In a very remarkable message read to Congress on January 8, 1918, President Wilson laid down his famous “fourteen points” summarizing the ideals for which we were fighting.  They included open treaties of peace, openly arrived at; absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas; the removal, as far as possible, of trade barriers among nations; reduction of armaments; adjustment of colonial claims in the interest of the populations concerned; fair and friendly treatment of Russia; the restoration of Belgium; righting the wrong done to France in 1871 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine; adjustment of Italian frontiers along the lines of nationality; more liberty for the peoples of Austria-Hungary; the restoration of Serbia and Rumania; the readjustment of the Turkish Empire; an independent Poland; and an association of nations to afford mutual guarantees to all states great and small.  On a later occasion President Wilson elaborated the last point, namely, the formation of a league of nations to guarantee peace and establish justice among the powers of the world.  Democracy, the right of nations to determine their own fate, a covenant of enduring peace—­these were the ideals for which the American people were to pour out their blood and treasure.

=The Selective Draft.=—­The World War became a war of nations.  The powers against which we were arrayed had every able-bodied man in service and all their resources, human and material, thrown into the scale.  For this reason, President Wilson summoned the whole people of the United States to make every sacrifice necessary for victory.  Congress by law decreed that the national army should be chosen from all male citizens and males not enemy aliens who had declared their intention of becoming citizens.  By the first act of May 18, 1917, it fixed the age limits at twenty-one to thirty-one inclusive.  Later, in August, 1918, it extended them to eighteen and forty-five.  From the men of the first group so enrolled were chosen by lot the soldiers for the World War who, with the regular army and the national guard, formed the American Expeditionary Force upholding the American cause on the battlefields of Europe.  “The whole nation,” said the President, “must be a team in which each man shall play the part for which he is best fitted.”

=Liberty Loans and Taxes.=—­In order that the military and naval forces should be stinted in no respect, the nation was called upon to place its financial resources at the service of the government.  Some urged the “conscription of wealth as well as men,” meaning the support of the war out of taxes upon great fortunes; but more conservative counsels prevailed.  Four great Liberty Loans were floated, all the agencies of modern publicity being employed to enlist popular interest.  The first loan had four and a half million subscribers; the fourth more than twenty million.  Combined with loans were heavy taxes.  A progressive tax was laid upon incomes beginning with four per cent