\
0y
IN OUR
FIRST YEAR OF WAR
MESSAGES AND ADDRESSES TO
THE CONGRESS AND THE PEOPLE
MARCH 5, 1917, TO APRIL 6, 1918
BY
WOODROW WILSON
PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
NEW AND ENLARGED EDITION
Frontispiece from drawing by
WILFRID MUIR EVANS
HARPER i^ BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
Kvv
1IST, 1
Books by
WOODROW WILSON
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
WHY WE ARE AT WAR. 16mo
A HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
Profusely illustrated. 5 volumes. 8vo
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GEORGE WASHINGTON. Illustrated. 8vo
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WHEN A MAN COMES TO HIMSELF.
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ON BEING HUMAN
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THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
16mo. Cloth. Leather
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ir.i^iOilVU
CONTENTS
chap. page
Introduction to New and Enlarged Edition v
Foreword vii
I. The Second Inaugural Address .... i
{March 5, 191 7)
II. We Must Accept War 9
{Message to the Congress^ April 2, 1917)
III. A State of War 26
{The President's Proclamation of April 6,
1917)
IV. "Speak, Act and Serve Together" ... 32
{Message to the American People, April 15 ^
1917)
V. The Conscription Proclamation .... 40
{May 18, 1917)
VI. Conserving the Nation's Food .... 49
{May 19, 1917)
VII. An Answer to Critics 54
{May 22, 1917)
VIII. Memorial Day Address 56
{May JO, 1917)
IX. A Statement to Russia 59
{June 9, 1917)
X. Flag-day Address 64
{June 14, 1917)
XI. An Appeal to the Business Interests . 76
{July II, 1917)
384016
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
XII. Reply to the Pope 83
(August 27, ip/7)
XIII. A Message to Teachers and School
Officers 89
{September 30, 1917)
XIV. Woman Suffrage Must Come Now . . 92
{October 25, 1917)
XV. The Thanksgiving Day Proclamation . 96
{November 7, 1917)
XVI. Labor Must Bear Its Part 99
{November 12, 1917)
XVII. Address to the Congress 112
{December 4, 1917)
XVIII. Proclamation of War Against Austria-
Hungary 130
{December 12, 1917)
XIX. The Government Takes Over the Rail-
roads 134
{A Statement by the President, December
26, 1917)
XX. Government Operation of Railroads . 143
{Address to the Congress, January 4, 191 8)
XXI. The Terms of Peace 150
{January 8, 1918)
XXII. Four Basic Peace Principles .... 162
{Address to the Congress, February 11,
1918)
XXIII. "Force, Force to the Utmost" .... 174
{An Address Delivered by the President
at Baltimore on the Evening of April
6, 1918, on the Opening of the Third
Liberty Loan Campaign)
Appendix 183
INTRODUCTION TO NEW AND
ENLARGED EDITION
It is gratifying in a sense which is higher
than purely practical considerations to record
the immediate welcome given to this volume.
This has led to a new edition at a very early
date. It has been possible to take advantage
of this and to add two addresses, ' ' Four Basic
Peace Principles," the address to the Congress
of February ii, 19 18, and ''Force, Force to
the Utmost," the address delivered at Balti-
more on the opening of the Third Liberty
Loan Campaign, April 6, 1918. The present
volume, therefore, contains all the important
addresses of the first year of our righteous
war for liberty.
On April 14th the New York Sun in its
interesting Book Section presented a remark-
able symposium offering the opinions of dis-
tinguished men and women of letters as to
**The new book that interested me most."
With his customary felicity of phrase, that
incisive and brilliant essayist and novelist,
INTRODUCTION
Meredith Nicholson, uttered his decision in
these words:
To name the best book of a given period is a serious
matter. In these iron years imaginative Hterature is
bound to suffer. There have been good novels in the
past twelve months, but none that may be classed with
the books of all time. There have been good poems, but
no single poem has sprung to the front rank. There
have been admirable essays, but this department has
not been greatly enriched by the addition of volumes
that will carry far into the future. And we are making
history, not writing it.
Great novels and great verse interpreting these clang-
ing times must wait a little. In scanning the shelf of
newest books for a candidate for immortality my eye_
falls upon one volume that will, I believe, outlive every
other book of the past year. Its literary merit is the
highest; it is addressed to the minds and the consciences
not only of the American people but of every civilized
man and woman on the globe.
There is no savage in the utmost island of the farthest
sea but is in some manner affected by the book that lies
open before me. Here we have in every sense a piece of
world literature, the production, under the most trying
circumstances, of an American scholar, patriot, and
statesman. Here we have democracy interpreted for
all the children of men, and between the covers of this
book there are phrases that are already indehbly written
"in the very alphabet of memory."
The book I refer to is In Our First Year of War (Har-
pers), a volume of messages and addresses to the Amer-
ican Congress and the people, and the author is Wood-
row Wilson, sometime president of Princeton University
and now, by the grace of God, President of the United
States.
FOREWORD
This book opens with the second inaugural
address and contains the President's messages
and addresses since the United States was
forced to take up arms against Germany.
These pages may be said to picture not only
official phases of the great crisis, but also the
highest significance of liberty and democracy
and the reactions of President and people to
the great developments of the times. The
second Inaugural Address with its sense of
solemn responsibility serves as a prophecy as
well as prelude to the declaration of war and
the message to the people which followed so
soon.
The extracts from the Conscription Procla-
mation, the messages on Conservation and the
Fixing of Prices, the Appeal to Business In-
terests, the Address to the Federation of Labor
and the Railroad messages present the solid
every-day realities and the vast responsibili-
ties of war-time as they affect every Amer-
ican. These are concrete messages which
should be at hand for frequent reference,
just as the uplift and inspiration of lofty
FOREWORD
appeals like the Memorial Day and Flag Day
addresses should be a constant source of in-
spiration. There are also the clarifying and
vigorous definitions of American purpose af-
forded in utterances like the statement to
Russia, the reply to the communication of
the Pope, and, most emphatically, the Presi-
dent's restatement of War Aims on January
8th. These and other state papers from the
early spring of 191 7 to January, 19 18, have
a significance and value in this collected form
which has been attested by the many re-
quests that have come to Harper & Brothers,
as President Wilson's publishers, for a war vol-
ume of the President's messages to follow Why
We Are At War.
As a matter of course, the President has been
consulted in regard to the plan of publication,
and the conditions which he requested have
been observed. For title, arrangement, head-
ings, and like details the publishers are respon-
sible. They have held the publication of the
President's words of enlightenment and inspi-
ration to be a public service. And they think
that there is no impropriety in adding that in
the case of this book, and Why We Are At
War] the American Red Cross receives all
author's royalties.
In the case of the former book the evolution
of events which led to war was illustrated in
messages from January to April 15th. In the
FOREWORD
preparation of this book, which begins with the
second inaugural, it has seemed desirable to
present practically all the messages of war-
time, and therefore three papers are included
which appeared in the former and smaller book,
in addition to the eighteen messages and
addresses which have been collected for this
volume.
IN OUR FIRST YEAR
OF WAR
IN OUR FIRST YEAR
OF WAR
THE SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS
{March 5, 191T)
My Fellow-citizens, — The four years
which have elapsed since last I stood in this
place have been crowded with counsel and
action of the most vital interest and conse-
quence. Perhaps no equal period in our his-
tory has been so fruitful of important reforms
in our economic and industrial life or so full
of significant changes in the spirit and purpose
of our political action. We have sought very
thoughtfully to set our house in order, correct
the grosser errors and abuses of our industrial
life, liberate and quicken the processes of our
national genius and energy, and lift our politics
to a broader view of the people's essential in-
terests. It is a record of singular variety and
f;^iVi3N 'QUR/FIKST YEAR OF WAR
singular distinction. But I shall not attempt
to review it. It speaks for itself and will be of
increasing influence as the years go by. This
is not the time for retrospect. It is time,
rather, to speak our thoughts and purposes
concerning the present and the immediate
future.
A COSMOPOLITAN EPOCH AT HAND
Although we have centered counsel and
action with such unusual concentration and
success upon the great problems of domestic
legislation to which we addressed ourselves
four years ago, other matters have more and
more forced themselves upon our attention,
matters lying outside our own life as a nation
and over which we had no control, but which,
despite our wish to keep free of them, have
drawn us more and more irresistibly into their
own current and influence.
It has been impossible to avoid them. They
have affected the life of the whole world.
They have shaken men everywhere with a pas-
sion and an apprehension they never knew
before. It has been hard to preserve calm
counsel while the thought of our own people
swayed this way and that under their influence.
We are a composite and cosmopolitan people.
We are of the blood of all the nations that
are at war. The currents of our thoughts as
well as the currents of our trade run quick at
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 3
all seasons back and forth between us and
them. The war inevitably set its mark from
the first alike upon our minds, our industries,
our commerce, our politics, and our social
action. To be indifferent to it or independent
of it was out of the question.
And yet all the while we have been conscious
that we were not part of it. In that con-
sciousness, despite many divisions, we have
drawn closer together. We have been deeply
wronged upon the seas, but we have not
wished to wrong or injure in return;, have re-
tained throughout the consciousness of stand-
ing in some sort apart, intent upon an interest
that transcended the immediate issues of the
war itself. As some of the injuries done us
have become intolerable, we have still been
clear that we wished nothing for ourselves
that we were not ready to demand for all
mankind, — ^fair dealing, justice, the freedom to
live and be at ease against organized wrong.
It is in this spirit and with this thought that
we have grown more and more aware, more
and more certain that the part we wished to
play was the part of those who mean to vin-
dicate and fortify peace. We have been
obliged to arm ourselves to make good our
claim to a certain minimum of right and of
freedom of action. We stand firm in armed
neutrality since it seems that in no other way
we can demonstrate what it is we insist upon
4 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
and cannot forego. We may even be drawn
on, by circumstances, not by our own pur-
pose or desire, to a more active assertion of
our rights as we see them and a more imme-
diate association with the great struggle itself.
But nothing will alter our thought or our
purpose. They are too clear to be obscured.
They are too deeply rooted in the principles
of our national life to be altered. We desire
neither conquest nor advantage. We wish
nothing that can be had only at the cost of
another people. We have always professed un-
selfish purpose and we covet the opportunity
to prove that our professions are sincere.
THE SPIRIT OF CO-OPERATION
There are many things still to do at home,
to clarify our own politics and give new vi-
tality to the industrial processes of our own
life, and we shall do them as time and oppor-
tunity serve; but we realize that the greatest
things that remain to be done must be done
with the whole world for stage and in co-
operation with the wide and universal forces
of mankind, and we are making our spirits
ready for those things. They will follow in
the immediate wake of the war itself and will
set civilization up again. We are provincials
no longer. The tragical events of the thirty
months of vital turmoil through which we
have just passed have made us citizens of the
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 5
world. There can be no turning back. Our
own fortunes as a nation are involved, whether
we would have it so or not.
And yet we are not the less Americans on
that account. We shall be the more American
if we but remain true to the principles in which
we have been bred. They are not the prin-
ciples of a province or of a single continent.
We have known and boasted all along that
they were the principles of a liberated man-
kind. These, therefore, are the things we
shall stand for, whether in war or in peace :
OUR NATIONAL PLATFORM
That all nations are equally interested in the
peace of the world and in the political stability
of free peoples, and equally responsible for
their maintenance;
That the essential principle of peace is the
actual equality of nations in all matters of
right or privilege;
That peace cannot securely or justly rest
upon an armed balance of power;
That Governments derive all their just
powers from the consent of the governed and
that no other powers should be supported by
the common thought, purpose or power of the
family of nations;
That the seas should be equally free and
safe for the use of all peoples, under rules set
up by common agreement and consent, and
6 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
that, so far as practicable, they should be ac-
cessible to all upon equal terms;
That national armaments should be limited
to the necessities of national order and domes-
tic safety;
That the community of interest and of power
upon which peace must henceforth depend im-
poses upon each nation the duty of seeing to
it that all influences proceeding from its own
citizens meant to encourage or assist revolu-
tion in other states should be sternly and
effectually suppressed and prevented.
A UNITY OF PURPOSE AND ACTION
I need not argue these principles to you, my
fellow-countrymen: they are your own, part
and parcel of your own thinking and your own
motive in affairs. They spring up native
amongst us. Upon this as a platform of pur-
pose and of action we can stand together.
And it is imperative that we should stand
together. We are being forged into a new
unity amidst the fires that now blaze through-
out the world. In their ardent heat we shall,
in God's providence, let us hope, be purged of
faction and division, purified of the errant
humors of party and of private interest, and
shall stand forth in the days to come with a
new dignity of national pride and spirit. Let
each man see to it that the dedication is in
his own heart, the high purpose of the nation
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 7
in his own mind, ruler of his own will and
desire.
I stand here and have taken the high and
solemn oath to which you have been audience
because the people of the United States have
chosen me for this august delegation of power
and have by their gracious judgment named
me their leader in affairs. I know now what
the task means. I realize to the full the re-
sponsibility which it involves. I pray God I
may be given the wisdom and the prudence
to do my duty in the true spirit of this great
people. I am their servant and can succeed
only as they sustain and guide me by their
confidence and their counsel. The thing I
shall count upon, the thing without which
neither counsel nor action will avail, is the
unity of America — an America united in feel-
ing, in purpose, and in its vision of duty, of
opportunity, and of service. We are to beware
of all men who would turn the tasks and the
necessities of the nation to their own private
profit or use them for the building up of private
power; beware that no faction or disloyal
intrigue break the harmony or embarrass the
spirit of our people ; beware that our Govern-
ment be kept pure and incorrupt in all its
parts. United alike in the conception of otir
duty and in the high resolve to perform it in
the face of all men, let us dedicate ourselves
to the great task to which we must now set our
2
8 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
hand. For myself I beg your tolerance, your
countenance, and your united aid. The shad-
ows that now lie dark upon our path will soon
be dispelled and we shall walk with the light
all about us if we be but true to ourselves —
to ourselves as we have wished to be known in
the counsels of the world a'nd in the thought
of all those who love liberty and justice and
the right exalted.
II
WE MUST ACCEPT WAR
(Message to the Congress, April 2, igij)
Gentlemen of the Congress, — I have
called the Congress into extraordinary session
because there are serious, very serious, choices
of policy to be made, and made immediately,
which it was neither right nor constitution-
ally permissible that I should assume the re-
sponsibility of maldng.
On the 3d of February last I officially laid
before you the extraordinary announcement of
the Imperial German Government that on
and after the first day of February it was its
purpose to put aside all restraints of law or of
humanity and use its submarines to sink every
vessel that sought to approach either the ports
of Great Britain and Ireland or the western
coasts of Europe or any of the ports controlled
by the enemies of Germany within the Med-
iterranean. That had seemed to be the object
of the German submarine warfare earlier in the
war, but since April of last year the Imperial
Government had somewhat restrained the
10 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
commanders of its undersea craft in conformity
with its promise then given to us that passen-
ger-boats should not be sunk, and that due
warning would be given to all other vessels
which its submarines might seek to destroy-
when no resistance was offered or escape at-
tempted, and care taken that their crews were
given at least a fair chance to save their lives
in their open boats.
The precautions taken were meager and hap-
hazard enough, as was proved in distressing
instance after instance in the progress of the
cruel and unmanly business, but a certain
degree of restraint was observed.
Germany's ruthless policy
The new policy has swept every restriction
aside. Vessels of every kind, whatever their
flag, their character, their cargo, their destina-
tion, their errand, have been ruthlessly sent to
the bottom without warning, and without
thought of help or mercy for those on board,
the vessels of friendly neutrals along with those
of belHgerents. Even hospital-ships and ships
carrying relief to the sorely bereaved and
stricken people of Belgium, though the latter
were provided with safe conduct through the
proscribed areas by the German Government
itself and were distinguished by unmistakable
marks of identity, have been sunk with the
same reckless lack of compassion or of principle.
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR ii
I was for a little while unable to believe that
such things would, in fact, be done by any
Government that had hitherto subscribed to
the humane practices of civilized nations.
International law had its origin in the attempt
to set up some law which would be respected
and observed upon the seas, where no nation
had right of dominion, and where lay the
free highways of the world. By painful
stage after stage has that law been built up
with meager enough results, indeed, after all
was accomplished that could be accom-
plished, but always with a clear view at
least of what the heart and conscience of
mankind demanded.
This minimum of right the German Govern-
ment has swept aside under the plea of retalia-
tion and necessity, and because it had no
weapons which it could use at sea except these,
which it is impossible to employ as it is em-
ploying them without throwing to the winds
all scruples of humanity or of respect for the
understandings that were supposed to underlie
the intercourse of the world.
I am not now thinking of the loss of property
involved, immense and serious as that is, but
only of the wanton and wholesale destruction
of the lives of non-combatants, men, women
and children engaged in pursuits which have
always, even in the darkest periods of modern
history, been deemed innocent and legitimate.
12 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
Property can be paid for ; the lives of peace-
ful and innocent people cannot be.
GERMAN WARFARE AGAINST MANKIND
The present German warfare against com-
merce is a warfare against mankind. It is a
war against all nations. American ships have
been sunk, American lives taken, in ways which
it has stirred us very deeply to learn of, but
the ships and people of other neutral and
friendly nations have been sunk and over-
whelmed in the waters in the same way. There
has been no discrimination. The challenge is
to all manldnd. Each nation must decide
for itself how it will meet it. The choice
we make for ourselves must be made with
a moderation of counsel and a temperateness
of judgment befitting our character and our
motives as a nation. We must put excited
feeling away.
Our motive will not be revenge or the vic-
torious assertion of the physical might of the
nation, but only the vindication of right, of
human right, of which we are only a single
champion.
When I addressed the Congress on the
26th of February last I thought that it would
suffice to assert our neutral rights with arms,
our right to use the seas against unlawful
interference, our right to keep our people safe
against unlawful violence. But armed neu-
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 13
trality, it now appears, is impracticable. Be-
cause submarines are in effect outlaws when
used as the German submarines have been
used against merchant shipping, it is impossi-
ble to defend ships against their attacks as the
law of nations has assumed that merchantmen
would defend themselves against privateers or
cruisers, visible craft giving chase upon the
open sea.
It is common prudence in such circum-
stances, grim necessity, indeed, to endeavor to
destroy them before they have shown their
own intention. They must be dealt with upon
sight, if dealt with at all.
The German Government denies the right
of neutrals to use arms at all within the areas
of the sea which it has proscribed, even in the
defense of rights which no modem publicist
has ever before questioned their right to de-
fend. The intimation is conveyed that the
armed guards which we have placed on our
merchant-ships will be treated as beyond the
pale of law and subject to be dealt with as
pirates would be.
Armed neutrality is ineffectual enough at
best ; in such circumstances and in the face of
such pretensions it is worse than ineffectual;
it is likely to produce what it was meant to
prevent; it is practically certain to draw us
into the war without either the rights or the
effectiveness of belligerents.
14 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
There is one choice we cannot make, we are
incapable of making: we will not choose the
path of submission and suffer the most sacred
rights of our nation and our people to be ig-
nored or violated. The wrongs against which
we now array ourselves are not common
wrongs; they reach out to the very roots of
human life.
BELLIGERENCY THRUST UPON US
With a profound sense of the solemn and
even tragical character of the step I am taking
and of the grave responsibilities which it in-
volves, but in unhesitating obedience to what
I deem my constitutional duty, I advise that
the Congress declare the recent course of the
Imperial German Government to be in fact
nothing less than war against the Government
and people of the United States. That it
formally accept the status of belligerent which
has thus been thrust upon it and that it take
immediate steps not only to put the country
in a more thorough state of defense, but also
to exert all its power and employ all its re-
sources to bring the Government of the Ger-
i^an Empire to terms and end the war.
WHAT THIS WILL INVOLVE
What this will involve is clear. It will in-
volve the utmost practicable co-operation in
counsel and action with the Governments now
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 15
at war with Germany, and as incident to that
the extension to those Governments of the
most Hberal financial credits in order that our
resources may so far as possible be added to
theirs.
It will involve the organization and mobili-
zation of all the material resources of the
country to supply the materials of war and
serve the incidental needs of the nation in the
most abundant and yet the most economical
and efficient way possible.
It will involve the immediate full equipment
of the navy in all respects, but particularly in
supplying it with the best means of dealing
with the enemy's submarines.
It will involve the immediate addition to the
armed forces of the United States already pro-
vided for by law in case of war at least 500,000
men, who should, in my opinion, be chosen
upon the principle of universal liability to
service, and also the authorization of sub-
sequent additional increments of equal force
so soon as they may be needed and can be
handled in training.
It will involve also, of course, the granting
of adequate credits to the Government, sus-
tained, I hope, so far as they can equitably be
sustained by the present generation, by well-
conceived taxation. I say sustained so far as
may be equitable by taxation because it seems
to me that it would be most unwise to base
i6 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
the credits which will 'now be necessary en-
tirely on money borrowed.
It is our duty, I most respectfully urge,
to protect our people so far as we may
against the very serious hardships and evils
which would be likely to arise out of the
inflation which would be produced by vast
loans.
In carrying out the measures by which these
things are to be accomplished we should keep
constantly in mind the wisdom of interfering
as little as possible in our own preparation
and in the equipment of our own military
forces with the duty — for it will be a very
practical duty — of supplying the nations
already at war with Germany with the
materials which they can obtain only from
us or by our assistance. They are in the
field and we should help them in every way
to be effective there.
I shall take the liberty of suggesting, through
the several executive departments of the Gov-
ernment, for the consideration of your com-
mittees measures for the accomplishment of
the several objects I have mentioned. I hope
that it will be your pleasure to deal with them
as having been framed after very careful
thought by the branch of the Government
upon which the responsibility of conducting
the war and safeguarding the nation will most
directly fall.
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 17
OUR MOTIVES AND OBJECTS
While we do these things, these deeply mo-
mentous things, let us be very clear and make
very clear to all the world what our motives
and our objects are. My own thought has
not been driven from its habitual and normal
course by the unhappy events of the last two
months, and I do not beHeve that the thought
of the nation has been altered or clouded by
them.
I have exactly the same thing in mind now
that I had in mind when I addressed the Senate
on the 2 2d of January last; the same that I
had in mind when I addressed the Congress
on the 3d of February and on the 26th of
February.
Our object now, as then, is to vindicate
the principles of peace and justice in the life
of the world as against selfish and autocratic
power and to set up amongst the really free and
self -governed peoples of the world such a con-
cert of purpose and of action as will henceforth
insure the observance of those principles.
Neutrality is no longer feasible or desirable
where the peace of the world is involved and
the freedom of its peoples, and the menace to
that peace and freedom lies in the existence
of autocratic Governments backed by organ-
ized force which is controlled wholly by their
will, not by the will of their people. We have
i8 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
seen the last of neutrality in such circum-
stances.
We are at the beginning of an age in which
it will be insisted that the same standards of
conduct and of responsibility for wrong done
shall be observed among nations and their
Governments that are observed among the
individual citizens of civilized states.
We have no quarrel with the German peo-
ple. We have no feeling toward them but one
of sympathy and friendship. It was not upon
their impulse that their Government acted in
entering this war. It was not with their pre-
vious knowledge or approval.
It was a war determined upon as wars used
to be determined upon in the old, unhappy
days when peoples were nowhere consulted
by their rulers and wars were provoked and
waged in the interest of dynasties or of little
groups of ambitious men who were accus-
tomed to use their fellow - men as pawns and
tools.
