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.

WE FIGHT TO FREE THE WORLD.

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 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.

COMMENTS ON THE WAR ADDRESS.

New York Sun: "The voice of the Nation."

Theodore Roosevelt: "The President's message

will

rank among the great state papers of which Americans in future will be proud."

President Poincaré to Wilson: "Eloquent interpreter of outraged right and menaced civilization."

Lloyd George: "The glowing phrases of the President's noble deliverance illumine the horizon and make clearer than ever the goal we are striving to reach."

Wilfrid Laurier: "One of the most important contributions since Lincoln's time to the literature of freedom and democracy." M. Ribot of France: "Gives the war its true character for the whole world to understand."

Chicago Evening Post: "Rarely has the soul of America been interpreted to America, rarely has it been translated into action with greater force, with finer statesmanship, with simpler nobility, than in this mesage of final American revolt against the natural foe of liberty."'

"

Literary Digest: "Worked a miracle of crystallization and unification in American sentiment."

Figaro: "The whole world realizes the deeper meaning of the war of 1914."

Paris Matin: "The nobility and grandeur of this action are heightened by the sublimity and the simplicity with which this purpose is expressed by the illustrious head of this great democracy. If the world had the slightest doubt as to the profound meaning of the war the message of the President of the United States would forever dissipate all obscurity."

Petit Journal: "It brings a moral power greater than all these." (Credit, resources, fleet, etc.)

Journal: "A moral condemnation of Germany. It is her banishment from the ranks of the nations..."

Petit Parisian: "Her recognized and positive disinterestedness accentuates and makes clear the character of the war."

Manchester Guardian: "Our greatest victory since the war

began."

London Daily News: "An appeal as noble and as moving as any ever addressed to the sons of men; the authentic voice of humanity, stating the issue. We hard pressed nations

can

not but feel the moral uplifting and precious moral endorsement of forces inspired by such an ideal. Because he has declared a new and indisputable gospel in the governance of men, President Wilson's speech has echoed in our hearts like no other utterance in these days."

London Evening Star: "It sounds the knell of autocracy." Pall Mall Gazette: "A crusade more than worthy of its best traditions."

London Times: "An event which is certain to influence their destinies on both sides of the Atlantic for generations to come."

"We doubt if in all history a great community has ever been summoned to war on grounds so largely ideal..." "President Wilson proves his faith in the profound idealism of the American people."

Russekiya Ryetels: "The most important feature of the development in Washington is the profound moral significance of the entry of the United States into the war."

Cologne Volks Zeitung: "The gravest insult ever offered to Germany."

ity."

Frankfurter Zeitung: "President Wilson's artificial human

Lokal Anzeiger: "Deed of a stubborn fanatic." APRIL 4, 1917-Senate adoPTS WAR RESOLUTION.

APRIL 6, 1917-HOUSE Adopts war resolUTION.

APRIL 6, 1917-President WILSON ISSUES War proclamation.

APRIL 16, 1917-THE PRESIDENT ISSUES A PROCLAMATION TO HIS FELLOW-COUNTRYMEN ON WAYS TO SERVE THE NATION DURING THE WAR.

(This appeal laid a foundation for other appeals, demands and exactions which were to come-food and fuel regulations, the selective draft, industrial control, Red Cross drives, etc. Not once has the American people whined or winced.)

"SPEAK, ACT AND SERVE TOGETHER.”

AN APPEAL TO THE PEOPLE.
(Complete)

My Fellow Countrymen:

The entrance of our own beloved country into the grim and terrible war for democracy and human rights which has shaken the world creates so many problems of national life and action which call for immediate consideration and settlement that I hope you will permit me to address to you a few words of earnest counsel and appeal with regard to them.

We are rapidly putting our navy upon an efficient war footing and are about to create and equip a great army, but these are the

simplest parts of the great task to which we have addressed ourselves. There is not a single selfish element, so far as I can see, in the cause we are fighting for. We are fighting for what we believe and wish to be the rights of mankind and for the future peace and security of the world. To do this great thing worthily and successfully we must devote ourselves to the service without regard to profit or material advantage and with an energy and intelligence that will rise to the level of the enterprise itself. We must realize to the full how great the task is and how many things, how many kinds and elements of capacity and service and self-sacrifice, it involves.

These, then, are the things we must do, and do well, besides fighting, the things without which mere fighting would be fruitless:

We must supply abundant food for ourselves and for our armies and our seamen not only, but also for a large part of the nations with whom we have now made common cause, in whose support and by whose sides we shall be fighting;

We must supply ships by the hundreds out of our shipyards to carry to the other side of the sea, submarines or no submarines, what will every day be needed there, and abundant materials out of our fields and our mines and our factories with which not only to clothe and equip our own forces on land and sea but also to clothe and support our people for whom the gallant fellows under arms can no longer work, to help clothe and equip the armies with which we are coöperating in Europe, and to keep the looms and manufactories there in raw material; coal to keep the fires going in ships at sea and in the furnaces of hundreds of factories across the sea; steel out of which to make arms and ammunition both here and there; rails for worn-out railways back of the fighting fronts; locomotives and rolling stock to take the place of those every day going to pieces; mules, horses, cattle for labor and for military service; everything with which the people of England and France and Italy and Russia have usually supplied themselves but cannot now afford the men, the materials, or the machinery to make.

