er be our privilege to suggest or initiate a movement for
peace among the nations now at war, I am sure that the people of the
United States would wish their Government to move along these lines:
First, such a settlement with regard to their own immediate interests as
the belligerents may agree upon. We have nothing material of any kind to
ask for ourselves, and are quite aware that we are in no sense or degree
parties to the present quarrel. Our interest is only in peace and its
future guarantees. Second, an universal association of the nations to
maintain the inviolate security of the highway of the seas for the
common and unhindered use of all the nations of the world, and to
prevent any war begun either contrary to treaty covenants or without
warning and full submission of the causes to the opinion of the
world,--a virtual guarantee of territorial integrity and political
independence.

But I did not come here, let me repeat, to discuss a program. I came
only to avow a creed and give expression to the confidence I feel that
the world is even now upon the eve of a great consummation, when some
common force will be brought into existence which shall safeguard right
as the first and most fundamental interest of all peoples and all
governments, when coercion shall be summoned not to the service of
political ambition or selfish hostility, but to the service of a common
order, a common justice, and a common peace. God grant that the dawn of
that day of frank dealing and of settled peace, concord, and cooeperation
may be near at hand!

THE DEMANDS OF RAILWAY EMPLOYEES

[Address delivered at a joint session of the two Houses of Congress,
August 29, 1916.]

GENTLEMEN OF THE CONGRESS:

I have come to you to seek your assistance in dealing with a very grave
situation which has arisen out of the demand of the employees of the
railroads engaged in freight train service that they be granted an
eight-hour working day, safeguarded by payment for an hour and a half of
service for every hour of work beyond the eight.

The matter has been agitated for more than a year. The public has been
made familiar with the demands of the men and the arguments urged in
favor of them, and even more familiar with the objections of the
railroads and their counter demand that certain privileges now enjoyed
by their men and certain bases of payment worked out through many years
of contest be reconsidered, especially in their relation to t