Self -governed nations do not fill their neigh-
bor states with spies or set the course of
intrigue to bring about some critical post-
ure of affairs which will give them an op-
portunity to strike and make conquest. Such
designs can be successfully worked only under
cover and where no one has the right to ask
questions.
Cunningly contrived plans of deception or
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 19
aggression, carried, it may be, from generation
to generation, can be worked out and kept
from the light only within the privacy of
courts or behind the carefully guarded con-
fidences of a narrow and privileged class. They
are happily impossible where public opinion
commands and insists upon full information
concerning all the nation's affairs.
PEACE THROUGH FREE PEOPLES
A steadfast concert for peace can never be
maintained except by a partnership of demo-
cratic nations. Nq [autocratic Government
could be trusted to keep faith within it or ob-
serve its covenants. It must be a league of
honor, a partnership of opinion. Intrigue
would eat its vitals away, the plottings of inner
circles who could plan what they would and
render account to no one would be a corruption
seated at its very heart. Only free peoples can
hold their purpose and their honor steady to a
common end and prefer the interests of man-
kind to any narrow interest of their own.
Does not every American feel that assur-
ance has been added to our hope for the future
peace of the world by the wonderful and heart-
ening things that have been happening within
the last few weeks in Russia?
Russia was known by those who know it
best to have been always in fact democratic
at heart, in all the vital habits of her thought,
20 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
in all the intimate relationships of her people
that spoke their natural instinct, their habitual
attitude toward life.
Autocracy that crowned the summit of her
political structure, long as it had stood and
terrible as was the reality of its power, was
not in fact Russian in origin, in character or
purpose ; and now it has been shaken and the
great, generous Russian people have been
added, in all their native majesty and might,
to the forces that are fighting for freedom in
the world, for justice and for peace. Here is
a fit partner for a league of honor.
One of the things that have served to con-
vince us that the Prussian autocracy was not
and could never be our friend is that from the
very outset of the present war it has filled our
unsuspecting communities and even our offices
of Government with spies and set criminal
intrigues everywhere afoot against our na-
tional unity of council, our peace within and
without, our industries and our commerce.
Indeed, it is now evident that its spies were
here even before the war began, and it is, un-
happily, not a matter of conjecture, but a fact
proved in our courts of justice, that the in-
trigues which have more than once come per-
ilously near to disturbing the peace and dislo-
cating the industries of the country have been
carried on at the instigation, with the support,
and even under the personal direction, of offi-
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 21
cial agents of the Imperial German Govern-
ment accredited to the Government of the
United States.
Even in checking these things and trying to
extirpate them we have sought to put the most
generous interpretation possible upon them
because we knew that their source lay, not in
any hostile feeling or purpose of the German
people toward us (who were, no doubt, as
ignorant of them as we ourselves were), but
only in the selfish designs of a Government
that did what it pleased and told its people
nothing. But they have played their part in
serving to convince us at last that that Govern-
ment entertains no real friendship for us and
means to act against our peace and security at
its convenience. That it means to stir up
enemies against us at our very doors the inter-
cepted note to the German Minister at Mexico
City is eloquent evidence.
A CHALLENGE OF HOSTILE PURPOSE
We are accepting this challenge of hostile
purpose because we know that in such a Gov-
ernment, following such methods, we can never
have a friend; and that in the presence of its
organized power, always lying in wait to ac-
complish we know not what purpose, there
can be no assured security for the democratic
Governments of the world.
We are now about to accept the gage of
22 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
battle with this natural foe to liberty, and
shall, if necessary, spend the whole force of the
nation to check and nullify its pretensions and
its power. We are glad, now that we see the
facts with no veil of false pretense about them,
to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the
world and for the liberation of its peoples,
the German people included; for the rights
of nations great and small and the privilege
of men everywhere to choose their way of life
and of obedience. The world must be made
safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted
upon the trusted foundations of political
liberty.
We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire
no conquest, no dominion. We seek no in-
demnities for ourselves, no material compen-
sation for the sacrifices we shall freely make.
We are but one of the champions of the rights
of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those
rights have been made as secure as the faith
and the freedom of the nation can make
them.
Just because we fight without rancor and
without selfish objects, seeking nothing for
ourselves but what we shall wish to share with
all free peoples, we shall, I feel confident, con-
duct our operations as belligerents without
passion and ourselves observe with proud
punctilio the principles of right and of fair
play we profess to be fighting for.
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 23
I have said nothing of the Governments al-
lied with the Imperial Government of Germany
because they have not made war upon us or
challenged us to defend our right and our
honor.
The Austro-Hungarian Government has in-
deed avowed its unqualified indorsement and
acceptance of the reckless and lawless sub-
marine warfare adopted now without disguise
by the Imperial German Government, and it
has therefore not been possible for this Govern-
ment to receive Count Tarnowski, the am-
bassador recently accredited to this Govern-
ment by the Imperial and Royal Government
of Austria-Hungary; but that Government
has not actually engaged in warfare against
citizens of the United States on the seas, and
I take the liberty, for the present at least, of
postponing a discussion of our relations with
the authorities at Vienna.
OPPOSITION TO THE GERMAN GOVERNMENT
FRIENDSHIP TOWARD THE GERMAN PEOPLE
We enter this war only where we are clearly
forced into it because there are no other means
of defending our rights.
It will be all the easier for us to conduct
ourselves as belligerents in a high spirit of
right and fairness because we act without ani-
mus, not in enmity toward a people or with the
desire to bring any injury or disadvantage
24 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
upon them, but only in armed opposition to an
irresponsible Government which has thrown
aside all considerations of humanity and of
right and is running amuck.
We are, let me say again, the sincere friends
of the German people, and shall desire nothing
so much as the early re-establishment of inti-
mate relations of mutual advantage between
us — ^however hard it may be for them, for the
time being, to believe that this is spoken from
our hearts. We have borne with their present
Government through all these bitter months
because of that friendship — exercising a pa-
tience and forbearance which would otherwise
have been impossible.
We shall, happily, still have an opportunity
to prove that friendship in our daily attitude
and actions toward the millions of men and
women of German birth and native sympathy
who live amongst us and share our life, and
we shall be proud to prove it toward all who
are, in fact, loyal to their neighbors and to the
Government in the hour of test. They are,
most of them, as true and loyal Americans as
if they had never known any other fealty or
allegiance. They will be prompt to stand with
us in rebuking and restraining the few who
may be of a different mind and purpose. If
there should be disloyalty it will be dealt with
with a firm hand of stem repression; but, if
it lifts its head at all, it will lift it only here
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 25
and there and without countenance except
from a lawless and malignant few.
RIGHT MORE PRECIOUS THAN PEACE
It is a distressing and oppressive duty, gen-
tlemen of the Congress, which I have per-
formed in thus addressing you. There are, it
may be, many months of fiery trial and sacri-
fice ahead of us. It is a fearful thing to lead
this great, peaceful people into war, into the
most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civili-
zation itself seeming to be in the balance.
But the right is more precious than peace, and
we shall fight for the things which we have
always carried nearest our hearts — for de-
mocracy, for the right of those who submit to
authority to have a voice in their own govern-
ments, for the rights and liberties of small
nations, for a universal dominion of right by
such a concert of free peoples as shall bring
peace and safety to all nations and make the
world itself at last free.
To such a task we can dedicate our lives
and our fortunes, everything that we are and
everything that we have, with the pride of
those who know that the day has come when
America is privileged to spend her blood and
her might for the principles that gave her
birth and happiness and the peace which she
has treasured. God helping her, she can do no
other.
Ill
A STATE OF WAR
(The Presidents Proclamation of April 6, igif)
Whereas, the Congress of the United States,
in the exercise of the constitutional authority
vested in them, have resolved by joint resolu-
tion of the Senate and House of Representa-
tives, bearing date this day, that a state of war
between the United States and the Imperial
German Government, which has been thrust
upon the United States, is hereby formally
declared;
Whereas, It is provided by Section 4067 of
the Revised Statutes as follows :
Whenever there is declared a war between the United
States and any foreign nation or Government, or any
invasion or predatory incursion is perpetrated, attempted
or threatened against the territory of the United States
by any foreign nation or Government, and the President
makes public proclamation of the event, all natives,
citizens, denizens or subjects of a hostile nation or Gov-
ernment being male of the age of fourteen years and
upward who shall be within the United States and not
actually naturalized shall be liable to be apprehended,
restrained secured and removed as alien enemies.
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 27
The President is authorized in any such
event, by his proclamation thereof or other
public acts, to direct the conduct to be ob-
served on the part of the United States tow-
ard the aliens who become so Hable; the
manner and degree of the restraint to which
they shall be subject and in what cases and
upon what security their residence shall be
permitted and to provide for the removal of
those who, not being permitted to reside within
the United States, refuse or neglect to depart
therefrom, and to establish any such regula-
tions which are found necessary in the prem-
ises and for the public safety;
Whereas, By Sections 4068, 4069, and 4070
of the Revised Statutes further provision is
made relative to alien enemies;
Now, therefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, Presi-
dent of the United States of America, do
hereby proclaim to all whom it may concern
that a state of war exists between the United
States and the Imperial German Government,
and I do specially direct all officers, civil or
military, of the United States that they exer-
cise vigilance and zeal in the discharge of the
duties incident to such a state of war, and I
do, moreover, earnestly appeal to all American
citizens that they, in loyal devotion to their
country, dedicated from its foundation to the
principles of liberty and justice, uphold the
laws of the land and give midivided and will-
28 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
ing support to those measures which may be
adopted by the constitutional authorities in
prosecuting the war to a successful issue and
in obtaining a secure and just peace ;
And acting under and by virtue of the au-
thority vested in me by the Constitution of
the United States and the said sections of the
Revised Statutes:
I do hereby further proclaim and direct that
the conduct to be observed on the part of the
United States toward all natives, citizens, deni-
zens or subjects of Germany, being male, of
the age of fourteen years and upward, who
shall be within the United States and not act-
ually naturalized, who for the purpose of this
proclamation and under such sections of the
Revised Statutes are termed alien enemies,
shall be as follows :
All alien enemies are enjoined to preserve the peace
toward the United States and to refrain from crime
against the public safety and from violating the laws of
the United States and of the States and Territories
thereof, and to refrain from actual hostility or giving in-
formation, aid or comfort to the enemies of the United
States, and to comply strictly with the regulations which
are hereby or which may be from time to time promul-
gated by the President, and so long as they shall conduct
themselves in accordance with law they shall be undis-
turbed in the peaceful pursuit of their lives and occupa-
tions and be accorded the consideration due to all
peaceful and law-abiding persons, except so far as re-
strictions may be necessary for their own protection and
for the safety of the United States, and toward such alien
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 29
enemies as conduct themselves in accordance with law
all citizens of the United States are enjoined to preserve
the peace and to treat them with all such friendUness as
may be compatible with loyalty and allegiance to the
United States.
And all alien enemies who fail to conduct themselves
as so enjoined, in addition to all other penalties pre-
scribed by law, shall be liable to restraint or to give
security or to remove and depart from the United States
in the manner prescribed by Sections 4069 and 4070 of
the Revised Statutes and as prescribed in the regulations
duly promulgated by the President,
And, pursuant to the authority vested in
me, I hereby declare and establish the follow-
ing regulations, which I find necessary in the
premises and for the public safety :
First. An alien enemy shall not have in his possession
at any time or place any firearms, weapons or imple-
ment of war, or component parts thereof; ammimition,
Maxim or other silencer, arms or explosives or material
used in the manufacture of explosives.
Second. An aHen enemy shall not have in his possession
at any time or place, or use or operate, any aircraft
or wireless apparatus, or any form of signaling device,
or any form of cipher code or any paper, document
or book written or printed in cipher, or in which there
may be invisible writing.
Third. All property found in the possession of an alien
enemy in violation of the foregoing regulations shall be
subject to seizure by the United States.
Fourth. An alien enemy shall not approach or be
found within one-half of a mile of any Federal or State
fort, camp, arsenal, aircraft station. Government or
naval vessel, navy-yard, factory or workshop for the
30 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
manufacture of munitions of war or of any products for
the use of the army or navy.
Fifth. An aUen enemy shall not write, print or publish
any attack or threat against the Government or Con-
gress of the United States, or either branch thereof, or
against the measures or policy of the United States, or
against the persons or property of any person in the
military, naval or civil service of the United States, or
of the States or Territories, or of the District of Columbia,
or of the municipal governments therein.
Sixth. An alien enemy shall not commit or abet any
hostile acts against the United States, or give informa-
tion, aid or comfort to its enemies.
Seventh. An aUen enemy shall not reside in or con-
tinue to reside in, to remain in or enter any locality
which the President may from time to time designate
by an executive order as a prohibitive area in which
residence by an alien enemy shall be found by him
to constitute a danger to the public peace and safety
of the United States except by permit from the Presi-
dent and except under such limitations or restrictions
as the President may prescribe.
Eighth. An alien enemy whom the President shall
have reasonable cause to believe to be aiding or about to
aid the enemy, or to be at large to the danger of the
public peace or safety of the United States, or to have
violated or to be about to violate any of these regulations,
shall remove to any location designated by the President
by executive order, and shall not remove therefrom with-
out permit, or shall depart from the United States if so
required by the President.
Ninth. No alien enemy shall depart from the United
States until he shall have received such permit as the
President shall prescribe, or except under order of a
Coiurt, Judge or Justice, under Sections 4069 and 4070
of the Revised Statutes.
Tenth. No alien enemy shall land in or enter the
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 31
United States except under such restrictions and at such
places as the President may prescribe.
Eleventh. If necessary to prevent violation of the
regulations, all alien enemies will be obliged to register.
Twelfth. An alien enemy whom there may be reason-
able cause to believe to be aiding or about to aid the
enemy, or to be at large to the danger of the public^
peace or safety, or who violates or who attempts to
\dolate or of whom there is reasonable grounds to believe
that he is about to violate any regulation to be promul-
gated by the President or any criminal law of the United
States or of the States or Territories thereof, will be
subject to summary arrest by the United States, by the
United States Marshal or his deputy or such other offi-
cers as the President shall designate, and to confinement
in such penitentiary, prison, jail, military camp, or other
place of detention as may be directed by the President.
This proclamation and the regulations herein
contained shall extend and apply to all land
and water, continental or insular, in any way
within the jurisdiction of the United States.
IV
"SPEAK, ACT AND SERVE TOGETHER"
{Message to the American People, April is, iQi?)
My Fellow Countrymen, — ^The entrance
of our own beloved country into the grim and
terrible 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 sim-
plest parts of the great task to which we have
addressed ourselves. There^s not a single self-
ish element, so far as fcan see, in~tEe~cause
we are fighting for. We are fighting for what
we believe and wish to be the rights of man-
kind and for the future peace and security of
the world. To do this great thing worthily and
successfully we must devote ourselves to the
service without regard to profit or material ad-
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 33
vantage and with an energy and intelligence
that will rise to the level of the enterprise
itself. We must realize to the full how great
the task is and how many things, how many
kinds and elements of capacity and service and
self-sacrifice it involves.
WHAT WE MUST DO
These, then, are the things we must do, and
do well, besides fighting — the things without
which mere fighting would be fruitless :
We must supply abundant food for ourselves
and for our armies and our seamen, not only,
but also for a large part of the nations with
whom we have now made common cause, in
whose support and by whose sides we shall be
fighting.
We must supply ships by the hundreds out
of our shipyards to carry to the other side of
the sea, submarines or no submarines, what
will every day be needed there, and abundant
materials out of our fields and our mines and
our factories with which not only to clothe
and equip our own forces on land and sea, but
also to clothe and support our people, for
whom the gallant fellows under arms can no
longer work; to help clothe and equip the
armies with which we are co-operating in Eu-
rope, and to keep the looms and manufacto-
ries there .in raw material; coal to keep the
fires going m ships at sea and in the furnaces
34 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
of hundreds of factories across the sea; steel
out of which to make arms and ammunition
both here and there ; rails for womout railways
back of the fighting fronts; locomotives and
rolling-stock to take the place of those every
day going to pieces; mules, horses, cattle for
labor and for military service ; everything with
which the people of England and France and
Italy and Russia have usually supplied them-
selves, but cannot now afford the men, the
materials or the machinery to make.
GREATER EFFICIENCY
It is evident to every thinking man that our
industries, on the farms, in the shipyards, in
the mines, in the factories, must be made more
prolific and more efficient than ever, and that
they must be more economically managed, and
better adapted to the particular requirements
of our task than they have been; and what I
want to say is that the men and the women
who devote their thought and their energy to
these things will be serving the country and
conducting the fight for peace and freedom
just as truly and just as effectively as the men
on the battle-field or in the trenches. The in-
dustrial forces of the country, men and women
alike, will be a great national, a great interna-
tional, service army — a notable and honored
host engaged in the service of the nation and
the world, the efficient friends and saviors of
/'
/
/
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 35
free men everTwhere. Thousands, nay, hun-
dreds of thousands, of men otherwise Hable to
military service will of right and of necessity
be excused from that service and assigned to
the fundamental sustaining work of the fields
and factories and mines, and they will be as
much part of the great patriotic forces of the
nation as the men under fire.
I take the liberty, therefore, of addressing
this word to the farmers of the country and to
all who work on the farms : The supreme need
of our own nation and of the nations with
which we are co-operating is an abundance of
supplies, and especially of foodstuffs. The im-
portance of an adequate food-supply, especially
for the present year, is superlative. Without
abundant food, alilce for the armies and the
peoples now at war, the whole great enterprise
upon which we have embarked will break down
and fail. The world's food reserves are low.
Not only during the present emergency, but
for some time after peace shall have come,
both our own people and a large proportion of
the people of Europe must rely upon the har-
vests in America.
THE RESPONSIBILITY OP THE FARMERS
Upon the farmers of this country, therefore,
in large measure rest the fate of the war and
the fate of the nations. May the nation not
count upon them to omit no step that will in-
36 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
crease the production of their land or that will
bring about the most effectual co-operation
in the sale and distribution of their products?
The time is short. It is of the most imperative
importance that everything possible be done,
and done immediately, to make sure of large
harvests. I call upon young men and old alike
and upon the able-bodied boys of the land to
accept and act upon this duty — to turn in
hosts to the farms and make certain that no
pains and no labor is lacking in this great
matter.
I particularly appeal to the farmers of the
South to plant abundant foodstuffs, as well as
cotton. They can show their patriotism in no
better or more convincing way than by resist-
ing the great temptation of the present price
of cotton and helping, helping upon a great
scale, to feed the nation and the peoples every-
where who are fighting for their liberties and
for our own. The variety of their crops will be
the visible measure of their comprehension of
their national duty.
The Government of the United States and
the Governments of the several States stand
ready to co-operate. They win do everything
possible to assist farmers in securing an ade-
quate supply of seed, an adequate force of la-
borers when they are most needed, at harvest-
time, and the means of expediting shipments
of fertilizers and farm machinery, as well as
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 37
of the crops themselves when harvested. The
course of trade shall be as unhampered as it
is possible to make it, and there shall be no
unwarranted manipulation of the nation's food-
supply by those who handle it on its way to
the consumer. This is our opportunity to
demonstrate the efficiency of a great democ-
racy, and we shall not fall short of it !
THE DUTY OF MIDDLEMEN
This let me say to the middlemen of every
sort, whether they are handling our foodstuffs
or the raw materials of manufacture or the
products of our mills and factories : The eyes
of the country will be especially upon you.
This is your opportunity for signal service,
efficient and disinterested. The country ex-
pects you, as it expects all others, to forego
unusual profits, to organize and expedite ship-
ments of supplies of every kind, but especially
of food, with an eye to the service you are
rendering and in the spirit of those who enlist
in the ranks, for their people, not for them-
selves. I shall confidently expect you to de-
serve and win the confidence of people of every
sort and station.
THE MEN OF THE RAILWAYS
To the men who run the railways of the
country, whether they be managers or opera-
tive employees, let me say that the railways are
38 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
the arteries of the nation's life and that upon
them rests the immense responsibility of seeing
to it that those arteries stiff er no obstruction
of any kind, no inefficiency or slackened power.
To the merchant let me suggest the motto,
"Small profits and quick service," and to the
shipbuilder the thought that the life of the war
depends upon him. The food and the war
supplies must be carried across the seas, no
matter how many ships are sent to the bottom.
The places of those that go down must be sup-
plied, and supplied at once. To the miner let
me say that he stands where the farmer does:
the work of the world waits on him. If he
slackens or fails, armies and statesmen are
helpless. He also is enlisted in the great Ser-
vice Army. The manufacturer does not need
to be told, I hope, that the nation looks to him
to speed and perfect every process ; and I want
only to remind his employees that their service
is absolutely indispensable and is counted on
by every man who loves the country and its
liberties.
Let me suggest also that every one who cre-
ates or cultivates a garden helps, and helps
greatly, to solve the problem of the feeding of
the nations; and that every housewife who
practises strict economy puts herself in the
ranks of those who serve the nation. This is
the time for America to correct her unpardon-
able fault of wastefulness and extravagance.
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 39
Let every man and every woman assume the
duty of careful, provident use and expenditure
as a public duty, as a dictate of patriotism
which no one can now expect ever to be ex-
cused or forgiven for ignoring.
THE SUPREME TEST
In the hope that this statement of the needs
of the nation and of the world in this hour of
supreme crisis may stimulate those to whom it
comes and remind all who need reminder of
the solemn duties of a time such as the world
has never seen before, I beg that all. editors
and publishers everywhere will give as promi-
nent publication and as wide circulation as
possible to this appeal. I venture to suggest
also to all advertising agencies that they would
perhaps render a very substantial and timely
service to the country if they would give it
widespread repetition. And I hope that clergy-
men will not think the theme of it an unworthy
or inappropriate subject of comment and hom-
ily from their pulpits.
The supreme test of the nation has come.
We must all speak, act and serve together.
4 "^' ' ' '^
V
THE CONSCRIPTION PROCLAMATION
(May j8, 1917)
Whereas, Congress has enacted and the Pres-
ident has on the i8th day of May, 191 7, ap-
proved a law which contains the following
provisions :
Section 5. That all male persons between
the ages of twenty-one and thirty, both inclu-
sive, shall be subject to registration in accord-
ance with regulations to be prescribed by the
President, and upon proclamation by the Presi-
ident or other pubHc notice given by him or
by his direction, stating the time and place of
such registration, it shall be the duty of all
persons of the designated ages, except officers
and enlisted men of the Regular Army, the
Navy and the National Guard and Naval Mi-
litia while in the service of the United States,
to present themselves for and submit to regis-
tration under the provisions of this act.
And every such person shall be deemed to
have notice of the requirements of this act
upon the publication of said proclamation or
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 41
other notice as aforesaid given by the President
or by his direction.
THE PENALTY FOR FAILURE
And any person who shall wilfully fail or
refuse to present himself for registration or to
submit thereto as herein provided, shall be
guilty of a misdemeanor and shall, upon con-
viction in the District Court of the United
States having jurisdiction thereof, be punished
by imprisonment for not more than one year,
and shall thereupon be duly registered.
Provided, that in the call of the docket pref-
erence shall be given, in courts trying the same,
to the trial of criminal proceedings under this
act.
Provided, further, that persons shall be sub-
ject to registration as herein provided who
shall have attained their twenty-first birthday
and who shall not have attained their thirty-
first birthday on or before the day set for the
registration, and all persons so registered shall
be and remain subject to draft into the forces
hereby authorized unless exempted or excused
therefrom, as in this act provided.
