nd have taken the high and solemn oath to which you have
been audience because the people of the United States have chosen me for
this august delegation of power and have by their gracious judgment
named me their leader in affairs. I know now what the task means. I
realize to the full the responsibility which it involves. I pray God I
may be given the wisdom and the prudence to do my duty in the true
spirit of this great people. I am their servant and can succeed only as
they sustain and guide me by their confidence and their counsel. The
thing I shall count upon, the thing without which neither counsel nor
action will avail, is the unity of America,--an America united in
feeling, in purpose, and in its vision of duty, of opportunity, and of
service. We are to beware of all men who would turn the tasks and the
necessities of the Nation to their own private profit or use them for
the building up of private power; beware that no faction or disloyal
intrigue break the harmony or embarrass the spirit of our people; beware
that our Government be kept pure and incorrupt in all its parts. United
alike in the conception of our duty and in the high resolve to perform
it in the face of all men, let us dedicate ourselves to the great task
to which we must now set our hand. For myself I beg your tolerance, your
countenance, and your united aid. The shadows that now lie dark upon our
path will soon be dispelled and we shall walk with the light all about
us if we be but true to ourselves,--to ourselves as we have wished to be
known in the counsels of the world and in the thought of all those who
love liberty and justice and the right exalted.

THE CALL TO WAR

[Address delivered at a joint session of the two Houses of Congress,
April 2, 1917.]

GENTLEMEN OF THE CONGRESS:

I have called the Congress into extraordinary session because there are
serious, very serious, choices of policy to be made, and made
immediately, which it was neither right nor constitutionally permissible
that I should assume the responsibility of making.

On the third of February last I officially laid before you the
extraordinary announcement of the Imperial German Government that on and
after the first day of February it was its purpose to put aside all
restraints of law or of humanity and use its submarines to sink every
vessel that sought to approach either the ports of Great Britain and
Ireland or the western coasts of Europe or any of the ports