imagery of war and battle is used. We are charged to fight the good fight of faith; we are to sail through bloody seas to win the prize. The Christian soldier is constantly marshaled to war. Not only in our habits and customs, but in our daily speech and in our inmost thoughts we are beset by the obsession of conflict and mutual destruction. It is like the law of sin in the members to which the greatest of the Apostles refers: "Who shall deliver us from the body of this death?"

I am speaking to those who recognize the lamentable state of things and who yet do not accept it, or submit to it, and who hope that through the shadow of this night we shall sweep into a younger day. How is this great deliverance to be accomplished?

We have all recently read that wonderful sermon on war by Count Tolstoi, in which a spirit of marvelous lucidity and fire, absolutely detached from geographical or political conditions, speaks the Word as it has been given to speak it, and as no other living man could have done. As you read, with an aching heart, his terrible arraignment of war, feeling that as a man you are partly responsible for all human atrocities, you wait with impatience for the remedy he shall propose, and you find it is Religion. Yes, that is the remedy. If all would do right, nobody would do wrong—nothing is plainer. It is a counsel of perfection, satisfactory to prophets and saints, to be reached in God's good time. But you are here to consult together to see whether the generation now alive may not do something to hasten the coming of the acceptable day, the appearance on earth of the beatific vision. If we cannot at once make peace and good will the universal rule and practice of nations, what can we do to approximate this condition? What measures can we now take which may lead us at least a little distance toward the wished-for goal?

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I have not come to advise you; I have no such ambitious pretensions. I do not even aspire to take part in your deliberations. But I am authorized to assure you that the American Government extends to you a cordial and sympathetic welcome,

and shares to the utmost the spirit and purpose in which you have met. The President, so long as he remains in power, has no thought of departing from the traditions bequeathed us by the great soldiers and statesmen of our early history, which have been strictly followed during the last seven years. We shall continue to advocate and to carry into effect, as far as practicable, the principle of the arbitration of such questions as may not be settled through diplomatic negotiations. We have already done much in this direction; we shall hope to do much more. The President is now considering the negotiation of treaties of arbitration with such of the European powers as desire them, and hopes to lay them before the Senate next winter. And, finally, the President has only a few days ago promised, in response to the request of the Inter-parliamentary Union, to invite the nations to a second conference at The Hague to continue the beneficent work of the Conference of 1899.

Unhappily we cannot foresee in the immediate future the cessation of wars upon the earth. We ought therefore to labor constantly for the mitigation of the horrors of war, especially to do what we can to lessen the sufferings of those who have no part in the struggle. This has been one of the most warmly cherished wishes of the last two Administrations. I make no apology for reading you a paragraph from the message which President Roosevelt sent to Congress last December.

There seems good ground for the belief that there has been a real growth among the civilized nations of a sentiment which will permit a gradual substitution of other methods than the method of war in the settlement of disputes. It is not pretended that as yet we are near a position in which it will be possible wholly to prevent war, or that a just regard for national interest and honor will in all cases permit of the settlement of international disputes by arbitration; but by a mixture of prudence and firmness with wisdom we think it is possible to do away with much of the provocation and excuse for war, and at least in many cases to substitute some other and more rational method for the settlement of disputes. The Hague Court offers so good an example of what can be done

in the direction of such settlement that it should be encouraged in every way.

Further steps should be taken. In President McKinley's annual message of December 5, 1898, he made the following recommendation:

The experiences of the last year bring forcibly home to us a sense of the burdens and the waste of war. We desire, in common with most civilized nations, to reduce to the lowest possible point the damage sustained in time of war by peaceable trade and commerce. It is true we may suffer in such cases less than other communities, but all nations are damaged more or less by the state of uneasiness and apprehension into which an outbreak of hostilities throws the entire commercial world. It should be our object, therefore, to minimize, so far as practicable, this inevitable loss and disturbance. This purpose can probably best be accomplished by an international agreement to regard all private property at sea as exempt from capture or destruction by the forces of belligerent powers. The United States Government has for many years advocated this humane and beneficent principle, and is now in a position to recommend it to other powers without the imputation of selfish motives. I therefore suggest for your consideration that the Executive be authorized to correspond with the governments of the principal maritime powers with a view of incorporating into the permanent law of civilized nations the principle of the exemption of all private property at sea, not contraband of war, from capture or destruction by belligerent powers.

The President urged this beneficent scheme with an earnestness which gained the willing attention of Congress, already predisposed to it in spirit, and on the 28th of April of this year he was able to approve a joint resolution of both Houses recommending that the "President endeavor to bring about an understanding among the principal maritime powers with a view to incorporating into the permanent law of civilized nations the principle of the exemption of all private property at sea, not contraband of war, from capture or destruction by belligerents."

It has not been thought advisable by the President during the past summer to call the attention of the powers to a project which would necessarily be regarded by two of them, and possibly by others, with reference to its bearing upon the deplorable

conflict now raging in the Far East. But as we earnestly pray that the return of peace may not be long delayed between the two nations, to both of which we are bound by so many historic ties, we may confidently look forward at no distant day to inviting the attention of the nations to this matter, and we hope we may have the powerful influence of this great organization in gaining their adherence.

The time allotted to me is at an end. I can only bid you Godspeed in your work. The task you have set yourselves, the purpose to which you are devoted, have won the praise of earth and the blessing of Heaven since the morning of time. The noblest of all the beatitudes is the consecration promised the peacemakers. Even if in our time we may not win the wreath of olive; even if we may not hear the golden clamor of the trumpets celebrating the reign of universal and enduring peace, it is something to have desired it, to have worked for it in the measure of our forces. And if you now reap no visible guerdon of your labors, the peace of God that passes understanding will be your all-sufficient reward.

WAR FOR DEMOCRACY AND PEACE 1

WOODROW WILSON

Gentlemen of the Congress: I have called the Congress into extraordinary session because there are serious, very serious, choices of policy to be made, and made immediately, which it was neither right nor constitutionally permissible that I should assume the responsibility of making.

On the 3d of February last I officially laid before you the extraordinary announcement of the Imperial German Government that on and after the first day of February it was its purpose to put aside all restraints of law or of humanity and use its submarines to sink every vessel that sought to approach either the ports of Great Britain and Ireland or the western coasts of Europe, or any of the ports controlled by the enemies of Germany within the Mediterranean. That had seemed to be the object of the German submarine warfare earlier in the war, but since April of last year the Imperial Government had somewhat restrained the commanders of its undersea craft, in conformity with its promise, then given to us, that passenger boats should not be sunk and that due warning would be given to all other vessels which its submarines might seek to destroy, when no resistance was offered or escape attempted, and care taken that their crews were given at least a fair chance to save their lives in their open boats. The precautions taken were meager and haphazard enough, as was proved in distressing instance after instance in the progress of the cruel and unmanly business, but a certain degree of restraint was observed.

1 The War Message was read by the President before a joint session of the Senate and the House of Representatives, April 2, 1917.