Provided, further, that in the case of tempo-
rary absence from actual place of legal resi-
dence of any person liable to registration as
provided herein, such registration may be made
by mail under regulations to be prescribed by
the President.
42 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
THE WORK OF REGISTRATION
Section 6. That the President is hereby au-
thorized to utilize the service of any or all de-
partments and any or all officers or agents of
the United States and of the several States,
Territories and the District of Columbia and
subdivisions thereof, in the execution of this
act, and all officers and agents of the United
States and of the several States, Territories
and subdivisions thereof, and of the District of
Columbia, and all persons designated or ap-
pointed under regulations prescribed by the
President, whether such appointments are made
by the President himself or by the Governor or
other officer of any State or Territory to per-
form any duty in the execution of this act, are
hereby required to perform such duty as the
President shall order or direct, and all such
officers and agents and persons so designated
or appointed shall hereby have full authority
for all acts done by them in the execution of
this act, by the direction of the President.
Correspondence in the execution of this act
may be carried in penalty envelopes bearing
the frank of the War Department.
NEGLECT OF DUTY AND FRAUD
Any person charged, as herein provided, with
the duty of carrying into effect any of the pro-
visions of this act or the regulations made or
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 43
directions given thereunder who shall fail or
neglect to perform such duty, and any person
charged with such duty or having and exercis-
ing any authority under said act, regulations
or directions, who shall knowingly make or be
a party to the making of any false or incorrect
registration, physical examination, exemption,
enlistment, enrolment or muster.
And any person who shall make or be a party
to the making of any false statement or certifi-
cate as to the fitness or liability of himself or
any other person for service under the provi-
sions of this act, or regulations made by the
President thereunder, or otherwise evades or
aids another to evade the requirements of this
act or of said regulations, or who, in any man-
ner, shall fail or neglect fully to perform any
duty required of him in the execution of this act,
shall, if not subject to military law, be guilty
of a misdemeanor and upon conviction in the
District Court of the United States having ju-
risdiction thereof be punished by imprisonment
for not more than one year, or, if subject to
military law, shall be tried by court martial
and suffer such punishment as a court martial
may direct.
A CALL TO GOVERNORS
Now, therefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, Presi-
dent of the United States, do call upon the
Governor of each of the several States and
44 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
Territories, the Board of Commissioners of
the District of Columbia and all officers
and agents of the several States and Terri-
tories, of the District of Columbia, and of
the counties and municipalities therein, to
perform certain duties in the execution of
the foregoing law, which duties will be com-
municated to them directly in regulations of
even date herewith.
And I do further proclaim and give notice
to all persons subject to registration in the
several States and in the District of Columbia,
in accordance with the above law, that the
time and place of such registration shall be
between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. on the 5th day
of June, 191 7, at the registration place in the
precinct wherein they have their permanent
homes.
Those who shall have attained their twenty-
first birthday and who shall not have attained
their thirty-first birthday on or before the day
here named are required to register, excepting
only officers and enlisted men of the Regular
Army, the Navy, the Marine Corps and the
National Guard and Naval Militia while in
the service of the United States, and officers
in the Officers' Reserve Corps and enlisted men
in the enlisted Reserve Corps while in active
service. In the Territories of Alaska, Hawaii
and Porto Rico a day for registration will be
named in a later proclamation.
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 45
REGISTRATION BY MAIL
And I do hereby charge those who, through
sickness, shall be unable to present them-
selves for registration that they apply on or
before the day of registration to the County
Clerk of the county where they may be for-
instructions as to how they may be registered
by agent.
Those who expect to be absent on the day
named from the counties in which they have
their permanent homes may register by mail,
but their mailed registration cards must reach
the places in which they have their perma-
nent homes by the day named herein. They
should apply as soon as practicable to the
County Clerk of the county wherein they may
be for instructions as to how they may accom-
plish their registration by mail.
In case such persons as, through sickness or
absence, may be unable to present themselves
personally for registration shall be sojourning
in cities of over 30,000 population, they shall
apply to the City Clerk of the city wherein
they may be sojourning rather than to the
Clerk of the county.
The Clerks of counties and of cities of over
30,000 population, in which numerous applica-
tions from the sick and from non-residents are
expected, are authorized to establish such sub-
agencies and to employ and deputize such cler*
46 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
ical force as may be necessary to accommodate
these applications.
THE WHOLE NATION AN ARMY
The Power against which we are arrayed has
sought to impose its will upon the world by
force. To this end it has increased armament
until it has changed the face of war. In the
sense in which we have been wont to think of
armies there are no armies in this struggle,
there are entire nations armed.
Thus, the men who remain to till the soil
and man the factories are no less a part of the
army that is in France than the men beneath
the battle flags.
It must be so with us. It is not an army
that we must shape and train for war — ^it is a
Nation. To this end our people must draw
close in one compact front against a common
foe. But this cannot be if each man pursues
a private purpose. All must pursue one pur-
pose. The Nation needs all men, but it needs
each man, not in the field that will most pleas-
ure him, but in the endeavor that will best
serve the common good.
Thus, though a sharpshooter pleases to op-
erate a trip-hammer for the forging of great
guns, and an expert machinist desires to march
with the flag, the Nation is being served only
when the sharpshooter marches and the ma-
chinist remains at his levers. The whole Na-
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 47
tion must be a team, in which each man shall
play the part for which he is best fitted.
NOT A DRAFT OP THE UNWILLING
To this end Congress has provided that the
Nation shall be organized for war by selection,
that each man shall be classified for service in
the place to which it shall best serve the gen-
eral good to call him.
The significance of this cannot be overstated.
It is a new thing in our history and a landmark
in our progress. It is a new manner of accept-
ing and vitalizing our duty to give ourselves
with thoughtful devotion to the common pur-
pose of us all. It is in no sense a conscription
of the unwilling. It is, rather, selection from
a Nation which has volunteered in mass.
It is no more a choosing of those who shall
march with the colors than it is a selection of
those who shall serve an equally necessary and
devoted purpose in the industries that lie be-
hind the battle-lines.
The day here named is the time upon which
all shall present themselves for assignment to
their tasks. It is for that reason destined to
be remembered as one of the most conspicuous
moments in our history. It is nothing less
than the day upon which the manhood of the
country shall step forward in one soHd rank in
defense of the ideals to which this Nation is
consecrated. It is important to those ideals,
48 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
no less than to the pride of this generation in
manifesting its devotion to them, that there be
no gaps in the. ranks.
DAY OF PATRIOTIC DEVOTION
It is essential that the day be approached in
thoughtful apprehension of its significance and
that we accord to it the honor and the mean-
ing that it deserves. Our industrial need pre-
scribes that it be not made a technical holiday,
but the stern sacrifice that is before us urges
that it be carried in all our hearts as a great
day of patriotic devotion and obligation, when
the duty shall lie upon every man, whether he
is himself to be registered or not, to see to it
that the name of every male person of the des-
ignated ages is written on these lists of honor.
In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my
hand and caused the seal of the United States
to be affixed.
Done at the city of Washington this i8th
day of May, in the year of our Lord, 191 7, and
of the independence of the United States of
America the one hundred and forty-first.
By the President :
Robert Lansing,
Secretary of State.
VI
CONSERVING THE NATION'S FOOD
{May IQ, 1917)
It is very desirable, in order to prevent mis-
understanding or alarms and to assure co-op-
eration in a vital matter, that the country
should understand exactly the scope and pur-
pose of the very great powers which I have
thought it necessary, in the circumstances, to
ask the Congress to put in my hands with re-
gard to our food-supplies.
Those powers are very great, indeed, but
they are no greater than it has proved neces-
sary to lodge in the other Governments which
are conducting this momentous war, and their
object is stimulation and conservation, not ar-
bitrary restraint or injurious interference with
the normal processes of production. They are
intended to benefit and assist the farmer and all
those who play a legitimate part in the prepara-
tion, distribution and marketing of foodstuffs.
A SHARP LINE OF DISTINCTION
It is proposed to draw a sharp line of dis-
tinction between the normal activities of the
so IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
Government, represented in the Department
of Agriculture, in reference to food production,
conservation and marketing, on the one hand,
and the emergency activities necessitated by
the war, in reference to the regulation of food
distribution and consumption, on the other.
All measures intended directly to extend the
normal activities of the Department of Agri-
culture, in reference to the production, conser-
vation and the marketing of farm crops, will
be administered, as in normal times, through
that department; and the powers asked for
over distribution and consumption, over ex-
ports, imports, prices, purchase and requisition
of commodities, storing and the like, which
may require regulation during the war, will be
placed in the hands of a Commissioner of Food
Administration, appointed by the President
and directly responsible to him.
THE END TO BE ATTAINED
The objects sought to be served by the leg-
islation asked for are: Full inquiry into the
existing available stocks of foodstuffs and into
the costs and practices of the various food pro-
ducing and distributing trades ; the prevention
of all unwarranted hoarding of every kind, and
of the control of foodstuffs by persons who are
not in any legitimate sense producers, dealers
or traders ; the requisition, when necessary for
public use, of food supplies and of the equip-
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 51
ment necessary for handling them properly;
the licensing of wholesome and legitimate mix-
tures and milling percentages, and the prohi-
bition of the unnecessary or wasteful use of
foods.
Authority is asked also to establish prices,
but nc^t in order to limit the profits of the
farmcis, but only to guarantee to them, when
necessary, a minimum price, which will insure
them a profit where they are asked to attempt
new crops, and to secure the consumer against
extortion by breaking up corners and attempts
at speculation when they occur, by fixing tem-
porarily a reasonable price at which middle-
men must sell.
THE FIXING OF PRICES
I have asked Mr. Herbert Hoover to under-
take this all-important task of food adminis-
tration. He has expressed his willingness to do
so, on condition that he is to receive no pay-
ment for his services, and that the whole of the
force under him, exclusive of clerical assistance,
shall be employed, as far as possible, upon the
same volunteer basis.
He has expressed his confidence that this
difficult matter of food administration can be
successfully accomplished through the vol-
untary co-operation and direction of legiti-
mate distributers of foodstuffs and with the
help of the women of the country.
52 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
Although it is absolutely necessary that un-
questionable powers shall be placed in my
hands, in order to insure the success of this
administration of the f ood-suppHes of the coun-
try, I am confident that the exercise of those
powers will be necessary only in the few cases
where some small and selfish minority proves
unwilling to put the Nation's interests above
personal advantage, and that the whole coun-
try will heartily support Mr. Hoover's efforts
by supplying the necessary volunteer agencies
throughout the country for the intelligent con-
trol of food consumption, and securing the
co-operation of the most capable leaders of the
very interests most directly affected, that the
exercise of the powers deputed to him will rest
very successfully upon the good- will and co-op-
eration of the people themselves, and that the
ordinary economic machinery of the country
will be left substantially undisturbed.
NO FEAR OF BUREAUCRACY
The proposed food administration is intended,
of course, only to meet a manifest emergency
and to continue only while the war lasts. Since
it will be composed for the most part of volun-
teers, there need be no fear of the possibility
of a permanent bureaucracy arising out of it.
All control of consumption will disappear
when the emergency has passed. It is with
that object in view that the Administration
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 53
considers it to be of pre-eminent importance
that the existing associations of producers and
distributers of foodstuffs should be mobilized
and made use of on a volunteer basis. The
successful conduct of the projected food ad-
ministration, by such means, will be the finest
possible demonstration of the willingness, the
ability and the efficiency of democracy and of
its justified reHance upon the freedom of indi-
vidual initiative.
The last thing that any American could con-
template with equanimity would be the intro-
duction of anything resembling Prussian au-
tocracy into the food control of this country.
It i^ of vital interest and importance to every
man who produces food and to every man who
takes part in its distribution that these policies,
thus Liberally administered, should succeed and
succeed altogether. It is only in that way that
we can prove it to be absolutely unnecessary
to resort to the rigorous and drastic measures
which have proved to be necessary in some of
the European countries.
VII
AN ANSWER TO CRITICS
{May 22, 1917)
In the following letter, addressed to Repre-
sentative Hefiin, Democrat, of Alabama, Presi-
dent Wilson replies to criticisms regarding his
position with regard to the war and its objects :
It is incomprehensible to me how any frank
or honest person could doubt or question my
position with regard to the war and its ob-
jects. I have again and again stated the very
serious and long-continued wrongs which the
Imperial German Government has perpetrated
against the rights, the commerce and the citi-
zens of the United States. The list is long and
overwhelming. No Nation that respected it-
self or the rights of humanity could have borne
those wrongs any longer.
Our objects in going into the war have been
stated with equal clearness. The whole of the
conception which I take to be the conception
of our fellow-countrymen with regard to the
outcome of the war and the terms of its settle-
ment, I set forth with the utmost explicitness
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 55
in an address to the Senate of the United States
on the 2 2d of January last. Again, in my mes-
sage to Congress on the 2d of April last, those
objects were stated in unmistakable terms.
I can conceive no purpose in seeking to be-
cloud this matter except the purpose of weak-
ening the hands of the Government and mak-
ing the part which the United States is to play
in this great struggle for human Hbeirty an in-
efficient and hesitating part.
We have entered the war for our own rea-
sons and with our own objects clearly stated,
and shall forget neither the reasons nor the
objects. There is no hate in our hearts for
the German people, but there is a resolve
which cannot be shaken even by misrepre-
sentation, to overcome the pretensions 5f the
autocratic Government which acts upon pur-
poses to which the German people have never
consented.
5
VIII
MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS
{May 30, 1917)
In one sense the great struggle into which we
have now entered is an American struggle,
because it is in defense of American honor and
American rights, but it is something even
greater than that; it is a WQrld__struggle^^It
is the struggle of men who love liberty every"
where, and in this cause America will show
herself greater than ever because she will rise
to a greater thing.
The program has conferred an unmerited
dignity upon the remarks I am going to make
by calling them an address, because I am
not here to deliver an address [said the Presi-
dent]. I am here merely to show in my offi-
cial capacity the sympathy of this great Gov-
ernment with the object of this occasion, and
also to speak just a word of the sentiment that
is in my own heart.
Any memorial day of this sort is, of course,
a day touched with sorrowful memory, and
yet I for one do not see how we can have any
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 57
thought of pity for the men whose^ memory we
honor to-day. I do not pity them. I envy
them, rather, because their great work for lib-
erty is accompHshed, and we are in the midst
of a work unfinished, testing our strength where
their strength already has been tested.
A HERITAGE FROM THE DEAD
There is a touch of sorrow, but there is a
touch of reassurance also in a day Hke this,
because we know how the men of America
have responded to the call of the cause of lib-
erty, and it fills our mind with a perfect asstu*-
ance that that response will come again in equal
measures, with equal majesty and with a result
which will hold the attention of all mankind.
When you reflect upon it, these men who
died to preserve the Union died to preserve
the instrument which we are now using to
serve the world — a free nation espousing the
cause of himian liberty. In one sense the
great struggle into which we have now entered
is an American struggle, because it is in the
sense of American honor and American rights,
but it is something even greater than that;
it is a world struggle. It is a struggle of men
who love liberty everywhere ; and in this cause
America will show herself greater than ever
because she will rise to a greater thing.
We have said in the beginning that we
planned this great Government that men who
S8 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
wish freedom might have a place of refuge and
a place where their hope could be realized,
and now, having established such a Govern-
ment, having preserved such a Government,
having vindicated the power of such a Gov-
ernment, we are saying to all mankind, "We
did not set this Government up in order that
we might have a selfish and separate liberty,
for we are now ready to come to your assist-
ance and fight out upon the fields of the
world the cause of human liberty."
America's full fruition
In this thing America attains her full dig-
nity and the full fruition of her great purpose.
No man can be glad that such things have
happened as we have witnessed in these last
fateful years, but perhaps it may be permitted
to us to be glad that we have an opportunity
to show the principles which we profess to be
living — ^principles which live in our hearts —
and to have a chance by the pouring out of otu-
blood and treasure to vindicate the things
which we have professed. For, my friends,
the real fruition of life is to do the things we
have said we wished to do. There are times
when words seem empty and only action seems
great. Such a time has come, and in the
providence of God America will once more
have an opportunity to show to the world that
she was born to serve mankind.
IX
A STATEMENT TO RUSSIA
{June 9t 1917)
In view of the approaching visit of the Amer-
ican delegation to Russia to express the deep
friendship of the American people for the people
of Russia and to discuss the best and most
practical means of co-operation between the
two peoples in carrying the present struggle
for the freedom of all peoples to a successful
consummation, it seems opportune and appro-
priate that I should state again, in the light of
this new partnership, the objects the United
States has had in mind in entering the war.
Those objects have been very much beclouded
during the past few weeks by mistaken and
misleading statements, and the issues at stake
are too momentous, too tremendous, too sig-
nificant for the whole human race to permit
any misinterpretations or misunderstandings,
however slight, to remain uncorrected for a
moment.
The war has begun to go against Germany,
and in their desperate desire to escape the in-
6o IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
evitable ultimate defeat, those who are in au-
thority in Germany are using every possible
instrumentality, are making use even of the
influence of groups and parties among their
own subjects to whom they have never been
just or fair, or even tolerant, to promote a
propaganda on both sides of the sea which will
preserve for them their influence at home and
their power abroad, to the undoing of the very
men they are using.
AMERICA SEEKS NO CONQUEST
The position of America in this war is so
clearly avowed that no man can be excused
for mistaking it. She seeks no material profit
or aggrandizement of any kind. She is fight-
ing for no advantage or selfish object of her
own, but for the liberation of peoples every-
where from the aggressions of autocratic force.
The ruling classes in Germany have begun of
late to profess a like liberality and justice of
purpose, but only to preserve the power they
have set up in Germany and the selfish advan-
tages which they have wrongly gained for them-
selves and their private projects of power all
the way from Berlin to Bagdad and beyond.
Government after Government has, by their
influence, without open conquest of its terri-
tory, been linked together in a net of intrigue
directed against nothing less than the peace
and liberty of the world. The meshes of that
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 6i
intrigue must be broken, but cannot be broken
unless wrongs already done are undone; and
adequate measures must be taken to prevent
it from ever again being rewoven or repaired.
Of course the Imperial German Government
and those whom it is using for their own undo-
ing are seeking to obtain pledges that the war
will end in the restoration of the status quo
ante. It was the status quo ante out of which
this iniquitous war issued forth, the power of
the Imperial German Government within the
empire and its widespread domination and in-
fluence outside of that empire. That status
must be altered in such fashion as to prevent any-
such hideous thing from ever happening again.
THE PRINCIPLES THAT ARE INVOLVED
We are fighting for the liberty, self-govern-
ment and the undictated development of all
peoples, and every feature of the settlement
that concludes this war must be conceived and
executed for that purpose. Wrongs must first
be righted and then adequate safeguards must
be created to prevent their being committed
again. We ought not to consider remedies
merely because they have a pleasing and sonor-
ous sound. Practical questions can be settled
only by practical means. Phrases will not ac-
complish the result. Effective readjustments
will; and whatever readjustments are neces-
sary must be made.
62 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
But they must follow a principle, and that
principle is plain:
No people must be forced under sovereignty
under which it does not wish to live.
No territory must change hands except for
the purpose of securing those who inhabit it a
fair chance of life and liberty.
No indemnities must be insisted on except
those that constitute payment for manifest
wrongs done.
No readjustments of power must be made
except such as will tend to secure the future
peace of the world and the future welfare and
happiness of its peoples.
And then the free peoples of the world must
draw together in some common covenant, some
genuine and practical co-operation, that will in
effect combine their force to secure peace and
justice in the dealings of nations with one
another. The brotherhood of mankind must
no longer be a fair but empty phrase; it must
be given a structure of force and reality. The
nations must realize their common life and ef-
fect a workable partnership to secure that life
against the aggressions of autocratic and self-
pleasing power.
For these things we can affora to pour out
blood and treasure. For these are the things we
have always professed to desire, and unless we
pour out blood and treasure now and succeed,
we may never be able to tmite or show con-
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 63
quering force again in the great cause of hu-
man liberty. The day has come to conquer or
submit. If the forces of autocracy can divide
us, they will overcome us ; if we stand together,
victory is certain and the liberty which victory
will secure.
We can afford, then, to be generous, but we
cannot afford then or now to be weak or omit
any single guarantee of justice and security.
X
FLAG-DAY ADDRESS
{June 14, 1 917)
My Fellow-citizens, — We meet to cele-
brate Flag Day because this flag which we
honor and under which we serve is the emblem
of our unity, our power, our thought and pur-
pose as a nation. It has no other character
than that which we give it from generation to
generation. The choices are ours. It floats
in majestic silence above the hosts that exe-
cute those choices, whether in peace or in war.
And yet, though silent, it speaks to us —
speaks to us of the past, of the men and women
who went before us and of the records they
wrote upon it. We celebrate the day of its
birth ; and from its birth until now it has wit-
nessed a great history, has floated on high the
symbol of great events, of a great plan of life
worked out by a great people. We are about
to carry it into battle, to lift it where it will
draw the fire of our enemies. We are about to
bid thousands, hundreds of thousands, it may
be millions, of our men — the young, the strong,
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 65
the capable men of the nation — to go forth
and die beneath it on fields of blood far away —
for what? For some unaccustomed thing? For
something for which it has never sought the
fire before? American armies were never be-
fore sent across the seas. Why are they sent
now? For some new purpose, for which this
great flag has never been carried before, or for
some old, familiar, heroic purpose for which it
has seen men, its own men, die on every battle-
field upon which Americans have borne arms
since the Revolution?
These are questions which must be answered.
We are Americans. We in our turn serve
America, and can serve her with no private
purpose. We must use her flag as she has al-
ways used it. We are accountable at the bar
of history and must plead in utter frankness
what purpose it is we seek to serve.
WHY WE ARE AT WAR
It is plain enough how we were forced into
the war. The extraordinary insults and ag-
gressions of the Imperial German Government
left us no self-respecting choice but to take up
arms in defense of our rights as a free people
and of our honor as a sovereign Government.
The military masters of Germany denied us
the right to be neutral. They filled our unsus-
pecting communities with vicious spies and
conspirators and sought to corrupt the opinion
66 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
of our people in their own behalf. When they
found that they could not do that, their agents
diligently spread sedition among us and sought
to draw our own citizens from their allegiance
— and some of those agents were men con-
nected with the official embassy of the Ger-
man Government itself here in our own capital.
They sought by violence to destroy our own
industries and arrest our commerce. They
tried to incite Mexico to take up arms against
us and to draw Japan into a hostile alliance
with her — and that, not by indirection, but by
direct suggestion from the Foreign Office in Ber-
lin. They impudently denied us the use of the
seas and repeatedly executed their threat that
they would send to their death anyof oiu* people
who ventured to approach the coasts of Eu-
rope. And many of our own people were cor-
rupted. Men began to look upon their own
neighbors with suspicion and to wonder, in
their hot resentment and surprise, whether
there was any community in which hostile in-
trigue did not lurk. What great nation, in
such circumstances, would not have taken up
arms? Much as we had desired peace, it was
denied us, and not of our own choice. This
flag under which we serve would have been
dishonored had we withheld our hand.
But that is only part of the story. We
know now as clearly as we knew before we
were ourselves engaged that we axe not the
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR Gj
enemies of the German people and that they
are not our enemies. They did not originate
or desire this hideous war or wish that we
should be drawn into it; and we are vaguely
conscious that we are fighting their cause, as
they will some day see it, as well as our own.
They are themselves in the grip of the same
sinister power that has now at last stretched
its ugly talons out and drawn blood from us.
The whole world is at war because the whole
world is in the grip of that power and is trying
out the great battle which shall determine
whether it is to be brought under its mastery
or fling itself free.
THE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE CONFLICT
The war was begun by the military masters
of Germany, who proved to be also the masters
of Austria-Hungary. These men have never
regarded nations as peoples, men, women
and children of like blood and frame as them-
selves, for whom governments existed and in
whom governments had their life. They have
regarded them merely as serviceable organiza-
tions which they could by force or intrigue
bend or corrupt to their own purpose. They
have regarded the smaller states, in particular,
and the peoples who could be overwhelmed by
force, as their natural tools and instruments of
domination. Their purpose has long been
avowed. The statesmen of other nations, to
68 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
whom that purpose was incredible, paid Httle
attention; regarded what German professors
expounded in their class-rooms and German
writers set forth to the world as the goal of
German policy as rather the dream of minds
detached from practical affairs, as preposterous
private conceptions of German destiny, than as
the actual plans of responsible rulers; but the
rulers of Germany themselves knew all the
while what concrete plans, what well-advanced
intrigues, lay back of what the professors and
the writers were saying, and were glad to go
forward unmolested, filling the thrones of Bal-
kan states with German princes, putting Ger-
man officers at the service of Turkey to drill
her armies and make interest with her Gov-
ernment, developing plans of sedition and re-
bellion in India and Egypt, setting their fires
in Persia. The demands made by Austria upon
Serbia were a mere single step in a plan which
compassed Europe and Asia, from BerHn to
Bagdad. They hoped those demands might
not arouse Europe, but they meant to press
them whether they did or not, for they thought
themselves ready for the final issue of arms.
THE PLAN OF CONQUEST
Their plan was to throw a broad belt of Ger-
man military power and political control across
the very center of Europe and beyond the Med-
iterranean into the very heart of Asia; and
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 69
Austria-Hungary was to be as much their tool
and pawn as Serbia or Bulgaria or Turkey or
the ponderous states of the East. Austria-
Hungary, indeed, was to become part of the
central German Empire, absorbed and domi-
nated by the same forces and influences that
had originally cemented the German states
themselves. The dream had its heart at Ber-
lin. It could have had a heart nowhere else!
It rejected the idea of solidarity of race entirely.
The choice of peoples played no part in it at
all. It contemplated binding together racial
and political units which could be kept together
only by force — Czechs, Magyars, Croats, Serbs,
Rumanians, Turks, Armenians — the proud
states of Bohemia and Hungary, the stout little
commonwealths of the Balkans, the indomi-
table Turks, the subtile peoples of the East.
These peoples did not wish to be united. They
ardently desired to direct their own affairs,
would be satisfied only by undisputed inde-
pendence. They could be kept quiet only by
the presence or the constant threat of armed
men. They would live under a common power
only by sheer compulsion and await the day of
revolution. But the German military states-
men had reckoned with all that and were
ready to deal with it in their own way.
And they have actually carried the greater
part of that amazing plan into execution!
Look how things stand. Austria is at their
70 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
mercy. It has acted, not upon its own initia-
tive or upon the choice of its own people, but
at Berlin's dictation, ever since the war began.
Its people now desire peace, but cannot have
it until leave is granted from Berlin. The so-
called Central Powers are, in fact, but a single
Power. Serbia is at its mercy, should its
hand be but for a moment freed. Bulgaria
has consented to its will, and Rumania is
overrun. The Turkish armies, which Germans
trained, are serving Germany, certainly not
themselves, and the guns of German warships
lying in the harbor at Constantinople remind
Turkish statesmen every day that they have
no choice but to take their orders from Berlin.
From Hamburg to the Persian Gulf the net is
spread.
THE TALK OF PEACE
Is it not easy to understand the eagerness
for peace that has been manifested from Berlin
ever since the snare was set and sprung?
Peace, peace, peace has been the talk of her
Foreign Office for now a year and more; not
peace upon her own initiative, but upon the
initiative of the nations over which she now
deems herself to hold the advantage. A little
of the talk has been public, but most of it has
been private. Through all sorts of channels it
has come to me, and in all sorts of guises, but
never with the terms disclosed which the Ger-
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 71
man Government would be willing to accept.
That Government has other valuable pawns
in its hands besides those I have mentioned.
It still holds a valuable part of France, though
with slowly relaxing grasp, and practically the
whole of Belgium. Its armies press close upon
Russia and overrun Poland at their will. It
cannot go farther; it dare not go back. It
wishes to close its bargain before it is too late,
and it has little left to offer for the pound of
flesh it will demand.
The military masters under whom Germany
is bleeding see very clearly to what point Fate
has brought them. If they fall back or are
forced back an inch, their power both abroad
and at home will fall to pieces like a house of
cards. It is their power at home they are
thinking about now more than their power
abroad. It is that power which is trembling
under their very feet; and deep fear has en-
tered their hearts. They have but one chance
to perpetuate their military power, or even
their controlling political influence. If they
can secure peace now, with the immense ad-
vantages still in their hands which they have
up to this point apparently gained, they will
have justified themselves before the German
people; they will have gained by force what
they promised to gain by it — an immense ex-
pansion of German power, an immense enlarge-
ment of German industrial and commercial
6
72 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
opportunities. Their prestige will be secure,
and with their prestige their political power.
If they fail, their people will thrust them aside;
a government accountable to the people them-
selves will be set up in Germany, as it has been
in England, in the United States, in France,
and in all the great countries of the modem
time except Germany. If they succeed they
are safe and Germany and the world are un-
done; if they fail Germany is saved and the
world will be at peace. If they succeed, Amer-
ica will fall within the menace. We and all
the rest of the world must remain armed, as
they will remain, and must make ready for the
next step in their aggression; if they fail, the
world may unite for peace and Germany may
be of the union.
THE PRESENT AIM OP GERMANY
Do you not now understand the new intrigue,
the intrigue for peace, and why the masters of
Germany do not hesitate to use any agency
that promises to effect their purpose, the de-
ceit of the nations? Their present particular
aim is to deceive all those who throughout the
world stand for the rights of peoples and the
self-government of nations; for they see what
immense strength the forces of justice and of
liberalism are gathering out of this war. They
are employing liberals in their enterprise. They
are using men, in Germany and without, as
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 73
their spokesmen whom they have hitherto de-
spised and oppressed, using them for their own
destruction — sociaUsts, the leaders of labor,
the thinkers they have hitherto sought to si-
lence. Let them once succeed and these men,
now their tools, will be ground to powder be-
neath the weight of the great military empire
they will have set up; the revolutionists in
Russia will be cut off from all succor or co-
operation in western Europe and a counter
revolution fostered and supported; Germany
herself will lose her chance of freedom ; and all
Europe will arm for the next, the final struggle.
The sinister intrigue is being no less actively
conducted in this country than in Russia, and
in every country in Europe to which the agents
and dupes of the Imperial German Govern-
ment can get access. That Government has
many spokesmen here, in places high and low.
They have learned discretion. They keep
within the law. It is opinion they utter now,
not sedition. They proclaim the liberal pur-
poses of their masters; declare this a foreign
war which can touch America with no danger
to either her lands or her institutions ; set Eng-
land at the center of the stage and talk of her
ambition to assert economic dominion through-
out the world; appeal to our ancient tradition
of isolation in the politics of the nations; and
seek to undermine the Government with false
professions of loyalty to its principles.
74 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
THIS IS A PEOPLES* WAR
But they will make no headway. The false
betray themselves always in every accent. It
is only friends and partisans of the German
Government whom we have already identified
who utter these thinly disguised disloyalties.
The facts are patent to all the world, and no-
where are they more plainly seen than in the
United States, where we are accustomed to
deal with facts and not with sophistries; and
the great fact that stands out above all the rest
is that this is a Peoples' War, a war for free-
dom and justice and self-government amongst
all the nations of the world, a war to make the
world safe for the peoples who live in it and
have made it their own, the German people
themselves included; and that with us rests
the choice to break through all these hypocri-
sies and patent cheats and masks of brute
force and help set the world free, or else stand
aside and let it be dominated a long age through
by sheer weight of arms and the arbitrary
choices of self -constituted masters, by the na-
tion which can maintain the biggest armies
and the most irresistible armaments — a power
to which the world has afforded no parallel
and in the face of which political freedom must
wither and perish.
For us there is but one choice. We have
made it. Woe be to the man or group of men
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 75
that seeks to stand in our way in this day of
high resolution, when every principle we hold
dearest is to be vindicated and made secure
for the salvation of the nations. We are ready
to plead at the bar of history, and our flag
shall wear a new luster. Once more we shall
make good with our lives and fortunes the
great faith to which we were bom, and a new
glory shall shine in the face of our people.
XI
AN APPEAL TO THE BUSINESS INTERESTS
{July II, 1917)
My Fellow-countrymen, — The Govern-
ment is about to attempt to determine the
prices at which it will ask you henceforth to
furnish various supplies which are necessary
for the prosecution of the war, and various
materials which will be needed in the indus-
tries by which the war must be sustained.
We shall, of course, try to determine them
justly and to the best advantage of the nation
as a whole. But justice is easier to speak of
than to arrive at, and there are some consid-
erations which I hope we shall keep steadily in
mind while this particular problem of justice
is being worked out.
I therefore take the liberty of stating very
candidly my own view of the situation and
of the principles which should guide both
the Government and the mine -owners and
manufacturers of the country in this difficult
matter,
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 77
PATRIOTISM AND PROFITS APART
A just price must, of course, be paid for
everything the Government buys. By a just
price I mean a price which will sustain the in-
dustries concerned in a high state of efficiency,
provide a living for those who conduct them,
enable them to pay good wages, and make pos-
sible the expansions of their enterprises, which
will from time to time become necessary as
the stupendous undertakings of this great war
develop.
We could not wisely or reasonably do less
than pay such prices. They are necessary for
the maintenance and development of industry;
and the maintenance and development of in-
dustry are necessary for the great task we have
in hand.
But I trust that we shall not surround the
matter with a mist of sentiment. Facts are
our masters now. We ought not to put the
acceptance of such prices on the ground of
patriotism. Patriotism has nothing to do
with profits in a case like this. Patriotism
and profits ought never in the present circum-
stances to be mentioned together.
It is perfectly proper to discuss profits as a
matter of business, with a view to maintaining
the integrity of capital and the efficiency of
labor in these tragical months, when the lib-
erty of free men everywhere and of industry
78 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
itself trembles in the balance, but it would be
absurd to discuss them as a motive for helping
to serve and save our country.
Patriotism leaves profits out of the question.
In these days of our supreme trial, when we
are sending hundreds of thousands of our young
men across the seas to serve a great cause, no
true man who stays behind to work for them
and sustain them by his labor will ask himself
what he is personally going to make out of
that labor.
No true patriot will permit himself to take
toll of their heroism in money or seek to grow
rich by the shedding of their blood. He will
give as freely and with as unstinted self-sacri-
fice as they. When they are giving their lives,
will he not at least give his money?
I hear it insisted that more than a just
price, more than a price that will sustain
our industries, must be paid; that it is
necessary to pay very liberal and imusual
profits in order to ** stimulate production,"
that nothing but pecuniary rewards will do —
rewards paid in money, not in the mere
liberation of the world.
IS A BRIBE NECESSARY?
I take it for granted that those who argue
thus do not stop to think what that means.
Do they mean that you must be paid, must be
bribed, to make your contribution, a contribu-
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 79
tion that costs you neither a drop of blood,
nor a tear, when the whole world is in travail
and men everywhere depend upon and call to
you to bring them out of bondage and make
the world a fit place to live in again amidst
peace and justice?
Do they mean that you will exact a price,
drive a bargain, with the men who are endur-
ing the agony of this war on the battlefield, in
the trenches, amid the lurking dangers of the
sea, or with the bereaved women and pitiful
children, before you will come forward to do
your duty and give some part of your life, in
easy, peaceful fashion, for the things we are
fighting for, the things we have pledged our
fortunes, our lives, our sacred honor, to vindi-
cate and defend — liberty and justice and fair
dealing and the peace of nations ?
Of course you will not. It is inconceivable.
Your patriotism is of the same self-denying
stuff as the patriotism of the men dead or
maimed on the fields of France, or else it is no
patriotism at all. Let us never speak, then, of
profits and of patriotism in the same sentence,
but face facts and meet them. Let us do
sound business, but not in the midst of a
mist.
Many a grievous burden of taxation will
be laid on this Nation, in this generation
and in the next, to pay for this war; let
us see to it that for every dollar that is
8o IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
taken from the people's pockets it shall be
possible to obtain a dollar's worth of the
sound stuffs they need.
HIGH FREIGHTS AID GERMANY
Let us for a moment turn to the ship-owners
of the United States and the other ocean car-
riers whose example they have followed, and
ask them if they realize what obstacles, what
almost insuperable obstacles, they have been
putting in the way of the successful prosecu-
tion of this war by the ocean freight rates they
have been exacting.
They are doing everything that high freight
charges can do to make the war a failure, to
make it impossible. I do not say that they
realize this or intend it.
The thing has happened naturally enough,
because the commercial processes which we are
content to see operate in ordinary times have
without sufficient thought been continued into
a period where they have no proper place. I
am not questioning motives. I am merely
stating a fact, and stating it in order that
attention may be fixed upon it.
The fact is that those who have fixed war
freight rates have taken the most effective
means in their power to defeat the armies en-
gaged against Germany. When they realize
this we may, I take it for granted, count upon
them to reconsider the whole matter. It is
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 8i
high time. Their extra hazards are covered by
war-risk insurance.
THE LAW TO DEAL WITH OFFENDERS
I know, and you know, what response to
this great challenge of duty and of opportu-
nity the riation will expect of you; and I know
what response you will make. Those who do
not respond, who do not respond in the spirit
of those who have gone to give their lives for
us on bloody fields far away, may safely be left
to be dealt with by opinion and the law — ^for
the law must, of course, command those
things.
I am dealing with the matter thus publicly
and frankly, not because I have any doubt or
fear as to the result, but only in order that, in
all our thinking and in all our dealings with
one another we may move in a perfectly clear
air of mutual understanding.
And there is something more that we must
add to our thinking. The public is now as
much part of the Government as are the Army
and Navy themselves. The whole people, in
all their activities, are now mobilized and in
service for the accomplishment of the Nation's
task in this war. It is in such circumstances
impossible justly to distinguish between indus-
trial purchases made by the Government and
industries. And it is just as much our duty
to sustain the industries of the country, all the
82 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
industries that contribute to its life, as it is
to sustain our forces in the field and on the sea.
We must make the prices to the public the
same as the prices to the Government.
PRICES MEAN VICTORY OR DEFEAT
Prices mean the same thing everywhere now.
They mean the efficiency or the inefficiency of
the Nation, whether it is the Government that
pays them or not. They mean victory or de-
feat. They mean that America will win her
place once for all among the foremost free Na-
tions of the world, or that she will sink to
defeat and become a second-rate Power alike
in thought and action. This is a day of her
reckoning, and every man among us must per-
sonally face that reckoning along with her.
The case needs no arguing. I assume that
I am only expressing your own thoughts—
what must be in the mind of every true man
when he faces the tragedy and the solemn
glory of the present war, for the emancipa-
tion of mankind. I summon you to a great
duty, a great privilege, a shining dignity and
distinction.
I shaU expect every man who is not a slacker
to be at my side throughout this great enter-
prise. In it no man can win honor who thinks
of himself.
XII
REPLY OF THE UNITED STATES TO THE COM-
MUNICATION OF THE POPE TO THE BELLIG-
ERENT GOVERNMENTS
{August 27, IQ17)
To His Holiness Benedictus XV., Pope.
In acknowledgment of the communication
of Your Holiness to the belligerent peoples,
dated August i, 191 7, the President of the
United States requests me to transmit the
following reply :
Every heart that has not been blinded and
hardened by this terrible war must be touched
by this moving appeal of His Holiness, the
Pope, must feel the dignity and force of the
humane and generous motives which prompted
it, and must fervently wish that we might take
the path of peace he so persuasively points
out. But it would be folly to take it if it does
not, in fact, lead to the goal he proposes. Our
response must be based upon the stem facts
and upon nothing else. It is not a mere ces-
sation of arms he desires; it is a stable and
enduring peace. This agony must not be gone
84 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
through with again, and it must be a matter
of very sober judgment what will insure us
against it.
THE PROPOSAL FROM THE VATICAN
His Holiness, in substance, proposes that we
return to the status quo ante hellufHy and that
then there be a general condonation, disarma-
ment, and a concert of nations based upon an
acceptance of the principle of arbitration ; that
by a similar concert freedom of the seas be
established; and that the territorial claims of
France and Italy, the perplexing problems of
the Balkan states, and the restitution of Po-
land be left to such conciliatory adjustments as
may be possible in the new temper of such a
peace, due regard being paid to the aspira-
tions of the peoples whose political fortunes
and affiliations will be involved.
It is manifest that no part of this program
can be successfully carried out unless the res-
titution of the status quo ante furnishes a firm
and satisfactory basis for it. The object of
this war is to deliver the free peoples of the
world from the menace and the actual power
of a vast military establishment controlled by
an irresponsible Government, which, having
secretly planned to dominate the world, pro-
ceeded to carry the plan out without re-
gard either to the sacred obligations of treaty
or the long-established practices and long-
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 85
cherished principles of international action and
honor; which chose its own time for the war;
deHveredits blow fiercely and suddenly ; stopped
at no barrier either of law or of mercy; swept
a whole continent within the tide of blood —
not the blood of soldiers only, but the blood of
innocent women and children also, and of the
helpless poor; and now stands balked but not
defeated, the enemy of four-fifths of the world.
This power is not the German people. It is
the ruthless master of the German people. It
is no business of ours how that great people
came under its control or submitted with tem-
porary zest to the domination of its purpose;
but it is our business to see to it that the his-
tory of the rest of the world is no longer left
to its handling.
To deal with such a power by way of peace
upon the plan proposed by His Holiness the
Pope would, so far as we can see, involve a
recuperation of its strength and a renewal of
its policy ; would make it necessary to create
a permanent hostile combination of nations
against the German people who are its instru-
ments; and would result in abandoning the
new-bom Russia to the intrigue, the manifold
subtle interference, and the certain counter-
revolution which wotild be attempted by all
the malign influences to which the German
Government has of late accustomed the world.
Can peace be based upon a restitution of its
86 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
power or upon any word of honor it could
pledge in a treaty of settlement and accom-
modation ?
Responsible statesmen must now everywhere
see, if they never saw before, that no peace can
rest securely upon political or economic restric-
tions meant to benefit some nations and cripple
or embarrass others, upon vindictive action of
any sort, or any kind of revenge or deliberate
injury. The American people have stiffered
intolerable wrongs at the hands of the Imperial
German Government, but they desire no re-
prisal upon the German people, who have
themselves suffered all things in this war which
they did not choose. They believe that peace
should rest upon the rights of peoples, not the
rights of governments — the rights of peoples
great or small, weak or powerful — their equal
right to freedom and security and self-govern-
ment and to a participation upon fair terms in
the economic opportunities of the world, the
German people, of course, included, if they will
accept equality and not seek domination.
The test, therefore, of every plan of peace
is this: Is it based upon the faith of all the
peoples involved or merely upon the word of
an ambitious and intriguing Government on
the one hand, and of a group of free peoples
on the other ? This is a test which goes to the
root of the matter; and it is the test which
must be applied.
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 87
THE TEST THAT MUST BE APPLIED
The purposes of the United States in this
war are known to the whole world, to every
people to whom the truth has been permitted
to come. They do not need to be stated again.
We seek no material advantage of any kind.
We believe that the intolerable wrongs done in
this war by the furious and brutal power of the
Imperial German Government ought to be re-
paired, but not at the expense of the sover-
eignty of any people — ^rather a vindication of
the sovereignty both of those that are weak
and of those that are strong. Punitive dam-
ages, the dismemberment of empires, the es-
tablishment of selfish and exclusive economic
leagues, we deem inexpedient and in the end
worse than futile, no proper basis for a peace
of any kind, least of all for an enduring peace.
That must be based upon justice and fairness
and the common rights of mankind.
THE GERMAN RULERS CANNOT BE TRUSTED
We cannot take the word of the present rul-
ers of Germany as a guaranty of anything that
is to endure, unless explicitly supported by
such conclusive evidence of the will and pur-
pose of the German people themselves as the
other peoples of the world would be justified
in accepting. Without such guarantees treaties
of settlement, agreements for disarmament,
7
88 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
covenants to set up arbitration in the place of
force, territorial adjustments, reconstitutions
of small nations, if made with the German
Government, no man, no nation could now
depend on. We must await some new evi-
dence of the purposes of the great peoples of
the Central Powers. God grant it may be
given soon, and in a way to restore the confi-
dence of all peoples ever3rwhere in the faith of
nations and the possibility of a covenanted
peace.
Robert Lansing,
Secretary of State of the United States of
America.
XIII
A MESSAGE TO TEACHERS AND SCHOOL
OFFICERS
(Septetnbet 30, 1917)
The war is bringing to the minds of our
people a new appreciation of the problems of
national life and a deeper understanding of the
meaning and aims of democracy. Matters
which heretofore have seemed commonplace
and trivial are seen in a truer light. The ur-
gent demand for the production and proper
distribution of food and other national re-
sources has made us aware of the close de-
pendence of individual on individual and na-
tion on nation. The effort to keep up social
and industrial organizations, in spite of the
withdrawal of men for the army, has revealed
the extent to which modem life has become
complex and specialized.
These and other lessons of the war must be
learned quickly if we are intelligently and suc-
cessfully to defend our institutions. When the
war is over we must apply the wisdom which
90 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
we have acquired in purging and ennobling the
life of the world.
THE COMMON SCHOOL HAS A PART TO PLAY
In these vital tasks of acquiring a broader
view of human possibiHties the common school
must have large part. I urge that teachers
and other school officers increase materially the
time and attention devoted to instruction bear-
ing directly on the problems of community and
national life.
Such a plea is in no way foreign to the spirit
of American public education or of existing
practices. Nor is it a plea for a temporary
enlargement of the school program appropri-
ate merely to the period of the war. It is a
plea for a realization in public education of the
new emphasis which the war has given to the
ideals of democracy and to the broader con-
ceptions of national life.
In order that there may be definite material
at hand with which the schools may at once
expand their teachings, I have asked Mr.
Hoover and Commissioner Claxton to organ-
ize the proper agencies for the preparation and
distribution of suitable lessons for the element-
ary grades and for the high-school classes.
Lessons thus suggested will serve the double
purpose of illustrating in a concrete way what
can be undertaken in the schools and of stimu-
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 91
lating teachers in all parts of the country to
formulate new and appropriate materials drawn
directly from the commimities in which they
live.
WooDRow Wilson.
