e early adoption of this
measure is necessary to the successful prosecution of the war, and if
the method of State action proposed in the party platforms of 1916 is
impracticable within any reasonable length of time, if practical at
all. And its adoption is, in my judgment, clearly necessary to the
successful prosecution of the war and the successful realization of
the objects for which the war is being fought.

That judgment I take the liberty of urging upon you with solemn
earnestness for reasons which I shall state very frankly and which I
shall hope will seem as conclusive to you as they seem to me.

This is a people's war and the people's thinking constitutes its
atmosphere and morale, not the predilections of the drawing room or
the political considerations of the caucus. If we be indeed democrats
and wish to lead the world to democracy, we can ask other peoples to
accept in proof of our sincerity and our ability to lead them whither
they wish to be led, nothing less persuasive and convincing than our
actions.

Our professions will not suffice. Verification must be forthcoming
when verification is asked for. And in this case verification is asked
for--asked for in this particular matter. You ask by whom? Not through
diplomatic channels; not by foreign ministers; not by the intimations
of parliaments. It is asked for by the anxious, expectant, suffering
peoples with whom we are dealing and who are willing to put their
destinies in some measure in our hands, if they are sure that we wish
the same things that they do.

I do not speak by conjecture. It is not alone that the voices of
statesmen and of newspapers reach me, and that the voices of foolish
and intemperate agitators do not reach me at all. Through many, many
channels I have been made aware what the plain, struggling, workaday
folk are thinking, upon whom the chief terror and suffering of this
tragic war fall. They are looking to the great, powerful, famous
democracy of the West to lead them to the new day for which they have
so long waited; and they think, in their logical simplicity, that
democracy means that women shall play their part in affairs alongside
men and upon an equal footing with them.

If we reject measures like this, in ignorant defiance of what a new
age has brought forth, of what they have seen but we have not, they
will cease to believe in us; they will cease to follow or to trust us.
They have seen their own governments accept this