it alters every question of domestic development. The men who insist upon going on to do the old things in the old way are going to be at the tail end of the procession.

The sign of our destiny has at last become as wide as the horizon. And the thing that we have to be careful about is that we do this thing in a new way. It has hitherto been done by those who wanted to exploit the world. It has got to be done now in a way that will deserve the confidence of the world.

American character, as well as American enterprise, is going to be put to the test. American ideals are for the first time to be exhibited upon a world-wide scale, American purposes are going to be tested by the purposes of mankind, and not by the purposes of national ambition.

72. Extract from an Address of President Wilson. October 7, 1916

(New York Times, October 8, 1916)

We are indeed at a critical juncture in the affairs of the world, and the affairs of the world touch America very nearly. She does not stand apart. up out of the peoples of the world. broad as the extended stocks of There is nothing human that does not concern her.

Her people are made Her sympathies are as national Governments.

73. Extract from an Address of President Wilson. October 12, 1916

(New York Times, October 13, 1916)

I have said, and shall say again, that when the great present war is over it will be the duty of America to join with the other nations of the world in some kind of league for the maintenance of peace. Now, America was not

party to this war, and the only terms upon which we will be admitted to a league, almost all the other powerful members of which were engaged in the war and made infinite sacrifices when we apparently made none, are the only terms which we desire, namely, that America shall not stand for national aggression, but shall stand for the just conceptions and bases of peace, for the competitions of merit alone, and for the generous rivalry of liberty.

Are we ready always to be the friends of justice, of fairness, of liberty, of peace, and of those accommodations which rest upon justice and peace? In these two trying years that have just gone by we have forborne, we have not allowed provocation to disturb our judgments, we have seen to it that America kept her poise when all the rest of the world seemed to have lost its poise.

Only upon the terms of retaining that poise and using the splendid force which always comes with poise can we hope to play the beneficent part in the history of the world which I have just now intimated.

74. Extract from an Address of President Wilson. October 14, 1916

(New York Times, October 15, 1916)

I want you to realize the part that the United States must play. It has been said, my fellow-citizens, been said with cruel emphasis in some quarters, that the people of the United States do not want to fight about anything. . . . But the people of the United States want to be sure what they are fighting about, and they want to be sure that they are fighting for the things that will bring to the world justice and peace. Define the elements; let us know that we are not fighting for the prevalence of this nation over that, for the

ambitions of this group of nations as compared with the ambitions of that group of nations; let us once be convinced that we are called in to a great combination to fight for the rights of mankind, and America will unite her force and spill her blood for the great things which she has always believed in and followed.

America is always ready to fight for things which are American. She does not permit herself to be embroiled, but she does know what it would be to be challenged. And when once she is challenged, there is not a man in the United States, I venture to say, so mean, so forgetful of the great heritage of this nation, that he would not give everything he possessed, including life itself, to stand by the honor of this nation.

What Europe is beginning to realize is that we are saving ourselves for something greater that is to come. We are saving ourselves in order that we may unite in that final league of nations in which it shall be understood that there is no neutrality where any nation is doing wrong, in that final league of nations which must, in the providence of God, come into the world where nation shall be leagued with nation in order to show all mankind that no man may lead any nation into acts of aggression without having all the other nations of the world leagued against it.

75. Extract from an Address of President Wilson. October 16, 1916

(New York Times, October 17, 1916)

So far America has concentrated her thought too much upon herself. So far she has thought too much of her internal development merely without forecasting what use she is going to make of the great power which she has accumu

lated. And now, by circumstances which she did not choose, over which she had no control, she has been thrust out into the great game of mankind, on the stage of the world itself, and here she must know what she is about, and no nation in the world must doubt that all her forces are gathered and organized in the interest of justice, righteousness, and humane government.

76. Extract from an Address of President Wilson. October 26, 1916

(New York Times, October 27, 1916)

What I intend to preach from this time on is that America must show that as a member of the family of nations she has the same attitude toward the other nations that she wishes her people to have toward each other: That America is going to take this position, that she will lend her moral influence, not only, but her physical force, if other nations will join her, to see to it that no nation and no group of nations tries to take advantage of another nation or group of nations, and that the only thing ever fought for is the common rights of humanity.

A great many men are complaining that we are not fighting now in order to get something—not something spiritual, not a right, not something we could be proud of, but something we could possess and take advantage of and trade on and profit by. They are complaining that the Government of the United States has not the spirit of other Governments, which is to put the force, the army and navy, of that Government behind investments in foreign countries. Just so certainly as you do that, you join this chaos of competing and hostile ambitions.

Have you ever heard what started the present war? If you have, I wish you would publish it, because nobody else

Nothing in particular started
There had been growing up

has, so far as I can gather. it, but everything in general. in Europe a mutual suspicion, an interchange of conjectures about what this Government and that Government was going to do, an interlacing of alliances and understandings, a complex web of intrigue and spying, that presently was sure to entangle the whole of the family of mankind on that side of the water in its meshes.

Now, revive that after this war is over and sooner or later you will have just such another war, and this is the last war of the kind or of any kind that involves the world that the United States can keep out of.

I say that because I believe that the business of neutrality is over; not because I want it to be over, but I mean this, that war now has such a scale that the position of neutrals sooner or later becomes intolerable. Just as neutrality would be intolerable to me if I lived in a community where everybody had to assert his own rights by force and I had to go around among my neighbors and say: "Here, this cannot last any longer; let us get together and see that nobody disturbs the peace any more." That is what society is and we have not yet a society of nations.

We must have a society of nations, not suddenly, not by insistence, not by any hostile emphasis upon the demand, but by the demonstration of the needs of the time. The nations of the world must get together and say, "Nobody can hereafter be neutral as respects the disturbance of the world's peace for an object which the world's opinion can not sanction." The world's peace ought to be disturbed if the fundamental rights of humanity are invaded, but it ought not to be disturbed for any other thing that I can think of, and America was established in order to indicate, at any rate in one Government, the fundamental rights of man.

America must hereafter be ready as a member of