January last; the same that I had in
mind when I addressed the Congress on the 3d of February and on the
26th of February. Our object now, as then, is to vindicate the
principles of peace and the justice in the life of the world as against
selfish and autocratic power and to set up among the really free and
self-governed peoples of the world such a concert of purpose and of
action as will henceforth insure the observance of those principles.

"Neutrality is no longer feasible or desirable where the peace of the
world is involved and the freedom of its peoples, and the menace to
that peace and freedom lies in the existence of autocratic governments
backed by organised force which is controlled wholly by their will, not
by the will of their people. We have seen the last of neutrality in
such circumstances.

"We are at the beginning of an age in which it will be insisted that
the same standards of conduct and of responsibility for wrong done
shall be observed among nations and their governments that are observed
among the individual citizens of civilised states.

"We have no quarrel with the German people. We have no feeling toward
them but one of sympathy and friendship. It was not upon their impulse
that their government acted in entering this war. It was not with
their previous knowledge or approval.

"It was a war determined upon as wars used to be determined upon in the
old unhappy days when peoples were nowhere consulted by their rulers
and wars were provoked and waged in the interest of dynasties or of
little groups of ambitious men who were accustomed to use their
fellowmen as pawns and tools.

"Self-governed nations do not fill their neighbour states with spies or
set the course of intrigue to bring about some critical posture of
affairs which will give them an opportunity to strike and make
conquest. Such designs can be successfully worked only under cover and
where no one has the right to ask questions.

"Cunningly contrived plans of deception or aggression, carried, it may
be, from generation to generation, can be worked out and kept from the
light only within the privacy of courts or behind the carefully guarded
confidences of a narrow and privileged class. They are happily
impossible where public opinion commands and insists upon full
information concerning all the nation's affairs.

"A steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained except by a
partnership of democratic nations. No autoc