VOICES OF OUR LEADERS D LEWIS LIBRARY OF CONGRESS DDDlflHSbOH? Class Book - u 4- « CONTENTS Introduction, Hon. Newton D. Baker v Oratory in National Crises, William Mather Lewis vii Addresses The Second Inaugural, Hon. Woodrow Wilson.. 3 War Message, Hon. Woodrow Wilson 13 Memorial Day Address, Hon. Woodrow Wilson. 33 Flag Day Address, Hon. Woodrow Wilson 39 Why Do We Fight Germany? Hon. Franklin K. Lane 53 To Reserve Officers' Training Corps, Hon. Robert Lansing 63 Tribute to America, Hon. Herbert Henry Asquith 79 The Oldest Free Assemblies, Rt. Hon. Arthur James Balfour 85 Greetings to America, M. Alexandre Felix Joseph Ribot 91 The Harvest of Justice, M. Paul Dechanal 97 Our Heritage of Liberty, M. Rene Viviani 103 Their Monuments in Our Hearts, M. Rene Viviani 109 To the House of Representatives, M. Rene Viviani 115 Tribute to Lincoln, M. Rene Viviani 121 To the House of Representatives, Prince of Udine 129 Greetings from Belgium, Baron Ludovic Moncheur 139 The New Russia, Prof. Boris Bakhmetieff 145 Tribute to Washington, Viscount Kikujiro Ishii. . 151 Message to the Pope, Hon. Woodrow Wilson... 155 Justice for Serbia, Dr. Milenko R. Vesnitch 163 American Rights and Honor, Hon. Julius Kahn. 175 Program of the World's Peace, Hon. Woodrow Wilson 187 INTRODUCTION RY Hon. Newton D. Baker, Secretary of War Through these addresses he who listens shrewdly will hear the voices of the millions who have toiled and sacrificed that the promise of these words might come true. There are no literary exercises in this book. Nothing printed here was said because it sounds well, there are no empty rhetorical vanities. These are the words of the chosen leaders of the free nations, and they are underwritten every one of them with the heroism and the skill and the benignant power and the unfailing endurance of those who love liberty more than their comfort and their lives. This is what makes a speech memorable and only this : that it should be spoken at a turning point in human affairs on behalf of a great hope. These speeches were spoken in the days when the supreme decision was made to lay down the weight of the New World that the earth may be secure. In the light of such an event any utter- ance would be repeated while there were men to remember it. But the words printed here are touched not only with the glory of the American decision but with the undying warmth of the Three Years' Resistance. We recognized at the THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS time and we shall not forget the messages brought to us overseas. We shall play our part and these words printed here shall be not only a promise but a prophecy that out of this agony and this enterprise we shall'build a rich and enduring free- dom. We seek nothing more and shall accept nothing less. Scientifically and inexorably we shall go on till the menace which has risen in Central Europe to terrorize mankind is destroyed from without or discarded from within. VI PUBLIC SPEAKING IN NATIONAL CRISES The student of public speaking is impressed with the fact that from the earliest time wide periods have separated the occasions upon which great orations have been given to the world. Upon the stage of human affairs have come from time to time little groups of men who have wrought mightily with their ringing eloquence. When for many years mediocrity has marked the utterances of the public forum, the state- ment has often been made that the golden age of •oratory was gone, never to return. But another •group has always arisen to give the lie to this pessimistic assertion. The occasional recurrence of surpassing eloquence, the long periods of -dreary utterance, suggest the fact that it is the occasion rather than the man which produces the spoken classic. Speakers may charm with the grace of their utterance, with their flights of fancy, with their brilliant word pictures, but unless the cause for which they plead is one of surpassing import to the people at large, they and their contemporaries will not find place in the Hall of Fame. The spoken word will ever have its effect upon the stage and from the pul- pit and in the courts of law: but only when a great issue is to be met, a great wrong righted, a great truth vindicated, will that spoken word VII THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS rise to the dignity of oratory. It is the soul sob of an oppressed people ; the battle cry of an aroused nation ; the struggle for release from fetters of unrighteousness, which will ever sound through the tone of the real orator. Among all the great orations of the world, we find none which proclaims the trivial issue ; none has lived whose author was not obviously sincere. The last profound crisis through which this country passed was that culminating in the Civil War. It was likewise our last great oratorical period. Abraham Lincoln, master of the English language that he was, could not have produced a Gettysburg address under conditions less mov- ing than that which brought it into being. Henry Ward Beecher, Wendell Phillips, Stephen A. Douglas and all the rest of that great group have lived in history because of the opportunity afforded by the times in which they worked. Back of the Civil War period we have to go to our Revolutionary days to find another great school of speakers, led by Patrick Henry in America and Edmund Burke in Great Britain. And so down through history we pass to Robespierre and Mirabeau of the French Revolution, back to Demosthenes of crumbling Athens : only to find that the great occasion has ever produced the great orator : that for every mighty human VIII THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS cause there has been "A Voice crying in the wilderness." Even the great cause of Christian religion shows its progress in these periodic groupings surrounding critical events. National crises, particularly wars, have always produced great orations. It is reasonable to as- sert that the present conflict, involving as it does, not two, but a score of nations, and having at root issues which affect human happiness every- where, will stimulate in this country and through- out Europe public utterances of a commanding strength. Therefore it is safe to assume that some of the addresses chosen in the collection herewith presented will find place among the oratorical classics of all time. Be that as it may, they all deserve careful study because each is the product of a leader in the great struggle, each illuminates in some manner the great Drama in which all mankind has a part. In his "Memories and Portraits" Robert Louis Stevenson says : "Whenever I read a book or a passage that particularly pleased me, in which a thing was said or an effect rendered with pro- priety, in which there was either some conspicu- ous force or some happy distinction in the style, I must sit down at once and set myself to ape that quality. I was unsuccessful, and always un- successful ; but at least in these vain bouts I got IX THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS some practice in rhythm, in harmony, in con- struction and the coordination of parts. . . . That, like it or not, is the way to learn to write : whether I have profited or not, that is the way. It was so Keats learned, and there was never a finer temperament for literature than Keats. It is the great point in these imitations that there still shines, beyond the student's reach, his in- imitable model. Let him try as he please, he is still sure of failure; and it is an old and very true saying that 'Failure is the high road to suc- cess." To him who has reveled in the glorious word pictures of Treasure Island, David Balfour, and Kidnapped, no other proof need be presented that the great novelist's method was effective, to all beside, the place which Stevenson holds in the world of letters will be assurance enough that he knew whereof he spoke. And if it be true that through the study and imitation of ac- knowledged masters, there comes proficiency in the written word, vastly more must such a method be valuable where skill in vocal ex- pression is sought. The essayist may spend hours locating the word which brings out the exact shade of meaning he wishes to con- vey. The speaker must have the needed expres- sion at his instant command. Thus it follows THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS that the student of public speaking should make his own the best examples of oral phraseology available. He should bear in mind that the vocab- ulary of speech, must have qualities unnecessary and even undesirable in written composition ; and that his hearer has but a fleeting moment to grasp the thought, where the reader may pause to ponder over the hidden meaning of some in- volved sentence. He must study those composi- tions which have stirred listening audiences. It is for the student of this class that the addresses contained in this brief work are presented. It is well to familiarize one's self with the standard orations of all times, but the greatest good will come from the study of present-day examples. A century ago the speaker thought only of the audience before him : to-day, if he is a distinguished man, the "breakfast table audience" with the morning paper will be far larger than that within the sound of his voice. And so the style of oratory has changed, become more restrained and less verbose. That it has lost in this process none of its force and charm will be evident to all who read this collection of addresses bearing on the great war. It is not too much to say that in clarity of expression and felicity of phraseology some of the speeches of Woodrow Wilson will rank with those of his XI THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS great predecessors, Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. Nor will the brief and brilliant words of his contemporaries in Great Britain and France suffer by comparison with the utter- ances of the leaders of those nations which have given so much to the oratorical literature of the world. The student, young or old, who earn- estly studies these twentieth century messages and makes their style his own will acquire an asset of immeasurable value. He will likewise have a deeper love for the United States and a greater conception of the holy cause for which the nation struggles. William Mather Lewis. XII . SUGGESTIONS TO STUDENTS OF PUBLIC SPEAKING While it may be true that "Orators are born, not made," it is nevertheless a fact that almost any person, with proper application, can make himself an effective public speaker. And the capacity for effective public speech is one of the greatest business, and professional assets that a man can possess. How many men have ex- claimed "I Would give a thousand dollars if I had the power of expressing myself strongly before a company of men." Two men may have the same mental equipment, the same knowledge of a subject; yet the one may be put down as an authority, the other as an ignoramus, because of ability or lack of ability to present properly the subject upon which they have specialized. There are a few essential facts in connection with public speaking, which are here set down in the hope that they may be of service to the reader. First ; how should a quotation of any kind or a whole composition be memorized ? The student should carefully analyze the selection, determin- ing the logical construction which the author used. This will help him in the construction of future speeches. Having separated the quota- XIII THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS tion into its logical divisions, he should memorize unit by unit rather than sentence by sentence. In this way, the mind is kept alert and a "parrot" system avoided. Furthermore, having the skele- ton of the composition in mind, if the exact words do not come back, the substance of the subject matter can be recalled and an embar- rassing break avoided. As has been suggested, nothing will aid the speaker more than familiarity with the kind of addresses contained in this book. Whatever may be his method in creating ad- dresses later, no speaker will ever regret the training secured in the early days of his study, by committing to memory good examples. Having committed the subject matter to mem- ory there next follows the problem of effective delivery. As the speaker is about to face the audience there sometimes comes to him that ner- vous feeling commonly known as "stage fright." It is the same sensation experienced by the sprinter in the moments preceding the pistol shot, and by the football player as he awaits the kick- off. It is not fright, but the reaction of nervous alertness on a body not physically in play. The sprinter and the football player in action, with the blood coursing through their veins, lose this sensation. The speaker, if he will take a few deep breaths, and thus start a more rapid circu- XIV THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS lation of the blood will likewise find that his "stage fright" disappears. As he rises to address the audience let the speaker remember that his body as well as his voice, is carrying a message to the audience. A weak position — chest low — chin thrust for- ward — abdomen out — hands working nervously — these things are not lost upon hearers, more inclined to be critical than receptive. An erect carriage, strong position, self-control, poise — these help to win a hearing. Some men of not- ably poor appearance have succeeded as speak- ers, but they have succeeded in spite of this han- dicap, not because of it. All speakers cannot be Adonis-like, but all can make the most of their physical equipment. As a master of speaking has tersely said, "Attack the audience or it will attack you." An audience to which you do not give your best will be slow indeed to respond to any message you bring. Take plenty of time before speaking, to be sure you have the attention of your hearers. Look them squarely in the eyes. Just as we instinctively trust a man who in conversation looks us in the face, so the au- dience responds to the direct gaze of the speaker and becomes inattentive when he studies the rafters and the stained glass windows. Above XV THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS everything else do not assume a pose. "No man is great so long as he attempts to look great." As to voice placing, no valuable suggestion can be made here except the observation that he who is to do much public speaking will do well to take a few lessons from a skilled vocal instructor. "Ministers' sore throat," and even tubercular trouble, come from the misuse of the voice. Fur- thermore, a well placed voice is a great element in securing and holding the attention of the audience. A rasping voice, a throaty, guttural tone, a piping utterance, all have most unfortu- nate effects upon those whom one is attempting to impress. Nothing is worse for the voice than to drink ice water in the midst of a speech. Furthermore, any such extraneous action draws the auditor's attention from the thoughts of the moment. When the speaker consults his watch, it naturally occurs to the audience that it is time the address came to an end. The speaker must recognize that in an au- dience room his rate of speech should be slower than in individual conversation. The sound waves become confused when the rate is rapid, and the speaker will have to use much greater volume to make himself heard than if his words are pronounced with deliberation. In beginning a speech that listener at the XVI THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS greatest distance from the speaker should be addressed first. By adopting this method the voice is instinctively raised to the proper volume, and everyone in the room hears easily. Nothing so makes for inattention in an au- dience as inability to hear. If inattention occurs in any part of the audience, the speaker must not turn away from that section and speak to those who appear interested. Inattention spreads rapidly and should be stopped at its source. Let the speaker address his words to the inattentive, and through natural courtesy they will assume at least the attitude of attention. Thus will the danger of losing one's audience be avoided. No consideration should be given to the gestures one is to use in a speech. "Suit the action to the word, the word to the action." Some of the world's greatest speakers have never raised a hand ; others are constantly in motion. Gestures should be used if the impulse comes naturally ; if not, any attempt will mark the user as an artificial and elocutionary speaker. Speak- ing depends for its effect on sincerity — Christ was a success as a speaker because "he spoke as one having authority." Lincoln the uncouth was a great speaker for the same reason. Earn- estness, strength, conviction, are qualities to be sought before grace. Study every speaker whom XVII THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS you have the opportunity to hear; observe his effect upon the audience ; take every opportunity that is given you to speak ; make the most of your physical equipment, and you will soon bq on the road to effective public speech. XVIII THE SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS Hon. Woodrow Wilson Delivered at Washington, D. C, March 5th, 1917 INAUGURAL ADDRESS, Woodrow Wilson My Fellow Citizens: The four years which have elapsed since last I stood in this place have been crowded with counsel and action of the most vital interest and consequence. Perhaps no equal period in our history has been so fruitful of important reforms in our economic and industrial life or so full of significant changes in the spirit and purpose of our political action. We have sought very thoughtfully to set our house in order, correct the grosser errors and abuses of our industrial life, liberate and quicken the processes of our national genius and energy, and lift our politics to a broader view of the people's essential inter- ests. It is a record of singular variety and singu- lar distinction. But I shall not attempt to review it. It speaks for itself and will be of increasing influence as the years go by. This is not the time for retrospect. It is time, rather, to speak our thoughts and purposes concerning the pres- ent and the immediate future. Although we have centered counsel and action with such unusual concentration and success upon the great problems of domestic legislation to which we addressed ourselves four years ago, other matters have more and more forced them- 3 4 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS selves upon our attention, matters lying outside our own life as a nation and over which we had no control, but which, despite our wish to keep free of them, have drawn us more and more irresistibly into their own current and influence. It has been impossible to avoid them. They have affected the life of the whole world. They have shaken men everywhere with a passion and an apprehension they never knew before. It has been hard to preserve calm counsel while the thought of our own people swayed this way and that under their influence. We are a composite and cosmopolitan people. We are of the blood of all the nations that are at war. The currents of our thoughts as well as the currents of our trade run quick at all seasons back and forth between us and them. The war inevitably set its mark from the first alike upon our minds, our industries, our commerce, our politics, and our social action. To be indifferent to it or inde- pendent of it was out of the question. And yet all the while we have been conscious that we were not part of it. In that conscious- ness, despite many divisions, we have drawn closer together. We have been deeply wronged upon the seas, but we have not wished to wrong or injure in return; have retained throughout the consciousness of standing in some sort apart, THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 5 intent upon an interest that transcended the immediate issues of the war itself. As some of the injuries done us have become intolerable we have still been clear that we wished nothing for ourselves that we were not ready to demand for all mankind, — fair dealing, justice, the freedom to live and be at ease against organized wrong. It is in this spirit and with this thought that we have grown more and more aware, more and more certain that the part we wished to play was the part of those who mean to vindicate and fortify peace. We have been obliged to arm ourselves to make good our claim to a certain minimum of right and of freedom of action. We stand firm in armed neutrality since it seems that in no other way we can demonstrate what it is we insist upon and cannot forego. We may even be drawn on, by circumstances, not by our own purpose or desire, to a more active assertion of our rights as we see them and a more immediate association with the great struggle itself. But nothing will alter our thought or our purpose. They are too clear to be obscured. They are too deeply rooted in the principles of our national life to be altered. We desire neither conquest nor advantage. We wish nothing that can be had only at the cost of another people. We have always professed unselfish purpose and we covet 6 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS the opportunity to prove that our professions are sincere. There are many things still to do at home, to clarify our own politics and give new vitality to the industrial processes of our own life, and we shall do them as time and opportunity serve ; but we realize that the greatest things that remain to be done must be done with the whole world for stage and in cooperation with the wide and universal forces of mankind, and we are making our spirits ready for those things. They will follow in the immediate wake of the war itself and will set civilization up again. We are pro- vincials no longer. The tragical events of the thirty months of vital turmoil through which we have just passed have made us citizens of the world. There can be no turning back. Our own fortunes as a nation are involved, whether we would have it so or not. And yet we are not the less Americans on that account. We shall be the more American if we but remain true to the principles in which we have been bred. They are not the principles of a province or of a single continent. We have known and boasted all along that they were the principles of a liberated mankind. These, there- fore, are the things we shall stand for, whether in war or in peace : THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 7 That all nations are equally interested in the peace of the world and in the political stability of free peoples, and equally responsible for their maintenance ; That the essential principle of peace is the actual equality of nations in all matters of right or privilege; That peace cannot securely or justly rest upon an armed balance of power; That governments derive all their just powers from the consent of the governed and that no other powers should be supported by the common thought, purpose, or power of the family of nations ; That the seas should be equally free and safe for the use of all peoples, under rules set up by common agreement and consent, and that, so far as practicable, they should be accessible to all upon equal terms; That national armaments should be limited to the necessities of national order and domestic safety ; That the community of interest and of power upon which peace must henceforth depend im- poses upon each nation the duty of seeing to it that all influences proceeding from its own citi- zens meant to encourage or assist revolution in 8 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS other states should be sternly and effectually suppressed and prevented. I need not argue these principles to you, my fellow countrymen: they are your own, part and parcel of your own thinking and your own mo- tive in affairs. They spring up native amongst us. Upon this as a platform of purpose and of action we can stand together. And it is imperative that we should stand to- gether. We are being forged into a new unity amidst the fires that now blaze throughout the world. In their ardent heat we shall, in God's providence, let us hope, be purged of faction and division, purified of the errant humors of party and of private interest, and shall stand forth in the days to come with a new dignity of national pride and spirit. Let each man see to it that the dedication is in his own heart, the high pur- pose of the Nation in his own