that the actions of the
Government are made to square with those traditions.

But there are other dangers, my fellow-citizens, which are not past and
which have not been overcome, and they are dangers which we cannot
control. We can control irresponsible talkers amidst ourselves. All we
have got to do is to encourage them to hire a hall and their folly will
be abundantly advertised by themselves. But we cannot in this simple
fashion control the dangers that surround us now and have surrounded us
since this titanic struggle on the other side of the water began. I say
on the other side of the water; you will ask me, "On the other side of
which water," for this great struggle has extended to all quarters of
the globe. There is no continent outside, I was about to say, of this
Western Hemisphere which is not touched with it, but I recollected as I
began the sentence that a part of our own continent was touched with it,
because it involves our neighbors to the north in Canada. There is no
part of the world, except South America, to which the direct influences
of this struggle have not extended, so that now we are completely
surrounded by this tremendous disturbance and you must realize what that
involves.

Our thoughts are concentrated upon our own affairs and our own relations
to the rest of the world, but the thoughts of the men who are engaged in
this struggle are concentrated upon the struggle itself, and there is
daily and hourly danger that they will feel themselves constrained to do
things which are absolutely inconsistent with the rights of the United
States. They are not thinking of us. I am not criticising them for not
thinking of us. I dare say if I were in their place neither would I
think of us. They believe that they are struggling for the lives and
honor of their nations, and that if the United States puts its interests
in the path of this great struggle, she ought to know beforehand that
there is danger of very serious misunderstanding and difficulty. So that
the very uncalculating, unpremeditated, one might almost say accidental,
course of affairs may touch us to the quick at any moment, and I want
you to realize that, standing in the midst of these difficulties, I feel
that I am charged with a double duty of the utmost difficulty. In the
first place, I know that you are depending upon me to keep this Nation
out of the war. So far I have done so, and I pledge you my word that,
God helping me, I will if it