Speech Transcript:

 So many problems are calling for solution that a recital of all of
them, in the face of the known limitations of a short session of
Congress, would seem to lack sincerity of purpose. It is four years
since the World War ended, but the inevitable readjustment of the
social and economic order is not more than barely begun. There is no
acceptance of pre-war conditions anywhere in the world. In a very
general way humanity harbors individual wishes to go on with war-time
compensation for production, with pre-war requirements in expenditure.
In short, everyone, speaking broadly, craves readjustment for
everybody except himself, while there can be no just and permanent
readjustment except when all participate.

The civilization which measured its strength of genius and the power
of science and the resources of industries, in addition to testing
the limits of man power and the endurance and heroism of men and
women--that same civilization is brought to its severest test in
restoring a tranquil order and committing humanity to the stable ways
of peace.

If the sober and deliberate appraisal of pre-war civilization makes
it seem a worth-while inheritance, then with patience and good
courage it will be preserved. There never again will be precisely the
old order; indeed, I know of no one who thinks it to be desirable For
out of the old order came the war itself, and the new order,
established and made secure, never will permit its recurrence.

It is no figure of speech to say we have come to the test of Our
civilization. The world has been passing--is today passing through of
a great crisis. The conduct of war itself is not more difficult than
the solution of the problems which necessarily follow. I am not
speaking at this moment of the problem in its wider aspect of world
rehabilitation or of international relationships. The reference is to
our own social, financial, and economic problems at home. These things
are not to be considered solely as problems apart from all
international relationship, but every nation must be able to carry on
for itself, else its international relationship will have scant
importance.

Doubtless our own people have emerged from the World War tumult less
impaired than most belligerent powers; probably we have made larger
progress toward reconstruction. Surely we have been fortunate in
diminishing unemployment, and our industrial and business activities,
which are the lifeblood of our material existence, have been restored
as in no other reconstruction period of like length in the history of
the world. Had we escaped the coal and railway strikes, which had no
excuse for their beginning and less justification for their delayed
settlement, we should have done infinitely better. But labor was
insistent on holding to the war heights, and heedless forces of
reaction sought the pre-war levels, and both were wrong. In the folly
of conflict our progress was hindered, and the heavy cost has not yet
been fully estimated. There can be neither adjustment nor the penalty
of the failure to readjust in which all do not somehow participate.

The railway strike accentuated the difficulty of the American farmer.
The first distress of readjustment came to the farmer, and it will not
be a readjustment fit to abide until he is relieved. The distress
brought to the farmer does not affect him alone. Agricultural ill
fortune is a national ill fortune. That one-fourth of our population
which produces the food of the Republic and adds so largely to our
export commerce must participate in the good fortunes of the Nation,
else there is none worth retaining.

Agriculture is a vital activity in our national life. In it we had
our beginning, and its westward march with the star of the empire has
reflected the growth of the Republic. It has its vicissitudes which no
legislation will prevent, its hardships for which no law can provide
escape. But the Congress can make available to the farmer the
financial facilities which have been built up under Government aid
and supervision for other commercial and industrial enterprises. It
may be done on the same solid fundamentals and make the vitally
important agricultural industry more secure, and it must be done.

This Congress already has taken cognizance of the misfortune which
precipitate deflation brought to American agriculture. Your measures
of relief and the reduction of the Federal reserve discount rate
undoubtedly saved the country from widespread disaster. The very
proof of helpfulness already given is the strongest argument for the
permanent establishment of widened credits, heretofore temporarily
extended through the War Finance Corporation.

The Farm Loan Bureau, which already has proven its usefulness through
the Federal land banks, may well have its powers enlarged to provide
ample farm production credits as well as enlarged land credits. It is
entirely practical to create a division in the Federal land banks to
deal with production credits, with the limitations of time so
adjusted to the farm turnover as the Federal reserve system provides
for the turnover in the manufacturing and mercantile world. Special
provision must be made for live-stock production credits, and the
limit of land loans may be safely enlarged. Various measures are
pending before you, and the best judgment of Congress ought to be
expressed in a prompt enactment at the present session.

But American agriculture needs more than added credit facilities. The
credits will help to solve the pressing problems growing out of
war-inflated land values and the drastic deflation of three years
ago, but permanent and deserved agricultural good fortune depends on
better and cheaper transportation.

