Speech Transcript:

 GENTLEMEN OF THE CONGRESS:

The year that has elapsed since I last stood before you to fulfil my
constitutional duty to give to the Congress from time to time
information on the state of the Union has been so crowded with great
events, great processes, and great results that I cannot hope to give
you an adequate picture of its transactions or of the far-reaching
changes which have been wrought of our nation and of the world. You
have yourselves witnessed these things, as I have. It is too soon to
assess them; and we who stand in the midst of them and are part of
them are less qualified than men of another generation will be to say
what they mean, or even what they have been. But some great
outstanding facts are unmistakable and constitute, in a sense, part
of the public business with which it is our duty to deal. To state
them is to set the stage for the legislative and executive action
which must grow out of them and which we have yet to shape and
determine.

A year ago we had sent 145,918 men overseas. Since then we have sent
1,950,513, an average of 162,542 each month, the number in fact
rising, in May last, to 245,951, in June to 278,760, in July to
307,182, and continuing to reach similar figures in August and
September, in August 289,570 and in September 257,438. No such
movement of troops ever took place before, across three thousand
miles of sea, followed by adequate equipment and supplies, and
carried safely through extraordinary dangers of attack,-dangers which
were alike strange and infinitely difficult to guard against. In all
this movement only seven hundred and fifty-eight men were lost by
enemy attack, six hundred and thirty of whom were upon a single
English transport which was sunk near the Orkney Islands.

I need not tell you what lay back of this great movement of men and
material. It is not invidious to say that back of it lay a supporting
organization of the industries of the country and of all its
productive activities more complete, more thorough in method and
effective in result, more spirited and unanimous in purpose and
effort than any other great belligerent had been able to effect. We
profited greatly by the experience of the nations which had already
been engaged for nearly three years in the exigent and exacting
business, their every resource and every executive proficiency taxed
to the utmost. We were their pupils. But we learned quickly and acted
with a promptness and a readiness of cooperation that justify our
great pride that we were able to serve the world with unparalleled
energy and quick accomplishment.

But it is not the physical scale and executive efficiency of
preparation, supply, equipment and despatch that I would dwell upon,
but the mettle and quality of the officers and men we sent over and
of the sailors who kept the seas, and the spirit of the nation that
stood behind them. No soldiers or sailors ever proved themselves more
quickly ready for the test of battle or acquitted themselves with more
splendid courage and achievement when put to the test. Those of us who
played some part in directing the great processes by which the war was
pushed irresistibly forward to the final triumph may now forget all
that and delight our thoughts with the story of what our men did.
Their officers understood the grim and exacting task they had
undertaken and performed it with an audacity, efficiency, and
unhesitating courage that touch the story of convoy and battle with
imperishable distinction at every turn, whether the enterprise were
great or small, from their great chiefs, Pershing and Sims, down to
the youngest lieutenant; and their men were worthy of them,-such men
as hardly need to be commanded, and go to their terrible adventure
blithely and with the quick intelligence of those who know just what
it is they would accomplish. I am proud to be the fellow-countryman
of men of such stuff and valor. Those of us who stayed at home did
our duty; the war could not have been won or the gallant men who
fought it given their opportunity to win it otherwise; but for many a
long day we shall think ourselves "accurs'd we were not there, and
hold our manhoods cheap while any speaks that fought" with these at
St. Mihiel or Thierry. The memory of those days of triumphant battle
will go with these fortunate men to their graves; and each will have
his favorite memory. "Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot, but
hell remember with advantages what feats he did that day!"

What we all thank God for with deepest gratitude is that our men went
in force into the line of battle just at the critical moment when the
whole fate of the world seemed to hang in the balance and threw their
fresh strength into the ranks of freedom in time to turn the whole
tide and sweep of the fateful struggle,-turn it once for all, so that
thenceforth it was back, back, back for their enemies, always back,
never again forward! After that it was only a scant four months
before the commanders of the Central Empires knew themselves beaten;
and now their very empires are in liquidation!