mind, ruler of his own will and desire. I stand here and have taken the high and solemn oath to which you have been audience because the people of the United States have chosen me for this august delegation of power and have by their gracious judgment named me their leader in affairs. I know now what the task means. I realize to the full the responsi- bility which it involves. I pray God I may be THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 9 given the wisdom and the prudence to do my duty in the true spirit of this great people. I am their servant and can succeed only as they sus- tain and guide me by their confidence and their counsel. The thing I shall count upon, the thing without which neither counsel nor action will avail, is the unity of America, — an America united in feeling, in purpose, and in its vision of duty, of opportunity, and of service. We are to beware of all men who would turn the tasks and the necessities of the Nation to their own private profit or use them for the building up of private power; beware that no faction or dis- loyal intrigue break the harmony or embarrass the spirit of our people ; beware that our Govern- ment be kept pure and incorrupt in all its parts. United alike in the conception of our duty and in the high resolve to perform it in the face of all men, let us dedicate ourselves to the great task to which we must now set our hand. For myself I beg your tolerance, your countenance, and your united aid. The shadows that now lie dark upon our path will soon be dispelled and we shall walk with the light all about us if we be but true to ourselves, — to ourselves as we have wished to be known in the counsels of the world and in the thought of all those who love liberty and justice and the right exalted. THE WAR MESSAGE Hon. Woodrow Wilson Delivered before a joint session of the Senate and the House of Rep- resentatives of the United States, April 2nd, 1917 THE WAR MESSAGE Woodrow Wilson Gentlemen of the Congress : I have called the Congress into extraordinary session because there are serious, very serious, choices of policy to be made, and made imme- diately, which it was neither right nor constitu- tionally permissible that I should assume the responsibility of making. On the 3d of February last I officially laid before you the extraordinary announcement of the Imperial German Government that on and after the first day of February it was its purpose to put aside all restraints of law or of 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 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 13 14 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS escape attempted, and care taken that their crews were given at least a fair chance to save their lives in their open boats. The precautions taken 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, 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 bellig- erents. Even hospital ships and ships carrying relief to the sorely bereaved and stricken people of Belgium, though the latter were provided with safe conduct through the proscribed areas by the German Government itself and were distin- guished by unmistakable marks of identity, have been sunk with the same reckless lack of com- passion or of principle. I was for a little while unable to believe that such things would in fact be done by any gov- ernment that had hitherto subscribed to the hu- man practices of civilized nations. International law had its origin in the attempt to set up some law which would be respected and observed 11 IE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 15 upon the seas, where no nation had right of dominion, and where lay the free highways of the world. By painful stage after stage has that law has 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 man- kind demanded. This minimum of right the Ger- man 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 employ- ing them without throwing to the winds all scruples of humanity or of respect for the under- standings that were 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-com- batants, 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 16 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 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 man- kind. 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 feeling 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 rights 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 subma- rines 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 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS \7 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 proscribed, even in the defense of rights which no modern publicist has ever before ques- tioned their right to defend. The intimation is conveyed that the armed guards which we have placed on our merchant ships will be treated as beyond the pale of law and subject to be dealt with as pirates would be. Armed neutrality is ineffectual enough at best ; in such circumstances and in the face of such pretensions it is worse than ineffectual : it is likely 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 sub- mission 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 not common wrongs ; they reach out to the very roots of human life. With a profound sense of the solemn and even 18 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 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 has 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 co-operation in counsel 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 na- tions in the most abundant and yet the most eco- nomical and efficient way possible. It will involve the immediate full equipment of the navy in all respects but particularly in supplying it with the THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 19 best means of dealing with the enemy's subma- rines. It will involve the immediate addition to the armed forces of the United States already pro- vided 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 most unwise to base the credits which will now Le 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 pro- duced 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 20 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS supplying the nations already at war with Ger- many 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 the several executive departments of the Gov- ernment, for the consideration of your commit- tees, 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 safe- guarding the nation will most directly fall. While we do these things, these deeply momen- tous 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 un- happy events of the last two months, and I do not believe that the thought of the nation has been al- tered or clouded by them. I have exactly the same thing in mind now that I had in mind when I addressed the Senate on the 22d of January last; the same that I had in mind when I addressed the Congress on the 3d of February and on the 26th of February. Our object now, THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 21 as then, is to vindicate the principles of peace and the justice in the life of the world as against selfish and autocratic power and to set up amongst the really free and self-governed peoples of the world such a concert of purpose and of action as will henceforth insure 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 knowl- edge or approval. It was a war determined upon as wars used to be determined upon in the old, unhappy days, when peoples were nowhere con- 22 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS suited by their rulers and wars were provoked and waged in the interest of dynasties or of little groups of ambitious men who were ac- customed to use their fellowmen as pawns and tools. Self-governed nations do not fill their neighbor states with spies, or set the course of in- trigue 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 ag- gression, 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 impos- sible 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. It must be a league of honor, a part- nership of opinion. Intrigue would eat its vitals away ; the plotting of inner circles who could plan what they would and render account to no THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 23' 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 relationships of her people that spoke their natural instinct, their habitual attitude toward life. 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 native ma- jesty 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 have served to convince us that the Prussian autocracy was not, and could never be our friend is that from the very outset. 24 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 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 counsel, our peace within and without, our industries and our commerce. Indeed it is now evident that its 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 the intrigues which have more than once come perilously near to disturbing the peace and dislocating the in- dustries 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 Govern- ment 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 toward us (who were, no doubt as ignorant of them as we ourselves were), but only in the selfish designs of a Government that did what it pleased and told its people nothing. Eut they have played their part in serv- ing 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 conveni- THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 25- ence. That it means to stir up enemies against up at our very doors, the intercepted note to the German Minister at Mexico City is eloquent evi- dence. We are accepting this challenge of hostile pur- pose because we know that in such a govern- ment, following such methods, we can never have a friend ; and that in the presence of its or- ganized power, always lying in wait to accom- plish we know not what purpose, there can be no assured security for the democratic govern- ments of the world. We are now about to accept the gauge of battle with this natural foe to liberty and shall, if necessary, spend the whole force of the nation to check and nullify its pre- tensions and its power. We are glad, now that we see the facts with no veil of false pretense about them, to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its peoples, the German people 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 trusted foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemni- ties for ourselves, no material compensation for 26 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 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 the nation can make them. Just because we fight without rancour and with- out selfish object, seeking nothing for ourselves but what we shall wish to share with all free peo- ples, we shall, I feel confident, conduct our opera- tions as belligerents without passion and our- selves 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 be- cause they have not made war upon us or chal- lenged us to defend our right and our honor. The Austro-Hungarian Government has, indeed, avowed its unqualified indorsement 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 ac- credited 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, THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 27 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 our- selves as belligerents in a high spirit of right and fairness because we act without animus, not in enmity toward a people or with the desire to bring any injury or disadvantage upon them, but only in armed opposition to an irresponsible gov- ernment which has thrown aside all considera- tions of humanity and of right and is running amuck. We are, let me say again, the sincere friends of the German people, and shall desire nothing so much as the early re-establishment 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 be- cause 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 toward the millions of men and women of German birth and native sympathy who live amongst us and share our life, and we 28 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS shall be proud to prove it toward all who are in fact loyal to their neighbors and to the Govern- ment 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 re- straining 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, Gentle- men 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 dis- astrous 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 sub- mit to authority to have a voice in their own gov- ernments, for the rights and liberties of small na- tions, 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 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 29 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. MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS Hon. Woodrow Wilson Delivered at the National Cemetery, Arlington, Virginia, May 30th, 1917 MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS Woodrow Wilson The program has conferred an unmerited dig- nity upon the remarks I am going to make by calling them an address, because I am not here to deliver an address. I am here merely to show in my official capacity the sympathy of this great government with the object of this occa- sion, and also to speak just a word of the senti- ment that is in my own heart. Any Memorial Day of this sort is, of course, a day touched with sorrowful memory, and yet I for one do not see how we can have any thought of pity for the men whose memory we honor to-day. I do not pity them. I envy them, rather, because theirs is a great work for liberty accomplished and we are in the midst of a work unfinished, testing our strength where their strength has already been tested. There is a touch of sorrow, but there is a touch of reassurance also in a day like this, because we know how the men of America have responded to the call of the cause of liberty, and it fills our mind with a perfect assurance that that response will come again in equal measure, with equal majesty, and with a result which will hold the attention of all mankind. When you reflect upon it these men who died 33 34 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS to preserve the Union died to preserve the instru- ment which we are now using to serve the world — a free nation espousing the cause of human lib- erty. In one sense the great struggle into which we have now entered is an American struggle, because it is in the sense of American rights, but it is something even greater than that, it is a world struggle. It is a struggle of men who love liberty every- where, and in this cause America will show her- self greater than ever, because she will rise to a greater thing. We have said in the beginning that we planned this great government that men who wish free- dom might have a place of refuge and a place where their hope could be realized and now, having established such a government, having preserved such a government, having vindicated the power of such a government, we are saying to all mankind, "We did not set this government up in order that we might have a selfish and sep- arate liberty, for we are now ready to come to your assistance and fight out upon the fields of the world the cause of human liberty." In this thing America attains her full dignity and the full fruition of her purpose. No man can be glad that such things have hap- pened as we have witnessed in these last fateful THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 35 years, but perhaps it may be permitted to us to be glad that we have an opportunity to show the principles that we profess to be living, prin- ciples that live in our hearts, and to have a chance by the pouring out of our blood and treas- ure to vindicate the things which we have pro- fessed. For, my friends, the real fruition of life is to do the things we have said we wished to do. There are times when words seem empty and only ac- tion seems great. Such a time has come, and in the providence of God America will once more have an opportunity to show the world she was born to serve mankind. FLAG DAY ADDRESS Hon. Woodrow Wilson Delivered at Washington, D. C, June 14th, 1917 FLAG DAY ADDRESS Woodrow Wilson My Fellow Citizens: We meet to celebrate Flag Day because this 1 flag which we honor and under which we serve is the emblem of our unity, our power, our thought and purpose as a nation. It has no other character than that which we give it from gen- eration to generation. The choices are ours. It floats in majestic silence above the hosts that execute those choices, whether in peace or in war. And yet, though silent, it speaks to us, — speaks to us of the past, of the men and women who went before us and of the records they wrote upon it. We celebrate the day of its birth; and from its birth until now it has witnessed a great history, has floated on high the symbol of great events, of a great plan of life worked out by a great people. We are about to carry it into battle, to lift it where it will draw the fire of our enemies. We are about to bid thousands, hun- dreds of thousands, it may be millions, of our men, the young, the strong, the capable men of the nation, to go forth and die beneath it on fields of blood far away, — for what? For some unaccustomed thing? For something for which it has never sought the fire before? American armies were never before sent across the seas.. 39 40 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS Why are they sent now ? For some new purpose, for which this great flag has never been carried before, or for some old, familiar, heroic purpose for which it has seen men, its own men, die on every battlefield upon which Americans have borne arms since the Revolution? These are questions which must be answered. We are Americans. We in our turn serve America, and can serve her with no private purpose. We must use her flag as she has always used it. We are accountable at the bar of history and must plead in utter frankness what purpose it is we seek to serve. It is plain enough how we were forced into the war. The extraordinary insults and aggres- sions of the Imperial German Government left us no self-respecting choice but to take up arms in defense of our rights as a free people and of our honor as a sovereign government. The mili- tary masters of Germany denied us the right to be neutral. They filled our unsuspecting com- munities with vicious spies and conspirators and sought to corrupt the opinion of our people in their own behalf. When they found that they could not do that, their agents diligently spread sedition amongst us and sought to draw our own citizens from their allegiance, — and some of those agents were men connected with the official THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 41 Embassy of the German Government itself here in our own capital. They sought by violence to destroy our industries and arrest our commerce. They tried to incite Mexico to take up arms against us and to draw Japan into a hostile alliance with her, — and that, not by indirection, but by direct suggestion from the Foreign Office in Berlin. They impudently denied us the use of the high seas and repeatedly executed their threat that they would send to their death any of our people who ventured to approach the coasts of Europe. And many of our own people were corrupted. Men began to look upon their own neighbors with suspicion and to wonder in their hot resentment and surprise whether there was any community in which hostile intrigue did not lurk. What great nation in such circum- stances would not have taken up arms? Much as we had desired peace, it was denied us, and not of our own choice. This flag under which we serve would have been dishonored had we withheld our hand. But that is only part of the story. We know now as clearly as we knew before we were our- selves engaged that we are not the enemies of the German people and that they are not our ene- mies. They did not originate or desire this hideous war or wish that we should be drawn 42 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS into it ; and we are vaguely conscious that we are fighting their cause, as they will some day see it, as well as our own. They are themselves in the grip of the same sinister power that has now at last stretched its ugly talons out and drawn blood from us. The whole world is at war because the whole world is in the grip of that power and is trying out the great battle which shall determine whether it is to be brought under its mastery or fling itself free. The war was begun by the military masters of Germany, who proved to be also the masters of Austria-Hungary. These men have never regarded nations as peoples, men, women, and children of like blood and frame as themselves, for whom governments existed and in whom governments had their life. They have regarded them merely as serviceable organizations which they could by force or intrigue bend or corrupt to their own purpose. They have regarded the smaller states, in particular, and the peoples who could be overwhelmed by force, as their natural tools and instruments of domination. Their pur- pose has long been avowed. The statesmen of other nations, to whom that purpose was incred- ible, paid little attention ; regarded what German professors expounded in their classrooms and German writers set forth to the world as the goal THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 43 of German policy as rather the dream of minds detached from practical affairs, as preposterous private conceptions of German destiny, than as the actual plans of responsible rulers ; but the rulers of Germany themselves knew all the while what concrete plans, what well advanced in- trigues lay back of what the professors and the writers were saying, and were glad to go for- ward unmolested, filling the thrones of Balkan states with German princes, putting German officers at the service of Turkey to drill her armies and make interest with her government, developing plans of sedition and rebellion in India and Egypt, setting their fires in Persia The demands made by Austria upon Servia were a mere single step in a plan which com passed Europe and Asia, from Berlin to Bag- dad. They hoped those demands might not arouse Europe, but they meant to press them whether they did or not, for they thought them- selves ready for the final issue of arms. Their plan was to throw a broad belt of Ger- man military power and political control across the very centre of Europe and beyond the Medi- terranean into the heart of Asia ; and Austria- Hungary was to be as much their tool and pawn as Servia or Bulgaria or Turkey or the ponderous states of the East. Austria-Hungary, indeed, was 44 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS to become part of the central German Empire, absorbed and dominated by the same forces and influences that had originally cemented the Ger- man states themselves. The dream had its heart at Berlin. It could have had a heart nowhere else! It rejected the idea of solidarity of race entirely. The choice of peoples played no part in it at all. It contemplated binding together racial and political units which could be kept together only by force — Czechs, Magyars, Croats, Serbs, Roumanians, Turks, Armenians, — the proud states of Bohemia and Hungary, the stout little commonwealths of the Balkans, the indomitable Turks, the subtile peoples of the East. These peoples did not wish to be united. They ardently desired to direct their own affairs, would be satisfied only by undisputed indepen- dence. They could be kept quiet only by the presence or the constant threat of armed men. They would live under a common power only by sheer compulsion and await the day of revolu- tion. But the German military statesmen had reckoned with all that and were ready to deal with it in their own way. And they have actually carried the greater part of that amazing plan into execution ! Look how things stand. Austria is at their mercy. It has acted, not upon its own initiative or upon THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 45. the choice of its own people, but at Berlin's dictation ever since the war began. Its people now desire peace, but cannot have it until leave is granted from Berlin. The so-called Central Powers are in fact but a single Power. Servia is at its mercy, should its hands be but for a moment freed. Bulgaria has consented to its will, and Roumania is overrun. The Turkish