we were not part of
it. In that consciousness, despite many divisions, we have drawn
closer together. We have been deeply wronged upon the seas, but we
have not wished to wrong or injure in return; have retained
throughout the consciousness of standing in some sort apart, intent
upon an interest that transcended the immediate issues of the war
itself. As some of the injuries done us have become intolerable, we
have still been clear that we wished nothing for ourselves that we
were not ready to demand for all mankind,--fair dealing, justice, the
freedom to live and be at ease against organized wrong.
It is in this spirit and with this thought that we have grown more
and more aware, more and more certain that the part we wished to play
was the part of those who mean to vindicate and fortify peace. We
have been obliged to arm ourselves to make good our claim to a
certain minimum of right and of freedom of action. We stand firm in
armed neutrality since it seems that in no other way we can
demonstrate what it is we insist upon and cannot forego. We may even
be drawn on, by circumstances, not by our own purpose or desire, to a
more active assertion of our rights as we see them and a more
immediate association with the great struggle itself. But nothing
will alter our thought or our purpose. They are too clear to be
obscured. They are too deeply rooted in the principles of our
national life to be altered. We desire neither conquest nor
advantage. We wish nothing that can be had only at the cost of
another people. We have always professed unselfish purpose and we
covet the opportunity to prove that our professions are sincere.
THE SPIRIT OF CO-OPERATION
There are many things still to do at home, to clarify our own
politics and give new vitality to the industrial processes of our own
life, and we shall do them as time and opportunity serve; but we
realize that the greatest things that remain to be done must be done
with the whole world for stage and in 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 world.
There can be no turning back. Our own fortunes as a nation are
involved, whether we would have it so or not.
And yet we are not the less Americans on that account. We shall be
the more American if we but remain true to the principles in which we
have been bred. They are not the principles of a province or of a
single continent. We have known and boasted all along that they were
the principles of a liberated mankind. These, therefore, are the
things we shall stand for, whether in war or in peace:
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
that, so far as practicable, they should be accessible to all upon
equal terms;
That national armaments should be limited to the necessities of
national order and domestic safety;
That the community of interest and of power upon which peace must
henceforth depend imposes upon each nation the duty of seeing to it
that all influences proceeding from its own citizens meant to
encourage or assist revolution in other states should be sternly and
effectually suppressed and prevented.
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 purpose and of action we can stand together.
And it is imperative that we should stand together. We are being
forged into a new unity amidst the fires that now blaze throughout
the world. In their ardent heat we shall, in God's providence, let us
hope, be purged of faction and division, purified of the errant
humors of party and of private interest, and shall stand forth in the
days to come with a new dignity of national pride and spirit. Let
each man see to it that the dedication is in his own heart, the high
purpose of the nation in his own mind, ruler of his own will and
desire.
I stand here and have taken the high and solemn oath to which you
have been audience because the people of the United States have
chosen me for this august delegation of power and have by their
gracious judgment named me their leader in affairs. I know now what
the task means. I realize to the full the responsibility which it
involves. I pray God I may be given the wisdom and the prudence to do
my duty in the true spirit of this great people. I am their servant
and can succeed only as they sustain and guide me by their confidence
and their counsel. The thing I shall count upon, the thing without
which neither counsel nor action will avail, is the unity of
America--an America united in feeling, in purpose, and in its vision
of duty, of opportunity, and of service. We are to beware of all men
who would turn the tasks and the necessities of the nation to their
own private profit or use them for the building up of private power;
beware that no faction or disloyal intrigue break the harmony or
embarrass the spirit of our people; beware that our Government be
kept pure and incorrupt in all its parts. United alike in the
conception of our duty and in the high resolve to perform it in the
face of all men, let us dedicate ourselves to the great task to which
we must now set our hand. For myself I beg your tolerance, your
countenance, and your united aid. The shadows that now lie dark upon
our path will soon be dispelled and we shall walk with the light all
about us if we be but true to ourselves--to ourselves as we have
wished to be known in the counsels of the world and in the thought of
all those who love liberty and justice and the right exalted.
II
WE MUST ACCEPT WAR
(_Message to the Congress, April 2, 1917_)
Gentlemen of the Congress,--I have called the Congress into
extraordinary session because there are serious, very serious,
choices of policy to be made, and made immediately, which it was
neither right nor constitutionally permissible that I should assume
the responsibility of making.
On the 3d of February last I officially laid before you the
extraordinary announcement of the Imperial German Government that on
and after the first day of February it was its purpose to put aside
all restraints of law or of humanity and use its submarines to sink
every vessel that sought to approach either the ports of Great
Britain and Ireland or the western coasts of Europe or any of the
ports controlled by the enemies of Germany within the Mediterranean.
That had seemed to be the object of the German submarine warfare
earlier in the war, but since April of last year the Imperial
Government had somewhat restrained the commanders of its undersea
craft in conformity with its promise then given to us that
passenger-boats should not be sunk, and that due warning would be
given to all other vessels which its submarines might seek to destroy
when no resistance was offered or escape attempted, and care taken
that their crews were given at least a fair chance to save their
lives in their open boats.
The precautions taken were meager and haphazard enough, as was proved
in distressing instance after instance in the progress of the cruel
and unmanly business, but a certain degree of restraint was observed.
GERMANY'S RUTHLESS POLICY
The new policy has swept every restriction aside. Vessels of every
kind, whatever their flag, their character, their cargo, their
destination, their errand, have been ruthlessly sent to the bottom
without warning, and without thought of help or mercy for those on
board, the vessels of friendly neutrals along with those of
belligerents. Even hospital-ships and ships carrying relief to the
sorely bereaved and stricken people of Belgium, though the latter
were provided with safe conduct through the 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.
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 accomplished, but always
with a clear view at least of what the heart and conscience of
mankind demanded.
This minimum of right the German Government has swept aside under the
plea of retaliation and necessity, and because it had no weapons
which it could use at sea except these, which it is impossible to
employ as it is employing them without throwing to the winds all
scruples of humanity or of respect for the understandings that were
supposed to underlie the intercourse of the world.
I am not now thinking of the loss 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.
Property can be paid for; the lives of peaceful and innocent people
cannot be.
GERMAN WARFARE AGAINST MANKIND
The present German warfare against commerce is a warfare against
mankind. It is a war against all nations. American ships have been
sunk, American lives taken, in ways which it has stirred us very
deeply to learn of, but the ships and people of other neutral and
friendly nations have been sunk and overwhelmed in the waters in the
same way. There has been no discrimination. The challenge is to all
mankind. Each nation must decide for itself how it will meet it. The
choice we make for ourselves must be made with a moderation of
counsel and a temperateness of judgment befitting our character and
our motives as a nation. We must put excited feeling away.
Our motive will not be revenge or the victorious assertion of the
physical might of the nation, but only the vindication of right, of
human right, of which we are only a single champion.
When I addressed the Congress on the 26th of February last I thought
that it would suffice to assert our neutral rights with arms, our
right to use the seas against unlawful interference, our right to
keep our people safe against unlawful violence. But armed neutrality,
it now appears, is impracticable. Because submarines are in effect
outlaws when used as the German submarines have been used against
merchant shipping, it is impossible to defend ships against their
attacks as the law of nations has assumed that merchantmen would
defend themselves against privateers or cruisers, visible craft
giving chase upon the open sea.
It is common prudence in such circumstances, grim necessity, indeed,
to 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 modern publicist has ever before
questioned their right to defend. The intimation is conveyed that the
armed guards which we have placed on our merchant-ships will be
treated as beyond the pale of law and subject to be dealt with as
pirates would be.
Armed neutrality is ineffectual enough at best; in such circumstances
and in the face of such pretensions it is worse than ineffectual; it
is likely to produce what it was meant to prevent; it is practically
certain to draw us into the war without either the rights or the
effectiveness of belligerents.
There is one choice we cannot make, we are incapable of making: we
will not choose the path of submission and suffer the most sacred
rights of our nation and our people to be ignored or 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
involves, but in unhesitating obedience to what I deem my
constitutional duty, I advise that the Congress declare the recent
course of the Imperial German Government to be in fact nothing less
than war against the Government and people of the United States. That
it formally accept the status of belligerent which has thus been
thrust upon it and that it take immediate steps not only to put the
country in a more thorough state of defense, but also to exert all
its power and employ all its resources to bring the Government of the
German Empire to terms and end the war.
WHAT THIS WILL INVOLVE
What this will involve is clear. It will involve the utmost
practicable co-operation in counsel and action with the Governments
now at war with Germany, and as incident to that the extension to
those Governments of the most liberal financial credits in order that
our resources may so far as possible be added to theirs.
It will involve the organization and mobilization of all the material
resources of the country to supply the materials of war and serve the
incidental needs of the nation in the most abundant and yet the most
economical and efficient way possible.
It will involve the immediate full equipment of the navy in all
respects, but particularly in supplying it with the best means of
dealing with the enemy's submarines.
It will involve the immediate addition to the armed forces of the
United States already provided for by law in case of war at least
500,000 men, who should, in my opinion, be chosen upon the principle
of universal liability to service, and also the authorization of
subsequent additional increments of equal force so soon as they may
be needed and can be handled in training.
It will involve also, of course, the granting of adequate credits to
the Government, sustained, I hope, so far as they can equitably be
sustained by the present generation, by well-conceived taxation. I
say sustained so far as may be equitable by taxation because it seems
to me that it would be most unwise to base the credits which will now
be necessary entirely on money borrowed.
It is our duty, I most 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 Government, for the consideration of your
committees measures for the accomplishment of the several objects I
have mentioned. I hope that it will be your pleasure to deal with
them as having been framed after very careful thought by the branch
of the Government upon which the responsibility of conducting the war
and safeguarding the nation will most directly fall.
OUR MOTIVES AND OBJECTS
While we do these things, these deeply momentous things, let us be
very clear and make very clear to all the world what our motives and
our objects are. My own thought has not been driven from its habitual
and normal course by the unhappy events of the last two months, and I
do not believe that the thought of the nation has been altered or
clouded by them.
I have exactly the same thing in mind now that I had in mind when I
addressed the Senate on the 22d of January last; the same that I had
in mind when I addressed the Congress on the 3d of February and on
the 26th of February.
Our object now, as then, is to vindicate the principles of peace and
justice in the life of the world as against selfish and autocratic
power and to set up amongst the really free and self-governed peoples
of the world such a concert of 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 organized force which is controlled wholly by
their will, not by the will of their people. We have seen the last of
neutrality in such circumstances.
We are at the beginning of an age in which it will be insisted that
the same standards of conduct and of responsibility for wrong done
shall be observed among nations and their Governments that are
observed among the individual citizens of civilized states.
We have no quarrel with the German people. We have no feeling toward
them but one of sympathy and friendship. It was not upon their
impulse that their Government acted in entering this war. It was not
with their previous knowledge or approval.
It was a war determined upon as wars used to be determined upon in
the old, unhappy days when peoples were nowhere consulted by their
rulers and wars were provoked and waged in the interest of dynasties
or of little groups of ambitious men who were accustomed to use their
fellow-men as pawns and tools.
Self-governed nations do not fill their neighbor states with spies or
set the course of intrigue to bring about some critical posture of
affairs which will give them an opportunity to strike and make
conquest. 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 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 confidences 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 democratic nations. No autocratic Government could be
trusted to keep faith within it or observe its covenants. It must be
a league of honor, a partnership of opinion. Intrigue would eat its
vitals away, the plottings of inner circles who could plan what they
would and render account to no one would be a corruption seated at
its very heart. Only free peoples can hold their purpose and their
honor steady to a common end and prefer the interests of mankind to
any narrow interest of their own.
