different to it or independent
of it was out of the question.

And yet all the while we have been conscious that we were not part of
it. In that consciousness, despite many divisions, we have drawn closer
together. We have been deeply wronged upon the seas, but we have not
wished to wrong or injure in return; have retained throughout the
consciousness of standing in some sort apart, intent upon an interest
that transcended the immediate issues of the war itself. As some of the
injuries done us have become intolerable we have still been clear that
we wished nothing for ourselves that we were not ready to demand for all
mankind,--fair dealing, justice, the freedom to live and be at ease
against organized wrong.

It is in this spirit and with this thought that we have grown more and
more aware, more and more certain that the part we wished to play was
the part of those who mean to vindicate and fortify peace. We have been
obliged to arm ourselves to make good our claim to a certain minimum of
right and of freedom of action. We stand firm in armed neutrality since
it seems that in no other way we can demonstrate what it is we insist
upon and cannot forego. We may even be drawn on, by circumstances, not
by our own purpose or desire, to a more active assertion of our rights
as we see them and a more immediate association with the great struggle
itself. But nothing will alter our thought or our purpose. They are too
clear to be obscured. They are too deeply rooted in the principles of
our national life to be altered. We desire neither conquest nor
advantage. We wish nothing that can be had only at the cost of another
people. We have always professed unselfish purpose and we covet the
opportunity to prove that our professions are sincere.

There are many things still to do at home, to clarify our own politics
and give new vitality to the industrial processes of our own life, and
we shall do them as time and opportunity serve; but we realize that the
greatest things that remain to be done must be done with the whole world
for stage and in cooeperation with the wide, and universal forces of
mankind, and we are making our spirits ready for those things. They will
follow in the immediate wake of the war itself and will set civilization
up again. We are provincials no longer. The tragical events of the
thirty months of vital turmoil through which we have just passed have
made us citizens of the world. There can be no turning back.