(_November 12, 1917_)
In his address before the American Federation of Labor, assembled in
convention at Buffalo, New York, the President spoke as follows:
Mr. President, Delegates of the American Federation of Labor, Ladies
and Gentlemen,--I esteem it a great privilege and a real honor to be
thus admitted to your public councils. When your executive committee
paid me the compliment of inviting me here I gladly accepted the
invitation, because it seems to me that this, above all other times
in your history, is the time for common counsel, for the drawing not
only of the energies, but of the minds of the nation together. I
thought that it was a welcome opportunity for disclosing to you some
of the thoughts that have been gathering in my mind during the last
momentous months.
I am introduced to you as the President of the United States, and yet
I would be pleased if you would put the thought of the office into
the background and regard me as one of your fellow-citizens who has
come here to speak, not the words of authority, but the words of
counsel, the words which men should speak to one another who wish to
be frank in a moment more critical, perhaps, than the history of the
world has ever yet known, a moment when it is every man's duty to
forget himself, to forget his own interests, to fill himself with the
nobility of a great national and world conception and act upon a new
platform elevated above the ordinary affairs of life, elevated to
where men have views of the long destiny of mankind.
I think that in order to realize just what this moment of counsel is,
it is very desirable that we should remind ourselves just how this
war came about and just what it is for. You can explain most wars
very simply, but the explanation of this is not so simple. Its roots
run deep into all the obscure soils of history, and, in my view, this
is the last decisive issue between the old principles of power and
the new principles of freedom.