teen, and of
Independence of the United States the one hundred and forty-second.

WOODROW WILSON.

NEWTON D. BAKER, Secretary of War.

By the President:

ROBERT LANSING, Secretary of State.

XX

GOVERNMENT OPERATION OF RAILROADS

(_Address to the Congress, January 4, 1918_)

Gentlemen of the Congress,--I have asked the privilege of addressing
you in order to report that on the 28th of December last, during the
recess of Congress, acting through the Secretary of War, and under
the authority conferred upon me by the Act of Congress approved
August 29, 1916, I took possession and assumed control of the railway
lines of the country and the systems of water transportation under
their control. This step seemed to be imperatively necessary in the
interest of the public welfare, in the presence of the great tasks of
war with which we are now dealing. As our experience develops
difficulties and makes it clear what they are, I have deemed it my
duty to remove those difficulties wherever I have the legal power to
do so.

To assume control of the vast railway systems of the country is, I
realize, a very great responsibility, but to fail to do so in the
existing circumstances would have been much greater. I assumed the
less responsibility rather than the weightier.

NEED OF UNITED DIRECTION

I am sure that I am speaking the mind of all thoughtful Americans
when I say that it is our duty as the representatives of the nation
to do everything that it is necessary to do to secure the complete
mobilization of the whole resources of America by as rapid and
effective a means as can be found. Transportation supplies all the
arteries of mobilization. Unless it be under a single and unified
direction, the whole process of the nation's action is embarrassed.

It was in the true spirit of America, and it was right, that we
should first try to effect the necessary unification under the
voluntary action of those who were in charge of the great railway
properties, and we did try it. The directors of the railways
responded to the need promptly and generously. The group of railway
executives who were charged with the task of actual co-ordination and
general direction performed their difficult duties with patriotic
zeal and marked ability, as was to have been expected, and did, I
believe, everything that it was possible for them to do in the
circumstances. If I have taken the task out of their hands, it has
not been be