one has known since August 4, 1914, and this has been brutally emphasized by the rejection of our peace offer. When, in 1914, we had to seize and have recourse to the sword against Russia's general mobilization, we did so with the deepest sense of responsibility toward our people and conscious of resolute strength, which says: 'We must and, therefore, we can.' Endless streams of blood have since been shed, but they have not washed away the 'must' and the 'can.'

"BEST AND SHARPEST WEAPON."

"In now deciding to employ our best and sharpest weapon, we are guided solely by sober consideration of all the circumstances that come into the question and by the firm determination to help our people out of the distress and disgrace which cur enemies contemplate for them.

"Success lies in a higher hand, but as regards all that human strength can do to enforce success for the Fatherland, be assured, gentlemen, that nothing has been neglected. Everything in this respect will be done."

(New York Times, Feb. 2, 1917.)

N. [$234] SUMMARY OF REASONS FOR OUR GOING TO WAR.

1. National Injuries-Particularly:

(a) Brutal behavior of German agents in this country.

(b)

Destruction of American property and commercial interests. (c) Murder of American citizens engaged in lawful trade.

2. Violations of International Law, to Our Detriment. (a) Interference with neutral trade.

(b) Illegal submarine policy.

3. Attack Upon the American Principles of Equality, Democracy, and Popular Government.

4. Attempt to Form a World Power Dangerous to the Whole Human Race.

5. Impending Danger of an Attack On, and Possible Invasion of, the U. S., Bringing German Military. Government to Our Own Doors.

6. Danger to the Future of the U. S. as a Power Able to Defend Itself and Take Its Just Part in the Concerns of the World.

7. Documents and Extracts on the Section.

(a) [$235] How to Arouse the People.

BY THE SPEAKERS' TRAINING CAMP (June, 1917.).

The Speakers' Training Camp for Education in Patriotic Service, at the close of the six days' session held at Chautauqua under the auspices of the National Security League's Committee on Patriotism Through Education, wishes to put on record the following resolution:

RESOLVED:-I. That it is essential to national security to bring to the American people exact knowledge of the direct issues of the war, of the military and industrial measures neces

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sary for its conduct, and of the varied problems to be solved by the nation.

II. That this work should be forwarded systematically, by public lectures under the direction of an organized bureau, in close co-operation with state and city defense committees, educational authorities, chambers of commerce, agricultural, labor, fraternal, patriotic and religious organizations.

III. That we particularly recommend the organization, by States, of Speakers' Bureaus, utilizing existing forces as far as possible, and that we request the Committee on Patriotism Through Education to immediately undertake this work.

IV. That the Handbook prepared by the Committee on Patriotism Through Education, and now being revised, be especially commended to speakers, writers and readers on the war. V. That we suggest that the speakers should emphasize:

(1) The patriotic obligation of supporting, with singleness of purpose, the President and Federal Government in all their plans for the effective conduct of the war;

(2)

That politics has no proper place in war policies; (3) That no dual allegiance or hyphenated citizenship be tolerated, but that the public service should be open to all loyal citizens, regardless of racial origin;

(4) That the cause of the Allies is our cause and that loyalty to the United States involves understanding of and loyalty to the nations that fight alongside of us, and we recommend the withholding of criticism of our Allies, either through the press, cartoons, moving pictures, or the stage, as weakening the united forces in the fight for civilization;

(5) That, as a war measure, the concentration of the fullest administrative powers in the hands of individuals, if coupled with responsibility, is consistent with American ideals;

(6) That, as democracy rests upon freedom of speech and of the press, the people are entitled to all the facts regarding the war, so far as consistent with the conduct of military and naval operations.

(7) That, in the language of our President, "No nation should seek to extend its policy over any other nation or people, but that every people should be left free to determine its own policy, its own way of development, unhindered, unthreatened, unafraid."

(Leaflet issued by National Security League.)

(b) [$236] The War Speech (April 2, 1917).

BY PRESIDENT WOODROW WILSON.

Gentlemen of the Congress:

I have called the Congress into extraordinary session because there are serious, very serious, choices of policy to be made, and made immediately, which it was neither right nor constitutionally permissible that I should assume the responsibility of making.

SUBMARINE POLICY.

On the third of February last I officially laid before you the extraordinary announcement of the Imperial German Gover

ment that on and after the first day of February it was its purpose to put aside all restraints of law or of humanity and use its submarines to sink every vessel that sought to approach either the ports of Great Britain and Ireland or the western coasts of Europe or any of the ports controlled by the enemies of Germany within the Mediterranean.

The new policy has swept every restriction aside. Vessels of every kind, whatever their flag, their character, their cargo, their destination, their errand, have been ruthlessly sent to the bottom without warning and without thought of help or mercy for those on board, the vessels of friendly neutrals along with those of belligerents.

Even hospital ships and ships carrying relief to the sorely bereaved and stricken people of Belgium, though the latter were provided with safe-conduct through the prescribed areas by the German Government itself and were distinguished by unmistakable marks of identity, have been sunk with the same reckless lack of compassion or of principle. .

I am not now thinking of the loss of property involved, immense and serious as that is, but only the wanton and wholesale destruction of the lives of noncombatants, men, women and children, engaged in pursuits which have always, even in the darkest periods of modern history, been deemed innocent and legitimate. Property can be paid for; the lives of peaceful and innocent people cannot be.

