of the country or their use for
speculative purposes in such volume as to hinder or
impede or stand in the way of other more legitimate,
more fruitful uses.--_From the President's Address to
Congress, April 23, 1913._]

[Illustration: _Courtesy New York Times_
July 3, 1912: Governor Wilson receiving congratulations
from newspaper correspondents on his nomination for the
Presidency]

But a sharp division of sentiment showed itself when, on August 18, he
issued an address to the American people warning against partisan
sympathies and asking that Americans be "impartial in thought as well
as in action," in order that the country might be "neutral in fact as
well as in name." The great majority of the American people, or of such
part of it as held opinions on public questions, had already made up
their minds about the war, and most of the others were in process of
being convinced. Some of them had made up their minds from racial
sympathies, but others had thought things out. And among these last,
particularly, there was a revolt against the assumption that in the
presence of such issues any impartiality of thought was possible.

Moreover, the world-wide extent of the war, and the closer
inter-relations of nations which had grown up in recent years, made
almost from the first a series of conflicts between the interests of
the United States and those of one or the other set of belligerents.
Preservation of neutrality against continual petty infractions was
hard, and was rendered harder by the active sympathy felt for the
different belligerents by many Americans. A further complication came
from the growing feeling that America's military and naval forces were
far from adequate for protection in a world where war was after all
possible. The Autumn of 1914 saw the beginning for better national
preparedness, and counter to that the rise of organized
peace-at-any-price sentiment which from the first drew much support
from pro-German circles.

The President appeared to incline toward the pacifists. He called the
discussion of preparedness "good mental exercise," and referred to some
of its advocates as "nervous and excitable," and in the message to
Congress in December, 1914, he took the position that American
armaments were quite sufficient for American needs. In this it was
apparent that he was opposed by a large part o