“It is a war against all nations.  American ships have been sunk, American lives taken, in ways which it has stirred us very deeply to learn of, but the ships and people of other neutral and friendly nations have been sunk and overwhelmed in the waters in the same way.

“There has been no discrimination.  The challenge is to all mankind.  Each nation must decide for itself how it will meet it.  The choice we make for ourselves must be made with a moderation of counsel and a temperateness of judgment befitting our character and our motives as a nation.  We must put excited feelings away.  Our motive will not be revenge or the victorious assertion of the physical might of the nation, but only the vindication of right—­of human right—­of which we are only a single champion.

“When I addressed the congress on the 26th of February last I thought that it would suffice to assert our neutral rights with arms, our right to use the seas against unlawful interference, our right to keep our people safe against unlawful violence.

“But armed neutrality, it now appears, is impracticable.  Because submarines are in effect outlaws when used as the German submarines have been used against merchant shipping, it is impossible to defend ships against their attacks, as the law of nations has assumed that merchantmen would defend themselves against privateers or cruisers, visible craft giving chase upon the open sea.

“It is common prudence in such circumstances, grim necessity, indeed, to endeavor to destroy them before they have shown their own intentions.  They must be dealt with upon sight if dealt with at all.

“The German government denies the right of neutrals to use arms at all within the areas of the sea which it has proscribed, even in the defense of rights which no modern publicist has ever before questioned their right to defend.

“The intimation is conveyed that the armed guards which we have placed on our merchant ships will be 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.

MUST ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY