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; and that in the presence of its organized power, always lying in wait to accomplish we know not what purpose, there can be no assured security for the democratic governments of the world. We are now about to accept gage of battle with this natural foe to liberty and shall, if necessary, spend the whole force of the nation to check and nullify its pretensions and its power. We are glad, now that we see the facts with no veil of false pretense about them, 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.

Just because we fight without rancor and without selfish object, seeking nothing for ourselves but what we shall wish to share with all free peoples, we shall, I feel confident, conduct our operations as belligerents without passion and ourselves observe with proud punctilio the principles of right and of fair play we profess to be fighting for.

It will be all the easier for us to conduct ourselves as belligerents in a high spirit of right and fairness because we act without animus, not in enmity towards a people or with the desire to bring any injury or disadvantage upon them, but only in armed opposition to an irresponsible government which has thrown aside all considerations of humanity and of right and is running amuck. We are, let me say again, the sincere friends of the German people, and shall desire nothing so much as the early reëstablishment of intimate relations of mutual advantage between us, — however hard it may be for them, for the time being, to believe that this is spoken from our hearts. We have borne with their present government through all these bitter months because of that friendship, exercising a patience and forbearance which would otherwise have been impossible. We shall, happily, still have an opportunity to prove that friendship in our daily attitude and actions towards the millions of men and women of German birth and native sympathy who live amongst us and share our life, and we shall be proud to prove it towards all who are in fact loyal to their neighbors and to the Government in the hour of test. They are, most of them, as true and loyal Americans as if they had never known any other fealty or allegiance. They will be prompt to stand with us in rebuking and restraining the few who may be of a different mind and purpose. If there should be disloyalty, it will be dealt with with a firm hand of stern repression; but, if it lifts its head at all, it will lift it only here and there and without countenance except from a lawless and malignant few.

It is a distressing and oppressive duty, Gentlemen of the Congress, which I have performed in thus addressing you.

There are, it may be, many months of fiery trial and sacrifice ahead of us. It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts, — for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free. To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no other.

THE MENACE OF AUTOCRACY 1

ELIHU ROOT

[Elihu Root (1845- ) was educated at Hamilton College, and is one of the foremost American statesmen of to-day. His chief public services have been as Secretary of War under Presidents McKinley and Roosevelt, Secretary of State under President Roosevelt, and Senator from New York from 1909 to 1915. He was a member of the Hague Tribunal in 1910 and has rendered important services to the settlement of international problems. In 1912 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The present selection is the larger part of his Presidential Address at the Eleventh Meeting of the American Society of International Law in Washington, April 26, 1917. As an exposition of the phrase "The world must be made safe for democracy" and a justification of the entrance of the United States into the World War it stands second only to the April 2d Message.]

The greatest change in the conditions of national life during the past century has been in the advance and spread of democratic government, and the correlative decrease in the extent and power of autocratic and dynastic governments. It is impossible to regard the advance of democracy as being merely local or temporary. It has been the result of long-continued and persistent progress, varying in different countries according to the character of the people and the nature of the obstacles to be overcome, but, in its nature, essentially the same in all countries.

England, in her steady-going, undemonstrative way, has moved along from government by a king claiming divine right to a Commons representing popular right through the revolution of 1688, which established the nation's right to

1 From "The Effect of Democracy on International Law," International Conciliation, August, 1917. Reprinted by permission.

choose its king, through that civil war over the rights of British subjects known as the American Revolution, through chartism and Catholic emancipation, the Reform Bill of 1832, the franchise extension of 1867, the abandonment of the king's veto power, and the establishment of the Commons' right to pass bills over the rejection of the House of Lords.

France, in her own different way, with much action and reaction, traveled towards the same goal through the States General and the Constituent Assembly, through the Reign of Terror, and her amazing defense of the first Republic against all Europe, through the heroic surgery of Napoleon's career, the Bourbon restoration, the assertion of her right to choose her own king in 1830, and the assertion of her right to dispense with a king in 1848, the plebiscite and the second Empire, the Commune and the third Republic, which has grown in stability and capacity for popular government until the steadiness and self-control and noble devotion of the French people under suffering and sacrifice have come to be one of the amazing revelations of these terrible years.

Italy, struggling out of the control of a multitude of petty tyrants sustained by foreign influence, established her newly won unity and independence upon the basis of representative parliamentary government.

Spain has regained and strengthened the constitution of which Ferdinand VII and the Holy Alliance deprived her.

Throughout the greater part of the world constitutions. have become the order of the day. Switzerland, Belgium, Holland, Portugal, all Scandinavia, all Latin-America, have established their governments upon constitutional bases. Japan, emerging from her military feudalism, makes her entry into the community of civilized nations under a constitutional government. China, throwing off the domination of the Manchu, is striving to accustom her long-suffering and submissive millions to the idea of constitutional right. The great self-governing British Dominions, bound to the Mother Country only by ties of tradition and sentiment, have shown