armies, which Germans trained, are serving Ger- many, certainly not themselves, and the guns of German warships lying in the harbour at Con- stantinople remind Turkish statesmen every day that they have no choice but to take their orders from Berlin. From Hamburg to the Persian Gulf the net is spread. Is it not easy to understand the eagerness for peace that has been manifested from Berlin ever since the snare was set and sprung? Peace, peace, peace has been the talk of her Foreign Office for now a year and more ; not peace upon her own initiative, but upon the initiative of the nations over which she now deems herself to hold the advantage. A little of the talk has been public, but most of it has been private. Through all sorts of channels it has come to me, and in all sorts of guises, but never with the terms dis- closed which the German Government would be willing to accept. That government has other 46 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS valuable pawns in its hands than those I have mentioned. It still holds a valuable part of France, though with slowly relaxing grasp, and practically the whole of Belgium. Its armies press close upon Russia and overrun Poland at their will. It cannot go further ; it dare not go back. It wishes to close its bargain before it is too late and it has little left to offer for the pound of flesh it will demand. The military masters under whom Germany is bleeding see very clearly to what point Fate has brought them. If they fall back or are forced back an inch, their power both abroad and at home will fall to pieces like a house of cards. It is their power at home they are thinking about now more than their power abroad. It is that power which is trembling under their very feet; and deep fear has entered their hearts. They have but one chance to perpetuate their military power or even their controlling political influence. If they can secure peace now with the immense advantages still in their hands which they have up to this point apparently gained, they will have justified themselves before the German peo- ple: they will have gained by force what they promised to gain by it ; an immense expansion of German power, an immense enlargement of German industrial and commercial opportunities. THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 47 Their prestige will be secure, and with their prestige their political power. If they fail, their people will thrust them aside; a government ac- countable to the people themselves will be set up in Germany as it has been in England, in the United States, in France, and in all the great countries of the modern time except Germany. If they succeed they are safe and Germany and the world are undone ; if they fail Germany is saved and the world will be at peace. If they succeed, America will fall within the menace. We and all the rest of the world must remain armed, as they will remain, and must make ready for the next step in their aggression ; if they fail, the world may unite for peace and Germany may be of the union. Do you not now understand the new intrigue, the intrigue for peace, and why the masters of Germany do not hesitate to use any agency that promises to effect their purpose, the deceit of the nations ? Their present particular aim is to deceive all those who throughout the world stand for the rights of peoples and the self- government of nations ; for they see what im- mense strength the forces of justice and of liber- alism are gathering out of this war. They are employing liberals in their enterprise. They are using men, in Germany and without, as their 48 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS spokesmen whom they have hitherto despised and oppressed, using them for their own destruction, — socialists, the leaders of labour, the thinkers they have hitherto sought to silence. Let them once succeed and these men, now their tools, will be ground to powder beneath the weight of the great military empire they will have set up ; the revolutionists in Russia will be cut off from all succor or co-operation in western Europe and a counter revolution fostered and supported ; Ger- many herself will lose her chance of freedom ; and all Europe will arm for the next, the final struggle. The sinister intrigue is being no less actively conducted in this country than in Russia and in every country in Europe to which the agents and dupes of the Imperial German Government can get access. That government has many spokesmen here, in places high and low. They have learned discretion. They keep within the law. It is opinion they utter now, not sedition. They proclaim the liberal purposes of their mas- ters ; declare this a foreign war which can touch America with no danger to either her lands or her institutions ; set England at the center of the stage and talk of her ambition to assert economic dominion throughout the world; appeal to our ancient tradition of isolation in the politics THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 49 of the nations ; and seek to undermine the gov- ernment with false professions of loyalty to its principles. But they will make no headway. The false betray themselves always in every accent. It is only friends and partisans of the German Gov- ernment whom we have already identified who utter these thinly disguised disloyalties. The facts are patent to all the world, and nowhere are they more plainly seen than in the United States, where we are accustomed to .deal with facts and not with sophistries; and the great fact that stands out above all the rest is that this is a Peoples' War, a war for freedom and justice and self-government amongst all the na- tions of the world, a war to make the world safe for the peoples who live upon it and have made it their own, the German people themselves in- cluded ; and that with us rests the choice to break through all these hypocrisies and patent cheats and masks of brute force and help set the world free, or else stand aside and let it be dominated a long age through by sheer weight of arms and the arbitrary choices of self-constituted masters, by the nation which can maintain the biggest armies and the most irresistible armaments, — a power to which the world has afforded no paral- 50 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS lei and in the face of which political freedom must whither and perish. For us there is but one choice. We have made it. Woe be to the man or group of men that seeks to stand in our way in this day of high resolution when every principle we hold dearest is to be vindicated and made secure for the sal- vation of the nations. We are ready to plead at the bar of history, and our flag shall wear a new lustre. Once more we shall make good with our lives and fortunes the great faith to which we were born, and a new glory shall shine in the face of our people. WHY DO WE FIGHT GERMANY? Hon. Franklin K. Lane, Secretary of the Interior Delivered before the Home Club, Interior Depart- ment, Washington, D. C, June 4th, 1917. WHY DO WE FIGHT GERMANY? Franklin K. Lane Tomorrow is registration day. It is the duty of all, their legal as well as their patriotic duty, to register if within the class called. There are some who have not clearly seen the reason for that call. To these I would speak a word. Why are we righting Germany? The brief answer is that ours is a war of self-defense. We did not wish to fight Germany. She made the attack upon us ; not on our shores, but on our ships, our lives, our rights, our future. For two years and more we held to a neutrality that made us apologists for things which outraged man's common sense of fair play and humanity. At each new offense — the invasion of Belgium, the kill- ing of civilian Belgians, the attacks on Scar- borough and other defenseless towns, the laying of mines in neutral waters, the fencing off of the seas — and on and on through the months we said : "This is war — archaic, uncivilized war, but war ! All rules have been thrown away ; all nobility ; man has come down to the primitive brute. And while we cannot justify we will not intervene. It is not our war." Then why are we in? Because we could not keep out. The invasion of Belgium, which opened the war, led to the invasion of the United 53 54 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS States by slow, steady, logical steps. Our sym- pathies evolved into a conviction of self-interest. Our love of fair play ripened into alarm at our own peril. We talked in the language and in the spirit of good faith and sincerity, as honest men should talk, until we discovered that our talk was con- strued as cowardice. And Mexico was called upon to cow us. We talked as men would talk who cared alone for peace and the advancement of their own material interests, until we discov- ered that we were thought to be a nation of mere money makers, devoid of all character — until, indeed, we are told that we could not walk the highways of the world without permis- sion of a Prussian soldier, that our ships might not sail without wearing a striped uniform of humiliation upon a narrow path of national sub- servience. We talked as men talk who hope for honest agreement, not for war, until we found that the treaty torn to pieces at Liege was but the symbol of a policy that made agreements worthless against a purpose that knew no word but success. And so we came into this war for ourselves. It is a war to save America — to preserve self- respect, to justify our right to live as we have lived, not as some one else wishes us to live. In THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 55 the name of freedom we challenge with ships and men, money, and an undaunted spirit, that word "Verboten" which Germany has written upon the sea and upon the land. For America is not the name of so much territory. It is a living- spirit, born in travail, grown in the rough school of bitter experiences, a living spirit which has purpose and pride and conscience — knows why it wishes to live and to what end, knows how it comes to be respected of the world, and hopes to retain that respect by living on with the light of Lincoln's love of man as its old and new testa- ment. It is more precious that this America should live than that we Americans should live. And this America as we now see has been chal- lenged from the first of this war by the strong arm of a power that has no sympathy with our purpose, and will not hesitate to destroy us if the law that we respect, the rights that are to us sacred, or the spirit that we have, stand across her set will to make this world bow before her policies, backed by her organized and scientific military system. The world of Christ — a neg- lected but not a rejected Christ — has come again face to face with the world of Mahomet, who> willed to win by force. With this background of history and in this sense, then we fight Germany^- 56 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS Because of Belgium — invaded, outraged, en- slaved, impoverished Belgium. We cannot for- get Liege, Louvain, and Cardinal Mercier. Trans- lated into terms of American history these names stand for Bunker Hill, Lexington, and Patrick Henry. Because of France — invaded, desecrated France, a million of whose heroic sons have died to save the land of LaFayette. Glorious golden France, the preserver of the arts, the land of noble spirit. The first land to follow our lead into republican liberty. Because of England — from whom came the laws, traditions, standards of life, and inherent love of liberty which we call Anglo-Saxon civil- ization. We defeated her once upon the land and once upon the sea. But Australia, New Zealand, Africa, and Canada are free because of what we did. And they are with us in the fight for the freedom of the seas. Because of Russia — New Russia. She must not be overwhelmed now. Not now, surely, when she is just born into freedom. Her peasants must have their chance ; they must go to school to Washington, to Jefferson, and to Lincoln, until they know their way about in the new, strange world, of government by the popular will. THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 57 Because of other peoples, with their rising- hope that the world may be freed from govern- ment by the soldier. We are fighting Germany because she sought to terrorize us and then to fool us. We could not believe that Germany would do what she said she would do upon the seas. We still hear the piteous cries of children coming up out of the sea where the Lusitania went down. And Germany has never asked for- giveness of the world. We saw the Sussex sunk, crowded with the sons and daughters of neutral nations. We saw ship after ship sent to the bottom — ships of mercy bound out of America for the Belgian starving; ships carrying the Red Cross and laden with the wounded of all nations ; ships carrying food and clothing to friendly, harmless, terrorized peoples ; ships flying the Stars and Stripes — sent to the bottom hundreds of miles from shore, manned by American seamen, mur- dered against all law, without warning. We believed Germany's promise that she would respect the neutral flag and the rights of neu- trals, and v/e held our anger and outrage in check. But now we see that she was holding us off with fair promises until she could build her hugh fleet of submarines. For when spring 58 ' THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS came she blew her promise into the air, just as at the beginning she had torn up that "scrap of paper." Then we saw clearly that there was but one law for Germany — her will to rule. We are fighting Germany because she violated our confidence. Paid German spies filled our cities. Officials of her Government, received as the guests of this Nation, lived with us to bribe and terrorize, defying our law and the law of nations. We are fighting Germany because while we were yet her friends — the only great power that still held hands off"— she sent the Zimmermann note, calling to her aid Mexico, our southern neighbor, and hoping to lure Japan, our western neighbor, into war against this Nation of peace. The nation that would do these things pro- claims the gospel that government has no con- science. And this doctrine cannot live, or else •democracy must die. For the nations of the world must keep faith. There can be no living for us in a world where the state has no con- science, no reverence for the things of the spirit, no respect for international law, no mercy for those who fall before its force. What an unor- dered world! Anarchy! The anarchy of rival wolf packs ! We are fighting Germany because in this war THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 59 feudalism is making its last stand against on- coming democracy. We see it now. This is a war against an old spirit, an ancient, outworn spirit. It is a war against feudalism — the right of the castle on the hill to rule the village below. It is a war for democracy — the right of all to be their own masters. Let Germany be feudal if she will, but she must not spread her system over a world that has outgrown it. Feudalism plus science, thirteenth century plus twentieth — this is the religion of the mistaken Germany that has linked itself with the Turk, that has, too, adopted the method of Mahomet. "The state has no conscience." "The state can do no wrong." With the spirit of the fanatic she believes this gospel and that it is her duty to spread it by force. With poison gas that makes living a hell, with submarines that sneak through the seas to slyly murder noncombatants, with dirigibles that bombard men and women while they sleep, with a perfected system of terroriza- tion that the modern world first heard of when German troops entered China, German feudal- ism is making war upon mankind. Let this old spirit of evil have its way and no man will live in America without paying toll to it in manhood and in money. This spirit might de- mand Canada from a defeated, navyless Eng- 60 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS land, and then our dream of peace on the north would be at an end. We would live, as France has lived for 40 years, in haunting terror. America speaks for the world in fighting Ger- many. Mark on a map those countries which are Germany's allies and you will mark but four, running from the Baltic through Austria and Bulgaria to Turkey. All the other nations the whole globe around are in arms against her or are unable to move. There is deep meaning in this. We fight with the world for an honest world in which nations keep their word, for a world in which nations do not live by swagger or by threat, for a world in which men think of the ways in which they can conquer the common cruelties of nature instead of inventing more horrible cruelties to inflict upon the spirit and body of man, for a world in which the ambition or the philosophy of a few shall not make miser- able all mankind, for a world in which the man is held more precious than the machine, the sys- tem, or the state. ADDRESS TO THE RESERVE OFFICERS* TRAINING CORPS Hon. Robert Lansing, Secretary of State Delivered at Madison Barracks, New York, July 29th, 1927 ADDRESS TO THE RESERVE OFFICERS' TRAINING CORPS Robert Lansing Gentlemen: It is an opportunity which I greatly appreciate to be here this evening and to say a few words to you about the great enter- prise in which you are to be participants. There are so many things to be said, so many view- points, that it is hard to know how to deal with the subject in a way that will appeal to the greatest number. First, we must all realize that we are living in the most momentous time in all history, in a time when the lives and destinies of nations are in the balance, when even the civilization, which has taken centuries to build, may crumble before the terrible storm which is sweeping over Europe. We are not only living in this critical period but we, as a nation, have become a par- ticipant in the struggle. Having cast our lot on the side of the powers allied against the Imperial German Government we will put behind our de- cision, the full power and the resources of the Republic. We intend to win in this mighty conflict, and we will win because our cause is the cause of justice and of right and of humanity. 63 64 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS I wonder how many of us comprehend what the outcome of this war means to mankind, or, to bring it nearer to each one of us, what it means to our country. I sometimes think that there prevail very erroneous impressions as to the reasons why we entered the war, not the immediate reasons, but the deep underlying rea- sons which affect the life and future of the United States and of all other liberty-loving na- tions throughout the world. Of course the immediate cause of our war against Germany was the announced purpose of the German Government to break its promises as to indiscriminate submarine warfare and the subsequent renewal of that ruthless method of destruction with increased vigor and brutality. While this cause was in itself sufficient to force us to enter the war if we would preserve our self-respect, the German Government's deliberate breach of faith and its utter disregard of right and life had a far deeper meaning, a meaning which had been growing more evident as the war had progressed and which needed but this act of perfidy to bring it home to all thinking Ameri- cans. The evil character of the German Govern- ment is laid bare before the world. We know now that that Government is inspired with am- bitions which menace human liberty, and that THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 65 to gain its end it does not hesitate to break faith, to violate the most sacred rights, or to prepetrate intolerable acts of inhumanity. It needed but the words reported to have been uttered by the German Chancellor to complete the picture of the character of his Government when he announced that the only reason why the intensified submarine campaign was delayed until February last was that sufficient submarines could not be built before that time to make the attacks on commerce effective. Do you realize that this means, if it means anything, that the promises to refrain from brutal submarine war- fare, which Germany had made to the United States, were never intended to be kept, that they were only made in order to gain time in which to build more submarines, and that when the time came to act the German promises were un- hesitatingly torn to pieces like other "scraps of paper" ? It is this disclosure of the character of the Imperial German Government which is the under- lying cause of our entry into the war. We had doubted, or at least many Americans had doubted, the evil purposes of the rulers of Germany. Doubt remained no longer. In the light of events we could read the past and see that for a quarter of a century the absorbing ambition of the mili- 66 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS tary oligarchy which was the master of the Ger- man Empire was for world dominion. Every agency in the fields of commerce, industry, science and diplomacy had been directed by the German Government to this supreme end. Phil- osophers and preachers taught that the destiny of Germany was to rule the world, thus preparing the mind of the German people for the time when the mighty engine which the German Govern- ment had constructed should crush all opposition and the German Emperor should rule supreme. For nearly three years we have watched the conduct of the Imperial Government, and we have learned more and more of the character of that Government and of its aims. We came very slowly to a realizing sense that not only was the freedom of the European nations at stake, but the liberty throughout the world was threat- ened by the powerful autocracy which was seek- ing to gratify its vast ambition. Not impulsively, but with deliberation, the American people reached the only decision which was possible from the standpoint of their own national safety. Congress declared that a state of war existed between the United States and the Imperial Government of Germany, and this coun- try united with the other liberal nations of the earth to crush the power which sought to erect THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 67 on the ruins of democracy a world empire greater than that of Greece or Rome of the Caliphs. The President has said, with the wonderful ability which he has to express aptly a great thought in a single phrase that "the world must be made safe for democracy.'' In that thought there is more than the establishment of liberty and self-government for all nations, there is in it the hope of an enduring peace. I do not know in the annals of history an instance where a people, with truly democratic institutions, permitted their government to wage a war of aggression, a war of conquest. Faithful to their treaties, sympathetic with others seeking self-development, real democracies, whether mon- archical or republican in their forms of govern- ment, desire peace with their neighbors and with all mankind. Were every people on earth able to express their will there would be no wars of aggression, and if there were no wars of aggression then there would be no wars, and lasting peace would come to this earth. The only way that a people can express their will is through democratic in- stitutions. Therefore, when the world is made safe for democracy, when that great principle •68 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS prevails, universal peace will be an accomplished fact. No nation or people will benefit more than the United States when that time comes. But it has not yet come. A great people, ruled in thought and word, as well as in deed, by the most sin- ister government of modern times, is straining ■every nerve to supplant democracy by the au- tocracy which they have been taught to worship. When will the German people awaken to the truth? When will they arise in their might and cast off the yoke and become their own masters ? I fear that it will not be until a physical might of the united democracies of the world have destroyed forever the evil ambition of the military rulers of Germany, and liberty triumphs over its arch enemies. And yet in spite of these truths which have been brought to light in these last three years I wonder how many Americans feel that our democracy is in peril, that our liberty needs pro- tection, that the United States is in real danger from the malignant forces which are seeking to impose their