and a real honor to be thus admitted to
your public counsels. When your executive committee paid me the
compliment of inviting me here I gladly accepted the invitation because
it seems to me that this, above all other times in our history, is the
time for common counsel, for the drawing together not only of the
energies but of the minds of the Nation. I thought that it was a welcome
opportunity for disclosing to you some of the thoughts that have been
gathering in my mind during these last momentous months.

CRITICAL TIME IN HISTORY

I am introduced to you as the President of the United States, and yet I
would be pleased if you would put the thought of the office into the
background and regard me as one of your fellow-citizens who has come
here to speak, not the words of authority, but the words of counsel; the
words which men should speak to one another who wish to be frank in a
moment more critical perhaps than the history of the world has ever yet
known; a moment when it is every man's duty to forget himself, to forget
his own interests, to fill himself with the nobility of a great national
and world conception, and act upon a new platform elevated above the
ordinary affairs of life and lifted to where men have views of the long
destiny of mankind.

I think that in order to realize just what this moment of counsel is it
is very desirable that we should remind ourselves just how this war came
about and just what it is for. You can explain most wars very simply,
but the explanation of this is not so simple. Its roots run deep into
all the obscure soils of history, and in my view this is the last
decisive issue between the old principle of power and the new principle
of freedom.

WAR STARTED BY GERMANY

The war was started by Germany. Her authorities deny that they started
it, but I am willing to let the statement I have just made await the
verdict of history. And the thing that needs to be explained is why
Germany started the war. Remember what the position of Germany in the
world was--as enviable a position as any nation has ever occupied. The
whole world stood at admiration of her wonderful intellectual and
material achievements. All the intellectual men of the world went to
school to her. As a university man I have been surrounded by men trained
in Germany, men who had resorted to Germany because nowhere else could
they get such thorough and searching training, particularly in the
principles of science an