I request also that you will grant me at the same
time, along with the powers I ask, a sufficient credit to enable me to
provide adequate means of protection where they are lacking, including
adequate insurance against the present war risks.
I have spoken of our commerce and of the legitimate errands of our
people on the seas, but you will not be misled as to my main thought,
the thought that lies beneath these phrases and gives them dignity and
weight. It is not of material interests merely that we are thinking. It
is, rather, of fundamental human rights, chief of all the right of life
itself. I am thinking, not only of the rights of Americans to go and
come about their proper business by way of the sea, but also of
something much deeper, much more fundamental than that. I am thinking of
those rights of humanity without which there is no civilization. My
theme is of those great principles of compassion and of protection which
mankind has sought to throw about human lives, the lives of
non-combatants, the lives of men who are peacefully at work keeping the
industrial processes of the world quick and vital, the lives of women
and children and of those who supply the labor which ministers to their
sustenance.
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