Evening capital and Maryland gazette. (Annapolis, Md.) 1910-1922, 1915-12-08
PRESIDENT WILSON'S
STIRRING ADDRESS
Wants Larger Army and Navy and
Special Criminal Laws.
TO PUNISH ALL INTRIGUERS.
Asserts Country Needs Statutes to. Deal
With Those Who Try t. Plant
War Passions IN its Border

President Wilson read the follow
ing message yesterday to the Senate
and House Of Representatives in joint
assembly:
Gentlemen of the Congress: Since
| had the last privilege Of addressing
you on the state of the Union the war
of nations on the other side of the sea,
which had then only begun to disclose
it's portentious proportions, has ex-
tended it's threatening and sinister
scope until it has swept within its
flame some portion of every quarter
of the globe, not excepting our own
hemisphere, has altered the whole face
of international affairs and now pre-
sents a prospect Of reorganization
and reconstruction such as statesmen
have never been called upon to at
tempt before.
We have stood apart. studiously
neutral. It was our manifest duty to
do so. Not only did we have no part
or interest in the policies which seem
to have brought the conflict on; it was
necessary, if universal catastrophe
was to be avoided, that a limit should
be set at the sweep of destructive war
that some part of the great family of
nations should keep the processes of
peace alive, if only to prevent collect
i've economic ruin and the breakdown
throughout the world of the indus
tries by which it's populations are fed
and sustained. It was manifestly the
duty of the self-governed nations of
this hemisphere to redress. if possi-
BILE, the balance of economic loss and
confusion in the other. if they could
do nothing more. In the day of read
justment and recuperation we earn
estly hope and believe that they can
be of infinite service.
There was a time when the United
States looked upon itself as a sort of
guardian of the republic to the south
against the enyroachment of efforts of
political controk from Europe But,
while we have not abated that spirit
our purpose is now better understood
so far as it concerns ourselves All
the governments Of America stand
upon a footing of equality and un-
questioned independence. We have
been put to the test in Mexico and we
have stood the test. 1t remains to be
seen whether Mexico has been bene-
fted, but we have at least proved that
we will not take advantage of her in
her distress and undertake to impose
upon her an order and government Of
our own choosing.
"The passion of the American peo-
pie is for peace. Conquest and domin-
ion is not in their reckoning or agree
able to their principles. The War
Department plans for strengthening
the army is the essential first step and
is for the present sufficient. The
plans include the increasing of the
standing army to force of al, ,S43
men of all services and the establishz
ment of a supplementary force of
100000 disciplined citizens, who would
undergo training for short periods
throughout three years of a six-year
enlistment
The navy plan involves only a
shortening of the time within which
plans long matured shall be carried
out: but it does make definite and
explicit a program which has here
tofore been only implicit, held in the
minds of the committees on naval af-
fairs and disclosed in the debates of
the two houses, but nowhere formula
ted or formally adopted. There are
citizens of the United States, | blush
to admit, born under other flags. but
welcomed to our generous nauraliza-
tion laws to the full freedom and op-
portunity of America, who have pour
ed the poison of disloyalty into the
very arteries of our national life; who
have sought to bring the authority
and good name of our government into
contempt, to destroy our industries
wherever they thought it effective for
their vindictive purposes, to strike at
them and to debase our policies TO the
uses of the foreign intrigue.
mo federal laws exist to meet this
situation because such a thing would
have seemed Incredible in the past.
Such creatures of passion. disloyalty
and anarchy must be crushed out
They are not many, but they are in
finitely malignant and the hand of our
power should close over them at
ODpe -