without victory" address the German
autocracy put into effect its cherished programme of ruthless submarine
warfare. The only possible answer on the part of the United States was
the dismissal of Count von Bernstorff the German Ambassador, and from
that time war between the United States and Germany was only a matter
of days. But Mr. Wilson had achieved the great purpose that he had
formulated two years before. He had been balked in his efforts at
mediation, but he had united the American people on the issues of the
conflict. He had demonstrated to them that their Government had exerted
every honorable means to avoid war and that its hands were clean. There
was no uncertainty in their own minds that the responsibility for the
war rested solely on Germany, and Mr. Wilson now purposed to write the
terms of peace with the sword.

_A Call to a Crusade_

Mr. Wilson's War Address on the night of April 2, 1917, was the most
dramatic event that the National Capitol had ever known. In the
presence of both branches of Congress, of the Supreme Court, of the
Cabinet and of the Diplomatic Corps, Mr. Wilson summoned the American
people not to a war but to a crusade in words that instantaneously
captivated the imagination of the Nation:

But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for
the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts--for
democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a
voice in their own government, for the rights and liberties of
small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert
of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and
make the world at last free. To such a task we can dedicate our
lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that
we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come
when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the
principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which
she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no other.

This was not Woodrow Wilson, the intellectual aristocrat, who was
speaking, but Woodrow Wilson, the fervent democrat, proclaiming a new
declaration of independence to the embattled peoples.

No sooner had Congress declared war than Mr. Wilson proceeded to
mobilize all the resources of the Nation and throw them into the
conflict. This war was different from any other war in which t