These things I urge upon you, not in haste or merely as a means of meeting a present emergency, but as permanent and necessary additions to the law of the land, suggested, indeed, by circumstances we had hoped never to see, but imperative as well as just, if such emergencies are to be prevented in the future.  I feel that no extended argument is needed to commend them to your favorable consideration.  They demonstrate themselves.  The time and the occasion only give emphasis to their importance.  We need them now and we shall continue to need them.

SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE

[On being offered the nomination for President by the Democratic Party.  Delivered at Shadow Lawn, Sea Girt, N.J., Saturday, September 2, 1916.]

SENATOR JAMES, GENTLEMEN OF THE NOTIFICATION COMMITTEE, FELLOW-CITIZENS: 

I cannot accept the leadership and responsibility which the National Democratic Convention has again, in such generous fashion, asked me to accept without first expressing my profound gratitude to the party for the trust it reposes in me after four years of fiery trial in the midst of affairs of unprecedented difficulty, and the keen sense of added responsibility with which this honor fills (I had almost said burdens) me as I think of the great issues of national life and policy involved in the present and immediate future conduct of our Government.  I shall seek, as I have always sought, to justify the extraordinary confidence thus reposed in me by striving to purge my heart and purpose of every personal and of every misleading party motive and devoting every energy I have to the service of the nation as a whole, praying that I may continue to have the counsel and support of all forward-looking men at every turn of the difficult business.

For I do not doubt that the people of the United States will wish the Democratic Party to continue in control of the Government.  They are not in the habit of rejecting those who have actually served them for those who are making doubtful and conjectural promises of service.  Least of all are they likely to substitute those who promised to render them particular services and proved false to that promise for those who have actually rendered those very services.

Boasting is always an empty business, which pleases nobody but the boaster, and I have no disposition to boast of what the Democratic Party has accomplished.  It has merely done its duty.  It has merely fulfilled its explicit promises.  But there can be no violation of good taste in calling attention to the manner in which those promises have been carried out or in adverting to the interesting fact that many of the things accomplished were what the opposition party had again and again promised to do but had left undone.  Indeed that is manifestly part of the business of this year of reckoning and assessment.  There is no means of judging the future except by assessing the past.  Constructive action must be weighed against destructive comment and reaction.  The Democrats either have or have not understood the varied interests of the country.  The test is contained in the record.