own thought has not been driven from its habitual and
normal course by the unhappy events of the last two months, and I do not
believe that the thought of the nation has been altered or clouded by
them.

FIRM STAND FOR VINDICATION.

"I have exactly the same things in mind now that I had in mind when I
addressed the Senate on the twenty-second of January last; the same that
I had in mind when I addressed the Congress on the third of February and
on the twenty-sixth of February. Our object now, as then, is to
vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the life of the world
against selfish and autocratic power and to set up among the really free
and self-governed peoples of the world such a concert of purpose and
action as will henceforth insure the observance of those principles.

"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 wrongdoing 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, or
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.

PRECONCEIVED DECEPTION.

"Cunningly contrived plans of deception or aggression carried it may be
from generation to generation, can be worked out an