Obrázky stránek
PDF
ePub

The use of the submarine, however, has changed these relations. Comparison of the defensive strength of a cruiser and a submarine shows that the latter, relying for protection on its power to submerge, is almost defenseless in point of construction. Even a merchant ship carrying a small caliber gun would be able to use it effectively for offense against a submarine. Moreover, pirates and sea rovers have been swept from the main trade channels of the seas, and privateering has been abolished. Consequently, the placing of guns on merchantmen at the present day of submarine warfare can be explained only on the ground of a purpose to render merchantmen superior in force to submarines and to prevent warning and visit and search by them. Any armament, therefore, on a merchant vessel would seem to have the character of an offensive armament.

If a submarine is required to stop and search a merchant vessel on the high seas and, in case it is found that she is of enemy character and that conditions necessitate her destruction, to remove to a place of safety all persons on board, it would not seem just or reasonable that the submarine should be compelled, while complying with these requirements, to expose itself to almost certain destruction by the guns on board the merchant vessel.

It would, therefore, appear to be a reasonable and reciprocally just arrangement if it could be agreed by the opposing belligerents that submarines should be caused to adhere strictly to the rules of international law in the matter of stopping and searching merchant vessels, determining their belligerent nationality, and removing the crews and passengers to places of safety before sinking the vessels as prizes of war, and that merchant vessels of belligerent nationality should be prohibited and prevented from carrying any armament whatsoever.

In presenting this formula as a basis for conditional declarations by the belligerent Governments, I do so in the full conviction that your Government will consider primarily the humane purpose of saving the lives of innocent people rather than the insistence upon a doubtful legal right which may be denied on account of new conditions.

I should add that my Government is impressed with the reasonableness of the argument that a merchant vessel carrying an armament of any sort, in view of the character of submarine warfare and the defensive weakness of undersea craft, should be held to be an auxiliary cruiser and so treated by a neutral as well as by a belligerent Government, and is seriously considering instructing its officials accordingly.

THE DANGERS THAT THREATEN THE

UNITED STATES

50. Extract from an Address of President Wilson. January 29, 19161

(House Document No. 803, 64th Congress, 1st Session, p. 23)

The times are such, gentlemen, that it is necessary that we should take common counsel together regarding them.

I suppose that this country has never found itself before in so singular a position. The present situation of the world would, only a twelvemonth ago, even after the European war had started, have seemed incredible, and yet

1 The Cleveland preparedness speech is typical of the others delivered at this time. For those delivered at New York, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Chicago, Des Moines, Topeka, Kansas City and St. Louis, see 64th Congress, 1st session, House Document No. 803.

now the things that no man anticipated have happened. The titanic struggle continues. The difficulties of the world's affairs accumulate..

What are the elements of the case? In the first place, and most obviously, two-thirds of the world are at war. It is not merely a European struggle; nations in the Orient have become involved, as well as nations in the West, and everywhere there seems to be creeping even upon the nations disengaged the spirit and the threat of war. All the world

outside of America is on fire.

Do you wonder that men's imaginations take color from the situation? Do you wonder that there is a great reaction against war? Do you wonder that the passion for peace grows stronger as the spectacle grows more tremendous and more overwhelming? Do you wonder, on the other hand, that men's sympathies become deeply engaged on the one side or the other? For no small things are happening. This is a struggle which will determine the history of the world, I dare say, for more than a century to come. The world will never be the same again after this war is over. The change may be for weal or it may be for woe, but it will be fundamental and tremendous.

And in the meantime we, the people of the United States, are the one great disengaged power, the one neutral power, finding it exceedingly difficult to be neutral, because, like men everywhere else, we are human; we have the deep passions of mankind in us; we have sympathies that are as easily stirred as the sympathies of any other people; we have interests which we see being drawn slowly into the maelstrom of this tremendous upheaval. . . .

. . . And all the while the nations themselves that were engaged seemed to be looking to us for some sort of action, not hostile in character but sympathetic in character. Hardly a single thing has occurred in Europe which has in

any degree shocked the sensibilities of mankind that the Government of the United States has not been called upon by the one side or the other to protest and intervene with its moral influence, if not with its physical force. It is as if we were the great audience before whom this stupendous drama is being played out, and we are asked to comment upon the turns and crises of the plot. And not only are we the audience, and challenged to be the umpire so far as the opinion of the world is concerned, but all the while our own life touches these matters at many points of vital contact.

And America has done more than care for her own people and think of her own fortunes in these great matters. She has said ever since the time of President Monroe that she was the champion of freedom and the separate sovereignty of peoples throughout the Western Hemisphere. She is trustee for these ideals, and she is pledged, deeply and permanently pledged, to keep these momentous promises.

She not only, therefore, must play her part in keeping this conflagration from spreading to the people of the United States, she must also keep this conflagration from spreading on this side of the sea. These are matters in which our very life and our whole pride are imbedded and rooted, and we can never draw back from them.

[ocr errors]

I merely want to leave you with this solemn impression, that I know that we are daily treading amid the most intricate dangers, and that the dangers that we are treading amongst are not of our making and are not under our control, and that no man in the United States knows what a single week or a single day or a single hour may bring forth. These are solemn things to say to you but I would be unworthy of my office if I did not come out and tell you with

absolute frankness just exactly what I understand the situation to be.

[ocr errors]

You have laid upon me this double obligation: “We are relying upon you, Mr. President, to keep us out of this war, but we are relying upon you, Mr. President, to keep the honor of the nation unstained."

Do you not see that a time may come when it is impossible to do both of these things? Do you not see that if I am to guard the honor of the Nation I am not protecting it against itself, for we are not going to do anything to stain the honor of our own country; I am protecting it against things that I cannot control, the action of others. And where the action of others may bring us I cannot foretell. You may count upon my heart and resolution to keep you out of the war, but you must be ready if it is necessary that I should maintain your honor.

ARMED MERCHANTMEN

51. Extract from a Letter of President Wilson to Senator Stone, of Missouri. February 24, 1916

(Congressional Record, LIII, 3318)

Our duty is clear. No nation, no group of nations, has the right, while war is in progress, to alter or disregard the principles which all nations have agreed upon in mitigation of the horrors and sufferings of war; and if the clear rights of American citizens should very unhappily be abridged or denied by any such action, we should, it seems to me, have in honor no choice as to what our own course should be.

For my own part, I can not consent to any abridgement of the rights of American citizens in any respect. The

« PředchozíPokračovat »