XIV
WOMAN SUFFRAGE MUST COME NOW
{October 23, igi7)
The President received at the White House
a delegation from the New York State Woman
Suffrage Party. Answering the address made
by the chairman, Mrs. Norman de R. White-
house, the President spoke as follows:
Mrs. Whitehouse and Ladies, — It is with
great pleasure that I receive you. I esteem it
a privilege to do so. I know the difficulties
which you have been laboring under in New
York State, so clearly set forth by Mrs. White-
house, but in my judgment those difficulties
cannot be used as an excuse by the leaders of
any party or by the voters of any party for
neglecting the question which you are pressing
upon them. Because, after all, the whole
world now is witnessing a struggle between two
ideals of government. It is a struggle which
goes deeper and touches more of the founda-
tions of the organized life of men than any
struggle that has ever taken place before, and
no settlement of the questions that lie on the
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 93
surface can satisfy a situation which requires
that the questions which lie underneath and at
the foundation should also be settled and
settled right. I am free to say that I think
the question of woman suffrage is one of those
questions which lie at the foundation.
The world has witnessed a slow political
reconstruction, and men have generally been
obliged to be satisfied with the slowness of the
process. In a sense it is wholesome that it
should be slow, because then it is solid and
sure. But I believe that this war is going so
to quicken the convictions and the conscious-
ness of mankind with regard to political ques-
tions that the speed of reconstruction will be
greatly increased. And I believe that just be-
cause w^e are quickened by the questions of
this war, we ought to be quickened to give
this question of woman suffrage our immediate
consideration.
NOW IS THE TIME TO ACT
As one of the spokesmen of a great party,
I would be doing nothing less than obeying the
mandates of that party if I gave my hearty
support to the question of woman suffrage
which you represent, but I do not want to
speak merely as one of the spokesmen of a
party. I want to speak for myself, and say
that it seems to me that this is the time for the
States of this Union to take this action. I
94 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
perhaps may be touched a Httle too much by
the traditions of our poHtics, traditions which
lay such questions almost entirely upon the
States, but I want to see communities declare
themselves quickened at this time and show
the consequence of the quickening.
I think the whole country has appreciated
the way in which the women have risen to this
great occasion. They not only have done what
they have been asked to do, and done it with
ardor and efficiency, but they have shown a
power to organize for doing things of their own
initiative, which is quite a different thing, and
a very much more difficult thing, and I think
the whole country has admired the spirit and
the capacity and the vision of the women of
the United States.
It is almost absurd to say that the country
depends upon the women for a large part of
the inspiration of its life. That is too obvious
to say; but it is now depending upon the
women also for suggestions of service, which
have been rendered in abundance and with the
distinction of originality. I, therefore, am very
glad to add my voice to those which are urging
the people of the great State of New York to
set a great example by voting for woman suf-
frage. It would be a pleasure if I might utter
that advice in their presence. Inasmuch as
I am bound too close to my duties here to
moko that possible, I am glad to have th§
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 95
privilege to ask you to convey that message
to them.
It seems to me that this is a time of privi-
lege. All otir principles, all our hearts, all our
purposes, are being searched ; searched not only
by our own consciences, but searched by the
world ; and it is time for the people of the States
of this country to show the world in what prac-
tical sense they have learned the lessons of
democracy — that they are fighting for democ-
racy because they beheve it, and that there is
no application of democracy which they do not
believe in.
I feel, therefore, that I am standing upon
the firmest foundations of the age in bidding
godspeed to the cause which you represent and
in expressing the ardent hope that the people
of New York may realize the great occasion
which faces them on Election Day and may
respond to it in noble fashion.
XV
THE THANKSGIVING DAY PROCLAMATION
{November 7, iQiT)
It has long been the honored custom of our
people to turn in the fruitful autumn of the
year in praise and thanksgiving to Almighty
God for His many blessings and mercies to us
as a Nation. That custom we can follow now,
even in the midst of the tragedy of a world
shaken by war and immeasurable disaster, in
the midst of sorrow and great peril, because
even amidst the darkness that has gathered
about us we can see the great blessings God
has bestowed upon us ; blessings that are bet-
ter than mere peace of mind and prosperity of
enterprise.
We have been given the opportunity to serve
mankind as we once served ourselves in the
great day of our declaration of independence,
by taking up arms against a tyranny that
threatened to master and debase men every-
where and joining with other free peoples in
demanding for all the nations of the world
what we then demanded and obtained for our-
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 97
selves. In this day of the revelation of our
duty not only to defend our rights as a Nation,
but to defend also the rights of free men
throughout the world, there has been vouch-
safed us in full and inspiring measure the reso-
lution and spirit of united action. We have
been brought to one mind and purpose. A
new vigor of common counsel and common
action has been revealed in us.
We should especially thank God that, in
such circumstances, in the midst of the great-
est enterprise the spirits of men have ever
entered upon, we have, if we but observe a
reasonable and practicable economy, abun-
dance with which to supply the needs of those
associated with us as well as our own.
A new light shines about us. The great
duties of a new day awaken a new and greater
national spirit in us. We shall never again be
divided or wonder what stuff we are made of.
And while we render thanks for these things,
let us pray Almighty God that in all humble-
ness of spirit we may look always to Him for
guidance; that we may be kept constant in the
spirit and purpose of service ; that by His grace
our minds may be directed and our hands
strengthened, and that in His good time lib-
erty and security and peace and the comrade-
ship of a common justice may be vouchsafed
all the nations of the earth.
Wherefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, President of
98 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
the United States of America, do hereby desig-
nate Thursday, the 29th day of November
next, as a day of thanksgiving and prayer, and
invite the people throughout the land to cease
upon that day from their ordinary occupations
and in their several homes and places of wor-
ship to render thanks to God, the Great Ruler
of nations.
XVI
LABOR MUST BEAR ITS PART
{November 12, 1917)
In his address before the American Federa-
tion of Labor, assembled in convention at
Buffalo, New York, the President spoke as
follows:
Mr. President, Delegates of the Amer-
ican Federation op Labor, Ladies and
Gentlemen, — I esteem it a great privilege
and a real honor to be thus admitted to your
public councils. When your executive com-
mittee paid me the compliment of inviting me
here I gladly accepted the invitation, because
it seems to me that this, above all other times
in your history, is the time for common coun-
sel, for the drawing not only of the energies,
but of the minds of the nation together. I
thought that it was a welcome opportunity for
disclosing to you some of the thoughts that
have been gathering in my mind during the
last momentous months.
I am introduced to you as the President of
the United States, and yet I would be pleased
if you would put the thought of the office into
loo IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
the background and regard me as one of your
fellow-citizens who has come here to speak,
not the words of authority, but the words of
counsel, the words which men should speak to
one another who wish to be frank in a moment
more critical, perhaps, than the history of the
world has ever yet known, a moment when it
is every man's duty to forget himself, to forget
his own interests, to fill himself with the nobil-
ity of a great national and world conception
and act upon a new platform elevated above
the ordinary affairs of life, elevated to where
men have views of the long destiny of mankind.
I think that in order to realize just what
this moment of counsel is, it is very desirable
that we should remind ourselves just how this
war came about and just what it is for. You
can explain most wars very simply, but the
explanation of this is not so simple. Its roots
run deep into all the obscure soils of history,
and, in my view, this is the last decisive issue
between the old principles of power and the
new principles of freedom.
GERMANY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE WAR
The war was started by Germany. Her
authorities deny that they started it, but I am
willing to let the statement I have just made
await the verdict of history. The thing that
needs to be explained is why Germany started
the war. Remember what the position of Ger-
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR loi
many in the world WciS-^ias' en viable a' position
as any nation has ever occupied. The whole
world stood at admiration of her wonderful
intellectual and material achievements, and all
the intellectual men of the world went to school
to her. As a university man I have been sur-
rounded by men trained in Germany, men
who had resorted to Germany because nowhere
else could they get such thorough and search-
ing training, particularly in the principles of
science and the principles that underlie modem
material achievements.
Her men of science had made her indus-
tries perhaps the most competent industries in
the world, and the label, "Made in Germany,'*
was a guarantee of good workmanship and
of sound material. She had access to all the
markets of the world, and every other man
who traded in those markets feared Germany
because of her effective and almost irresistible
competition. She had a place in the sun. Why
was she not satisfied? What more did she
want? There was nothing in the world of
peace that she did not already have, and have
in abundance.
We boast of the extraordinary pace of
American advancement. We show with pride
the statistics of the increase of our industries
and of the population of our cities. Well,
those statistics did not match the recent sta-
tistics of Germany. Her old cities took on
102 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
youth, grew faster than any American cities
ever grew; her old industries opened their eyes
and saw a new world and went out for its con-
quest, and yet the authorities of Germany were
not satisfied.
You have one part of the answer to the
question why she was not satisfied in her meth-
ods of competition. There is no important in-
dustry in Germany upon which the Govern-
ment had not laid its hands to direct it and,
when necessity arose, control it.
You have only to ask any man whom you
meet who is familiar with the conditions that
prevailed before the war in the matter of inter-
national competition to find out the methods
of competition which the German manufactur-
ers and exporters used under the patronage
and support of the Government of Germany.
You will find that they were the same sorts of
competition that we have decided to prevent
by law within our own borders. If they could
not sell their goods cheaper than we could
sell ours, at a profit to themselves, they could
get a subsidy from the Government which
made it possible to sell them cheaper any-
how; and the conditions of competition were
thus controlled in large measure by the German
Government itself.
But that did not satisfy the German Gov-
ernment. All the while there was lying be-
hind its thought, in its dreams of the future, a
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 103
political control which would enable it, in the
long run, to dominate the labor and the in-
dustry of the world.
SUCCESS BY AUTHORITY
They were not content with success by su-
perior achievement; they wanted success by
authority. I suppose very few of you have
thought much about the Berlin to Bagdad rail-
way. The Berlin to Bagdad railway was con-
structed in order to run the threat of force
down the flank of the industrial undertakings
of half a dozen other countries, so that when
German competition came in it would not be
resisted too far — because there was always the
possibility of getting German armies into the
heart of that country quicker than any other
armies could be got there.
Look at the map of Europe now. Ger-
many, in thrusting upon us again and again
the discussion of peace, talks about what?
Talks about Belgium, talks about northern
France, talks about Alsace-Lorraine. She has
kept all that her dreams contemplated when
the war began. If she can keep that, her
power can disturb the world as long as she
keeps it ; always provided — for I feel bound to
put this provision in — always provided the
present influences that control the German
Government continue to control it.
I believe that the spirit of freedom can get
I04 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
into the hearts of Germans and find as fine a
welcome there as it can find in any other
hearts. But the spirit of freedom does not
suit the plans of the Pan-Germans. Power
cannot be used with concentrated force against
free peoples if it is used by free people. You
know how many intimations come to us from
one of the Central Powers that it is more
anxious for peace than the chief Central Power,
and you know that it means that the people in
that Central Power know that if the war ends
as it stands, they will in effect themselves be
vassals of Germany, notwithstanding that their
populations are compounded with all the people
of that part of the world, and notwithstanding
the fact that they do not v/ish, in their pride
and proper spirit of nationality, to be so
absorbed and dominated.
THE POLITICAL POWER OP THE WORLD
Germany is determined that the political
power of the world shall belong to her. There
have been such ambitions before. They have
been in part realized. But never before have
those ambitions been based upon so exact and
precise and scientific a plan of domination.
May I not say it is amazing to me that any
group of people should be so ill informed as to
suppose, as some groups in Russia apparently
suppose, that any reforms planned in the in-
terest of the people can live in the presence of
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 105
a Germany powerful enough to undermine or
overthrow them by intrigue or force?
Any body of free men that compounds
with the present German Government is com-
pounding for its own destruction. But that
is not the whole of the story. Any man in
America or anywhere else who supposes that
the free industry and enterprise of the world
can continue if the Pan-German plan is achieved
and German power fastened upon the world is
as fatuous as the dreamers of Russia.
What I am opposed to is not the feeling of
the pacifists, but their stupidity. My heart
is with them, but my mind has a contempt for
them. I want peace, but I know how to get
it, and they do not.
You will notice that I sent a friend of
mine, Colonel House, to Europe, who is as
great a lover of peace as any man in the world ;
but I did not send him on a peace mission. I
sent him to take part in a conference as to how
the war was to be won. And he knows, as I
know, that that is the way to get peace if you
want it for more than a few minutes.
If we are true friends of freedom — our own
or anybody else's — ^we will see that the power
of this country and the productivity of this
country is raised to its absolute maximum and
that absolutely nobody is allowed to stand in
the way of it.
When I say that nobody ought to be al-
io6 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
lowed to stand in the way, I don't mean that
they shall be prevented by the power of
Government, but by the power of the Ameri-
can spirit. Our duty, if we are to do this great
thing and show America to be what we believe
her to be, the greatest hope and energy in the
world, then we must stand together night and
day until the job is finished.
LABOR MUST BE FREE
While we are fighting for freedom we must
see, among other things, that labor is free, and
that means a number of interesting things. It
means not only that we must do what we have
declared our purpose to do — ^see that the con-
ditions of labor are not rendered more oner-
ous by the war — but also that we shall see to
it that the instrumentalities by which the con-
ditions of labor are improved are not blocked
or checked. That we must do. That has
been the matter about which I have taken
pleasiire in conferring, from time to time, with
your president, Mr. Gompers; and if I may be
permitted to do so, I want to express my ad-
miration of his patriotic courage, his large
vision, his statesman-Hke sense and a mind that
knows how to pull in harness. The horses
that kick over the traces will have to be put
in a corral.
Now, to ''stand together" means that no-
body must interrupt the processes of our en-
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 107
ergy if the interruption can possibly be avoided
without the absolute invasion of freedom. To
put it concretely, that means this : Nobody has
a right to stop the processes of labor until all
the methods of conciliation and settlement
have been exhausted, and I might as well say
right here that I am not talking to you alone.
You sometimes stop the courses of labor, but
there are others who do the same. I am speak-
ing of my own experience when I say that you
are reasonable in a larger number of cases than
the capitalists.
I am not saying these things to them per-
sonally yet, because I haven't had a chance.
But they have to be said, not in any spirit of
criticism.
But, in order to clear the atmosphere and
come down to business, everybody on both
sides has got to transact business, and the
settlement is never impossible when both sides
want to do the square and right thing. More-
over, a settlement is always hard to avoid
when the parties can be brought face to face.
I can differ with a man much more radically
when he isn't in the room than I can when he
is in the room, because then the awkward thing
is that he can come back at me and answer
what I say. It is always dangerous for a man
to have the floor entirely to himself. And,
therefore, we must insist in every instance that
the parties come into each other's presence and
loS IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
there discuss the issues between them, and not
separately in places which have no communi-
cation with each other.
I like to remind myself of a delightful say-
ing of an Englishman of a past generation,
Charles Lamb. He was with a group of friends
and he spoke harshly of some man who was
not present. I ought to say that Lamb stut-
tered a little bit. And one of his friends said,
*'Why, Charles, I didn't know that you knew
So-and-so?" * 'Oh," he said, ** I don't. I can't
hate a man I know."
There is a great deal of human nature, of
very pleasant human nature, in that saying.
It is hard to hate a man you know. I may
admit, parenthetically, that there are some
politicians whose methods I do not at all be-
lieve in, but they are jolly good fellows, and if
they would not talk the wrong kind of politics
with me I would love to be with them. And
so it is all along the line, in serious matters and
things less serious. We are all of the same
clay and spirit, and we can get together if we
desire to get together.
AMERICANS MUST CO-OPERATE
Therefore my counsel to you is this : Let us
show ourselves Americans by showing that we
do not want to go off in separate camps or
groups by ourselves, but that we want to co-
operate with all other classes and all other
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 109
groups in a common enterprise, which is to
release the spirits of the worid from bondage.
I would be willing to set that up as the final
test of an American. That is the meaning of
democracy.
I have been very much distressed, my fel-
low-citizens, by some of the things that have
happened recently. The mob spirit is display-
ing itself here and there in this country. I
have no sympathy with what some men are
saying, but I have no sympathy with the men
that take their punishment into their own
hands; and I want to say to every man who
does join such a mob that I recognize him as
unworthy of the free institutions of the United
States.
There are some organizations in this coun-
try whose object is anarchy and the destruc-
tion of the law. I despise and hate their pur-
pose as much as any man, but I respect the
ancient processes of justice, and I would be too
proud not to see them done justice, however
wrong they are. And so I want to utter my
earnest protest against any manifestation of
the spirit of lawlessness anywhere or in any
cause. Why, gentlemen, look what it means.
We claim to be the greatest democratic
people in the world, and democracy means,
first of all, that we can govern ourselves. If
our men have not self-control, then they are
not capable of that great thing which we call
no IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
democratic government. A man who takes the
law into his own hands is not the right man to
co-operate in any form of orderly development
of law and institutions.
And some of the processes by which the
struggle between capital and labor is carried
on are processes that come very near to taking
the law into your own hands. I do not mean
for a moment to compare them with what I
have just been speaking of, but I want you to
see that they are mere gradations of the mani-
festations of the unwillingness to co-operate.
The fundamental lesson of the whole situation
is that we must not only take common counsel,
but that we must yield to and obey common
counsel. Not all of the instrumentalities for
this are at hand.
BETTER CONDITIONS MAY BE AT HAND
I am hopeful that in the very near future
new instrumentalities may be organized by
which we can see to it that various things that
are now going on shall not go on. There are
various processes of the dilution of labor and
the unnecessary substitution of labor and bid-
ding in different markets and unfairly upset-
ting the whole competition of labor which
ought not to go on — I mean now, on the part
of employers — and we must interject into this
some instrumentality of co-operation by which
the fair thing will be done all around.
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR in
I am hopeful that some such instrumen-
talities may be devised, but whether they are
or not we must use those that we have, and
upon every occasion where it is necessary to
have such an instrumentality, originated upon
that occasion, if necessary.
And so, my fellow-citizens, the reason that
I came away from Washington is that I some-
times get lonely down there — there are so many
people in Washington who know things that
are not so, and there are so few people in Wash-
ington who know anything about what the
people of the United States are thinking about.
I have to come away to get reminded of the
rest of the country. I have come away and
talk to men who are up against the real thing
and say to them, I am with you if you are
with me. The only test of being with me is
not to think about me personally at all, but
merely to think of me as the expression for the
time being of the power and dignity and hope
of the American people.
XVII
ADDRESS TO CONGRESS
{December 4, 1917)
Gentlemen of the Congress, — Eight
months have elapsed since I last had the honor
of addressing you. They have been months
crowded with events of immense and grave sig-
nificance for us. I shall not imdertake to detail
or even to summarize these events. The prac-
tical particulars of the part we have played in
them will be laid before you in the reports of
the executive departments. I shall discuss only
our present outlook upon these vast affairs,
our present duties and the immediate means of
accomplishing the objects we shall hold always
in view.
I shall not go back to debate the causes of
the war. The intolerable wrongs done and
planned against us by the sinister masters of
Germany have long since become too grossly
obvious and odious to every true American to
need to be rehearsed. But I shall ask you to
consider again, and with very grave scrutiny,
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 113
our objectives and the measures by which we
mean to attain them; for the purpose of discus-
sion here in this place is action, and our action
must move straight toward definite ends. Our
object is, of course, to win the war, and we
shall not slacken or suffer ourselves to be di-
verted until it is won. But it is worth while
asking and answering the question, When shall
we consider the war won?
From one point of view it is not necessary to
broach this fundamental matter. I do not
doubt that the American people know what
the war is about, and what sort of an outcome
they will regard as a realization of their pur-
pose in it. As a nation we are united in spirit
and intention.
I pay little heed to those who tell me
otherwise. I hear the voices of dissent —
who does not? I hear the criticism and
the clamor of the noisily thoughtless and
troublesome. I also see men here and there
fling themselves in impotent disloyalty against
the calm, indomitable power of the Nation.
I hear men debate peace who understand
neither its nature nor the way in which we
may attain it, with uplifted eyes and un-
broken spirits. But I know that none of
these speaks for the Nation. They do not
touch the heart of anything. They may
safely be left to strut about their uneasy
hour and be forgotten.
114 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
WHAT WE ARE FIGHTING FOR
But from another point of view I believe
that it is necessary to say plainly what we here
at the seat of action consider the war to be for,
and what part we mean to play in the settle-
ment of its searching issues. We are the spokes-
men of the American people, and they have a
right to know whether their purpose is ours.
They desire peace by the overcoming of evil,
but the defeat once and for all of the sinister
forces that interrupt peace and render it im-
possible, and they wish to know how closely
our thought runs with theirs and what action
we propose. They are impatient with those
who desire peace by any sort of compromise —
deeply and indignantly impatient — but they
will be equally impatient with us if we do not
make it plain to them what our objectives are
and what we are planning for in seeking to
make conquest of peace by arms.
I believe that I speak for them when I say
two things : First, that this intolerable Thing of
which the masters of Germany have shown us
the ugly face, this menace of combined intrigue
and force, which we now see so clearly as the
German power, a Thing without conscience or
honor or capacity for covenanted peace, must
be crushed, and, if it be not utterly brought
to an end, at least shut out from the friendly
intercourse of the nations; and, second, that
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 115
when this Thing and its power are indeed de-
feated and the time comes that we can discuss
peace — when the German people have spokes-
men whose word we can believe, and when
those spokesmen are ready, in the name of their
people, to accept the common judgment of the
nations as to what shall henceforth be the
bases of law and of covenant for the life of
the world — we shall be willing and glad to pay
the full price for peace and pay it ungrudgingly.
We know what that price will be. It will be
full, impartial justice — justice done at every
point and to every nation that the final settle-
ment must affect, our enemies as well as our
friends.
You catch with me the voices of humanity
that are in the air. They grow daily more
audible, more articulate, more persuasive, and
they come from the hearts of men everywhere.
They insist that the war shall not end in vin-
dictive action of any kind; that no nation or
people shall be robbed or punished because the
irresponsible rulers of a single country have
themselves done deep and abominable wrong.
It is this thought that has been expressed in
the formula, "No annexations, no contribu-
tions, no punitive indemnities."
THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA LED ASTRAY
Just because this crude formula expresses the
instinctive judgment as to the right of plain
ii6 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
men everywhere, it has been made diligent use
of by the masters of German intrigue to lead
the people of Russia astray, and the people of
every other country their agents could reach,
in order that a premature peace might be
brought about before autocracy has been taught
its final and convincing lesson and the people
of the world put in control of their own
destinies.
But the fact that a wrong use has been made
of a just idea is no reason why a right use
should not be made of it. It ought to be
brought under the patronage of its real friends.
Let it be said again that autocracy must first
be shown the utter futility of its claims to
power or leadership in the modern world. It
is impossible to apply any standard of justice
so long as such forces are unchecked and un-
defeated as the present masters of Germany
command. Not until that has been done can
right be set up as arbiter and peacemaker
among the nations. But when that has been
done — as, God willing, it assuredly will be —
we shall at last be free to do an unprecedented
thing, and this is the time to avow our purpose
to do it. We shall be free to base peace on
generosity and justice, to the exclusion of all
selfish claims to advantage, even on the part
of the victors.
Let there be no misunderstanding. Our
present and immediate task is to win the war,
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 117
and nothing shall turn us aside from it until
it is accomplished. Every power and resource
we possess, whether of men, of money, or of
materials, is being devoted, and will continue
to be devoted, to that purpose until it is
achieved. Those who desire to bring peace
about before that purpose is achieved I coun-
sel to carry their advice elsewhere. We will
not entertain it.
JUSTICE AND REPARATION
We shall regard the war only as won when
the German people say to us, through properly
accredited representatives, that they are ready
to agree to a settlement based upon justice and
the reparation of the wrongs their rulers have
done. They have done a wrong to Belgium
which must be repaired. They have estab-
lished a power over other lands and peoples
than their own — over the great empire of Aus-
tria-Hungary, over hitherto free Balkan states,
over Turkey, and within Asia — which must be
relinquished.
