Speech Transcript:

 GENTLEMEN OF THE CONGRESS:

Eight months have elapsed since I last had the honor of addressing
you. They have been months crowded with events of immense and grave
significance for us. I shall not undertake to detail or even to
summarize those events. The practical particulars of the part we have
played in them will be laid before you in the reports of the executive
departments. I shall discuss only our present outlook upon these vast
affairs, our present duties, and the immediate means of accomplishing
the objects we shall hold always in view.

I shall not go back to debate the causes of the war. The intolerable
wrongs done and planned against us by the sinister masters of Germany
have long since become too grossly obvious and odious to every true
American to need to be rehearsed. But I shall ask you to consider
again and with a very grave scrutiny our objectives and the measures
by which we mean to attain them; for the purpose of discussion here
in this place is action, and our action must move straight toward
definite ends. Our object is, of course, to win the war; and we shall
not slacken or suffer ourselves to be diverted until it is won. But it
is worth while asking and answering the question, When shall we
consider the war won?

From one point of view it is not necessary to broach this fundamental
matter. I do not doubt that the American people know what the war is
about and what sort of an outcome they will regard as a realization
of their purpose in it.

As a nation we are united in spirit and intention. I pay little heed
to those who tell me otherwise. I hear the voices of dissent-who does
not? I bear the criticism and the clamor of the noisily thoughtless
and troublesome. I also see men here and there fling themselves in
impotent disloyalty against the calm, indomitable power of the
Nation. I hear men debate peace who understand neither its nature nor
the way in which we may attain it with uplifted eyes and unbroken
spirits. But I know that none of these speaks for the Nation. They do
not touch the heart of anything. They may safely be left to strut
their uneasy hour and be forgotten.

But from another point of view I believe that it is necessary to say
plainly what we here at the seat of action consider the war to be for
and what part we mean to play in the settlement of its searching
issues. We are the spokesmen of the American people, and they have a
right to know whether their purpose is ours. They desire peace by the
overcoming of evil, by the defeat once for all of the sinister forces
that interrupt peace and render it impossible, and they wish to know
how closely our thought runs with theirs and what action we propose.
They are impatient with those who desire peace by any sort of
compromise deeply and indignantly impatient--but they will be equally
impatient with us if we do not make it plain to them what our
objectives are and what we are planning for in seeking to make
conquest of peace by arms.

I believe that I speak for them when I say two things: First, that
this intolerable thing of which the masters of Germany have shown us
the ugly face, this menace of combined intrigue and force which we
now see so clearly as the German power, a thing without conscience or
honor of capacity for covenanted peace, must be crushed and, if it be
not utterly brought to an end, at least shut out from the friendly
intercourse of the nations; and second, that when this thing and its
power are indeed defeated and the time comes that we can discuss
peace when the German people have spokesmen whose word we can believe
and when those spokesmen are ready in the name of their people to
accept the common judgment of the nations as to what shall henceforth
be the bases of law and of covenant for the life of the world-we shall
be willing and glad to pay the full price for peace, and pay it
ungrudgingly.

We know what that price will be. It will be full, impartial
justice-justice done at every point and to every nation that the
final settlement must affect, our enemies as well as our friends.

You catch, with me, the voices of humanity that are in the air. They
grow daily more audible, more articulate, more persuasive, and they
come from the hearts of men everywhere. They insist that the war
shall not end in vindictive action of any kind; that no nation or
people shall be robbed or punished because the irresponsible rulers
of a single country have themselves done deep and abominable wrong.
It is this thought that has been expressed in the formula, "No
annexations, no contributions, no punitive indemnities."

Just because this crude formula expresses the instinctive judgment as
to right of plain men everywhere, it has been made diligent use of by
the masters of German intrigue to lead the people of Russia astray
and the people of every other country their agents could reach-in
order that a premature peace might be brought about before autocracy
has been taught its final and convincing lesson and the people of the
world put in control of their own destinies.