Does not every American feel that assurance has been added to our
hope for the future peace of the world by the wonderful and
heartening things that have been happening within the last few weeks
in Russia?
Russia was known by those who know it best to have been always in
fact democratic at heart, in all the vital habits of her thought, in
all the intimate 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 convince us that the Prussian
autocracy was not and could never be our friend is that from the very
outset of the present war it has filled our unsuspecting communities
and even our offices of Government with spies and set criminal
intrigues everywhere afoot against our national unity of council, our
peace within and without, our industries and our commerce.
Indeed, it is now evident that its spies were here even before the
war began, and it is, unhappily, not a matter of conjecture, but a
fact proved in our courts of justice, that the intrigues which have
more than once come perilously near to disturbing the peace and
dislocating the industries of the country have been carried on at the
instigation, with the support, and even under the personal direction,
of official agents of the Imperial German Government accredited to
the Government of the United States.
Even in checking these things and trying to extirpate them we have
sought to put the most generous interpretation possible upon them
because we knew that their source lay, not in any hostile feeling or
purpose of the German people toward us (who were, no doubt, as
ignorant of them as we ourselves were), but only in the selfish
designs of a Government that did what it pleased and told its people
nothing. But they have played their part in serving to convince us at
last that that Government entertains no real friendship for us and
means to act against our peace and security at its convenience. That
it means to stir up enemies against us at our very doors the
intercepted note to the German Minister at Mexico City is eloquent
evidence.
A CHALLENGE OF HOSTILE PURPOSE
We are accepting this challenge of hostile purpose because we know
that in such a Government, following such methods, we can never have
a friend; and that in the presence of its organized power, always
lying in wait to accomplish we know not what purpose, there can be no
assured security for the democratic Governments of the world.
We are now about to accept the gage of battle with this natural foe
to liberty, and shall, if necessary, spend the whole force of the
nation to check and 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 indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for
the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions
of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights
have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of 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, conduct our operations
as belligerents without passion and ourselves observe with proud
punctilio the principles of right and of fair play we profess to be
fighting for.
I have said nothing of the Governments allied with the Imperial
Government of Germany because they have not made war upon us or
challenged us to defend our right and our honor.
The Austro-Hungarian Government has indeed avowed its unqualified
indorsement and acceptance of the reckless and lawless submarine
warfare adopted now without disguise by the Imperial German
Government, and it has therefore not been possible for this
Government to receive Count Tarnowski, the ambassador recently
accredited to this Government by the Imperial and Royal Government of
Austria-Hungary; but that Government has not actually engaged in
warfare against citizens of the United States on the seas, and I take
the liberty, for the present at least, of postponing a discussion of
our relations with the authorities at Vienna.
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 animus,
not in enmity toward a people or with the desire to bring any injury
or disadvantage 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
intimate relations of mutual advantage between us--however hard it
may be for them, for the time being, to believe that this is spoken
from our hearts. We have borne with their present Government through
all these bitter months because of that friendship--exercising a
patience and forbearance which would otherwise have been 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 stern repression; but, if it
lifts its head at all, it will lift it only here and there and
without countenance except from a lawless and malignant few.
RIGHT MORE PRECIOUS THAN PEACE
It is a distressing and oppressive duty, gentlemen of the Congress,
which I have performed in thus addressing you. There are, it may be,
many months of fiery trial and sacrifice ahead of us. It is a fearful
thing to lead this great, peaceful people into war, into the most
terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to
be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we
shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our
hearts--for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority
to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and
liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such
a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all
nations and make the world itself at last free.
To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything
that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who
know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her
blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and
happiness and the peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she
can do no other.
III
A STATE OF WAR
(_The President's Proclamation of April 6, 1917_)
Whereas, the Congress of the United States, in the exercise of the
constitutional authority vested in them, have resolved by joint
resolution of the Senate and House of Representatives, 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 Government
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.
The President is authorized in any such event, by his proclamation
thereof or other public acts, to direct the conduct to be observed on
the part of the United States toward the aliens who become so liable;
the manner and degree of the restraint to which they shall be subject
and in what cases and upon what security their residence shall be
permitted and to provide for the removal of those who, not being
permitted to reside within the United States, refuse or neglect to
depart therefrom, and to establish any such regulations which are
found necessary in the premises 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, President of the United States of
America, do hereby proclaim to all whom it may concern that a state
of war exists between the United States and the Imperial German
Government, and I do specially direct all officers, civil or
military, of the United States that they exercise vigilance and zeal
in the discharge of the duties incident to such a state of war, and I
do, moreover, earnestly appeal to all American citizens that they, in
loyal devotion to their country, dedicated from its foundation to the
principles of liberty and justice, uphold the laws of the land and
give undivided and willing 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 authority vested in me by the
Constitution of the United States and the said sections of the
Revised Statutes:
I do hereby further proclaim and direct that the conduct to be
observed on the part of the United States toward all natives,
citizens, denizens or subjects of Germany, being male, of the age of
fourteen years and upward, who shall be within the United States and
not actually naturalized, who for the purpose of this proclamation
and under such sections of the Revised Statutes are termed alien
enemies, shall be as follows:
All alien enemies are enjoined to preserve the peace
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
information, aid or comfort to the enemies of the United
States, and to comply strictly with the regulations which
are hereby or which may be from time to time promulgated
by the President, and so long as they shall conduct
themselves in accordance with law they shall be
undisturbed in the peaceful pursuit of their lives and
occupations and be accorded the consideration due to all
peaceful and law-abiding persons, except so far as
restrictions may be necessary for their own protection and
for the safety of the United States, and toward such alien
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 friendliness as may
be compatible with loyalty and allegiance to the United
States.
And all alien enemies who fail to conduct themselves as so
enjoined, in addition to all other penalties prescribed by
law, shall be liable to restraint or to give security or
to remove and depart from the United States in the manner
prescribed by Sections 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 following 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 implement of
war, or component parts thereof; ammunition, Maxim or
other silencer, arms or explosives or material used in the
manufacture of explosives.
Second. An alien enemy shall not have in his possession at
any time or place, or use or operate, any aircraft or
wireless apparatus, or any form of 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
manufacture of munitions of war or of any products for the
use of the army or navy.
Fifth. An alien enemy shall not write, print or publish
any attack or threat against the Government or Congress of
the United States, or either branch thereof, or against
the measures or policy of the United States, or against
the 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 information, aid
or comfort to its enemies.
Seventh. An alien enemy shall not reside in or continue to
reside in, to remain in or enter any locality which the
President may from time to time designate by 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 President 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 without
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 Court, Judge
or Justice, under Sections 4069 and 4070 of the Revised
Statutes.
Tenth. No alien enemy shall land in or enter the
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 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,
or who violates or who attempts to violate or of whom
there is reasonable grounds to believe that he is about to
violate any regulation to be 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, by the United States Marshal or his
deputy or such other officers 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 15, 1917_)
MY FELLOW COUNTRYMEN,--The entrance of our own beloved
country into the grim and terrible war for democracy and human rights
which has shaken the world creates so many problems of national life
and action which call for immediate consideration and settlement that
I hope you will permit me to address to you a few words of earnest
counsel and appeal with regard to them.
We are rapidly putting our navy upon an effective war footing and are
about to create and equip a great army, but these are the simplest
parts of the great task to which we have addressed ourselves. There
is not a single selfish element, so far as I can see, in the cause we
are fighting for. We are fighting for what we believe and wish to be
the rights of mankind and for the future peace and 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
advantage and with an energy and intelligence that will rise to the
level of the enterprise itself. We must realize to the full how great
the task is and how many things, how many kinds and elements of
capacity and service and self-sacrifice it involves.
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 Europe, and to keep the looms and manufactories there
in raw material; coal to keep the fires going in ships at sea and in
the furnaces of hundreds of factories across the sea; steel out of
which to make arms and ammunition both here and there; rails for
wornout railways back of the fighting fronts; locomotives and
rolling-stock to take the place of those every day going to pieces;
mules, horses, cattle for labor and for military service; everything
with which the people of England and France and Italy and Russia have
usually supplied themselves, but 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 industrial forces
of the country, men and women alike, will be a great national, a
great international, service army--a notable and honored host engaged
in the service of the nation and the world, the efficient friends and
saviors of free men everywhere. Thousands, nay, hundreds of
thousands, of men otherwise liable to military service will of right
and of necessity be excused from that service and assigned to the
fundamental sustaining work of the fields and factories and mines,
and they will be as much part of the great patriotic forces of the
nation as the men under fire.
I take the liberty, therefore, of addressing this word to the farmers
of the country and to all who work on the farms: The supreme need of
our own nation and of the nations with which we are co-operating is
an abundance of supplies, and especially of foodstuffs. The
importance of an adequate food-supply, especially for the present
year, is superlative. Without abundant food, alike for the armies and
the peoples now at war, the whole great enterprise upon which we have
embarked will break down and fail. The world's food reserves are low.
Not only during the present emergency, but for some time after peace
shall have come, both our own people and a large proportion of the
people of Europe must rely upon the harvests in America.
THE RESPONSIBILITY OF 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 increase 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 resisting the great temptation
of the present price of cotton and helping, helping upon a great
scale, to feed the nation and the peoples everywhere who are fighting
for their liberties and for our own. The variety of their crops will
be the visible measure of their comprehension of their national duty.
The Government of the United States and the Governments of the
several States stand ready to co-operate. They will do everything
possible to assist farmers in securing an adequate supply of seed, an
adequate force of laborers when they are most needed, at
harvest-time, and the means of expediting shipments of fertilizers
and farm machinery, as well as of the crops themselves when
harvested. The course of trade shall be as unhampered as it is
possible to make it, and there shall be no unwarranted manipulation
of the nation's food-supply by those who handle it on its way to the
consumer. This is our opportunity to demonstrate the efficiency of a
great democracy, 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 expects you, as it expects
all others, to forego unusual profits, to organize and expedite
shipments of supplies of every kind, but especially of food, with an
eye to the service you are rendering and in the spirit of those who
enlist in the ranks, for their people, not for themselves. I shall
confidently expect you to deserve and win the confidence of people of
every sort and station.
THE MEN OF THE RAILWAYS
To the men who run the railways of the country, whether they be
managers or operative employees, let me say that the railways are the
arteries of the nation's life and that upon them rests the immense
responsibility of seeing to it that those arteries suffer no
obstruction of any kind, no inefficiency or slackened power. To the
merchant let me suggest the motto, "Small profits and quick service,"
and to the shipbuilder the thought that the life of the war depends
upon him. The food and the war supplies must be carried across the
seas, no matter how many ships are sent to the bottom. The places of
those that go down must be supplied, and supplied at once. To the
miner let me say that he stands where the farmer does: the work of
the world waits on him. If he slackens or fails, armies and statesmen
are helpless. He also is enlisted in the great Service Army. The
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 creates 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 unpardonable fault of wastefulness and
extravagance. Let every man and every woman assume the duty of
careful, provident use and expenditure as a public duty, as a dictate
of patriotism which no one can now expect ever to be excused or
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 prominent publication and as wide
circulation as possible to this appeal. I venture to suggest also to
all advertising agencies that they would perhaps render a very
substantial and timely service to the country if they would give it
widespread repetition. And I hope that clergymen will not think the
theme of it an unworthy or inappropriate subject of comment and
homily from their pulpits.