will upon the world, as they have upon Germany and her deceived allies. Let us understand once for all that this is no war to establish an abstract principle of right. It is a war in which the future of the United THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 69 States is at stake. If any among you have the idea that we are fighting others' battles and not our own, the sooner he gets away from that idea the better it will be for him, the better it will be for all of us. Imagine Germany victor in Europe because the United States remained neutral. Who, then, think you, would be the next victim of those who are seeking to be masters of the whole earth? Would not this country with its enormous wealth arouse the cupidity of an impoverished though triumphant Germany? Would not this democ- racy be the only obstacle between the autocratic rulers of Germany and their supreme ambition? Do you think that they would withhold their hand from so rich a prize? Let me then ask you, would it be easier or wiser for this country single-handed to resist a German Empire, flushed with victory and with great armies and navies at its command, than to unite with the brave enemies of that Empire in ending now and for all time this menace to our future ? Primarily, then, every man who crosses the ocean to fight on foreign soil against the armies of the German Emperor goes forth to fight for his country and for the preservation of those things for which our forefathers were willing to 70 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS die. To those who thus offer themselves we owe the same debt that we owe to those men who in the past fought on American soil in the cause of liberty. No, not the same debt, but a greater one. It calls for more patriotism, more self- denial, and a truer vision to wage war on distant shores than to repel an invader or defend one's home. I, therefore, congratulate you, young men, in your choice of service. You have done a splendid thing. You have earned already the gratitude of your countrymen and of generations of Americans to come. Your battle flags will become the cherished trophies of a nation which will never forget those who bore them in the cause of liberty. I know that some among you may consider that the idea that Germany would attack us, if she won this war, to be improbable ; but let him who doubts remember that the improbable, yes, the impossible, has been happening in this war from the beginning. If you had been told prior to August, 1914, that the German Government would disregard its solemn treaties and send its armies into Belgium, would wantonly burn Lou- vain, would murder defenseless people, would extort ransoms from conquered cities, would carry away men and women into slavery, would like vandals of old, destroy some of history's THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 71 most cherished monuments, and would with ma- licious purpose lay waste the fairest fields of France and Belgium, you would have indignantly denied the possibility. You would have exclaimed that Germans, lovers of art and learning, would never permit such foul deeds. Today you know that the unbelievable has happened, that all these crimes have been committed, not under the im- pulse of passion but under official orders. Again, if you had been told before the war that German submarine commanders would sink peaceful vessels of commerce and send to sudden death men, women, and little children, you would have declared such scientific brutality to be im- possible. Or if you had been told that German aviators would fly over thickly populated cities, scattering missiles of death and destruction, with no other purpose than to terrorize the innocent inhabitants, you would have denounced the very thought, as unworthy of belief and as a calumny upon German honor. Yet, God help us, these things have come to pass, and iron crosses have rewarded the perpetrators. But there is more, far more, which might be added to this record of unbelievable things which the German Government has done. I only need to mention the attempt of the Foreign Office at Berlin to bribe Mexico to make war upon us by 72 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS promising her American territory. It was only one of many intrigues which the German Gov- ernment was carrying on in many lands. Spies and conspirators were sent throughout the world. Civil discord was encouraged to weaken the po- tential strength of nations which might be ob- stacles to the lust of Germany's rulers for world mastery. Those of German blood who owed allegiance to other countries were appealed to to support the Fatherland, which beloved name masked the military clique at Berlin. Some day I hope that the whole tale may be told. It will be an astounding tale indeed. But enough has been told, so that there no longer remains the shadow of a doubt as to the character of Germany's rulers, of their amazing ambition for world empire, and of their intense hatred for democracy. The day has gone by when we can measure possibilities by past experiences or when we be- lieve that any physical obstacle is so great or any moral influence is so potent as to cause the German autocracy to abandon its mad purpose of world conquest. It was the policy of those, who plotted and made ready for the time to accomplish the desire of the German rulers, to lull into false security the great nations which they intended to subdue, THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 73 so that when the storm broke they would be unprepared. How well they succeeded you know. But democracy no longer sleeps. It is fully awake to the menace which threatens it. The American people, trustful and friendly, were re- luctant to believe that imperialism again threat- ened the peace and liberty of the world. Con- viction came to them at last, and with it prompt action. The American Nation arrayed itself with the other great democracies of the earth against the genius of evil which broods over the destinies of Central Europe. No thought of material gain and no thought of material loss impelled this action. Inspired by the highest motives, American manhood pre- pared to risk all for the right. I am proud of my country. I am proud of my countrymen. I am proud of our national character. With lofty purpose, with patriotic fervor, with intense earn- estness the American democracy has drawn the sword, which it will not sheathe until the baneful forces of absolutism go down defeated and broken. Who can longer doubt — and there have been many who have doubted in these critical days — the power of that eternal spirit of freedom which lives in every true American heart? My friends, I am firmly convinced that the 74 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS independence of no nation is safe, that the liberty of no individual is sure, until the military despot- ism which holds the German people in the hollow of its hand has been made impotent and harmless forever. Appeals to justice, to moral obligation, to honor, no longer avail with such a power. There is but one way to restore peace to the world and that is by overcoming the physical might of German imperialism by force of arms. For its own safety as well as for the cause of human liberty this great Republic is marshaling its armies and preparing with all its vigor to aid in ridding Germany, as well as the world, of the most ambitious and most unprincipled autocracy which has arisen to stay the wheels of progress and imperil Christian civilization. It is to this great cause you, who are present here tonight, like thousands of other loyal Americans, have dedicated yourselves. Upon each one of you much depends. You are going forth into foreign lands, not only as guardians of the flag of your country and of the liberties of your countrymen, but as guardians of the national honor of the United States. American character will be judged by your conduct ; Ameri- can spirit, by your deeds. As you maintain your- selves courageously and honorably, so will you bring glory to the flag which we all love as the THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 75 emblem of our national unity and independence. I know that it is unnecessary to emphasize the responsibilities which will rest upon you as you lead the men under your command. To their officers they will look for guidance and example not only in the battle line, but in the camp and on the march. Your responsibilities are great. As you meet them so will your services be meas- ured by your country. It is in the toil and danger of so great an ad- venture as you are soon to experience that a man's true character will become manifest. He will be brought face to face with the realities. The little things which once engrossed his thought and called forth his energies will be forgotten in the stern events of his new life. The sternness of it all will not deprive him of the satisfaction which comes from doing his best. As he found gratification and joy in the peaceful pursuits of the old life, so will he find a deeper gratification and greater joy in serving his country loyally and doing his part in molding the future aright. And, when your task is completed, when the grim days of battle are over and you return once more to the quiet life of your profession or occu- pation, which you have so generously abandoned at your country's call, you will find in the grati- 76 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS tude of your countrymen an ample reward for the great sacrifice which you have made. If enthusiasm and ardor can make success sure, then we, Americans, have no cause for anxiety, no reason to doubt the outcome of the conflict. But enthusiasm and ardor are not all. They must be founded on a profound conviction of the righteousness of our cause and on an implicit faith that the God of Battles will strengthen the arm of him who rights for the right. In the time of stress and peril, when a man stands face to face with death and its most terrible forms, God will not desert him who puts his trust in Him. It is at such a time that the eternal verities wilL be disclosed. It is then, when you realize that existence is more than this life and that over our destinies watches an all-powerful and com- passionate God, you will stand amidst the storm of battle unflinching and unafraid. There is no higher praise that can be be- stowed upon a soldier of the Republic than to say that he served his country faithfully, and trusted in his God. Such I hope will be the praise which each one of you will be entitled to when peace returns to this suffering earth, and mankind rejoices that the world is made safe for democracy. A TRIBUTE TO AMERICA Hon. Herbert Henry Asquith, Formerly Prime Minister of Great Britain Delivered in House of Parliament, April 17th, 1917 A TRIBUTE TO AMERICA Herbert Henry Asquith It is only right and fitting that this House, the chief representative body of the British Empire, should at the, earliest possible opportunity give definite and emphatic expression to the feelings which throughout the length and breadth of the Empire have grown day by day in volume and fervor since the memorable decision of the Presi- dent and Congress of the United States. I doubt whether, even now, the world realizes the full significance of the step America has taken. I do not use language of flattery or exaggeration when I say it is one of the most disinterested acts in history. For more than 100 years it has been the cardinal principle of American policy to keep clear of foreign entanglements. A war such as this must necessarily dislocate interna- tional commerce and finance, but on the balance it was doing little appreciable harm to the ma- terial fortunes and prosperity of the American people. What, then, has enabled the President — after waiting with the patience which Pitt described as the first virtue of statesmanship — to carry with him a united nation into the hazards and horrors of the greatest war in history? Not calculation of material gain, not hope of 79 80 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS territorial aggrandizement, not even the pricking of one of those so-called points of honor which in days gone by have driven nations, as they used to drive individuals, to the duelling ground. It was the constraining force* of conscience and humanity, growing in strength and compul- sive authority month by month, with the gradual unfolding of the real character of German aims and methods. It was that force alone which brought home to the great democracy overseas the momentous truth that they were standing at the parting ways. The American nation had to make one of those great decisions which in the lives of men and nations determine for good or ill their whole future. What was it that our kinsmen in America realized as the issue in this unexampled conflict? The very things which, if we are worthy of our best traditions, we are bound to vindicate — essen- tial conditions of free and honorable development of the nations of the" world, humanity, respect for law, consideration for the weak and unpro- tected, chivalry toward mankind, observance of good faith — these things, which we used to regard as commonplaces of international decency, one after another have been flouted, menaced, trodden under foot, as though they were effete supersti- tions of a bygone creed. THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 81 America sees in this clear issue something of wider import than the vicissitudes of the battle- fields, or even of a rearrangement of the map of Europe on the basis of nationality. The whole future of civilized government and intercourse, in particular the fortunes and faith of democracy, has been brought into peril. In such a situation aloofness is seen to be not only a blunder, but a crime. To stand aside with stopped ears, with folded arms, with averted gaze, when you have the power to intervene, is to become not a mere spectator, but an accom- plice. There was never in the minds of any of us a fear that the moment the issue became apparent and unmistakable the voice of America would not be heard. She has now dedicated herself without hesitation or reserve, heart and soul and strength, to the greatest of causes, to which, stimulated and fortified by her comradeship, we here renew our fealty and devotion. THE OLDEST FREE ASSEMBLIES Right Honorable Arthur James Balfour, For- merly Prime Minister of Great Britain, Head of the British Mission to the United States. Delivered in the United States House of Represen- tatives, May 5th, 1917. THE OLDEST FREE ASSEMBLIES Arthur James Balfour Mr. Speaker, Ladies and Gentlemen of the House of Representatives: Will you permit me on behalf of my friends and myself, to offer you my deepest and sincerest thanks for the rare and valued honor which you have done us by re- ceiving us here today? We all feel the greatness of this honor; but I think to none of us can it come home so closely as to one who, like myself, has been for 43 years in the service of a free assembly like your own. I rejoice to think that a member — a very old member, I am sorry to say — of the British House of Commons has been received here today by this great sister assembly with such kindness as you have shown to me and to my friends. Ladies and gentlemen, these two assemblies are the greatest and the oldest of the free assem- blies now governing great nations in the world. The history indeed of the two is very different. The beginnings of the British House of Com- mons go back to a dim historic past, and its full rights and status have only been conquered and permanently secured after centuries of political struggle. Your fate has been a happier one. You were called into existence at a much later stage of 85 86 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS social development. You came into being com- plete and perfected and all your powers deter- mined, and your place in the Constitution secured beyond chance of revolution ; but, though the his- tory of these two great assemblies is different,, each of them represents the great democratic prin- ciple to which we look forward as the security for the future peace of the world. All of the free assemblies now to be found governing the great nations of the earth have been modeled either upon your practice or upon ours or upon both combined. Mr. Speaker, the compliment paid to the mis- sion from Great Britain by such an assembly and upon such an occasion is one not one of us is ever likely to forget. But there is something, after all, even deeper and more significant in the circumstances under which I now have the honor to address you than any which arise out of the interchange of courtesies, however sincere, be- tween the great and friendly nations. We all, I think, feel instinctively that this is one of the great moments in the history of the world, and that what is now happening on both sides of the Atlantic represents the drawing to- gether of great and free peoples for mutual pro- tection against the aggression of military des- potism. THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 87 I am not one of those, and none of you are among those, who are such bad democrats as to say that democracies make no mistakes. All free assemblies have made blunders: sometimes they have committed crimes. Why is it, then, that we look forward to the spread of free institutions throughout the world, and especially among our present enemies, as one of the greatest guaranties of the future peace of the world? I will tell you, gentlemen, how it seems to me. It is quite true that the people and the representatives of the people may be betrayed by some momentary gust of passion into a policy which they ultimately deplore ; but it is only a military despotism of the German type which can, through generations if need be, pursue steadily, remorselessly, unscrupulously, the ap- palling object of dominating the civilization of mankind. And, mark you, this evil, this menace under which we are now suffering, is not one which diminishes with the growth of knowledge and the progress of material civilization, but, on the contrary, it increases with them. When I was young we used to flatter our- selves that progress inevitably meant peace, and that growth of knowledge was always accompa- nied, as its natural fruit, by the growth of good- 88 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS will among the nations of the earth. Unhappily, we know better now, and we know there is such a thing in the world as a power which can with unvarying persistency focus all the resources of knowledge and of civilization into the one great task of making itself the moral and material master of the world. It is against that danger that we, the free peoples of western civilization, have banded our- selves together. It is in that great cause that we are going to fight, and are now fighting this very moment side by side. In that cause we shall surely conquer, and our children will look back to this fateful date as the one day from which democracies can feel secure that their progress, their civilization, their rivalry, if need be, will be conducted, not on German lines, but in that friendly and Christian spirit which really befits the age in which we live. Mr. Speaker, ladies and gentlemen, I beg most sincerely to r epeat again how heartily I thank you for the cordial welcome which you have given us today, and to repeat my profound sense of the significance of this unique meeting, GREETINGS TO AMERICA M. Alexandre Felix Joseph Ribot, President of the French Council Delivered in the Chamber of Deputies, April 6th, 1917 GREETINGS TO AMERICA Alexandre Felix Joseph Ribot Before the Chamber adjourns the Government asks it to address a cordial greeting to the great Republic of the United States. You have read the admirable message of Presi- dent Wilson. We all feel that something great, which exceeds the proportions of a political event, has been accomplished. It is an historic fact of unequalled importance — this entry into the war on the side of us and our allies by the most peaceful democracy in the world. After having done everything to affirm its attachment to peace, the great Amer- ican nation declares solemnly that it cannot remain neutral in this immense conflict between right and violence, between civilization and barbarism. It holds that honor requires it to take up the defiance flung at all rules of inter- national law so laboriously built up by the civil- ized nations. It declares at the same time that it is not fight- ing for self-interest, desires neither conquest nor compensation, intends only to help toward a vic- tory of the cause of law and liberty. The grandeur, the nobility, of this action is en- hanced by the simplicity and serenity of the lan- 93 92 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS guage of the illustrous leader of the great dem- ocracy. If the world had entertained the least doubt of the profound meaning of this war in which we are engaged, the message of the President of the United States would dissipate all obscurity. It makes apparent to all that the struggle is verily a struggle between the liberal spirit of modern societies and the spirit of oppression of societies still enslaved to military despotism. It is for this reason that the message rings in the depths of all hearts like a message of deliverance to the world. The people which, under the inspiration of the writings of our philosophers, declared its rights in the eighteenth century, the people who place Washington and Lincoln foremost among their heroes, the people who in the last century suffered a civil war for the abolition of slavery, were indeed worthy to give such an example to the world. Thus they remain faithful to the traditions of the founders of their independence and demon- strate that the enormous rise of their industrial strength and of their economic and financial power has not weakened in them that need for an ideal without which there can be no great action. What touches us particularly is that the United THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 93 States has held to the friendship which at an earlier time was ratified in blood. We bear wit- ness with grateful joy to ihe enduring sympathy between the peoples, which is one of the delicate virtues the bosom of a democracy can nourish. The Star-Spangled Banner and the Tri-Color will fly side by side; our hands will join; our hearts beat in unison. This will mean for us, after so much suffering, heroically borne, so many bereavements, so many ruins, a renewal of the sentiments which have animated and sus- tained us during this long trial. The powerful, decisive aid which the United States brings us is not only a material aid; it will be especially moral aid, a real consolation. Seeing the conscience of peoples everywhere in the world awake and rise in an immense protest against the atrocities of which we are the victims, we feel more keenly that we are fighting not only for ourselves and for our allies, but for something immortal, and that we are laying the foundations of a new order. Thus our sacrifices will not have been in vain ; the generous blood poured out by the sons of France will have sowed fertile seeds in the ideas of justice and of liberty funda- mentally necessary to concord between nations. In the name of the whole country, the govern- ment of the French Republic addresses to the 9 4 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS government and people of the United States, with The expression of its gratitude, its warmest good wishes. THE HARVEST OF JUSTICE M. Paul Dechanel, President of the French Chamber of Deputies Delivered in the Chamber of Deputies, April 6th, 1917 THE HARVEST OF JUSTICE Paul Dechanel The French Chamber greets with enthusiasm the verdict of the President of the Republic of the United States, who has indeed spoken for justice, and the vigorous decision of the Federal Senate accepting the war imposed by Germany. yEchylus says in "The Persians" : "When insolence takes root, it grows into crime ; the harvest is suffering." And we can say: "The growth of the crime brings vengeance; after the harvest of suffering comes the harvest of justice!" The cry of the women and children from the depths of the abyss where hideous wickedness flung them echoed from one end of the earth to the other. Washington and Lincoln trembled in their graves; their great spirit has roused America. And is it a question only of avenging Ameri- cans? Is it a question only