And throughout it all how fine the spirit of the nation was: what
unity of purpose, what untiring zeal! What elevation of purpose ran
through all its splendid display of strength, its untiring
accomplishment! I have said that those of us who stayed at home to do
the work of organization and supply will always wish that we had been
with the men whom we sustained by our labor; but we can never be
ashamed. It has been an inspiring thing to be here in the midst of
fine men who had turned aside from every private interest of their
own and devoted the whole of their trained capacity to the tasks that
supplied the sinews of the whole great undertaking! The patriotism,
the unselfishness, the thoroughgoing devotion and distinguished
capacity that marked their toilsome labors, day after day, month
after month, have made them fit mates and comrades of the men in the
trenches and on the sea. And not the men here in Washington only.
They have but directed the vast achievement. Throughout innumerable
factories, upon innumerable farms, in the depths of coal mines and
iron mines and copper mines, wherever the stuffs of industry were to
be obtained and prepared, in the shipyards, on the railways, at the
docks, on the sea, in every labor that was needed to sustain the
battle lines, men have vied with each other to do their part and do
it well. They can look any man-at-arms in the face, and say, We also
strove to win and gave the best that was in us to make our fleets and
armies sure of their triumph!

And what shall we say of the women,-of their instant intelligence,
quickening every task that they touched; their capacity for
organization and cooperation, which gave their action discipline and
enhanced the effectiveness of everything they attempted; their
aptitude at tasks to which they had never before set their hands;
their utter self-sacrifice alike in what they did and in what they
gave? Their contribution to the great result is beyond appraisal.
They have added a new lustre to the annals of American womanhood.

The least tribute we can pay them is to make them the equals of men
in political rights as they have proved themselves their equals in
every field of practical work they have entered, whether for
themselves or for their country. These great days of completed
achievement would be sadly marred were we to omit that act of
justice. Besides the immense practical services they have rendered
the women of the country have been the moving spirits in the
systematic economies by which our people have voluntarily assisted to
supply the suffering peoples of the world and the armies upon every
front with food and everything else that we had that might serve the
common cause. The details of such a story can never be fully written,
but we carry them at our hearts and thank God that we can say that we
are the kinsmen of such.

And now we are sure of the great triumph for which every sacrifice
was made. It has come, come in its completeness, and with the pride
and inspiration of these days of achievement quick within us, we turn
to the tasks of peace again,-a peace secure against the violence of
irresponsible monarchs and ambitious military coteries and made ready
for a new order, for new foundations of justice and fair dealing.

We are about to give order and organization to this peace not only
for ourselves but for the other peoples of the world as well, so far
as they will suffer us to serve them. It is international justice
that we seek, not domestic safety merely. Our thoughts have dwelt of
late upon Europe, upon Asia, upon the near and the far East, very
little upon the acts of peace and accommodation that wait to be
performed at our own doors. While we are adjusting our relations with
the rest of the world is it not of capital importance that we should
clear away all grounds of misunderstanding with our immediate
neighbors and give proof of the friendship we really feel? I hope
that the members of the Senate will permit me to speak once more of
the unratified treaty of friendship and adjustment with the Republic
of Colombia. I very earnestly urge upon them an early and favorable
action upon that vital matter. I believe that they will feel, with
me, that the stage of affairs is now set for such action as will be
not only just but generous and in the spirit of the new age upon
which we have so happily entered.

So far as our domestic affairs are concerned the problem of our
return to peace is a problem of economic and industrial readjustment.
That problem is less serious for us than it may turn out too he for
the nations which have suffered the disarrangements and the losses of
war longer than we. Our people, moreover, do not wait to be coached
and led. They know their own business, are quick and resourceful at
every readjustment, definite in purpose, and self-reliant in action.
Any leading strings we might seek to put them in would speedily
become hopelessly tangled because they would pay no attention to them
and go their own way. All that we can do as their legislative and
executive servants is to mediate the process of change here, there,
and elsewhere as we may. I have heard much counsel as to the plans
that should be formed and personally conducted to a happy
consummation, but from no quarter have I seen any general scheme of
"reconstruction" emerge which I thought it likely we could force our
spirited business men and self-reliant laborers to accept with due
pliancy and obedience.

