THE WORLD WAR AND AMERICAN

PREPAREDNESS

ADDRESS DELIVERED AT CLEVELAND, OHIO, JANUARY 29, 1916

MR. PRESIDENT AND FELLOW CITIZENS:

I esteem it a real privilege to be in Cleveland again and to address you upon the serious questions of public policy which now confront us. I have not given myself this sort of pleasure very often since I have been President, for I hope that you have observed what my conception of the office of President is. I do not believe that, ordinarily speaking, it is a speech-making office. I have found the exactions of it such that it was absolutely necessary for me to remain constantly in touch with the daily changes of public business, and you so arranged it that I should be President at a time when there was a great deal of public business to remain in touch with. But the times are such, gentlemen, that it is necessary that we should take common counsel together regarding them.

I suppose that this country has never found itself before in so singular a position. The present situation of the world would, only a twelvemonth ago, even after the European war had started, have seemed incredible, and yet now the things that no man anticipated have happened. The titanic struggle continues. The difficulties of the world's affairs accumulate. It

was, of course, evident that this was taking place long before the present session of Congress assembled, but only since the Congress assembled has it been possible to consider what we ought to do in the new circumstances of the times. Congress can not know what to do unless the Nation knows what to do, and it seemed to me not only my privilege but my duty to go out and inform my fellow countrymen just what I understood the present situation to be.

What are the elements of the case? In the first place, and most obviously, two-thirds of the world are at war. It is not merely a European struggle; nations in the Orient have become involved, as well as nations in the west, and everywhere there seems to be creeping even upon the nations disengaged the spirit and the threat of war. All the world outside of America is on fire.

Do you wonder that men's imaginations take color from the situation? Do you wonder that there is a great reaction against war? Do you wonder that the passion for peace grows stronger as the spectacle grows more tremendous and more overwhelming? Do you wonder, on the other hand, that men's sympathies become deeply engaged on the one side or the other? For no small things are happening. This is a struggle which will determine the history of the world, I dare say, for more than a century to come. The world will never be the same again after this war is over. The change may be for weal or it may be for woe, but it will be fundamental and tremendous.

And in the meantime we, the people of the United

States, are the one great disengaged power, the one neutral power, finding it exceedingly difficult to be neutral, because, like men everywhere else, we are human; we have the deep passions of mankind in us; we have sympathies that are as easily stirred as the sympathies of any other people; we have interests which we see being drawn slowly into the maelstrom of this tremendous upheaval. It is very difficult for us to hold off and look with cool judgment upon such stupendous matters.

And yet we have held off. It has not been easy for the Government at Washington to avoid the entanglements which seemed to beset it on every side. It has needed a great deal of watchfulness and an unremitting patience to do so, but all the while no American could fail to be aware that America did not wish to become engaged, that she wished to hold apart; not because she did not perceive the issues of the struggle, but because she thought her duties to be the duties of peace and of separate action. And all the while the nations themselves that were engaged seemed to be looking to us for some sort of action, not hostile in character but sympathetic in character. Hardly a single thing has occurred in Europe which has in any degree shocked the sensibilities of mankind that the Government of the United States has not been called upon by the one side or the other to protest and intervene with its moral influence, if not with its physical force. It is as if we were the great audience before whom this stupendous drama is being played out, and we are asked to comment upon the turns and crises

of the plot. And not only are we the audience, and challenged to be the umpire so far as the opinion of the world is concerned, but all the while our own life touches these matters at many points of vital contact.

The United States is trying to keep up the processes of peaceful commerce while all the world is at war and while all the world is in need of the essential things which the United States produces, and yet by an oversight for which it is difficult to forgive ourselves we did not provide ourselves when there was proper peace and opportunity with a mercantile marine, by means of which we could carry the commerce of the world without the interference of the motives of other nations which might be engaged in controversy not our own; and so the carrying trade of the world is for the most part in the hands of the nations now embroiled in this great struggle. Americans have gone to all quarters of the world, Americans are serving the business of the world in every part of it, and every one of these men when his affairs touch the regions that are on fire is our ward, and we must see to his rights and that they are respected. Do you not see how all the sensitive places of our life touch these great disturbances?

Now in the midst of all this, what is it that we are called on to do as a nation? I suppose that from the first America has had one peculiar and particular mission in the world. Other nations have grown rich, my fellow citizens, other nations have been as powerful as we in material resources in comparison with the other nations of the world, other nations have built up

empires and exercised dominion; we are not peculiar in any of these things, but we are peculiar in this, that from the first we have dedicated our force to the service of justice and righteousness and peace. We have said, "Our chief interest is not in the rights of property but in the rights of men; our chief interest is in the spirits of men that they might be free, that they might enjoy their lives unmolested so long as they observed the just rules of the game, that they might deal with their fellow-men with their heads erect, the subjects and servants of no man; the servants only of the principles upon which their lives rested." And America has done more than care for her own people and think of her own fortunes in these great matters. She has said ever since the time of President Monroe that she was the champion of the freedom and the separate sovereignty of peoples throughout the Western Hemisphere. She is trustee for these ideals and she is pledged, deeply and permanently pledged, to keep these momentous promises.

She not only, therefore, must play her part in keeping this conflagration from spreading to the people of the United States; she must also keep this conflagration from spreading on this side of the sea. These are matters in which our very life and our whole pride are embedded and rooted, and we can never draw back from them. And I, my fellow citizens, because of the extraordinary office with which you have intrusted me, must, whether I will or not, be your responsible spokesman in these great matters. It is my duty, therefore, when impressions are deeply