ritories under the existing régime. One cannot escape the conclusion that short of utter dissolution, involving the rise of fully independent Magyar, Czecho-Slovak, Ruthenian, and South Slav states no final solution was possible, save perchance the reorganization of the monarchy upon a purely federal basis, similar to the organization of Germany under the Empire, but with very much smaller powers in the central government. Opportunity to try the latter expedient in favorable times of peace was lost; the involuntary adoption of the first was decreed by a disastrous war.

SELECTED REFERENCES

A. L. Lowell, Governments and Parties in Continental Europe (Boston, 1896), II, Chaps. viii-x; Cambridge Modern History (London, 1902-1910), XI, Chaps. vi-vii, XII, Chap. vii; J. S. Schapiro, Modern and Contemporary European History (Boston, 1918), Chap. xvi; G. Drage, AustriaHungary (London, 1909); W. von Schierbrand, Austria-Hungary, the Polyglot Empire (New York, 1917); A. R. Colquhoun, The Whirlpool of Europe (New York, 1907); H. W. Steed, The Hapsburg Monarchy (2d ed., London, 1914); H. Rumbold, Francis Joseph and His Times (London, 1909); R. W. Seton Watson, Corruption and Reform in Hungary: a Study of Electoral Practice (London, 1911); ibid., The Southern Slav Question and the Hapsburg Monarchy (London, 1911); ibid., German, Slav, and Magyar (London, 1916); C. M. Knatchbull-Hugessen, The Political Evolution of the Hungarian Nation, 2 vols. (London, 1908); J. Andrassy, Development of Hungarian Constitutional Liberty (London, 1908); P. Alden [ed.], Hungary of Today (London, 1910); W. F. Dodd, Modern Constitutions (Chicago, 1909), I, 71-122, for texts of the fundamental laws.

ers.

By virtue of a recognized principle almost as old as the Constitution itself, the President of the United States is the authorized spokesman of our country in dealing with all foreign powThomas Jefferson, the first Secretary of State, writing to a representative of the French government, informed him that the President was "the only channel of communication between this country and foreign nations," and that "it is from him alone that foreign nations or their agents are to learn what is or has been the will of the nation, and whatever he communicates as such, they have a right and are bound to consider as the expression of the nation." Accordingly it is fitting and proper that in seeking for the war aims of the United States we should turn to the official utterances of President Wilson. Other aims and other purposes may lie in the minds of individual citizens or groups of citizens, but there is no other source of authority on this point so widely accepted or so profoundly approved.

National Self-Defense. In his address to Congress on April 2, 1917, calling for a declaration of war on Germany, President Wilson made it clear and presented the facts to prove that our country was not challenging another nation pursuing its own way in accordance with the rights of nations, but was in very truth taking up arms to repel acts of violence and wrong already being committed against the United States.

"Vessels of every kind," he said, "whatever their flag, their character, their cargo, their destination, their errand, have been ruthlessly sent to the bottom without warning and without thought of help or mercy for those on board, the vessels of friendly neutrals along with those of belligerents. Even hospital ships and ships carrying relief to the sorely bereaved and stricken people of Belgium, though the latter were provided with safe

conduct through the proscribed areas by the German Government itself and were distinguished by unmistakable marks of identity, have been sunk with the same reckless lack of compassion or of principle. One of the things that has served to convince us that the Prussian autocracy was not and could never be our friend is that from the very outset of the present war it has filled our unsuspecting communities and even our offices of government with spies and set criminal intrigues everywhere afoot against our national unity of counsel, our peace within and without, our industries and our commerce. Indeed it is now evident that its spies were here even before the war began; and it is unhappily not a matter of conjecture but a fact proved in our courts of justice that the intrigues which have more than once come perilously near to disturbing the peace and dislocating the industries of the country have been carried on at the instigation, with the support, and even under the personal direction of official agents of the Imperial Government accredited to the Government of the United States. Even in checking these things and trying to extirpate them we have sought to put the most generous interpretation possible upon them because we knew that their source lay, not in any hostile feeling or purpose of the German people towards us (who were, no doubt, as ignorant of them as we ourselves were), but only in the selfish designs of a government that did what it pleased and told its people nothing. But they have played their part in serving to convince us at last that that government entertains no real friendship for us and means to act against our peace and security at its convenience. That it means to stir up enemies against us at our very doors the intercepted note to the German Minister at Mexico City is eloquent evidence. We are accepting this challenge of hostile purpose because we know that in such a government following such methods we can never have a friend.”