While the war lasted we set up many agencies by which to direct the
industries of the country in the services it was necessary for them
to render, by which to make sure of an abundant supply of the
materials needed, by which to check undertakings that could for the
time be dispensed with and stimulate those that were most serviceable
in war, by which to gain for the purchasing departments of the
Government a certain control over the prices of essential articles
and materials, by which to restrain trade with alien enemies, make
the most of the available shipping, and systematize financial
transactions, both public and private, so that there would be no
unnecessary conflict or confusion,-by which, in short, to put every
material energy of the country in harness to draw the common load and
make of us one team in the accomplishment of a great task. But the
moment we knew the armistice to have been signed we took the harness
off. Raw materials upon which the Government had kept its hand for
fear there should not be enough for the industries that supplied the
armies have been released and put into the general market again.
Great industrial plants whose whole output and machinery had been
taken over for the uses of the Government have been set free to
return to the uses to which they were put before the war. It has not
been possible to remove so readily or so quickly the control of
foodstuffs and of shipping, because the world has still to be fed
from our granaries and the ships are still needed to send supplies to
our men overseas and to bring the men back as fast as the disturbed
conditions on the other side of the water permit; but even there
restraints are being relaxed as much as possible and more and more as
the weeks go by.

Never before have there been agencies in existence in this country
which knew so much of the field of supply, of labor, and of industry
as the War Industries Board, the War Trade Board, the Labor
Department, the Food Administration, and the Fuel Administration have
known since their labors became thoroughly systematized; and they have
not been isolated agencies; they have been directed by men who
represented the permanent Departments of the Government and so have
been the centres of unified and cooperative action. It has been the
policy of the Executive, therefore, since the armistice was assured
(which is in effect a complete submission of the enemy) to put the
knowledge of these bodies at the disposal of the business men of the
country and to offer their intelligent mediation at every point and
in every matter where it was desired. It is surprising how fast the
process of return to a peace footing has moved in the three weeks
since the fighting stopped. It promises to outrun any inquiry that
may be instituted and any aid that may be offered. It will not be
easy to direct it any better than it will direct itself. The American
business man is of quick initiative.

The ordinary and normal processes of private initiative will not,
however, provide immediate employment for all of the men of our
returning armies. Those who are of trained capacity, those who are
skilled workmen, those who have acquired familiarity with established
businesses, those who are ready and willing to go to the farms, all
those whose aptitudes are known or will be sought out by employers
will find no difficulty, it is safe to say, in finding place and
employment. But there will be others who will be at a loss where to
gain a livelihood unless pains are taken to guide them and put them
in the way of work. There will be a large floating residuum of labor
which should not be left wholly to shift for itself. It seems to me
important, therefore, that the development of public works of every
sort should be promptly resumed, in order that opportunities should
be created for unskilled labor in particular, and that plans should
be made for such developments of our unused lands and our natural
resources as we have hitherto lacked stimulation to undertake.

I particularly direct your attention to the very practical plans
which the Secretary of the Interior has developed in his annual
report and before your Committees for the reclamation of arid, swamp,
and cutover lands which might, if the States were willing and able to
cooperate, redeem some three hundred million acres of land for
cultivation. There are said to be fifteen or twenty million acres of
land in the West, at present arid, for whose reclamation water is
available, if properly conserved. There are about two hundred and
thirty million acres from which the forests have been cut but which
have never yet been cleared for the plow and which lie waste and
desolate. These lie scattered all over the Union. And there are
nearly eighty million acres of land that lie under swamps or subject
to periodical overflow or too wet for anything but grazing, which it
is perfectly feasible to drain and protect and redeem. The Congress
can at once direct thousands of the returning soldiers to the
reclamation of the arid lands which it has already undertaken, if it
will but enlarge the plans and appropriations which it has entrusted
to the Department of the Interior. It is possible in dealing with our
unused land to effect a great rural and agricultural development which
will afford the best sort of opportunity to men who want to help
themselves and the Secretary of the Interior has thought the possible
methods out in a way which is worthy of your most friendly attention.

