So that what we have to realize in dealing with forces of this sort is that we are dealing with the substance of life itself.  I have felt as I sat here to-night the wholesome contagion of the occasion.  Almost every other time that I ever visited Atlantic City, I came to fight somebody.  I hardly know how to conduct myself when I have not come to fight against anybody, but with somebody.  I have come to suggest, among other things, that when the forces of nature are steadily working and the tide is rising to meet the moon, you need not be afraid that it will not come to its flood.  We feel the tide; we rejoice in the strength of it; and we shall not quarrel in the long run as to the method of it.  Because, when you are working with masses of men and organized bodies of opinion, you have got to carry the organized body along.  The whole art and practice of government consists not in moving individuals, but in moving masses.  It is all very well to run ahead and beckon, but, after all, you have got to wait for the body to follow.  I have not come to ask you to be patient, because you have been, but I have come to congratulate you that there was a force behind you that will beyond any peradventure be triumphant, and for which you can afford a little while to wait.

THE TERMS OF PEACE

[Address to the Senate of the United States, delivered January 22, 1917.]

GENTLEMEN OF THE SENATE: 

On the eighteenth of December last I addressed an identic note to the governments of the nations now at war requesting them to state, more definitely than they had yet been stated by either group of belligerents, the terms upon which they would deem it possible to make peace.  I spoke on behalf of humanity and of the rights of all neutral nations like our own, many of whose most vital interests the war puts in constant jeopardy.  The Central Powers united in a reply which stated merely that they were ready to meet their antagonists in conference to discuss terms of peace.  The Entente Powers have replied much more definitely and have stated, in general terms, indeed, but with sufficient definiteness to imply details, the arrangements, guarantees, and acts of reparation which they deem to be the indispensable conditions of a satisfactory settlement.  We are that much nearer a definite discussion of the peace which shall end the present war.  We are that much nearer the discussion of the international concert which must thereafter hold the world at peace.  In every discussion of the peace that must end this war it is taken for granted that that peace must be followed by some definite concert of power which will make it virtually impossible that any such catastrophe should ever overwhelm us again.  Every lover of mankind, every sane and thoughtful man must take that for granted.

I have sought this opportunity to address you because I thought that I owed it to you, as the council associated with me in the final determination of our international obligations, to disclose to you without reserve the thought and purpose that have been taking form in my mind in regard to the duty of our Government in the days to come when it will be necessary to lay afresh and upon a new plan the foundations of peace among the nations.