The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-04-03
OF THE SAME MIND


 nation has been altered or clouded by them.
 OF THE SAME MIND T have exactly the same things in mind now that had in mind when I addressed the Senate on the 22d of January last the same that I had in mind when I ad- dressed the Congress on the 3d of Feb- ruary and on the 26th of February. Our object now, as then is to vndicate 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.
 Neutrality is no longer feasible or de- sirable where the peace of the world is and the menace to that peace and free dom lies in the existence of autocratic governments backed by organized force which is controlled wholly ty their will. not by the will of their people: We have seen the last of neutrality in such cir cumstances
 We are the beginning of an age in which it will be insisted that the same standards of conduct and of responsi- among nations and their governments that are observed among the individual citizens of civilized states.
 "We have no quarrel with the German people. We have no feeling towards tkem but one of sympathy and friend ship. It was not upon their impulse that their government acted in entering this knowledge or approval.
 'It was war determined upon as wars to be determined upon in the old unhappy days when peoples were nowhere con sulsted by their rulers and wars were provoked and waged in the interest of dynasties orr of little. groups of ambitious lmen who were accustomed to use their fellow men as pawns and tools. SPY SYSTEM WRONG 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 give them an opportunity strike and make conquest Such designs can be success fully worked only under cover and where no one has the right to ask questions. "Cunningly contrived plans of decep- ton 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 condolences of a narrow and privileged class. They are happily impossible where public opinions commands and insist upon full informa- I.tion concerning all the nations affairs. "A steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained except by a partner ship of democratic nations. No autocratic government could be trusted to keep faith within it or observe it's covenants. It must be league of honor, a partner ship of opinion. Intrigue would eat it's vitals away; the plottings of inner cir cles who could plan what they would and render account to no one would be a corruption seated at its very heart. Only free peoples can hold their purpose and their honor steady to a common eno and prefer the interests of mankind to any narrow interest of their own. i Does not every American feel that as- surance 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 knew it best to have been al ways 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 habit 1 ual attitude towards life
 '.The autocracy that crowned the sum-
 init of her political structure. long as it