are
cooperating in Europe, and to keep the looms and manufactories there
in raw material; coal to keep the fires going in ships at sea and in
the furnaces of hundreds of factories across the sea; steel out of
which to make arms and ammunition both here and there; rails for
worn-out railways back of the fighting fronts; locomotives and rolling
stock to take the place of those every day going to pieces; mules,
horses, cattle for labor and for military service; everything with
which the people of England and France and Italy and Russia have
usually supplied themselves, but cannot now afford the men, the
materials, or the machinery to make."

The President's specific appeal was to the agricultural and industrial
workers of the country to put their shoulder to the wheel to help
provision and equip the armies in Europe. On the farmers and their
laborers, he said, in large measure rested the issue of the war and
the fate of the nations. To the middlemen of every sort the President
was bluntly candid: "The eyes of the country are especially upon you,"
he said. "The country expects you, as it expects all others, to forego
unusual profits, to organize and expedite shipments of supplies of
every kind, but especially of food," in a disinterested spirit. He
asked railroad men of all ranks not to permit the nation's arteries to
suffer any obstruction, inefficiency, or slackened power in carrying
war supplies. To the merchant he suggested the motto: "small profits
and quick service" to the shipbuilder the thought that the war
depended on him. "The food and the war supplies must be carried across
the seas, no matter how many ships are sent to the bottom." The miner
he ranked with the farmer--the work of the world waited upon him.
Finally, every one who created or cultivated a garden helped to solve
the problem of feeding the nation; and every housewife who practiced
economy placed herself in the ranks of those who served.

Legislative tasks which confronted Congress were overwhelming and not
a little confusing. They embraced measures for authorizing huge issues
of bonds to finance the Allies and provide funds for the American
campaign; new taxation; food control; the provision of an enormous
fleet of airships; forbidding trading with the enemy; an embargo on
exports to neutral countries to prevent their shipment to Germany; an
espionage bill; and chiefly, a measure of compulsory military service
by selective draft to raise a prelimi