The present German 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 endeavor 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 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 cannot 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 not common wrongs;
they reach out to the very roots of human life.