02 April 1917
President Woodrow Wilson's War Message
Woodrow Wilson, War Messages, 65th Cong., 1st Sess. Senate Doc. No. 5,
Serial No. 7264, Washington, D.C., 1917; pp. 3-8, passim.
On 03 February 1917, President Wilson addressed Congress to announce that
diplomatic relations with Germany were severed. In a Special Session of
Congress held on 02 April 1917, President Wilson delivered this 'War Message.'
Four days later, Congress overwhelmingly passed the War Resolution which
brought the United States into the Great War.
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 1st
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 meagre 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.
By painful stage after stage has that law been built up, with meagre enough
results, indeed, after all was accomplished that could be accomplished, but
always with a clear view, at least, of what the heart and conscience of
mankind demanded. 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 can not 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 26th 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 endeavour 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 can not 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 credits, 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 500,000 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....
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 22d
of January last; the same that I had in mind when I addressed the Congress on
the 3d of February and on the 26th 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
self-governed peoples of the world such a concert of purpose and of action as
will henceforth ensure 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. Self-governed nations do not fill their neighbour 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 honour, 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 honour 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 honour.
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
[Zimmermann 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 gage 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 pretence 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 rancour 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 honour. 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 neighbours 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, everything 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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