"WE MUST LEAVE SELFISHNESS OUT."

AN APPEAL TO BUSINESS MEN.

My Fellow-Countrymen;

(Complete)

The Government is about to attempt to determine the prices at which it will ask you henceforth to furnish various supplies which are necessary for the prosecution of the war, and various materials which will be needed in the industries by which the war must be sustained.

We shall, of course, try to determine them justly and to the best advantage of the nation as a whole. But justice is easier to speak of than to arrive at, and there are some considerations which I hope we shall keep steadily in mind while this particular problem of justice is being worked out.

I therefore take the liberty of stating very candidly my own view of the situation and of the principles which should guide both the Government and the mine-owners and manufacturers of the country in this difficult matter.

JUST PRICES AND PROFITS.

A just price must, of course, be paid for everything the Government buys. By a just price I mean a price which will sustain the industries concerned in a high state of efficiency, provide a living for those who conduct them, enable them to pay good wages, and make possible the expansions of their enterprises which will from time to time become necessary as the stupendous undertakings of this great war develop.

We could not wisely or reasonably do less than pay such prices. They are necessary for the maintenance and development of industry; and the maintenance and development of industry are necessary for the great task we have in hand.

But I trust that we shall not surround the matter with a mist of sentiment. Facts are our masters now. We ought not to put the acceptance of such prices on the ground of patriotism. Patriotism has nothing to do with profits in a case like this. Patriotism and profits ought never in the present circumstances to be mentioned together.

It is perfectly proper to discuss profits as a matter of business, with a view to maintaining the integrity of capital and the efficiency of labor in these tragical months, when the liberty of free men everywhere and of industry itself trembles in the bal ance, but it would be absurd to discuss them as a motive for helping to serve and save our country.

PATRIOTISM LEAVES PROFITS OUT.

Patriotism leaves profits out of the question. In these days of our supreme trial, when we are sending hundreds of thousands of our young men across the seas to serve a great cause, no true man who stays behind to work for them and sustain them by his labor will ask himself what he is personally going to make out of that labor.

No true patriot will permit himself to take toll of their heroism in money or seek to grow rich by the shedding of their blood. He will give as freely and with as unstinted self-sacrifice as they. When they are giving their lives, will he not at least give his money?

I hear it insisted that more than a just price, more than a price that will sustain our industries, must be paid; that it is necessary to pay very liberal and unusual profits in order to "stimulate production," that nothing but pecuniary rewards will do-rewards paid in money, not in the mere liberation of the world.

I take it for granted that those who argue thus do not stop to think what that means. Do they mean that you must be paid, must be bribed, to make your contribution, a contribution that costs you neither a drop of blood, nor a tear, when the whole world is in travail and men everywhere depend upon and call to you to bring them out of bondage and make the world a fit place to live in again amidst peace and justice?

WHO WILL DRIVE BARGAINS Now?

Do they mean that you will exact a price, drive a bargain, with the men who are enduring the agony of this war on the battlefield, in the trenches, amid the lurking dangers of the sea, or with the bereaved women and pitiful children, before you will come forward to do your duty and give some part of your life, in casy, peaceful fashion, for the things we are fighting for, the things we have pledged our fortunes, our lives, our sacred honor, to vindicate and defend-liberty and justice and fair dealing and the peace of nations?

Of course you will not. It is inconceivable. Your patriotism is of the same self-denying stuff as the patriotism of the men dead or maimed on the fields of France, or else it is no patriotism at all. Let us never speak, then, of profits and of patriotism in the same sentence, but face facts and meet them. Let us do sound business, but not in the midst of a mist.

Many a grievous burden of taxation will be laid on this Nation, in this generation and in the next, to pay for this war;

let us see to it that for every dollar that is taken from the people's pockets it shall be possible to obtain a dollar's worth of the sound stuffs they need.

SELFISHNESS HELPS GERMANY.

Let us for a moment turn to the ship-owners of the United States and the other ocean carriers whose example they have followed, and ask them if they realize what obstacles, what almost insuperable obstacles, they have been putting in the way of the successful prosecution of this war by the ocean freights they have been exacting.

They are doing everything that high freight charges can do to make the war a failure, to make it impossible. I do not say that they realize this or intend it.

The thing has happened naturally enough, because the commercial processes which we are content to see operate in ordinary times have without sufficient thought been continued into a period where they have no proper place. I am not questioning motives. I am merely stating a fact, and stating it in order that attention may be fixed upon it.

The fact is that those who have fixed war freight rates have taken the most effective means in their power to defeat the armies engaged against Germany. When they realize this we may, I take it for granted, count upon them to reconsider the whole matter. It is high time. Their extra hazards are covered by war-risk insurance.

THE NATION EXPECTS YOUR ASSISTANCE.

I know, and you know, what response to this great challenge of duty and of opportunity the Nation will expect of you; and I know what response you will make. Those who do not respond, who do not respond in the spirit of those who have gone to give their lives for us on bloody fields far away, may safely be left to be dealt with by opinion and the law-for the law must, of course, command those things.

I am dealing with the matter thus publicly and frankly, not because I have any doubt or fear as to the result, but only in order that, in all our thinking and in all our dealings with one another we may move in a perfectly clear air of mutual understanding.

And there is something more that we must add to our think... ing. The public is now as much part of the Government as the Army and Navy themselves. The whole people, in all their activities, are now mobilized and in service for the accomplish

64

WOODROW WILSON AND THE WAR

ment of the Nation's task in this war. It is in such circumstances impossible justly to distinguish between industrial purchases made by the Government and industries. And it is just as much our duty to sustain the industries of the country, all the industries that contribute to its life, as it is to sustain our forces in the field and on the sea. We must make the prices to the public the same as the prices to the Government.