I have spoken of the control which must yet for a while, perhaps for
a long long while, be exercised over shipping because of the priority
of service to which our forces overseas are entitled and which should
also be accorded the shipments which are to save recently liberated
peoples from starvation and many devastated regions from permanent
ruin. May I not say a special word about the needs of Belgium and
northern France? No sums of money paid by way of indemnity will serve
of themselves to save them from hopeless disadvantage for years to
come. Something more must be done than merely find the money. If they
had money and raw materials in abundance to-morrow they could not
resume their place in the industry of the world to-morrow,-the very
important place they held before the flame of war swept across them.
Many of their factories are razed to the ground. Much of their
machinery is destroyed or has been taken away. Their people are
scattered and many of their best workmen are dead. Their markets will
be taken by others, if they are not in some special way assisted to
rebuild their factories and replace their lost instruments of
manufacture. They should not be left to the vicissitudes of the sharp
competition for materials and for industrial facilities which is now
to set in. I hope, therefore, that the Congress will not be
unwilling, if it should become necessary, to grant to some such
agency as the War Trade Board the right to establish priorities of
export and supply for the benefit of these people whom we have been
so happy to assist in saving from the German terror and whom we must
not now thoughtlessly leave to shift for themselves in a pitiless
competitive market.

For the steadying, and facilitation of our own domestic business
readjustments nothing is more important than the immediate
determination of the taxes that are to be levied for 1918, 1919, and
1920. As much of the burden of taxation must be lifted from business
as sound methods of financing the Government will permit, and those
who conduct the great essential industries of the country must be
told as exactly as possible what obligations to the Government they
will be expected to meet in the years immediately ahead of them. It
will be of serious consequence to the country to delay removing all
uncertainties in this matter a single day longer than the right
processes of debate justify. It is idle to talk of successful and
confident business reconstruction before those uncertainties are
resolved.

If the war had continued it would have been necessary to raise at
least eight billion dollars by taxation payable in the year 1919; but
the war has ended and I agree with the Secretary of the Treasury that
it will be safe to reduce the amount to six billions. An immediate
rapid decline in the expenses of the Government is not to be looked
for. Contracts made for war supplies will, indeed, be rapidly
cancelled and liquidated, but their immediate liquidation will make
heavy drains on the Treasury for the months just ahead of us. The
maintenance of our forces on the other side of the sea is still
necessary. A considerable proportion of those forces must remain in
Europe during the period of occupation, and those which are brought
home will be transported and demobilized at heavy expense for months
to come. The interest on our war debt must of course be paid and
provision made for the retirement of the obligations of the
Government which represent it. But these demands will of course fall
much below what a continuation of military operations would have
entailed and six billions should suffice to supply a sound foundation
for the financial operations of the year.

I entirely concur with the Secretary of the Treasury in recommending
that the two billions needed in addition to the four billions
provided by existing law be obtained from the profits which have
accrued and shall accrue from war contracts and distinctively war
business, but that these taxes be confined to the war profits
accruing in 1918, or in 1919 from business originating in war
contracts. I urge your acceptance of his recommendation that
provision be made now, not subsequently, that the taxes to be paid in
1920 should be reduced from six to four billions. Any arrangements
less definite than these would add elements of doubt and confusion to
the critical period of industrial readjustment through which the
country must now immediately pass, and which no true friend of the
nation's essential business interests can afford to be responsible
for creating or prolonging. Clearly determined conditions, clearly
and simply charted, are indispensable to the economic revival and
rapid industrial development which may confidently be expected if we
act now and sweep all interrogation points away.

