If I have overlooked anything that ought to be done for the more effective conduct of the war, your own counsels will supply the omission.  What I am perfectly clear about is that in the present session of the Congress our whole attention and energy should be concentrated on the vigorous, rapid, and successful prosecution of the great task of winning the war.

We can do this with all the greater zeal and enthusiasm because we know that for us this is a war of high principle, debased by no selfish ambition of conquest or spoliation; because we know, and all the world knows, that we have been forced into it to save the very institutions we live under from corruption and destruction.  The purposes of the Central Powers strike straight at the very heart of everything we believe in; their methods of warfare outrage every principle of humanity and of knightly honor; their intrigue has corrupted the very thought and spirit of many of our people; their sinister and secret diplomacy has sought to take our very territory away from us and disrupt the Union of the States.  Our safety would be at an end, our honor forever sullied and brought into contempt were we to permit their triumph.  They are striking at the very existence of democracy and liberty.

It is because it is for us a war of high, disinterested purpose, in which all the free peoples of the world are banded together for the vindication of right, a war for the preservation of our nation and of all that it has held dear of principle and of purpose, that we feel ourselves doubly constrained to propose for its outcome only that which is righteous and of irreproachable intention, for our foes as well as for our friends.  The cause being just and holy, the settlement must be of like motive and quality.  For this we can fight, but for nothing less noble or less worthy of our traditions.  For this cause we entered the war and for this cause will we battle until the last gun is fired.

I have spoken plainly because this seems to me the time when it is most necessary to speak plainly, in order that all the world may know that even in the heat and ardor of the struggle and when our whole thought is of carrying the war through to its end we have not forgotten any ideal or principle for which the name of America has been held in honor among the nations and for which it has been our glory to contend in the great generations that went before us.  A supreme moment of history has come.  The eyes of the people have been opened and they see.  The hand of God is laid upon the nations.  He will show them favor, I devoutly believe, only if they rise to the clear heights of His own justice and mercy.

GOVERNMENT ADMINISTRATION OF RAILWAYS

[Address delivered at a joint session of the two Houses of Congress, January 4, 1918.]

GENTLEMEN OF THE CONGRESS: