The conviction that great spiritual forces will assert
themselves at the end of the European war to enlighten the
judgment and steady the spirits of mankind was expressed by
President Wilson in an address of welcome delivered at the
Maryland annual conference of the Methodist Protestant Church
at Washington on April 8, 1915. The text of his address
appears below.
These are days of great perplexity, when a great cloud of trouble hangs
and broods over the greater part of the world. It seems as if great,
blind, material forces had been released which had for long been held in
leash and restraint. And yet underneath that you can see the strong
impulses of great ideals.
It would be impossible for men to go through what men are going through
on the battlefields of Europe and struggle through the present dark
night of their terrible struggle if it were not that they saw, or
thought that they saw, the broadening of light where the morning should
come up and believed that they were standing each on his side of the
contest for some eternal principle for right.
Then all about them, all about us, there sits the silent, waiting
tribunal which is going to utter the ultimate judgment upon this
struggle, the great tribunal of the opinion of the world; and I fancy I
see, I hope that I see, I pray that it may be that I do truly see, great
spiritual forces lying waiting for the outcome of this thing to assert
themselves, and are asserting themselves even now to enlighten our
judgment and steady our spirits.
No man is wise enough to pronounce judgment, but we can all hold our
spirits in readiness to accept the truth when it dawns on us and is
revealed to us in the outcome of this titanic struggle.
It is of infinite benefit that in assemblages like this and in every
sort of assemblage we should constantly go back to the sources of our
moral inspiration and question ourselves as to what principle it is that
we are acting on. Whither are we bound? What do we wish to see triumph?
And if we wish to see certain things triumph, why do we wish to see them
triumph? What is there in them that is for the lasting benefit of
mankind?
For we are not in this world to amuse ourselves with its affairs. We are
here to push the whole sluggish mass forward in some particular
direction, and unless you know the direction in which you want to go
your force is of no avail. Do you love righteousness? is what each one
of us ought to ask himself. And if you love righteousness are you ready
to translate righteousness into action and be ashamed and afraid before
no man?
It seems to me, therefore, that it is worth suggesting to you that you
are not sitting here merely to transact the business and express the
ideals of a great church as represented in the State of Maryland, but
you are here also as part of the assize of humanity, to remind
yourselves of the things that are permanent and eternal, which if we do
not translate into action we have failed in the fundamental things of
our lives.
You will see that it is only in such general terms that one can speak in
the midst of a confused world, because, as I have already said, no man
has the key to this confusion. No man can see the outcome, but every man
can keep his own spirit prepared to contribute to the net result when
the outcome displays itself.
"What the Germans Say About Their Own Methods of Warfare"