The supreme test of the nation has come. We must all speak, act and
serve together.
V
THE CONSCRIPTION PROCLAMATION
(_May 18, 1917_)
Whereas, Congress has enacted and the President has on the 18th day
of May, 1917, approved a law which contains the following provisions:
Section 5. That all male persons between the ages of twenty-one and
thirty, both inclusive, shall be subject to registration in
accordance with regulations to be prescribed by the President, and
upon proclamation by the President or other public notice given by
him or by his direction, stating the time and place of such
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 Militia while in the service of the
United States, to present themselves for and submit to registration
under the provisions of this act.
And every such person shall be deemed to have notice of the
requirements of this act upon the publication of said proclamation or
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 conviction in the District
Court of the United States having jurisdiction thereof, be punished
by imprisonment for not more than one year, and shall thereupon be
duly registered.
Provided, that in the call of the docket preference shall be given,
in courts trying the same, to the trial of criminal proceedings under
this act.
Provided, further, that persons shall be subject to registration as
herein provided who shall have 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 temporary absence from actual
place of legal residence of any person liable to registration as
provided herein, such registration may be made by mail under
regulations to be prescribed by the President.
THE WORK OF REGISTRATION
Section 6. That the President is hereby authorized to utilize the
service of any or all departments and any or all officers or agents
of the United States and of the 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 appointed under
regulations prescribed by the President, whether such appointments
are made by the President himself or by the Governor or other officer
of any State or Territory to perform any duty in the execution of
this act, are hereby required to perform such duty as the President
shall order or direct, and all such officers and agents and persons
so designated or appointed shall hereby have full authority for all
acts done by them in the execution of this act, by the direction of
the President. Correspondence in the execution of this act may be
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 provisions of this act or the regulations made
or directions given thereunder who shall fail or neglect to perform
such duty, and any person charged with such duty or having and
exercising any authority under said act, regulations or directions,
who shall knowingly make or be a party to the making of any false or
incorrect registration, physical examination, exemption, enlistment,
enrolment or muster.
And any person who shall make or be a party to the making of any
false statement or certificate as to the fitness or liability of
himself or any other person for service under the provisions of this
act, or regulations made by the President thereunder, or otherwise
evades or aids another to evade the requirements of this act or of
said regulations, or who, in any manner, shall fail or neglect fully
to perform any duty required of him in the execution of this act,
shall, if not subject to military law, be guilty of a misdemeanor and
upon conviction in the District Court of the United States having
jurisdiction thereof be 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, President of the United States, do
call upon the Governor of each of the several States and Territories,
the Board of Commissioners of the District of Columbia and all
officers and agents of the several States and Territories, of the
District of Columbia, and of the counties and municipalities therein,
to perform certain duties in the execution of the foregoing law,
which duties will be communicated to them directly in regulations of
even date herewith.
And I do further proclaim and give notice to all 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, 1917, 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.
REGISTRATION BY MAIL
And I do hereby charge those who, through sickness, shall be unable
to present themselves for registration that they apply on or before
the day of registration to the County Clerk of the county where they
may be for instructions as to how they may be registered by agent.
Those who expect to be absent on the day named from the counties in
which they have their permanent homes may register by mail, but their
mailed registration cards must reach the places in which they have
their permanent homes by the day named herein. They should apply as
soon as practicable to the County Clerk of the county wherein they
may be for instructions as to how they may accomplish their
registration by mail.
In case such persons as, through sickness or absence, may be unable
to present themselves personally for 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 applications from the sick and from non-residents are
expected, are authorized to establish such sub-agencies and to employ
and deputize such clerical 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 purpose. The
Nation needs all men, but it needs each man, not in the field that
will most pleasure him, but in the endeavor that will best serve the
common good.
Thus, though a sharpshooter pleases to operate a trip-hammer for the
forging of great guns, and an expert machinist desires to march with
the flag, the Nation is being served only when the sharpshooter
marches and the machinist remains at his levers. The whole Nation
must be a team, in which each man shall play the part for which he is
best fitted.
NOT A DRAFT OF 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 general good to call
him.
The significance of this cannot be overstated. It is a new thing in
our history and a landmark in our progress. It is a new manner of
accepting and vitalizing our duty to give ourselves with thoughtful
devotion to the common purpose of us all. It is in no sense a
conscription of the unwilling. It is, rather, selection from a Nation
which has volunteered in mass.
It is no more a choosing of those who shall march with the colors
than it is a selection of those who shall serve an equally necessary
and devoted purpose in the industries that lie behind the
battle-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 solid rank in defense of the
ideals to which this Nation is consecrated. It is important to those
ideals, no less than to the pride of this generation in manifesting
its devotion to them, that there be no gaps in the ranks.
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
meaning that it deserves. Our industrial need prescribes that it be
not made a technical holiday, but the stern sacrifice that is before
us urges that it be carried in all our hearts as a great day of
patriotic devotion and obligation, when the duty shall lie upon every
man, whether he is himself to be registered or not, to see to it that
the name of every male person of the designated ages is written on
these lists of honor.
In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal
of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the city of Washington this 18th day of May, in the year of
our Lord, 1917, 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 19, 1917_)
It is very desirable, in order to prevent misunderstanding or alarms
and to assure co-operation in a vital matter, that the country should
understand exactly the scope and purpose of the very great powers
which I have thought it necessary, in the circumstances, to ask the
Congress to put in my hands with regard to our food-supplies.
Those powers are very great, indeed, but they are no greater than it
has proved necessary to lodge in the other Governments which are
conducting this momentous war, and their object is stimulation and
conservation, not arbitrary 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
preparation, distribution and marketing of foodstuffs.
A SHARP LINE OF DISTINCTION
It is proposed to draw a sharp line of distinction between the normal
activities of the Government, represented in the Department of
Agriculture, in reference to food 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 Agriculture, in reference to the production,
conservation and the marketing of farm crops, will be administered,
as in normal times, through that department; and the powers asked for
over distribution and consumption, over exports, imports, 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 legislation asked for are:
Full inquiry into the existing available stocks of foodstuffs and
into the costs and practices of the various food producing and
distributing trades; the prevention of all unwarranted hoarding of
every kind, and of the control of foodstuffs by persons who are not
in any legitimate sense producers, dealers or traders; the
requisition, when necessary for public use, of food supplies and of
the equipment necessary for handling them properly; the licensing of
wholesome and legitimate mixtures and milling percentages, and the
prohibition of the unnecessary or wasteful use of foods.
Authority is asked also to establish prices, but not in order to
limit the profits of the farmers, but only to 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 temporarily a reasonable price at which
middlemen must sell.
THE FIXING OF PRICES
I have asked Mr. Herbert Hoover to undertake this all-important task
of food administration. He has expressed his willingness to do so, on
condition that he is to receive no payment for his services, and that
the whole of the force under him, exclusive of clerical assistance,
shall be 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 voluntary
co-operation and direction of legitimate distributers of foodstuffs
and with the help of the women of the country.
Although it is absolutely necessary that unquestionable powers shall
be placed in my hands, in order to insure the success of this
administration of the food-supplies of the country, I am confident
that the exercise of those powers will be necessary only in the few
cases where some small and selfish minority proves unwilling to put
the Nation's interests above personal advantage, and that the whole
country will heartily support Mr. Hoover's efforts by supplying the
necessary volunteer agencies throughout the country for the
intelligent control of food consumption, and securing the
co-operation of the most capable leaders of the very interests most
directly affected, that the exercise of the powers deputed to him
will rest very successfully upon the good-will and co-operation of
the people themselves, and that the ordinary economic machinery of
the country will be left substantially 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 volunteers, there need be no
fear of the possibility of a permanent bureaucracy arising out of it.
All control of consumption will disappear when the emergency has
passed. It is with that object in view that the Administration
considers it to be of pre-eminent importance that the existing
associations of producers and distributers of foodstuffs should be
mobilized and made use of on a volunteer basis. The successful
conduct of the projected food administration, by such means, will be
the finest possible demonstration of the willingness, the ability and
the efficiency of democracy and of its justified reliance upon the
freedom of individual initiative.
The last thing that any American could contemplate with equanimity
would be the introduction of anything resembling Prussian autocracy
into the food control of this country.
It is of vital interest and importance to every man who produces food
and to every man who takes part in its distribution that these
policies, thus liberally 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 Representative Heflin,
Democrat, of Alabama, President 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 objects.
I have again and again stated the very serious and long-continued
wrongs which the Imperial German Government has perpetrated against
the rights, the commerce and the citizens of the United States. The
list is long and overwhelming. No Nation that respected itself or the
rights of humanity could have borne those wrongs any longer.
Our objects in going into the war have been stated with equal
clearness. The whole of the conception which I take to be the
conception of our fellow-countrymen with regard to the outcome of the
war and the terms of its settlement, I set forth with the utmost
explicitness in an address to the Senate of the United States on the
22d of January last. Again, in my message to Congress on the 2d of
April last, those objects were stated in unmistakable terms.
I can conceive no purpose in seeking to becloud this matter except
the purpose of weakening the hands of the Government and making the
part which the United States is to play in this great struggle for
human liberty an inefficient and hesitating part.
We have entered the war for our own reasons and with our own objects
clearly stated, and shall forget neither the reasons nor the objects.
There is no hate in our hearts for the German people, but there is a
resolve which cannot be shaken even by misrepresentation, to overcome
the pretensions of the autocratic Government which acts upon purposes
to which the German people have never consented.
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
world struggle. It is the 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.
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 President]. I am here merely to show in
my official capacity the sympathy of this great Government 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
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 liberty
is accomplished, 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 like this, because we know how the men of America have
responded to the call of the cause of liberty, and it fills our mind
with a perfect assurance 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 human 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 wish freedom might have a place of refuge and a place
where their hope could be realized, and now, having established such
a Government, having preserved such a Government, having vindicated
the power of such a Government, 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 assistance 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 dignity 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 our 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 9, 1917_)
In view of the approaching visit of the American delegation to Russia
to express the deep friendship of the American people for the people
of Russia and to discuss the best and most practical means of
co-operation between the two peoples in carrying the present struggle
for the freedom of all peoples to a successful consummation, it seems
opportune and appropriate that I should state again, in the light of
this new partnership, the objects the United States has had in mind
in entering the war. Those objects have been very much beclouded
during the past few weeks by mistaken and misleading statements, and
the issues at stake are too momentous, too tremendous, too
significant for the whole human race to permit any misinterpretations
or misunderstandings, however slight, to remain uncorrected for a
moment.
The war has begun to go against Germany, and in their desperate
desire to escape the inevitable ultimate defeat, those who are in
authority in Germany are using every possible instrumentality, are
making use even of 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 fighting for no advantage or
selfish object of her own, but for the liberation of peoples
everywhere from the aggressions of autocratic force. The ruling
classes in Germany have begun of late to profess a like liberality
and justice of purpose, but only to preserve the power they have set
up in Germany and the selfish advantages which they have wrongly
gained for themselves and their private projects of power all the way
from Berlin to Bagdad and beyond. Government after Government has, by
their influence, without open conquest of its territory, been linked
together in a net of intrigue directed against nothing less than the
peace and liberty of the world. The meshes of that intrigue must be
broken, but cannot be broken unless wrongs already done are undone;
and adequate measures must be taken to prevent it from ever again
being rewoven or repaired.
