in international conference after conference representatives of the people of the United States have urged with the eloquence of those who are the convinced disciples of liberty; and that moderation of armaments which makes of armies and navies a power for order merely, not an instrument of aggression or of selfish violence.

"These are American principles, American policies. We could stand for no others. And yet they are the principles and policies of forwardlooking men and women everywhere, of every modern nation, of every enlightened community. They are the principles of mankind and must prevail."

THE SECOND INAUGURAL.

"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 consequences. Perhaps no equal period in our history has been so fruitful in 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 those in order, to correct the grosser errors and abuses of our industrial life, to liberate and quicken the processes of national genius and energy, and to lift politics to a broader view of the people's essential interests. It is a record of singular variety and singular distinction, but I shall not attempt to review it. It speaks for itself, and will be of increasing influence as the years go by.

"This is not the time for retrospect. It is a

time rather to speak over thoughts and purposes concerning the present and the immediate future. Although we have centred 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 have 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 and shaken men everywhere with passion and apprehension which they never knew before. It has been hard to preserve calm counsel while the thought of our own people has been swayed this way and that under their influence.

"We are a composite and cosmopolitan people, we are of the brood of all the nations that are at war, the currents of our thoughts as well as the currents of our trade run quick at all seasons back and forth between us and them. The war has inevitably set its mark from the first alike upon our minds, our industries, our commerce, our politics, our social action. To be indifferent to it or independent of it was out of the question. Yet all the while we have been conscious that we are not a part of it, and in that consciousness, in spite of many divisions, we have been drawn closer together.

"We have been deeply wronged upon the seas, but we have not wished to wrong or injure in return, and have retained throughout the consciousness of standing in some sort apart, intent upon an interest that transcended the immediate issues of the war itself. As some of the injuries

done to 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, and 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 and more and more certain that the part we wished to play was the part of those who mean to vindicate and fortify peace.

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We have been obliged to arm ourselves to make good our claim to a certain minimum of right and freedom of action. We stand firm in an armed neutrality, since it seems that in no other way we can demonstrate what it is that we insist upon and cannot forgo. We may

even be drawn on by circumstances, not by our own purpose or desire, to an active reassertion of our rights as we see them, and to more immediate association in 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 an unselfish purpose, and we covet the opportunity to prove that our professions are sincere. There are many thing's still to do at home to clarify our own politics, and to add new vitality to the industrial processes of our own life, and we shall do them as time and opportunity serve; but we realize that the greatest things that remain to be done must be done with the whole world for a stage, and in co-operation with the wide 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 set civilization up again.

"We are provincials no longer. The tragical events of thirty months of vital turmoil through which we have just passed have made us citizens of the world. There can be no turning back. Our own fortunes as a nation are involved whether we would have it so or not, and yet we are not the less Americans if we but remain true to the principles in which we have been bred. They are not the principles of a province or of a single continent. We have known and boasted all along that they were the principles of liberated mankind.

"These, therefore, are the things we shall stand for, whether in war or peace: that all nations are equally interested in the peace of the world and in the political stability of free peoples, and are equally responsible for their maintenance; that the essential principle of peace is the actual equality of all 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 powers of the family of nations; that the seas should be equally free and safe for the use of all peoples under rules set up by common agreement and consent, and that so far as is practicable they should be accessible to all upon equal terms; that national armaments should be limited to the necessities of national order and domestic safety; that the community of interest and power upon which peace will henceforth depend imposes upon each nation the duty of seeing to it that all influences proceeding from its own citizens meant to encourage or assist

revolution in other States should be sternly and effectually suppressed and prevented.

"I need not argue these principles to you, my fellow-countrymen. They are your own-part and parcel of your own thinking, of your own motive in affairs. They spring up native amongst us. Upon this, as upon a platform of purpose and action, we can stand together, and it is imperative that we should stand together.

In

"We are being forced into a new unity amidst fires that now blaze throughout the world. their ardent heat we shall in God's providence, let us hope, be purged of faction and division, purified of errant humours of party and private interest, and stand forth in the days to come with new dignity of national pride and spirit.

Let

each man see to it that the dedication is in his own heart, that the high purpose of the nation is in his own mind, that he is ruler of his own will and desire.

"I stand here and have taken the high 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 by their gracious judgment have named me their leader in affairs. I know now what the task means. I realize to the full the responsibility which it involves. I pray God that I be given wisdom and 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.

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The thing I shall count upon and the thing without which neither counsel nor action avail is the unity of America-an America united in feeling, in purpose, in its vision of duty and its opportunity of service. We have to beware of all men who would turn the tasks and necessities