deemed satisfactory as a guaranty against its renewal or the kindling of any similar conflict in the future, as would make it possible frankly to compare them.

Commenting on this note, on January 3, 1917, Roosevelt said in a published statement:

"The note takes positions so profoundly immoral and misleading that high-minded and right-thinking American citizens, whose country this note places in a thoroughly false light, are in honor bound to protest. For example, the note says that thus far both sides seem to be fighting for the same thing. This is palpably false. Nor is this all. It is wickedly false."

On January 25, 1917, President Wilson made an address before the two Houses of Congress in joint session in which he advocated a League of Nations and freedom of the seas and used his famous phrase, "Peace without victory." In his address the President said concerning the utterances of the statesmen of both groups of nations engaged in the

war:

"They imply first of all that it must be a peace without victory. It is not pleasant to say this. . . . Victory would mean peace forced upon the loser, a victor's terms forced upon the vanquished. Only a peace between equals can last; only a peace the very principle of which is equality and a common participation in a common benefit.'

Commenting on this address on the evening of the day on which it was delivered, Roosevelt issued a statement which appeared side by side with the text of the address in the morning papers of January 28, 1917, in which he said, speaking first of a league of peace for all nations:

"Unless the Government can bring the peace of justice to Mexico, it had better not talk of securing the peace of justice throughout the world.

"As regards freedom of the seas, the most important element in it is freedom from murder, and until this Government has taken an effective stand to prevent the murder

of its citizens by submarines on the high seas, it makes itself an object of derision by asking for the freedom of the seas. Interfering with life is worse than interfering with property.

"As for the statement there can be no real peace with victory. So far as Belgium is concerned the statement stands on a par with a similar statement, had there been such, after Bunker Hill and Lexington, that there could be no real peace if victory came to the forces of General Washington.

"If President Wilson's statement had been made by the Emperor Napoleon III, or by Lord John Russell in 1864, I doubt if it would have won any enthusiastic support from Abraham Lincoln, although it would have been applauded by the pacifists."

A day later, January 29, 1917, when a declaration by President Wilson against universal military service was published, Roosevelt said:

"President Wilson has announced himself in favor of peace without victory, and now he has declared himself against universal service-that is, against all efficient preparedness by the United States.

"Peace without victory is the natural ideal of the man who is too proud to fight.

"When fear of the German submarine next moves Mr. Wilson to declare for 'peace without victory' between the tortured Belgians and their cruel oppressors and taskmasters; when such fear next moves him to utter the shameful untruth that each side is fighting for the same things, and to declare for neutrality between wrong and right; let him think of the prophetess Deborah, who, when Sisera mightily oppressed the children of Israel with his chariots of iron, and when the people of Meroz stood neutral between the oppressed and the oppressor, sang of them:

Curse ye Meroz, said the angel of the Lord, curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof; because they came not to the help of the Lord against the wrongdoings of the mighty.

"President Wilson has earned for the nation the curse of Meroz for he has not dared to stand on the side of the Lord against the wrongdoings of the mighty."

When, on February 3, 1917, President Wilson addressed Congress again, announcing the severing of diplomatic relations with Germany and the handing of his passports to Bernstorff, Roosevelt said:

"Of course I shall in every way support the President in all that he does to uphold the honor of the United States and to safeguard the lives of American citizens. Yesterday I wrote to the War Department asking permission to raise a division if war is declared and there is a call for volunteers. In such event I and my four sons will go.'

He abandoned a proposed trip to the West Indies, and began at once to agitate for speedy preparation for war. On March 1, 1917, in a speech at Hartford, Conn., he said: "If we go to war, we are not to be excused if we do not prepare instantly and to the utmost of all our strength.

We must strike hard at Germany with the most formidable expeditionary force that can be raised."

At a great mass meeting in Carnegie Hall, on the evening of March 5, 1917, he said:

"The time has come when it is unpardonable for us as a nation to fail to act immediately for the full and effective defense of American rights and performance of American duties."

The inaction of the Wilson Administration disturbed and alarmed him, and he sought earnestly to move it to action. In a published statement on March 19, 1917, he said:

"The news this morning of the sinking of our three ships -City of Memphis, Vigilancia and Illinois-with loss of American life, makes it imperative that every self-respecting American should speak out and demand that we hit hard and effectively. Words are wasted on Germany. What we need is effective and thorough-going action.

"Seven weeks have passed since Germany renewed with the utmost ruthlessness her never-wholly abandoned submarine war against neutrals and noncombatants. She then notified our Government of her intention. This notification was itself a declaration of war and should have been treated as such. During the seven weeks that have since elapsed she has steadily waged war upon us. It has been a war of murder upon us; she has killed American women and children as well as American men upon the high seas. has sunk our ships, our ports have been put under blockade. She has asked Mexico and Japan to join her in dismembering this country. If these are not overt acts of war, then Lexington and Bunker Hill were not overt acts of war.

She

"Seven weeks ago we broke relations with Germany. This was eminently proper. But it amounted to nothing, it was an empty gesture, unless it was followed by vigorous and efficient action. Yet during the seven weeks (a time as long as the entire duration of the war between Prussia and Austria in 1866) we have done nothing. We have not even prepared.

"Under existing conditions armed neutrality is only another name for timid war; and Germany despises timidity as she despises all other forms of feebleness. She does not wage timid war herself, and she neither respects nor understands it in others.

Seemingly her submarine warfare has failed and is less menacing now than it was seven weeks ago. We are profiting and shall profit by this failure. But we have done nothing to bring it about. It has been due solely to the efficiency of the British Navy. We have done nothing to help ourselves. We have done nothing to secure our own safety or to vindicate our own honor. We have been content to shelter ourselves behind the fleet of a foreign power.

"Such a position is intolerable to all self-respecting Americans who are proud of the great heritage handed down to them by their fathers and their fathers' fathers. Let us dare to look the truth in the face. Let us dare to use our own strength in our own defense and strike hard

for our national interest and honor. There is no question about 'going to war.' Germany is already at war with us. The only question for us to decide is whether we shall make war nobly or ignobly. Let us face the accomplished fact, admit that Germany is at war with us, wage war on Germany with all our energy and courage, and regain the right to look the whole world in the eyes without flinching.'

In March, 1917, John J. Richeson, dean of Ohio University, sent to Roosevelt a set of resolutions that had been adopted by the faculty of that institution upholding President Wilson's policy. Replying on March 21, 1917, Roosevelt wrote:

"I thank you for your kind letter. I am very glad that the University and you yourself favor universal military training.

"You say that on many subjects our opinions have not been the same. One of these subjects includes the first 'resolved' of the paper you inclosed. In my judgment nothing has done more to damage our country than this writing blank checks in support of President Wilson's foreign policy, when, as a matter of fact, it has been in the highest degree disgraceful to this country. This resolution puts you down as 'strongly approving and supporting his policy in the controversy with Germany.' As good Americans, you ought unqualifiedly to condemn at least 99 per cent of that policy. His first note, 'the strict accountability note,' would have been excellent if he had lived up to it, but as he has for two years failed to live up to it, it becomes infamous. We then had two years of note-writing, of tame submission to brutal wrong-doing, and of utter failure to prepare. Then he broke relations. This was excellent, but only if he meant to follow it up; it amounts to nothing whatever by itself. Seven weeks have gone by, and he has done not one thing. He is himself responsible for the growth of the pacifist and pro-German party in Congress. He never asked for any real action, and the little action he did ask for, was asked for so late that he must have known