I say sustained so far as may be equitable by taxation, because it seems to me that it would be most unwise to base the credits, which will now be necessary, entirely on money borrowed. It is our duty, I most respectfully urge, to protect our people, so far as we may, against the very serious hardships and evils which would be likely to arise out of the inflation which would be produced by vast loans.

In carrying out the measures by which these things are to be accomplished we should keep constantly in mind the wisdom of interfering as little as possible in our own preparation and in the equipment of our own military forces with the duty for it will be a very practical duty of supplying the nations already at war with Germany with the materials which they can obtain only from us or by our assistance. They are in the field, and we should help them in every way to be effective there.

I shall take the liberty of suggesting, through the several executive departments of the government, for the consideration of your committees, measures for the accomplishment of the several objects I have mentioned. I hope that it will be your pleasure to deal with them as having been framed after very careful thought by the branch of the government upon whom the responsibility of conducting the war and safeguarding the nation will most directly fall.

Neutrality is no longer feasible or desirable where the peace of the world is involved and the freedom of its peoples, and the menace to that peace and freedom lies in the existence of autocratic governments, backed by organized force which is controlled wholly by their will, not by the will of their people. We have seen the last of neutrality in such circumstances. We are at the beginning of an age in which it will be insisted that the same standards of conduct and of responsibility for wrong done shall be observed among nations and their governments that are observed among the individual citizens of civilized States.

We have no quarrel with the German people. We have no feeling toward them but one of sympathy and friendship. It was not upon their impulse that their government acted in entering this war. It was not with their previous knowledge or approval. It was a war determined upon as wars used to be determined upon in the old, unhappy days, when peoples were nowhere consulted by their rulers and wars were provoked and waged in the interest of dynasties or of little groups of ambitious men who were accustomed to use their fellow-men as pawns and tools.

Self-governed nations do not fill their neighbor States with spies nor set the course of intrigue to bring about some critical posture of affairs which will give them an opportunity to strike and make conquest. Such designs can be successfully worked out only under cover and where no one has the right to ask questions. Cunningly contrived plans of deception or aggression, carried, it may be, from generation to generation, can be worked out and kept from the light only within the privacy of courts or behind the carefully guarded confidences of a narrow and privileged class. They are happily impossible where public opinion commands and insists upon full information concerning all the nation's affairs.

A steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained except by a partnership of democratic nations. The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of nations can make them.

It is a fearful thing to lead this great, peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance.

But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free.

TEXT OF THE DECLARATION OF WAR

Joint Resolution Passed by the United States Senate and House of Representatives.

[ Effective April 6, 1917, at 1 :18 p. m.]

WHEREAS, The Imperial German Government has committed repeated acts of war against the Government and the people of the United States of America; therefore, be it;

Resolved, by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the state of war between the United States and the Imperial German Government, which has thus been thrust upon the United States, is hereby formally declared; and;

That the President be, and he is hereby, authorized and directed to employ the entire naval and military forces of the United States and the resources of the Government to carry on war against the Imperial German Government; and to bring the conflict to a successful termination all the resources of the country are hereby pledged by the Congress of the United States.

BRITAIN WELCOMES AMERICA INTO THE WAR

By Prime Minister David Lloyd George.

A FEW weeks before making this speech at the American Club in London, April 12, 1917, David Lloyd George had become Prime Minister of England, in succession to Herbert Asquith. Previously (on the drowning of Lord Kitchener as the result of a German submarine attack on the British battleship "Hampshire" in the North Sea), in June, 1916, he had become Secretary for War.

His administration was called upon to face an extraordinary series of crises. In meeting them the new Prime Minister exhibited great resourcefulness and audacity in action, as well as fire and force in oratory, of which this is an excellent example. His quickness in grasping a situation, combined with his enthusiasm and courage, braced the British People to "carry on" to victory, and was of incalculable value to the Allies.

An equally cordial welcome was extended by Premier Ribot, in the French Senate.

I AM in the happy position, I think, of being the first British Minister of the Crown who, speaking on behalf of the people of this country, can salute the American nation as comrades in arms, I am glad. I am proud. I am glad not merely because of the stupendous resources which this great nation can bring to the succor of the Alliance, but I rejoice as a Democrat that the advent of the United States into this war gives the final stamp and seal to the character of the conflict as a struggle against military autocracy throughout the world. That was the note that rang through the great deliverance of President-Wilson. . . . The United States of America have a noble tradition, never broken, of having never engaged in a war except for liberty, and this is the greatest struggle for liberty they have ever embarked upon. I am not at all surprised, when one recollects the wars of the past, that America took its time to make up its mind about the character of this struggle. In Europe most of the great wars of the past were waged for dynastic aggrandizements and for conquest. No wonder that when this great war started there were some elements of suspicion still lurking in the minds of the people of the United States of America. There were many who thought, perhaps, that kings were at their old tricks, and although they saw the gallant Republic of France fighting, some of them perhaps regarded France as the poor victim of conspiracy and of monarchical swashbucklers. The fact that the United States of America has made up its mind finally makes it abundantly clear to the world that this is no struggle of that character, but a great fight for human liberty.

They naturally did not know at first what we had endured in Europe for years from this military caste in Prussia. It never has reached the United States of America. Prussia was not a democracy. The Kaiser promises that it will be a democracy after the war. I think he is right. But Prussia not merely was not a democracy. Prussia was not a Staff; Prussia was an army. It had great industries that had been highly developed; a great educational system; it had its universities, it had developed its science.

All these were subordinate to the one great predominant purpose, the purpose of all a conquering army which was to intimidate the world. The army was the spear-point of Prussia; the rest was merely the haft. That was what we had to deal with in these old countries. It got on the nerves of Europe. They knew what it all meant. It was an army that in recent times had waged three wars, all of conquest, and the unceasing tramp of its legions through the streets of Prussia, on the parade grounds of Prussia, had gone into the Prussian head. The Kaiser, when he witnessed on a grand scale his reviews, got drunk with the sound of it. He delivered the law to the world as if Potsdam was another Sinai, and he was uttering the law from the thunder clouds.

Why is it that Germany deliberately in the third year of the war provoked America to this declaration, and to this action? Deliberately! Yes ; resolutely! It has been suggested that the reason was that there were certain elements in American life which Germany was under the impression would make it impossible for the United States to declare war. That I can hardly believe ; but the answer has been afforded by General Hindenburg himself in the very remarkable interview which appeared in the press.

He depended clearly on one of two things that the submarine campaign would have destroyed international shipping to such an extent that England would have been put out of business before America was ready. According to his computation, America would not be ready for twelve months. He does not know America. Then alternatively, and when America was ready at the end of twelve months with her army, she would have no ships to transport that army to the field of battle. In Hindenburg's words, "America carries no weight." I suppose he means that she has no ships to carry it in!

Well, it is not wise always to assume, even when the German General Staff has miscalculated, that they have had no ground for their calculation; and therefore it behooves the whole of the Allies Britain and America in particular to see that the reckoning of von Hindenburg is as false as the one he made about his famous line which we have already broken. . . . The road to victory, the guarantee of victory, the absolute assurance of victory is to be found in one word ships! In a second word ships! In a third word ships! I see that America, with that quickness of comprehension which characterizes your nation, fully realizes that, and to-day I observe that they have already made an arrangement to build a thousand 3,000-tonners for the Atlantic. I think that the German military advisers must already begin to realize that this is another of the tragic miscalculations which is going to lead them to disaster and to ruin.