PRICES ARE VITAL NOW.

Prices mean the same thing everywhere now. They mean the efficiency or the inefficiency of the Nation, whether it is the Government that pays them or not. They mean victory or defeat. They mean that America will win her place once for all among the foremost free Nations of the world, or that she will sink to defeat and become a second-rate Power alike in thought and action. This is a day for her reckoning, and every man among us must personally face that reckoning along with her.

The case needs no arguing. I assume that I am only expressing your own thoughts-what must be in the mind of every true man when he faces the tragedy and the solemn glory of the present war, for the emancipation of mankind. I summon you to a great duty, a great privilege, a shining dignity and distinction. I shall expect every man who is not a slacker to be at my side throughout this great enterprise. In it no man can win honor who thinks of himself.

JULY 12, 1917-RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE AGAINST LEMBERO, LEAD BY KERENSKY IN PERSON, PROGRESSES.

JULY 19, 1917-REICHSTAG ADOPTS PEACE RESOLUTIONS.

(These resolutions expressed the desire of the German people for a peace of lasting conciliation without forced acquisition of territory-"no annexation, no indemnities." German diplomats contrived to have this cry taken up later by the Bolsheviki, and certain pacifists also adopted it.)

JULY 19, 1917-Russian ofFENSIVE SLACKS UP IN DISORDER.

JULY 20, 1917-Kerensky MADE RUSSIAN PREMIER.

JULY 22, 1917-RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE BREAKS DOWN THROUGH LACK OF DISCIPLINE AND MUTINY SPREADS AMONGST THE TROOPS.

JULY 24, 1917-Edward N. Hurley put in charge of SHIP

BUILDING.

JULY 29, 1917-GERMANY IN ANOTHER PEACE OFFENSIVE.

(Dr. Michaelis, German Chancellor, seizing upon the Reichstag peace resolutions of "no annexations, no idemnities," maintained that the refusal of the Allies to accept this formula at once as a basis for peace negotiations convicted them of hypocrisy and proved that they had not renounced conquest as their object in war. Count Czernin, Austrian Foreign Minister, contended that peace would be reached by negotiation sooner or later, and that any delay in bringing the war to an end was therefor due to England's determination to destroy the Central Powers.)

JULY 31, 1917-FRENCH AND BRITISH SMASH THE GERMAN LINES IN BELGIUM on a FRONT OF 25 MILES, FROM DIXM UDE TO WARNETON.

AUGUST 8, 1917-FOOD CONTROL BILL PASSES.

AUGUST 10, 1917-PRESIDENT gives Mr. Hoover CONTROL OF

FOOD.

AUGUST 15, 1917-THE POPE SENDS A PEACE NOTE TO ALL BELLIGERENTS.

(In his appeal to belligerents, the Pope suggested disarmament, withdrawal from occupied territories, restitution of German colonies, settlement of territorial and political questions in a conciliatory spirit, and a general condonation.)

AUGUST 23, 1917-RUSSIANS EVACUATE RIGA.

AUGUST 23, 1917-CANADIANS ADVANCE SOUTH OF LENS. AUGUST 27, 1917-PRESIDENT WILSON REPLIES TO THE POPE'S

PEACE PROPOSALS.

(The proposal for peace negotiations, coming from such a quarter, proved embarrassing to the Allies. The burden of replying was left to President Wilson. His answer to the suggestion, though courteous and respectful, left little unsaid that bore upon the question of destroying the power for evil existing in German autocracy. His reference to "selfish and exclusive economic leagues" was construed as a repudiation of an understanding reached by

France and England, at the Paris Conference, concerning an economic war to be waged on Germany after the conclusion of hostilities, and lead to a retirement from that plan. America and Allied Europe rallied behind the calm, firm, forceful assertion of principle contained in the reply, which proved final to the peace suggestion.) "PEACE IS IMPOSSIBLE NOW."

THE REPLY TO THE POPE.
(Complete)

To His Holiness Benedictus XV, Popc:

In acknowledgment of the communication of your Holiness to the belligerent peoples, dated August 1, 1917, the President of the United States requests me to transmit the following reply:

Every heart that has not been blinded and hardened by this terrible war must be touched by this moving appeal of his Holiness the Pope, must feel the dignity and force of the humane and generous motives which prompted it, and must fervently wish that we might take the path of peace he so persuasively points out. But it would be folly to take it if it does not in fact lead to the goal he proposes. Our response must be based upon the stern facts, and upon nothing else. It is not a mere cessation of arms he desires; it is a stable and enduring peace. This agony must not be gone through with again, and it must be a matter of very sober judgment what will insure us against it.

His Holiness in substance proposes that we return to the status quo ante-bellum and that there be a general condonation, disarmament, and a concert of nations based upon an acceptance of the principle of arbitration; that by a similar concert freedom of the seas be established; and that the territorial claims of France and Italy, the perplexing problems of the Balkan States, and the restitution of Poland be left to such conciliatory adjustments as may be possible in the new temper of such a peace, due regard being paid to the aspirations of the peoples whose political fortunes and affiliations will be involved.

WE DEAL WITH A SECRET AND SINISTER POWER.

It is manifest that no part of this program can be successfully carried out unless the restitution of the status quo ante furnishes a firm and satisfactory basis for it. The object of this war is to deliver the free peoples of the world from the menace and the actual power of a vast military establishment, controlled by an irresponsible Government, which, having secretly planned to dominate the world, proceeded to carry the plan out without