The present German submarine warfare against commerce is a warfare against mankind. It is a war against all nations. American ships have been sunk, American lives taken, in ways which it has stirred us very deeply to learn of, but the ships and people of other neutral and friendly nations have been sunk and overwhelmed in the waters in the same way. There has been no discrimination. The challenge is to all mankind. Each nation must decide for itself how it will meet it.

COURSE TO VINDICATE HUMAN RIGHTS.

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 motives will not be revenge or the victorious assertion of the physical might of the nation, but only the vindication of right, or human right, of which we are only a single champion.

The German Government denies the right of neutrals to use arms at all within the areas of the sea which it has proscribed, even in the defense of rights which no modern publicist has ever questioned their right to defend. The intimation is conveyed that the armed guards which we have placed on our merchant ships will be treated as beyond the pale of law and subject to be dealt with as pirates would be.

Armed neutrality is ineffectual enough at best; in such circumstances and in the face of such pretensions it is worse than ineffectual; it is likely once to produce what it was meant to prevent; it is virtually certain to draw us into war without either the rights or the effectiveness of belligerents.

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There is one choice we cannot make, we are incapable of making: we will not choose the path of submission and suffer the most sacred rights of our nation and our people to be ignored or violated. The wrong against which we now array ourselves are not common wrongs; they cut to the very roots of human life.

ASKS CONGRESS TO DECLARE STATE OF WAR.

With a profound sense of the solemn and even tragical character of the step I am taking and of the grave responsibilities which it involves, but in unhesitating obedience to what I deem my constitutional duty, I advise that the Congress declare the recent course of the Imperial German Government to be in fact nothing less than war against the Government and people of the United States; that it formally accept the status of belligerent which has thus been thrust upon it and that it take immediate steps not only to put the country in a more thorough state of defense, but also to exert all its power and employ all its resources to bring the Government of the German Empire to terms and end the war.

What this will involve is clear. It will involve the utmost practicable co-operation in counsel and action with the Governments now at war with Germany, and as incdent to that, the extension to those Governments of the most liberal financial credits, in order that our resources may, so far as possible, be added to theirs. It will involve the organization and mobilization of all the material resources of the country to supply the material of war and serve the incidental needs of the nation in the most abundant and yet the most economical and efficient way possible.

It will involve the immediate full equipment of the navy in all respects, but particularly in supplying it with the best means of dealing with the enemy's submarines. It will involve the immediate addition to the armed forces of the United States already provided for by law in case of war, at least 500,000 men, who should, in my opinion, be chosen upon the principle of universal liability to service, and also the authorization of subsequent additional increments of equal force so soon as they may be needed and can be handled in training.

WANTS THE WORLD TO KNOW AMERICA'S MOTIVE.

While we do these things-these deeply momentous things— let us be very clear, and make very clear to all the world what our motives and our objects are. . . Our object . . . is to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the life of the world against selfish and autocratic power and to set up among the really free and self-governed peoples of the world such a concert of purpose and 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 freeedom of its peoples and the menace to that peace and freedom lies in the existence of autocratic governments backed by organized force which is controlled wholly by their will, not by the will of their people.

We have seen the last of neutrality in such circumstances "WE HAVE NO QUARREL WITH THE GERMAN PEOPLE."

We have no quarrel with the German people. We have no feeling toward them but one of sympathy and friendship. It was not upon their impulse that their Govevrnment acted in entering this war. It was not with their previous knowledge or approval.

A steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained except by a partnership of democratic nations. No autocratic Government could be trusted to keep faith within it or observe its covenants. It must be a league of honor, a partnership of opinion. Intrigue would eat its vitals away; the plotting of inner circles who could plan what they would and render account to no one would be a corruption seated at its very heart. Only free peoples can hold their purpose and their honor steady to a common end and prefer the interests of mankind to any narrow interests of their own.

GERMAN SPIES HERE EVEN BEFORE WAR BEGAN.

Indeed, it is now evident that its spies were even here before the war began; and it is unhappily not a matter of conjecture, but a fact proved in our courts of justice, that the intrigues which have more than once come perilously near to disturbing the peace and dislocating the industries of the country have been carried on at the instigation, with the support, and even under the personal direction of official agents of the Imperial Government accredited to the Government of the United States.

Even in checking these things and trying to extirpate them, we have sought to put the most generous interpretation possible upon them because we knew that their source lay, not in any hostile feeling or purpose of the German people towards us (who were, no doubt, as ignorant of them as we ourselves were), but only in the selfish designs of a Government that did what it pleased and told its people nothing. But they have played their part in serving to convince us at last that that Government entertains no real friendship for us and means to act against our peace and security at its convenience. That it means to stir up enemies against us at our very doors the intercepted note to the German Minister at Mexico City is eloquent evidence.

We are accepting this challenge of hostile purpose because we know that in such a Government, following such methods, we can never have a friend; and that in the presence of its organized power, always lying in wait to accomplish we know not what purpose, there can be no assured security of the democratic governments of the world.

"ABOUT TO ACCEPT GAGE OF BATTLE.

We are now about to accept gage of battle with this natural foe of 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