The Birmingham age-herald., 1916-01-28
WILSON SOUNDS KEYNOTE OF PREPAREDNESS SPEECHES IN
 ADDRESS TO RAILROAD MEN

ROAD MEN 1 ican life is founded They are ready a any time to fight for the vindication D their character and their honor, They vii | at no time seek a contest, but they wil at no time cravenly avoid it. Because | there is one thing that the country ough | to fight for and that every nation ough to fight for, it is the integrity of it' own convictions We cannot surrender our convictions. l would rather surrende | territory than surrender those ideal which are the staff of life for the sou itself. And because we hold certain ideal we have thought it was right we should l hold them for others as well as for our selves.
 SNEERS NO LONGER
 America has more than once given evi dence of the generosity and disinterested ness of it's love of liberty. It has beer willing to fight for the liberty of others as well as for it's own liberty. The work sneered when we set out for the Liberation of Cuba, but the world does not snee any longer. The world knows now wha it was then loath to believe, that a pa tion can sacrifice it's own interests anC it's own blood for the sake of the liberty and happiness of another people.
 And, whether by one process or another, we have made ourselves in some sort the champions of free gov ernment and national sovereignty in both continents of this hemisphere. Sc that there are certain obligations which every American knows, that we have undertaken. The first and pri- mary obligation is the maintenance oi the integrity of our own sovereignty which goes as of course. There is also , the maintenance of our liberty to de- veiop our political institutions without hindrance, and last of all, there is the determination and the obligation to stand as the strong brother of all those in this hemisphere who will maintain the same principles and follow the same ideals of liberty
 WOULD LOSE CONFIDENCE
 May I venture to insert here a parenthesis? Have any of you thought of this? We have slowly, very slowly, indeed, begun to win the confidence of the other states of the American hemi- sphere. If we should go into Mexico do you know what would happen? All the sympathy of the rest of America would look across the water and not northward to the great republic which we profess to represent
 And do you not see the conse- quences that would ensue in every in- ternational relationship? Have the gentlemen who have rushed down to Washington to insist that we should go into Mexico reflected upon the pol itics of the world? Nobody seriously supposes, gentlemen, that the United States needs to fear an invasion of it's own territory. What America has to fear, if she has anything to fear, art indirect, rounda bout, flank movements upon her regnant position in the west ern hemisphere. Are we going to open those gates, or are we going to close them? For they are the gates to the hearts of our American friends C tn ., south of us, and not the gates to the ports. Win their spirits and you have won the only sort of leadership and the only sort of safety that America covets We must all of us think from this time out, gentlemen, in the terms of the world, and must learn what it is that America has set out to maintain as a standard bearer for all those who love liberty and justice and the righteousness of political ac- tion.
 But, geneltmen, we must find means to 10 this thing which are suitable tt the time and suitable to our own ideals. Suitable to time. Does anybody un- derstand the time? Perhaps when you learned, as I dare say you did learn beforehand, that 1 was expecting to ad- dress you on the subject of prepared ness, you recalled the address which I made to Congress something more than a year ago in which I said that this question of military preparedness was not a pressing question But more than a year has gone by since then, and I would be ashamed if I had not learned something in IA months. The minute I stop changing my mind as President, with the change of all tho circumstances in the world, I will be a back number.
 CHANGED ON TARIFF
 '"There is another thing about which have changed my mind. A year ago I was not in favor of a tariff board, and l will tell you why: Because, then, the only pur- pose of a tariff board was to keep alive an unprofitable controversy. If you sci up any board of inquiry whose purpose it is to keep business disturbed and tC make it always an open question what you are going to do about the public pol icy of the government, I am opposed to it And the very men who were dinning il into our ears that what business wanted was to be let alone, were, many of them men who were insisting that we should start up a controversy that meant that we could not let it alone. There is 8 great deal more opinion vocal in this world than is consistent with logic.
 But the circumstances of the present time are these: There is going on in the world, under our eyes, an economic revo- lution. No man understands that revo- lution; no man has the elements of il clearly in his mind no part of the busi- ness of legislation with regard to interna- tional trade can be undertaken until we do understand it. And members of Con- gress are too busy, their duties are toe multifarious and distracting to make il possible within a sufficiently short space of time for them to master the change that is coming. I hear a great many things predicted about the end of the war, but I don't know anything about what is going to happen when the wal is over and neither do you.
 AS TO IMMIGRATION
 "There are two diameticany opposed views as to immigration: Some men tel us that at least a million men are going to leave the country, and others tell u: that many millions are going to rush into it. Neither party knows what they art talking about, and I am one of those pru dent individuals who would really like tC know the facts before he forms an opin ion: not out of wisdom, but out of pru. dence. l have lived long enough to know that if l do not, the facts will get away from me. l have come to have a whole some respect for the facts, I have had tC yield to them sometimes before I saw them coming, and that has led me to keer weather eye open, in order that l may see them coming.
 There is so much to understand tha we have not the data to comprehend, tha1 advice is concerned, to leave the govern ment without the adequate means of in.