Gentlemen of the Congress:
I have called the Congress into extraordinary session because there are
serious, very serious, choices of policy to be made, and made immediately,
which it was neither right nor constitutionally permissible that I should
assume the responsibility of making.
On the 3d of February last I officially laid before you the extraordinary
announcement of the Imperial German Government that on and after the 1st
day of February it was its purpose to put aside all restraints of law or
of humanity and use its submarines to sink every vessel that sought to
approach either the ports of Great Britain and Ireland or the western coasts
of Europe or any of the ports controlled by the enemies of Germany within
the Mediterranean. That had seemed to be the object of the German submarine
warfare earlier in the war, but since April of last year the Imperial
Government had somewhat restrained the commanders of its undersea craft
in conformity with its promise then given to us that passenger boats should
not be sunk and that due warning would be given to all other vessels which
its submarines might seek to destroy, when no resistance was offered or
escape attempted, and care taken that their crews were given at least a
fair chance to save their lives in their open boats. The precautions taken
were meagre and haphazard enough, as was proved in distressing instance
after instance in the progress of the cruel and unmanly business, but a
certain degree of restraint was observed The new policy has swept every
restriction aside. Vessels of every kind, 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.
I was for a little while unable to believe that such things would in fact
be done by any government that had hitherto subscribed to the humane
practices of civilized nations. International law had its origin in the at
tempt 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 meagre 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 for; the lives of peaceful and innocent
people can not be. The present German submarine warfare against commerce is
a warfare against mankind.
It is a war against all nations. American ships have been sunk, American
lives taken, in ways which it has stirred us very deeply to learn of,
but the ships and people of other neutral and friendly nations have been
sunk and overwhelmed in the waters in the same way. There has been no
discrimination. The challenge is to all mankind. Each nation must decide
for itself how it will meet it. The choice we make for ourselves must be
made with a moderation of counsel and a temperateness of judgment befitting
our character and our motives as a nation. We must put excited feeling away.
Our motive will not be revenge or the victorious assertion of the physical
might of the nation, but only the vindication of right, of human right, of
which we are only a single champion.
When I addressed the Congress on the 26th of February last, I thought that
it would suffice to assert our neutral rights with arms, our right to use the seas against
unlawful interference, our right to keep our people safe against unlawful
violence. But armed neutrality, it now appears, is impracticable. Because submarines are in
effect outlaws when used as the German submarines have been used against
merchant shipping, it is impossible to defend ships against their attacks
as the law of nations has assumed that merchantmen would defend themselves
against privateers or cruisers, visible craft giving chase upon the open sea.
It is common prudence in such circumstances, grim necessity indeed, to
endeavour to destroy them before they have shown their own intention.
They must be dealt with upon sight, if dealt with at all. The German
Government denies the right of neutrals to use arms at all within the
areas of the sea which it has proscribed, even in the defense of rights
which no modern publicist has ever before questioned their right to defend.
The intimation is conveyed that the armed guards which we have placed on
our merchant ships will be treated as beyond the pale of law and subject
to be dealt with as pirates would be. Armed neutrality is ineffectual
enough at best; in such circumstances and in the face of such pretensions it
is worse than ineffectual; it is likely only to produce what it was meant
to prevent; it is practically certain to draw us into the war without
either the rights or the effectiveness of belligerents. There is one
choice we can not make, we are incapable of making: we will not choose
the path of submission and suffer the most sacred rights of our nation
and our people to be ignored or violated. The wrongs against which we now
array ourselves are no common wrongs; they cut to the very roots of human life.
With a profound sense of the solemn and even tragical character of the step
I am taking and of the grave responsibilities which it involves, but in
unhesitating obedience to what I deem my constitutional duty, I advise that
the Congress declare the recent course of the Imperial German Government to
be in fact nothing less than war against the Government and people of the
United States; that it formally accept the status of belligerent which has
thus been thrust upon it, and that it take immediate steps not only to put
the country in a more thorough state of defense but also to exert all its
power and employ all its resources to bring the Government of the German
Empire to terms and end the war.