Of course the Imperial German Government and those whom it is using
for their own undoing are 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 influence 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-government and the undictated
development of all peoples, and every feature of the settlement that
concludes this war must be conceived and executed for that purpose.
Wrongs must first be righted and then adequate safeguards must be
created to prevent their being committed again. We ought not to
consider remedies merely because they have a pleasing and sonorous
sound. Practical questions can be settled only by practical means.
Phrases will not accomplish the result. Effective readjustments will;
and whatever readjustments are necessary must be made.
But they must follow a principle, and that 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
effect a workable partnership to secure that life against the
aggressions of autocratic and self-pleasing power.
For these things we can afford to pour out blood and treasure. For
these are the things we have always professed to desire, and unless
we pour out blood and treasure now and succeed, we may never be able
to unite or show conquering force again in the great cause of human
liberty. The day has come to 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, 1917_)
My Fellow-citizens,--We meet to celebrate Flag Day because this flag
which we honor and under which we serve is the emblem of our unity,
our power, our thought and purpose as a nation. It has no other
character than that which we give it from generation to generation.
The choices are ours. It floats in majestic silence above the hosts
that execute those choices, whether in peace or in war. And yet,
though silent, it speaks to us--speaks to us of the past, of the men
and women who went before us and of the records they wrote upon it.
We celebrate the day of its birth; and from its birth until now it
has witnessed a great history, has floated on high the symbol of
great events, of a great plan of life worked out by a great people.
We are about to carry it into battle, to lift it where it will draw
the fire of our enemies. We are about to bid thousands, hundreds of
thousands, it may be millions, of our men--the young, the strong, the
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 before sent across the seas. Why are they sent now?
For some new purpose, for which this great flag has never been
carried before, or for some old, familiar, heroic purpose for which
it has seen men, its own men, die on every battlefield upon which
Americans have borne arms since the Revolution?
These are questions which must be answered. We are Americans. We in
our turn serve America, and can serve her with no private purpose. We
must use her flag as she has always used it. We are accountable at
the bar of history and must plead in utter frankness what purpose it
is we seek to serve.
WHY WE ARE AT WAR
It is plain enough how we were forced into the war. The extraordinary
insults and aggressions of the Imperial German Government left us no
self-respecting choice but to take up arms in defense of our rights
as a free people and of our honor as a sovereign Government. The
military masters of Germany denied us the right to be neutral. They
filled our unsuspecting communities with vicious spies and
conspirators and sought to corrupt the opinion of our people in their
own behalf. When they found that they could not do that, their agents
diligently spread sedition among us and sought to draw our own
citizens from their allegiance--and some of those agents were men
connected with the official embassy of the German Government itself
here in our own capital. They sought by violence to destroy our 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 Berlin. They impudently denied us the use of
the seas and repeatedly executed their threat that they would send to
their death any of our people who ventured to approach the coasts of
Europe. And many of our own people were corrupted. Men began to look
upon their own neighbors with suspicion and to wonder, in their hot
resentment and surprise, whether there was any community in which
hostile intrigue did not lurk. What great nation, in such
circumstances, would not have taken up arms? Much as we had desired
peace, it was denied us, and not of our own choice. This flag under
which we serve would have been dishonored had we withheld our hand.
But that is only part of the story. We know now as clearly as we knew
before we were ourselves engaged that we are not the enemies of the
German people and that they are not our enemies. They did not
originate or desire this hideous war or wish that we should be drawn
into it; and we are vaguely conscious that we are fighting their
cause, as they will some day see it, as well as our own. They are
themselves in the grip of the same sinister power that has now at
last stretched its ugly talons out and drawn blood from us. The whole
world is at war because the whole world is in the grip of that power
and is trying out the great battle which shall determine whether it
is to be brought under its mastery or fling itself free.
THE 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 themselves, for whom governments existed and in whom governments
had their life. They have regarded them merely as serviceable
organizations which they could by force or intrigue bend or 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 whom that
purpose was incredible, paid little 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 Balkan states with German
princes, putting German officers at the service of Turkey to drill
her armies and make interest with her Government, developing plans of
sedition and rebellion in India and Egypt, setting their fires in
Persia. The demands made by Austria upon Serbia were a mere single
step in a plan which compassed Europe and Asia, from Berlin to
Bagdad. They hoped those demands might not arouse Europe, but they
meant to press them whether they did or not, for they thought
themselves ready for the final issue of arms.
THE PLAN OF CONQUEST
Their plan was to throw a broad belt of German military power and
political control across the very center of Europe and beyond the
Mediterranean into the very heart of Asia; and Austria-Hungary was to
be as much their tool and pawn as Serbia or Bulgaria or Turkey or the
ponderous states of the East. Austria-Hungary, indeed, was to become
part of the central German Empire, absorbed and dominated by the same
forces and influences that had originally cemented the German states
themselves. The dream had its heart at Berlin. It could have had a
heart nowhere else! It rejected the idea of solidarity of race
entirely. The choice of peoples played no part in it at all. It
contemplated binding together racial and political units which could
be kept together only by force--Czechs, Magyars, Croats, Serbs,
Rumanians, Turks, Armenians--the proud states of Bohemia and Hungary,
the stout little commonwealths of the Balkans, the indomitable 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 independence. They could be kept quiet
only by the presence or the constant threat of armed men. They would
live under a common power only by sheer compulsion and await the day
of revolution. But the German military statesmen had reckoned with
all that and were ready to deal with it in their own way.
And they have actually carried the greater part of that amazing plan
into execution! Look how things stand. Austria is at their mercy. It
has acted, not upon its own initiative or upon the choice of its own
people, but at Berlin's dictation, ever since the war began. Its
people now desire peace, but cannot have it until leave is granted
from 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 German Government would be willing to accept. That Government has
other valuable pawns in its hands besides those I have mentioned. It
still holds a valuable part of France, though with slowly relaxing
grasp, and practically the whole of Belgium. Its armies press close
upon Russia and overrun Poland at their will. It cannot go 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 entered 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 advantages still in their hands which
they have up to this point apparently gained, they will have
justified themselves before the German people; they will have gained
by force what they promised to gain by it--an immense expansion of
German power, an immense enlargement of German industrial and
commercial opportunities. Their prestige will be secure, and with
their prestige their political power. If they fail, their people will
thrust them aside; a government accountable to the people themselves
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 modern time
except Germany. If they succeed they are safe and Germany and the
world are undone; if they fail Germany is saved and the world will be
at peace. If they succeed, America will fall within the menace. We
and all the rest of the world must remain armed, as they will remain,
and must make ready for the next step in their aggression; if they
fail, the world may unite for peace and Germany may be of the union.
THE PRESENT AIM OF 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 deceit of the nations? Their
present particular aim is to deceive all those who throughout the
world stand for the rights of peoples and the self-government of
nations; for they see what immense strength the forces of justice and
of liberalism are gathering out of this war. They are employing
liberals in their enterprise. They are using men, in Germany and
without, as their spokesmen whom they have hitherto despised and
oppressed, using them for their own destruction--socialists, the
leaders of labor, the thinkers they have hitherto sought to silence.
Let them once succeed and these men, now their tools, will be ground
to powder beneath the weight of the great military empire they will
have set up; the revolutionists in Russia will be cut off from all
succor or 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 Government can get access.
That Government has many spokesmen here, in places high and low. They
have learned discretion. They keep within the law. It is opinion they
utter now, not sedition. They proclaim the liberal purposes of their
masters; declare this a foreign war which can touch America with no
danger to either her lands or her institutions; set England at the
center of the stage and talk of her ambition to assert economic
dominion throughout the world; appeal to our ancient tradition of
isolation in the politics of the nations; and seek to undermine the
Government with false professions of loyalty to its principles.
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
nowhere are they more plainly seen than in the United States, where
we are accustomed to deal with facts and not with sophistries; and
the great fact that stands out above all the rest is that this is a
Peoples' War, a war for freedom and justice and self-government
amongst all the nations of the world, a war to make the world safe
for the peoples who live 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 hypocrisies and patent cheats and masks of
brute force and help set the world free, or else stand aside and let
it be dominated a long age through by sheer weight of arms and the
arbitrary choices of self-constituted masters, by the nation which
can maintain the biggest armies and the most irresistible
armaments--a power to which the world has afforded no parallel and in
the face of which political freedom must wither and perish.
For us there is but one choice. We have made it. Woe be to the man or
group of men that seeks to stand in our way in this day of high
resolution, when every principle we hold dearest is to be vindicated
and made secure for the salvation of the nations. We are ready to
plead at the bar of history, and our flag shall wear a new luster.
Once more we shall make good with our lives and fortunes the great
faith to which we were born, and a new glory shall shine in the face
of our people.
XI
AN APPEAL TO THE BUSINESS INTERESTS
(_July 11, 1917_)
My Fellow-countrymen,--The Government 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 industries 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 considerations 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.
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
industries concerned in a high state of efficiency, provide a living
for those who conduct them, enable them to pay good wages, and make
possible 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 industry 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 circumstances 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 liberty of
free men everywhere and of industry 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-sacrifice 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 unusual 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 contribution 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 enduring 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 vindicate 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 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 carriers 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
prosecution 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 engaged
against Germany. When they realize this we may, I take it for
granted, count upon them to reconsider the whole matter. It is 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 opportunity the Nation 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 industrial purchases made by the Government and
industries. And it is just as much our duty to sustain the industries
of the country, all the 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 defeat. They mean that America
will win her place once for all among the foremost free Nations 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 personally 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
emancipation of mankind. I summon you to a great duty, a great
privilege, a shining dignity and distinction.
I shall expect every man who is not a slacker to be at my side
throughout this great enterprise. In it no man can win honor who
thinks of himself.
XII
REPLY OF THE UNITED STATES TO THE COMMUNICATION OF THE POPE TO THE
BELLIGERENT GOVERNMENTS
(_August 27, 1917_)
To His Holiness Benedictus XV., Pope.
In acknowledgment of the communication of Your Holiness to the
belligerent peoples, dated August 1, 1917, the President of the
United States requests me to transmit the following reply:
Every heart that has not been blinded and hardened by this terrible
war must be touched by this moving appeal of His Holiness, the Pope,
must feel the dignity and force of the humane and generous motives
which prompted it, and must fervently wish that we might take the
path of peace he so persuasively points out. But it would be folly to
take it if it does not, in fact, lead to the goal he proposes. Our
response must be based upon the stern facts and upon nothing else. It
is not a mere cessation of arms he desires; it is a stable and
enduring peace. This agony must not be gone through with again, and
it must be a matter of very sober judgment what will insure us
against it.
THE PROPOSAL FROM THE VATICAN
His Holiness, in substance, proposes that we return to the _status
quo ante bellum_, and that then there be a general condonation,
disarmament, and a concert of nations based upon an acceptance of the
principle of arbitration; that by a similar concert freedom of the
seas be established; and that the territorial claims of France and
Italy, the perplexing problems of the Balkan states, and the
restitution of Poland be left to such conciliatory adjustments as may
be possible in the new temper of such a peace, due regard being paid
to the aspirations of the peoples whose political fortunes and
affiliations will be involved.
