e treated as beyond the pale
of law and subject to be dealt with as pirates would be. Armed
neutrality is ineffectual enough at best; in such circumstances and in
the face of such pretensions it is worse than ineffectual: it is likely
only to produce what it was meant to prevent; it is practically certain
to draw us into the war without either the rights or the effectiveness
of belligerents. There is one choice we cannot make, we are incapable of
making: we will not choose the path of submission 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.

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.

What this will involve is clear. It will involve the utmost practicable
cooeperation 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
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 s