Page style in our time, his addresses are regarded both here and in Europe, as among the most important documents in the history of the world war. The earlier addresses given in this volume deal with problems of citizenship, patriotism, and democracy. The later ones are landmarks in our struggle against Germany and autocracy. THE MEANING OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 63. 1. John Hancock of Massachusetts (1737-1793) was chosen president of the Continental Congress in 1775 and his name stands at the head of the signers of the Declaration. 64. 65. 66. 2. On the 10th of June, 1776, a committee of five was appointed to draw up the Declaration. It consisted of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston. This committee assigned the composition to Jefferson. The draft which he brought in was modified by omitting certain passages and articles which it was thought might weaken the force of the Colonies' case. The phraseology is very largely Jefferson's. 3. Before the outbreak of the war in Europe and for some time thereafter, there was a financial depression in the country, of which the President's opponents took advantage in order to criticize the legislative program which he was carrying into execution. 4. The banking and currency law, known as the Federal Reserve Act, was approved after much opposition and discussion, December 23, 1913. It was a constructive measure based on the work of financiers, bankers, statesmen, and economists. Under it the United States is divided into twelve districts, each with a Reserve Bank which is the center of the banking system of that district. In operation it has proved itself successful and a decided advance upon its predecessor, the National Banking System. 69. 5. At this time the President was being severely criticized for his refusal to declare war or intervene in Mexico to protect the property rights of American citizens. 71. 6. The Panama Canal Act of 1912, providing for the perma nent government of the Canal Zone and other regulations, was Page amended in a bill signed by the President June 15, 1914, known as the "Panama Tolls Exemption Repeal Bill." In this bill the clause which exempted American coastwise vessels from paying tolls was repealed because it was in contravention of the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty with Great Britain. The repeal of the Tolls Exemption for American coastwise vessels gave the same advantages to English and foreign vessels that our own possessed. It meant sacrificing undoubted economic advantages in the interest of maintaining good faith. AMERICA FIRST 85. 1. This paragraph, and indeed this whole address, illustrates President Wilson's attitude in the early period of the war. He felt at that time that America was out of and above the conflict. The reasons for the change will be plain after reading the War Message, April 2nd, 1917, page 126, and the Flag Day Address, June 14, 1917, page 141, with their notes. 88. 2. Woman Suffrage was voted upon and defeated in New Jersey October 19, 1915. 94. 100. 102. THE SCHOOL OF CITIZENSHIP 1. How serious this movement was, and how it was started and fomented by agents of the German government will be plainer after reading the Flag Day Address, June 14, 1917, and the notes to its opening paragraphs. ABRAHAM LINCOLN 1. Hamlet, Act III. scene 4. A WORLD LEAGUE FOR PEACE 1. This address, which attracted much attention throughout the world, marks the culmination of President Wilson's earlier policy and of his efforts to establish peace between the belligerents without direct intervention. Even at the time of its delivery, Germany, unknown to the President, was planning acts of aggression against the United States (see the Zimmermann Note, War Message, note 22). Her failure to make any satisfactory reply to the President's Note of December 18th, in which he asked the belligerents to state their peace terms, Page 105. showed only too plainly that her rulers were more interested in carrying out their plans for the extension of German dominion and the creation of Mittel-Europa (see Flag Day Address, notes 12-16) than they were in the establishment of any permanent peace based upon principles of right and justice. This address was directed not to the belligerents but to the American people, and its main interest lay in the fact that it presented the program for peace which the President was then willing to sanction. Its main thesis lay in its insistence that the time for a new "balance of power" (see Note 3) was past and that the peace to which we aspired must be based upon a concert of the powers acting to guarantee liberty and justice and ready to check and curb any outlaw nation. The many Declarations of War upon Germany which followed upon her promulgation of ruthless submarine warfare seemed to foreshadow the formation of such a concert of powers. 2. See Flag Day Address. 106. 