Here is an outstanding problem, demanding the most rigorous
consideration of the Congress and the country. It has to do with more
than agriculture. It provides the channel for the flow of the
country's commerce. But the farmer is particularly hard hit. His
market, so affected by the world consumption, does not admit of the
price adjustment to meet carrying charges. In the last half of the
year now closing the railways, broken in carrying capacity because of
motive power and rolling stock out of order, though insistently
declaring to the contrary, embargoed his shipments or denied him cars
when fortunate markets were calling. Too frequently transportation
failed while perishable products were turning from possible profit to
losses counted in tens of millions.

I know of no problem exceeding in importance this one of
transportation. In our complex and interdependent modern life
transportation is essential to our very existence. Let us pass for
the moment the menace in the possible paralysis of such service as we
have and note the failure, for whatever reason, to expand our
transportation to meet the Nation's needs.

The census of 1880 recorded a population of 50,000,000. In two
decades more we may reasonably expect to count thrice that number. In
the three decades ending in 1920 the country's freight by rail
increased from 631,000,000 tons to 2,234,000,000 tons; that is to
say, while our population was increasing, less than 70 per cent, the
freight movement increased over 250 per cent.

We have built 40 per cent of the world's railroad mileage, and yet
find it inadequate to our present requirements. When we contemplate
the inadequacy of to-day it is easy to believe that the next few
decades will witness the paralysis of our transportation-using social
scheme or a complete reorganization on some new basis. Mindful of the
tremendous costs of betterments, extensions, and expansions, and
mindful of the staggering debts of the world to-day, the difficulty
is magnified. Here is a problem demanding wide vision and the
avoidance of mere makeshifts. No matter what the errors of the past,
no matter how we acclaimed construction and then condemned operations
in the past, we have the transportation and the honest investment in
the transportation which sped us on to what we are, and we face
conditions which reflect its inadequacy to-day, its greater
inadequacy to-morrow, and we contemplate transportation costs which
much of the traffic can not and will not continue to pay.

Manifestly, we have need to begin on plans to coordinate all
transportation facilities. We should more effectively connect up our
rail lines with our carriers by sea. We ought to reap some benefit
from the hundreds of millions expended on inland waterways, proving
our capacity to utilize as well as expend. We ought to turn the motor
truck into a railway feeder and distributor instead of a destroying
competitor.

It would be folly to ignore that we live in a motor age. The motor
car reflects our standard of living and gauges the speed of our
present-day life. It long ago ran down Simple Living, and never
halted to inquire about the prostrate figure which fell as its
victim. With full recognition of motor-car transportation we must
turn it to the most practical use. It can not supersede the railway
lines, no matter how generously we afford it highways out of the
Public Treasury. If freight traffic by motor were charged with its
proper and proportionate share of highway construction, we should
find much of it wasteful and more costly than like service by rail.
Yet we have paralleled the railways, a most natural line of
construction, and thereby taken away from the agency of expected
service much of its profitable traffic, which the taxpayers have been
providing the highways, whose cost of maintenance is not yet
realized.

The Federal Government has a right to inquire into the wisdom of this
policy, because the National Treasury is contributing largely to this
highway construction. Costly highways ought to be made to serve as
feeders rather than competitors of the railroads, and the motor truck
should become a coordinate factor in our great distributing system.

This transportation problem can not be waived aside. The demand for
lowered costs on farm products and basic materials can not be
ignored. Rates horizontally increased, to meet increased wage outlays
during the war inflation, are not easily reduced. When some very
moderate wage reductions were effected last summer there was a 5 per
cent horizontal reduction in rates. I sought at that time, in a very
informal way, to have the railway managers go before the Interstate
Commerce Commission and agree to a heavier reduction on farm products
and coal and other basic commodities, and leave unchanged the freight
tariffs which a very large portion of the traffic was able to bear.
Neither the managers nor the commission tile@@ suggestion, so we had
the horizontal reduction saw fit to adopt too slight to be felt by
the higher class cargoes and too little to benefit the heavy tonnage
calling most loudly for relief.

Railways are not to be expected to render the most essential service
in our social organization without a air return on capital invested,
but the Government has gone so far in the regulation of rates and
rules of operation that it has the responsibility of pointing the way
to the reduced freight costs so essential to our national welfare.

Government operation does not afford the cure. It was Government
operation which brought us to the very order of things against which
we now rebel, and we are still liquidating the costs of that supreme
folly.

Surely the genius of the railway builders has not become extinct
among the railway managers. New economies, new efficiencies in
cooperation must be found. The fact that labor takes 50 to 60 per
cent of total railway earnings makes limitations within which to
effect economies very difficult, but the demand is no less insistent
on that account.

Clearly the managers are without that intercarrier, cooperative
relationship so highly essential to the best and most economical
operation. They could not function in harmony when the strike
threatened the paralysis of all railway transportation. The
relationship of the service to public welfare, so intimately affected
by State and Federal regulation, demands the effective correlation and
a concerted drive to meet an insistent and justified public demand.

The merger of lines into systems, a facilitated interchange of
freight cars, the economic use of terminals, and the consolidation of
facilities are suggested ways of economy and efficiency.

I remind you that Congress provided a Joint Commission of
Agricultural Inquiry which made an exhaustive investigation of car
service and transportation, and unanimously recommended in its report
of October 15, 1921, the pooling of freight cars under a central
agency. This report well deserves your serious consideration. I think
well of the central agency, which shall be a creation of the railways
themselves, to provide, under the jurisdiction of the Interstate
Commerce Commission, the means for financing equipment for carriers
which are otherwise unable to provide their proportion of car
equipment adequate to transportation needs. This same agency ought to
point the way to every possible economy in maintained equipment and
the necessary interchanges in railway commerce.

In a previous address to the Congress I called to your attention the
insufficiency of power to enforce the decisions of the Railroad Labor
Board. Carriers have ignored its decisions, on the one hand, railway
workmen have challenged its decisions by a strike, on the other
hand.

The intent of Congress to establish a tribunal to which railway labor
and managers may appeal respecting questions of wages and working
conditions can not be too strongly commended. It is vitally important
that some such agency should be a guaranty against suspended
operation. The public must be spared even the threat of discontinued
service.

Sponsoring the railroads as we do, it is an obligation that labor
shall be assured the highest justice and every proper consideration
of wage and working conditions, but it is an equal obligation to see
that no concerted action in forcing demands shall deprive the public
of the transportation service essential to its very existence. It is
now impossible to safeguard public interest, because the decrees of
the board are unenforceable against either employer or employee.

The Labor Board itself is not so constituted as best to serve the
public interest. With six partisan members on a board of nine, three
partisans nominated by the employees and three by the railway
managers, it is inevitable that the partisan viewpoint is maintained
throughout hearings and in decisions handed down. Indeed, the few
exceptions to a strictly partisan expression in decisions thus far
rendered have been followed by accusations of betrayal of the
partisan interests represented. Only the public group of three is
free to function in unbiased decisions. Therefore the partisan
membership may well be abolished, and decisions should be made by an
impartial tribunal.

I am well convinced that the functions of this tribunal could be much
better carried on here in Washington. Even were it to be continued as
a separate tribunal, there ought to be contact with the Interstate
Commerce Commission, which has supreme authority in the rate making
to which wage cost bears an indissoluble relationship Theoretically,
a fair and living wage must be determined quite apart from the
employer's earning capacity, but in practice, in the railway service,
they are inseparable. The record of advanced rates to meet increased
wages, both determined by the Government, is proof enough.

The substitution of a labor division in the Interstate Commerce
Commission made up from its membership, to hear and decide disputes
relating to wages and working conditions which have failed of
adjustment by proper committees created by the railways and their
employees, offers a more effective plan.

It need not be surprising that there is dissatisfaction over delayed
hearings and decisions by the present board when every trivial
dispute is carried to that tribunal. The law should require the
railroads and their employees to institute means and methods to
negotiate between themselves their constantly arising differences,
limiting appeals to the Government tribunal to disputes of such
character as are likely to affect the public welfare.

This suggested substitution will involve a necessary increase in the
membership of the commission, probably four, to constitute the labor
division. If the suggestion appeals to the Congress, it will be well
to specify that the labor division shall be constituted of
representatives of the four rate-making territories, thereby assuring
a tribunal conversant with the conditions which obtain in the
different ratemaking sections of the country.

I wish I could bring to you the precise recommendation for the
prevention of strikes which threaten the welfare of the people and
menace public safety. It is an impotent civilization and an
inadequate government which lacks the genius and the courage to guard
against such a menace to public welfare as we experienced last summer.
You were aware of the Government's great concern and its futile
attempt to aid in an adjustment. It will reveal the inexcusable
obstinacy which was responsible for so much distress to the country
to recall now that, though all disputes are not yet adjusted, the
many settlements which have been made were on the terms which the
Government proposed in mediation.

Public interest demands that ample power shall be conferred upon the.
labor tribunal, whether it is the present board or the suggested
substitute, to require its rulings to be accepted by both parties to
a disputed question.

