which it has stirred us very deeply to learn of,
but the ships and people of other neutral and friendly nations have been
sunk and overwhelmed in the waters in the same way. There has been no
discrimination.

[Sidenote: Our motive vindication of human right.]

The challenge is to all mankind. Each nation must decide for itself how
it will meet it. The choice we make for ourselves must be made with a
moderation of counsel and a temperateness of judgment befitting our
character and our motives as a nation. We must put excited feeling away.
Our motive will not be revenge or the victorious assertion of the
physical might of the nation, but only the vindication of right, of
human right, of which we are only a single champion.

[Sidenote: Submarines are in effect outlaws.]

[Sidenote: Must be dealt with on sight.]

When I addressed the Congress on the 26th of February last I thought
that it would suffice to assert our neutral rights with arms, our right
to use the seas against unlawful interference, our right to keep our
people safe against unlawful violence. But armed neutrality, it now
appears, is impracticable. Because submarines are in effect outlaws,
when used as the German submarines have been used against merchant
shipping, it is impossible to defend ships against their attacks, as
the law of nations has assumed that merchantmen would defend themselves
against privateers or cruisers, visible craft giving chase upon the open
sea. It is common prudence in such circumstances, grim necessity indeed,
to endeavor to destroy them before they have shown their own intention.
They must be dealt with upon sight, if dealt with at all.

[Sidenote: Armed neutrality ineffectual]

The German Government denies the right of neutrals to use arms at all
within the areas of the sea which it has proscribed, even in the defense
of rights which no modern publicist has ever before questioned their
right to defend. The intimation is conveyed that the armed guards which
we have placed on our merchant ships will be treated as beyond the pale
of law and subject to be dealt with as pirates would be. Armed
neutrality is ineffectual enough at best; in such circumstances and in
the face of such pretensions it is worse than ineffectual; it is likely
only to produce what it was meant to prevent; it is practically certain
to draw us into the war without either the rights or the effectiveness
of belligerents. There is one choice we cannot make, we