now the things that no man anticipated have happened. The titanic struggle continues. The difficulties of the world's affairs accumulate.

What are the elements of the case? In the first place, and most obviously, two-thirds of the world are at war. It is not merely a European struggle; nations in the Orient have become involved, as well as nations in the West, and everywhere there seems to be creeping even upon the nations disengaged the spirit and the threat of war. All the world outside of America is on fire.

Do you wonder that men's imaginations take color from the situation? Do you wonder that there is a great reaction against war? Do you wonder that the passion for peace grows stronger as the spectacle grows more tremendous and more overwhelming? Do you wonder, on the other hand, that men's sympathies become deeply engaged on the one side or the other? For no small things are happening. This is a struggle which will determine the history of the world, I dare say, for more than a century to come. The world will never be the same again after this war is over. The change may be for weal or it may be for woe, but it will be fundamental and tremendous.

And in the meantime we, the people of the United States, are the one great disengaged power, the one neutral power, finding it exceedingly difficult to be neutral, because, like men everywhere else, we are human; we have the deep passions of mankind in us; we have sympathies that are as easily stirred as the sympathies of any other people; we have interests which we see being drawn slowly into the maelstrom of this tremendous upheaval. .

.. And all the while the nations themselves that were engaged seemed to be looking to us for some sort of action, not hostile in character but sympathetic in character. Hardly a single thing has occurred in Europe which has in

any degree shocked the sensibilities of mankind that the Government of the United States has not been called upon by the one side or the other to protest and intervene with its moral influence, if not with its physical force. It is as if we were the great audience before whom this stupendous drama is being played out, and we are asked to comment upon the turns and crises of the plot. And not only are we the audience, and challenged to be the umpire so far as the opinion of the world is concerned, but all the while our own life touches these matters at many points of vital contact.

And America has done more than care for her own people and think of her own fortunes in these great matters. She has said ever since the time of President Monroe that she was the champion of freedom and the separate sovereignty of peoples throughout the Western Hemisphere. She is trustee for these ideals, and she is pledged, deeply and permanently pledged, to keep these momentous promises.

She not only, therefore, must play her part in keeping this conflagration from spreading to the people of the United States, she must also keep this conflagration from spreading on this side of the sea. These are matters in which our very life and our whole pride are imbedded and rooted, and we can never draw back from them. . . .

I merely want to leave you with this solemn impression, that I know that we are daily treading amid the most intricate dangers, and that the dangers that we are treading amongst are not of our making and are not under our control, and that no man in the United States knows what a single week or a single day or a single hour may bring forth. These are solemn things to say to you but I would be unworthy of my office if I did not come out and tell you with

absolute frankness just exactly what I understand the situation to be.

You have laid upon me this double obligation: "We are relying upon you, Mr. President, to keep us out of this war, but we are relying upon you, Mr. President, to keep the honor of the nation unstained."

Do you not see that a time may come when it is impossible to do both of these things? Do you not see that if I am to guard the honor of the Nation I am not protecting it against itself, for we are not going to do anything to stain the honor of our own country; I am protecting it against things that I cannot control, the action of others. And where the action of others may bring us I cannot foretell. You may count upon my heart and resolution to keep you out of the war, but you must be ready if it is necessary that I should maintain your honor.

ARMED MERCHANTMEN

51. Extract from a Letter of President Wilson to Senator Stone, of Missouri. February 24, 1916

(Congressional Record, LIII, 3318)

Our duty is clear. No nation, no group of nations, has the right, while war is in progress, to alter or disregard the principles which all nations have agreed upon in mitigation of the horrors and sufferings of war; and if the clear rights of American citizens should very unhappily be abridged or denied by any such action, we should, it seems to me, have in honor no choice as to what our own course should be.

For my own part, I can not consent to any abridgement of the rights of American citizens in any respect. The

honor and self-respect of the Nation is involved.

We

covet peace, and shall preserve it at any cost but the loss of honor. To forbid our people to exercise their rights for fear we might be called upon to vindicate them would be a deep humiliation indeed. It would be an implicit, all but an explicit, acquiescence in the violation of the rights of mankind everywhere and of whatever nation or allegiance. It would be a deliberate abdication of our hitherto proud position as spokesmen, even amid the turmoil of war, for the law and the right. It would make everything this Government has attempted and everything that it has accomplished during this terrible struggle of nations meaningless and futile.

It is important to reflect that if in this instance we allowed expediency to take the place of principle the door would inevitably be opened to still further concessions. Once accept a single abatement of right, and many other humiliations would certainly follow, and the whole fine fabric of international law might crumble under our hands piece by piece. What we are contending for in this matter is of the very essence of the things that have made America a sovereign nation. She can not yield them without conceding her own impotency as a Nation and making virtual surrender of her independent position among the nations of the world.

BASES OF AMERICAN POLICY

52. Extract from an Address of President Wilson. February 26, 1916

(Congressional Record, LIII, 3308)

The point in national affairs, gentlemen, never lies along the lines of expediency. It always rests in the field of

principle. The United States was not founded upon any principle of expediency; it was founded upon a profound principle of human liberty and of humanity, and whenever it bases its policy upon any other foundations than those it builds on the sand and not upon the solid rock. . . . It seems to me that if you do not think of the things that lie beyond and away from and disconnected from this scene in which we attempt to think and conclude, you will inevitably be led astray. I would a great deal rather know what they are talking about around quiet firesides all over this country than what they are talking about in the cloakrooms of Congress. I would a great deal rather know what the men on the trains and by the wayside and in the shops and on the farms are thinking about and yearning for than hear any of the vociferous proclamations of policy which it is so easy to hear and so easy to read by picking up any scrap of printed paper. There is only one way to hear these things, and that is constantly to go back to the fountains of American action. Those fountains are not to be found in any recently discovered sources.

America ought to keep out of this war. She ought to keep out of this war at the sacrifice of everything except this single thing upon which her character and history are founded, her sense of humanity and justice. If she sacrifices that, she has ceased to be America; she has ceased to entertain and to love the traditions which have made us pround to be Americans; and when we go about seeking safety at the expense of humanity, then I, for one, will believe that I have always been mistaken in what I have conceived to be the spirit of American history.

You never can tell your direction except by long measurements. You can not establish a line by two posts; you have got to have three at least to know whether they are straight