imum of right the German Government has swept aside under the
plea of retaliation and necessity, and because it had no weapons which
it could use at sea except these, which it is impossible to employ as
it is employing them without throwing to the winds all scruples of
humanity or of respect for the understandings that were supposed to
underlie the intercourse of the world.

"I am not now thinking of the loss of property involved, immense and
serious as that is, but only of the wanton and wholesale destruction of
the lives of non-combatants, men, women and children, engaged in
pursuits which have always, even in the darkest periods of modern
history, been deemed innocent and legitimate. Property can be paid
for; the lives of peaceful and innocent people cannot be.

"The present German warfare against commerce is a warfare against
mankind. It is a war against all nations. American ships have been
sunk, American lives taken, in ways which it has stirred us very deeply
to learn of, but the ships and people of other neutral and friendly
nations have been sunk and overwhelmed in the waters in the same way.
There has been no discrimination. The challenge is to all mankind.
Each nation must decide for itself how it will meet it. The choice we
make for ourselves must be made with a moderation of counsel and a
temperateness of judgment befitting our character and our motives as a
nation. We must put excited feeling away. Our motive will not be
revenge or the victorious assertion of the physical might of the
nation, but only the vindication of right, of human right, of which we
are only a single champion.

"When I addressed the Congress on the twenty-sixth of February last I
thought that it would suffice to assert our neutral rights with arms,
our right to use the seas against unlawful interference, our right to
keep our people safe against unlawful violence. But armed neutrality,
it now appears, is impracticable.

"Because submarines are in effect outlaws when used as the German
submarines have been used, against merchant shipping, it is impossible
to defend ships against their attacks, as the law of nations has
assumed that merchantmen would defend themselves against privateers or
cruisers, visible craft giving chase upon the open sea. It is common
prudence in such circumstances--grim necessity, indeed--to endeavour to
destroy them before they have shown their own intention. They must be
dealt with upon sight, if