hus admitted to your public councils. When your executive committee
paid me the compliment of inviting me here I gladly accepted the
invitation, because it seems to me that this, above all other times
in your history, is the time for common counsel, for the drawing not
only of the energies, but of the minds of the nation together. I
thought that it was a welcome opportunity for disclosing to you some
of the thoughts that have been gathering in my mind during the last
momentous months.

I am introduced to you as the President of the United States, and yet
I would be pleased if you would put the thought of the office into
the background and regard me as one of your fellow-citizens who has
come here to speak, not the words of authority, but the words of
counsel, the words which men should speak to one another who wish to
be frank in a moment more critical, perhaps, than the history of the
world has ever yet known, a moment when it is every man's duty to
forget himself, to forget his own interests, to fill himself with the
nobility of a great national and world conception and act upon a new
platform elevated above the ordinary affairs of life, elevated to
where men have views of the long destiny of mankind.

I think that in order to realize just what this moment of counsel is,
it is very desirable that we should remind ourselves just how this
war came about and just what it is for. You can explain most wars
very simply, but the explanation of this is not so simple. Its roots
run deep into all the obscure soils of history, and, in my view, this
is the last decisive issue between the old principles of power and
the new principles of freedom.

GERMANY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE WAR

The war was started by Germany. Her authorities deny that they
started it, but I am willing to let the statement I have just made
await the verdict of history. The thing that needs to be explained is
why Germany started the war. Remember what the position of Germany in
the world was--as enviable a position as any nation has ever
occupied. The whole world stood at admiration of her wonderful
intellectual and material achievements, and all the intellectual men
of the world went to school to her. As a university man I have been
surrounded by men trained in Germany, men who had resorted to Germany
because nowhere else could they get such thorough and searching
training, particularly in the principles of science and the
principles that underlie modern m