It is manifest that no part of this program can be successfully
carried out unless the restitution of the _status quo ante_
furnishes a firm and satisfactory basis for it. The object of this
war is to deliver the free peoples of the world from the menace and
the actual power of a vast military establishment controlled by an
irresponsible Government, which, having secretly planned to dominate
the world, proceeded to carry the plan out without regard either to
the sacred obligations of treaty or the long-established practices
and long-cherished principles of international action and honor;
which chose its own time for the war; delivered its blow fiercely and
suddenly; stopped at no barrier either of law or of mercy; swept a
whole continent within the tide of blood--not the blood of soldiers
only, but the blood of innocent women and children also, and of the
helpless poor; and now stands balked but not defeated, the enemy of
four-fifths of the world. This power is not the German people. It is
the ruthless master of the German people. It is no business of ours
how that great people came under its control or submitted with
temporary zest to the domination of its purpose; but it is our
business to see to it that the history of the rest of the world is no
longer left to its handling.
To deal with such a power by way of peace upon the plan proposed by
His Holiness the Pope would, so far as we can see, involve a
recuperation of its strength and a renewal of its policy; would make
it necessary to create a permanent hostile combination of nations
against the German people who are its instruments; and would result
in abandoning the new-born Russia to the intrigue, the manifold
subtle interference, and the certain counter-revolution which would
be attempted by all the malign influences to which the German
Government has of late accustomed the world. Can peace be based upon
a restitution of its power or upon any word of honor it could pledge
in a treaty of settlement and accommodation?
Responsible statesmen must now everywhere see, if they never saw
before, that no peace can rest securely upon political or economic
restrictions meant to benefit some nations and cripple or embarrass
others, upon vindictive action of any sort, or any kind of revenge or
deliberate injury. The American people have suffered intolerable
wrongs at the hands of the Imperial German Government, but they
desire no reprisal upon the German people, who have themselves
suffered all things in this war which they did not choose. They
believe that peace should rest upon the rights of peoples, not the
rights of governments--the rights of peoples great or small, weak or
powerful--their equal right to freedom and security and
self-government and to a participation upon fair terms in the
economic opportunities of the world, the German people, of course,
included, if they will accept equality and not seek domination.
The test, therefore, of every plan of peace is this: Is it based upon
the faith of all the peoples involved or merely upon the word of an
ambitious and intriguing Government on the one hand, and of a group
of free peoples on the other? This is a test which goes to the root
of the matter; and it is the test which must be applied.
THE 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 repaired, but not at the expense of the sovereignty of any
people--rather a vindication of the sovereignty both of those that
are weak and of those that are strong. Punitive damages, the
dismemberment of empires, the establishment of selfish and exclusive
economic leagues, we deem inexpedient and in the end worse than
futile, no proper basis for a peace of any kind, least of all for an
enduring peace. That must be based upon justice and fairness and the
common rights of mankind.
THE GERMAN RULERS CANNOT BE TRUSTED
We cannot take the word of the present rulers of Germany as a
guaranty of anything that is to endure, unless explicitly supported
by such conclusive evidence of the will and purpose of the German
people themselves as the other peoples of the world would be
justified in accepting. Without such guarantees treaties of
settlement, agreements for disarmament, 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
evidence of the purposes of the great peoples of the Central Powers.
God grant it may be given soon, and in a way to restore the
confidence of all peoples everywhere in the faith of nations and the
possibility of a covenanted peace.
ROBERT LANSING,
Secretary of State of the United States of America.
XIII
A MESSAGE TO TEACHERS AND SCHOOL OFFICERS
(_September 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 urgent demand
for the production and proper distribution of food and other national
resources has made us aware of the close dependence of individual on
individual and nation on nation. The effort to keep up social and
industrial organizations, in spite of the withdrawal of men for the
army, has revealed the extent to which modern life has become complex
and specialized.
These and other lessons of the war must be learned quickly if we are
intelligently and successfully to defend our institutions. When the
war is over we must apply the wisdom which 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
possibilities the common school must have large part. I urge that
teachers and other school officers increase materially the time and
attention devoted to instruction bearing 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 appropriate merely to the period of
the war. It is a plea for a realization in public education of the
new emphasis which the war has given to the ideals of democracy and
to the broader conceptions of national life.
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 organize the proper agencies for the
preparation and distribution of suitable lessons for the elementary
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 stimulating teachers in all parts
of the country to formulate new and appropriate materials drawn
directly from the communities in which they live.
WOODROW WILSON.
XIV
WOMAN SUFFRAGE MUST COME NOW
(_October 25, 1917_)
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. Whitehouse, 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. Whitehouse, 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 foundations 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 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 consciousness of mankind with regard
to political questions that the speed of reconstruction will be
greatly increased. And I believe that just because we 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 perhaps
may be touched a little too much by the traditions of our politics,
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 suffrage. 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 make that possible, I am
glad to have the privilege to ask you to convey that message to them.
It seems to me that this is a time of privilege. All our 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 practical sense they have learned the lessons of
democracy--that they are fighting for democracy because they believe
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, 1917_)
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 better than mere peace of mind and prosperity of enterprise.
We have been given the opportunity to serve mankind as we once served
ourselves in the great day of our declaration of independence, by
taking up arms against a tyranny that threatened to master and debase
men everywhere and joining with other free peoples in demanding for
all the nations of the world what we then demanded and obtained for
ourselves. In this day of the revelation of our duty not only to
defend our rights as a Nation, but to defend also the rights of free
men throughout the world, there has been vouchsafed us in full and
inspiring measure the resolution and spirit of united action. We have
been brought to one mind and purpose. A new vigor of common counsel
and common action has been revealed in us.
We should especially thank God that, in such circumstances, in the
midst of the greatest enterprise the spirits of men have ever entered
upon, we have, if we but observe a reasonable and practicable
economy, abundance with which to supply the needs of those associated
with us as well as our own.
A new light shines about us. The great duties of a new day awaken a
new and greater national spirit in us. We shall never again be
divided or wonder what stuff we are made of.
And while we render thanks for these things, let us pray Almighty God
that in all humbleness of spirit we may look always to Him for
guidance; that we may be kept constant in the spirit and purpose of
service; that by His grace our minds may be directed and our hands
strengthened, and that in His good time liberty and security and
peace and the comradeship of a common justice may be vouchsafed all
the nations of the earth.
Wherefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States of
America, do hereby designate Thursday, the 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 worship 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 Federation of Labor, assembled in
convention at Buffalo, New York, the President spoke as follows:
Mr. President, Delegates of the American Federation of Labor, Ladies
and Gentlemen,--I esteem it a great privilege and a real honor to be
thus admitted to your public councils. When your executive committee
paid me the compliment of inviting me here I gladly accepted the
invitation, because it seems to me that this, above all other times
in your history, is the time for common counsel, 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
the background and regard me as one of your fellow-citizens who has
come here to speak, not the words of authority, but the words of
counsel, the words which men should speak to one another who wish to
be frank in a moment more critical, perhaps, than the history of the
world has ever yet known, a moment when it is every man's duty to
forget himself, to forget his own interests, to fill himself with the
nobility of a great national and world conception and act upon a new
platform elevated above the ordinary affairs of life, 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 Germany in
the world was--as enviable a position as any nation has ever
occupied. The whole world stood at admiration of her wonderful
intellectual and material achievements, and all the intellectual men
of the world went to school to her. As a university man I have been
surrounded by men trained in Germany, men who had resorted to Germany
because nowhere else could they get such thorough and searching
training, particularly in the principles of science and the
principles that underlie modern material achievements.
Her men of science had made her industries perhaps the most competent
industries in the world, and the label, "Made in Germany," was a
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 statistics of Germany. Her old cities took on youth, grew
faster than any American cities ever grew; her old industries opened
their eyes and saw a new world and went out for its conquest, and yet
the authorities of Germany were not satisfied.
You have one part of the answer to the question why she was not
satisfied in her methods of competition. There is no important
industry in Germany upon which the Government 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
international competition to find out the methods of competition
which the German manufacturers and exporters used under the patronage
and support of the Government of Germany. You will find that they
were the same sorts of competition that we have 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 anyhow; and the conditions of competition were thus
controlled in large measure by the German Government itself.
But that did not satisfy the German Government. All the while there
was lying behind its thought, in its dreams of the future, a
political control which would enable it, in the long run, to dominate
the labor and the industry of the world.
SUCCESS BY AUTHORITY
They were not content with success by superior achievement; they
wanted success by authority. I suppose very few of you have thought
much about the Berlin to Bagdad railway. The Berlin to Bagdad railway
was constructed in order to run the threat of force down the flank of
the industrial undertakings of half a dozen other countries, so that
when German competition came in it would not be resisted too
far--because there was always the possibility of getting German
armies into the heart of that country quicker than any other armies
could be got there.
Look at the map of Europe now. Germany, in thrusting upon us again
and again the discussion of peace, talks about what? Talks about
Belgium, talks about northern France, talks about Alsace-Lorraine.
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 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 wish, in their pride and proper spirit of nationality, to
be so absorbed and dominated.
THE POLITICAL POWER OF 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 interest of the people can
live in the presence of a Germany powerful enough to undermine or
overthrow them by intrigue or force?
Any body of free men that compounds with the present German
Government is compounding for its own destruction. But that is not
the whole of the story. Any man in America or anywhere else who
supposes that the free industry and enterprise of the world can
continue if the Pan-German plan is achieved and German power fastened
upon the world is as fatuous as the dreamers of Russia.
What I am opposed to is not the feeling of the pacifists, but their
stupidity. My heart is with them, but my mind has a contempt for
them. I want peace, but I know how to get it, and they do not.
You will notice that I sent a friend of mine, Colonel House, to
Europe, 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 allowed 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 American spirit. Our duty, if we are to do
this great thing and show America to be what we believe her to be,
the greatest hope and energy 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 conditions of labor are not rendered more onerous by
the war--but also that we shall see to it that the instrumentalities
by which the conditions of labor are improved are not blocked or
checked. That we must do. That has been the matter about which I have
taken pleasure in conferring, from time to time, with your president,
Mr. Gompers; and if I may be permitted to do so, I want to express my
admiration of his patriotic courage, his large vision, his
statesman-like 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 nobody must interrupt the
processes of our energy if the interruption can possibly be avoided
without the absolute invasion of freedom. To put it concretely, that
means this: Nobody has a right to stop the processes of labor until
all the methods of 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 speaking 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 personally 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. Moreover, a settlement is always hard to avoid when
the parties can be brought face to face. I can differ with a man much
more radically when he isn't in the room than I can when he is in the
room, because then the awkward thing is that he can come back at me
and answer what I say. It is always 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 there
discuss the issues between them, and not separately in places which
have no communication with each other.
I like to remind myself of a delightful saying 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 stuttered 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 believe 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 groups in a common enterprise, which is to release the
spirits of the world from bondage. I would be willing to set that up
as the final test of an American. That is the meaning of democracy.
I have been very much distressed, my fellow-citizens, by some of the
things that have happened recently. The mob spirit is displaying
itself here and there in this country. I have no sympathy with what
some men are saying, but I have no sympathy with the men 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 country whose object is anarchy
and the destruction of the law. I despise and hate their purpose 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 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 manifestations 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
bidding in different markets and unfairly upsetting the whole
competition of labor which ought not to go on--I mean now, on the
part of employers--and we must interject into this some
instrumentality of co-operation by which the fair thing will be done
all around.
