ion or
people, but that every people should be left free to determine its own
polity, its own way of development, unhindered, unthreatened, unafraid,
the little along with the great and powerful.

I am proposing that all nations henceforth avoid entangling alliances
which would draw them into competitions of power, catch them in a net of
intrigue and selfish rivalry, and disturb their own affairs with
influences intruded from without. There is no entangling alliance in a
concert of power. When all unite to act in the same sense and with the
same purpose all act in the common interest and are free to live their
own lives under a common protection.

I am proposing government by the consent of the governed; that freedom
of the seas which in international conference after conference
representatives of the United States have urged with the eloquence of
those who are the convinced disciples of liberty; and that moderation of
armaments which makes of armies and navies a power for order merely, not
an instrument of aggression or of selfish violence.

These are American principles, American policies. We could stand for no
others. And they are also the principles and policies of forward looking
men and women everywhere, of every modern nation, of every enlightened
community. They are the principles of mankind and must prevail.

MEETING GERMANY'S CHALLENGE

[Address delivered at a joint session of the two Houses of Congress,
February 3, 1917.]

GENTLEMEN OF THE CONGRESS:

The Imperial German Government on the thirty-first of January announced
to this Government and to the governments of the other neutral nations
that on and after the first day of February, the present month, it would
adopt a policy with regard to the use of submarines against all shipping
seeking to pass through certain designated areas of the high seas to
which it is clearly my duty to call your attention.

Let me remind the Congress that on the eighteenth of April last, in view
of the sinking on the twenty-fourth of March of the cross-Channel
passenger steamer _Sussex_ by a German submarine, without summons or
warning, and the consequent loss of the lives of several citizens of the
United States who were passengers aboard her, this Government addressed
a note to the Imperial German Government in which it made the following
declaration:

"If it is still the purpose of the Imperial Government to prosecute
relentless and indiscriminate warfare ag