But the fact that a wrong use has been made of a just idea is no
reason why a right use should not be made of it. It ought to be
brought under the patronage of its real friends. Let it be said again
that autocracy must first be shown the utter futility of its claim to
power or leadership in the modern world. It is impossible to apply
any standard of justice so long as such forces are unchecked and
undefeated as the present masters of Germany command. Not until that
has been done can right be set up as arbiter and peacemaker among the
nations. But when that has been done-as, God willing, it assuredly
will be-we shall at last be free to do an unprecedented thing, and
this is the time to avow our purpose to do it. We shall be free to
base peace on generosity and justice, to the exclusions of all
selfish claims to advantage even on the part of the victors.

Let there be no misunderstanding. Our present and immediate task is
to win the war and nothing shall turn us aside from it until it is
accomplished. Every power and resource we possess, whether of men, of
money, or of materials, is being devoted and will continue to be
devoted to that purpose until it is achieved. Those who desire to
bring peace about before that purpose is achieved I counsel to carry
their advice elsewhere. We will not entertain it. We shall regard the
war as won only when the German people say to us, through properly
accredited representatives, that they are ready to agree to a
settlement based upon justice and reparation of the wrongs their
rulers have done. They have done a wrong to Belgium which must be
repaired. They have established a power over other lands and peoples
than their own--over the great empire of Austria-Hungary, over
hitherto free Balkan states, over Turkey and within Asia-which must
be relinquished.

Germany's success by skill, by industry, by knowledge, by enterprise
we did not grudge or oppose, but admired, rather. She had built up
for herself a real empire of trade and influence, secured by the
peace of the world. We were content to abide by the rivalries of
manufacture, science and commerce that were involved for us in her
success, and stand or fall as we had or did not have the brains and
the initiative to surpass her. But at the moment when she had
conspicuously won her triumphs of peace she threw them away, to
establish in their stead what the world will no longer permit to be
established, military and political domination by arms, by which to
oust where she could not excel the rivals she most feared and hated.
The peace we make must remedy that wrong. It must deliver the once
fair lands and happy peoples of Belgium and Northern France from the
Prussian conquest and the Prussian menace, but it must deliver also
the peoples of Austria-Hungary, the peoples of the Balkans and the
peoples of Turkey, alike in Europe and Asia, from the impudent and
alien dominion of the Prussian military and commercial autocracy.

We owe it, however, to ourselves, to say that we do not wish in any
way to impair or to rearrange the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It is no
affair of ours what they do with their own life, either industrially
or politically. We do not purpose or desire to dictate to them in any
way. We only desire to see that their affairs are left in their own
hands, in all matters, great or small. We shall hope to secure for
the peoples of the Balkan peninsula and for the people of the Turkish
Empire the right and opportunity to make their own lives safe, their
own fortunes secure against oppression or injustice and from the
dictation of foreign courts or parties.

And our attitude and purpose with regard to Germany herself are of a
like kind. We intend no wrong against the German Empire, no
interference with her internal affairs. We should deem either the one
or the other absolutely unjustifiable, absolutely contrary to the
principles we have professed to live by and to hold most sacred
throughout our life as a nation.

The people of Germany are being told by the men whom they now permit
to deceive them and to act as their masters that they are fighting
for the very life and existence of their empire, a war of desperate
self-defense against deliberate aggression. Nothing could be more
grossly or wantonly false, and we must seek by the utmost openness
and candor as to our real aims to convince them of its falseness. We
are in fact fighting for their emancipation from the fear, along with
our own-from the fear as well as from the fact of unjust attack by
neighbors or rivals or schemers after world empire. No one is
threatening the existence or the independence of the peaceful
enterprise of the German Empire.

The worst that can happen to the detriment the German people is this,
that if they should still, after the war is over, continue to be
obliged to live under ambitious and intriguing masters interested to
disturb the peace of the world, men or classes of men whom the other
peoples of the world could not trust, it might be impossible to admit
them to the partnership of nations which must henceforth guarantee the
world's peace. That partnership must be a partnership of peoples, not
a mere partnership of governments. It might be impossible, also, in
such untoward circumstances, to admit Germany to the free economic
intercourse which must inevitably spring out of the other
partnerships of a real peace. But there would be no aggression in
that; and such a situation, inevitable, because of distrust, would in
the very nature of things sooner or later cure itself, by processes
which would assuredly set in.