I take it for granted that the Congress will carry out the naval
programme which was undertaken before we entered the war. The
Secretary of the Navy has submitted to your Committees for
authorization that part of the programme which covers the building
plans of the next three years. These plans have been prepared along
the lines and in accordance with the policy which the Congress
established, not under the exceptional conditions of the war, but
with the intention of adhering to a definite method of development
for the navy. I earnestly recommend the uninterrupted pursuit of that
policy. It would clearly be unwise for us to attempt to adjust our
programmes to a future world policy as yet undetermined.

The question which causes me the greatest concern is the question of
the policy to be adopted towards the railroads. I frankly turn to you
for counsel upon it. I have no confident judgment of my own. I do not
see how any thoughtful man can have who knows anything of the
complexity of the problem. It is a problem which must be studied,
studied immediately, and studied without bias or prejudice. Nothing
can be gained by becoming partisans of any particular plan of
settlement.

It was necessary that the administration of the railways should be
taken over by the Government so long as the war lasted. It would have
been impossible otherwise to establish and carry through under a
single direction the necessary priorities of shipment. It would have
been impossible otherwise to combine maximum production at the
factories and mines and farms with the maximum possible car supply to
take the products to the ports and markets; impossible to route troop
shipments and freight shipments without regard to the advantage
or-disadvantage of the roads employed; impossible to subordinate,
when necessary, all questions of convenience to the public necessity;
impossible to give the necessary financial support to the roads from
the public treasury. But all these necessities have now been served,
and the question is, What is best for the railroads and for the
public in the future?

Exceptional circumstances and exceptional methods of administration
were not needed to convince us that the railroads were not equal to
the immense tasks of transportation imposed upon them by the rapid
and continuous development of the industries of the country. We knew
that already. And we knew that they were unequal to it partly because
their full cooperation was rendered impossible by law and their
competition made obligatory, so that it has been impossible to assign
to them severally the traffic which could best be carried by their
respective lines in the interest of expedition and national economy.

We may hope, I believe, for the formal conclusion of the war by
treaty by the time Spring has come. The twenty-one months to which
the present control of the railways is limited after formal
proclamation of peace shall have been made will run at the farthest,
I take it for granted, only to the January of 1921. The full
equipment of the railways which the federal administration had
planned could not be completed within any such period. The present
law does not permit the use of the revenues of the several roads for
the execution of such plans except by formal contract with their
directors, some of whom will consent while some will not, and
therefore does not afford sufficient authority to undertake
improvements upon the scale upon which it would be necessary to
undertake them. Every approach to this difficult subject-matter of
decision brings us face to face, therefore, with this unanswered
question: What is it right that we should do with the railroads, in
the interest of the public and in fairness to their owners?

Let me say at once that I have no answer ready. The only thing that
is perfectly clear to me is that it is not fair either to the public
or to the owners of the railroads to leave the question unanswered
and that it will presently become my duty to relinquish control of
the roads, even before the expiration of the statutory period, unless
there should appear some clear prospect in the meantime of a
legislative solution. Their release would at least produce one
element of a solution, namely certainty and a quick stimulation of
private initiative.

I believe that it will be serviceable for me to set forth as
explicitly as possible the alternative courses that lie open to our
choice. We can simply release the roads and go back to the old
conditions of private management, unrestricted competition, and
multiform regulation by both state and federal authorities; or we can
go to the opposite extreme and establish complete government control,
accompanied, if necessary, by actual government ownership; or we can
adopt an intermediate course of modified private control, under a
more unified and affirmative public regulation and under such
alterations of the law as will permit wasteful competition to be
avoided and a considerable degree of unification of administration to
be effected, as, for example, by regional corporations under which the
railways of definable areas would be in effect combined in single
systems.