Let there be no confusion about the purpose of the suggested
conferment of power to make decisions effective. There can be no
denial of constitutional rights of either railway workmen or railway
managers. No man can be denied his right to labor when and how he
chooses, or cease to labor when he so elects, but, since the
Government assumes to safeguard his interests while employed in an
essential public service, the security of society itself demands his
retirement from the service shall not be so timed and related as to
effect the destruction of that service. This vitally essential public
transportation service, demanding so much of brain and brawn, so much
for efficiency and security, ought to offer the most attractive
working conditions and the highest of wages paid to workmen in any
employment.

In essentially every branch, from track repairer to the man at the
locomotive throttle, the railroad worker is responsible for the
safety of human lives and the care of vast property. His high
responsibility might well rate high his pay within the limits the
traffic will bear; but the same responsibility, plus governmental
protection, may justly deny him and his associates a withdrawal from
service without a warning or under circumstances which involve the
paralysis of necessary transportation. We have assumed so great a
responsibility in necessary regulation that we unconsciously have
assumed the responsibility for maintained service; therefore the
lawful power for the enforcement of decisions is necessary to sustain
the majesty of government and to administer to the public welfare.

During its longer session the present Congress enacted a new tariff
law. The protection of the American standards of living demanded the
insurance it provides against the distorted conditions of world
commerce The framers of the law made provision for a certain
flexibility of customs duties, whereby it is possible to readjust
them as developing conditions may require. The enactment has imposed
a large responsibility upon the Executive, but that responsibility
will be discharged with a broad mindfulness of the whole business
situation. The provision itself admits either the possible
fallibility of rates or their unsuitableness to changing conditions.
I believe the grant of authority may be promptly and discreetly
exercised, ever mindful of the intent and purpose to safeguard
American industrial activity, and at the same time prevent the
exploitation of the American consumer and keep open the paths of such
liberal exchanges as do not endanger our own productivity.

No one contemplates commercial aloofness nor any other aloofness
contradictory to the best American traditions or loftiest human
purposes. Our fortunate capacity for comparative self-containment
affords the firm foundation on which to build for our own security,
and a like foundation on which to build for a future of influence and
importance in world commerce. Our trade expansion must come of
capacity and of policies of righteousness and reasonableness in till
our commercial relations.

Let no one assume that our provision for maintained good fortune at
home, and our unwillingness to assume the correction of all the ills
of the world, means a reluctance to cooperate with other peoples or
to assume every just obligation to promote human advancement anywhere
in the world.

War made its a creditor Nation. We did not seek an excess possession
of the world's gold, and we have neither desire to profit Unduly by
its possession nor permanently retain it. We do not seek to become an
international dictator because of its power.

The voice of the United States has a respectful hearing in
international councils, because we have convinced the world that we
have no selfish ends to serve, no old grievances to avenge, no
territorial or other greed to satisfy. But the voice being heard is
that of good counsel, not of dictation. It is the voice of sympathy
and fraternity and helpfulness, seeking to assist but not assume for
the United States burdens which nations must bear for themselves. We
would rejoice to help rehabilitate currency systems and facilitate
all commerce which does not drag us to the very levels of those we
seek to lift up.

While I have everlasting faith in our Republic, it would be folly,
indeed, to blind ourselves to our problems at home. Abusing the
hospitality of our shores are the advocates of revolution, finding
their deluded followers among those who take on the habiliments of an
American without knowing an American soul. There is the recrudescence
of hyphenated Americanism which we thought to have been stamped out
when we committed the Nation, life and soul, to the World War.

There is a call to make the alien respect our institutions while he
accepts our hospitality. There is need to magnify the American
viewpoint to the alien who seeks a citizenship among us. There is
need to magnify the national viewpoint to Americans throughout the
land. More there is a demand for every living being in the United
States to respect and abide by the laws of the Republic. Let men who
are rending the moral fiber of the Republic through easy contempt for
the prohibition law, because they think it restricts their personal
liberty, remember that they set the example and breed a contempt for
law which will ultimately destroy the Republic.

Constitutional prohibition has been adopted by the Nation. It is the
supreme law of the land. In plain speaking, there are conditions
relating to its enforcement which savor of nation-wide scandal. It is
the most demoralizing factor in our public life.

Most of our people assumed that the adoption of the eighteenth
amendment meant the elimination of the question from our politics. On
the contrary, it has been so intensified as an issue that many voters
are disposed to make all political decisions with reference to this
single question. It is distracting the public mind and prejudicing
the judgment of the electorate.