The wrongs, the very deep wrongs, committed in this war will have to
be righted. That, of course. But they cannot and must not be righted
by the commission of similar wrongs against Germany and her allies.
The world will not permit the commission of similar wrongs as a means
of reparation and settlement. Statesmen must by this time have learned
that the opinion of the world is everywhere wide awake and fully
comprehends the issues involved. No representative of any
self-governed nation will dare disregard it by attempting any such
covenants of selfishness and compromise as were entered into at the
Congress of Vienna. The thought of the plain people here and
everywhere throughout the world, the people who enjoy no privilege
and have very simple and unsophisticated standards of right and
wrong, is the air all governments must henceforth breathe if they
would live.

It is in the full disclosing light of that thought that all policies
must be received and executed in this midday hour of the world's
life. Ger. man rulers have been able to upset the peace of the world
only because the German people were not suffered under their tutelage
to share the comradeship of the other peoples of the world either in
thought or in purpose. They were allowed to have no opinion of their
own which might be set up as a rule of conduct for those who
exercised authority over them. But the Congress that concludes this
war will feel the full strength of the tides that run now in the
hearts and consciences of free men everywhere. Its conclusions will
run with those tides.

All those things have been true from the very beginning of this
stupendous war; and I cannot help thinking that if they had been made
plain at the very outset the sympathy and enthusiasm of the Russian
people might have been once for all enlisted on the side of the
Allies, suspicion and distrust swept away, and a real and lasting
union of purpose effected. Had they believed these things at the very
moment of their revolution, and had they been confirmed in that belief
since, the sad reverses which have recently marked the progress of
their affairs towards an ordered and stable government of free men
might have been avoided. The Russian people have been poisoned by the
very same falsehoods that have kept the German people in the dark, and
the poison has been administered by the very same hand. The only
possible antidote is the truth. It cannot be uttered too plainly or
too often.

From every point of view, therefore, it has seemed to be my duty to
speak these declarations of purpose, to add these specific
interpretations to what I took the liberty of saying to the Senate in
January. Our entrance into the war has not altered out attitude
towards the settlement that must come when it is over.

When I said in January that the nations of the world were entitled
not only to free pathways upon the sea, but also to assured and
unmolested access to those-pathways, I was thinking, and I am
thinking now, not of the smaller and weaker nations alone which need
our countenance and support, but also of the great and powerful
nations and of our present enemies as well as our present associates
in the war. I was thinking, and am thinking now, of Austria herself,
among the rest, as well as of Serbia and of Poland.

Justice and equality of rights can be had only at a great price. We
are seeking permanent, not temporary, foundations for the peace of
the world, and must seek them candidly and fearlessly. As always, the
right will prove to be the expedient.

What shall we do, then, to push this great war of freedom and justice
to its righteous conclusion? We must clear away with a thorough hand
all impediments to success, and we must make every adjustment of law
that will facilitate the full and free use of our whole capacity and
force as a fighting unit.

One very embarrassing obstacle that stands hi our way is that we are
at war with Germany but not with her allies. I, therefore, very
earnestly recommend that the Congress immediately declare the United
States in a state of war with Austria-Hungary. Does it seem strange
to you that this should be the conclusion of the argument I have just
addressed to you? It is not. It is in fact the inevitable logic of
what I have said. Austria-Hungary is for the time being not her own
mistress but simply the vassal of the German Government.

We must face the facts as they are and act upon them without
sentiment in this stern business. The Government of Austria and
Hungary is not acting upon its own initiative or in response to the
wishes and feelings of its own peoples, but as the instrument of
another nation. We must meet its force with our own and regard the
Central Powers as but one. The war can be successfully conducted in
no other way.

The same logic would lead also to a declaration of war against Turkey
and Bulgaria. They also are the tools of Germany, but they are mere
tools and do not yet stand in the direct path of our necessary
action. We shall go wherever the necessities of this war carry us,
but it seems to me that we should go only where immediate and
practical considerations lead us, and not heed any others.

The financial and military measures which must be adopted will
suggest themselves as the war and its undertakings develop, but I
will take the liberty of proposing to you certain other acts of
legislation which seem to me to be needed for the support of the war
and for the release of our whole force and energy.

It will be necessary to extend in certain particulars the legislation
of the last session with regard to alien enemies, and also necessary,
I believe, to create a very definite and particular control over the
entrance and departure of all persons into and from the United
States.

