carrying the Red Cross and laden with the wounded of all nations; ships carrying food and clothing to friendly, harmless, terrorized peoples; ships flying the Stars and Stripes sent to the bottom hundreds of miles from shore, manned by American seamen, murdered against all law, without warning.

We believed Germany's promise that she would respect the neutral flag and the rights of neutrals, and we held our anger and outrage in check. But now we see that she was holding us off with fair promises until she could build her huge fleet of submarines. For when spring came she blew her promise into the air, just as at the beginning she had torn up that "scrap of paper." Then we saw clearly that there was but one law for Germany - her will to rule.

We are fighting Germany because she violated our confidence. Paid German spies filled our cities. Officials of her Government, received as the guests of this Nation, lived with us to bribe and terrorize, defying our law and the law of nations.

We are fighting Germany because while we were yet her friends the only great power that still held hands offshe sent the Zimmerman note, calling to her aid Mexico, our southern neighbor, and hoping to lure Japan, our western neighbor, into war against this Nation of peace.

The nation that would do these things proclaims the gospel that government has no conscience. And this doctrine cannot live, or else democracy must die. For the nations of the world must keep faith. There can be no living for us in a world where the state has no conscience, no reverence for the things of the spirit, no respect for international law, no mercy for those who fall before its force. What an unordered world! Anarchy! The anarchy of rival wolf packs!

We are fighting Germany because in this war feudalism is making its last stand against oncoming democracy. We

see it now. This is a war against an old spirit, an ancient, outworn spirit. It is a war against feudalism - the right of the castle on the hill to rule the village below. It is a war for democracy the right of all to be their own masters. Let Germany be feudal if she will, but she must not spread her system over the world that has outgrown it. Feudalism plus science, thirteenth century plus twentieth — this is the religion of the mistaken Germany that has linked itself with the Turk; that has, too, adopted the method of Mahomet. "The State has no conscience." "The State can do no wrong." With the spirit of the fanatic she believes this gospel and that it is her duty to spread it by force. With poison gas that makes living a hell, with submarines that sneak through the seas slyly to murder non-combatants, with dirigibles that bombard men and women while they sleep, with a perfected system of terrorization that the modern world first heard of when German troops entered China, German feudalism is making war upon mankind. Let this old spirit of evil have its way and no man will live in America without paying toll to it in manhood and in money. This spirit might demand Canada from a defeated, navyless England, and then our dream of peace on the north would be at an end. We would live, as France has lived for forty years, in haunting terror.

America speaks for the world in fighting Germany. Mark on a map those countries which are Germany's allies and you will mark but four, running from the Baltic through Austria and Bulgaria to Turkey. All the other nations the whole globe around are in arms against her or are unable to move. There is deep meaning in this. We fight with the world for an honest world in which nations keep their word, for a world in which nations do not live by swagger or by threat, for а world in which men think of the ways in which they can conquer the common cruelties of nature instead of in

venting more horrible cruelties to inflict upon the spirit and body of man, for a world in which the ambition or the philosophy of a few shall not make miserable all mankind, for a world in which the man is held more precious than the machine, the system, or the State.

THE RIGHTEOUS CONCLUSION

OF THE WAR'

WOODROW WILSON

EIGHT months have elapsed since I last had the honor of addressing you. They have been months crowded with events of immense and grave significance for us. I shall not undertake to detail or even to summarize those events. The practical particulars of the part we have played in them will be laid before you in the reports of the executive departments. I shall discuss only our present outlook upon these vast affairs, our present duties, and the immediate means of accomplishing the objects we shall hold always in view.

I shall not go back to debate the causes of the war. The intolerable wrongs done and planned against us by the sinister masters of Germany have long since become too grossly obvious and odious to every true American to need to be rehearsed. But I shall ask you to consider again and with very grave scrutiny our objectives and the measures by which we mean to attain them; for the purpose of discussion here in this place is action and our action must move straight toward definite ends. Our object is, of course, to win the war, and we shall not slacken or suffer ourselves to be diverted until it is won. But it is worth while asking and answering the question, When shall we consider the war won?

From one point of view it is not necessary to broach this fundamental matter. I do not doubt that the American

1 The Second War Message delivered before Congress, December 4, 1917.

people know what the war is about and what sort of an outcome they will regard as a realization of their purpose in it. As a Nation we are united in spirit and intention.

I pay little heed to those who tell me otherwise. I hear the voices of dissent-who does not? I hear the criticism and the clamor of the noisily thoughtless and troublesome. I also see men here and there fling themselves in impotent disloyalty against the calm, indomitable power of the Nation. I hear men debate peace who understand neither its nature nor the way in which we may attain it, with uplifted eyes and unbroken spirits. But I know that none of these speaks for the Nation. They do not touch the heart of anything. They may safely be left to strut their uneasy hour and be forgotten.

But from another point of view I believe that it is necessary to say plainly what we here at the seat of action consider the war to be for and what part we mean to play in the settlement of its searching issues. We are the spokesmen of the American people and they have a right to know whether their purpose is ours. They desire peace by the overcoming of evil, by the defeat once and for all of the sinister forces that interrupt peace and render it impossible, and they wish to know how closely our thought runs with theirs and what action we propose. They are impatient with those who desire peace by any sort of compromise, - deeply and indignantly impatient,— but they will be equally impatient with us if we do not make it plain to them what our objectives are and what we are planning for in seeking to make conquest of peace by arms.

I believe that I speak for them when I say two things: First, that this intolerable Thing of which the masters of Germany have shown us the ugly face, this menace of combined intrigue and force, which we now see so clearly as the German power, a Thing without conscience or honor or