and the
occupants of the crowded galleries.

"We will not choose the path of submission," repeated the President,
"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."

Then came the presentation of the only alternate course the United
States could take:

"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."

Now what did this involve? The President thus answered the question:

"It will involve the utmost practicable cooperation 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 with the enemy's submarines.

"It will involve the immediate addition to the armed forces of the
United States, already provided for by law in case of war, of at least
500,000 men, who should, in my opinion, be chosen upon the principle
of universal liability to service, and also the authorization of
subsequent additional increments of equal force so soon as they may be
needed and can be handled in training.

"It will involve also, of course, the granting of adequate credits to
the Government, sustained, I hope, so far as they can equitably be
sustained by the present generation