We must
await some new evidence of the purposes of the great peoples of the
central powers. God grant it may be given soon and in a way to restore
the confidence of all peoples everywhere in the faith of nations and the
possibility of a covenanted peace.
ROBERT LANSING,
_Secretary of State of the United States of America_.
LABOR MUST BE FREE
[Address to the American Federation of Labor Convention, Buffalo, New
York, November 12, 1917.]
MR. PRESIDENT, DELEGATES OF THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR, LADIES AND
GENTLEMEN:
I esteem it a great privilege and a real honor to be thus admitted to
your public counsels. When your executive committee paid me the
compliment of inviting me here I gladly accepted the invitation because
it seems to me that this, above all other times in our history, is the
time for common counsel, for the drawing together not only of the
energies but of the minds of the Nation. I thought that it was a welcome
opportunity for disclosing to you some of the thoughts that have been
gathering in my mind during these last momentous months.
CRITICAL TIME IN HISTORY
I am introduced to you as the President of the United States, and yet I
would be pleased if you would put the thought of the office into the
background and regard me as one of your fellow-citizens who has come
here to speak, not the words of authority, but the words of counsel; the
words which men should speak to one another who wish to be frank in a
moment more critical perhaps than the history of the world has ever yet
known; a moment when it is every man's duty to forget himself, to forget
his own interests, to fill himself with the nobility of a great national
and world conception, and act upon a new platform elevated above the
ordinary affairs of life and lifted to where men have views of the long
destiny of mankind.
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