And yet it will be no cool process of mere science.  The Nation has been deeply stirred, stirred by a solemn passion, stirred by the knowledge of wrong, of ideals lost, of government too often debauched and made an instrument of evil.  The feelings with which we face this new age of right and opportunity sweep across our heartstrings like some air out of God’s own presence, where justice and mercy are reconciled and the judge and the brother are one.  We know our task to be no mere task of politics but a task which shall search us through and through, whether we be able to understand our time and the need of our people, whether we be indeed their spokesmen and interpreters, whether we have the pure heart to comprehend and the rectified will to choose our high course of action.

This is not a day of triumph; it is a day of dedication.  Here muster, not the forces of party, but the forces of humanity.  Men’s hearts wait upon us; men’s lives hang in the balance; men’s hopes call upon us to say what we will do.  Who shall live up to the great trust?  Who dares fail to try?  I summon all honest men, all patriotic, all forward-looking men, to my side.  God helping me, I will not fail them, if they will but counsel and sustain me!

FIRST ADDRESS TO CONGRESS

[Delivered at a joint session of the two Houses of Congress, at the beginning of the first session of the Sixty-third Congress, April 8, 1913.]

MR. SPEAKER, MR. PRESIDENT, GENTLEMEN OF THE CONGRESS: 

I am very glad indeed to have this opportunity to address the two Houses directly and to verify for myself the impression that the President of the United States is a person, not a mere department of the Government hailing Congress from some isolated island of jealous power, sending messages, not speaking naturally and with his own voice—­that he is a human being trying to cooeperate with other human beings in a common service.  After this pleasant experience I shall feel quite normal in all our dealings with one another.[B]

I have called the Congress together in extraordinary session because a duty was laid upon the party now in power at the recent elections which it ought to perform promptly, in order that the burden carried by the people under existing law may be lightened as soon as possible and in order, also, that the business interests of the country may not be kept too long in suspense as to what the fiscal changes are to be to which they will be required to adjust themselves.  It is clear to the whole country that the tariff duties must be altered.  They must be changed to meet the radical alteration in the conditions of our economic life which the country has witnessed within the last generation.  While the whole face and method of our industrial and commercial life were being changed beyond recognition the tariff schedules have remained