What this will involve is clear. It will involve the utmost practicable
cooperation in counsel and action with the governments now at war with
Germany, and, as incident to that, the extension to those governments of
the most liberal financial credits, in order that our resources may so far
as possible be added to theirs. It will involve the organization and
mobilization of all the material resources of the country to supply the
materials of war and serve the incidental needs of the nation in the most
abundant and yet the most economical and efficient way possible. It will
involve the immediate full equipment of the Navy in all respects but
particularly in supplying it with the best means of dealing with the
enemy's submarines. It will involve the immediate addition to the
armed forces of the United States already provided for by law in case of
war at least 500,000 men, who should, in my opinion, be chosen upon the
principle of universal liability to service, and also the authorization
of subsequent additional increments of equal force so soon as they may be
needed and can be handled in training. It will involve also, of course, the
granting of adequate credits to the Government, sustained, I hope, so far
as they can equitably be sustained by the present generation, by well
conceived taxation....
While we do these things, these deeply momentous things, let us be very
clear, and make very clear to all the world what our motives and our
objects are. My own thought has not been driven from its habitual and
normal course by the unhappy events of the last two months, and I do
not believe that the thought of the nation has been altered or clouded
by them I have exactly the same things in mind now that I had in mind
when I addressed the Senate on the 22d of January last; the same that I
had in mind when I addressed the Congress on the 3d of February and on the
26th of February. Our object now, as then, is to vindicate the principles of
peace and justice in the life of the world as against selfish and
autocratic power and to set up amongst the really free and self-governed
peoples of the world such a concert of purpose and of action as will
henceforth ensure the observance of those principles. Neutrality is no
longer feasible or desirable where the peace of the world is involved
and the freedom of its peoples, and the menace to that peace and freedom
lies in the existence of autocratic governments backed by organized force
which is controlled wholly by their will, not by the will of their people.
We have seen the last of neutrality in such circumstances. We are at the
beginning of an age in which it will be insisted that the same standards of
conduct and of responsibility for wrong done shall be observed among
nations and their governments that are observed among the individual
citizens of civilized states.
We have no quarrel with the German people. We have no feeling towards them
but one of sympathy and friendship. It was not upon their impulse that
their Government acted in entering this war. It was not with their previous
knowledge or approval. It was a war determined upon as wars used to be
determined upon in the old, unhappy days when peoples were nowhere
consulted by their rulers and wars were provoked and waged in the interest
of dynasties or of little groups of ambitious men who were accustomed to use
their fellow men as pawns and tools. Self-governed nations do not fill their
neighbour states with spies or set the course of intrigue to bring about
some critical posture of affairs which will give them an opportunity to
strike and make conquest. Such designs can be successfully worked out
only under cover and where no one has the right to ask questions. Cunningly
contrived plans of deception or aggression, carried, it may be, from
generation to generation, can be worked out and kept from the light only
within the privacy of courts or behind the carefully guarded confidences
of a narrow and privileged class. They are happily impossible where public
opinion commands and insists upon full information concerning all the
nation's affairs.
A steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained except by a
partnership of democratic nations. No autocratic government could be
trusted to keep faith within it or observe its covenants. It must be a
league of honour, a partnership of opinion. Intrigue would eat its vitals
away; the plottings of inner circles who could plan what they would and
render account to no one would be a corruption seated at its very heart.
Only free peoples can hold their purpose and their honour steady to a
common end and prefer the interests of mankind to any narrow interest
of their own.
Does not every American feel that assurance has been added to our hope for
the future peace of the world by the wonderful and heartening things that
have been happening within the last few weeks in Russia? Russia was known
by those who knew it best to have been always in fact democratic
at heart, in all the vital habits of her thought, in all the intimate
relationships of her people that spoke their natural instinct, their
habitual attitude towards life. The autocracy that crowned the summit
of her political structure, long as it had stood and terrible as was the
reality of its power, was not in fact Russian in origin, character, or
purpose; and now it has been shaken off and the great, generous Russian
people have been added in all their naive majesty and might to the forces
that are fighting for freedom in the world, for justice, and for peace.
Here is a fit partner for a league of honour.
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 [
Zimmermann] 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 pretence
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 rancour 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.
I have said nothing of the governments allied with the Imperial Government
of Germany because they have not made war upon us or challenged us to
defend our right and our honour. The Austro-Hungarian Government has,
indeed, avowed its unqualified endorsement and acceptance of the reckless
and lawless submarine warfare adopted now without disguise by the Imperial
German Government, and it has therefore not been possible for this
Government to receive Count Tarnowski, the Ambassador recently accredited
to this Government by the Imperial and Royal Government of Austria-Hungary;
but that Government has not actually engaged in warfare against citizens
of the United States on the seas, and I take the liberty, for the present
at least, of postponing a discussion of our relations with the authorities
at Vienna. We enter this war only where we are clearly forced into it
because there are no other means of defending our rights.
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
reestablishment 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 neighbours 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.
