purpose nothing more than the reasonable defense of the undoubted rights of our people. We wish to serve no selfish ends. We seek merely to stand true alike in thought and in action to the immemorial principles of our people which I sought to express in my address to the Senate only two weeks ago,-seek merely to vindicate our right to liberty and justice and an unmolested life. These are the bases of peace, not war. God grant we may not be challenged to defend them by acts of wilful injustice on the part of the Government of Germany!

FEBRUARY 17, 1917-FIRST WEEK'S SUBMARINE TOLL-58 VESSELS SUNK, OF WHICH 21 WERE NEUTRAL.

FEBRUARY 26, 1917-BRITISH ADVANCE IN ASIA-MINOR; CAPTURE KUT-EL-AMARA.

FEBRUARY 26, 1917-PRESIDENT WILSON ADDRESSES CONGRESS. (This is known as The Armed Neutrality Address. President Wilson asked Congress for authority to arm merchant vessels. He had now given up hope of a change in Germany's U-boat policy. Americans, including women and children, had been lost in the ruthless warfare. Ambassador Gerard had been held as hostage in Berlin, but finally permitted to go to Switzerland. Meanwhile American shipping had stagnated because owners were unwilling to risk unarmed ships in the U-boat danger zone. This request for power to arm ships met with the resistance of "the little group of wilful men" in the Senate. All this time clamor for war grew. People were becoming impatient with the President's patience; while he evidently was carefully exhausting every possibility of averting war-not so much to escape it, as to make all the world see that, when it should come, it was inevitable.)

"WE MUST ARM OUR SHIPS."

ARMED NEUTRALITY ADDRESS Delivered to THE CONGRESS FERRUARY 26, 1917. (Abridged)

it must be admitted that there have been certain additional indications and expressions of purpose on the part of the German press and the German authorities which have increased rather than lessened the impression that, if our ships and our people are spared, it will be because of fortunate circumstances or because the commanders of the German submarines which they

may happen to encounter exercise an unexpected discretion and restraint rather than because of the instructions under which these commanders are acting. It would be foolish to deny that the situation is fraught with the gravest possibilities and dangers. No thoughtful man can fail to see that the necessity for definite action may come at any time, if we are in fact, and not in word merely, to defend our elementary rights as a neutral nation. It would be most imprudent to be unprepared.

ARMED NEUTRALITY.

No one doubts what it is our duty to do. We must defend our commerce and the lives of our people in the midst of the present trying circumstances, with discretion but with clear and steadfast purpose. Only the method and the extent remain to be chosen, upon the occasion, if occasion should indeed arise. Since it has unhappily proved impossible to safeguard our neutral rights by diplomatic means against the unwarranted infringements they are suffering at the hands of Germany, there may be no recourse but to armed neutrality, which we shall know how to maintain and for which there is abundant American precedent.

It is devoutly to be hoped that it will not be necessary to put armed force anywhere into action. The American people do not desire it, and our desire is not different from theirs. I am sure that they will understand the spirit in which I am now acting, the purpose I hold nearest my heart and would wish to exhibit in everything I do. I am anxious that the people of the nations at war also should understand and not mistrust us. I hope that I need give no further proofs and assurances than I have already given throughout nearly three years of anxious patience that I am the friend of peace and mean to preserve it for America so long as I am able. I am not now proposing or contemplating war or any steps that need lead to it. I merely request that you will accord me by your own vote and definite bestowal the means and the authority to safeguard in practice the right of a great people who are at peace and who are desirous of exercising none but the rights of peace to follow the pursuits of peace in quietness and good will-rights recognized time out of mind by all the civilized nations of the world. No course of my choosing or of theirs will lead to war. War can only come by the wilful acts and aggressions of others.

You will understand why I can make no definite proposals or forecasts of action now and must ask for your supporting authority in the most general terms. I request that you will authorize me to supply our merchant ships with defensive arms,

should that become necessary, and with the means of using them, and to employ any other instrumentalities or methods that may be necessary and adequate to protect our ships and our people in their legitimate and peaceful pursuits on the seas.