The day is unlikely to come when the eighteenth amendment will be
repealed. The fact may as well be recognized and our course adapted
accordingly. If the statutory provisions for its enforcement are
contrary to deliberate public opinion, which I do not believe the
rigorous and literal enforcement will concentrate public attention on
any requisite modification. Such a course, conforms with the law and
saves the humiliation of the Government and the humiliation of our
people before the world, and challenges the destructive forces
engaged in widespread violation, official corruption and individual
demoralization.

The eighteenth amendment involves the concurrent authority of State
and Federal Governments, for the enforcement of the policy it
defines. A certain lack of definiteness, through division of
responsibility is thus introduced. In order to bring about a full
understanding of duties and responsibilities as thus distributed, I
purpose to invite the governors of the States and Territories, at an
early opportunity, to a conference with the Federal Executive
authority. Out of the full and free considerations which will thus be
possible, it is confidently believed, will emerge a more adequate,
comprehension of the whole problem, and definite policies of National
and State cooperation in administering the laws.

There are pending bills for the registration of the alien who has
come to our shores. I wish the passage of such an act might be
expedited. Life amid American opportunities is worth the cost of
registration if it is worth the seeking, and the Nation has the right
to know who are citizens in the making or who live among us anti share
our advantages while seeking to undermine our cherished institutions.
This provision will enable us to guard against the abuses in
immigration, checking the undesirable whose irregular Willing is his
first violation of our laws. More, it will facilitate the needed
Americanizing of those who mean to enroll as fellow citizens.

Before enlarging the immigration quotas we had better provide
registration for aliens, those now here or continually pressing for
admission, and establish our examination boards abroad, to make sure
of desirables only. By the examination abroad we could end the pathos
at our ports, when men and women find our doors closed, after long
voyages and wasted savings, because they are unfit for admission It
would be kindlier and safer to tell them before they embark.

Our program of admission and treatment of immigrants is very
intimately related to the educational policy of the Republic With
illiteracy estimated at front two-tenths of 1 per cent to less than 2
per cent in 10 of the foremost nations of Europe it rivets our
attention to it serious problem when we are reminded of a 6 per cent
illiteracy in the United States. The figures are based on the test
which defines an Illiterate as one having no schooling whatever.
Remembering the wide freedom of our public schools with compulsory
attendance in many States in the Union, one is convinced that much of
our excessive illiteracy comes to us from abroad, and the education of
the immigrant becomes it requisite to his Americanization. It must be
done if he is fittingly to exercise the duties as well as enjoy the
privileges of American citizenship. Here is revealed the special
field for Federal cooperation in furthering education.

From the very beginning public education has been left mainly in the
hands of the States. So far as schooling youth is concerned the
policy has been justified, because no responsibility can be so
effective as that of the local community alive to its task. I believe
in the cooperation of the national authority to stimulate, encourage,
and broaden the work of the local authorities. But it is the especial
obligation of the Federal Government to devise means and effectively
assist in the education of the newcomer from foreign lands, so that
the level of American education may be made the highest that is
humanly possible.

Closely related to this problem of education is the abolition of
child labor. Twice Congress has attempted the correction of the evils
incident to child employment. The decision of the Supreme Court has
put this problem outside the proper domain of Federal regulation
until the Constitution is so amended as to give the Congress
indubitable authority. I recommend the submission of such an
amendment.

We have two schools of thought relating to amendment of the
Constitution. One need not be committed to the belief that amendment
is weakening the fundamental law, or that excessive amendment is
essential to meet every ephemeral whim. We ought to amend to meet the
demands of the people when sanctioned by deliberate public opinion.

One year ago I suggested the submission of an amendment so that we
may lawfully restrict the issues of tax-exempt securities, and I
renew that recommendation now. Tax-exempt securities are drying up
the sources of Federal taxation and they are encouraging unproductive
and extravagant expenditures by States and municipalities. There is
more than the menace in mounting public debt, there is the
dissipation of capital which should be made available to the needs of
productive industry. The proposed amendment will place the State and
Federal Governments and all political subdivisions on an exact
equality, and will correct the growing menace of public borrowing,
which if left unchecked may soon threaten the stability of our
institutions.

We are so vast and so varied in our national interests that scores of
problems are pressing for attention. I must not risk the wearying of
your patience with detailed reference.

Reclamation and irrigation projects, where waste land may be made
available for settlement and productivity, are worthy of your
favorable consideration.

