The weekly soliphone., 1917-04-05

men, women and children, engaged 1 in pursuits which have always, even in the darkest periods of modern history, been deemed innocent and | legitimate. Property can be paid for the lives of peaceful and in- nocent people cannot be. The pres ent German submarine warfare against commerce is a warfare against mankind.
 "It is a war against all nations. American ships have been sunk, American lives taken, in ways which it has stirred us very deeply to learn of, but the ships and people of other neutral and friendly na- tions have been sunk and over whelmed in the waters in the same way There has been no discrimina- tion. The challenge is to all man. kind. Each nation must decide for itself how it will meet it.. The choice we make for ourselves must be made with a moderation of coun- sel and a temperateness of judg- ment befitting our character and our motives as a nation. We must put excited feeling away. Our mo- tive will not be revenge or the victorious assertion of the physical might of the nation, but only the vindication of right, of human right, of which we are only a sin gle champion.
 "When I addressed the congress on Feb 26 last, I thought that it would suffice to assert our neutral rights with arms, our right to use the seas against unlawful interfer- ence, our right to keep our people armed neutrality, it now appears, is impracticable. Because subma rines are in effect outlaws, when used as the German submarines have been used against merchant shipping, it is impossible to defend ships against their attacks as the law of nations has assumed that m erchantmen would defend them selves against privateers or cruisers, visible craft giving chase upon the open. sea. It is common prudence in such circumstances-gri neces- sity, indeed-to endeavor to de- stroy them before they have shown their own intention. They must be dealt with upon sight, if dealt with at all.
 USE ALL RESOURCES TO END
 WAR
 ''The German government denies the right of neutrals to use arms at all within the areas of the sea which it has prescribed, even in the defense of rights which no modern publicist has. ever before questioned their right to defend. The intimation is conveyed that the armed guards which we have placed on our merchant ships will be treated as beyond the pale of law and subject to be dealt with as pirates would be. Armed neu- trality is intellectual enough at best; in such circumstances and in the face of such pretensiOns it is worse than intellectual; it is likely only to produce what it was meant to prevent; it is practically. certain to draw us into the war without eith- CT the rights or the effectiveness of belligerents.
 "There is one choice we cannot make, we are incapable of making: We will not choose the path of submission and suffer the most sa- cred rights of our nation and our people to be ignored or violated. The wrongs against which we now array ourselves are no common wrongs; they cut to the very roots of human life.
 with a profound sense of the solemn. and even tragical character of the step l am taking and of the grave responsibility which it in- wolves, but in unhesitating Obedi- ence to what l deem my constitu- tional duty, I advise that the con gress declare the recent course of the imperial German government to be in fact nothing less than war against the government and people of the United States; that it formal ly accept the status of belligerent, which has thus been thrust upon it, and that it take immediate steps not only to put the country in a more thorough state of defense but also to exert all it's power and eIn- ploy all it's resources to bring the government of the German empire to terms and end the war.
 What this will involve is clear. It will involve the utmost practical cooperation in counsel and action with the governments now at war with Germany and, as incident to that, the extension to those gov ernments of the most liberal finan- cial credits, in order that our re- sources may so far as possible be T T Ax I.N sv.ry< NlrrA IIn