I am hopeful that some such instrumentalities may be devised, but
whether they are or not we must use those that we have, and upon
every occasion where it is necessary to have such an instrumentality,
originated upon that occasion, if necessary.
And so, my fellow-citizens, the reason that I came away from
Washington is that I sometimes get lonely down there--there are so
many people in Washington who know things that are not so, and there
are so few people in Washington who know anything about what the
people of the United States are thinking 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 significance for us. I shall not
undertake to detail or even to summarize these events. The practical
particulars of the part we have played in them will be laid before
you in the reports of the executive departments. I shall discuss only
our present outlook upon these vast affairs, our present duties and
the immediate means of accomplishing the objects we shall hold always
in view.
I shall not go back to debate the causes of the war. The intolerable
wrongs done and planned against us by the sinister masters of Germany
have long since become too grossly obvious and odious to every true
American to need to be rehearsed. But I shall ask you to consider
again, and with very grave scrutiny, our objectives and the measures
by which we mean to attain them; for the purpose of discussion here
in this place is action, and our action must move straight toward
definite ends. Our object is, of course, to win the war, and we shall
not slacken or suffer ourselves to be diverted until it is won. But
it is worth while asking and answering the question, When shall we
consider the war won?
From one point of view it is not necessary to broach this fundamental
matter. I do not doubt that the American people know what the war is
about, and what sort of an outcome they will regard as a realization
of their purpose in it. As a nation we are united in spirit and
intention.
I pay little heed to those who tell me otherwise. I hear the voices
of dissent--who does not? I hear the criticism and the clamor of the
noisily thoughtless and troublesome. I also see men here and there
fling themselves in impotent disloyalty against the calm, indomitable
power of the Nation. I hear men debate peace who understand neither
its nature nor the way in which we may attain it, with uplifted eyes
and unbroken spirits. But I know that none of these speaks for the
Nation. They do not touch the heart of anything. They may safely be
left to strut about their uneasy hour and be forgotten.
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 settlement of its searching
issues. We are the spokesmen of the American people, and they have a
right to know whether their purpose is ours. They desire peace by the
overcoming of evil, but the defeat once and for all of the sinister
forces that interrupt peace and render it impossible, and they wish
to know how closely our thought runs with theirs and what action we
propose. They are 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 when this Thing and its
power are indeed defeated and the time comes that we can discuss
peace--when the German people have spokesmen whose word we can
believe, and when those spokesmen are ready, in the name of their
people, to accept the common judgment of the nations as to what shall
henceforth be the bases of law and of covenant for the life of the
world--we shall be willing and glad to pay the full price for peace
and pay it ungrudgingly. We know what that price will be. It will be
full, impartial justice--justice done at every point and to every
nation that the final settlement must affect, our enemies as well as
our friends.
You catch with me the voices of humanity that are in the air. They
grow daily more audible, more articulate, more persuasive, and they
come from the hearts of men everywhere. They insist that the war
shall not end in vindictive action of any kind; that no nation or
people shall be robbed or punished because the irresponsible rulers
of a single country have themselves done deep and abominable wrong.
It is this thought that has been expressed in the formula, "No
annexations, no contributions, no punitive indemnities."
THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA LED ASTRAY
Just because this crude formula expresses the instinctive judgment as
to the right of plain men everywhere, it has been made diligent use
of by the masters of German intrigue to lead the people of 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
undefeated as the present masters of Germany command. Not until that
has been done can right be set up as arbiter and peacemaker among the
nations. But when that has been done--as, God willing, it assuredly
will be--we shall at last be free to do an unprecedented thing, and
this is the time to avow our purpose to do it. We shall be free to
base peace on generosity and justice, to the exclusion of all selfish
claims to advantage, even on the part of the victors.
Let there be no misunderstanding. Our present and immediate task is
to win the war, and nothing shall turn us aside from it until it is
accomplished. Every power and resource we possess, whether of men, of
money, or of materials, is being devoted, and will continue to be
devoted, to that purpose until it is achieved. Those who desire to
bring peace about before that purpose is achieved I counsel to carry
their advice elsewhere. We will not entertain it.
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 established a power over other
lands and peoples than their own--over the great empire of
Austria-Hungary, over hitherto free Balkan states, over Turkey, and
within Asia--which must be relinquished.
Germany's success by skill, by industry, by knowledge, by enterprise,
we did not grudge or oppose, but admired rather. She had built up for
herself a real empire of trade and influence, secured by the peace of
the world. We were content to abide the rivalries of manufacture,
science and commerce that were involved for us in her success, and
stand or fall as we had or did not have the brains and the initiative
to surpass her. But at the moment when she had conspicuously won her
triumphs of peace she threw them away to establish in their stead
what the world will no longer permit to be established--military and
political domination by arms, by which to oust where she could not
excel the rivals she most feared and hated.
The peace we make must remedy that wrong. It must deliver the once
fair lands and happy peoples of Belgium and northern France from the
Prussian conquest and the Prussian menace, but it must also deliver
the peoples of Austria-Hungary, the peoples of the Balkans, and the
peoples of Turkey, alike in Europe and in Asia, from the impudent and
alien domination of the Prussian military and commercial autocracy.
We owe it, however, to ourselves to say that we do not wish in any
way to impair or to rearrange the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It is no
affair of ours what they do with their own life, either industrially
or politically. We do not purpose nor desire to dictate to them in
any way. We only desire to see that their affairs are left in their
own hands, in all matters, great or small. We shall hope to secure
for the peoples of the Balkan peninsula and for the people of the
Turkish Empire the right and opportunity to make their own lives
safe, their own fortunes secure against oppression or injustice and
from the dictation of foreign courts or parties, and our attitude and
purpose with regard to Germany herself are of a like kind.
OUR ATTITUDE TOWARD GERMANY
We intend no wrong against the German Empire, 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 falseness. We
are, in fact, fighting for their emancipation from fear, along with
our own, from the fear as well as from the fact of unjust attack by
neighbors or rivals or schemers after world empire. No one is
threatening the existence or the independence or the peaceful
enterprise of the German Empire.
The worst that can happen to the detriment of the German people is
this, that if they should still, after the war is over, continue to
be obliged to live under ambitious and intriguing masters interested
to disturb the peace of the world, men or classes of men whom the
other peoples of the world could not trust, it might be impossible to
admit them to the partnership of nations which must henceforth
guarantee the world's peace. That partnership must be a partnership
of peoples, not a mere partnership of governments.
It might be impossible, also, in such untoward circumstances, to
admit Germany to the free economic intercourse which must inevitably
spring out of the other partnerships of a real peace. But there would
be no aggression in that; and such a situation, inevitable because 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, committed in this war will have to
be righted. That of course. But they cannot and must not be righted
by the commission of similar wrongs against Germany and her allies.
The world will not permit the commission of similar wrongs as a means
of reparation and settlement. Statesmen must by this time have
learned that the opinion of the world is everywhere wide awake and
fully comprehends the issues involved. No representative of any
self-governed nation will dare disregard it by attempting any such
covenants of selfishness and compromise as were entered into at the
congress of Vienna.
The thought of the plain people here and 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 henceforth breathe if they would live. It is in the
full disclosing light of that thought that all policies must be
conceived and executed in this midday hour of the world's life.
German rulers have been able to upset the peace of the world only
because the German people were not suffered, under their tutelage, to
share the comradeship of the other peoples of the world either in
thought or in purpose. They were allowed to have no opinion of their
own which might be set up as a rule of conduct for those who
exercised authority over them. But the congress that concludes this
war will feel the full strength of the tides that run now in the
hearts and consciences of free men everywhere. Its conclusions will
run with those tides.
All these things have been true from the very beginning of this
stupendous war; and I cannot help thinking that if they had been made
plain at the very outset the sympathy and enthusiasm of the Russian
people might have been once for all enlisted on the side of the
Allies, suspicion and distrust swept away, and a real and lasting
union of purpose effected. Had they believed these things at the very
moment of their revolution, and had they been confirmed in that
belief since, the sad reverses which have recently marked the
progress of their affairs toward an ordered and stable government of
free men might have been avoided.
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 declarations of purpose, to add these specific
interpretations to what I took the liberty of saying to the Senate in
January. Our entrance into the war has not altered our attitude
toward the settlement that must come when it is over. When I said in
January that the nations of the world were entitled not only to free
pathways upon the sea, but also to assured and unmolested access to
those pathways, I was thinking, and I am thinking now, not of the
smaller and weaker nations alone, which need our countenance and
support, but also of the great and powerful nations, and of our
present enemies as well as our present associates in the war. I was
thinking, and am thinking now, of Austria herself, among the rest, as
well as of Serbia and of Poland. Justice and equality of rights can
be had only at a great price. We are seeking permanent, not
temporary, foundations for the peace of the world, and must seek them
candidly and fearlessly. As always, the right will prove to be the
expedient.
What shall we do, then, to push this great war of freedom and justice
to its righteous conclusion? We must clear away with a thorough hand
all impediments to success, and we must make every adjustment of law
that will facilitate the full and free use of our whole capacity and
force as a fighting unit.
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
earnestly recommend that the Congress immediately declare the United
States in a state of war with Austria-Hungary. Does it seem strange
to you that this should be the conclusion of the argument I have just
addressed to you? It is not. It is, in fact, the inevitable logic of
what I have said. Austria-Hungary is for the time being not her own
mistress, but simply the vassal of the German Government. We must
face the facts as they are and act upon them without sentiment in
this stern business.
The Government of Austria-Hungary is not acting upon its own
initiative or in response to the wishes and feelings of its own
peoples, but as the 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 liberty of proposing to you certain other acts of
legislation which seem to me to be needed for the support of the war
and for the release of our whole force and energy.
It will be necessary to extend in certain particulars the legislation
of the last session with regard to alien enemies; and also necessary,
I believe, to create a very definite and particular control over the
entrance and departure of all persons into and from the United
States.
Legislation should be enacted defining as a criminal 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 should be
included under the terms of the acts placing restraints upon alien
enemies. It is likely that as time goes on many alien enemies will be
willing to be fed and housed at the expense of the Government in the
detention camps, and it would be the purpose of the legislation I
have suggested to confine offenders among them in penitentiaries and
other similar 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 profiteering in
several branches of industry, it still runs impudently rampant in
others. The farmers, for example, complain with a great deal of
justice that, while the regulation of food prices restricts their
incomes, no restraints are placed upon the prices of most of the
things they must themselves purchase; and similar inequities obtain
on all sides.
It is imperatively necessary that the consideration of the full use
of the water power of the country, and also the consideration of the
systematic and yet economical development of such of the natural
resources of the country as are still under the control of the
Federal Government, should be resumed and affirmatively and
constructively dealt with at the earliest possible moment. The
pressing need of such legislation is daily becoming more obvious.
The legislation proposed at the last session with regard to regulated
combinations among our exporters, in order to provide for our foreign
trade a more effective organization and method of 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 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 necessary before the present
Congress adjourns, in order to effect the most efficient
co-ordination and operation of the railway and other transportation
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
omission. What I am perfectly clear about is that, in the present
session of the Congress, our whole attention and energy should be
concentrated on the vigorous and rapid and successful prosecution of
the great task of winning the war.