Germany's success by skill, by industry, by
knowledge, by enterprise, we did not grudge
or oppose, but admired rather. She had built
up for herself a real empire of trade and influ-
ence, secured by the peace of the world. We
were content to abide the rivalries of manufact-
ure, science and commerce that were involved
for us in her success, and stand or fall as we had
ii8 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
or did not have the brains and the initiative
to surpass her. But at the moment when she
had conspicuously won her triumphs of peace
she threw them away to estabHsh in their
stead what the world will no longer permit to
be established — military and political domi-
nation by arms, by which to oust where she
could not excel the rivals she most feared and
hated.
The peace we make must remedy that wrong.
It must deliver the once fair lands and happy
peoples of Belgium and northern France from
the Prussian conquest and the Prussian men-
ace, but it must also deliver the peoples of
Austria-Hungary, the peoples of the Balkans,
and the peoples of Turkey, alike in Europe and
in Asia, from the impudent and alien domi-
nation of the Prussian military and commercial
autocracy.
We owe it, however, to ourselves to say that
we do not wish in any way to impair or to re-
arrange the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It is
no affair of ours what they do with their own
life, either industrially or politically. We do
not purpose nor desire to dictate to them in
any way. We only desire to see that their af-
fairs are left in their own hands, in all matters,
great or small. We shall hope to secure for
the peoples of the Balkan peninsula and for the
people of the Turkish Empire the right and op-
portunity to make their own lives safe, their
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 119
own fortunes secure against oppression or injus-
tice and from the dictation of foreign courts or
parties, and our attitude and purpose with
regard to Germany herself are of a like kind.
OUR ATTITUDE TOWARD GERMANY
We intend no wrong against the German Em-
pire, no interference with her internal affairs.
We should deem either the one or the other
absolutely unjustifiable, absolutely contrary to
the principles we have professed to live by and
to hold most sacred throughout our life as a
nation.
The people of Germany are being told by
the men whom they now permit to deceive
them and to act as their masters that they
are fighting for very life and existence of
their empire, a war of desperate self-defense
against deliberate aggression. Nothing could
be more grossly or wantonly false, and we must
seek, by the utmost openness and candor as
to our real aims, to convince them of its false-
ness. We are, in fact, fighting for their eman-
cipation from fear, along with our own, from
the fear as well as from the fact of unjust
attack by neighbors or rivals or schemers after
world empire. No one is threatening the exist-
ence or the independence or the peaceful en-
terprise of the German Empire.
The worst that can happen to the detriment
of the German people is this, that if they should
120 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
still, after the war is over, continue to be
obliged to live under ambitious and intriguing
masters interested to disturb the peace of the
world, men or classes of men whom the other
peoples of the world could not trust, it might
be impossible to admit them to the partner-
ship of nations which must henceforth guar-
antee the world's peace. That partnership
must be a partnership of peoples, not a mere
partnership of governments.
It might be impossible, also, in such untow-
ard circumstances, to admit Germany to the
free economic intercourse which must inevi-
tably spring out of the other partnerships of a
real peace. But there would be no aggression
in that; and such a situation, inevitable be-
cause of distrust, would in the very nature of
things sooner or later cure itself, by processes
which would assuredly set in.
THE RIGHTS OF THE CENTRAL POWERS
The wrongs, the very deep wrongs, com-
mitted in this war will have to be righted.
That of course. But they cannot and must
not be righted by the commission of similar
wrongs against Germany and her allies. The
world will not permit the commission of simi-
lar wrongs as a means of reparation and settle-
ment. Statesmen must by this time have
learned that the opinion of the world is every-
where wide awake and fully comprehends the
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 121
issues involved. No representative of any self-
governed nation will dare disregard it by at-
tempting any such covenants of seLfishness and
compromise as were entered into at the congress
of Vienna.
The thought of the plain people here and
everywhere throughout the world, the people
who enjoy no privilege and have very simple
and unsophisticated standards of right and
wrong, is the air all governments must hence-
forth breathe if they would live. It is in the
full disclosing light of that thought that all
policies must be conceived and executed in this
midday hour of the world's life.
German rulers have been able to upset the
peace of the world only because the German
people were not suffered, under their tutelage,
to share the comradeship of the other peoples
of the world either in thought or in purpose.
They were allowed to have no opinion of their
own which might be set up as a rule of conduct
for those who exercised authority over them.
But the congress that concludes this war will
feel the full strength of the tides that run now
in the hearts and consciences of free men every-
where. Its conclusions will run with those
tides.
All these things have been true from the very
beginning of this stupendous war; and I can-
not help thinMng that if they had been made
plain at the very outset the sympathy and en-
122 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
thusiasm of the Russian people might have
been once for all enlisted on the side of the
AlHes, suspicion and distrust swept away, and
a real and lasting union of purpose effected.
Had they believed these things at the very mo-
ment of their revolution, and had they been
confirmed in that belief since, the sad reverses
which have recently marked the progress of
their affairs toward an ordered and stable gov-
ernment of free men might have been avoided.
TRUTH AS THE ANTIDOTE
The Russian people have been poisoned by
the very same falsehoods that have kept the
German people in the dark, and the poison has
been administered by the very same hands.
The only possible antidote is the truth. It
cannot be uttered too plainly or too often.
From every point of view, therefore, it has
seemed to be my duty to speak these declara-
tions of purpose, to add these specific interpre-
tations to what I took the liberty of saying to
the Senate in January. Our entrance into the
war has not altered our attitude toward the
settlement that must come when it is over.
When I said in January that the nations of
the world were entitled not only to free path-
ways upon the sea, but also to assured and un-
molested access to those pathways, I was
thinking, and I am thinking now, not of the
smaller and weaker nations alone, which need
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 123
our countenance and support, but also of the
great and powerful nations, and of our present
enemies as well as our present associates in the
war. I was thinking, and am thinking now,
of Austria herself, among the rest, as well as
of Serbia and of Poland. Justice and equal-
ity of rights can be had only at a great price.
We are seeking permanent, not temporary,
foundations for the peace of the world, and
must seek them candidly and fearlessly. As
always, the right will prove to be the expedient.
What shall we do, then, to push this great
war of freedom and justice to its righteous con-
clusion ? We must clear away with a thorough
hand all impediments to success, and we must
make every adjustment of law that will facili-
tate the full and free use of our whole capacity
and force as a fighting unit.
THE WAR AGAINST AUSTRIA
One very embarrassing obstacle that stands
in our way is that we are at war with Germany,
but not with her allies. I therefore very ear-
nestly recommend that the Congress immedi-
ately declare the United States in a state of
war \/ith Austria-Hungary. Does it seem
strange to you that this should be the conclu-
sion of the argument I have just addressed to
you? It is not. It is, in fact, the inevitable
logic of what I have said. Austria-Hungary is
for the time being not her own mistress, but
124 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
simply the vassal of the German Government.
We must face the facts as they are and act
upon them without sentiment in this stem
business.
The Government of Austria-Hungary is not
acting upon its own initiative or in response to
the wishes and feelings of its own peoples, but
as the instrument of another nation. We must
meet its force with our own and regard the
Central Powers as but one. The war can be
successfully conducted in no other way. The
same logic would lead also to a declaration of
war against Turkey and Bulgaria. They also
are the tools of Germany. But they are mere
tools, and do not yet stand in the direct path
of our necessary action. We shall go wherever
the necessities of this war carry us, but it seems
to me that we should go only where immediate
and practical considerations lead us, and not
heed any others.
A STRICTER GRIP ON ENEMY ALIENS
The financial and military measures which
must be adopted will suggest themselves as the
war and its undertakings develop, but I will
take the Hberty of proposing to you certain
other acts of legislation which seem to me to
be needed for the support of the war and for
the release of our whole force and energy.
It will be necessary to extend in certain par-
ticulars the legislation of the last session with
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 125
regard to alien enemies; and also necessary, I
believe, to create a very definite and particular
control over the entrance and departure of all
persons into and from the United States.
Legislation should be enacted defining as a
criminal offense every wilful violation of the
Presidential proclamations relating to enemy
aliens promulgated under Section 4067 of the
Revised Statutes and providing appropriate
punishment ; and women as well as men shoiild
be included under the terms of the acts placing
restraints upon ahen enemies. It is likely that
as time goes on many ahen enemies will be
willing to be fed and housed at the expense of
the Government in the detention camps, and
it would be the purpose of the legislation I have
suggested to confine offenders among them in
penitentiaries and other similar institutions,
where they could be made to work as other
criminals do.
A FURTHER LIMITING OF PRICES
Recent experience has convinced me that
the Congress must go further in authorizing
the Government to set limits to prices. The
law of supply and demand, I am sorry to say,
has been replaced by the law of unrestrained
selfishness. While we have eliminated profit-
eering in several branches of industry, it still
runs impudently rampant in others . The farm-
ers, for example, complain with a great deal
126 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
of justice that, while the regulation of food
prices restricts their incomes, no restraints are
placed upon the prices of most of the things
they must themselves purchase; and similar
inequities obtain on all sides.
It is imperatively necessary that the con-
sideration of the full use of the water power of
the country, and also the consideration of the
systematic and yet economical development of
such of the natural resources of the country
as are still under the control of the Federal
Government, should be resumed and affirma-
tively and constructively dealt with at the
earliest possible moment. The pressing need
of such legislation is daily becoming more
obvious.
The legislation proposed at the last session
with regard to regulated combinations among
our exporters, in order to provide for oiu* for-
eign trade a more effective organization and
method of co-operation, ought by all means to
be completed at this session.
And I beg that the members of the House of
Representatives will permit me to express the
opinion that it will be impossible to deal in
any way but a very wasteful and extravagant
fashion with the enormous appropriations of
the public moneys which must continue to be
made, if the war is to be properly sustained,
unless the House will consent to return to its
former practice of initiating and preparing all
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 127
appropriation bills through a single committee,
in order that responsibility may be centered,
expenditures standardized and made uniform,
and waste and duplication as much as possible
avoided.
Additional legislation may also become nec-
essary before the present Congress adjourns, in
order to effect the most efficient co-ordination
and operation of the railway and other trans-
portation systems of the country; but to that
I shall, if circumstances should demand, call
the attention of Congress upon another occasion.
THE WINNING OF THE WAR
If I have overlooked anything that ought to
be done for the more effective conduct of the
war, your own counsels will supply the omis-
sion. What I am perfectly clear about is that,
in the present session of the Congress, our
whole attention and energy should be con-
centrated on the vigorous and rapid and suc-
cessful prosecution of the great task of winning
the war.
We can do this with all the greater zeal and
enthusiasm because we know that for us this is
a war of high principle, debased by no selfish
ambition of conquest or spoliation; because we
know, and all the world knows, that we have
been forced into it to save the very institutions
we live under from corruption and destruction.
The purposes of the Central Powers strike
128 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
straight at the very heart of everything we be-
lieve in ; their methods of warfare outrage every
principle of humanity and of knightly honor;
theirintriguehascorruptedtheverythoughtand
spirit of many of our people ; their sinister and
secret diplomacy has sought to take our very
territory away from us and disrupt the union
of the States. Our safety would be at an end,
our honor forever sullied and brought into con-
tempt, were we to permit their triumph. They
are striking at the very existence of democracy
and liberty.
It is because it is for us a war of high, disin-
terested purpose, in which all the free people
of the world are banded together for the vindi-
cation of right, a war for the preservation of
our nation and of all that it has held dear of
principle and of purpose, that we feel ourselves
doubly constrained to propose for its outcome
only that which is righteous and of irreproach-
able intention, for our foes as well as for our
friends.
The cause being just and holy, the settle-
ment must be of like motive and quality. For
this we can fight, but for nothing less noble or
less worthy of our traditions. For this cause
we entered the war, and for this cause we will
battle until the last gun is fired.
I have spoken plainly because this seems to
me the time when it is most necessary to speak
plainly, in order that all the world may know
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 129
that even in the heat and ardor of the struggle,
and when our whole thought is of carrying the
war through to its end, we have not forgotten
any ideal or principle for which the name of
America has been held in honor among the
nations and for which it has been our glory to
contend in the great generations that went
before us.
A supreme moment of history has come.
The eyes of the people have been opened and
they see. The hand of God is laid upon the
nations. He will show them favor, I devoutly
believe, only if they rise to the clear heights of
His own justice and mercy.
XVIII
PROCLAMATION OF WAR AGAINST AUSTRIA-
HUNGARY
{December 12, 1917)
The President's proclamation, after citing
the resolution of Congress authorizing the war
with Austria, says :
Now, therefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, Presi-
dent of the United States of America, do hereby
proclaim to all whom it may concern that a
state of war exists between the United States
and the Imperial and Royal Austro-Hungarian
Government, and I do specially direct aU offi-
cers, civil or military, of the United States
that they exercise vigilance and zeal in the
discharge of the duties incident to such a
state of war.
And I do, moreover, earnestly appeal to all
American citizens that they, in loyal devotion
to their coimtry, dedicated from its foundation
to the principles of Hberty and justice, uphold
the laws of the land and give undivided and
willing support to those measures which may
be adopted by the constitutional authorities
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 131
in prosecuting the war to a successful issue
and obtaining a secure and just peace.
NEED ONLY OBEY THE LAWS
And, acting under and by virtue of the au-
thority vested in me by the Constitution of the
United States, and the aforesaid sections of
the Revised Statutes, I do hereby further pro-
claim and direct that the conduct to be ob-
served on the part of the United States toward
all natives, citizens, denizens or subjects of
Austria-Hungary, being males of the age of
fourteen years and upward, who shall be within
the United States and not actually naturalized,
shall be as follows :
All natives, citizens, denizens or subjects of Austria-
Hungary, being males of fourteen years and upward
who shall be within the United States and not actually
naturalized, are enjoined to preserve the peace toward
the United States and to refrain from crime against
the public safety and from violating the laws of the
United States and of the States and Territories thereof.
And to refrain from actual hostility or giving infor-
mation, aid or comfort to the enemies of the United
States.
And to comply strictly with the regulations which
are hereby or which may be, from time to time, promul-
gated by the President.
And so long as they shall conduct themselves in
accordance with law, they shall be undisturbed in the
peaceful pursuit of their lives and occupations and be
accorded the consideration due to all peaceful and law-
abiding persons, except so far as restrictions may be
132 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
necessary for their own protection and for the safety
of the United States.
A FRIENDLY ATTITUDE IS URGED
And toward such of said persons 'as con-
duct themselves in accordance with law, all
citizens of the United States are enjoined to
preserve the peace and to treat them with all
such friendliness as may be compatible with
loyalty and allegiance to the United States.
And all natives, citizens, denizens or sub-
jects of Austria-Hungary, being males of the
age of fourteen years and upward, who shall
be within the United States and not actually
naturalized, who fail to conduct themselves as
so enjoined, in addition to all other penalties
prescribed by law, shall be liable to restraint
or to give security, or to remove and depart
from the United States in the manner pre-
scribed by Sections 4069 and 4070 of the Re-
vised Statutes and as prescribed in regulations
duly promulgated by the President :
FEW REGULATIONS
And pursuant to the authority vested in
me, I hereby declare and establish the follow-
ing regulations, which I find necessary in the
premises, and for the public safety:
I. No native, citizen, denizen or subject of Austria-
Hungary, being a male of the age of fourteen years and
upward and not actually naturalized, shall depart from
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 133
the United Sta±es until he shall have received such per-
mit as the President shall prescribe, or except under order
of a court, judge or justice, under Sections 4069 and 4070
of the Revised Statutes.
2. No such person shall land or enter the United
States except under such restrictions and at such places
as the President may prescribe.
3. Every such person, of whom there may be reason-
able cause to believe that he is aiding or about to aid the
enemy, or who may be at large to the danger of the public
peace or safety, or who violates or attempts to violate,
or of whom there is reasonable ground to believe that he
is about to violate any regulation duly promulgated by
the President, or any criminal law of the United States,
or of the States or Territories thereof, will be subject to
summary arrest by the United States Marshal or his
deputy, or such other officers as the President shall desig-
nate, and to confinement in such penitentiary, prison,
jail, military camp or other place of detention as may
be directed by the President.
This proclamation and the regulations
herein contained shall extend and apply to all
land and water, continental or insular, in any
way within the jurisdiction of the United
States.
XIX
THE GOVERNMENT TAKES OVER THE
RAILROADS
(A Statement by the President, December 26, igi7)
I have exercised the powers over the trans-
portation systems of the country which were
granted me by the Act of Congress of Au-
gust, 1 91 6, because it has become imperatively
necessary for me to do so.
This is a war of resources no less than of
men, perhaps even more than of men, and it
is necessary for the complete mobilization of
our resources that the transportation systems
of the country should be organized and em-
ployed under a single authority and a simpli-
fied method of co-ordination which have not
proved possible under private management
and control.
The committee of railway executives who
have been co-operating with the Government
in this all-important matter have done the ut-
most that it was possible for them to do; have
done it with patriotic zeal and with great abil-
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 135
ity ; but there were differences that they could
neither escape nor neutralize.
IN FAIRNESS TO THE RAILROADS
Complete unity of administration in the
present circumstances involves upon occasion
and at many points a serious dislocation of
earnings, and the committee was, of course,
without power or authority to rearrange changes
or effect proper compensations and adjustments
of earnings. Several roads which were will-
ingly and with admirable public spirit accept-
ing the orders of the committee have already
suffered from these circumstances and should
not be required to suffer further. In mere
fairness to them the full authority of the
Government must be substituted.
The Government itself will thereby gain
an immense increase of efficiency in the
conduct of the war and of the innumerable
activities upon which its successful conduct
depends.
The public interest must be first served, and
in addition the financial interests of the Gov-
ernment and the financial interests of the rail-
ways must be brought under a common direc-
tion. The financial operations of the railways
need not then interfere with the borrowings of
the Government, and they themselves can be
conducted at a great advantage.
10
136 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
INVESTORS TO BE PROTECTED
Investors in railway securities may rest as-
sured that their rights and interests will be as
scrupulously looked after by the Government
as they could be by the directors of the
several railway systems. Immediately upon
the reassembling of Congress I shall recom-
mend that these definite guarantees be given:
First, of course, that the railway properties
will be maintained during the period of Fed-
eral control in as good repair and as complete
equipment as when taken over by the Gov-
ernment, and, second, that the roads shall re-
ceive a net operating income equal in each case
to the average net income of the three years
preceding June 30, 191 7; and I am entirely
confident that the Congress will be disposed
in this case, as in others, to see that justice
is done and full security assured to the own-
ers and creditors of the great systems which
the Government must now use under its own
direction or else suffer serious embarrassment.
The Secretary of War and I are agreed that,
all the circumstances being taken into consid-
eration, the best results can be obtained under
the immediate executive direction of the Hon.
William G. McAdoo, whose practical experi-
ence peculiarly fits him for the service, and
whose authority as Secretary of the Treasury
will enable him to co-ordinate, as no other man
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 137
could, the many financial interests which will
be involved and which might, unless systemat-
ically directed, suffer very embarrassing en-
tanglements.
A RECOGNITION OP FACTS
The Government of the United States is the
only great Government now engaged in the
war which has not already assumed control of
this sort. It was thought to be in the spirit
of American institutions to attempt to do
everything that was necessary through private
management, and if zeal and ability and patri-
otic motive could have accomplished the nec-
essary unification of administration, it would
certainly have been accomplished; but no zeal
or abiHty could overcome insuperable obstacles
and I have deemed it my duty to recognize
that fact in all candor, now that it is demon-
strated, and to use without reserve the great
authority reposed in me.
A great national necessity dictated the ac-
tion, and I was therefore not at liberty to
abstain from it.
WooDROw Wilson.
The text of the proclamation follows :
Whereas, the Congress of the United States, in the ex-
ercise of the constitutional authority vested in them, by
joint resolution of the Senate and House of Representa-
tives, bearing date April 6, 191 7, resolved:
138 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
**That the state of war between the United States and
the Imperial German Government which has thus been
thrust upon the United States is hereby formally de-
clared, and that the President be, and he is hereby,
authorized and directed to employ the entire naval
and miUtary forces of the United States and the re-
sources of the Government to carry on war against
the Imperial German Government, and to bring the
conflict to a successful termination, all of the re-
sources of the country are hereby pledged by the
Congress of the United States."
And by joint resolution bearing date of December
7, 191 7, resolved:
**That a state of war is hereby declared to exist between
the United States of America and the Imperial and
Royal Austro-Hungarian Government, and that the
President be, and he is hereby, authorized and di-
rected to employ the entire naval and military forces
of the United States and the resources of the Govern-
ment to carry on war against the Imperial and Royal
Austro-Hungarian Government, and to bring the
conflict to a successful termination, all the resources
of the country are hereby pledged by the Congress of
the United States."
And whereas, it is provided by Section i of the act
approved August 29, 1916, entitled "An act making
appropriations for the support of the army for the fiscal
year ending June 30, 191 7, and for other purposes," as
follows:
**The President, in time of war, is empowered, through
the Secretary of War, to take possession and assume
control of any system or systems of transportation,
or any part thereof, and to utilize the same, to the
exclusion as far as may be necessary of all other
traffic thereon, for the transfer or transportation of
troops, war material and equipment, or for such other
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 139
purposes connected with the emergency as may be
needful or desirable."
And whereas, it has now become necessary in the
national defense to take possession and assume control of
certain systems of transportation and to utilize the same,
to the exclusion as far as may be necessary of other than
war traffic thereon for the transportation of troops, war
material and equipment therefor, and for other needful
and desirable purposes connected with the prosecution
of the war.
Now, therefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, President of the
United States, under and by virtue of the powers vested
in me by the foregoing resolutions and statute, and by
virtue of all other powers thereto me enabling, do hereby,
through Newton D. Baker, Secretary of War, take pos-
session and assume control at 12 o'clock noon on the
twenty-eighth day of December, 191 7, of each and every
system of transportation and the appurtenances thereof
located wholly or in part within the boundaries of the
continental United States and consisting of railroads, and
owned or controlled systems of coastwise and inland
transportation, engaged in general transportation,
whether operated by steam or by electric power, including
also terminals, terminal companies and terminal associa-
tions, sleeping and parlor cars, private cars and private
car Hnes, elevators, warehouses, telegraph and telephone
lines and all other equipment and appurtenances com-
monly used upon or operated as a part of such rail or
combined rail and water systems of transportation, to
the end that such systems of transportation be utiHzed
for the transfer and transportation of troops, war ma-
terial and equipment to the exclusion so far as may be
necessary of all other traffic thereon, and that so far as
such exclusive use be not necessary or desirable, such
systems of transportation be operated and utilized in the
performance of such other services as the national interest
140 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
may require and of the usual and ordinary business and
duties of common carriers.
It is hereby directed that the possession, control, op-
eration and utilization of such transportation systems
hereby by me undertaken shall be exercised by and
through William G. McAdoo, who is hereby appointed
and designated Director-General of Railroads.
Said director may perform the duties imposed upon
him, so long and to such extent as he shall determine,
through the boards of directors, receivers, officers and
employees of said systems of transportation. Until and
except so far as said director shall from time to time by
general or special orders otherwise provide, the boards
of directors, receivers, officers and employees of the vari-
ous transportation systems shall continue the operation
thereof in the usual and ordinary course of the business
of common carriers, in the names of their respective
companies.
