Although we have centered counsel and action with such unusual
concentration and success upon the great problems of domestic
legislation to which we addressed ourselves four years ago, other
matters have more and more forced themselves upon our attention,
matters lying outside our own life as a nation and over which we had
no control, but which, despite our wish to keep free of them, have
drawn us more and more irresistibly into their own current and
influence.
It has been impossible to avoid them. They have affected the life of
the whole world. They have shaken men everywhere with a passion and
an apprehension they never knew before. It has been hard to preserve
calm counsel while the thought of our own people swayed this way and
that under their influence. We are a composite and cosmopolitan
people. We are of the blood of all the nations that are at war. The
currents of our thoughts as well as the currents of our trade run
quick at all seasons back and forth between us and them. The war
inevitably set its mark from the first alike upon our minds, our
industries, our commerce, our politics, and our social action. To be
indifferent to it or independent of it was out of the question.
And yet all the while we have been conscious that we were not part of
it. In that consciousness, despite many divisions, we have drawn
closer together. We have been deeply wronged upon the seas, but we
have not wished to wrong or injure in return; have retained
throughout the consciousness of standing in some sort apart, intent
upon an interest that transcended the immediate issues of the war
itself. As some of the injuries done us have become intolerable, we
have still been clear that we wished nothing for ourselves that we
were not ready to demand for all mankind,--fair dealing, justice, the
freedom to live and be at ease against organized wrong.
It is in this spirit and with this thought that we have grown more
and more aware, more and more certain that the part we wished to play
was the part of those who mean to vindicate and fortify peace. We
have been obliged to arm ourselves to make good our claim to a
certain minimum of right and of freedom of action. We stand firm in
armed neutrality since it seems that in no other way we can
demonstrate what it is we insist upon and cannot forego. We may even
be drawn on, by circumstances, not by our own purpose or desire, to a
more active assertion of our rights as we see them and a more
immediate association with the great struggle itself. But nothing
will alter our thought or our purpose. They are too clear to be
obscured. They are too deeply rooted in the principles of our
national life to be altered. We desire neither conquest nor
advantage. We wish nothing that can be had only at the cost of
another people. We have always professed unselfish purpose and we
covet the opportunity to prove that our professions are sincere.