included; for the rights
of nations great and small and the privilege of men everywhere to
choose their way of life and of obedience. The world must be made
safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the trusted
foundations of political liberty.

We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion.
We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for
the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions
of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights
have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of the nation
can make them.

Just because we fight without rancor and without selfish objects,
seeking nothing for ourselves but what we shall wish to share with
all free peoples, we shall, I feel confident, conduct our operations
as belligerents without passion and ourselves observe with proud
punctilio the principles of right and of fair play we profess to be
fighting for.

I have said nothing of the Governments allied with the Imperial
Government of Germany because they have not made war upon us or
challenged us to defend our right and our honor.

The Austro-Hungarian Government has indeed avowed its unqualified
indorsement and acceptance of the reckless and lawless submarine
warfare adopted now without disguise by the Imperial German
Government, and it has therefore not been possible for this
Government to receive Count Tarnowski, the ambassador recently
accredited to this Government by the Imperial and Royal Government of
Austria-Hungary; but that Government has not actually engaged in
warfare against citizens of the United States on the seas, and I take
the liberty, for the present at least, of postponing a discussion of
our relations with the authorities at Vienna.

OPPOSITION TO THE GERMAN GOVERNMENT

FRIENDSHIP TOWARD THE GERMAN PEOPLE

We enter this war only where we are clearly forced into it because
there are no other means of defending our rights.

It will be all the easier for us to conduct ourselves as belligerents
in a high spirit of right and fairness because we act without animus,
not in enmity toward a people or with the desire to bring any injury
or disadvantage upon them, but only in armed opposition to an
irresponsible Government which has thrown aside all considerations of
humanity and of right and is running amuck.

We are, let me say again, the sincere friends of the German people,
and shall desire not