Legislation should be enacted defining as a criminal offense every
wilful violation of the presidential proclamation relating to alien
enemies promulgated under section 4o67 of the revised statutes and
providing appropriate punishments; and women, as well as men, should
be included under the terms of the acts placing restraints upon alien
enemies.

It is likely that as time goes on many alien enemies will be willing
to be fed and housed at the expense of the Government in the
detention camps, and it would be the purpose of the legislation I
have suggested to confine offenders among them in the penitentiaries
and other similar institutions where they could be made to work as
other criminals do.

Recent experience has convinced me that the Congress must go further
in authorizing the Government to set limits to prices. The law of
supply and demand, I am sorry to say, has been replaced by the law of
unrestrained selfishness. While we have eliminated profiteering in
several branches of industry, it still runs impudently rampant in
others. The farmers for example, complain with a great deal of
justice that, while the regulation of food prices restricts their
incomes, no restraints are placed upon the prices of most of the
things they must themselves purchase; and similar inequities obtain
on all sides.

It is imperatively necessary that the consideration of the full use
of the water power of the country, and also of the consideration of
the systematic and yet economical development of such of the natural
resources of the country as are still under the control of the
Federal Government should be immediately resumed and affirmatively
and constructively dealt with at the earliest possible moment. The
pressing need of such legislation is daily becoming more obvious.

The legislation proposed at the last session with regard to regulated
combinations among our exporters in order to provide for our foreign
trade a more effective organization and method of co-operation ought
by all means to be completed at this session.

And I beg that the members of the House of Representatives will
permit me to express the opinion that it will be impossible to deal
in any but a very wasteful and extravagant fashion with the enormous
appropriations of the public moneys which must continue to be made if
the war is to be properly sustained, unless the House will consent to
return to its former practice of initiating and preparing all
appropriation bills through a single committee, in order that
responsibility may be centered, expenditures standardized and made
uniform, and waste and duplication as much as possible avoided.

Additional legislation may also become necessary before the present
Congress again adjourns in order to effect the most efficient
co-ordination and operation of the railways and other transportation
systems of the country; but to that I shall, if circumstances should
demand, call the attention of Congress upon another occasion.

If I have overlooked anything that ought to be done for the more
effective conduct of the war, your own counsels will supply the
omission. What I am perfectly clear about is that in the present
session of the Congress our whole attention and energy should be
concentrated on the vigorous, rapid and successful prosecution of the
great task of winning the war.

We can do this with all the greater zeal and enthusiasm because we
know that for us this is a war of high principle, debased by no
selfish ambition of conquest or spoliation; because we know, and all
the world knows, that we have been forced into it to save the very
institutions we five under from corruption and destruction. The
purpose of the Central Powers strikes straight at the very heart of
everything we believe in; their methods of warfare outrage every
principle of humanity and of knightly honor; their intrigue has
corrupted the very thought and spirit of many of our people; their
sinister and secret diplomacy has sought to take our very territory
away from us and disrupt the union of the states. Our safety would be
at an end, our honor forever sullied and brought into contempt, were
we to permit their triumph. They are striking at the very existence
of democracy and liberty.

It is because it is for us a war of high, disinterested purpose, in
which all the free peoples of the world are banded together for the
vindication of right, a war for the preservation of our nation, of
all that it has held dear, of principle and of purpose, that we feel
ourselves doubly constrained to propose for its outcome only that
which is righteous and of irreproachable intention, for our foes as
well as for our friends. The cause being just and holy, the
settlement must be of like motive and equality. For this we can
fight, but for nothing less noble or less worthy of our traditions.
For this cause we entered the war and for this cause will we battle
until the last gun is fired.

I have spoken plainly because this seems to me the time when it is
most necessary to speak plainly, in order that all the world may know
that, even in the heat and ardor of the struggle and when our whole
thought is of carrying the war through to its end, we have not
forgotten any ideal or principle for which the name of America has
been held in honor among the nations and for which it has been our
glory to contend in the great generations that went before us. A
supreme moment of history has come. The eyes of the people have been
opened and they see. The hand of God is laid upon the nations. He
will show them favor, I devoutly believe, only if they rise to the
clear heights of His own justice and mercy.