HISTORIC SPEECHES
WOODROW WILSON
War Message
April
2, 1917
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 third 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.
The new policy has swept every restriction aside. Vessels
of every kind, whatever their flag, their character, their
cargo, their destination, their errand, have been ruthlessly
sent to the bottom: without warning and without thought
of help or mercy for those on board, the vessels of friendly
neutrals along with those of belligerents. Even hospital
ships and ships carrying relief to the sorely bereaved
and stricken people of Belgium, though the latter were
provided with safe conduct through the proscribed areas
by the German Government itself and were distinguished
by unmistakable marks of identity, have been sunk with
the same reckless lack of compassion or of principle. I
was for a little while unable to believe that such things
would in fact be done by any government that had hitherto
subscribed to the humane practices of civilized nations.
International law had its origin in the attempt to set
up some law which would be respected and observed upon
the seas, where no nation had right of dominion and where
lay the free highways of the world.... This minimum of
right the German Government has swept aside under the plea
of retaliation and necessity and because it had no weapons
which it could use at sea except these which it is impossible
to employ as it is employing them without throwing to the
winds all scruples of humanity or of respect for the understandings
that were supposed to underlie the intercourse of the world.
I am not now thinking of the loss of property involved,
immense and serious as that is, but only of the wanton
and wholesale destruction of the lives of noncombatants,
men, women, and children, engaged 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 innocent people cannot be.
The present 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 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 it will meet it. The choice we make for
ourselves must be made with a moderation of counsel and
a temperateness of judgment befitting our character and
our motives as a nation. We must put excited feeling away.
Our motive 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 single
champion.
When I addressed the Congress on the twenty-sixth of February
last I thought that it would suffice to assert our neutral
rights with arms, our right to use the seas against unlawful
interference, our right to keep our people safe against
unlawful violence. But armed neutrality, it now appears,
is impracticable. 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 themselves against privateers or cruisers,
visible craft giving chase upon the open sea. It is common
prudence in such circumstances, grim necessity indeed,
to endeavor to destroy them before they have shown their
own intention. They must be dealt with upon sight, if dealt
with at all. The German Government denies the right of
neutrals to use arms at all within the areas of the sea
which it has proscribed, 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 neutrality is ineffectual
enough at best; in such circumstances and in the face of
such pretensions it is worse than ineffectual: it is likely
only to produce what it was meant to prevent; it is practically
certain to draw us into the war without either 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 sacred
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 I am taking and of the grave responsibilities
which it involves, but in unhesitating obedience to what
I deem my constitutional duty, I advise that the Congress
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 formally 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 its power and employ all its 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
practicable cooperation in counsel and action with the
governments now at war with Germany, and, as incident to
that, the extension to those governments of the most liberal
financial credit, in order that our resources may so far
as possible be added to theirs. It will involve the organization
and mobilization of all the material resources of the country
to supply the materials of war and serve the incidental
needs of the Nation in the most abundant and yet the most
economical and efficient way possible. It will involve
the immediate full equipment of the navy in all respects
but particularly in supplying it with the best means of
dealing with the enemy's submarines. It will involve the
immediate addition to the armed forces of the United States
already provided for by law in case of war at least five
hundred thousand men, who should, in my opinion, be chosen
upon the principle of universal liability to service, and
also the authorization of subsequent additional increments
of equal force so soon as they may be needed and can be
handled in training. It will involve also, of course, the
granting of adequate credits to the Government, sustained,
I hope, so far as they can equitably be sustained by the
present generation, by well conceived taxation. I say sustained
so far as may be equitable by taxation because it seems
to me that it would be most unwise to base the credits
which will now be necessary entirely on money borrowed.
It is our duty, I most respectfully urge, to protect our
people so far as we may against the very serious hardships
and evils which would be likely to arise out of the inflation
which would be produced by vast loans.
In carrying out the measures by which these things are
to be accomplished we should keep constantly in mind the
wisdom of interfering as little as possible in our own
preparation and in the equipment of our own military forces
with the duty- for it will be a very practical duty-of
supplying the nations already at war with Germany with
the materials which they can obtain only from us or by
our assistance. They are in the field and we should help
them in every way to be effective there.
I shall take the liberty of suggesting, through the several
executive departments of the Government, for the consideration
of your committees, measures for the accomplishment of
the several objects I have mentioned. I 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 momentous 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 its habitual and normal course by
the unhappy events of the last two months, and I do not
believe that the thought of the Nation has been altered
or clouded by them. I have exactly the same things in mind
now that I had in mind when I addressed the Senate on the
twenty-second of January last, the same that I had in mind
when I addressed the Congress on the third of February
and 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 selfgoverned
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 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. We are at the beginning of an age in which
it will be insisted that the same standards of conduct
and of responsibility for wrong done shall be observed
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 them but one of sympathy and friendship.
It was not upon their impulse that their government acted
in entering this war. It was not with their previous knowledge
or approval. It was a war determined upon as wars used
to be determined upon in the old, unhappy days when peoples
were nowhere consulted by their rulers and wars were provoked
and waged in the interest of dynasties or of little groups
of ambitious men who were accustomed to use their fellow
men as pawns and tools.
Selfgoverned 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 out only under cover and where no
one has the right to ask questions. Cunningly contrived
plans of deception 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 confidences of a narrow and privileged
class. They are happily impossible where public opinion
commands and insists upon full information concerning all
the nation's affairs.
A steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained
except by a partnership of democratic nations. No autocratic
government could be trusted to keep faith within it or
observe its covenants. It must be a league of honor, a
partnership of opinion. Intrigue would eat its vitals away;
the plottings of inner circles 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 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
knew it best to have been always 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 habitual attitude towards life. The autocracy
that crowned the summit of her political structure, long
as it had stood and terrible as was the reality of its
power, was not in fact Russian in origin, character, or
purpose; and now it has been shaken off and the great,
generous Russian people have been added in all their naive
majesty and might to the forces that are fighting for freedom
in the world, for justice, and for peace. Here is a fit
partner for a League of Honor.
One of the things that has served to convince us that
the Prussian, autocracy was not and could never be our
friend is that from the very outset of the present war
it has filled our unsuspecting communities and even our
offices of government with spies and set criminal intrigues
everywhere afoot against our national unity of counsel,
our peace Within and without, our industries and our commerce.
Indeed it is now evident that its spies were here even
before the war began; and it is unhappily not a matter
of conjecture but a fact proved in our courts of justice
that the intrigues which have more than once come perilously
near to disturbing the peace and dislocating the industries
of the country have been carried on at the instigation,
with the support, and even under the personal direction
of official agents of the Imperial Government accredited
to the Government of the United States. Even in checking
these things and trying to extirpate them we have sought
to put the most generous interpretation possible upon them
because we knew that their source lay, not in any hostile
feeling or purpose of the German people towards us (who
were, no doubt, as ignorant of them as we ourselves were),
but only in the selfish designs of a Government that did
what it pleased and told its people nothing. But they have
played their part in serving to convince us at last that
that Government entertains no real friendship for us and
means to act against our peace and security at its convenience.
That it means to stir up enemies against us at our very
doors the intercepted note to the German Minister at Mexico
City is eloquent evidence.
We are accepting this challenge of hostile purpose because
we know that in such a Government, following such methods,
we can never have a friend; and that in the presence of
its organized power, always lying in wait to accomplish
we know not what purpose, there can be no assured security
for the democratic Governments of the world. We are now
about to accept gauge of battle with this natural foe to
liberty and shall, if necessary, spend the whole force
of the nation to check and nullify its pretensions and
its power. We are glad, now that we see the facts with
no veil of false pretense about them to fight thus for
the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation
of its peoples, the German peoples included: for the rights
of nations great and small and the privilege of men everywhere
to choose their way of life and of obedience. The world
must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted
upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have
no selfish ends to serve.
We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities
for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices
we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of
the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those
rights have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom
of nations can make them. Just because we fight without
rancor and without selfish object, seeking nothing for
ourselves but what we shall wish to share with all free
peoples, we shall, I feel confident, conduct our operations
as belligerents without passion and ourselves observe with
proud punctilio the principles of right and of fair play
we profess to be fighting for.
I have said nothing of the Governments allied with the
Imperial Government of Germany because they have not made
war upon us or challenged us to defend our right and our
honor. The Austro-Hungarian Government has, indeed, avowed
its unqualified endorsement and acceptance of the reckless
and lawless submarine warfare adopted now without disguise
by the Imperial German Government, and it has therefore
not been possible for this Government to receive Count
Tarnowski, the Ambassador recently accredited to this Government
by the Imperial and Royal Government of Austria-Hungary;
but that Government has not actually engaged in warfare
against citizens of the United States on the seas, and
I take the liberty, for the present at least, of postponing
a discussion of our relations with the authorities at Vienna.
We enter this war only where we are clearly forced into
it because there are no other means of defending our rights.
It will be all the easier for us to conduct ourselves
as belligerents in a high spirit of right and fairness
because we act without animus, not in enmity towards a
people or with the desire to bring any injury or disadvantage
upon them, but only in armed opposition to an irresponsible
government which has thrown aside all considerations of
humanity and of right and is running amuck. We are, let
me say again, the sincere friends of the German people,
and shall desire nothing so much as the early reestablishment
of intimate relations of mutual advantage between us,-
however hard it may be for them, for the time being, to
believe that this is spoken from our hearts. We have borne
with their present Government through all these bitter
months because of that friendship,-exercising a patience
and forbearance which would otherwise have been impossible.
We shall, happily, still have an opportunity to prove that
friendship in our daily attitude and actions towards the
millions of men and women of German birth and native sympathy
who live amongst us and share our life, and we shall be
proud to prove it towards all who are in fact loyal to
their neighbors and to the Government in the hour of test.
They are, most of them, as true and loyal Americans as
if they had never known any other fealty or allegiance.
They will be prompt to stand with us in rebuking and restraining
the few who may be of a different mind and purpose. If
there should be disloyalty, it will be dealt with with
a firm hand of stern repression; but, if it lifts its head
at all, it will lift it only here and there and without
countenance except from a lawless and malignant few.
It is a distressing and oppressive duty, Gentlemen of
the Congress, which I have performed in thus addressing
you. There are, it may be many months of fiery trial and
sacrifice ahead of us. It is a fearful thing to lead this
great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible
and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming
to be in the balance.
But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall
fight for the things which we have always carried nearest
our hearts,-for democracy, for the right of those who submit
to authority to have a voice in their own Governments,
for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal
dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as
shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the
world itself at last free. To such a task we can dedicate
our lives and our fortunes, every thing that we are and
everything that we have, with the pride of those who know
that the day has come when America is privileged to spend
her blood and her might for the principles that gave her
birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured.
God helping her, she can do no other.
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