We can do this with all the greater zeal and 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 straight at the very heart of
everything we believe in; their methods of warfare outrage every
principle of humanity and of knightly honor; their intrigue has
corrupted the very thought and spirit of many of our people; their
sinister and secret diplomacy has sought to take our very territory
away from us and disrupt the union of the States. Our safety would be
at an end, our honor forever sullied and brought into contempt, were
we to permit their triumph. They are striking at the very existence
of democracy and liberty.
It is because it is for us a war of high, disinterested purpose, in
which all the free people of the world are banded together for the
vindication of right, a war for the preservation of our nation and of
all that it has held dear of principle and of purpose, that we feel
ourselves doubly constrained to propose for its outcome only that
which is righteous and of irreproachable intention, for our foes as
well as for our friends.
The cause being just and holy, the settlement must be of like motive
and quality. For this we can fight, but for nothing less noble or
less worthy of our traditions. For this cause we entered the war, and
for this cause 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
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, President of the United States of
America, do hereby proclaim to all whom it may concern that a state
of war exists between the United States and the Imperial and Royal
Austro-Hungarian Government, and I do specially direct all officers,
civil or military, of the United States that they exercise vigilance
and zeal in the discharge of the duties incident to such a state of
war.
And I do, moreover, earnestly appeal to all American citizens that
they, in loyal devotion to their country, dedicated from its
foundation to the principles of liberty and justice, uphold the laws
of the land and give undivided and willing support to those measures
which may be adopted by the constitutional authorities 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 authority vested in me by the
Constitution of the United States, and the aforesaid 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, 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
information, aid or comfort to the enemies of the United
States.
And to comply strictly with the regulations which are
hereby or which may be, from time to time, promulgated by
the President.
And so long as they shall conduct themselves in accordance
with law, they shall be undisturbed in the peaceful
pursuit of their lives and occupations and be accorded the
consideration due to all peaceful and law-abiding persons,
except so far as restrictions may be 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 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 friendliness as may be
compatible with loyalty and allegiance to the United States.
And 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, who fail to
conduct themselves as so enjoined, in addition to all other penalties
prescribed by law, shall be liable to restraint or to give security,
or to remove and depart from the United States in the manner
prescribed by Sections 4069 and 4070 of the Revised 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 following regulations, which I find necessary in the
premises, and for the public safety:
1. 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
the United States until he shall have received such permit
as the President shall prescribe, or except under order of
a court, judge or justice, under 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 reasonable
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 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.
XIX
THE GOVERNMENT TAKES OVER THE RAILROADS
(_A Statement by the President, December 26, 1917_)
I have exercised the powers over the transportation systems of the
country which were granted me by the Act of Congress of August, 1916,
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 employed under a single authority and a simplified
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 utmost that
it was possible for them to do; have done it with patriotic zeal and
with great ability; 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 willingly and with
admirable public spirit accepting 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 Government and the financial interests of
the railways must be brought under a common direction. 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.
INVESTORS TO BE PROTECTED
Investors in railway securities may rest assured 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 recommend that
these definite guarantees be given:
First, of course, that the railway properties will be maintained
during the period of Federal control in as good repair and as
complete equipment as when taken over by the Government, and, second,
that the roads shall receive a net operating income equal in each
case to the average net income of the three years preceding June 30,
1917; 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 owners 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 consideration, the best results can be obtained
under the immediate executive direction of the Hon. William G.
McAdoo, whose practical experience peculiarly fits him for the
service, and whose authority as Secretary of the Treasury will enable
him to co-ordinate, as no other man could, the many financial
interests which will be involved and which might, unless
systematically directed, suffer very embarrassing entanglements.
A RECOGNITION OF 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 patriotic motive could have
accomplished the necessary unification of administration, it would
certainly have been accomplished; but no zeal or ability could
overcome insuperable obstacles and I have deemed it my duty to
recognize that fact in all candor, now that it is demonstrated, and
to use without reserve the great authority reposed in me.
A great national necessity dictated the action, 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 exercise of the
constitutional authority vested in them, by joint resolution of the
Senate and House of Representatives, bearing date April 6, 1917,
resolved:
"That the state of war between the United States and the
Imperial German Government which has thus been thrust upon
the United States is hereby formally declared, and that
the President be, and he is hereby, authorized and
directed to employ the entire naval and military forces of
the United States and the resources of the Government to
carry on war against the Imperial German Government, and
to bring the conflict to a successful termination, all of
the resources of the country are hereby pledged by the
Congress of the United States."
And by joint resolution bearing date of December 7, 1917, 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 directed to employ the
entire naval and military forces of the United States and
the resources of the Government to carry on war against
the Imperial and Royal Austro-Hungarian Government, and to
bring the conflict to a successful termination, all the
resources of the country are hereby pledged by the
Congress of the United States."
And whereas, it is provided by Section 1 of the act approved August
29, 1916, entitled "An act making appropriations for the support of
the army for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1917, and for other
purposes," as follows:
"The President, in time of war, is empowered, through the
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 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
possession and assume control at 12 o'clock noon on the twenty-eighth
day of December, 1917, 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 associations, sleeping and parlor cars,
private cars and private car lines, elevators, warehouses, telegraph
and telephone lines and all other equipment and appurtenances
commonly 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 utilized for the transfer and
transportation of troops, war material and equipment to the exclusion
so far as may be necessary of all other traffic thereon, and that so
far as such exclusive use be not necessary or desirable, such systems
of transportation be operated and utilized in the performance of such
other services as the national interest may require and of the usual
and ordinary business and duties of common carriers.
It is hereby directed that the possession, control, operation 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 various 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 determine, such systems of
transportation shall remain subject to all existing statutes and
orders of the Interstate Commerce Commission, and to all statutes and
orders of regulating commissions of the various States in which said
systems or any part thereof may be situated. But any orders, general
or special, hereafter made by said director shall have paramount
authority and be obeyed as such.
Nothing herein shall be construed as now affecting the possession,
operation and control of street electric 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 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 assumed such
possession and control enter upon negotiations with the several
companies looking to agreements for just and reasonable compensation
for the possession, use and control of the respective properties on
the basis of an annual guaranteed compensation, above accruing
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 June 30, 1917--the results of such
negotiations to be reported to me for such action as may be
appropriate and lawful.
But nothing herein contained, expressed or implied, or hereafter done
or suffered hereunder, shall be deemed in any way to impair the
rights of the stockholders, bondholders, creditors and other persons
having interests 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 assumed.
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 mesne process or on execution shall be levied on or against any of
the property used by any of said transportation systems, in the
conduct of their 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,
1917, 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, 1917.
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
Independence 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, 1918_)
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 approved
August 29, 1916, I took possession and assumed control of the railway
lines of the country and the systems of water transportation under
their control. This step seemed to be imperatively necessary in the
interest of the public welfare, in the presence of the great tasks of
war with which we are now dealing. As our experience develops
difficulties and makes it clear what they are, I have deemed it my
duty to remove those difficulties wherever I have the legal power to
do so.
To assume control of the vast railway systems of the country is, I
realize, a very great responsibility, but to fail to do so in the
existing circumstances would have been much greater. 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. Unless it be under a single and unified
direction, the whole process of the nation's action is embarrassed.
It was in the true spirit of America, and it was right, that we
should first try to effect the necessary unification under the
voluntary action of those who were in charge of the great railway
properties, and we did try it. The directors of the railways
responded to the need promptly and generously. The group of railway
executives who were charged with the task of actual co-ordination and
general direction performed their difficult duties with patriotic
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
circumstances. If I have taken the task out of their hands, it has
not been because of any dereliction or failure on their part, but
only because there were some things which the Government can do, and
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 entire equipment of the several systems of
transportation be fully and unreservedly thrown into a common service
without injurious discrimination against particular properties; only
under Government administration can absolutely unrestricted and
unembarrassed common use be made of all tracks, terminal facilities
and equipment of every kind. Only under that authority can new
terminals be constructed and developed without regard to the
requirements or limitations of particular roads. But under Government
administration all these things will be possible--not instantly, but
as fast as practical difficulties, which cannot be merely conjured
away, give way before the new management.
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. We are serving the public interest and
safeguarding the public safety, but we are also regardful of the
interest of those by whom these great properties are owned and glad
to avail ourselves of the experience and trained ability of those who
have been managing them. It is necessary that the transportation of
troops and of war materials, of food and of fuel, and of everything
that is necessary for the full mobilization of the energies and
resources of the country, should be first considered; but it is
clearly in the public interest also that the ordinary activities and
the normal industrial and commercial life of the country should be
interfered with and dislocated as little as possible, and the public
may rest assured that the interest 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 Executive suffices for all
purposes of administration, and while, of course, all private
interests must for the present give way to the public necessity, it
is, I am sure you will agree with me, right and necessary that the
owners and creditors of the railways, the holders of their stocks and
bonds, should receive from the Government an unqualified guarantee
that their properties will be maintained throughout the period of
Federal control in as good repair and as complete equipment as at
present, and that the several roads will receive, under Federal
management, such compensation as is equitable and just alike to their
owners and to the general public. I would suggest the average net
railway operating income of the three years ending June 30, 1917. I
earnestly recommend that these guarantees be given by appropriate
legislation, and given as promptly as circumstances permit.
I need not point out the essential justice of such guarantees and
their great influence and significance as elements in the present
financial and industrial situation of the country. Indeed, one of the
strong arguments for assuming 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 financial operations every year necessary in connection with
the maintenance, operation and development of the roads should,
during the period of the war, be wisely 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 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 Treasury,
and no fundamental industrial values should anywhere be unnecessarily
impaired. In the hands of many thousands of small investors in the
country, as well as in national banks, in insurance companies, in
savings banks, in trust companies, in financial agencies 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 control of this new
executive task. At our request, he consented to assume the authority
and duties of organizer and director-general of the new railway
administration. He has assumed those duties, and his work is in
active progress.
It is probably too much to expect that, even under the unified
railway administration which will now be possible, sufficient
economies can be effected in the operation of the railways to make it
possible to add to their equipment and extend their operative
facilities as much as the present extraordinary demands upon their
use will render desirable, without resorting to the national Treasury
for the funds. If it is not possible, it will, of course, be
necessary to resort to the Congress for grants of money for that
purpose. The Secretary of the Treasury will advise with your
committees with regard to this very practical aspect of the matter.
For the present, I suggest only the guarantees I have indicated and
such appropriations as are necessary at the outset of this task.
I take the liberty of expressing the hope that the Congress may grant
these promptly and ungrudgingly. We are dealing with great matters,
and will, I am sure, deal with them greatly.
XXI
THE TERMS OF PEACE
(_January 8, 1918_)
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 desires to
discuss the objects of the war and the possible basis of a general
peace. Parleys have been in progress at Brest-Litovsk between Russian
representatives and representatives of the Central Powers to which
the attention of all the belligerents has been invited for the
purpose of ascertaining whether it may be possible to extend these
parleys into a general conference with regard to terms of peace and
settlement.
The Russian representatives presented not only a perfectly definite
statement of the principles upon which they would be willing to
conclude peace, but also an equally definite program of the concrete
application of those principles. The representatives of the Central
Powers, on their part, presented an outline of settlement which, if
much less definite, seemed susceptible of liberal interpretation
until their specific program of practical terms was added. That
program proposed no concessions at all, either to the sovereignty of
Russia or to the preferences of the population with whose fortunes it
dealt, but meant, in a word, that the Central Empires were to keep
every foot of territory their armed forces had occupied--every
province, every city, every point of vantage--as a permanent addition
to their territories and their power. It is a reasonable conjecture
that the general principles of settlement which they at first
suggested originated with the more liberal statesmen of Germany and
Austria, the men who have begun to feel the force of their own
people's thought and purpose, while the concrete terms of actual
settlement came from the military leaders who have no thought but to
keep what they have got. The negotiations have been broken off. The
Russian representatives were sincere and in earnest. They cannot
entertain such proposals of conquest and domination.