of punishing the violation of treaties signed by the United States ? No ; the eternal truths proclaimed in the Declara- tion in 1776, the sacred causes which LaFayette and Rochambeau defended, the ideal of pure con- sciences from which the Great Republic was born — honor, morality, liberty- — these are the supreme 97 98 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS values which shine in the folds of the Star-Span- gled Banner. Descendants of the Puritans of New England, brought up on the precepts of the Gospel, and who under the eyes of God are about to punish the infernal creation of evil, falsehood, perjury, assassination, profanation, rape, slavery, martyr- dom, and all kinds of disasters ; Catholics struck to the heart by curses against their religion, by outrages against their cathedrals and statues, reaching a climax in the destruction of Louvain and Rheims; university professors, trustworthy guardians of law and learning; industrialists of the East and Middle West, farmers and agricul- turists of the West ; workmen and artisans, threatened by the torpedoing of vessels, by the interruption of commerce, revolted by the insults to their national colors — all are arrayed against the mad arrogance which would enslave the earth, the sea, the heavens, and the souls of men. At a time when, as in the heroic times of the American Revolution, the Americans are to fight with us, let us repeat once more : We wish to prevent no one from living, working, and trading freely, but the tyranny of Prussia has become a peril for the New World as for the Old, for England as for Russia, for Italy as for Austria, and for Germany itself. To free the world, by THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 99 a common effort of all democratic peoples, from the yoke of a feudal and military caste in order to found peace upon right, is a work of human deliverance and universal good. In accomplishing, under an administration henceforth immortal, the greatest act in its annals since the abolition of slavery, the glorious nation whose whole history is but a development of the idea of liberty remains true to its lofty origin and creates for itself another claim to the grati- tude of mankind. The French Republic, across the ruins of its cities and its monuments, devastated without rea- son or excuse by shameful savagery, sends to its beloved sister Republic in America the palms of the Marne, the Yser, and of Verdun and the Somme, to which new victories will soon be added. OUR HERITAGE OF LIBERTY M. Rene Viviani, Former Prime Minister and Minister of Justice of France, President of the French Mission to the United States Delivered before the Senate of the United States, May 1st, 1917 OUR HERITAGE OF LIBERTY Rene Viviani Mr. President and Senators : Since I have been granted the supreme honor of speaking before the ; representatives of the American people, may I ask them first to allow me to thank this magnifi- cent Capital for the welcome it has accorded us? Accustomed as we are in our own free land to popular manifestations, and though we had been warned by your fellow-countrymen who live in Paris of the enthusiasm burning in your hearts, we are still full of the emotion raised by the sights that awaited us. I shall never cease to see the proud and stalwart men who saluted our passage ; your women, ^vhose grace adds fresh beauty to your city, their arms outstretched, full of flowers ; and your chil- dren hurrying to meet us as if our coming were looked upon as a lesson for them — all with one accord acclaiming in our perishable persons im- mortal France. And I predict there will be a yet grander mani- festation on the day when your illustrious Presi- dent, relieved from the burden of power, will come among us bearing the salute of the Republic of the United States to a free Europe, whose foundations from end to end shall be based on Right. 103 104 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS It is with unspeakable emotion that we crossed the threshold of this legislative palace, where prudence and boldness meet, and that I for the first time in the annals of America, though a foreigner, speak in this hall which only a few days since resounded with the words of virile force. You have set all the democracies of the world the most magnificent example. So soon as the common peril was made manifest to you, with simplicity and within a few short days you voted a formidable war credit and proclaimed that a formidable army was to be raised. President Wilson's commentary on his acts, which you made yours, remains in the history of free peoples the weightiest of lessons. Doubtless you were resolved to avenge the insults offered your flag, which the whole world respected ; doubtless through the thickness of these massive walls the mournful cry of all the victims that criminal hands hurled into the depths of the sea has reached and stirred your souls ; but it will be your honor in history that you also heard the cry of humanity and invoked against autocracy the right of democracies. And I can only wonder as I speak what, if they still have any power to think, are the thoughts of the autocrats who three years ago against us, THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 105 three months ago against you, unchained this con- flict. Ah ! doubtless they said among themselves that a democracy is an ideal government ; that it showers reforms on mankind ; that it can in the domain of labor quicken all economic activities. And yet now we see the French Republic fighting in defense of its territory and the liberty of na- tions and opposing to the avalanche let loose by the Prussian militarism the union of all its chil- dren, who are still capable of striking many a weighty blow. And now we see England, far removed like you from conscription, who has also, by virtue of a discipline all accept, raised from her soil millions of fighting men. And we see other na- tions accomplishing the same act ; and that liberty not only inflames all hearts, but co-ordinates and brings into being all needed efforts. And now we see all America rise and sharpen her weapons in the midst of peace for the com- mon struggle. Together we w r ill carry on that struggle, and when by force we have at last imposed military victory our labors will not be concluded. Our task will be — I quote the noble words of President Wilson — to organize the society of nations. I well know that our enemies, who have never 106 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS seen before them anything but horizons of carn- age, will never cease to jeer at so noble a design. Such has always been the fate of great ideas at their birth ; and if thinkers and men of action had allowed themselves to be discouraged by skeptics, mankind would still be in its infancy and we should still be slaves. After material victory we will win this moral victory. We will shatter the ponderous sword of mili- tarism; we will establish guaranties for peace; and then we can disappear from the world's stage, since we shall leave at the cost of our common immolation the noblest heritage future genera- tions can possess. I THEIR MONUMENT IN OUR HEARTS M. Rene Viviani Delivered before the Tomb of Washington, April 29th, 1917 THEIR MONUMENT IN OUR HEARTS Rene Viviani We could not remain longer in Washington without accomplishing this pious pilgrimage. In this spot lies all that is mortal of a great hero. Close by this spot is the modest abode where Washington rested after the tremendous labor of achieving for a nation its emancipation. In this spot meet the admiration of the whole world and the veneration of the American people. In this spot rise before us the glorious memories left by the soldiers of France led by Rochambeau and LaFayette ; a descendant of the latter, my friend, M. de Chambrun, accompanies us. And I esteem it a supreme honor, as well as a satisfaction for my conscience, to be entitled to render this homage to our ancestors in the pres- ence of my colleague and friend, Mr. Balfour, who so nobly represents his great nation. By thus coming to lay here the respectful tribute of every English mind he shows, in this historic moment of communion which France has willed, what nations that live for liberty can do. When we contemplate in the distant past the luminous presence of Washington, in nearer times the majestic figure of Abraham Lincoln; when we respectfully salute President Wilson, the worthy heir of these great memories, we at one 109 HO THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS glance measure the vast career of the American people. It is because the American people proclaimed and won for the nation the right to govern itself, it is because it proclaimed and won the equality of all men, that the free American people at the hour marked by fate had been enabled with com- manding force to carry its action beyond the seas ; it is because it was resolved to extend its action still further that Congress was enabled to obtain within the space of a few days the vote of con- scription and to proclaim the necessity for a na- tional army in the full splendor of civil peace. In the name of France, I salute the young army which will share in our common glory. While paying this supreme tribute to the memory of Washington, I do not diminish the effect of my words when I turn my thought to the memory of so many unnamed heroes. I ask you before this tomb to bow in earnest meditation and all the fervor of piety before all the soldiers of the allied nations who for nearly three years have been fighting under dif- ferent flags for some ideal. I beg you to address the homage of your hearts and souls to all the heroes, born to live in happiness, in the tranquil pursuit of their la- bors, in the enjoyment of all human affections, THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 111 who went into battle with virile cheerfulness and gave themselves up, not to death alone, but to the eternal silence that closes over those whose sacrifices remain unnamed, in the full knowledge that, save for those who loved them, their names would disappear with their bodies. Their monument is in our hearts. Not the living alone greet us here ; the ranks of the dead themselves rise to surround the soldiers of liberty. At this solemn hour in the history of the world, while saluting from this sacred mound the final victory of justice, I send to the Republic of the United States the greetings of the French Re- public. TO THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTA- TIVES M. Rene Viviani Address delivered before the House of Representa- tives oi the United States, May 3rd, 1917 TO THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES Rene Viviani Gentlemen: Once more, my fellow country- men and I are admitted to the honour of being present at a sitting in a legislative Chamber. May I be permitted to express our emotion at this solemn derogation against rules more than a century old, and, so far as my own person is con- cerned, may I say that, as a member of Parlia- ment accustomed for twenty years to the passions and storms which sweep through political assem- blies, I appreciate more than any one at this moment the supreme joy of being near this chair, which is in such a commanding position that however feeble may be the voice that speaks thence, it is heard over the whole world. Gentlemen, I will not thank you; not because our gratitude fails, but because new words to express it fail. No, I do not thank you for your welcome. We all felt, my companions and my- self, that the manifestations which rose toward our persons came not only from your lips. We felt that you were not merely fulfilling the obliga- tions of international courtesy. Suddenly, in all its charming intimacy, the complexity of the American soul was revealed to us. When one meets an American, one is supposed to meet a practical man, merely a practical man, 115 116 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS caring only for business, only interested in busi- ness. But when at certain hours in private life one studies the American soul, one discovers at the same time how fresh and delicate it is; and when at certain moments of public life one con- siders the soul of the Nation, then one sees all the force of the ideals that rise from it: so that this American people, in its perfect balance, is at once practical and sentimental, a realizer and a dreamer, and is always ready to place its practical qualities at the disposal of ifs puissant thoughts. And see, gentlemen, what a glorious compari- son, to our profit, to yours also, we can establish between our enemies and us. Entrusted with a mandate from a free people we came among free men to compare our ideas, to exchange our views, to measure the whole extent of the problems raised by this war. And all the allied nations, simply because they repose on demo- cratic institutions, through their governments meet in the same lofty region, on equal terms, in full liberty. I well know that at this very hour, in the Central Empire, there is an absolute monarch who binds to his will by vassal links of steel other peoples. It has been said this was a sign of strength: it is only a derisive appearance of strength. And in truth, only a few weeks ago, THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS \\7 on the eve of the day when outraged America was about to rise in its force, on the morrow of the day when the Russian revolution, faithful to its alliance, called at once its soldiers to arms and its people to independence, this absolute mon- arch was seen to totter on the steps of his throne, as he felt the first breath of the tempest pass over his crown. And he bent toward his people in humiliation, and in order to win its sympathy borrowed from free peoples their highest insti- tutions and promised his subjects universal suf- frage. Here, as in the crucial hours of our history, as in these of yours, it is liberty which clears the way for our soldiers. We are all now united in our common effort for civilization, for right. The day before yesterday, in a public meeting at which I was present, I heard one of your great- est orators say with deep emotion : "It has been sworn on the tomb of Washington." And I understood the full emotion and import of those words. If Washington could rise from his tomb, if from his sacred mound he could view the world as it now is, shrunk to smaller proportions by the lessening of material and moral distances, and the increase of every kind of communication be- tween men, he would feel his labors are not yet concluded ; and that, just as a man of superior and 118 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS powerful mind has a debt to all other men, so a superior and powerful nation owes a debt to other nations ; after establishing its own independence it must aid others to maintain their independence or to conquer it. This is the mysterious logic of history which President Wilson so marvelously understood, thanks to a mind as vigorous as it is subtle, as capable of analysis as it is of synthesis, of minute observation followed by swift action. It has been sworn on the tomb of Washington. It has been sworn on the tomb of our allied sol- diers, fallen in a sacred cause ! It has been sworn by the bedside of our wounded men ! It has been sworn on the heads of our orphan children ! It has been sworn on cradles and on tombs ! It has been sworn! TRIBUTE TO LINCOLN M. Rene Viviani Delivered before the Illinois State Legislature, Springfield, Illinois, May 7th, 1917 TRIBUTE TO LINCOLN Rene Viviani Gentlemen and Ladies: Before coming here we went to the field of silence to lay quick-fading flowers on the immor- tal tomb of Abraham Lincoln, and bear to his great shade the greeting of all France. And I would have you know that however great the distance between Springfield and France may be, the radiance of his noble face has long been known in our native land. In no democracy, in no modern democracy, did any man offer the world a purer image than he by his noble career. That career is far better known to you than to me. You know that, born of the people, the son of a man who could not read, after having in his youth suffered every sort of privation, he rose through silent meditation, by study, to the full cultiva- tion of his mind and the full development of his will. You know that silently he rose to the sum- mit of civic honor: and that from the summit he had attained he looked with untroubled gaze upon a great, an heroic, a tragic duty : he knew that the minds of men cannot without abasement live in contact with injustice. And that is why whatever pity and compassion rent his soul, since the equality of all human beings must needs be proclaimed, since the laws must needs rise to the 121 122 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS level of man's dignity in all places, he let loose civil war upon his native land — that civil war whose heroes we have seen in their old age recon- ciled, wherever we have passed. On the morrow of his gigantic enterprise he died. He cannot be said to have been buried in his triumph: that triumph will last as long as an American is left to revere it, and we have come here to salute his great memory in the name of France, of the French Republic. But permit me to recall with just pride that the French of the French Revolution, of the Revolution of 1848, also proclaimed the rights of man. And this shows that all democ- racies, in spite of distance and time, are one. And when three years ago Imperial Germany in arms, without provocation, without a shadow of excuse, by right of force alone, rushed on France, tore up international rights and violated all human con- sciences, France with her allies defended those eternal principles. And for three years she has defended them. And now America in turn, to their defence rises at the call of her illustrious President, Mr. Wilson, who, too, though a man of thought and a philosopher, has seen he must become a man of action when these eternal prin- ciples exacted reparation and vengeance. Now, we are all united in this great struggle, worthy to be ranked with the struggles of the THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 123 French Revolution. We all are united to defend right and justice. And our French hearts thrilled with gratitude when we heard the words of your President, of your Governor. Yes : we feel as if at every step in this blissful valley we found old memories of our beloved motherland, as if we had never left it. Here it was, as you said, Mr. Presi- dent, that French missionaries, the first French to discover the Mississippi, came to labor, to live, to die. Here it was they founded the first govern- ment that ruled over this land which once was French, where the French flag floats once more in tragic hours, our flag which carries in its folds all our hopes, and calls to file every form of cour- age in all our sons. Here we find the shades and memories of our forefathers. You can well un- derstand what emotions swell in the heart of a Frenchman when this tragic meeting comes about on American soil. But is it enough to evoke these memories in a speech? Must we bury all our ardent hopes in our hearts? I shall not forget, but transmit to my fellow countrymen your desire to pay back your debt of gratitude to France, in memory of LaFayette who brought here help and French soldiers to fight for American independ- ence. But permit me, without any thought of diminishing the efYect of your words, to define their full sense. It is not to France your debt 124 THE J^OICES OF OUR LEADERS lies. What France did for America, she did for liberty, with no thought of exacting a reward for it some day. It is to all humanity your debt of gratitude should be paid : humanity and France here are one. Yes, it is because that noble land has at all times in its history held in its hands the fate of the world: it is because on our terri- tory which seems to have been chosen by history as the meeting place for all combats and immola- tions, that the fate of the world has so often been decided; because our children with their hearts, their arms, their hands, their brains, are strug- gling even now to keep liberty from perishing, to keep disaster away from the whole world ; it is because of all that you have risen in arms. And when you rally to France, you rally to the cause of liberty, of right, of democracy. Come, then. We will bear away from your land the memory of these meetings of free citi- zens, and when we return to our country, when the free citizens of republican France ask us what we have seen, we will answer: We have seen crowds tumultuous in their joy, enthusiastic crowds, but they came not forth to see alone, ta gaze on passing men : they came as to some great duty, to acclaim France througfi us. We will take back the words of all your orators : we will tell what you think, what you desire, what you THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 125 hope for from the future, not only a free and delivered France, but a regenerate Europe, founded on right at last, built on the rock of jus- tice. And when this great work shall have been accomplished, American brothers, faithful to the traditions of Washington and Abraham Lincoln, you may return in pious pilgrimage to Mount Vernon and to the graveyard of Springfield and there bow in silent reverence before the two pure heroes of your race. You will most surely have served their memory; and rest assured that by so doing you will have broadened yet the glorious annals of the American Republic. TO THE HOUSE OF REPRE- SENTATIVES The Prince of Udine, Head of the Italian Mission to the United States Delivered before the House of Representatives of the United States, June 2nd, 1917 TO THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES The Prince of Udine Mr. Speaker and Members of the House : No one could appreciate the honor of your invitation more than myself and my colleagues. To address the Representatives of the greatest among new democracies at a time when the desti- nies of humanity are awaiting decision, at a time when our destiny and yours depend on the issue of the war, to bring you the greeting of distant brothers who are fighting for the same ideals at the foot of the snowy Alps or in the deadly trenches, to express to you our feelings and our sympathy for your feelings — all those are for me so many reasons for legitimate pride. During our brief stay among you we have found everywhere the most joyous welcome and the most friendly cordiality. Everywhere it was not only friendly words that greeted us, but also friendly souls who welcomed us. We have felt deeply moved by this. We know, gentlemen, that such cordial senti- ments, such hearty friendship, are meant not so much for our persons as for our beautiful and distant country ; our country, of which every foot is sacred to us because of its century-old great- ness and sufferings and because of the noble 129 130 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS share which it has always had in human thought and history. But your great Republic, when it grants us such courteous hospitality, honors still more that which at the present moment is dearest to us — the efforts of Italy's soldiers, the noble sacrifice of so many young lives freely given for their country and for civilization and in defense of ideas which you have made your own and which we all love. In the name of the soldiers of Italy, one of whom I am proud to be ; in the name of all those who are fighting on the mountains, on the plains and on the treacherous seas ; in the name of those to whom your words of friendship have brought a message of hope and faith across the ocean, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. The aims of the war for the allied nations were pointed out by President Wilson in his magnificent message, which will not only remain in the minds of our descendants as a historic event, but which has already aroused, because of its moral force, intense admiration among all civilized peoples. We shall be satisfied, what- ever sacrifices we may be called upon to make, when the rights of humanity are assured, when the guaranties of peace are effectual, and when THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 131 free nations are able to work for their own pros- perity and elevation. President Wilson has proclaimed that to the Americans right is more precious than peace and that the people of the United States are ready to shed their blood in defense