lt with at all. The German
Government denies the right of neutrals to use arms at all within the
areas of the sea which it has proscribed, even in the defense of rights
which no modern publicist has ever before questioned their right to
defend. The intimation is conveyed that the armed guards which we have
placed on our merchant ships will be treated as beyond the pale of law
and subject to be dealt with as pirates would be. Armed neutrality is
ineffectual enough at best; in such circumstances and in the face of
such pretensions it is worse than ineffectual: it is likely only to
produce what it was meant to prevent; it is practically certain to draw
us into the war without either the rights or the effectiveness of
belligerents. There is one choice we can not make, we are incapable of
making; we will not choose the path of submission and suffer the most
sacred rights of our nation and our people to be ignored or violated.
The wrongs against which we now array ourselves are no common wrongs;
they cut to the very roots of human life.

With a profound sense of the solemn and even tragical character of the
step I am taking and of the grave responsibilities which it involves,
but in unhesitating obedience to what I deem my constitutional duty, I
advise that the Congress declare the recent course of the Imperial
German Government to be in fact nothing less than war against the
government and people of the United States; that it formally accept the
status of belligerent which has thus been thrust upon it; and that it
take immediate steps not only to put the country in a more thorough
state of defense but also to exert all its power and employ all its
resources to bring the Government of the German Empire to terms and end
the war.

What this will involve is clear. It will involve the utmost practicable
co-operation in counsel and action with the governments now at war with
Germany, and, as incident to that, the extension to those governments of
the most liberal financial credits, in order that our resources may so
far as possible be added to theirs. It will involve the organization and
mobilization of all the material resources of the country to supply the
materials of war and serve the incidental needs of the nation in the
most abundant and yet the most economical and efficient way possible. It
will involve the immediate full equipment of the navy in all respects
but particularly in supplying it with the best means of dealing