SIGNIFICANCE IN PARLEYS
The whole incident is full of significance. It is also full of
perplexity. With whom are 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 imperialistic 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 9th of
July last, the spirit and intention of the Liberal leaders and
parties of Germany, or to those who resist and defy that spirit and
intention and insist upon conquest and subjugation? Or are we
listening, in fact, to both, unreconciled and in open and hopeless
contradiction? These are very serious and pregnant questions. Upon
the answer to them depends the peace of the world.
But, whatever the results of the parleys at Brest-Litovsk, whatever
the confusions of counsel and of purpose in the utterances of the
spokesmen of the Central Empires, they have again attempted to
acquaint the world with their objects in the war and have again
challenged their adversaries to say what their objects are and what
sort of settlement they would deem just and satisfactory. There is no
good reason why that challenge should not be responded to and
responded to with the utmost candor. We did not wait for it. Not
once, but again and again, we have laid our whole thought and purpose
before the world, not in general terms only, but each time with
sufficient definition to make it clear what sort of definitive terms
of settlement must necessarily spring out of them.
LLOYD GEORGE'S AIMS APPROVED
Within the last week Mr. Lloyd George has spoken with admirable
candor and in admirable spirit for the people and Government of Great
Britain. There is no confusion of counsel among the adversaries of
the Central Powers, no uncertainty of principle, no vagueness of
detail. The only secrecy of counsel, the only lack of fearless
frankness, the only failure to make definite statement of the objects
of the war lies with Germany and her allies. The issues of life and
death hang upon these definitions. No statesman who has the least
conception of his responsibility ought for a moment to permit himself
to continue this tragical and appalling outpouring of blood and
treasure unless he is sure beyond a peradventure that the objects of
the vital sacrifice are part and parcel of the very life of society,
and that the people for whom he speaks think them right and
imperative, as he does.
There is, moreover, a voice calling for these definitions of
principle and of purpose which is, it seems to me, more thrilling and
more compelling than any of the many moving voices with which the
troubled air of the world is filled. It is the voice of the Russian
people. They are prostrate and all but helpless, it would seem,
before the grim power of Germany, which has hitherto known no
relenting and no pity. Their power apparently is shattered. And yet
their soul is not subservient. They will not yield either in
principle or in action. Their conception of what is right, of what it
is humane and honorable for them to accept, has been stated with a
frankness, a largeness of view, a generosity of spirit and a
universal human sympathy which must challenge the admiration of every
friend of mankind; and they have refused to compound their ideals or
desert others that they themselves may be safe.
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 that the people of the United States would wish me to respond
with utter simplicity and frankness. Whether their present leaders
believe it or not, it is our heartfelt desire and hope that some way
may be opened whereby we may be privileged to assist the people of
Russia to attain their utmost hope of liberty and ordered peace.
It will be our wish and purpose that the processes of peace, when
they are begun, shall be absolutely open, and that they shall involve
and permit henceforth no secret understandings of any kind. The day
of conquest and aggrandizement is gone by; so is also the day of
secret covenants entered into in the interest of particular
governments and likely, at some unlooked-for moment, to upset the
peace of the world. It is this happy fact, now clear to the view of
every public man whose thoughts do not still linger in an age that is
dead and gone, which makes it possible for every nation whose
purposes are consistent with justice and the peace of the world to
avow now, or at any other time, the objects it has in view.
We entered this war because violations of right had occurred which
touched us to the quick and made the life of our own people
impossible unless they were corrected and the world secured once for
all against their recurrence. What we demand in this war, therefore,
is nothing peculiar to ourselves. It is that the world be made fit
and safe to live in; and particularly that it be made safe for every
peace-loving nation which, like our own, wishes to live its own life,
determine its own institutions, 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, therefore, is our program, and that
program, the only possible program, as we see it, is this:
I. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there
shall be no private international understandings of any kind, but
diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.
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
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 sovereignty the interests of the
populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable
claims of the Government whose title is to be determined.
VI. The evacuation of all Russian territory and such a settlement of
all questions affecting Russia as will secure the best and freest
co-operation of the other nations of the world in obtaining for her
an unhampered and unembarrassed opportunity for the independent
determination of her own political development and national policy
and assure her of a sincere welcome into the society of free nations
under institutions of her own choosing; and, more than a welcome,
assistance also of every kind that she may need and may herself
desire. The treatment accorded Russia by her sister nations will be
the acid test of their good will, of their comprehension of her needs
as distinguished from their own interests and of their intelligent
and unselfish sympathy.
BELGIUM MUST BE RESTORED
VII. Belgium, the whole world will agree, must be evacuated and
restored, without any attempt to limit the sovereignty which she
enjoys in common with all other free nations. No other single act
will serve as this will serve to restore confidence among the nations
in the laws which they have themselves set and determined for the
government of their relations with one another. Without this healing
act the whole structure and validity of international law is forever
impaired.
VIII. All French territory should be freed and the invaded portions
restored, and the wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the
matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which has unsettled the peace of the world
for nearly fifty years, should be righted, in order that peace may
once more be made secure in the interest of all.
IX. A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along
clearly recognizable lines of nationality.
X. The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we
wish to see safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the freest
opportunity of autonomous development.
XI. Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro should be evacuated; occupied
territories restored; Serbia accorded free and secure access to the
sea; and the relations of the several Balkan states to one another
determined by friendly counsel along historically established lines
of allegiance and nationality; and international guarantees of the
political and economic independence and territorial integrity of the
several Balkan states should be entered into.
XII. The Turkish portions of the present Ottoman Empire should be
assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are
now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of
life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous
development, and the Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a
free passage to the ships and commerce of all nations under
international 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 free and 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
alike.
In regard to these essential rectifications of wrong and assertions
of right, we feel ourselves to be intimate partners of all the
Governments and peoples associated together against the imperialists.
We cannot be separated in interest or divided in purpose. We stand
together until the end.
For such arrangements and covenants we are willing to fight, and to
continue to fight, until they are achieved; but only because we wish
the right to prevail and desire a just and stable peace, such as can
be secured only by removing the chief provocations to war, which this
program does remove. We have no jealousy of German greatness, and
there is nothing in this program that impairs it. We grudge her no
achievement or distinction of learning or of pacific enterprise, such
as have made her record very bright and very enviable. We do not wish
to injure her or to block in any way her legitimate influence or
power. We do not wish to fight her either with arms or with hostile
arrangements of trade, if she is willing to associate herself with us
and the other peace-loving nations of the world in covenants of
justice and law and fair dealing. We wish her only to accept a place
of equality among the peoples of the world--the new world in which we
now live--instead of a place of mastery.
GERMANY'S SPOKESMEN AN ISSUE
Neither do we presume to suggest to her any alteration or
modification of her institutions. But it is necessary, we must
frankly say, and necessary as a preliminary to any intelligent
dealings with her on our part, that we should know whom her spokesmen
speak for when they speak to us, whether for the Reichstag majority
or for the military party and the men whose creed is imperial
domination.
We have spoken now surely in terms too concrete to admit of any
further doubt or question. An evident principle runs through the
whole program I have outlined. It is the principle of justice to all
peoples and nationalities and their right to live on equal terms of
liberty and safety with one another, whether they be strong or weak.
Unless this principle be made its foundation, no part of the
structure of international justice can stand. The people of the
United States could act upon no other principle, and to the
vindication of this principle they are ready to devote their lives,
their honor and everything that they possess. The moral climax of
this, the culminating and final war for human liberty, has come, and
they are ready to put their own strength, their own highest purpose,
their own integrity and devotion to the test.
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, 1914.
Austria--Montenegro, Aug. 9, 1914.
Austria--Russia, Aug. 6, 1914.
Austria--Serbia, July 28, 1914.
Brazil--Germany, Oct. 26, 1917.
Bulgaria--Serbia, Oct. 14, 1915.
China--Austria, Aug. 14, 1917.
China--Germany, Aug. 14, 1917.
Cuba--Germany, April 7, 1917.
France--Austria, Aug. 13, 1914.
France--Bulgaria, Oct. 16, 1915.
France--Germany, Aug. 3, 1914.
France--Turkey, Nov. 5, 1914.
Germany--Belgium, Aug. 4, 1914.
Germany--France, Aug. 3, 1914.
Germany--Portugal, March 9, 1916.
Germany--Rumania, Sept. 14, 1916.
Germany--Russia, Aug. 1, 1914.
Great Britain--Austria, Aug. 13, 1914.
Great Britain--Bulgaria, Oct. 15, 1915.
Great Britain--Germany, Aug. 4, 1914.
Great Britain--Turkey, Nov. 5, 1914.
Greece--Bulgaria, Nov. 28, 1916. (Provisional Government.)
Greece--Bulgaria, July 2, 1917. (Government of Alexander.)
Greece--Germany, Nov. 28, 1916. (Provisional Government.)
Greece--Germany, July 2, 1917. (Government of Alexander.)
Italy--Austria, May 24, 1915.
Italy--Bulgaria, Oct. 19, 1915.
Italy--Germany, Aug. 28, 1916.
Italy--Turkey, Aug. 21, 1915.
Japan--Germany, Aug. 28, 1914.
Liberia--Germany, Aug. 4, 1917.
Montenegro--Austria, Aug. 8, 1914.
Montenegro--Germany, Aug. 9, 1914.
Panama--Germany, April 7, 1917.
Panama--Austria, Dec. 10, 1917.
Portugal--Germany, Nov. 23, 1914. (Resolutions passed authorizing
military intervention as ally of England.)
Portugal--Germany, May 19, 1915. (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, 1914.
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, 1917.
Siam--Germany, July 22, 1917.
Turkey--Allies, Nov. 23, 1914.
Turkey--Rumania, Aug. 29, 1916.
United States--Austria-Hungary, Dec. 7, 1917.
United States--Germany, April 6, 1917.
SEVERANCE OF DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS
Austria--Japan, Aug. 26, 1914.
Austria--Portugal, March 16, 1916.
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, 1917.
Costa Rica--Germany, Sept. 21, 1917.
Ecuador--Germany, Dec. 7, 1917.
Egypt--Germany, Aug. 13, 1914.
France--Austria, Aug. 10, 1914.
Greece--Turkey, July 2, 1917. (Government of Alexander.)
Greece--Austria, July 2, 1917. (Government of Alexander.)
Guatemala--Germany, April 27, 1917.
Haiti--Germany, June 17, 1917.
Honduras--Germany, May 17, 1917.
Nicaragua--Germany, May 18, 1917.
Peru--Germany, Oct. 6, 1917.
Turkey--United States, April 20, 1917.
United States--Germany, Feb. 3, 1917.
Uruguay--Germany, Oct. 7, 1917.
--_From the Official Bulletin of the Committee on Public
Information._
POPULATION OF THE NATIONS
Austria (including Hungary) 50,000,000
Belgium 7,571,387
Bolivia 2,520,538
Brazil 22,992,937
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 1,255,914
THE END
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