we did when we were provincial and isolated and unconnected with the great forces of the world, for now we are in the great drift of humanity which is to determine the politics of every country in the world.

With this outlook, is it worth while to stop to think of party advantage? Is it worth stopping to think of how we have voted in the past? We are now going to vote, if we be men with eyes open that can see the world, as those who wish to make a new America in a new world mean the same old thing for mankind that it meant when this great Republic was set up; mean hope and justice and righteous judgment and unselfish action. Why, my fellow-citizens, it is an unprecedented thing in the world that any nation in determining its foreign relations should be unselfish, and my ambition is to see America set the great example; not only a great example morally, but a great example intellectually. ***

Every man who has read and studied the great annals of this country may feel his blood warm as he feels these great forces of humanity growing stronger and stronger, not only, but knowing better and better from decade to decade how to concert action and unite their strength. In the days to come men will no longer wonder how America is going to work out her destiny, for she will have proclaimed to them that her destiny is not divided from the destiny of the world; that her purpose is justice and love of mankind.

New York Times, Nov. 5, 1916.

50. THE RIGHT HAND TO LABOR

(November 18, 1916)

ADDRESS TO THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR AT THE WHITE HOUSE

I need not say that, coming to me as you do on such an errand, I am very deeply gratified and very greatly cheered. It would be impossible for me off-hand to say just what thoughts are stirred in me by what Mr. Gompers has said to me as your spokesman, but perhaps the simplest thing I

can say is, after all, the meat of the whole matter. What I have tried to do is to get rid of any class division in this country, not only, but of any class consciousness and feeling. The worst thing that could happen to America would be that she should be divided into groups and camps in which there were men and women who thought that they were at odds with one another, that the spirit of America was not expressed except in them, and that possibilities of antagonism were the only things that we had to look forward to.

As Mr. Gompers said, achievement is a comparatively small matter, but the spirit in which things are done is of the essence of the whole thing, and what I am striving for, and what I hope you are striving for, is to blot out all the lines of division in America, and create a unity of spirit and of purpose founded upon this, the consciousness that we are all men and women of the same sort, and that if we do not understand each other we are not true Americans. If we cannot enter into each other's thoughts, if we cannot comprehend each other's interests, if we cannot serve each other's essential welfare, then we have not yet qualified as representatives of the American spirit.

Nothing alarms America so much as rifts, divisions, the drifting apart of elements among her people, and the thing we ought all to strive for is to close up every rift; and the only way to do it, so far as I can see, is to establish justice not only, but justice with a heart in it, justice with a pulse in it, justice with sympathy in it. Justice can be cold and forbidding, or can be warm and welcome, and the latter is the only kind of justice that Americans ought to desire. I do not believe I am deceiving myself when I say that I think this spirit is growing in America. I pray God it may continue to grow, and all I have to say is to exhort every one whom my voice reaches here or elsewhere to come into this common movement of humanity.

New York Times, Nov. 19, 1916.

51. THE WAY TO PEACE

(December 18, 1916)

DESPATCH PARTLY IN REPLY TO GERMAN PROPOSITION OF PEACE, THROUGH SECRETARY LANSING

The President of the United States has instructed me to suggest to the [here is inserted a designation of the Government addressed] a course of action with regard to the present war which he hopes that the *** Government will take under consideration as suggested in the most friendly spirit, and as coming not only from a friend but also as coming from the representative of a neutral nation whose interests have been most seriously affected by the war and whose concern for its early conclusion arises out of a manifest necessity to determine how best to safeguard those interests if the war is to continue.

The suggestion which I am instructed to make the President has long had it in mind to offer. He is somewhat embarrassed to offer it at this particular time because it may now seem to have been prompted by a desire to play a part in connection with the recent overtures of the Central Powers. It has in fact been in no way suggested by them in its origin and the President would have delayed offering it until those overtures had been independently answered but for the fact that it also concerns the questions of peace and may best be considered in connection with other proposals which have the same end in view. The President can only beg that his suggestion be considered entirely on its own merits and as if it had been made in other circumstances.

The President suggests that an early occasion be sought to call out from all the nations now at war such an avowal of their respective views as to the terms upon which the war might be concluded and the arrangements which would be deemed satisfactory as a guaranty against its renewal or the kindling of any similar conflict in the future as would make it possible frankly to compare them. He is indifferent as to the means taken to accomplish this. He would be

sense to do about the tariff. We have not put this into words, but I do not hesitate to put it into words: We have admitted that on the one side and on the other we were talking theories and managing policies without a sufficient knowledge of the facts upon which we were acting, and, therefore, we have established what is intended to be a nonpartisan tariff commission to study the conditions with which legislation has to deal in the matter of the relations of American with foreign business transactions. Another eye created to see the facts! And I am hopeful that I can find the men who will see the facts and state them, no matter whose opinion those facts contradict. For an opinion ought always to have a profound respect for a fact; and when you once get the facts, opinions that are antagonistic to those facts are necessarily defeated. I have never found a really courageous man who was afraid to put his opinion to the test of facts, or a morally sincere man who was not ready to surrender to the facts when they were contrary to his opinion. The Tariff Commission is going to look for the facts no matter who is hurt. We are creating one after another the instrumentalities of knowledge, so that the business men of this country shall know what the field of the world's business is and deal with that field upon that knowledge.

Then, when the knowledge is obtained, what are we going to do? One of the things that interests me most about an association of this sort is that the intention of it is that the members should share a common body of information, and that they should concert among themselves those operations of business which are beneficial to all of them; that, instead of a large number of dealers in grain acting separately and each fighting for his own hand, you are willing to come together and study the problem as if you were partners and brothers and co-operators in this field of business. That has been going on in every occupation in the United States of any consequence. Even the men that do the advertising have been getting together, and they have made this startling and fundamental discovery, that the only way to advertise successfully is to tell the truth. There are many reasons for that. One of the chief reasons is that when you get found out, it is worse for you than it was before; but the great

reason, the sober reason, is that business must be founded on the truth, and you men get together in order to create a clearing house for the truth about your business.

Very well; that is a picture in small of what we must do in the large. We must coöperate in the whole field of business, the Government with the merchant, the merchant with his employee, the whole body of producers with the whole body of consumers, to see that the right things are produced in the right volume and find the right purchasers at the right place, and that, all working together, we realize that nothing can be for the individual benefit which is not for the common benefit. ** *

And it is absolutely necessary now to make good our new connections. Our new connections are with the great and rich Republics to the south of us. For the first time in my recollection they are beginning to trust and believe in us and want us, and one of my chief concerns has been to see that nothing was done that did not show friendship and good faith on our part. You know that it used to be the case that if you wanted to travel comfortably in your own person from New York to a South American port, you had to go by way of England or else stow yourself away in some uncomfortable fashion in a ship that took almost as long to go straight, and within whose bowels you got in such a temper before you got there that you did not care whether she got there or not. The great interesting geographical fact to me is that by the opening of the Panama Canal there is a straight line south from New York through the canal to the western coast of South America, which hitherto has been one of the most remote coasts in the world so far as we are concerned. The west coast of South America is now nearer to us than the eastern coast of South America ever was, though we have the open Atlantic upon which to approach the east coast. Here is the loom all ready upon which to spread the threads which can be worked into a fabric of friendship and wealth such as we have never known before!

The real wealth of foreign relationships, my fellow-citizens, whether they be the relationships of trade or any other kind of intercourse, the real wealth of those relationships is the wealth of mutual confidence and understanding. If we do not