(_May 22, 1917_)
In the following letter, addressed to Representative Heflin,
Democrat, of Alabama, President Wilson replies to criticisms
regarding his position with regard to the war and its objects:
It is incomprehensible to me how any frank or honest person could
doubt or question my position with regard to the war and its objects.
I have again and again stated the very serious and long-continued
wrongs which the Imperial German Government has perpetrated against
the rights, the commerce and the citizens of the United States. The
list is long and overwhelming. No Nation that respected itself or the
rights of humanity could have borne those wrongs any longer.
Our objects in going into the war have been stated with equal
clearness. The whole of the conception which I take to be the
conception of our fellow-countrymen with regard to the outcome of the
war and the terms of its settlement, I set forth with the utmost
explicitness in an address to the Senate of the United States on the
22d of January last. Again, in my message to Congress on the 2d of
April last, those objects were stated in unmistakable terms.
I can conceive no purpose in seeking to becloud this matter except
the purpose of weakening the hands of the Government and making the
part which the United States is to play in this great struggle for
human liberty an inefficient and hesitating part.
We have entered the war for our own reasons and with our own objects
clearly stated, and shall forget neither the reasons nor the objects.
There is no hate in our hearts for the German people, but there is a
resolve which cannot be shaken even by misrepresentation, to overcome
the pretensions of the autocratic Government which acts upon purposes
to which the German people have never consented.