When it is realized that we are consuming our timber four times as
rapidly as we are growing it, we must encourage the greatest possible
cooperation between the Federal Government, the various States, and
the owners of forest lands, to the end that protection from fire
shall be made more effective and replanting encouraged.

The fuel problem is under study now by a very capable fact-finding
commission, and any attempt to deal with the coal problem, of such
deep concern to the entire Nation, must await the report of the
commission.

There are necessary studies of great problems which Congress might
well initiate. The wide spread between production costs and prices
which consumers pay concerns every citizen of the Republic. It
contributes very largely to the unrest in agriculture and must stand
sponsor for much against which we inveigh in that familiar term--the
high cost of living.

No one doubts the excess is traceable to the levy of the middleman,
but it would be unfair to charge him with all responsibility before
we appraise what is exacted of him by our modernly complex life. We
have attacked the problem on one side by the promotion of cooperative
marketing, and we might well inquire into the benefits of cooperative
buying. Admittedly, the consumer is much to blame himself, because of
his prodigal expenditure and his exaction of service, but Government
might well serve to point the way of narrowing the spread of price,
especially between the production of food and its consumption.

A superpower survey of the eastern industrial region has recently
been completed, looking to unification of steam, water, and electric
powers, and to a unified scheme of power distribution. The survey
proved that vast economies in tonnage movement of freights, and in
the efficiency of the railroads, would be effected if the superpower
program were adopted. I am convinced that constructive measures
calculated to promote such an industrial development--I am tempted to
say, such an industrial revolution-would be well worthy the careful
attention and fostering interest of the National Government.

The proposed survey of a plan to draft all the resources of the
Republic, human and material, for national defense may well have your
approval. I commended such a program in case of future war, in the
inaugural address. of March 4, 1921, and every experience in the
adjustment and liquidation of war claims and the settlement of war
obligations persuades me we ought to be prepared for such universal
call to armed defense.

I bring you no apprehension of war. The world is abhorrent of it, and
our own relations are not only free from every threatening cloud, but
we have contributed our larger influence toward making armed conflict
less likely.

Those who assume that we played our part in the World War and later
took ourselves aloof and apart, unmindful of world obligations, give
scant credit to the helpful part we assume in international
relationships.

Whether all nations signatory ratify all the treaties growing out of
the Washington Conference on Limitation of Armament or some withhold
approval, the underlying policy of limiting naval armament has the
sanction of the larger naval powers, and naval competition is
suspended. Of course, unanimous ratification is much to be desired.

The four-power pact, which abolishes every probability of war on the
Pacific, has brought new confidence in a maintained peace, and I can
well believe it might be made a model for like assurances wherever in
the world any common interests are concerned.

We have had expressed the hostility of the American people to a
supergovernment or to any commitment where either a council or an
assembly of leagued powers may chart our course. Treaties of armed
alliance can have no likelihood of American sanction, but we believe
in respecting the rights of nations, in the value of conference and
consultation, in the effectiveness of leaders of nations looking each
other in the face ace before resorting to the arbitrament of arms.

It has been our fortune both to preach and promote international
understanding. The influence of the United States in bringing near
the settlement of an ancient dispute between South American nations
is added proof of the glow of peace in ample understanding. In
Washington to-day are met the delegates of the Central American
nations, gathered at the table of international understanding, to
stabilize their Republics and remove every vestige of disagreement.
They are met here by our invitation, not in our aloofness, and they
accept our hospitality because they have faith in our unselfishness
and believe in our helpfulness. Perhaps we are selfish in craving
their confidence and friendship, but such a selfishness we proclaim
to the world, regardless of hemisphere, or seas dividing.

I would like the Congress and the people of the Nation to believe
that in a firm and considerate way we are insistent on American
rights wherever they may be questioned, and deny no rights of others
in the assertion of our own. Moreover we are cognizant of the world's
struggles for full readjustment and rehabilitation, and we have
shirked no duty which comes of sympathy, or fraternity, or highest
fellowship among nations. Every obligation consonant with American
ideals and sanctioned under our form of government is willingly met.
When we can not support we do not demand. Our constitutional
limitations do not forbid the exercise of a moral influence, the
measure of which is not less than the high purposes we have sought to
serve.

After all there is less difference about the part this great Republic
shall play in furthering peace and advancing humanity than in the
manner of playing it. We ask no one to assume responsibility for us;
we assume no responsibility which others must bear for themselves,
unless nationality is hopelessly swallowed up in internationalism.