To this thought President Wilson returned again and again, lest with the progress of time the people might forget the extraordinary circumstances amid which the conflict began. In his Flag Day address of June 14, 1917, he said:

The

"It is plain enough how we were forced into the war. extraordinary insults and aggressions of the Imperial German Government left us no self-respecting choice but to take up arms

in defense of our rights as a free people and of our honour as a sovereign government. The military masters of Germany denied us the right to be neutral. They filled our unsuspecting communities with vicious spies and conspirators and sought to corrupt the opinion of our people in their own behalf. When they found that they could not do that, their agents diligently spread sedition amongst us and sought to draw our own citizens from their allegiance, and some of those agents were men connected with the official Embassy of the German Government itself here in our own capital. They sought by violence to destroy our industries and arrest our commerce. They tried to incite Mexico to take up arms against us and to draw Japan into a hostile alliance with her, and that, not by indirection, but by direct suggestion from the Foreign Office in Berlin. They impudently denied us the use of the high seas and repeatedly executed their threat that they would send to their death any of our people who ventured to approach the coasts of Europe. And many of our own people were corrupted. Men began to look upon their own neighbours with suspicion and to wonder in their hot resentment and surprise whether there was any community in which hostile intrigue did not lurk. What great nation in such circumstances would not have taken up arms? Much as we had desired peace, it was denied us, and not of our own choice."

America Has No Selfish Aims in the War. In inviting Congress to consider the reasons why arms should be taken up against the Imperial German Government, on April 2, 1917, President Wilson announced to all the world that the United States sought no material gains from the war- no new territories, no forcibly won markets for American trade, no compensations in money for wrongs done but rather to overthrow militarism and imperialism, making way for peace and democratic governments throughout the earth. "We are glad . . .," he said, "to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its peoples, the German peoples included: for the rights of nations great and small and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and of obedience. The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We

have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of nations can make them."

International Law and Right Must be Sustained. - Under long accepted principles of international law, battleships of countries engaged in war could not destroy a merchant vessel even of any enemy power (to say nothing of merchant vessels of neutrals) without first providing for the safety of passengers and crew. American citizens thus had a right to travel with security not only on American merchant ships, but also on those of the warring countries of Europe. Even if established law had not forbidden the wanton killing of non-combatants, the dictates of humanity would have prevented such outrageous conduct. This was emphasized by President Wilson in his note to the German Imperial Government after the sinking of the Lusitania, in 1915; and in laying before Congress the just causes of war, he again referred to it:

International law had its origin in the attempt to set up some law which would be respected and observed upon the seas, where no nation had right of dominion and where lay the free highways of the world. By painful stage after stage has that law been built up, with meager enough results, indeed, after all was accomplished that could be accomplished, but always with a clear view, at least, of what the heart and conscience of mankind demanded. This minimum of right the German Government has swept aside under the plea of retaliation and necessity and because it had no weapons which it could use at sea except these which it is impossible to employ as it is employing them without throwing to the winds all scruples of humanity or of respect for the understandings that were supposed to underlie the intercourse of the world. I am not now thinking of the loss of property involved, immense and serious as that is, but only of the wanton and wholesale destruction of the lives of noncombatants, men, women, and children, engaged in pursuits which have always, even in the darkest periods of modern history, been deemed innocent and legitimate. Property can be paid