3. "Balance of power" is an old phrase in political history and international law. The idea goes back to the ancients and is in principle as follows: No nation or group of nations must be allowed to become so strong as to be able to enforce their will upon the others. In order to prevent this, members of the family of nations are justified in combining against another nation or group of nations. This idea of reestablishing the "balance of power" lay behind the formation of many of the coalitions in modern history,-those for instance against Louis XIV and Napoleon. The theory was complicated in the last hundred years by wars waged to establish national independence. In the later period of the nineteenth century the theory was illustrated in the attempted balance between the Dual Alliance of France and Russia and the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria, and Italy. 4. It is plain from the War Message that the President made a distinction between the German people and their rulers. It is no less plain from the Flag Day Address that he felt that the rulers of Germany, her military caste, her policy of inhumanity, and her plans of conquest must be defeated. Page 107. 5. The principles set forth in this and the following paragraphs were wholly at variance with the desires and purposes of Germany as they became plain at the end of 1917. Her contempt for the rights of small nations was only too evident in her treatment of Belgium and in her plans with respect to the smaller states of Europe as revealed in the Flag Day Address and its notes. 109. 6. The German autocracy was never willing to recognize this principle, of government by the consent of the governed. Prussia and the German Empire themselves were not governed in this way. (See Flag Day Address, Note 7.) Only a few years before the war the Emperor threatened to make Alsace-Lorraine, which was still governed like a conquered province, "a Prussian province." The Poles, who had been under German rule for over a century and a quarter, were still discriminated against; and it is unthinkable that Germany would ever willingly have founded a really autonomous Poland as suggested in the next paragraph. (See Flag Day Address, Note 18.) Carrying the principles here stated by Wilson into effect would have meant not only the complete nullification of Germany's plans in the war, but a reversal of her fundamental idea of social and national organization. 7. Germany, the originator of submarine warfare on neutrals, had claimed that she was fighting "for the freedom of the seas.' With no color of right she had already sunk, to mention but one neutral, over six hundred Norwegian vessels, and her policy had brought forth from many previously friendly nations declarations of war against her. (See War Message, Note 9.) The German conception of freedom of the seas was clearly exhibited in her note to us of February 1, 1917. (Quoted in Flag Day Address, Note 4.) 111. 8. The Monroe Doctrine, proclaimed in 1823, insisted that no foreign power should colonize further or attempt "to extend the European system" to the Western Hemisphere. 112. 9. How useless it was to propose peace to Germany on these terms will be only too evident when we read President Wilson's message to Congress, delivered less than two weeks later, severing relations with Germany for the reasons there given. Page WAR MESSAGE These notes on the War Message are taken by special permission from the text of the President's Message officially annotated by the Committee on Public Information. (See Introduction, page 15.) 126. 1. President Wilson had the sworn duty to lay the facts before Congress and recommended to it the needful action. The Constitution prescribes his duties in such emergencies. It is worthy of note that the Constitution lays the duty and power of declaring war directly upon Congress, and that it can not be evaded by Congressmen by any referendum to the voters, for which not the slightest constitutional provision is made. Congress performed this duty by voting on the war question, as requested. The vote of the Senate was 82 to 6 for war; of the House 373 to 50. Such comparative unanimity upon so momentous a question is almost unparalleled in the history of free nations. 2. The German Chancellor in announcing this repudiation of all his solemn pledges in the Imperial Parliament (Reichstag), on January 31, frankly admitted, that this policy involved "ruthlessness" toward neutrals. "When the most ruthless methods are considered the best calculated to lead us to victory and to a swift victory they must be employed. 3. The broken Sussex pledge. On May 4, 1916, the German government, in reply to the protest and warning of the United States following the sinking of the Sussex, gave this promise: That "merchant vessels both within and without the area declared a naval war zone shall not be sunk without warning, and without saving human lives, unless the ship attempt to escape or offer resistance.'' Germany added, indeed, that if Great Britain continued her blockade policy, she would have to consider "a new situation." On May 8, 1916, the United States replied that it could not admit that the pledge of Germany was "in the slightest degree contingent upon the conduct of any other Government" (i. e., on any question of the English blockade). To this Germany made no reply at all, and under general diplomatic usage, when one nation makes a statement to another, the latest statement |