after
careful investigation, President Wilson put the stain of pro-Germanism
where it properly belonged. Said the President:

MY FELLOW-COUNTRYMEN:

I take the liberty of addressing you upon a subject which so
vitally affects the honour of the nation and the very character and
integrity of our institutions that I trust you will think me
justified in speaking very plainly about it.

I allude to the mob spirit which has recently here and there very
frequently shown its head amongst us, not in any single region, but
in many and widely separated parts of the country. There have been
many lynchings, and every one of them has been a blow at the heart
of ordered law and humane justice. No man who loves America, no man
who really cares for her fame and honour and character, or who is
truly loyal to her institutions, can justify mob actions while the
courts of justice are open and the governments of the states and
the nation are ready and able to do their duty. We are at this very
moment fighting lawless passion. Germany has outlawed herself among
the nations because she has disregarded the sacred obligations of
law and has made lynchers of her armies. Lynchers emulate her
disgraceful example. I, for my part, am anxious to see every
community in America rise above that level, with pride and fixed
resolution which no man or act of men can afford to despise.

We proudly claim to be the champions of democracy. If we really
are, in deed and in truth, let us see to it that we do not
discredit our own. I say plainly that every American who takes part
in the action of a mob or gives it any sort of countenance is no
true son of this great democracy, but its betrayer, and does more
to discredit her by that single disloyalty to her standards of law
and of right than the words of her statesmen or the sacrifices of
her heroic boys in the trenches can do to make suffering peoples
believe her to be their saviour. How shall we commend democracy to
the acceptance of other peoples, if we disgrace our own by proving
that it is, after all, no protection to the weak? Every mob
contributes to German lies about the United States what her most
gifted liars cannot improve upon by way of calumny. They can at
least say that such things cannot happen in Germany, except in
times o