on is that righteous passion
for justice upon which all law, all structures alike of family, of
state, and of mankind must rest, as upon the ultimate base of our
existence and our liberty. I cannot imagine any man with American
principles at his heart hesitating to defend these things.

SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS

[Washington, March 4, 1917.]

MY FELLOW-CITIZENS:

The four years which have elapsed since last I stood in this place have
been crowded with counsel and action of the most vital interest and
consequence. Perhaps no equal period in our history has been so fruitful
of important reforms in our economic and industrial life or so full of
significant changes in the spirit and purpose of our political action.
We have sought very thoughtfully to set our house in order, correct the
grosser errors and abuses of our industrial life, liberate and quicken
the processes of our national genius and energy, and lift our politics
to a broader view of the people's essential interests. It is a record of
singular variety and singular distinction. But I shall not attempt to
review it. It speaks for itself and will be of increasing influence as
the years go by. This is not the time for retrospect. It is time,
rather, to speak our thoughts and purposes concerning the present and
the immediate future.

Although we have centered counsel and action with such unusual
concentration and success upon the great problems of domestic
legislation to which we addressed ourselves four years ago, other
matters have more and more forced themselves upon our attention, matters
lying outside our own life as a nation and over which we had no control,
but which, despite our wish to keep free of them, have drawn us more and
more irresistibly into their own current and influence.

It has been impossible to avoid them. They have affected the life of
the whole world. They have shaken men everywhere with a passion and an
apprehension they never knew before. It has been hard to preserve calm
counsel while the thought of our own people swayed this way and that
under their influence. We are a composite and cosmopolitan people. We
are of the blood of all the nations that are at war. The currents of our
thoughts as well as the currents of our trade run quick at all seasons
back and forth between us and them. The war inevitably set its mark from
the first alike upon our minds, our industries, our commerce, our
politics, and our social action. To be in