of those principles in the name of which they became a nation. For the sake of the same principles we are ready to face every sacrifice and every sorrow. We are fighting a terrible war. Our enemies were long since prepared for it, while we were content to live, trusting in peace, and only sought to contribute to the development of our people and to the progress of our country, almost uncon- scious of the clouds which so suddenly grew dark over our heads. We came into the war when we realized that there was no room for neutrals and that neutral- ity was neither possible nor desirable, when the freedom of all democratic nations was threatened and the very existence of free peoples was at stake. Ever since that day we have not hesitated before any danger or any suffering. Our wide fighting front presents conditions of exceptional difficulty. The enemy is, or has been until now, in possession of the best positions. He has dug deep trenches ; he has concealed his guns among 132 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS mountains. We are even compelled to fight at altitudes of eight and ten thousand feet in spots, where it seemed impossible that any fighting should ever take place. We are alone on our wide and treacherous front, and every step for- ward that we take, every progress that we accom- plish costs us great efforts and many lives. The enthusiasm of our soldiers has often helped them among the glaciers of the Alps and the many snares of the Carso to triumph over difficulties which seemed to defy every human effort. But the deep faith which burns in them, kept their strength alive. We must, we will, triumph over other difficul- ties and other insidious devices. Nature, which gave us our pure skies, our mild climate, has denied us almost entirely the two great necessities of modern industries — coal and iron. Therefore, with industries still in course of formation, Italy has had ever since their incep- tion to overcome obstacles which appeared insuperable. Italy occupies one of the first places in Europe as regards the number and power of her waterfalls ; but this wealth, which constitutes the great reserve of the future, has only been partly exploited until now. The treacherous enemy, who has long since prepared the weapons of aggression, not having obtained victory on THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 133 the field, is now trying by means of submarine -warfare to endanger our existence, to cause a scarcity of food, and, above all, a scarcity of the coal, for her railways, and for her industries. We have reduced the consumption of all neces- sities, and we are ready to reduce it still further within the limits of possibility. We do not com- plain of the privations that we have to endure. Wealth itself has no value if life and liberty are endangered. And when millions of soldiers offer their young lives for their country, there is not one among the civil population who is not ready to make any sacrifice. But to overcome the dangers of submarines, which, in defiance of every law of humanity, are not only destroying wealth, but endangering the lives of peaceful travelers, sinking hospital ships, and murdering women and children, we must all make a great effort. We must unite all our forces to oppose the strongest resistance to the insidious devices of the enemy. You possess a great and magnificent industrial organization. You, more than any one, are in a position to put an end to the enemy's barbarous dream and to create with your energy much more than he can destroy. This great and terrible trial can only make us better men. They who know how to offer to the 134 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS fatherland their wealth and their lives ; they who give themselves unto death and, more than them- selves, that which is sweetest and most sacred, their children ; they who are ready to suffer and to die ; they will know when the morrow dawns how to contribute to civilization new elements of moral nobility and of strength. We must not grieve over our sorrows. When we fight for the rights of humanity we are con- scious that we are elevating ourselves morally. When America proclaimed herself one with us a great joy ran through every city and every lit- tle village of Italy. We knew the full value of your co-operation, and at the same time we appre^ ciated the nobility of your sentiments. The families of 30,000,000 Italians who dwell in the United States under the protection of your hospitable and just laws, felt a deep sense of joy. Mr. Speaker and Members of the House, the words which his Majesty the King of Italy, first among our soldiers, wrote to your President expressed his feelings and those of all his people. To-morrow, when the news reaches Italy that this Congress, which represents the will of the American Nation, has desired to give to our mis- sion the supreme honor of welcoming it in its midst, your friendly words will reach the farther- most ooints where men are fighting and suffering. THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 135 And in the trenches, at the foot of the majestic Alps, there, where the struggle is bitterest and where death is ever present, a thrill of joy and of hope will be felt — the joy of a sincere union, the hope of certain victory. GREETINGS FROM BELGIUM Baron Ludovic Moncheur, Former Belgian Minister to the United States* Head of the Belgian Mission to the United States Delivered before the Senate of the United States, June 22nd, 1917 GREETINGS FROM BELGIUM LUDOVIC MONCHEUR You all know the unspeakable evils which have befallen my unfortunate country — the unpro- voked invasion, accompanied by a deliberate system of terror, the burning of many of our thriving cities, and of innumerable villages, the massacre of thousands of our peaceful citizens, the pillage and devastation of our country. Then followed the iron hand of foreign domi- nation, enormous war contributions exacted from all the nine provinces of Belgium, ruinous requi- sitions of all sorts from our people, the seizure of the raw material of industry, and even the theft of our machinery which was sent into the country of our enemy for his own use, so that now the silence of death reigns in our industrial centers which before had been the most active in Europe. You also know, gentlemen, the way in which this regime of oppression has been carried out — eighty thousand Belgians condemned in the space of one year to various penalties for having dis- pleased the invader, as, for example, the noble Burgomaster of Brussels, who has been in im- prisonment for the past two years for trying to uphold the principle of civic liberty which for centuries has been so ideal to all Belgians. 139 140 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS You have learned also of the deportation of our workmen into Germany — a crime the horrors of which, according to the opinion of one of our countrymen, should cause more indignation throughout the entire world than all the previous outrages against the sacred principles of justice and humanity. But Belgium, even in the midst of the terrible misfortunes which have been brought upon her by her fidelity to treaties and by respect for her plighted word, does not regret her decision, and there is not a single Belgian worthy of the name who does not now, as on the first day of the war, approve the judgment of our Government that it is better to die, if need be, rather than to live without honor. Like Patrick Henry, all Belgians say, ''Give me liberty or give me death." This sentiment will be shared by all the citizens of the great American nation, who responded with such enthusiasm and with such unanimity to the noble words of your President, when, in terms which held the world spellbound, he pro- claimed the imprescriptible right of justice over force. The courage of my fellow-countrymen has been strengthened, also, by the sympathy for our misfortunes which has been manifested through- out your great land. American initiative has be- THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 141 stowed most generous help upon our starving' population, and in offering from this tribune the expression of gratitude of every Belgian heart, I wish, also to render special homage to that admirable organization the Commission for Relief in Belgium, which has done so much to save our people from starvation. Yes, gentlemen, the sympathy of America gives us new courage, and while King Albert, who since the fateful day when our territory was vio- lated, has remained steadfastly at the front, con- tinues the struggle with indomitable energy at the head of our army intrenched upon the last strip of soil that remains to us, while the Queen, that worthy companion of a great sovereign, ex- pends her unceasing efforts to comfort and relieve the victims cf battle, exciting enthusiasm by her contempt for the danger to which she exposes herself day by day, on the other side of the enemy's lines of steel stand the Belgian people, bowed beneath the yoke but never con- quered, maintaining their unshaken patriotism in spite of the enemy as well as in spite of his iron rule. The Belgian population, a martyr whose courage is upheld by our great Cardinal Mercier, awaits silently in the sacred union of all parties the final hour of deliverance. That hour, gentlemen, will, I am convinced,, 142 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS be materially hastened by the powerful aid of the United States, and the time approaches when Belgium, restored to full and complete independ- ence, both politically and economically, will be able to thank in a fitting manner all those who have aided her to emerge from the darkness of the tomb into the glorious light of a new life. THE NEW RUSSIA Professor Boris Bakhmetieff, Head of the Russian Mission to the United States Delivered before the Senate of the United States, June 26th, 1917 THE NEW RUSSIA Boris Bakhmetieff At this moment all eyes are turned on Russia. Many hopes and doubts are raised by the tide of events in the greatest of revolutions, at an epoch in the world's greatest war. The fate of nations, the fate of the world, is at stake. The revolution called for the reconstruction of the very founda- tion of our national life. The creation anew of a country of boundless expanse on distinctly new principles will, of course, take time, and impa- tience should not be shown in the consummation of so grand an event as Russia's entry into the ranks of free nations. We should not forget that in this immense transformation various interests will seek to assert themselves, and, until the work of settle- ment is completed, a struggle among opposing currents is inevitable, and exaggerations cannot be avoided. Attempts on the part of disorganiz- ing elements to take advantage of this moment of transition must be expected and met with calmness and confidence. Two considerations make me feel that Russia has passed the stage of the world when the future appeared vague and uncertain. In the first place is the firm conviction of the necessity of legality which is widely developing and firmly 145 146 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS establishing itself through the country. This principle is based on the doctrine that govern- ments derive their just power from the consent of the governed, and hence a strong government must be created by the will of the people. My latest advice gives joyful confirmation of the establishment of a firm power, strong in its demo- cratic precepts and activity, strong in the trust reposed in it by the people in its ability to enforce law and order. In the second place and no less important is the growing conviction that the issues of the revolution and the future of Russia's freedom are closely connected with the fighting might of the country. It is such power, it is the force of arms which alone can define and make certain the achievements of the revolution against autocratic aggression. There has been a period closely fol- lowing the revolution of almost total suspension of all military activity, a period of what appeared to be disintegration of the army, a period which gave rise to serious doubts and to gloomy fore- bodings. At the same time there ensued unlimited freedom of speech and of the press, which afforded opportunities for expression of the most extreme and anti-national views, from all of which resulted wide-spread rumors throughout the world that Russia would abandon the war THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS U7 and conclude a separate peace with the Central Powers. With all emphasis and with deepest conviction, may I reiterate the statement that such rumors were wholly without foundation in fact. Russia rejects with indignation any idea of separate peace. What my country is striving for is the establishment of a firm and lasting peace between democratic nations. Russia is firmly convinced that a separate peace would mean the triumph of German autocracy, would render lasting peace impossible, create the greatest danger for democracy and liberty, and ever be a threatening menace to the new-born freedom of Russia. Conscious of its enormous task, the Provisional Government is taking measures to promptly restore throughout the country, conditions of life so deeply disorganized by the inefficiency of the previous rulers, and to provide for whatever is necessary for military success. Russia wants the world to be safe for democ- racy. To make it safe means to have democracy rule the world. TRIBUTE TO WASHINGTON Viscount Kikujiro Ishii, Head of the Japanese Mission to the United States Delivered before the Tomb of Washington, August 26th, 1917 TRIBUTE TO WASHINGTON KlKUJIRO ISHII In the name of my gracious sovereign, the Emperor of Japan, and representing all the lib- erty-loving people who own his sway, I stand to-day in this sacred presence, not to eulogize the name of Washington, for that were presump- tion, but to offer the simple tribute of a people's reverence and love. Washington was an American, but America,, great as she is, powerful as she is, certain as she is of her splendid destiny, can lay no exclusive claim to this immortal name. Washington is now a citizen of the world; to-day he belongs to all mankind. And so men come here from the ends, of the earth to honor his memory and to reiterate their faith in the principles to which his great life- was devoted. Japan claims entrance to this holy circle. She yields to none in reverence and respect; nor is there any gulf between the ancient East and the new-born West too deep and wide for the hearts and the understandings of her people to cross. It is fitting, then, that men who love liberty and justice better than they love life, that men who know what honor is, should seek this shrine and here, in the presence of these sacred ashes, rededicate themselves to the service of humanity. 151 152 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS It is a fitting place, at this time, when all the world is rilled with turmoil and suffering, for •comrades in a holy cause to gather and here renew their fealty to a righteous purpose, firm in the determination that the struggle must go on until the world is free from menace and aggres- sion. Japan is proud to place herself beside her noble allies in this high resolve, and here, in the pres- ence of these deathless ashes, she reaffirms her •devotion to the cause and the principles for which they wage battle, fully determined to do her whole part in securing for the world the blessings of liberty, justice, and lasting peace. As the representative of my people, then, I place this wreath upon the tomb of Washington with reverent hands; and in so doing it is my proud privilege to again pledge my country to those principles of right and justice which have given immortality to the name of Washington. THE MESSAGE TO THE POPE Hon. Woodrow Wilson, August 27, 1917. Although this message is not an address but a written communication, no collection of statements relative to the World War would be complete without it. It summarizes with wonderful clearness the reasons why the Allies must carry on the conflict to the point where German Autocracy is crushed. THE MESSAGE TO THE POPE Woodrow Wilson Every heart that has not been blinded and hardened by this terrible war must be touched by this moving appeal of His Holiness the Pope, must feel the dignity and force of the humane and generous motives which prompted it, and must fervently wish that we might take the path of peace he so persuasively points out. But it would be folly to take it if it does not in fact lead to the goal he proposes. Our response must be based upon the stern facts and upon nothing else. It is not a mere cessation of arms he de- sires ; it is a stable and enduring peace. This agony must not be gone through with again, and it must be a matter of very sober judgment what will insure us against it. His Holiness in substance proposes that we re- turn to the status quo ante bellum, and that then there be a general condonation, disarmament, and a concert of nations based upon an accept- ance of the principle of arbitration; that by a similar concert freedom of the seas be estab- lished ; and that the territorial claims of France and Italy, the perplexing problems of the Balkan states, and the restitution of Poland be left to such conciliatory adjustments as may be possible 155 156 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS in the new temper of such a peace, due regard being paid to the aspirations of the peoples whose political fortunes and affiliations will be involved. It is manifest that no part of this program can be successfully carried out unless the restitution of the status quo ante furnishes a firm and satis- factory basis for it. The object of this war is to deliver the free peoples of the world from the menace and the actual power of a vast military establishment controlled by an irresponsible gov- ernment which, having secretly planned to dom- inate the world, proceeded to carry the plan out without regard either to the sacred obligations of treaty or the long-established practices and long-cherished principles or international action and honor; which chose its own time for the war; delivered its blow fiercely and suddenly; stopped at no barrier either of law or of mercy; swept a whole continent within the tide of blood — not the blood of soldiers only, but the blood of innocent women and children also and of the helpless poor; and now stands balked but not defeated, the enemy of four-fifths of the world. This power is not the German people. It is the ruthless master of the German people. It -is no business of ours how that great people came under its control or submitted with temporary zest to the domination of its purpose; but it is THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 157 our business to see to it that the history of the rest of the world is no longer left to its handling. To deal with such a power by way of peace upon the plan proposed by His Holiness the Pope would, so far as we can see, involve a recupera- tion of its strength and a renewal of its policy; would make it necessary to create a permanent hostile combination of nations against the Ger- man people, who are its instruments ; and would result in abandoning the new-born Russia to the intrigue, the manifold subtle interference, and the certain counter-revolution which would be at- tempted by all the malign influences to which the German Government has of late accustomed the world. Can peace be based upon a restitution of its power or upon any word of honor it could pledge in a treaty of settlement and accommoda- tion? Responsible statesmen must now everywhere see, if they never saw before, that no peace can rest securely upon political or economic restric- tions meant to benefit some nations and cripple or embarrass others, upon vindictive action of any sort, or any kind of revenge or deliberate injury. The American people have suffered in- tolerable wrongs at the hands of the Imperial German Government, but they desire no reprisal upon the German people, who have themselves. 158 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS suffered all things in this war, which they did not choose. They believe that peace should rest upon the rights of peoples, not the rights of governments — the rights of peoples great or small, weak or powerful — their equal right to freedom and security and self-government and to .a participation upon fair terms in the economic opportunities of the world, the German people of course included, if they will accept equality and not seek domination. The test, therefore, of every plan of peace is this : Is it based upon the faith of all the peoples involved or merely upon the word of an am- bitious and intriguing government, on the one hand, and of a group of free peoples, on the other? This is a test which goes to the root of the matter; and it is the test which must be ap- plied. The purposes of the United States in this war are known to the whole world, to every people to whom the truth has been permitted to come. They do not need to be stated again. We seek no material advantage of any kind. We believe that the intolerable wrongs done in this war by the furious and brutal power of the Imperial German Government ought to be repaired, but not at the expense of the sovereignty of any people — rather a vindication of the sovereignty THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 159 both of those that are weak and of those that are strong. Punitive damages, the dismemberment of empires, the establishment of selfish and ex- clusive economic leagues, we deem inexpedient and in the end worse than futile no proper basis for a peace of any kind, least of all for an endur- ing peace. That must be based upon justice and fairness and the common rights of mankind. We can not take the word of the present rulers of Germany as a guarantee of anything that is to endure, unless explicitly supported by such conclusive evidence of the will and purpose of the German people themselves as the other peoples of the world would be justified in accepting. Without such guarantees treaties of settlement, agreements for disarmament, covenants to set up arbitration in the place of force, territorial adjustments, reconstitutions of small nations, if made with the German Government, no man, no nation could now depend on. We must await some new evidence of the purposes of the great peoples of the Central Powers. God grant it may be given soon and in a way to restore the con- fidence of all peoples everywhere in the faith of nations and the possibility of a covenanted peace. JUSTICE FOR SERBIA Dr. Milenko R. Vesnitch, Head of the Serbian Mission to the United States. Delivered before the House of Representatives of the United States, January 8th, 1918. JUSTICE FOR SERBIA MlLENKO R. VeSNITCII Mr. Speaker and gentlemen of the House of Representatives, we stand here, in this post of honor, my friends and myself, thanks to your great courtesy, and my first thoughts go beyond you to your constituents, to those whom you so conscientiously represent, and who probably have often asked of you the reason for this catastrophe overwhelming the world, and which has imposed upon them the greatest sacrifices which humanity has ever been called upon to endure. Would that my voice might reach them all, but, alas ! I fear that I can not hope to succeed in this self- imposed task, for the voice of a modest repre- sentative of a small nation is too weak to be heard throughout this vast country. Neverthe- less, I dare not hesitate, and your democracy, gracious and gentle as it is powerful, will lend its ears to my voice, because I ask the favor of speaking the truth and of invoking justice for the cause of the allies and for that of my desolate country. The most distinguished of our common allies have explained to you from this platform the reasons for which Germany and Austria-Hun- 163 164 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS gary have provoked this tremendous war, and for which all righteous and liberty-loving na- tions have been successively and necessarily in- volved in this conflagration. This\ duty was for none of them so great and so imperative as for me; for little Serbia, as you know, was the first nation attacked by Austria-Hungary, and later invaded by Germany, Bulgaria, and Turkey. Serbia was the first object of the Teuton's ag- gression. In a single moment the armies of four powers, representing 150,000,000 