THE GREAT SERVICE ARMY.

It is evident to every thinking man that our industries, on the farms, in the shipyards, in the mines, in the factories, must be made more prolific and more efficient than ever and that they must be more economically managed and better adapted to the particular requirements of our task than they have been; and what I want to say is that the men and women who devote their

AMERICANISM

thought and their energy to these things will be serving the country and conducting the fight for peace and freedom just as truly and just as effectively as the men on the battlefield or in the trenches. The industrial forces of the country, men and women alike, will be a great national, a great international, Service Army, a notable and honored host engaged in the service of the nation and the world, the efficient friends and saviors of free men everywhere. Thousands, nay, hundreds of thousands, of men otherwise liable to military service will of right and of necessity be excused from that service and assigned to the fundamental, sustaining work of the fields and factories and mines, and they will be as much part of the great patriotic forces of the nation as the men under fire.

I take the liberty, therefore, of addressing this word to the farmers of the country and to all who work on the farms: The supreme need of our own nation and of the nations with which we are coöperating is an abundance of supplies, and especially of foodstuffs. The importance of an adequate food supply, especially for the present year, is superlative. Without abundant food, alike for the armies and the peoples now at war, the whole great enterprise upon which we have embarked will break down and fail. The world's food reserves are low. Not only during the present emergency but for some time after peace shall have come both our own people and a large proportion of the people of Europe must rely upon the harvests in America. Upon the farmers of this country, therefore, in large measure, rests the fate of the war and the fate of the nations. May the nation not count upon them to omit no step that will increase the production of their land or that will bring about the most effectual coöperation in the sale and distribution of their products? The time is short. It is of the most imperative importance that everything possible be done and done immediately to make sure of large harvests. I call upon young men and old alike and upon the able-bodied boys of the land to accept and act upon this duty-to turn in hosts to the farms and make certain that no pains and no labor is lacking in this great matter.

I particularly appeal to the farmers of the South to plant abundant foodstuffs as well as cotton. They can show their patriotism in no better or more convincing way than by resisting the great temptation of the present price of cotton and helping, helping upon a great scale, to feed the nation and the peoples everywhere who are fighting for their liberties and for our own. The variety of their crops will be the visible measure of their comprehension of their national duty.

The Government of the United States and the governments of the several States stand ready to coöperate. They will do everything possible to assist the farmers in securing an adequate supply of seed, an adequate force of laborers when they are most needed, at harvest time, and the means of expediting shipments of fertilizers and farm machinery, as well as of the crops themselves when harvested. The course of trade shall be as unhampered as it is possible to make it and there shall be no unwarranted manipulation of the nation's food supply by those who handle it on its way to the consumer. This is our opportunity to demonstrate the efficiency of a great democracy and we shall not fall short of it!

SERVICE UNSELFISH AND SINCERE

This let me say to the middlemen of every sort, whether they are handling our foodstuffs or our raw materials of manufacture or the products of our mills and factories: The eyes of the country will be especially upon you. This is your opportunity for signal service, efficient and disinterested. The country expects you, as it expects all others, to forego unusual profits, to organize and expedite shipments of supplies of every kind, but especially of food, with an eye to the service you are rendering and in the spirit of those who enlist in the ranks, for their people, not for themselves. I shall confidently expect you to deserve and win the confidence of people of every sort and station.

To the men who run the railways of the country, whether they be managers or operative employees, let me say that the railways are the arteries of the nation's life and that upon them rests the immense responsibility of seeing to it that those arteries suffer no obstruction of any kind, no inefficiency or slackened power. To the merchant let me suggest the motto, "Small profits and quick service"; and to the shipbuilder the thought that the life of the war depends upon him. The food and the war supplies must be carried across the seas no matter how many ships are sent to the bottom. The places of those that go down must be supplied and supplied at once. To the miner let me say that he stands where the farmer does: the work of the world waits on him. If he slackens or fails, armies and statesmen are helpless. He also is enlisted in the great Service Army. The manufacturer does not need to be told, I hope, that the nation looks to him to speed and perfect every process; and I want only to remind his employees that their service is absolutely indispensable and is counted on by every man who loves the country and its liberties.

Let me suggest, also, that everyone who creates or cultivates

a garden helps, and helps greatly, to solve the problem of the 49