Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1917-04-03

Germany with the materials which
they can obtain only from us or by our
assistance. They are in the field and
we should help them in every way to
be effective there.
Il shall take the liberty of suggest
ing, through the several executive de-
partments of the government for the
consideration of your committees,
measures for the accomplishment of
the several objects | aforementioned. l
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 which
the responsibility of conducting the
war and safeguarding the nation will
most directly fall.
For Cause of Peace
while we do these things, these
deeply momentous things, let us be
very clear and make very clear to all
the world what our motives and our
objects are. My own thought has not
been driven from its habitual and
normal course by the unhappy events
of the last two months, and l do not
believe that the thought of the nation
has been altered or clouded. | have
exactly the same things in mind now
that l had in mind when l addressed
the Senate on the 22d of January last:
the same that l had in mind when /
addressed the Congress on the Sd of
February and on the 26th of Feb
ruary. Our object now, as then, is to
vindicate the principles of peace and
the justice in the life of the world as
against selfish and autocratic power
and to set up amongst the really free
and self-governed peoples of the
world such a concert of purpose and
of action as will henceforth insure the
observance of those principles.
Beginning New Age
Neutrality is no longer feasible or
desirable where the peace of the world
is involved and the freedom of its
peoples, and the menace to that peace
and freedom lies in the existence of
ganized force which is controlled
wholly by their will, not by the will
of their people. We have seen the last
of neutrality in such circumstances.
I'VE are at the beginning of an age
in which it will be insisted that the
same standard OF conduct and of re-
sponsibility for wrong done shall be
observed among nations and their gov
ernments that are observed among the
individual citizens of civilized states.
Sympathy For German People
I'VE have no quarrel with the Ger
man people. We have no feeling to-
| friendship. 1t was not upon their i'm
pulse that their government acted in
! entering the war. 1t was not with
their previous knowledge or approval.
1T was a war determined upon as
wars used to be determined upon in
the old. unhappy days when peoples
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 accustomed to use their fellow
mon as pawns and tools
Work Under Cover
"Self-governed nations do not fill
| their neighbor states with spies or set
the course of intrigue to bring about
| some critical posture of affairs which
will giveI them an opportunity to
| strike and make conquest. Such de-
| signs can be successfully worked only
under cover and where no one has
the right to ask questions.
"Cunningly contrived plans of de-
ception or aggression, carried, it may
be, from generation to generation, can
be worked, out and kept from the
| light only within the privacy of courts
] or behind the carefully guarded con-
! fdences of a narrow and privileged
class. They are happily impossible
where public opinion commands and
ing all the nations affairs.
Partnership of Nations
"a steadfast concert for peace can
never be maintained except by a part
nership of democratic nations. No
autocratic government could be trust
ed to keep faith within it or observe
its covenants 1t must be a league of
| honor, a partnership of opinion In
| trigue would eat it's vitals away; the
| plottings of inner circles who could
plan what they would and render ac-
count to no one would be corrup-
| ton seated at it's very heart. Only
free peoples can hold their purpose
and their honor steady to a common
| end and prefer the interests of man
! kind to any narrow interest of their
| own.
Does not every American feel that
| assurance has been added to our hbpe
for the future peace of the world by
the wonderful and heartening things
that have been happening within the
last few weeks in Russia?
Russia was known by those who
| knew it best to have been always in
| fact democratic at heart in all the
vital habits of her thought. in all the
intimate relationships of her people
that spoke their natural instinct, their
habitual attitude towards life.
'The autocracy that crowned the
summit OF her political structure, long
as it had stood and terrible as was
the reality of it's power, was not in
fact Russian in origin, character, or
purpose; and now 1t has been shaken
off and the great, generous Russian
people have been added in all their
native majesty and might to the
forces that are fighting for freedom in
the world, for justice and for peace.
Here is fit partner for league of
/ honor.
Censure For Prussia
zone of the things that has served
to convince us that the Prussian auto
cracy was not and could never be our
friend is that from the very outset of
the present war 1t has filled our un-
suspecting communities and even our
offices of government with spies and
set criminal intrigues everywhere
afoot against our national unity of
council, our peace within and without,
our industries and oun commerce.
Indeed 1t Is now evident that its