THE RIGHTS OF HUMANITY ARE AT STAKE.

I have spoken of our commerce and of the legitimate errands of our people on the seas, but you will not be misled as to my main thought, the thought that lies beneath these phrases and gives them dignity and weight. It is not of material interests merely that we are thinking. It is, rather, of fundamental human rights, chief of all the rights of life itself. I am thinking, not only of the rights of Americans to go and come about their proper business by way of the sea, but also of something much deeper, much more fundamental than that. I am thinking of those rights of humanity without which there is no civilization. My theme is of those great principles of compassion and of protection which mankind has sought to throw about human lives, the lives of non-combatants, the lives of men who are peacefully at work keeping the industrial processes of the world quick and vital, the lives of women and children and of those who supply the labor which ministers to their sustenance. We are speaking of no? selfish material rights but of rights which our hearts support and whose foundation is that righteous passion for justice upon which all law, all structures alike of family, of state, and of mankind must rest, as upon the ultimate base of our existence and our liberty. I cannot imagine any man with American principles at heart hesitating to defend these things.

FEBRUARY 28, 1917-AssOCIATED PRESS PUBLISHES VON ZIMMERMANN NOTE TO THE GERMAN AMBASSADOR IN MEXICO, PROPOSING THAT MEXICO AND JAPAN UNITE WITH GERMANY AGAINST THE United States, MEXICO TO BE Rewarded wiTH NEW MEXICO, TEXAS AND ARIZONA.

MARCH 3, 1917-ALLIED SPRING OFFENSIVE BEGINS ON WESTERN FRONT WITH ADVANCE OF BRITISH NEAR BAPAUME. MARCH 4, 1917-PRESIDENT WILSON ISSUES A STATEMENT REBUKING CERTAIN SENATORS.

(4 bill introduced in response to the President's address, giving him the authority he had requested to arm ships, was blocked in the Senate, and failed to get through before the session 34

WOODROW WILSON AND THE WAR

came to a close, March 3. President Wilson immediately called a special session, to convene April 2, and issued a statement rebuking those who had opposed defensive measures.)

A little group of wilful men, representing no opinion but their own, have rendered the great government of the United States helpless and contemptible.

MARCH 4, 1917-PRESIDENT WILSON INAUGURATED QUIETLY, THE DAY BEING SUNDAY.

(In his second inaugural, delivered the next day, President Wilson pointed out that the world-war was compelling the United States to take part in world affairs.. "We are provincials no longer. Events have made us citizens of the world"-and restated essential terms of peace and international comity.)

MARCH 10, 1917-PRESIDENT WILSON ORDERS MERCHANT SHIPS TO ARM, FINDING SUFFICIENT AUTHORITY IN HIS GENERAL POWERS.

MARCH 11, 1917-Russian Revolution begINS IN FOOD RIOTS.

MARCH 11, 1917-BRITISH capture Bagdad.

MARCH 13, 1917-GERMAN LINES ON THE WESTERN FRONT BEGIN TO FEEL THE PRESSURE OF THE ALLIED SPRING OFFENSIVE, THE GERMANS RETIRING FROM WEST of Bapaume.

MARCH 15, 1917-CZAR NICHOLAS ABDICATES THE RUSSIAN THRONE.

MARCH 17, 1917-BRITISH CAPTURE BAPAUME; FRENCH TAKE ROYE AND LASSIGNY.

MARCH 18, 1917-GERMANS MAKE GREAT "strategic reTREAT," RETIRING ON 85-MILE FRONT, ABANDONING PERONNE, CHAULNES, NESLE AND NOYON. ALLIES ADVANCE LINE, ARRAS TO SOISSONS, TO DEPTH OF 12 MILES, and retake 60 VILLAGES.

(This retreat was accompanied by a wanton, vicious destruc-> tion beyond comparison with anything in history.)