Until and except so far as said director shall from
time to time otherwise by general or special orders deter-
mine, such systems of transportation shall remain subject
to all existing statutes and orders of the Interstate Com-
merce Commission, and to all statutes and orders of regu-
lating commissions of the various States in which said
systems or any part thereof may be situated. But any
orders, general or special, hereafter made by said director
shall have paramount authority and be obeyed as such.
Nothing herein shall be construed as now affecting
the possession, operation and control of street electric
passenger railways, including railways commonly called
interurban, whether such railways be or be not owned or
controlled by such railroad companies or systems. By
subsequent order and proclamation, if and when it shall
be found necessary or desirable, possession, control or
operation may be taken of all or any part of such street
railway systems, including subways and tunnels, and by
subsequent order and proclamation possession, control
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 141
and operation in whole or in part may also be relinquished
to the owners thereof of any part of the railroad systems
or rail and water systems, possession and control of which
are hereby assumed.
The director shall as soon as may be after having
assimied such possession and control enter upon nego-
tiations with the several companies looking to agree-
ments for just and reasonable compensation for the
possession, use and control of the respective properties
on the basis of an annual guaranteed compensation,
above accruing depreciation and the maintenance of
their properties, equivalent, as nearly as may be, to the
average of the net operating income thereof for the three
year period ending Jime 30, 1917 — ^the results of such
negotiations to be reported to me for such action as may
be appropriate and lawful.
But nothing herein contained, expressed or implied,
or hereafter done or suffered hereimder, shall be deemed
in any way to impair the rights of the stockholders,
bondholders, creditors and other persons having inter-
ests in said systems of transportation or in the profits
thereof, to receive just and adequate compensation for
the use and control and operation of their property
hereby assimied.
Regular dividends hitherto declared, and maturing
interest upon bonds, debentures and other obligations,
may be paid in due course, and such regular dividends
and interest may continue to be paid until and unless
the said director shall from time to time otherwise by
general or special orders determine, and, subject to the
approval of the director, the various carriers may agree
upon and arrange for the renewal and extension of
maturing obligations.
Except with the prior written assent of said director,
no attachment by n:esne process or on execution shall
be levied on or against any of the property used by any
of saidtransportation systems, in the conduct of their
142 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
business as common carriers; but suits may be brought
by and against said carriers and judgments rendered as
hitherto until and except so far as said director may, by
general or special orders, otherwise determine.
From and after 12 o'clock on said twenty-eighth day of
December, 191 7, all transportation systems included in
this order and proclamation shall conclusively be deemed
within the possession and control of said director without
further act or notice, but for the purpose of accounting
said possession and control shall date from 12 o'clock
midnight on December 31, 191 7.
In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and
caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done by the President, through Newton D. Baker,
Secretary of War, in the District of Columbia, this
twenty -sixth day of December, in the year of our Lord
one thousand nine hundred and seventeen, and of Inde-
pendence of the United States the one hundred and
forty-second.
WooDRow Wilson.
Newton D. Baker, Secretary of War.
By the President :
Robert Lansing, Secretary of State.
XX
GOVERNMENT OPERATION OF RAILROADS
{Address to the Congress, January 4, igi8)
Gentlemen of the Congress, — I have
asked the privilege of addressing you in order
to report that on the 28th of December last,
during the recess of Congress, acting through
the Secretary of War, and under the authority
conferred upon me by the Act of Congress ap-
proved August 29, 19 16, I took possession and
assumed control of the railway lines of the
coimtry and the systems of water transporta-
tion under their control. This step seemed to
be imperatively necessary in the interest of the
public welfare, in the presence of the great
tasks of war with which we are now dealing.
As our experience develops difficulties and
makes it clear what they are, I have deemed
it my duty to remove those difficulties wher-
ever I have the legal power to do so.
To assume control of the vast railway sys-
tems of the country is, I realize, a very great re-
sponsibility, but to fail to do so in the existing
circumstances would have been much greater.
144 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
I assumed the less responsibility rather than
the weightier.
NEED OF UNITED DIRECTION
I am sure that I am speaking the mind of
all thoughtful Americans when I say that it is
our duty as the representatives of the nation
to do everything that it is necessary to do to
secure the complete mobilization of the whole
resources of America by as rapid and effective
a means as can be found. Transportation
supplies all the arteries of mobilization. Un-
less it be under a single and unified direction,
the whole process of the nation's action is
embarrassed.
It was in the true spirit of America, and it
was right, that we should first try to effect the
necessary unification under the voluntary ac-
tion of those who were in charge of the great
railway properties, and we did try it. The
directors of the railways responded to the need
promptly and generously. The group of rail-
way executives who were charged with the
task of actual co-ordination and general direc-
tion performed their difficult duties with patri-
otic zeal and marked ability, as was to have
been expected, and did, I believe, everything
that it was possible for them to do in the cir-
cumstances. If I have taken the task out of
their hands, it has not been because of any
dereHction or failure on their part, but only
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 145
because there were some things which the
Government can do, and private management
cannot. We shall continue to value most
highly the advice and assistance of these
gentlemen, and I am sure we shall not find
them withholding it.
It had become unmistakably plain that only
under Government administration can the en-
tire equipment of the several systems of trans-
portation be fully and unreservedly thrown
into a common service without injiuious dis-
crimination against particular properties ; only
under Government administration can abso-
lutely unrestricted and unembarrassed com-
mon use be made of all tracks, terminal facili-
ties and equipment of every kind. Only tmder
that authority can new terminals be con-
structed and developed without regard to the
requirements or limitations of particular roads.
But under Government administration aU these
things will be possible — not instantly, but as
fast as practical difficulties, which cannot be
merely conjured away, give way before the
new management.
AS LITTLE DISTURBANCE AS POSSIBLE
The common administration will be carried
out with as little disturbance of the present
operating organizations and personnel of the
railways as possible. Nothing will be altered
or disturbed which is not necessary to disturb.
146 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
We are serving the public interest and safe-
guarding the public safety, but we are also
regardful of the interest of those by whom
these great properties are owned and glad to
avail ourselves of the experience and trained
ability of those who have been managing them.
It is necessary that the transportation of troops
and of war materials, of food and of fuel, and
of everything that is necessary for the full mo-
bilization of the energies and resources of the
country, should be first considered; but it is
clearly in the public interest also that the or-
dinary activities and the normal industrial and
commercial life of the country should be inter-
fered with and dislocated as little as possible,
and the public may rest assured that the inter-
est and convenience of the private shipper will
be carefully served and safeguarded as it is
possible to serve and safeguard it in the present
extraordinary circumstances.
COMPENSATION SHOULD BE GUARANTEED
While the present authority of the Execu-
tive suffices for all purposes of administration,
and while, of course, all private interests must
for the present give way to the public neces-
sity, it is, I am sure you will agree with me,
right and necessary that the owners and credi-
tors of the railways, the holders of their stocks
and bonds, should receive from the Govern-
ment an unqualified guarantee that their prop-
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 147
erties will be maintained throughout the period
of Federal control in as good repair and as com-
plete equipment as at present, and that the
several roads will receive, under Federal man-
agement, such compensation as is equitable
and just alike to their owners and to the gen-
eral public. I would suggest the average net
railway operating income of the three years
ending June 30, 191 7. I earnestly recommend
that these guarantees be given by appropriate
legislation, and given as promptly as circum-
stances permit.
I need not point out the essential justice of
such guarantees and their great influence and
significance as elements in the present finan-
cial and industrial situation of the country.
Indeed, one of the strong arguments for as-
suming control of the railroads at this time is
the financial argument. It is necessary that
the values of railway securities should be justly
and fairly protected, and that the largest finan-
cial operations every year necessary in connec-
tion with the maintenance, operation and de-
velopment of the roads should, during the
period of the war, be wisely related to the
financial operations of the Government.
Our first duty is, of course, to conserve the
common interest and the common safety, and
to make certain that nothing stands in the way
of the successful prosecution of the great war
for liberty and justice; but it is an obligation
148 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
of public conscience and of public honor that
the private interests we disturb should be kept
safe from unjust injury, and it is of the utmost
consequence to the Government itself that all
great financial operations should be stabilized
and co-ordinated with the financial operations
of the Government. No borrowing should run
athwart the borrowings of the Federal Treas-
ury, and no fundamental industrial values
should anywhere be unnecessarily impaired.
In the hands of many thousands of small in-
vestors in the country, as well as in national
banks, in insurance companies, in savings
banks, in trust companies, in financial agen-
cies of every kind, railway securities — the sum
total of which runs up to some ten or eleven
thousand millions, constitute a vital part of the
structure of credit, and the unquestioned
solidity of that structure must be maintained.
SELECTION OF MCADOO AS DIRECTOR
The Secretary of War and I easily agreed
that, in view of the many complex interests
which must be safeguarded and harmonized,
as well as because of his exceptional experience
and ability in this new field of governmental
action, the Hon. William G. McAdoo was the
right man to assume direct administrative con-
trol of this new executive task. At our re-
quest, he consented to assume the authority
and duties of organizer and director-general of
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 149
the new railway administration. He has as-
sumed those duties, and his work is in active
progress.
It is probably too much to expect that, even
under the unified railway administration which
will now be possible, sufficient economies can
be effected in the operation of the railways to
make it possible to add to their equipment
and extend their operative facilities as much
as the present extraordinary demands upon
their use will render desirable, without resort-
ing to the national Treasury for the funds. If
it is not possible, it will, of course, be necessary
to resort to the Congress for grants of money
for that purpose. The Secretary of the Treas-
lu-y will advise with your committees with re-
gard to this very practical aspect of the matter.
For the present, I suggest only the guarantees
I have indicated and such appropriations as
are necessary at the outset of this task.
I take the liberty of expressing the hope that
the Congress may grant these promptly and
tmgrudgingly. We are dealing with great
matters, and will, I am sure, deal with them
greatly.
XXI
THE TERMS OF PEACE
{January 8, igi8)
In an address to both Houses of Congress,
assembled in joint session, President Wilson
enunciated the war and peace program of the
United States in fourteen definite proposals.
The President spoke as follows :
Gentlemen of the Congress, — Once
more, as repeatedly before, the spokesmen of
the Central Empires have indicated their de-
sires to discuss the objects of the war and the
possible basis of a general peace. Parleys have
been in progress at Brest-Litovsk between Rus-
sian representatives and representatives of the
Central Powers to which the attention of all
the belligerents has been invited for the pur-
pose of ascertaining whether it may be possible
to extend these parleys into a general confer-
ence with regard to terms of peace and
settlement.
The Russian representatives presented not
only a perfectly definite statement of the prin-
ciples upon which they would be willing to
conclude peace, but also an equally definite
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 151
program of the concrete application of those
principles. The representatives of the Central
Powers, on their part, presented an outline of
settlement which, if much less definite, seemed
susceptible of liberal interpretation until their
specific program of practical terms was added.
That program proposed no concessions at all,
either to the sovereignty of Russia or to the
preferences of the population with whose fort-
unes it dealt, but meant, in a word, that the
Central Empires were to keep every foot of
territory their armed forces had occupied —
every province, every city, every point of van-
tage— as a permanent addition to their terri-
tories and their power. It is a reasonable
conjecture that the general principles of settle-
ment which they at first suggested originated
with the more liberal statesmen of Germany
and Austria, the men who have begun to feel
the force of their own people's thought and
purpose, while the concrete terms of actual
settlement came from the military leaders who
have no thought but to keep what they have
got. The negotiations have been broken off.
The Russian representatives were sincere and
in earnest. They cannot entertain such pro-
posals of conquest and domination.
SIGNIFICANCE IN PARLEYS
The whole incident is full of significance.
It is also full of perplexity. With whom are
152 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
the Russian representatives dealing? For
whom are the representatives of the Central
Empires speaking? Are they speaking for the
majorities of their respective parliaments, or for
the minority parties — that military and im-
perialistic minority which has so far dominated
their whole policy and controlled the affairs of
Turkey and the Balkan states, which have felt
obliged to become their associates in this war?
The Russian representatives have insisted,
very justly, very wisely, and in the true spirit
of modern democracy, that the conferences
they have been holding with the Teutonic and
Turkish statesmen should be held within open,
not closed, doors, and all the world has been
audience, as was desired.
To whom have we been listening, then?
To those who speak the spirit and intention of
the resolution of the German Reichstag of the
gth of July last, the spirit and intention of the
Liberal leaders and parties of Germany, or to
those who resist and defy that spirit and in-
tention and insist upon conquest and subjuga-
tion? Or are we listening, in fact, to both,
unreconciled and in open and hopeless contra-
diction? These are very serious and pregnant
questions. Upon the answer to them depends
the peace of the world.
But, whatever the results of the parleys at
Brest-Litovsk, whatever the confusions of
coimsel and of purpose in the utterances of the
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 153
spokesmen of the Central Empires, they have
again attempted to acquaint the world with
their objects in the war and have again chal-
lenged their adversaries to say what their ob-
jects are and what sort of settlement they
would deem just and satisfactory. There is
no good reason why that challenge should not
be responded to and responded to with the
utmost candor. We did not wait for it. Not
once, but again and again, we have laid our
whole thought and purpose before the world,
not in general terms only, but each time with
sufficient definition to make it clear what sort of
definitive terms of settlement must necessarily
spring out of them.
LLOYD GE0RGE*S AIMS APPROVED
Within the last week Mr. Lloyd George
has spoken with admirable candor and in ad-
mirable spirit for the people and Government
of Great Britain. There is no confusion of
counsel among the adversaries of the Central
Powers, no uncertainty of principle, no vague-
ness of detail. The only secrecy of counsel,
the only lack of fearless frankness, the only
failure to make definite statement of the ob-
jects of the war lies with Germany and her
allies. The issues of life and death hang upon
these definitions. No statesman who has the
least conception of his responsibility ought for
a moment to permit himself to continue this
154 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
tragical and appalling outpouring of blood and
treasure unless he is sure beyond a peradvent-
ure that the objects of the vital sacrifice are
part and parcel of the very life of society, and
that the people for whom he speaks think them
right and imperative, as he does.
There is, moreover, a voice calling for these
definitions of principle and of purpose which is,
it seems to me, more thrilling and more com-
pelling than any of the many moving voices
with which the troubled air of the world is
filled. It is the voice of the Russian people.
They are prostrate and all but helpless, it would
seem, before the grim power of Germany, which
has hitherto known no relenting and no pity.
Their power apparently is shattered. And yet
their soul is not subservient. They will not
3rield either in principle or in action. Their con-
ception of what is right, of what it is humane
and honorable for them to accept, has been
stated with a frankness, a largeness of view, a
generosity of spirit and a universal human
sympathy which must challenge the admira-
tion of every friend of mankind ; and they have
refused to compound their ideals or desert
others that they themselves may be safe.
WOULD LIKE TO AID RUSSIA
They call to us to say what it is that we
desire — ^in what, if in anything, our purpose
and our spirit differ from theirs ; and I believe
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 155
that the people of the United States would
wish me to respond with utter simplicity and
frankness. Whether their present leaders be-
lieve it or not, it is our heartfelt desire and
hope that some way may be opened whereby
we may be privileged to assist the people of
Russia to attain their utmost hope of liberty
and ordered peace.
It will be our wish and purpose that the
processes of peace, when they are begun, shall
be absolutely open, and that they shall involve
and permit henceforth no secret understand-
ings of any kind. The day of conquest and
aggrandizement is gone by; so is also the day
of secret covenants entered into in the interest
of particular governments and likely, at some
unlooked-for moment, to upset the peace of
the world. It is this happy fact, now clear
to the view of every public man whose
thoughts do not still linger in an age that
is dead and gone, which makes it possible
for every nation whose ptuposes are consist-
ent with justice and the peace of the world
to avow now, or at any other time, the objects
it has in view.
We entered this war because violations of
right had occurred which touched us to the
quick and made the life of our own people
impossible unless they were corrected and the
world secured once for aU against their recur-
rence. What we demand in this war, there-
iS6 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
fore, is nothing peculiar to ourselves. It is
that the world be made fit and safe to live in ;
and particularly that it be made safe for every
peace-loving nation which, like our own, wishes
to live its own Hfe, determine its own institu-
tions, be assured of justice and fair dealing by
the other peoples of the world as against force
and selfish aggression. All the peoples of the
world are in effect partners in this interest,
and for our own part we see very clearly that
unless justice be done to others it will not be
done to us.
THE DEFINITE PROGRAM
The program of the world's peace, there-
fore, is our program, and that program, the
only possible program, as we see it, is this:
I. Open covenants of peace, openly jar-
rived at, after which there shall be no private
international understandings of any kind, but
diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in
the pubHc view.
II. Absolute freedom of navigation upon
the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in
peace and in war, except as the seas may be
closed in whole or in part by international
action for the enforcement of international
covenants.
III. The removal, so far as possible, of
all economic barriers and the establishment of
an equality of trade conditions among all the
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 157
nations consenting to the peace and associating
themselves for its maintenance.
IV. Adequate guarantees given and taken
that national armaments will be reduced to
the lowest point consistent with domestic
safety.
V. A free, open-minded and absolutely
impartial adjustment of all colonial claims,
based upon a strict observance of the principle
that in determining all such questions of sov-
ereignty the interests of the populations con-
cerned must have equal weight with the equi-
table claims of the Government whose title is
to be determined.
VI. The evacuation of all Russian terri-
tory and such a settlement of all questions
affecting Russia as will secure the best and
freest co-operation of the other nations of the
world in obtaining for her an unhampered and
unembarrassed opportunity for the indepen-
dent determination of her own political devel-
opment and national policy and assure her of
a sincere welcome into the society of free na-
tions under institutions of her own choosing;
and, more than a welcome, assistance also of
every kind that she may need and may herself
desire. The treatment accorded Russia by her
sister nations will be the acid test of their good
will, of their comprehension of her needs as
distinguished from their own interests and of
their intelligent and unselfish sympathy.
158 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
BELGIUM MUST BE RESTORED
VII. Belgium, the whole world will agree,
must be evacuated and restored, without any
attempt to limit the sovereignty which she en-
joys in common with all other free nations.
No other single act will serve as this will serve
to restore confidence among the nations in the
laws which they have themselves set and de-
termined for the government of their relations
with one another. Without this healing act
the whole structure and validity of interna-
tional law is forever impaired.
VIII. All French territory should be freed
and the invaded portions restored, and the
wrong done to France by Prussia in 187 1 in
the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which has un-
settled the peace of the world for nearly fifty
years, should be righted, in order that peace
may once more be made secure in the interest
of aU.
IX. A readjustment of the frontiers of
Italy should be effected along clearly recogniz-
able lines of nationality.
X. The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose
place among the nations we wish to see safe-
guarded and assured, should be accorded the
freest opportunity of autonomous development.
XL Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro
should be evacuated; occupied territories re-
stored; Serbia accorded free and secure access
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 159
to the sea; and the relations of the several
Balkan states to one another determined by
friendly counsel along historically established
Hnes of allegiance and nationality; and interna-
tional guarantees of the political and economic
independence and territorial integrity of the
several Balkan states should be entered into.
XII. The Turkish portions of the present
Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure
sovereignty, but the other nationalities which
are now under Turkish rule should be assured
an undoubted security of life and an absolutely
unmolested opportunity of autonomous devel-
opment, and the Dardanelles should be per-
manently opened as a free passage to the ships
and commerce of all nations under international
guarantees.
INDEPENDENCE FOR POLAND
XIII. An independent Polish state should
be erected which should include the territories
inhabited by indisputably Polish populations,
which should be assured a freehand secure access
to the sea, and whose political and economic
independence and territorial integrity should
be guaranteed by international covenant.
XIV. A general association of nations
must be formed under specific covenants for
the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of
political independence and territorial integrity
to great and small states aHke.
i6o IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
In regard to these essential rectifica-
tions of wrong and assertions of right, we
feel otirselves to be intimate partners of
all the Governments and peoples associated
together against the imperialists. We can-
not be separated in interest or divided in
purpose. We stand together until the
end.
*'For such arrangements and covenants we
are willing to fight, and to continue to fight,
until they are achieved; but only because we
wish the right to prevail and desire a just and
stable peace, such as can be secured only by
removing the chief provocations to war, which
this program does remove. We have no
jealousy of German greatness, and there is
nothing in this program that impairs it. We
grudge her no achievement or distinction of
learning or of pacific enterprise, such as have
made her record very bright and very envi-
able. We do not wish to injure her or to block
in any way her legitimate influence or power.
We do not wish to fight her either with arms
or with hostile arrangements of trade, if she is
willing to associate herself with us and the
other peace-loving nations of the world in cove-
nants of justice and law and fair dealing. We
wish her only to accept a place of equality
among the peoples of the world — the new world
in which we now live — ^instead of a place of
mastery.
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR i6i
Germany's spokesmen an issue
Neither do we presume to suggest to her
any alteration or modification of her institu-
tions. But it is necessary, we must frankly
say, and necessary as a preliminary to any in-
telligent dealings with her on our part, that we
should know whom her spokesmen speak for
when they speak to us, whether for the Reichs-
tag majority or for the military party and the
men whose creed is imperial domination.
We have spoken now surely in terms too
concrete to admit of any further doubt or ques-
tion. An evident principle runs through the
whole program I have outlined. It is the prin-
ciple of justice to all peoples and nationalities
and their right to live on equal terms of liberty
and safety with one another, whether they be
strong or weak. Unless this principle be made
its foundation, no part of the structure of in-
ternational justice can stand. The people of
the United States could act upon no other
principle, and to the vindication of this prin-
ciple they are ready to devote their lives, their
honor and everything that they possess. The
moral climax of this, the culminating and final
war for human liberty, has come, and they are
ready to put their own strength, their own
highest purpose, their own integrity and de-
votion to the test.
XXII
FOUR BASIC PEACE PRINCIPLES
{Address to the Congress, February ii, 1918)
Gentlemen of the Congress, — On the
8th of January I had the honor of addressing
you on the objects of the war as our people
conceive them. The Prime Minister of Great
Britain had spoken in similar terms on the ist
of January. To these addresses the German
Chancellor replied on the 24th, and Count
Czernin for Austria on the same day. It is
gratifying to have our desire so promptly
realized that all exchanges of views on this
great matter should be made in the hearing
of all the world.
Count Czernin's reply, which is directed
chiefly to my own address on the 8th of Janu-
ary, is uttered in a very friendly tone.
He finds in my statement a sufficiently en-
couraging approach to the views of his own
Government to justify him in believing that it
furnishes a basis for a more detailed discussion
of purposes by the two Governments.
He is represented to have intimated that the
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 163
views he was expressing had been communi-
cated to me beforehand and that I was aware
of them at the time he was uttering them, but
in this I am sure he was misunderstood. I
had received no intimation of what he in-
tended to say. There was, of course, no
reason why he should communicate privately
with me. I am quite content to be one of the
public audience.
HERTLING VAGUE AND CONFUSING
Count von Hertling^s reply is, I must say,
very vague and very confusing. It is full of
equivocal phrases and leads it is not clear
where. But it is certainly in a very different
tone from that of Count Czemin, and appar-
ently of an opposite purpose.
It confirms, I am sorry to say, rather than
removes, the unfortunate impression made by
what we had learned of the conference of
Brest-Litovsk. His discussion and acceptance
of our general principles lead him to no prac-
tical conclusions.
He refuses to apply them to the substantive
items which must constitute the body of any
final settlement. He is jealous of interna-
tional action and of international counsel.
