case that was brought before him, the President insisted upon the acceptance of arbitration and a prompt return to work. The present instance involved wage demands of carpenters in shipyards, and the following letter was sent by the President to William L. Hutcheson, head of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners:] February 17, 1918. General President, United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, New York: I have received your telegram of yesterday and am very glad to note the expression of your desire as a patriotic citizen to assist in carrying on the work by which we are trying to save America and men everywhere who work and are free. Taking advantage of that assurance, I feel it to be my duty to call your attention to the fact that the strike of the carpenters in the shipyards is in marked and painful contrast to the action of labor in other trades and places. Ships are absolutely necessary for the winning of this war. No one can strike a deadlier blow at the safety of the Nation and of its forces on the other side than by interfering with or obstructing the shipbuilding program. All the other unions engaged in this indispensable work have agreed to abide by the decisions of the Shipbuilding Wage Adjustment Board. That board has dealt fairly and liberally with all who have resorted to it. I must say to you very frankly that it is your duty to leave to it the solution of your present difficulties with your employers and to advise the men whom you represent to return at once to work pending the decision. No body of men have the moral right in the present circumstances of the Nation to strike until every method of adjustment has been tried to the limit. If you do not act upon this principle you are undoubtedly giving aid and comfort to the enemy, whatever may be your own conscious purpose. I do not see that anything will be gained by my seeing you personally until you have accepted and acted upon that principle. It is the duty of the Government to see that the best possible conditions of labor are maintained, as it is also its duty to see to it that there is no lawless and conscienceless profiteering, and that duty the Government has accepted and will perform. Will you coöperate or will you obstruct? WOODROW WILSON. ADDRESS OPENING THE CAMPAIGN IN NEW YORK MAY 18, 1918. Mr. Chairman and Fellow-Countrymen: I should be very sorry to think that Mr. Davison in any degree curtailed his exceedingly interesting speech for fear that he was postponing mine, because I am sure you listened with the same intent and intimate interest with which I listened to the extraordinarily vivid account he gave of the things which he had realized because he had come in contact with them on the other side of the water. We compassed them with our imagination. He compassed them in his personal experience. I am not come here to-night to review for you the work of the Red Cross. I am not competent to do so, because I have not had the time or the opportunity to follow it in detail. I have come here simply to say a few words to you as to what it all seems to me to mean. It means a great deal. There are two duties with which we are face to face. The first duty is to win the war. The second duty, that goes hand in hand with it, is to win it greatly and worthily, showing the real quality of our power not only, but the real quality of our purpose and of ourselves. Of course, the first duty, the duty that we must keep in the foreground of our thought until it is accom plished, is to win the war. I have heard gentlemen recently say that we must get five million men ready. Why limit it to five million? I have asked the Congress of the United States to name no limit, because the Congress intends, I am sure, as we all intend, that every ship that can carry men or supplies shall go laden upon every voyage with every man and every supply she can carry. And we are not to be diverted from the grim purpose of winning the war by any insincere approaches upon the subject of peace. I can say with a clear conscience that I have tested those intimations and have found them insincere. I now recognize them for what they are, an opportunity to have a free hand, particularly in the East, to carry out purposes of conquest and exploitation. Every proposal with regard to accommodation in the West involves a reservation with regard to the East. Now, so far as I am concerned, I intend to stand by Russia as well as France. The helpless and the friendless are the very ones that need friends and succor, and if any man in Germany thinks we are going to sacrifice anybody for our own sake, I tell them now they are mistaken. For the glory of this war, my fellow-citizens, so far as we are concerned, is that it is, perhaps for the first time in history, an unselfish war. I could not be proud to fight for a selfish purpose, but I can be proud to fight for mankind. If they wish peace, let them come forward through accredited representatives and lay their terms on the table. We have laid ours, and they know what they are. But behind all this grim purpose, my friends, lies the opportunity to demonstrate not only force, which will be demonstrated to the utmost, but the opportunity to demonstrate character, and it is that opportunity that we have most conspicuously in the work of the Red Cross. Not that our men in arms do not represent our character, for they do, and it is a character which those who see and realize appreciate and admire, but their duty is the duty of force. The duty of the Red Cross is the duty of mercy and succor and friendship. Have you formed a picture in your imagination of what this war is doing for us and for the world? In my own mind I am convinced that not a hundred years of peace could have knitted this Nation together as this single year of war has knitted it together; and better even than that, if possible it is knitting the world together. Look at the picture! In the center of the scene, four nations engaged against the world, and at every point of vantage, showing that they are seeking selfish aggrandizement; and against them, twenty-three governments, representing the greater part of the population of the world, drawn together into a new sense of community of interest, a new sense of community of purpose, a new sense of unity of life. The Secretary of War told me an interesting incident the other day. He said when he was in Italy a member of the Italian Government was explaining to him the many reasons why Italy felt near to the United States. He said, “If you want to try an interesting experiment, go up to any one of these troop trains and ask in English how many of them have been in America, and see what happens." He tried the experiment. He went up to a troop train and he asked, "How many of you boys have been in America?" and he said it seemed to him as if half of them sprang up: "Me from San Francisco," "Me from New York,”—all over. There was part of the heart of America in the Italian Army,-people that had been knitted to us by association, who knew us, who had lived amongst us, who had worked shoulder to shoulder with us, and now, friends of America, were fighting for their native Italy. Friendship is the only cement that will ever hold the world together. And this intimate contact of the great Red Cross with the peoples who are suffering the terrors and deprivations of this war is going to be one of the greatest instrumentalities of friendship that the world ever knew; and the center of the heart of it all, if we sustain it properly, will be this land that we so dearly love. My friends, a great day of duty has come, and duty finds a man's soul as no kind of work can ever find it. May I say this: The duty that faces us all now is to serve one another. No man can afford to make a fortune out of this war. There are men amongst us who have forgotten that, if they ever saw it. Some of you are old enough—I am old enough to remember men who made fortunes out of the Civil War, and you know how they were regarded by their fellow-citizens. That was a war to save one country. This is a war to save the world. And your relation to the Red Cross is one of the relations which will relieve you of the stigma. You cannot give anything to the Government of the United States. It will not accept it. There is a law of Congress against accepting even services without pay. The only thing that the Government will accept is a loan and duties performed, but it is a great deal better to give than to lend or to pay, and your great channel for giving is the American Red Cross. Down in your hearts you can not take very much satisfaction in the last analysis in lending money to the Government of the United States, because the interest which you draw will burn your pockets. It is a commercial transaction; and some men have even dared to cavil at the rate of interest, not knowing the incidental commentary that that constitutes upon their attitude. But when you give, something of your heart, something of your soul, something of yourself goes with the gift, particularly when it is given in such form that it never can come back by way of direct benefit to yourself. You know there is the old cynical definition of gratitude, as "the lively expectation of favors to come." Well, there is no expectation of favors to come in this kind of giving. These things are bestowed in order that the world may be a fitter place to live in, that men may be succored, that homes may |