" In carrying out the measures by which these things are to be accomplished we should loeep constantly in mind the wbdom of interfering as little as possible in our own lion and in the equipment of our ovrn military forces SZt1 ta duty — for it wM be a practical duty — of supplying the nations already at war with Germany with the materials which they can obtain only from us or by our assistance. They are m 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 government, for the considera tion of your committees, measures for the accomplishment of the several objects I have mentioned. I hope that it will be your pleasure to deal with them as having been framed after very careful thought by the branch of the government upon whom the responsibility of conductmg the war and safeguarding the nation will most directly fall " While we do these things, these deeply monaentous things, let us be very clear, and make very deer to all the world, what mu motives and our objects are. My own thought has not been driven from its habitual and normal course by tha unhappy events of the last two months. and I do not believe that the thought of the nation has been *lifted 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 Yeteuary and on the 26th of Fe.bruary. Our object now, as time. is to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the life of the world as against selfish and autocratic , and to set up among the really free and self-go peoples of the world such • concert of purpose and of action as will henceforth insure the observance of those principles.
" Neutrality is no longer feasible or cluirable where the peace of the world is involved and the freedom of its peoples, and the menace to that peace and freedona lies in the existence of autocratic governments, backed by organized force coutrolkd wholly by their will, not by the will of their people. We have seen the last of neutrality in such circum stanoes. We are at the beginning of an age in which it will be insisted that the same standseds of conthict and of respon silnlity for wiring done shall be observed among nations and their governrnents 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 thew previous Imowl
edge or a- vaL It was a war determined upon as wars used to be " upon in the old. unhappy days, when peoplm were nowhere consulted by their rulers and wars were provoked and waged in the interest of dynasties or of little groups of ambitious men who were accustonexl to use their fellow men as pavms and tools.
"Self-governed nations do not fill their neighbors' states with spies or set the coarse of intrigue to bring about sone critical posture of affairs which wstelleve them an to strike and make conquest. cancrauccrtui,utless fully worked out only under cover andde:Curel no one has the right to ask questions. Cunningly contrived plans of decep tion or aggression. canned. it may be, from generation to generation, can be worload out and kept from the light only within the privacy of courts or behind the carefull confidences of a narrow and oivileged class. Yfrerdaered happily impoisible where peth opimon conunands and insists upon full information concenung all the nation's affairs.
" A steadfast concert for peace can never be maintaiced except by • partnership of democratic nations. No auto cratic government could be trusted to keep faith within it or observe its covenants. It must be a league of honor. a partnership of opinion. Intrigue woukl eat its vitals away; the plotting° of inner circles who amid plan what they would and render account to no one would be a tion seated at its very heart. Only free peoples can hold purpose and their honor stesidy to a common end and, prefer the interests of mankind to ane narrow interest of their own.
" Does not every American feel that assurance has been added to our hope for the future peaoe of the world by the wonderful and heartening things that have been happening within the last few weeks m Russia? Russia was known by those who knew her beat to have been always in fact demo. cratic at heart in all the vital habits of her thought, in all the intimate relationships of her people that spoke their natural inetinct, their' habitual attitude toward life. The autocracy that crowned the summit of her political structure, kwg 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 Ittlesianz.ridPeoPe have been added, in all their native =piety and c ht, to the forces that are fighting for freedom in the for justice, and for peace. Here ie a fit partner for a League of Honor.