The Arizona copper camp., 1917-04-07
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 1 have mentions
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.
while we do these things, these
deeply momonetous 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 it's habitual and nor
NAL course by the unhappy events of
the last two months, and I do not be-
| lieve that the thought of the nation has
been altered or clouded by them.
II have exactly the same thing in
mind now that had in mind when 1
addressed the senate on the twenty
second Of January last; the same that
had in mind when I addressed the
congress on the third Of February ana
on the twenty sixth of February. Our
object now, as then, is to vindicate the
| principles of peace and justice in the
| life of the world as against selfish and
autocratic power and to set up amongst
the really free and self-governed peo-
Piles of the world such a concert of pur-
| pose and of action as will henceforth
| insure the observance of these prin-
ciples. 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 autocratic governments backed by
organized 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 standards of conduct and of re-
| sponsibility for wrong done shall be
observed among nations and the gov
ernments that are observed among the
| individual citizens of civilized states.
1--WE have no quarrel with the Ger
ward them but one of sympathy and
| friendship. 1t was not upon their inn
pulse that their government acted in
entering this war. 1t was not with
their previous knowledge or approval.
1t was war determined upon as
wars used to be determined on in the
old, unhappy days when peoples were
| nowhere consulted by their rulers and
wars were provoked and waged in the
| interests of dynasties or of little groups
! Of ambitious men who were accustomed
10 use their fellowmen as pawns and
I tools.
| self f-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 give them an opportunity to strike
| and make conquest. Such designs can
be successfully worked only under COW
| er 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
dences Of a narrow and privileged class
They are happily impossible where
public opinion commands and insists
upon full information concerning all
| the nations affairs.
"a steadfast concert for peace can
| never be maintained except by part
nership of democratic nations. No au-
tocratic government could be trusted
to keep faith within it or observe it's
covenants. 1t must be a league of hon.
or, partnership of opinion. Intrigue
| would eat it's vitals away; the plottings
of inner circles who could plan what
| they would and render account to no
one would be corruption 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 mankind to any narrow interest Of
| their own.
Does not every American feel that
assurance has been added to our hope
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
know it best to have been always in
| fact democratic at heart, in all the vital
habits Of her thought, in all the intir
|