He accepts, he says, the principle of public
diplomacy, but he appears to insist that it be
confined, at any rate in this case, to general-
ities and that the several particular questions
i64 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
of territory and sovereignty, the several ques-
tions upon whose settlement must depend
the acceptance of peace by the twenty-three
states now engaged in the war, must be dis-
cussed and settled, not in general council, but
severally by the nations most immediately
concerned by interest or neighborhood.
He agrees that the seas should be free, but
looks askance at any limitation to that freedom
by international action in the interest of the
common order.
He would without reserve be glad to see
economic barriers removed between nation and
nation, for that could in no way impede the
ambitions of the military party with whom he
seems constrained to keep on terms. Neither
does he raise objection to a limitation of
armaments. That matter will be settled of
itself, he thinks, by the economic conditions
which must follow the war.
But the German colonies, he demands, must
be returned without debate.
He will discuss with no one but the repre-
sentatives of Russia what disposition shall be
made of the peoples and the lands of the
Baltic provinces; with no one but the Govern-
ment of France the ** conditions " under which
French territory shall be evacuated ; and only
with Austria what shall be done with Poland.
In the determination of all questions affect-
ing the Balkan states he defers, as I under-
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 165
stand him, to Austria and Turkey; and with
regard to the agreements to be entered into
concerning the non-Turkish peoples of the
present Ottoman Empire, to the Turkish au-
thorities themselves.
After a settlement all around, effected in
this fashion, by individual barter and con-
cession, he would have no objection, if I
correctly interpret his statement, to a league
of nations which would undertake to hold the
new balance of power steady against external
disturbance.
GERMAN METHOD IS IMPOSSIBLE
It must be evident to every one who imder-
stands what this war has wrought in the
opinion and temper of the world that no
general peace, no peace worth the infinite
sacrifices of these years of tragical suffering,
can possibly be arrived at in any such fashion.
The method the German Chancellor proposes
is the method of the Congress of Vienna. We
cannot and will not return to that.
What is at stake now is the peace of the
world. What we are striving for is a new in-
ternational order based upon broad and uni-
versal principles of right and justice — no mere
peace of shreds and patches.
Is it possible that Count von Hertling does
not see that; does not grasp it; is, in fact,
living in his thought in a world dead and gone?
i66 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
Has he utterly forgotten the Reichstag
resolutions of the 19th of July, or does he de-
liberately ignore them? They spoke of the
conditions of a general peace, not of national
aggrandizement or of arrangements between
state and state.
The peace of the world depends upon the
just settlement of each of the several problems
to which I adverted in my recent address to
the Congress.
I, of course, do not mean that the peace of
the world depends upon the acceptance of any
particular set of suggestions as to the way in
which those problems are to be dealt with.
I mean only that those problems each and
all affect the whole world; that unless they
are dealt with in a spirit of unselfish and un-
biased justice, with a view to the wishes, the
natural connections, the racial aspirations, the
security and the peace of mind of the peoples
involved, no permanent peace will have been
attained.
They cannot be discussed separately or in
comers. None of them constitutes a private
or separate interest from which the opinion of
the world may be shut out. Whatever af-
fects the peace affects mankind, and nothing
settled by military force, if settled wrong, is
settled at all. It will presently have to be
reopened.
Is Count von Hertling not aware that he is
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 167
speaking in the court of mankind, that all the
awakened nations of the world now sit in
judgment on what every public man, of what-
ever nation, may say on the issues of a con-
flict which has spread to every region of the
world? The Reichstag resolutions of July
themselves frankly accepted the decisions of
that court.
There shall be no annexations, no contribu-
tions, no punitive damages. Peoples are not
to be handed about from one sovereignty to
another by an international conference or an
understanding between rivals and antagonists.
National aspirations must be respected; peo-
ples may now be dominated and governed
only by their own consent.
SELF-DETERMINATION VITAL ISSUE
** Self-determination" is not a mere phrase.
It is an imperative principle of action, which
statesmen will henceforth ignore at their peril.
We cannot have general peace for the asking,
or by the mere arrangements of a peace con-
ference. It cannot be pieced together out of
individual understandings between powerful
states. All the parties to this war must join
in the settlement of every issue anywhere in-
volved in it; because what we are seeking is
a peace that we can all unite to guarantee and
maintain, and every item of it must be sub-
mitted to the common judgment whether it be
i68 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
right and fair, an act of justice, rather than a
bargain between sovereigns.
The United States has no desire to interfere
in European affairs or to act as arbiter in
European territorial disputes. She would dis-
dain to take advantage of any internal weak-
ness or disorder to impose her own will upon
another people.
She is quite ready to be shown that the
settlements she has suggested are not the best
or the most enduring. They are only her own
provisional sketch of principles and of the
way in which they should be applied. But
she entered this war because she was made a
partner, whether she wotild or not, in the suf-
ferings and indignities inflicted by the military
masters of Germany against the peace and
security of mankind; and the conditions of
peace will touch her as nearly as they will
touch any other nation to which is intrusted a
leading part in the maintenance of civilization.
She cannot see her way to peace until the
causes of this war are removed, its renewal
rendered, as nearly as may be, impossible.
This war had its roots in the disregard of the
rights of small nations and of nationalities
which lacked the union and the force to make
good their claim to determine their own alle-
giances and their own forms of political Hfe.
Covenants must now be entered into which
will render such things impossible for the
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 169
future; and those covenants must be backed
by the united force of all the nations that love
justice and are willing to maintain it at any
cost.
If territorial settlements and the political
relations of great populations which have not
the organized power to resist are to be de-
termined by the contracts of the powerful
Governments which consider themselves most
directly affected, as Count von HertHng pro-
poses, why may not economic questions also?
peoples' rights vital as trade
It has come about in the altered world in
which we now find ourselves that justice and
the rights of peoples affect the whole field
of international dealing as much as access to
raw materials and fair and equal conditions
of trade.
Count von Hertling wants the essential bases
of commercial and industrial life to be safe-
guarded by common agreement and guarantee,
but he cannot expect that to be conceded him
if the other matters to be determined by the
articles of peace are not handled in the same
way as items in the final accounting.
He cannot ask the benefit of common agree-
ment in the one field without according it in the
other.
I take it for granted that he sees that
separate and selfish compacts with regard
I70 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
to trade and the essential materials of manu-
facture would afford no foundation for peace.
Neither, he may rest assured, will separate and
selfish compacts with regard to provinces and
peoples.
Count Czemin seems to see the funda-
mental elements of peace with clear eyes and
does not seek to obscure them. He sees that
an independent Poland, made up of all the
indisputably Polish peoples who lie contiguous
to one another, is a matter of European con-
cern and must of course be conceded; that
Belgium must be evacuated and restored, no
matter what sacrifices and concessions that
may involve; and that national aspirations
must be satisfied, even within his own empire,
in the common interest of Europe and man-
kind.
If he is silent about questions which touch
the interest and purpose of his allies more
nearly than they touch those of Austria only,
it must, of course, be because he feels con-
strained, I suppose, to defer to Germany and
Turkey in the circumstances.
Seeing and conceding as he does the essen-
tial principles involved and the necessity of
candidly applying them, he naturally feels
that Austria can respond to the purpose of
peace as expressed by the United States with
less embarrassment than could Germany. He
would probably have gone much further had
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 171
it not been for the embarrassments of Austria's
alliances and of her dependence upon Ger-
many.
FOUR PRINCIPLES TO BE APPLIED
After all, the test of whether it is possible
for either Government to go any further in this
comparison of views is simple and obvious.
The principles to be applied are these:
First — That each part of the final settlement
must be based upon the essential justice of
that particular case and upon such adjust-
ments as are most likely to bring a peace that
will be permanent.
Second — That peoples and provinces are not
to be bartered about from sovereignty to
sovereignty as if they were mere chattels and
pawns in a game, even the great game, now
forever discredited, of the balance of power;
but that
Third — Every territorial settlement involved
in this war must be made in the interest and
for the benefit of the populations concerned,
and not as part of any mere adjustment or
compromise of claims among rival states;
and
Fourth — That all well-defined national as-
pirations shall be accorded the utmost satis-
faction that can be accorded them without in-
troducing new or perpetuating old elements
of discord and antagonism that would be
172 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
likely in time to break the peace of Europe and
consequently of the world.
A general peace erected upon such founda-
tions can be discussed. Until such a peace
can be secured we have no choice but to go on.
So far as we can judge, these principles that
we regard as fundamental are already every-
where accepted as imperative except among
the spokesmen of the military and annexa-
tionist party in Germany. If they have any-
where else been rejected, the objectors have
not been sufficiently numerous or influential to
make their voices audible.
The tragical circumstance is that this one
party in Germany is apparently willing and
able to send millions of men to their death to
prevent what all the world now sees to be just.
WILL NOT TURN BACK FROM COURSE
I would not be a true spokesman of the
people of the United States if I did not say
once more that we entered this war upon no
small occasion, and that we can never turn
back from a course chosen upon principle.
Our resources are in part mobilized now, and
we shall not pause until they are mobilized in
their entirety.
Our armies are rapidly going to the fighting
front, and will go more and more rapidly.
Our whole strength will be put into this
war of emancipation — emancipation from the
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 173
threat and attempted mastery of selfish groups
of autocratic rulers — whatever the difficulties
and present partial delays.
We are indomitable in our power of in-
dependent action and can in no circumstances
consent to live in a world governed by intrigue
and force. We believe that our own desire
for a new international order under which
reason and justice and the common interests
of mankind shall prevail is the desire of en-
lightened men everyivhere.
Without that new order the world will be
without peace and human life will lack toler-
able conditions of existence and development.
Having set our hand to the task of achieving
it, we shall not turn back.
I hope that it is not necessary for me to
add that no word of what I have said is in-
tended as a threat. That is not the temper
of our people.
I have spoken thus only that the whole
world may know the true spirit of America—
that men everywhere may know that our
passion for justice and for self-government is
no mere passion of words, but a passion which,
once set in action, must be satisfied.
The power of the United States is a menace
to no nation or people. It will never be used
in aggression or for the aggrandizement of any
selfish interest of our own. It springs out of
freedom and is for the service of freedom.
XXIII
"FORCE, FORCE TO THE UTMOST"
(An Address Delivered by the President at Baltimore on the
Evening of April 6, 1918^ on the Opening of the Third
Liberty Loan Campaign)
Fellow-citizens, — This is the anniversary
of our acceptance of Germany's challenge to
fight for our right to live and be free, and for
the sacred rights of free men everywhere.
The Nation is awake. There is no need to
call to it. We know what the war must coct,
our utmost sacrifice, the lives of our fittest
men and, if need be, all that we possess. The
loan we are met to discuss is one of the least
parts of what we are called upon to give and to
do, though in itself imperative. The people 1
of the whole country are alive to the necessity /
of it, and are ready to lend to the utmost, even j
where it involves a sharp skimping and daily
sacrifice to lend^t^ofmeager earnings. They
will look with reprobation and contempt jupon
those who can and will not, upon those who
demand a higher rate of interest, upon those
who think of it as a mere commercial transac-
tion. I have not come, therefor.e, to urge the'
>j
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 175
loan. I have come only to give you, if I can,
a more vivid conception of what it is for.
THE CAUSE WE ARE FIGHTING FOR MORE
SHARPLY REVEALED THAN EVER
The reasons for this great war, the reason
why it had to come, the need to fight it
through, and the issues that hang upon its
outcome, are more clearly disclosed now than
ever before. It is easy to see just what this
particular loan means because the cause we
are fighting for stands more sharply revealed
than at any previous crisis of the momentous
struggle. The man who knows least can now
see plainly how the cause of justice stands and
what the imperishable thing is he is asked
to invest in. Men in America may be more
sure than they ever were before that the
cause is their own, and that, if it should be
lost, their own great nation's place and mission
in the world would be lost with it.
I call you to witness, my fellow-countrymen,
that at no stage of this terrible business have
I judged the purposes of Germany intem-
perately. I should be ashamed in the presence
of affairs so grave, so fraught with the destinies
of mankind throughout all the world, to speak
with truculence, to use the weak language of
hatred or vindictive purpose. We must judge
as we would be judged. I have sought to learn
the objects Germany has in this war from the
176 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
mouths of her own spokesmen, and to deal as
frankly with them as I wished them to deal
with me. I have laid bare our own ideals,
our own purposes, without reserve or doubtful
phrase, and have asked them to say as plainly
what it is that they seek.
WE HAVE OURSELVES PROPOSED NO INJUSTICE,
NO AGGRESSION
We have ourselves proposed no injustice,
no aggression. We are ready, whenever the
final reckoning is made, to be just to the
German people, deal fairly with the German
power, as with all others. There can be no
difference between peoples in the final judg-
ment, if it is indeed to be a righteous judg-
ment. To propose anything but justice, even-
handed and dispassionate justice, to Germany
at any time, whatever the outcome of the
war, would be to renounce and dishonor our
own cause. For we ask nothing that we are
not willing to accord.
It has been with this thought that I have
sought to learn from those who spoke for
Germany whether it was justice or dominion
and the execution of their own will upon the
other nations of the world that the German
leaders were seeking. They have answered,
answered in unmistakable terms. They have
avowed that it was not justice but dominion
and the unhindered execution of their own will.
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 177
AVOWAL OF DOMINION CAME NOT FROM
STATESMEN BUT MILITARY RULERS
The avowal has not come from Germany's
statesmen. It has come from her military
leaders, who are her real rulers. Her states-
men have said that they wished peace, and
were ready to discuss its terms whenever their
opponents were willing to sit down at the
conference table with them. Her present
Chancellor has said, — in indefinite and uncer-
tain terms, indeed, and in phrases that often
seem, to deny their own meaning, but with
as much plainness as he thought prudent, —
that he believed that peace should be based
upon the principles which we had declared
would be our own in the final settlement. At
Brest-Litovsk her civilian delegates spoke in
similar terms; professed their desire to con-
clude a fair peace and accord to the peoples
with whose fortunes they were dealing the
right to choose their own allegiances. But
action accompanied and followed the profes-
sion. Their military masters, the men who
act for Germany and exhibit her purpose in
execution, proclaimed a very different con-
clusion. We cannot mistake what they have
done — ^in Russia, in Finland, in the Ukraine,
in Rumania. The real test of their justice and
fair play has come. From this we may judge
the rest. They are enjoying in Russia a cheap
178 IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
triumph in which no brave or gallant nation
can long take pride. A great people, helpless
by their own act, lies for the time at their
mercy. Their fair professions are forgotten.
They nowhere set up justice, but everywhere
impose their power and exploit everything
for their own use and aggrandizement; and
the peoples of conquered provinces are invited
to be free under their dominion!
MIGHT DO THE SAME AT WESTERN FRONT BUT
FOR ARMIES THEY CANNOT OVERCOME
Are we not justified in believing that they
would do the same things at their western
front if they were not there face to face with
armies whom even their countless divisions
cannot overcome? If, when they have felt
their check to be final, they should propose
favorable and equitable terms with regard to
Belgium and France and Italy, could they
blame us if we concluded that they did so
only to assure themselves of a free hand in
Russia and the East?
Their purpose is undoubtedly to make all
the Slavic peoples, all the free and ambitious
nations of the Baltic peninsula, all the lands
that Turkey has dominated and misruled, sub-
ject to their will and ambition and build upon
that dominion an empire of force upon which
they fancy that they can then erect an empire
of gain and commercial supremacy — an empire
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 179
as hostile to the Americas as to the Europe
which it will overawe — an empire which will
ultimately master Persia, India, and the
peoples of the Far East. In such a program
our ideals, the ideals of justice and humanity
and liberty, the principle of the free self-
determination of nations upon which all the
modem world insists, can play no part. They
are rejected for the ideals of power, for the
principle that the strong must rule the weak,
that trade must follow the flag, whether those
to whom it is taken welcome it or not, that
the peoples of the world are to be made subject
to the patronage and overlordship of those
who have the power to enforce it.
That program once carried out, America and
all who care or dare to stand with her must
arm and prepare themselves to contest the
mastery of the world, a mastery in which the
rights of common men, the rights of women
and of all who are weak, must for the time
being be trodden underfoot and disregarded,
and the old, age-long struggle for freedom
and right begin again at its beginning. Every-
thing that America has Hved for and loved and
grown great to vindicate and bring to a
glorious reaHzation will have fallen in utter
ruin and the gates of mercy once more piti-
lessly shut upon mankind.
The thing is preposterous and impossible;
and yet is not that what the whole course and
i8o IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
action of the German armies has meant wher-
ever they have moved? I do not wish, even in
this moment of utter disillusionment, to judge
harshly or unrighteously. I judge only what
the German arms have accomplished with
unpitying thoroughness throughout every fair
region they have touched.
What, then, are we to do? For myself, I
am ready, ready still, ready even now, to dis-
cuss a fair and just and honest peace at any
time that it is sincerely purposed — a peace in
which the strong and the weak shall fare aHke.
But the answer, when I proposed such a peace,
came from the German commanders in Rus-
sia, and I cannot mistake the meaning of the
answer.
HAS ONCE MORE SAID THAT FORCE, AND FORCE
ALONE, SHALL REIGN
I accept the challenge. I know that you
accept it All the world shall know that you
accept it. It shall appear in the utter sacri-
fice and self-forgetfulness^^th whidi we~sEall
giv£ffi3feM>we fove and all that we have, to
redeem thej^Hd'iHdlhake it fit for free men
like Ourselves to live in. This now is the
meaning of^ITthat we do. Let everything
that we say, my fellow-countrymen, every-
thing that we henceforth plan and accomplish,
ring true to this response till the majesty
and might of our concerted power shall fill
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR i8i
the thought and utterly defeat the force of
those who flout and misprize what we honor
and hold dear. Germany has once more said
that force, and force alone, shall decide
whether justice and peace shall reign in the
affairs of men, whether right as America
conceives it or dominion as she conceives it
shall determine the destinies of mankind.
There is, therefore, but one response possible
from us: force, force to the utmost, force
without stint or limit, the righteous and
triumphant force which shall make right the
law of the world, and cast every selfish domin-
ion down in the dust.
APPENDIX
STATE DEPARTMENT'S REVISED LIST OF
NATIONS AT WAR WHICH HAVE
BROKEN RELATIONS
DECLARATIONS OF WAR
The country declaring war is named first.
Austria — Belgium, Aug. 28, 1914.
Austria — ^Japan, Aug. 27, 19 14.
Austria — Montenegro, Aug. 9, 1914.
Austria — Russia, Aug. 6, 19 14.
Austria — Serbia, July 28, 19 14.
Brazil — Qermany, Oct. 26, 1917.
Bulgaria — Serbia, Oct. 14, 1915.
China — ^Austria, Aug. 14, 191 7.
China — Germany, Aug. 14, 1917.
Cuba — Germany, April 7, 191 7.
France — ^Austria, Aug. 13, 19 14.
France — Bulgaria, Oct. 16, 1915.
France — Germany, Aug. 3, 19 14.
France — ^Turkey, Nov. 5, 1914.
Germany — Belgiiun, Aug. 4, 1914.
Germany — France, Aug. 3, 1914.
Germany — ^Portugal, March 9, 1916.
Germany — ^Rumania, Sept. 14, 1916.
Germany — Russia, Aug. i, 1914.
Great Britain — ^Austria, Aug. 13, 1914.
APPENDIX 183
Great Britain — Bulgaria, Oct. 15, 1915.
Great Britain — Germany, Aug. 4, 1914.
Great Britain — Turkey, Nov. 5, 1914.
Greece — Bulgaria, Nov. 28, 1916. (Provisional Govern-
ment.)
Greece — Bulgaria, July 2, 191 7. (Government of Alex-
ander.)
Greece — Germany, Nov. 28, 1916. (Provisional Gov-
ernment.)
Greece — Germany, July 2, 191 7. (Government of Alex-
ander.)
Italy — ^Austria, May 24, 1915.
Italy — Bulgaria, Oct. 19, 191 5.
Italy — Germany, Aug. 28, 1916.
Italy — ^Turkey, Aug. 21, 1915.
Japan — Germany, Aug. 28, 19 14.
Liberia — Germany, Aug. 4, 1917.
Montenegro — ^Austria, Aug. 8, 1914.
Montenegro — Germany, Aug. 9, 19 14.
Panama — Germany, April 7, 191 7.
Panama — Austria, Dec. 10, 191 7.
Portugal — Germany, Nov. 23, 19 14. (Resolutions passed
authorizing military intervention as ally of England.)
Portugal — Germany, May 19, 191 5. (Military aid
granted.)
Rumania — Austria, Aug. 27, 1916. (Allies of Austria
also consider it a declaration.)
Russia — Bulgaria, Oct. 19, 1915.
Russia — Turkey, Nov. 3, 19 14.
San Marino — ^Austria, May 24, 1915.
Serbia — Bulgaria, Oct. 16, 1915.
Serbia — Germany, Aug. 6, 1914.
Serbia — Turkey, Dec. 2, 1914.
Siam — Austria, July 22, 191 7.
Siam — Germany, July 22, 191 7.
Turkey — Allies, Nov. 23, 19 14.
Turkey — Rumania, Aug. 29, 1916.
i84 APPENDIX
United States — ^Austria-Hungary, Dec. 7, 191 7.
United States — Germany, April 6, 191 7.
SEVERANCE OF DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS
Austria — ^Japan, Aug. 26, 1914.
Austria — Portugal, March 16, 19 16.
Austria — Serbia, July 26, 1914.
Austria — United States, April 8, 1917.
Bolivia — Germany, April 14, 1917.
Brazil — Germany, April 11, 1917.
China — Germany, March 14, 191 7.
Costa Rica — Germany, Sept. 21, 191 7,
Ecuador — Germany, Dec. 7, 191 7.
Egypt— Germany, Aug. 13, 1914.
France — Austria, Aug. 10, 1914.
Greece — Turkey, July 2, 191 7. (Government of Alex-
ander.)
Greece — ^Austria, July 2, 191 7. (Government of Alex-
ander.)
Guatemala — Germany, April 27, 191 7.
Haiti — Germany, June 17, 191 7.
Honduras — Germany, May 17, 191 7.
Nicaragua — Germany, May 18, 19 17.
Peru— Germany, Oct. 6, 191 7.
Turkey — United States, April 20, 191 7.
United States — Germany, Feb. 3, 1917.
Uruguay — Germany, Oct. 7, 191 7.
— From the Official Bulletin of the Committee
on Public Information,
POPULATION OF THE NATIONS
Austria (including Hungary) 50,000,000
Belgium 7,57i,387
Bolivia 2,520,538
Brazil 22,992,937
APPENDIX i8s
Bulgaria 4,755,000
China 413,000,000
Costa Rica 427,604
Cuba 2,406,117
Ecuador 1,500,000
Egypt 12,170,000
France 39,601,509
Germany 66,715,000
Great Britain 40,834,790
Greece 5,000,000
Guatemala 2,092,824
Haiti 2,030,000
Honduras 592,675
Italy 35,598,000
Japan 53,696,358
Liberia 2,060,000
Montenegro 520,000
Nicaragua 689,891
Panama 386,891
Peru 4,500,000
Portugal 5,857,895
Rumania 7,600,000
Russia 175,137,000
San Marino 10,655
Serbia 4,600,000
Siam 6,000,000
Turkey 21,274,000
United States 102,826,309
Uruguay i,25S,9i4
THE END
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