They seemed to have divined the errand upon which I had
come, to remind you that we must subordinate every individual interest
and every local interest to assert once more, if it should be necessary
to assert them, the great principles for which that flag stands.
Do not deceive yourselves, ladies and gentlemen, as to where the colors
of that flag came from. Those lines of red are lines of blood, nobly and
unselfishly shed by men who loved the liberty of their fellow-men more
than they loved their own lives and fortunes. God forbid that we should
have to use the blood of America to freshen the color of that flag; but
if it should ever be necessary again to assert the majesty and integrity
of those ancient and honorable principles, that flag will be colored
once more, and in being colored will be glorified and purified.
THE SUBMARINE QUESTION
[Address delivered at a joint session of the two Houses of Congress,
April 19, 1916.]
GENTLEMEN OF THE CONGRESS:
A situation has arisen in the foreign relations of the country of which
it is my plain duty to inform you very frankly.
It will be recalled that in February, 1915, the Imperial German
Government announced its intention to treat the waters surrounding Great
Britain and Ireland as embraced within the seat of war and to destroy
all merchant ships owned by its enemies that might be found within any
part of that portion of the high seas, and that it warned all vessels,
of neutral as well as of belligerent ownership, to keep out of the
waters it had thus proscribed or else enter them at their peril.
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