New Britain herald., 1917-04-02

ton or the lives of non-com batants, men. women and children engaged in pursuits which have always, even in the darkest periods of modern his tory, been deemed innocent and le- gitimate. Property, can be paid for; the lives of peaceful and innocent people cannot be.
 ''The present German warfare against commerce is Q warfare against mankind. It is a war. against lll nations. American ships have been sunk, American lives taken, in ways which have stirred us very deeply to learn of, but the ships and people of other neutral and friendly nations have been sunk and overwhelmed in the waters in the same way. There has been no discrimination. The challenge is to all mankind. Each nation must decide for itself how 1t will meet it. The choice we make for ourselves must be made with u moderation of counsel and a temper ance of Judgment bef1tting our char acter and our motives as a nation. We must put excited feeling away.
 i.Our motive will not be revenge or the victorious assertion of the physi- cal might of the nation, but only the vindication of right, of human right, of which we are only 8 single cham pion.
 when I advised the congress on the twenty-sixth of February last I though it would suffice to assert our neutrhl rights with arms, our right to use the seas against unlawful inter- ference, our right to keep our people safe against unlawful violence. But armed neutrality. it now appears, is impracticable. 4 @ :.
 Because submarines 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 merchantmen would defend them selves against, privateers or cruisers. visible craft giving chase up pon the open sea. s.s
 "It Is common prudence in such circumstances, grim necessity indeed,l to endeavor to destroy them before they have shown their own intention They must be dealt with upon Hight. if dealt with at all..s ss4
 The German government dentes the right of neutrals to use arms Ut all within the areas of the sea which 1t has prescribed. even in the defense of rights which no modern publtcist has ever before questioned their right to defend sTl1es sintimation is con- veyed thae the rmed guards which we have Alaced our merchant ships will De treated sts beyond the pale of law and subject to be dealt with as pirates would be. Armed neutrality is ineifectual enough at best: in such circumstances and in the face of such pretensions it is worse than ineffec- tual, 1t Is likely once to produce what was meant to prevent it: it is .prac- tically certain to draw us into the war without either the rights or the effectiveness of belligerents.
 There is one choice we cannot make, wes are incapable of making; we will not choose the path of sub- mission and suffer the most sacred rights of bur nation and our people to be ignored or violated. The wrongs against which we now array our selves are not common wrongs: they cut to the very roots of human life.
 with a profound sense of the solemn and even tragical character of tho step I am taking and of the grave responsibilities which it in- voirns, but in unhesitating obedience to what I deem my constitutional duty, aI advise that the congress de- clare tho recent course of the imperial German government to be in fact rotlling less than war against the government and people of the United States; that it formally accept the status of belligerents 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 employ all it's resources to bring the government of the Ger man empire to terms and end the war.
 What this will involve is clear. It will involve the utmost practicab ble cooperation in counsel and action with the governments now at war with Germany and, as incident tn that. the extension to those govern ments of the most liberal financial credits, in order that our resources may, so far as possible, be added to theirs.
 "Tt will involve the organization
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