could give an account of themselves which would raise them above the fourth class. It reminds me of that very quaint saying of the old darky preacher, "The Lord says unto Moses, come fourth, and he came fifth and lost the race." But I think this Navy would not come fourth in 5 the race, but higher.

What we are proposing now is not the sudden creation of a Navy, for we have a splendid Navy, but the definite working out of a program by which within five years we shall bring the Navy to a fighting strength which otherwise 10 might have taken eight or ten years; along exactly the same lines of development that have been followed and followed diligently and intelligently for at least a decade past. There is no sudden panic, there is no sudden change of plan; all that has happened is that we now see that we 15 ought more rapidly and more thoroughly than ever before to do the things which have always been characteristic of America. For she has always been proud of her Navy and has always been addicted to the principle that her citizenship must do the fighting on land. We are working out 20 American principle a little faster, because American pulses are beating a little faster, because the world is in a whirl, because there are incalculable elements of trouble abroad which we cannot control or alter. I would be derelict to the duty which you have laid upon me if I did not tell you 25 that it was absolutely necessary to carry out our principles in this matter now and at once.

And yet all the time, my fellow-citizens, I believe that in these things we are merely interpreting the spirit of America. Who shall say what the spirit of America is? 30 I have many times heard orators apostrophize this beautiful flag which is the emblem of the Nation. I have many times heard orators and philosophers speak of the spirit which was resident in America. I have always for my own

part felt that it was an act of audacity to attempt to characterize anything of that kind, and when I have been outside of the country in foreign lands and have been asked if this, that, or the other was true of America I have habit5 ually said, "Nothing stated in general terms is true of America, because it is the most variegated and varied and multiform land under the sun.".. Yet I know that if you turn away from the physical aspects of the country, if you turn away from the variety of the strains of blood that 10 make up our great population, if you turn away from the great variations of occupation and of interest among our fellow-citizens, there is a spiritual unity in America. I know that there are some things which stir every heart in America, no matter what the racial derivation or the local 15 environment, and one of the things that stirs every American is the love of individual liberty. We do not stand for occupations. We do not stand for material interests. We do not stand for any narrow conception even of political institutions; but we do stand for this, that 20 we are banded together in America to see to it that no man shall serve any master who is not of his own choosing. And we have been very liberal and generous about this idea. We have seen great peoples, for the most part not of the same blood with ourselves, to the south of us build up 25 polities in which this same idea pulsed and was regnant, this idea of free institutions and individual liberty, and when we have seen hands reached across the water from older political polities to interfere with the development of free institutions on the Western Hemisphere we have 30 said: "No; we are the champions of the freedom of popular sovereignty wherever it displays or exercises itself throughout both Americas." We are the champions of a particular sort of freedom, the sort of freedom which is the only foundation and guarantee of peace.

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Peace lies in the hearts of great industrial and agricultural populations, and we have arranged a government on this side of the water by which their preferences and their predilections and their interests are the mainsprings of government itself. And so when we prepare for national defense we prepare for national political integrity; we prepare to take care of the great ideals which gave birth to this Government; we are going back in spirit and in energy to those great first generations in America, when men banded themselves together, though they were but a 10 handful upon a single coast of the Atlantic, to set up in the world the standards which have ever since floated everywhere that Americans asserted the power of their Government. As I came along the line of the railway to-day, I was touched to observe that everywhere, upon every 15 railway station, upon every house, where a flag could be procured, some temporary standard had been raised from which there floated the stars and stripes. They seemed to have divined the errand upon which I had come, to remind you that we must subordinate every individual interest 20 and every local interest to assert once more, if it should be necessary to assert them, the great principles for which that flag stands.

Do not deceive yourselves, ladies and gentlemen, as to where the colors of that flag came from. Those lines of red 25 are lines of blood, nobly and unselfishly shed by men who loved the liberty of their fellow-men more than they loved their own lives and fortunes. God forbid that we should have to use the blood of America to freshen the color of that flag; but if it should ever be necessary again to assert the 30 majesty and integrity of those ancient and honorable principles, that flag will be colored once more, and in being colored will be glorified and purified.

5

THE SUBMARINE QUESTION

[Address delivered at a joint session of the two Houses of Congress, April 19, 1916.]

GENTLEMEN OF THE CONGRESS:

A situation has arisen in the foreign relations of the country of which it is my plain duty to inform you very frankly.

It will be recalled that in February, 1915, the Imperial German Government announced its intention to treat the waters surrounding Great Britain and Ireland as embraced within the seat of war and to destroy all merchant ships owned by its enemies that might be found within 10 any part of that portion of the high seas, and that it warned all vessels, of neutral as well as of belligerent ownership, to keep out of the waters it had thus proscribed or else enter them at their peril. The Government of the United States earnestly protested. It took the position that such a policy could not be pursued without the practical certainty of gross and palpable violations of the law of nations, particularly if submarine craft were to be employed as its instruments, inasmuch as the rules prescribed by that law, rules founded upon principles of humanity 20 and established for the protection of the lives of noncombatants at sea, could not in the nature of the case be observed by such vessels. It based its protest on the ground that persons of neutral nationality and vessels of neutral ownership would be exposed to extreme and in25 tolerable risks, and that no right to close any part of the

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high seas against their use or to expose them to such risks could lawfully be asserted by any belligerent government.

The law of nations in these matters, upon which the Government of the United States based its protest, is not of recent origin or founded upon merely arbitrary principles set up by convention. It is based, on the contrary, upon manifest and imperative principles of humanity and has 5 long been established with the approval and by the express assent of all civilized nations.

Notwithstanding the earnest protest of our Government, the Imperial German Government at once proceeded to carry out the policy it had announced. It 10 expressed the hope that the dangers involved, at any rate the dangers to neutral vessels, would be reduced to a minimum by the instructions which it had issued to its submarine commanders, and assured the Government of the United States that it would take every possible pre- 15 caution both to respect the rights of neutrals and to safeguard the lives of non-combatants.

What has actually happened in the year which has since elapsed has shown that those hopes were not justified, those assurances insusceptible of being fulfilled. In 20 pursuance of the policy of submarine warfare against the commerce of its adversaries, thus announced and entered upon by the Imperial German Government in despite of the solemn protest of this Government, the commanders of German undersea vessels have attacked merchant ships 25 with greater and greater activity, not only upon the high seas surrounding Great Britain and Ireland but wherever they could encounter them, in a way that has grown more and more ruthless, more and more indiscriminate as the months have gone by, less and less observant of restraints 30 of any kind; and have delivered their attacks without compunction against vessels of every nationality and bound upon every sort of errand. Vessels of neutral ownership, even vessels of neutral ownership bound from