underlie the intercourse of the world.

I am not now thinking of the loss of property involved, immense and
serious as that is, but only of the wanton and wholesale destruction
of the lives of non-combatants, men, women, and children engaged in
pursuits which have always, even in the darkest periods of modem
history, been deemed innocent and legitimate. Property can be paid
for; the lives of peaceful and innocent people cannot be.


GERMAN WARFARE AGAINST MANKIND

The present German warfare against commerce is a warfare against
mankind. It is a war against all nations. American ships have been
sunk, American lives taken, in ways which it has stirred us very
deeply to learn of, but the ships and people of other neutral and
friendly nations have been sunk and overwhelmed in the waters in the
same way. There has been no discrimination. The challenge is to all
mankind. Each nation must decide for itself how it will meet it.
The choice we make for ourselves must be made with a moderation of
counsel and a temperateness of judgment befitting our character and
our motives as a nation. We must put excited feeling away.

Our motive will not be revenge or the victorious assertion of the
physical might of the nation, but only the vindication of right,
of human right, of which we are only a single champion.

When I addressed the Congress on the 26th of February last I thought
that it would suffice to assert our neutral rights with arms, our
right to use the seas against unlawful interference, our right to