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		       War Message to Congress
			    Woodrow Wilson

Delivered before both Houses of Congress
Washington, D.C.  April 2, 1917

I have called Congress in Extraordinary Session because there are
serious, very serious, choices of policy to be made, and made
immediately, which it was neither right constitutionally nor
permissible that I should assume the responsibility of making.

On the third 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 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 would be taken that their crews were given at least a fair
chance to save their lives in their open boats.  The precautions
then 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, or 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 a 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 some law
which would be respected and observed upon the seas, where no
nation had the 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 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 non-combatants, 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 cannot 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 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.

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 endeavor 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 prescribed,
even in defense of rights which no modern publicist ever before
questioned their right to defend.  An intimation has been conveyed
that the armed guards which we have placed on our merchant ships
will be treated as beyond the pale of the law and subject to be
dealt with as pirates would be.

Armed neutrality is ineffectual enough at the 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 cannot 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 hss 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 council 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.  I say sustained so far as may be
equitable by taxation because it seems to me that it would be
unwise to base the credits which will now be necessary entirely
on money borrowed.  It is our duty, I most respectfully urge, to
protect our people so far as we may against the very serious
hardships and evils which would be likely to arise out of the
inflation which would be produced by vast loans.

In carrying out the measures by which these things are to be
accomplished, we should keep constantly in mind the wisdom of
interfering as little as possible in our own preparation and in
the equipment of our own military forces with the duty -- for it
will be a very practical duty -- of supplying the nations already
at war with Germany with the materials which they can obtain only
from us or by our assistance.  They are in the field and we should
help them in every way to be effective there.

I shall take the liberty of suggesting, through several
executive departments of the government, for the consideration of
your committees, measures for the accomplishment of the several
objects I have mentioned.  I hope that it will be your pleasure to
deal with them as having been framed after very careful thought by
the branch of the government upon which the responsibility of
conducting the war and safeguarding the nation will most directly
fall.

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 22nd of January last; the same that I had in
mind when I addressed the Congress on the 3rd of February and 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 among 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
toward 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 neighbor 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.
There 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 honor 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 relations 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
Honor.

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 council, our peace within and without, our
industries and our commerce.  Indeed, it is now evident that 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 intrigues which more than once came 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
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 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 the 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 rights and our honor.  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 toward a people, or with a 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 amok.
We are, let me say again, the sincere friends of the German people,
and shall desire nothing so much as an 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 among us and
share our life, and we shall be proud to prove it toward 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.

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.


