an make them.

Just because we fight without rancor and without selfish object, 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 endorsement 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. 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 towards 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 nothing so much as the
early re-establishment of intimate relations of mutual advantage between
us--however hard it may be for them, for the time being, to believe that
this is spoken from our hearts. We have borne with their present
government through all these bitter months because of that
friendship--exercising a patience and forbearance which would otherwise
have been impossible. We shall, happily, still have an opportunity to
prove that friendship in our daily attitude and actions towards the
millions of men and women of German birth and native sympathy who live
amongst us and share our life, and we shall be proud to prove it towards
all who are in fact loyal to their neighbors an