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 5 helping her, she can do no other. WOODROW WILSON 22. WAYS TO SERVE THE NATION DURING WAR A PROCLAMATION TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, MY FELLOW COUNTRYMEN: The entrance of our own beloved country into the grim and terrible war for democracy and human rights which has shaken the world creates so many problems of national life and action which call for immediate consideration and settlement that 5 I hope you will permit me to address to you a few words of earnest counsel and appeal with regard to them. We are rapidly putting our navy upon an efficient war footing and are about to create and equip a great army, but these are the simplest parts of the great task to which 10 we have addressed ourselves. There is not a single selfish element, so far as I can see, in the cause we are fighting for. We are fighting for what we believe and wish to be the rights of mankind and for the future peace and security of the world. To do this great thing worthily 15 and successfully we must devote ourselves to the service without regard to profit or material advantage and with an energy and intelligence that will rise to the level of the enterprise itself. We must realize to the full how great the task is and how many things and how many kinds and 20 elements of capacity and service and self-sacrifice it involves. These, then, are the things we must do, and do well, besides fighting, the things without which mere fighting 5 would be fruitless: We must supply abundant food for ourselves and for our armies and our seamen not only, but also for a large part of the nations with whom we have now made common cause, in whose support and by whose sides we shall 10 be fighting: 20 We must supply ships by the hundreds out of our shipyards to carry to the other side of the sea, submarines or no submarines, what will every day be needed there, and abundant materials out of our fields and our mines and our 15 factories with which not only to clothe and equip our own forces on land and sea but also to clothe and support our people for whom the gallant fellows under arms can no longer work, to help clothe and equip the armies with which we are coöperating in Europe, and to keep the looms and manufactories there in raw material; coal to keep the fires going in ships at sea and in the furnaces of hundreds of factories across the sea; steel out of which to make arms and ammunition both here and there; rails for worn-out railways back of the fighting fronts; loco25 motives and rolling stock to take the place of those every day going to pieces; mules, horses, cattle for labor and for military service; everything with which the people of England and France and Italy and Russia have usually supplied themselves but cannot now afford the men, the 30 materials, or the machinery to make. It is evident to every thinking man that our industries, on the farms, in the shipyards, in the mines, in the fac 5 tories must be made more prolific and more efficient than ever and that they must be more economically managed and better adapted to the particular requirements of our task than they have been; and what I want to say is that the men and the women who devote their thought and their energy to these things will be serving the country and conducting the fight for peace and freedom just as truly and just as effectively as the men on the battlefield or in the trenches. The industrial forces of the country, men and women alike, will be a great national, a great 10 international Service Army, a notable and honored host engaged in the service of the nation and the world, the efficient friends and saviors of freemen everywhere. Thousands, nay, hundreds of thousands, of men otherwise liable to military service will of right and of necessity be 15 excused from that service and assigned to the fundamental, sustaining work of the fields and factories and mines, and they will be as much part of the great patriotic forces of the nation as the men under fire. I take the liberty, therefore, of addressing this word 20 to the farmers of the country and to all who work on the farms; the supreme need of our own nation and of the nations with which we are coöperating is an abundance of supplies, and especially of food stuffs. The importance of an adequate food supply, especially for the present year, 25 is superlative. Without abundant food, alike for the armies and peoples now at war, the whole great enterprise upon which we have embarked will break down and fail. The world's food reserves are low. Not only during the present emergency but for some time after peace shall 30 have come both our own people and a large proportion of the people of Europe must rely upon the harvests in America. Upon the farmers of this country, therefore, in large measure, rests the fate of the war and the fate of the nations. May the nation not count upon them to omit no step that will increase the production of their 5 land or that will bring about the most effectual coöperation in the sale and distribution of their products? The time is short. It is of the most imperative importance that everything possible be done and done immediately to make sure of large harvests. I call upon young men and 10 old alike and upon the able-bodied boys of the land to accept and act upon this duty - to turn in hosts to the farms and make certain that no pains and no labor is lacking in this great matter. I particularly appeal to the farmers of the South to 15 plant abundant food stuffs as well as cotton. They can show their patriotism in no better or more convincing way than by resisting the great temptation of the present price of cotton and helping, helping upon a great scale, to feed the nation and the peoples everywhere who are 20 fighting for their liberties and for our own. The variety of their crops will be the visible measure of their comprehension of their national duty. The government of the United States and the governments of the several States stand ready to coöperate. 25 They will do everything possible to assist farmers in securing an adequate supply of seeds and adequate force of laborers when they are most needed, at harvest time, and the means of expediting shipments of fertilizers and farm machinery as well as of the crops themselves when 30 harvested. The course of trade shall be as unhampered as it is possible to make it and there shall be no unwarranted manipulation of the nation's food supply by those |