Part 5 (1/2)

It is incomprehensible to me how any frank or honest person could doubt or question my position with regard to the war and its objects.

I have again and again stated the very serious and long-continued wrongs which the Imperial German Government has perpetrated against the rights, the commerce and the citizens of the United States. The list is long and overwhelming. No Nation that respected itself or the rights of humanity could have borne those wrongs any longer.

Our objects in going into the war have been stated with equal clearness. The whole of the conception which I take to be the conception of our fellow-countrymen with regard to the outcome of the war and the terms of its settlement, I set forth with the utmost explicitness in an address to the Senate of the United States on the 22d of January last. Again, in my message to Congress on the 2d of April last, those objects were stated in unmistakable terms.

I can conceive no purpose in seeking to becloud this matter except the purpose of weakening the hands of the Government and making the part which the United States is to play in this great struggle for human liberty an inefficient and hesitating part.

We have entered the war for our own reasons and with our own objects clearly stated, and shall forget neither the reasons nor the objects.

There is no hate in our hearts for the German people, but there is a resolve which cannot be shaken even by misrepresentation, to overcome the pretensions of the autocratic Government which acts upon purposes to which the German people have never consented.

VIII

MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS

(_May 30, 1917_)

In one sense the great struggle into which we have now entered is an American struggle, because it is in defense of American honor and American rights, but it is something even greater than that; it is a world struggle. It is the struggle of men who love liberty everywhere, and in this cause America will show herself greater than ever because she will rise to a greater thing.

The program has conferred an unmerited dignity upon the remarks I am going to make by calling them an address, because I am not here to deliver an address [said the President]. I am here merely to show in my official capacity the sympathy of this great Government with the object of this occasion, and also to speak just a word of the sentiment that is in my own heart.

Any memorial day of this sort is, of course, a day touched with sorrowful memory, and yet I for one do not see how we can have any thought of pity for the men whose memory we honor to-day. I do not pity them. I envy them, rather, because their great work for liberty is accomplished, and we are in the midst of a work unfinished, testing our strength where their strength already has been tested.

A HERITAGE FROM THE DEAD

There is a touch of sorrow, but there is a touch of rea.s.surance also in a day like this, because we know how the men of America have responded to the call of the cause of liberty, and it fills our mind with a perfect a.s.surance that that response will come again in equal measures, with equal majesty and with a result which will hold the attention of all mankind.

When you reflect upon it, these men who died to preserve the Union died to preserve the instrument which we are now using to serve the world--a free nation espousing the cause of human liberty. In one sense the great struggle into which we have now entered is an American struggle, because it is in the sense of American honor and American rights, but it is something even greater than that; it is a world struggle. It is a struggle of men who love liberty everywhere; and in this cause America will show herself greater than ever because she will rise to a greater thing.

We have said in the beginning that we planned this great Government that men who wish freedom might have a place of refuge and a place where their hope could be realized, and now, having established such a Government, having preserved such a Government, having vindicated the power of such a Government, we are saying to all mankind, ”We did not set this Government up in order that we might have a selfish and separate liberty, for we are now ready to come to your a.s.sistance and fight out upon the fields of the world the cause of human liberty.”

AMERICA'S FULL FRUITION

In this thing America attains her full dignity and the full fruition of her great purpose.

No man can be glad that such things have happened as we have witnessed in these last fateful years, but perhaps it may be permitted to us to be glad that we have an opportunity to show the principles which we profess to be living--principles which live in our hearts--and to have a chance by the pouring out of our blood and treasure to vindicate the things which we have professed. For, my friends, the real fruition of life is to do the things we have said we wished to do. There are times when words seem empty and only action seems great. Such a time has come, and in the providence of G.o.d America will once more have an opportunity to show to the world that she was born to serve mankind.

IX

A STATEMENT TO RUSSIA

(_June 9, 1917_)

In view of the approaching visit of the American delegation to Russia to express the deep friends.h.i.+p of the American people for the people of Russia and to discuss the best and most practical means of co-operation between the two peoples in carrying the present struggle for the freedom of all peoples to a successful consummation, it seems opportune and appropriate that I should state again, in the light of this new partners.h.i.+p, the objects the United States has had in mind in entering the war. Those objects have been very much beclouded during the past few weeks by mistaken and misleading statements, and the issues at stake are too momentous, too tremendous, too significant for the whole human race to permit any misinterpretations or misunderstandings, however slight, to remain uncorrected for a moment.

The war has begun to go against Germany, and in their desperate desire to escape the inevitable ultimate defeat, those who are in authority in Germany are using every possible instrumentality, are making use even of the influence of groups and parties among their own subjects to whom they have never been just or fair, or even tolerant, to promote a propaganda on both sides of the sea which will preserve for them their influence at home and their power abroad, to the undoing of the very men they are using.