inhabitants, were hurled against a small nation of hardly 5,000. X)0, whose army was exhausted by two preceding wars. Why did the central European powers attack us, aided by their Turanian, Asiatic, and half- Asiatic allies? Why did the liberal nations of Europe interfere in this unequal struggle? Why was it impossible for your great country to stand, as it were, apart, and await the final result of this immense conflict, far from the field of bat- tle? To frame clearly the answer of these ques- tions would require hours and hours, if not days, and, as I may not impose upon your good nature or claim more than half an hour of your precious time, I shall endeavor to be very brief. Because of this my address will necessarily suffer, but I count upon your indulgence. THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 165 You will, I sincerely hope, agree with me that a great and enlightened democracy has the right in our time to be fully informed why it is that its citizens, so far removed from the battle field, why, to be specific, the countrymen of Washing- ton and Monroe, should forsake their regular occupations, renounce all their cherished plans, and concentrate their thoughts and their pow- ers, physical as well as moral and material, ex- clusively on one object — to win the war. The necessity for this is absolute. Two motives have led Germany and Austria- Hungary to crush Serbia, both of which were peremptory and categorical. The first was dic- tated by the determination of the Germans to become the masters of the world after having successfully subjected Europe to their will and having settled themselves in Asia Minor. The second was due to the horror in which the Ger- man mind holds democracy. If you consider these two motives more closely you will readily per- suade yourselves that their origin is the same autocratic mentality of the Teutons, of which the Hohenzollerns and the Hapsburgs are the strong- est and the most evident personifications. This mentality manifested itself long- aer) in the Mid- dle Ages, when the Hohenzollerns imposed Christianity with the sword for political pur- 166 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS poses, and when the Hapsburgs forced a people to stand bareheaded before the hat of Gessler. Medieval, feudal robbers, the Hohenzollerns de- scended from their mountain castles, and, pass- ing through the county of Nuremburg, founded the Duchy of Brandenburg, outraging and ex- terminating the Slavs, and colonizing their lands with Teutons. Through persistent intrigue and military activity they have transformed their dominions into the Kingdom of Prussia, which they enlarged by robbing Austria of Silesia, Den- mark of Schleswig-Holstein, and, excluding Aus- tria from the circle of German States, formed the North German Confederation, under the leader- ship of Prussia. Five years later the South Ger- man States, through compulsion and compromise, were united with the North German States and merged into an empire, and, enlarged by the cyni- cal annexation of Alsace and Lorraine, under the dominion of this same Prussia, the German States have become Prussianized. From that moment the ambition of the Hohenzollerns has known no bounds. They have resolved to conquer the world. Indeed, before Nietsche announced his theory of the superman, the German people con- sidered themselves to be a superior people. Their superior people — Ubervolk, to use their own ex- pression — ought, in their opinion, to govern and THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 167 direct the world, because, in their pride, they claimed to be the cultured people — in their own language Kulturvolk — and the transmitters of culture, as they termed it, Kulturtrager — to the peoples of the earth. The first step to be taken was to secure financial and agricultural resources for the struggle which this ambition would neces- sarily provoke. These, they early saw, were to be found in Palestine and Mesopotamia, where there were cotton and wheat in abundance. After having for scores of years lulled the Turks into a belief in their friendship, until the Kaiser, with turban on head, knelt before the grave of Mo- hammed, the Germans decided to cut their way through the Balkans. But to reach Constanti- nople and Saloniki it was necessary to win over or to crush Serbia. As we could not be won over, our destruction was quickly decided at Berlin and Vienna. The House of Hapsburg had even more reasons to wish for our disappearance from the map. Old feudal brigands, descending from the Swiss mountains, the Hapsburgs conquered, often fraud- ulently acquired, Province after Province. By cabal, corruption, and treachery, they acquired the crown of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, without ever seeing in their provinces and realms anything more than private 168 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS lands or family domains. Even nowadays the Hapsburgs do not recognize an Austrian or Hun- garian, a Czech or Croat country, nor even an Austria-Hungary. They only know lands and estates belonging to their house like simple prop- erty, and it is on the basis of these conceptions that they administer their Provinces, considering the inhabitants as belonging to and forming a part of their estates. At the same time, being essentially a Teutonic dynasty, the Hapsburgs have always been in the East the agents of Ger- man policy. With the exception of the German, and from the latter half of the last century Mag- yar, they have never tolerated national tendencies under their rule, and they have persecuted syste- matically every nation or race with those ambi- tions, especially the Slavs, but they have emptied the vials of their wrath upon the Yougoslavs, be- cause the democratic Slovenes and Croats had seen in the Serbia of their brothers the realiza- tion of their dreams extending over centuries, and, as they have openly and with all their energy favored our development, many of them abandon- ing their homes and their native lands in order to .pass over to and to settle in little Serbia, the feu- dal and bureaucratic Hapsburgs have seen in our country a real danger to their political situation. And because of this menace, as they considered THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 169 it, they long ago inaugurated the policy of op- pressing the Yougoslavs, of persecuting Serbia, and of thwarting all our endeavors toward a nor- mal economic and political development. If Austria-Hungary has become a hell to all her inhabitants, with the exception of the Ger- mans and Magyars, no nationality has suffered more under Hapsburg misrule than the Yougo- slavs. Hatred of the Croats and of the Slovenes has increased in the last 50 years as they have begun to oppose Germanization, leaning upon Serbia as a defense and upon her democracy. Since the formation of the Austro-German alli- ance of 1879, Vienna and Berlin have been united in their policy to crush Serbia because of its democracy — a small America in the southeast of Europe — and to counteract every effort of the Serbs and Croats or Slovenes in the dual mon- archy standing in their way. Our desperate moral and political situation has been truly pictured by one of our great na- tional poets, "Our tears flow unremarked, and neither our cries nor our prayers are heard." The ambition to dominate the world, and the determination to check democratic movements in their dominions, have been the motives which have caused the central powers to inaugurate 170 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS this tremendous war. All else has been simple pretext. You know the methods followed by the Ger- mans in this war in Belgium, in France, in Italy, in Roumania, and even in Russia. You have never heard of the horrors endured by the Yougoslavs, not only in Serbia but even in the Provinces of Austria-Hungary. They are so cruel and in- human that I am obliged to spare you the recital. But I must give you one, the slightest example of it. Since we have been so happy as to enjoy the hospitality of your beautiful Capital, I have been going every Sunday to commune with your peo- ple in prayer for all the unfortunate men and women in the world and for our redemption from the evils imposed upon us all by German aggres- sion. On every one of these occasions I have re- called to mind the military order issued by the invader of my martyred country : "Divine service is only to be permitted at the request of the inhabitants of the locality and only in the open air and outside the church. No ser- mon, however, will be permitted under any con- ditions whatsoever. A platoon, prepared to fire, will hold itself in readiness near the church dur- ing divine service." In methods of barbarity, Austrians, Magyars, THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS \7\ Bulgarians, and Germans have vied with one an- other. Contrary to the traditions of warfare in the last three centuries, and contrary to the obli- gations assumed in international treaties, the Aus- tro-Germans, the Bulgarians, and the Turks have violated the most elementary civil, moral, and re- ligious rights in Belgium, in France, in Italy, in Roumania, but surely nowhere in such large measure as in Serbia. Should they be victorious in this war, the turn of others would necessarily come, and neutral nations would not escape. This situation imposes upon us all the impera- tive duty of facing sacrifices to win the war. I have come from the western front in Europe, and I saw there all the horrors of German devasta- tion. Attila could go to the school of barbarism founded by the successors of Moltke. But I saw at the same time the resolution of all the allied soldiers, those under the command of your gal- lant Gen. Pershing included, to win this war, forced upon us all, and to restore right, justice, and liberty to the civilized world. But to win it we must act with all our coordinated energy and indefatigably day and night. We must not, we dare not, think of anything else these days than of the war and of winning it. Only when we hold complete and definite victory in our hands can we dare to think of peace. This peace must be a 172 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS just and a lasting one, and to be such it can not be made in Germany. To obtain it we must re- alize that further great and earnest efforts are to be made. We must stand as one man and con- centrate all our energies. We Serbs put all our confidence in our allies, as we have up to the present day, that this sunlight will dawn. We hope that the new world organization — for a new world will and must result from this war — will be inspired by the American spirit, tending to- ward "a more perfect union," providing at the same time that no State shall be deprived of its equality in the new society of nations. We may assure you, gentlemen of the House of Represen- tatives, that in the coming happier organization we shall be factors and elements of order and of progress, and that we shall be happy and proud to stand beside you and to follow you in the way in which the spirit of Washington is to guide mankind. AMERICAN RIGHTS AND AMERICAN HONOR MUST NOT BE TRAMPLED UPON Hon. Julius Kahn, Representative from California. Delivered before the House of Representatives of the United States, September 7th, 1917. AMERICAN RIGHTS AND AMERICAN HONOR MUST NOT BE TRAMPLED UPON Julius Kahn Mr. Chairman: I want at this time to call to the attention of the committee a serious condition that prevails throughout the country: There are some men in various sections who are sowing the seeds of sedition and treason among the Ameri- can people. They willfully and maliciously mis- represent the attitude of our Government in this war. Therefore, I am glad to learn that the De- partment of Justice has reached out its arm and is going to suppress such sedition and treason wherever it attempts to raise its treacherous head. It has been done by other chief magistrates in other times in our country's history, and it is well that the snake is being crushed at the very outset of this struggle. To me this war is being fought by this country for a great principle, namely, the right under international law to sail the seas un- trammeled. It is the fourth time in our compara- tively brief history that we have unfurled our bat- tle flag to defend this right. In the early part of our history as a Nation, in 1798 — in fact, be- fore we were 10 years old, before we had passed 175 176 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS the first decade of our national life — we broke off our diplomatic relations with France — with France, that had been our ally in the Revolution, France that had lent us aid and comfort and as- sistance in obtaining our liberty, our freedom. But subsequently France interfered, r.nd for some years continued to interfere, with our rights upon the high seas. The Congress of the United States, after many efforts had been made to settle the matter peacefully, voted to break off all diplo- matic intercourse with our former friend and promptly created the Navy Department. Up to that time the War Department had also been holding jurisdiction over our Navy. A Secretary of the Navy was appointed. Con- gress immediately appropriated the money for that great line of American frigates of which "Old Ironsides" — the Constitution — was such a glorious type, and which brought honor and re- nown to our country. The Congress also created forthwith the grade of lieutenant general in the Army of the United States. Washington was nominated and appointed to command the Army. He was then in retirement on his farm at Mount Vernon. The Secretary of War himself brought the commission to Washington at that place. He found the foremost American in his fields looking after his crops. He explained to Gen. Washing- THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 177 ton the purpose of his visit. And then Washing- ton uttered a sentiment which I hope may be in- delibly written upon the memory of every Ameri- can boy and girl. "I am ready," he said, "for any service that I can give to my country." He accepted the trust and I believe took command of the American Army at Alexandria, Va. But France soon came to terms and acknowledged our right to the absolute freedom of the seas. Many Members of the House will recall that t4ie French spoilation claims, about which we are called upon to legislate every now and then, were caused by the attitude of France from 1793 to 1799. That early show of force and determination to assert our rights on the part of the young Republic, while many of the heroes of the Revolutionary War were still alive, compelled France to come to terms and she ceased to seize or destroy our ships and our cargoes. She unequivocally recog- nized our right to sail the seas everywhere under international law. In 1812 we fought the second war with Eng- land on account of her interference with our rights upon the seas. We had negotiated this question with her, or tried to negotiate it, for many years. And I may add, parenthetically, that this country of ours has always been slow to enter into quarrel with other nations. We in- 178 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS variably tried to follow a policy of forebearance so long as forebearance seemed possible. But finally, when things became unendurable, we had to let loose our dogs of war. I do not think it is necessary to go into the story of the War of 1812 at any great length at this time. But it was fought with England to maintain and protect and preserve our rights upon the high seas. In 1815 we went into the third contest on ac- count of our determination to insist upon and enforce these rights. The Barbary pirates had been exacting tribute from all the maritime na- tions of the earth up to that time. We paid tribute along with England, France, and the other great ocean-carrying powers, but the Corsairs of the Mediterranean continued to hamper our ships and shipping. Then in 1815 President Madison sent Commodore Stephen Decatur with a fleet of American ships into the Mediterranean. We whipped the Algerians and the Tripolitans ; and they finally made a treaty of peace with us, under the terms of which they acknowledged our abso- lute right to sail the seas of the world uncondi- tionally, without the necessity of paying a single dollar of tribute. Incidentally, in making that war, just as inci- dentally in making this war, we fought for the rights of mankind and humanity. For before the THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 179 year 1821 had passed every other maritime nation of the world — France being the last to make her treaty with the pirates — had made treaties similar to our own and ceased paying tribute for the right to sail the seas. And for 102 years the rights of this country to sail American ships in any waters where under international law they had the right to go was never questioned. And then the Im- perial Government of Germany again chaPenged these rights. A number of American ships were sunk after the present European war broke out. The lives of American citizens were continually being destroyed by German submarines in viola- tion of all the rules of civilized warfare. The President of the United States, following the tra- ditions of this Nation, had repeatedly protested and objected to the illegal attitude of the Imperial Government of Germany toward our citizens and our ships. Germany r after every protest, prom- ised to ameliorate conditions. With every promise the people of the United States breathed a hope that we would be able to weather the storm and that we would still be able to maintain peace. At last, like a bolt of lightning from a clear sky, we learned to our amazement that our protests were being treated with scorn and contempt. On the 31st of January of this year the Imperial Gov- ernment of Germany informed the President that 180 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS on the very next day, on the 1st of February, the German submarines would ruthlessly sink every American ship found within certain designated areas of the Atlantic Ocean. We had an absolute right in those areas. To have accepted that dic- tation, to have accepted that proposition would have meant the surrender of American sover- eignty on the high seas. It would have meant that we were willing to haul down "the Stars and Stripes" and hoist the white flag of surrender in their stead. And no red-blooded American, I hope, will ever be will- ing to surrender his country's rights — rights that other Americans in other days have fought and bled and died to maintain inviolate. If we had acquiesced in that doctrine on the Atlantic, prob- ably some day in the Pacific, when other nations might be at war there, and we should attempt to maintain a neutral attitude, some of those nations would tell us to keep off this or that part of the Pacific Ocean ; and, having surrendered our rights in this instance, we would have set a precedent which many of the pacifists of this country would insist that we ought to follow for all times. I am unwilling for my country ever to be placed in that attitude or that she should ever consent to take such a degraded position. Ah, many women of the country feel their THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 181 heartstrings torn because their boys are going to the war. It is a sad thing, indeed, to think that parents should raise their boys only to lose them soon after they arrive at man's estate in fighting for their country. I do not blame the women for feel- ing sadly about it. I do not wonder at their ach- ing hearts. But I want to recall to them that if the mothers of 1776, if the mothers of 1812, and if the mothers of 1861 had not been willing to sacrifice their boys in those days of trial and struggle, I do not know whether we of to-day would be enjoying all of the blessings of free- dom and liberty which this country extends to the humblest of its citizens. And so in every age, and at all times and at all hazards, the American citizen must be ready to defend with life itself, if need be, the liberty, the freedom that has come down to us. For myself, I believe this is going to a long, bloody, and terrible war. I am not trying to de- lude myself into the belief that some miracle is going to happen before we fairly get into the struggle that will end it all. I wish to God that it were so. But I look for a long and terrible con- flict. I feel that the armies that are now forming are but the beginning of things. I believe that the greatest mistake the autocracy of Germany 182 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS ever made was when it minimized the courage and the determination of this country to maintain all of its rights unimpaired. I believe that before the German autocrats are many months older they will realize what they did when they forced this country into the war. And the German people, too, will ultimately realize what was done by their stubborn and autocratic Government in forcing this great American Republic, which wanted to hold aloof, into this war. And, my colleagues, I believe that before many months are over the patriotic sentiment of this country will assert itself in such tones that they will penetrate even in the darkest recesses of the deepest German forests. I feel assured that vic- tory, yes, victory overwhelming and complete, will come to us in this struggle. I feel that the people of the United States begin to understand what we have at stake. I feel that the men who are attempting to spread seeds of discontent, of treason, of sedition, will be called to account by the civil authorities in every State and in every section of the Union. Already in a number of the States the governors have asserted themselves. They will do so more frequently in the future. I want to read to you from the lamented Lin- coln what he had to say about the "wily agitators" who tried to breed discontent at home during our THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 183 great Civil War. This quotation is from a letter which he addressed to Erastus Corning and others on the 12th of June, 1863. They had sent him a resolution protesting against his taking Vallan- digham, who had been a former Member of Con- gress, and who was preaching sedition in the North, and sending him across the Union lines into the lines of the Southern Confederacy. These gentlemen wrote President Lincoln a protest, to which he replied in part : "Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts, while I must not touch a hair of a wily agitator who induces him to desert ? This is none the less injurious when effected by getting a father or brother or friend into a public meeting and there working upon his feelings till he is per- suaded to write the soldier boy that he is fighting in a bad cause for a wicked administration of a contemptible Government, too weak to arrest and punish him if he shall desert. I think that in such a case to silence the agitator and save the boy is not only constitutional but withal a great mercy. ,, I hope that our treacherous agitators will be dealt with in that spirit. I hope they will be put down as they should be put down, and I have no fear but that this country will once again show the world that American rights and American honor must not be trampled upon, but that they 184 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS will be protected by the overwhelming might of a ^reat and free people. THE PROGRAM OF THE WORLD'S PEACE Hon. Woodrow Wilson. Delivered before a joint session of the Senate and the House of Representatives of the United States, January 8th, 1918. THE PROGRAM OF THE WORLD'S PEACE Woodrow Wilson • Gentlemen of the Congress, once more, as re- peatedly before, the spokesmen of the Central Empires have indicated their desire to discuss the objects of the war and the possible bases of a general peace. Parleys have been in progress at Brest-Litovsk between Russian representatives and representatives of the Central Powers, to which the attention of all the belligerents has been invited for the purpose of ascertaining whether it may be possible to extend these parleys into a general conference with regard to terms of peace and settlement. The Russian representatives pre- sented not only a perfectly definite statement of the principles upon which they would be willing to conclude peace, but also an equally definite program of the concrete application of those