The Spectator., 1914-12-08
All Important Problem Which Now confrOnts Congress,
 Says President.
SHIPS OUR GREATEST NEED
America Fears No Nation and Is Am ply Able to Defend ltseIf-Great Task Ahead in Helping to Restore Peace-Economy
 Is Strongly Urged.

Washington, Dec. S.--President Will to congress. Problems brought out by the great conflict in Europe engaged the greater part of his attention. The message follows:
 Gentlemen of the Congress:
 The session upon which you are now entering will be the closing session of the Sixty-third congress, congress, l venture to say, which will long be re- membered for the great body of thoughtful and constructive work which it has done, in loyal response to the thought and needs of the coun- try. l should like in this address to re- view the notable record and try to make adequate assessment of it; but no doubt we stand too near the work that has been done and are ourselves too much part of it to play the part of historians toward it. Moreover, our thoughts are now more of the future than of the past.
 While we have worked at our tasks of peace the circumstances of the whole age have been altered by war. What we have done for our own land and our own people we did with the best that was in us, whether of char acter or of intelligence, with sober enthusiasm and a confidence in the principles upon which we were acting which sustained us at every step of the difficult undertaking; but it is done. It has passed from our hands. It is now an established part of the legislation of the country. It's useful ness, its effects, will disclose them selves in experience. What chiefly strikes us now, as we look about us during these closing days of year which will be forever memorable in the history of the world is that we face new tasks, have been facing them these six months, must face them in the months to come-face them with out partisan feeling, like men who have forgotten everything but a com mon duty and the fact that we are representatives of great people whose thought is not of us but of what America owes to herself and to all mankind in such circumstances as these upon which we look amazed and anxious.
 Europe Will Need Our Help.
 War has interrupted the means of trade not only but also the processes of production. In Europe it is destroy ing men and resources wholesale and upon scale unprecedented and ap- palling. There is reason to fear that the time is near. If it be not already at hand, when several of the coun- tries of Europe will find it difficult to do for their people what they have hitherto been always easily able to do, many essential and fundamental things. At any rate they will need our help and our manifold services as they have never needed them before; and we should be ready. more fit and ready than we have ever been.
 It is of equal consequence that the nations whom Europe has usually sup piled with innumerable articles of manufacture and commerce of which they are in constant need and without which their economic development halts and stands still can now get only . small part of what they formerly i'm ported and eagerly look to us to supply their all but empty markets. This is particularly true of our own neighbors, the states, great and small, of Central and South America. Their lines of trade have hitherto run chiefly athwart the seas, not to our ports. but to the ports of Great Britain and of the older continent of Europe. I do not stop to inquire why, or to make any comment on probable causes. What interests us just now is not the explanation, but the fact, and our duty and opportunity in the presence of it. Here are mar kets which we must supply. and we must find the means of action. The United States, this great people for whom we speak and act, should be ready, as never before, to serve itself and to serve mankind; ready with it's resources, its energies, its forces of production. and it's means of distribu- ton.
 We Need Ships.
 It is a very practical matter, a mat ter of ways and means. We have the resources, but are we fully ready to use them? And if we can make ready what we have, have we the means at hand to distribute 1t? We are not fully ready; neither have we the means of distribution. We are willing, but we are not fully able. We have the wish to serve and to serve greatly. gener- ously; but we are not prepared as we should be. We are not ready to mo- bilize our resources at once. We are not prepared to use them immediately and at their best, without delay and without waste.
 To speak plainly we have grossly erred in the way in which we have stunted and hindered the development of our merchant marine. And now. when we need ships. we have not got them. We have year after year de-