The one conclusion that I am ready to state with confidence is that
it would be a disservice alike to the country and to the owners of
the railroads to return to the old conditions unmodified. Those are
conditions of restraint without development. There is nothing
affirmative or helpful about them. What the country chiefly needs is
that all its means of transportation should be developed, its
railways, its waterways, its highways, and its countryside roads.
Some new element of policy, therefore, is absolutely
necessary--necessary for the service of the public, necessary for the
release of credit to those who are administering the railways,
necessary for the protection of their security holders. The old
policy may be changed much or little, but surely it cannot wisely be
left as it was. I hope that the Con will have a complete and
impartial study of the whole problem instituted at once and
prosecuted as rapidly as possible. I stand ready and anxious to
release the roads from the present control and I must do so at a very
early date if by waiting until the statutory limit of time is reached
I shall be merely prolonging the period of doubt and uncertainty
which is hurtful to every interest concerned.

I welcome this occasion to announce to the Congress my purpose to
join in Paris the representatives of the governments with which we
have been associated in the war against the Central Empires for the
purpose of discussing with them the main features of the treaty of
peace. I realize the great inconveniences that will attend my leaving
the country, particularly at this time, but the conclusion that it was
my paramount duty to go has been forced upon me by considerations
which I hope will seem as conclusive to you as they have seemed to
me.

The Allied governments have accepted the bases of peace which I
outlined to the Congress on the eighth of January last, as the
Central Empires also have, and very reasonably desire my personal
counsel in their interpretation and application, and it is highly
desirable that I should give it in order that the sincere desire of
our Government to contribute without selfish purpose of any kind to
settlements that will be of common benefit to all the nations
concerned may be made fully manifest. The peace settlements which are
now to be agreed upon are of transcendent importance both to us and to
the rest of the world, and I know of no business or interest which
should take precedence of them. The gallant men of our armed forces
on land and sea have consciously fought for the ideals which they
knew to be the ideals of their country; I have sought to express
those ideals; they have accepted my statements of them as the
substance of their own thought and purpose, as the associated
governments have accepted them; I owe it to them to see to it, so far
as in me lies, that no false or mistaken interpretation is put upon
them, and no possible effort omitted to realize them. It is now my
duty to play my full part in making good what they offered their
life's blood to obtain. I can think of no call to service which could
transcend this.

I shall be in close touch with you and with affairs on this side the
water, and you will know all that I do. At my request, the French and
English governments have absolutely removed the censorship of cable
news which until within a fortnight they had maintained and there is
now no censorship whatever exercised at this end except upon
attempted trade communications with enemy countries. It has been
necessary to keep an open wire constantly available between Paris and
the Department of State and another between France and the Department
of War. In order that this might be done with the least possible
interference with the other uses of the cables, I have temporarily
taken over the control of both cables in order that they may be used
as a single system. I did so at the advice of the most experienced
cable officials, and I hope that the results will justify my hope
that the news of the next few months may pass with the utmost freedom
and with the least possible delay from each side of the sea to the
other.

May I not hope, Gentlemen of the Congress, that in the delicate tasks
I shall have to perform on the other side of the sea, in my efforts
truly and faithfully to interpret the principles and purposes of the
country we love, I may have the encouragement and the added strength
of your united support? I realize the magnitude and difficulty of the
duty I am undertaking; I am poignantly aware of its grave
responsibilities. I am the servant of the nation. I can have no
private thought or purpose of my own in performing such an errand. I
go to give the best that is in me to the common settlements which I
must now assist in arriving at in conference with the other working
heads of the associated governments. I shall count upon your friendly
countenance and encouragement. I shall not be inaccessible. The cables
and the wireless will render me available for any counsel or service
you may desire of me, and I shall be happy in the thought that I am
constantly in touch with the weighty matters of domestic policy with
which we shall have to deal. I shall make my absence as brief as
possible and shall hope to return with the happy assurance that it
has been possible to translate into action the great ideals for which
America has striven.