from
the first alike upon our minds, our industries, our commerce, our
politics and our social action. To be indifferent to it, or independent
of it, was out of the question.

And yet all the while we have been conscious that we were not part of
it. In that consciousness, despite many divisions, we have drawn closer
together. We have been deeply wronged upon the seas, but we have not
wished to wrong or injure in return; have retained throughout the
consciousness of standing in some sort apart, intent upon an interest
that transcended the immediate issues of the war itself.

As some of the injuries done us have become intolerable we have still
been clear that we wished nothing for ourselves that we were not ready
to demand for all mankind--fair dealing, justice, the freedom to live
and to be at ease against organized wrong.

It is in this spirit and with this thought that we have grown more and
more aware, more and more certain that the part we wished to play was
the part of those who mean to vindicate and fortify peace. We have been
obliged to arm ourselves to make good our claim to a certain minimum of
right and of freedom of action. We stand firm in armed neutrality since
it seems that in no other way we can demonstrate what it is we insist
upon and cannot forget. We may even be drawn on, by circumstances, not
by our own purpose or desire, to a more active assertion of our rights
as we see them and a more immediate association with the great struggle
itself. But nothing will alter our thought or our purpose. They are too
clear to be obscured. They are too deeply rooted in the principles of
our national life to be altered. We desire neither conquest nor
advantage. We wish nothing that can be had only at the cost of another
people. We always professed unselfish purpose and we covet the
opportunity to prove our professions are sincere.

There are many things still to be done at home, to clarify our own
politics and add new vitality to the industrial processes of our own
life, and we shall do them as time and opportunity serve, but we realize
that the greatest things that remain to be done must be done with the
whole world for stage and in cooperation with the wide and universal
forces of mankind, and we are making our spirits ready for those things.

We are provincials no longer. The tragic events of the thirty months of
vital turmoil through which we have just passed have made us citizens of
the world. There can b