Austro-Hungarian
Government has, indeed, avowed its unqualified indorsement and
acceptance of the reckless and lawless submarine warfare adopted now
without disguise by the imperial 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 toward 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 toward 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 toward all who are in fact
loyal to their neighbours and to the Government in the hour of test.
They are, most of them, as true and loyal Americans as if they had
never known any other fealty or allegiance. They will be prompt to
stand with us in rebuking and restraining the few who may be of a
different mind and purpose.

"If there should be disloyalty, it will be dealt with with a firm hand
of stern repression; but if it lifts its head at all, it will lift it
only here and there, and without countenance, except from a lawless and
malignant few.

"It is a distressing and oppressive duty, ge