" We shall happily still have an opportunity to prove that friendship in our daily attitude and actions toward the mil lion of men and women of German birth and native wm pathy who live among us and share our life, sand we shall be proud to prove it toward all who are in fact loyal to their neighbors and to the government in the hour of test. They are most of them as true and loYal Americans as they led never known any other fealty or allegiance. They vnll be prompt to stand with us in rebuking and restraining the few who may be of a different mind and purpose. if there shoukl be diskwalty it will be dealt with with a firm hand of stem repression; but if it life its head at alt, it will lift it only here and there and without countenanoe except from a lawless and malignant few.
" It is a distressing and mmessive duty, gentlemen of the Congress. which I have performed in thus addressing you. There are, it may be, many months of fiery trial and sacrtfice ahead of us. It is a fearful thing to lead this great, peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous 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 heart — for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voioe in their own governments, for the rights and liberties of sinad nations, for a imiversal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring pmce and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free.
' To such a task we can dedicate our lives and out 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 princi ples that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured.
" God helping her, she can do no other." The seme evening a resolution was intro duced into each House declaring that a state of war existed. After a debate of 13 hours the resolution passed the Senate. On the morn ing of 6 April 1917, the House also passed the resolution by the vote of 373 to 50.
The exantple of the United States had a pro found effect on other neutral states. On 10 April, Brazil severed diplomatic relations with Germany. The sarne day Argentina endorsed the action of the United States. Bolivia sev ered relations with Germany 13 April. Para guay and Uruguay recognized the juatiCe the course of action of 'the United States.
Cuba declared war on Germany.
The Pope's Peace Note and the Fourteen Points.—On 1 Aug. 1917, Pope Benedict XV addressed a note to the rulers of the belligerent peoples. The note spoke of the Pope's impar tiality during the war, his good will to all, and of previous endeavors to bring the peoples and their rubes to snore moderate resolutions. He invited the warring powets to agree on the following points: die replacement of the force of aims by the moral force of right; reciprocal disarmament; the acceptance of the principles of arbitration with penalties to be laid on any state nsfusine-to arbitrate a national question or to accept the decision; in demnity for damage done; the waiving of the cost of the war; entire and reciprocal emotions. tion; Belgitun to he evacuated with guarantees for her political, military and economic inde pendence; the German colonies to be returned in payment far tite evacuation of the occupied regions of France; territorial questions such as those concerning Alsace-Lonraine, Trieste, Trent, to be submitted to peaceful negotiatiou: community of the sea to be established. °Such are the principal bases,0 he said, ((whereon we believe the future reorganization of the peoples ought to be built.) The Pope's note called forth a nrisuber .of comments from the leading states:nest of both sides. The reply of President Wilson' dated 27 August was generally accepted as expreesive of the sentiment in *LI the Allied cations. The appeal of his Holiness, said Mr. Wilson, was in effect a proposal to return to the status ante bellum, with certain modifications. But 'it was clear that no part of the program could be carried out unless there was a firm and lasting basis for it.' 4We cannot take the word of the present rulers of Germany as a guarantee of anything that is to endure, unless explicitly. supported by such conclusive evideace of the will and purpose of the German people them selves as the other peoples of the world would be justified in accepting. Without such guar antees 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 wait some new evidence of the purrses of the great peoples of the Central Powers.