control,
but which, despite our wish to keep free of them, have drawn us more and
more irresistibly into their own current and influence.

It has been impossible to avoid them. They have affected the life of
the whole world. They have shaken men everywhere with a passion and an
apprehension they never knew before. It has been hard to preserve calm
counsel while the thought of our own people swayed this way and that
under their influence. We are a composite and cosmopolitan people. We
are of the blood of all the nations that are at war. The currents of our
thoughts as well as the currents of our trade run quick at all seasons
back and forth between us and them. The war inevitably set its mark
from the first alike upon our minds, our industries, our commerce, our
politics and our social action. To be indifferent to it, or independent
of it, was out of the question.

And yet all the while we have been conscious that we were not part of
it. In that consciousness, despite many divisions, we have drawn closer
together. We have been deeply wronged upon the seas, but we have not
wished to wrong or injure in return; have retained throughout the
consciousness of standing in some sort apart, intent upon an interest
that transcended the immediate issues of the war itself.

As some of the injuries done us have become intolerable we have still
been clear that we wished nothing for ourselves that we were not ready
to demand for all mankind--fair dealing, justice, the freedom to live
and to be at ease against organized wrong.

It is in this spirit and with this thought that we have grown more and
more aware, more and more certain that the part we wished to play was
the part of those who mean to vindicate and fortify peace. We have been
obliged to arm ourselves to make good our claim to a certain minimum of
right and of freedom of action. We stand firm in armed neutrality since
it seems that in no other way we can demonstrate what it is we insist
upon and cannot forget. We may even be drawn on, by circumstances, not
by our own purpose or desire, to a more active assertion of our rights
as we see them and a more immediate association with the great struggle
itself. But nothing will alter our thought or our purpose. They are too
clear to be obscured. They are too deeply rooted in the principles
of our national life to be altered. We desire neither conquest nor
advantage. We wish nothing that can be had only at the cost of
another peop