principles. The representatives of the Central Powers, on their part, presented an outline of settlement which, if much less definite, seemed susceptible of liberal interpretation until their specific program of practical terms was added. That program proposed no concessions at all either to the sovereignty of Russia or to the pref- 187 188 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS e'rences of the populations with whose fortunes it dealt, but meant, in a word, that the Central Empires were to keep every foot of territory their armed forces had occupied, — every province, every city, every point of vantage, — as a per- manent addition to their territories and their power. It is a reasonable conjecture that the gen- eral principles of settlement which they at first suggested originated with the more liberal states- men of Germany and Austria, the men who have begun to feel the force of their own peoples' thought and purpose, while the concrete terms of actual settlement came from the military lead- ers who have no thought but to keep what they have got. The negotiations have been broken off. The Russian representatives were sincere and in earnest. They cannot entertain such proposals of conquest and domination. The whole incident is full of significance. It is also full of perplexity. With whom are the Russian representatives dealing? For whom are the representatives of the Central Empires speak- ing? Are they speaking for the majorities of their respective parliaments or for the minority parties, that military and imperialistic minority which has so far dominated their whole policy and controlled the affairs of Turkey and of the Balkan states which have felt obliged to become their associ- THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 189 ates in the war ? The Russian representatives have insisted, very justly, very wisely, and in the true spirit of modern democracy, that the conferences they have been holding with the Teutonic and Turkish statesmen should be held within open, not closed, doors, and all the world has been audi- ence, as was desired. To whom have we been listening, then? To those who speak the spirit and intention of the Resolutions of the German Reichstag of the 9th of July last, the spirit and intention of the liberal leaders and parties of Germany, or to those who resist and defy that spirit and intention and insist upon conquest and subjugation ? Or are we listening, in fact, to both, unreconciled and in open and hopeless contra- diction? These are very serious and pregnant questions. Upon the answer to them depends the peace of the world. But, whatever the results of the parleys at Brest-Litovsk, whatever the confusions of coun- sel and of purpose in the utterances of the spokes- men of the Central Empires, they have again at- tempted to acquaint the world with their objects in the war and have again challenged their ad- versaries to say what their objects are and what sort of settlement they would deem just and satis- factory. There is no good reason why that chal- lenge should not be responded to, and responded 190 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS to with the utmost candor. We did not wait for it. Not once, but again and again, we have laid our whole thought and purpose before the world, not in general terms only, but each time with sufficient definition, to make it clear what sort of definite terms of settlement must necessarily spring out of them. Within the last week Mr. Lloyd George has spoken with admirable candor and in admirable spirit for the people and Govern- ment of Great Britain. There is no confusion of counsel among the adversaries of the Central Powers, no uncertainty of principle, no vagueness of detail. The only secrecy of counsel, the only lack of fearless frankness, the only failure to make definite statement of the objects of the war, lies with Germany and her Allies. The issues of life and death hang upon these definitions. No statesman who has the least conception of his responsibility ought for a moment to permit him- self to continue this tragical and appalling out- pouring of blood and treasure unless he is sure beyond a peradventure that the objects of the vital sacrifice are part and parcel of the very life of Society, and that the people for whom he speaks think them right and imperative as he does. There is, moreover, a voice calling for these definitions of principle and of purpose which is, it seems to me, more thrilling and more compelling THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 191 than any of the many moving voices with which the troubled air of the world is filled. It is the voice of the Russian people. They are prostrate and all but helpless, it would seem, before the grim power of Germany, which has hitherto known no relenting and no pity. Their power, ap- parently, is shattered. And yet their soul is not subservient. They will not yield either in principle or in action. Their conception of what is right, of what it is humane and honorable for them to accept, has been stated with a frankness, a large- ness of view, a generosity of spirit, and a uni- versal human sympathy which must challenge the admiration of every friend of mankind ; and they have refused to compound their ideals or desert others that they themselves may be safe. They call to us to say what it is that we desire, in what, if in anything our purpose and our spirit differ from theirs ; and I believe that the people of the United States would wish me to respond, with utter simplicity and frankness. Whether their present leaders believe it or not, it is our heart- felt desire and hope that some way may be opened whereby we may be privileged to assist the people of Russia to attain their utmost hope of liberty and ordered peace. It will be our wish and purpose that the processes of peace, when they are begun, shall 192 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS be absolutely open and that they shall involve and permit henceforth no secret understandings of any kind. The day of conquest and aggran- dizement is gone by ; so is also the day of secret covenants entered into in the interest of particular governments and likely at some unlooked-for mo- ment to upset the peace of the world. It is this happy fact, now clear to the view of every public man whose thoughts do not still linger in an age that is dead and gone, which makes it possible for every nation whose purposes are consistent with justice and the peace of the world to avow now or at any other time the objects it has in view. We entered this war because violations of right had occurred which touched us to the quick and made the life of our own people impossible unless they were corrected and the world secured once for all against their recurrence. What we de- mand in this war, therefore, is nothing peculiar to ourselves. It is that the world be made fit and safe to live in; and particularly that it be made safe for every peace-loving nation which, like our own, wishes to live its own life, determine its own institutions, be assured of justice and fair dealing by the other peoples of the world as against force and selfish aggression. All the peo- ples of the world are in effect partners in this in- terest, and for our own part we see very clearly THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 193 that unless justice be done to others it will not be done to us. The program of the world's peace, therefore, is our program ; and that pro- gram, the only possible program, as we see it, is this : I. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view. II. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in war, except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part by international action for the enforce- ment of international covenants. III. The removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace and associating them- selves for its maintenance. IV. Adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will be reduced to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety. V. A free, open-minded, an<4 absolutely impar- tial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in de- termining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have 194 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined. VI. The evacuation of all Russian territory and such a settlement of all questions affecting Russia as will secure the best and freest coopera- tion of the other nations of the world in obtain- ing for her an unhampered and unembarrassed opportunity for the independent determination of her own political development and national policy and assure her of a sincere welcome into the so- ciety of free nations under institutions of her own choosing ; and, more than a welcome, assistance also of every kind that she may need and may herself desire. The treatment accorded Russia by her sister nations in the months to come will be the acid test of their good will, of their compre- hension of her needs as distinguished from their own interests, and of their intelligent and un- selfish sympathy. VII. Belgium, the whole world will agree, must be evacuated and restored, without any at- tempt to limit the sovereignty which she enjoys in common with all other free nations. No other single act will serve as this will serve to restore confidence among the nations in the laws which they have themselves set and determined for the government of their relations with one another. Without this healing act the whole structure and THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 195 validity of international law is forever impaired. VIII. All French territory should be freed and the invaded portions restored, and the wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which has unsettled the peace of the world for nearly fifty years, should be righted, in order that peace may once more be made secure in the interest of all. IX. A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearly recognizable lines of nationality. X. The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to see safe- guarded and assured, should be accorded the freest opportunity of autonomous development. XI. Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro should be evacuated ; occupied territories restored ; Ser- bia accorded free and secure access to the sea ; and the relations of the several Balkan states to one another determined by friendly counsel along historically established lines of allegiance and nationality ; and international guarantees of the political and economic independence and terri- torial integrity of the several Balkan states should be entered into. XII. The Turkish portions of the present Ot- toman Empire should be assured a secure sov- ereignty, but the other nationalities which are 196 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely un- molested opportunity of autonomous develop- ment, and the Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a free passage to the ships and com- merce of all nations under international guaran- tees. XIII. An independent Polish state should be erected which should include the territories in- habitated by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose political and economic in- dependence and territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenant. XIV. A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political inde- pendence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike. In regard to these essentials rectifications of wrong and assertions of right we feel ourselves to be intimate partners of all the governments and peoples associated together against the Im- perialists. We cannot be separate in interest or divided in purpose. We stand together until the end. For such arrangements and covenants we are willing to fight and to continue to fight until they THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS 197 are achieved; but only because we wish the right to prevail and desire a just and stable peace such as can be secured only by emoving the chief provocations to war, which this program does remove. We have no jealousy of German great- ness, and there is nothing in this program that impairs it. We grudge her no achievement or distinction of learning or of pacific enterprise such as have made her record very bright and very enviable. We do not wish to injure her or to block in any way her legitimate influence or power. We do not wish to fight her either with arms or with hostile arrangements of trade if she is willing to associate herself with us and the other peace-loving nations of the world in cove- nants of justice and law and fair dealing. We wish her only to accept a place of equality among the peoples of the world, — the new world in which we now live, — instead of a place of mastery. Neither do we presume to suggest to her any alteration or modification of her institutions. But it is necessary, we must frankly say, and neces- sary as a preliminary to any intelligent dealings with her on our part, that we should know whom her spokesman speak for when they speak to us, whether for the Reichstag majority or for the mil- itary party and the men whose creed is imperial domination. 198 THE VOICES OF OUR LEADERS We have spoken now, surely, in terms too con- crete to admit of any further doubt or question. An evident principle runs through the whole pro- gram I have outlined. It is the principle of justice to all peoples and nationalities, and their right to live on equal terms of liberty and safety with one another, whether they be strong or weak. Unless this principle be made its foundation no part of the structure of international justice can stand. The people of the United States could act upon no other principle; and to the vindication of this principle they are ready to devote their lives, their honor, and everything that they possess. The moral climax of this the culminating and final way for human liberty has come, and they are ready to put their own strength, their own highest purpose, their own integrity and devotion to the test. How to Attract and Hold an Audience. Every stu- dent in college or school, every lawyer, every teacher, every clergyman, every man or woman occupying an official position, every citizen and every youth who is likely ever to have occasion in committee, or in public, to enlist the interest, to attract and hold the attention of one or more hearers, and convince them — every person who ever has to, or is likely to have to "speak" to one or more listeners will find in our new book a clear, concise, complete handbook which will enable him to succeed / Thorough, concise, methodical, replete with common sense, complete. In his logical method, in the crystal-like lucidity of his style, in his forceful, incisive, penetrating mastery of his subject, the author has at one bound placed himself en a plane with the very ablest teacher-authors of his day. Fenno's Science and Art of Elocution. Standard. Probably the most successful of its kind. The Power of Speech, How to Acquire It. A comprehensive system cf vocal expression. Thor- ough and practical instruction in the use of the speak- ing voice, embracing deep breathing, articulation, modulation, emphasis r/ad delivery; vocal coloring, interpretation of the written word, the conveying of thought by means of vocal expression, and the prin- ciples of cratory and dramatic art. The Psychology cf Public Speaking. A scientific treatment of the practical needs of the public speak- er. A worth-while book. How to Use the Vcico in Reading and Speaking. By Ed. Amherst Ott, head of the School of Oratory, Drake University, Suitable for class work. How to Gesture. E. A. Ott. New z'llus. edit. Constitution of U. C. In English, German and French. Constitution of U. £., with Index (Thorpe's Pock- et Edition), Brief History of Civilization (Blackmar), The Changing Values of English Speech. The Worth of Words. (Bell). The Religion of Beauty. (Bell). Entertainments for Every Occasion. . Ideas, games, charades, tricks, plans — for keeping those present entertained, on whatever occasion, whether a party, a festival, a bazaar, an entertainment, or merely 44 our own folks " or an "entre nous." The Humorous Speaker. The choicest, most recent humor that lends itself to recitation. Easily the best collection that has been made. The selections are chosen because they are good literature, and because they are good recitations. Unhackneyed material — most of it from recently copyrighted books, for which special permission has been secured. A hundred and twenty five selections, about 500 pages. Commencement Parts. " Efforts " for all occasions. Models for every possible occasion in high-school and college career, every one of the 4 * efforts" being what some fellow has stood on his feet and actually delivered on a similar occasion — not what the com- piler would say if he should happen to be called on for an ivy song or a response to a toast, or what not ; but what the fellow himself, when his turn came, did say ! Invaluable, indispensable to those prepar- ing any kind of "effort." Unique. Contains models of the salutatory, the valedictory, orationsi class poems, class songs, class mottoes, class will, ivy poem and song, Dux's speech ; essays and addresses for flag day, the sea- sons, national and other holidays; after-dinner speeches and responses to toasts. Also models for occasional addresses — so- cial, educational, political, religious. Also models for superin- tendents" and principals' addresses to graduating class, debating team, educational conference ; on dedication of school building, public building, library ; for holidays, festival days, and scores of social and other occasions. Also themes for essays, and lists of subjects for orations, essays, toasts. College Men's 3-Minute Declamations. Ma ^rial with vitality in it for prize speaking. 14th edit. College Maids' 3-Minute Readings. Up-to-date re- citations from living men and women. On the plan of the popular College Men's 3-minute Declamations, and on the same high plane. Twelfth edition. Pieces for Prize Speaking Contests. Volume I. Over one hundred pieces that have actually taken prizes in prize speaking contests. Successful. Pieces for Prize Speaking Contests. Vol. II. Pieces for Every Occasion. " Special days.'* Famous Poems Explained. (Barbe), The Speaker Series The Speaker Series (32 vob ) paper, 45c; cloth, 65c Popular Short Stories Selections Chosen for Declamation Contest^ Selections for Children to Recite Cuttings from Stories Cuttings from Stories Ten Short Plays Readings, and Four Plays Briefs of Debates, and Readings Cuttings of Popular Stories Modern American Oratory Dramatic and Humorous Readings Centennial Number Now Platform Selections Selections for Religious Occasions Encores : Nearly 230 Fresh, Bright Hits Popular Platform Readings Humorous and Dramatic Readings Monologues On Temperance For Declamation Contests After-dinner Speaking School and College Readings Selections for Entertainments Dramatic Selections Popular Prose and Poetry Readings from Great Authors Readings and Debates Not Found Elsewhere Classic Masterpieces Best Fiction for the Platform Humorous and Pathetic Readings Patriotic Selections Scenes from Plays for Platform Readings THE ABOVE NUMBERS IN EIGHT BOUND VOLUMES, indexed by authors and titles : Including Nos. 1, 2, 3 and 4, Including Nos. 5, 6, 7 and 8, Including Nos. 9, 10, 11 and 1?, Including Nos. 13, 14, 15 and 16, Including Nos. 17, 18, 19, 20, Including Nos. 21, 22, 23, 24, Including Nos. 25, 26, 27, 28, Vol. VIII. Including Nos. 29, SO, 31, 32, No. 1 No. 2 No. 3 No. 4 No. 5 No. 6 No. 7 No. 8 No. 9 No. 10 No. 11 No. 13 No. 13 No. 14 No. 15 No. 1G No. 17 No. 18 No. 19 No. 20 No. 21 No. 22 No. 23 No. 24 No. 25 No. 26 No. 27 No. 28 No. 29 No. 30 No. 31 No. 32 THE t \.BC Vol. I. Vol. II. Vol. III. Vol. IV. Vol. V. Vol. VI. Vol. VII. The numbers described in this folder are illustrative of the series. A complete Index arranged by authors and ti'les will be sent on reguest. BOOKS teY JRALCY IHUSTEJl* JJKI.L The Worth of Words Third Edition, Revised and Enlarged, The souls of words live after their forms change. This spiritual element of words survives as literature. The living book contains the EGO of the author — the spiritual personality of his mind. This book treats of the right usage of words on this vital basis. It is a living guide. Simple and clear, it aids correct speech and shows how to vitalize words with SOUL. The Changing Values of English Speech A mate to the worth of words. Touches lightly the philosophical side in a practical way: illumines Style, Soul of Words, Early English, Language-Change, Poetry, Syntax, Variations in Word-Meanings, Distinctions, Origin of Language, Old Celtic Friends, English Ortho- graphy, Words Changed Since Shakespeare, Commonplace Poetry, Aborigines. Reads with the fascination of romance. The Religion of Beauty Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged, This is the autobiography of a Soul glad of life — one who finds riches in the possessions of others and, above all, a golden wealth in man's Impersonal Estate— in sky and star, sun and city, the sea and the open world— one who finds the Religion of Beauty in all things, and reveals the secret whereby all who will may dig up "real wealth" while having a good time. Taormina Illustrated. New Historic Matter. History is told here with Maeterlinck's charm of style; scenes are painted with the power and beauty of Hearn ; philosophy is unconsciously brought forth from events. Greek legend weaves a necklace of imagery which holds ETNA in its clasp. Martial echoes mingle with the voices of ancient poets, the murmur of the Ionian Sea and of olive leaves in sunny Sicily. Extemporaneous Speaking BY PAUL M. PEARSON Professor Public Speaking, Swarthmnre College AND PHILLIP M. HICKS Assistant in Public Speaking, Swarthmore College A book grown from class-room experience. A text for school and college classes. Practical, thorough, inspirational: This text is prepared to meet the needs of teachers who wish to put into the hands of students a book which will give them a working method for preparing to speak, an appreciation of what is required in effect- ive extemporaneous speaking, and an acquaintance with the modern examples. By means of "The Speaker," "Intercollegiate De- bates," "The Public Speaking Review," and othei publications, Professor Pearson has done much to meet the present needs of teaching public speaking. We believe, however, that this latest publication will do even more than the others to help teachers and stu- dents. Like the other publications it is clear, brief, stimulating, and best of all it meets the modern re- quirements of speaking. Mail your order now, that you may have the book for the coming school year. American Civics For Schools, Academies and the Citizen By A. G. FRADENBURGH. Ph. D. PROFESSOR OF HISTORY AND POLITICS, ADELPHI COLLEGE BROOKLYN, N. Y. > CLOTH — $1.15, postpaid — OCTAVO In American Civics the student is shown that our governmental institutions have been not a creation but a development through long experience gained on both sides of the Atlantic. Numerous comparisons with the governments of England and Continental Europe serve to broaden the student's horizon and enable him to study the more intelligently the government of Amer- ica. An adequate treatment is given to the actual working of party organizations and party methods. It is believed that nowhere else will be found so excellent a treatment of these matters within so reasonable a space. Questions of present interest are brought before the reader in their proper connection, and in many in- stances the arguments on both sides of questions still open to debate, are given. SOME OF THE SUBJECTS DISCUSSED Municipal Home Rule Municipal Ownership Initiative and Referendum Woman Suffrage The Machine Citizenship Minorrty'and Proportional £aturalizat«m Representation Military and Naval Powers Civil Service Reform T of V°£ gr 5 ss „ «„. The Railroad Problem Legal Rights and Obliga- Ship Subsidies tions American Civics explains the government in New York State and New York City in a way to enable in- structive comparisons of the contrasts and the similar- ities with other states ; similarly the New England, the Southern, and the Western states. Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide Treatment Date: j^ 200 PreservationTechnologies A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATIOI 111 Thomson Park Drive Cranberry Township, PA 16066