On the second day of April, 1917, President Wilson read to Congress in the Congress, assembled in an extraordinary session, pursuant to executive proclamation, his message, from which the following extracts are quoted:

Special
Session.

"Gentlemen of the Congress:

"I have called the Congress into extraordinary session beThe Presi- cause there are serious, very serious, choices of dent's Mes- policy to be made, and made immediately, which sage. it is neither right nor constitutionally permissible that I should assume the responsibility of making.

"On the 3rd 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 The Submarine

of the German submarine warfare earlier in the war, but since April of last year the Imperial GovernCampaign. ment 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 fair chance to save their lives in their open boats. The precautions taken were meager 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 prescribed 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 attempt to set up Internasome law which would be respected and observed tional Law upon the seas, where no nation had right of dominion Shattered. and where lay the free highways of the world. By painful stage after stage has that law been built up with meager 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 A Warfare except these, which it is impossible to employ, as Against it is employing them, without throwing to the Mankind. wind 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.

"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 feelings 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.

"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 Germany to be in fact nothing less than war against the Has made Government and people of the United States; that War upon it formally accept the status of belligerent which the United has thus been thrust upon it; and that it take im- States. mediate 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

"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

"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 people 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."

On the sixth day of April the House of Representatives passed the following joint resolution which had already been passed by the Senate:

"Whereas, the Imperial German Government has committed repeated acts of war against the Government and the people of the United States of America; Therefore, be it

"Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the state of war between the United States and the Imperial German Declaration Government, which has thus been thrust upon the of War. United States is hereby formally declared; and that the President be, and he is hereby, authorized and directed to

employ the entire naval and military forces of the United States and the resources of the Government to carry on war against the Imperial German Government; and to bring the conflict to a successful termination all the resources of the country are hereby pledged by the Congress of the United States."

Why America is fighting Germany is the question here answered by Secretary of the Interior Lane:

"Why are we fighting Germany? The brief answer is that ours is a war of self-defense. We did not wish to why the fight Germany. She made the attack upon us; not United on our shores, but on our ships, our lives, our rights, States our future. For two years and more we held to a Fights. neutrality that made us apologists for things which outraged man's common sense of fair play and humanity. At each new offense the invasion of Belgium, the killing of civilian Belgians, the attacks on Scarborough and other defenseless towns, the laying of mines in neutral waters, the fencing off of the seas and on and on through the months we said: 'This is war-archaic, uncivilized war, but war! All rules have been thrown away: all nobility; man has come down to the primitive brute. And while we cannot justify we will not intervene. It is not our war!

"Then why are we in? Because we could not keep out. The invasion of Belgium, which opened the war, led to the invasion of the United States by slow, steady, logical steps. Our sympathies evolved into a conviction of self-interest. Our love of fair play ripened into alarm at our own peril.

"And so we came into this war for ourselves. It is a war to save America-to preserve self-respect, to justify our right to live as we have lived, not as some one else wishes us to live. In the name of freedom we challenge with ships and men, money, and an undaunted spirit, that word 'Verboten' which Germany has written upon the sea and upon the land. For The Spirit America is not the name of so much territory. It of America is a living spirit, born in travail, grown in the rough Must Live. school of bitter experiences, a living spirit which has purpose and pride, and conscience knows why it wishes to live and to what end, knows how it comes to be respected of the world, and hopes. to retain that respect by living on with the light of Lincoln's love of man as its Old and New Testament. It is more precious that this America should live than that we Americans should live. And this America, as we now see, has been challenged from the first of this war by the strong arm of a power that has no sympathy with our purpose and will not hesitate to destroy

us if the law that we respect, the rights that are to us sacred, or the spirit that we have, stand across her set will to make this world bow before her policies, backed by her organized and scientific military system. The world of ChristThe world of Christ-a neglected but not a rejected Christ-has come again face to face with the world of Mahomet, who willed to win by force

"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 a world in which men think of the ways in which they can conquer the common cruelties of nature instead of inventing more horrible cruelties For the Common Man.

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."

That the history of the United States made certain the entry of our country into the great war was shown by the Secretary of War, Newton D. Baker, when in a speech he said:

"Things have come to a pass in this world where all mankind must choose whether the nations of the earth are to be Militarism autocratic in their government and militarist or Demo- in their pretensions or democratic in their governments and just in their pretensions.

cracy.

America's

"America has chosen-nay, she chose in 1776-that she intended to be democratic in her policies and in Choice. her government, and our whole history of more than 100 years justifies the statement that our people are wedded and devoted to the idea of international justice as the rule upon which nations shall live together in peace and amity upon the earth.

"So that when we entered this war we entered it in order that we and our children and our children's children might For Our fabricate a new and better civilization under better Children conditions, enjoying liberty of person, liberty of belief, freedom of speech and freedom as to our political institutions. We entered this war to remove from ourselves, our children and our children's children the menace which threatened to deny us that right."