t the last session with regard to regulated
combinations among our exporters, in order to provide for our foreign
trade a more effective organization and method of co-operation, ought
by all means to be completed at this session.

And I beg that the members of the House of Representatives will
permit me to express the opinion that it will be impossible to deal
in any way but a very wasteful and extravagant fashion with the
enormous appropriations of the public moneys which must continue to
be made, if the war is to be properly sustained, unless the House
will consent to return to its former practice of initiating and
preparing all appropriation bills through a single committee, in
order that responsibility may be centered, expenditures standardized
and made uniform, and waste and duplication as much as possible
avoided.

Additional legislation may also become necessary before the present
Congress adjourns, in order to effect the most efficient
co-ordination and operation of the railway and other transportation
systems of the country; but to that I shall, if circumstances should
demand, call the attention of Congress upon another occasion.

THE WINNING OF THE WAR

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 and 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.

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