I'm not putting this copy of The Wyoming Tribune up for the story about President Wilson's speech, although that was an important story. No, rather I'm putting this one up because a story that appears here recalls one on the front page of this paper ran this weekend in the Casper Star Tribune, that being; "Says Oil In Backyard Of Cheyenne". This weekend there was a story in the Tribune about people who live just north of Cheyenne and who are worried about oil production north of the town.
I'm not commenting on that specifically. There is oil north of Cheyenne and that doesn't seem like a surprise to me. It's a bit surprising that it took so long to start developing it, but then the technology has developed to where that is easier to do. Just south of Cheyenne the Denver Basin has been in production for decades. Anyhow, I'm only noting it as L. D. Thompson proved to be absolutely right in his prediction, although he didn't live to see that prediction come true.
Russia's backing out of the war, which wouldn't really bring peace to Russia which went into a civil war, made the headlines. People reading it had to be worried what that would mean for the war in the west.
Wilson's State of the Union address read as follows:
Gentlemen of the Congress:
Eight
months have elapsed since I last had the honor of addressing you. They
have been months crowded with events of immense and grave significance
for us. I shall not undertake to retail or even to summarize those
events. The practical particulars of the part we have played in them
will be laid before you in the reports of the Executive Departments. I
shall discuss only our present outlook upon these vast affairs, our
present duties, and the immediate means of accomplishing the objects we
shall hold always in view.
I shall not go back to debate the
causes of the war. The intolerable wrongs done and planned against us by
the sinister masters of Germany have long since become too grossly
obvious and odious to every true American to need to be rehearsed. But I
shall ask you to consider again and with a very grave scrutiny our
objectives and the measures by which we mean to attain them; for the
purpose of discussion here in this place is action, and our action must
move straight towards definite ends. Our object is, of course, to win
the war; and we shall not slacken or suffer ourselves to be diverted
until it is won. But it is worth while asking and answering the
question, When shall we consider the war won?
From one point of
view it is not necessary to broach this fundamental matter. I do not
doubt that the American people know what the war is about and what sort
of an outcome they will regard as a realization of their purpose in it.
As a nation we are united in spirit and intention. I pay little heed to
those who tell me otherwise. I hear the voices of dissent; who does not?
I hear the criticism and the clamor of the noisily thoughtless and
troublesome. I also see men here and there fling themselves in impotent
disloyalty against the calm, indomitable power of the nation. I hear men
debate peace who understand neither its nature not the way in which we
may attain it with uplifted eyes and unbroken spirits. But I know that
none of these speaks for the nation. They do not touch the heart of
anything. They may safely be left to strut their uneasy hour and be
forgotten.
But from another point of view I believe that it is
necessary to say plainly what we here at the seat of action consider the
war to be for and what part we mean to play in the settlement of its
searching issues. We are the spokesmen of the American people and they
have a right to know whether their purpose is ours. They desire peace by
the overcoming of evil, by the defeat once for all of the sinister
forces that interrupt peace and render it impossible, and they wish to
know how closely our thought runs with theirs and what action we
propose. They are impatient with those who desire peace by any sort of
compromise--deeply and indignantly impatient--but they will be equally
impatient with us if we do not make it plain to them what our objectives
are and what we are planning for in seeking to make conquest of peace
by arms.
I believe that I speak for them when I say two things:
First, that this intolerable Thing of which the masters of Germany have
shown us the ugly face, this menace of combined intrigue and force which
we now see so clearly as the German power, a Thing without conscience
or honor or capacity for covenanted peace, must be crushed and, if it be
not utterly brought to an end, at least shut out from the friendly
intercourse of the nations; and, second, that when this Thing and its
power are indeed defeated and the time comes that we can discuss
peace--when the German people have spokesmen whose word we can believe
and when those spokesmen are ready in the name of their people to accept
the common judgment of the nations as to what shall henceforth be the
bases of law and of covenant for the life of the world--we shall be
willing and glad to pay the full price for peace, and pay it
ungrudgingly. We know what that price will be. It will be full,
impartial justice--justice done at every point and to every nation that
the final settlement must affect, our enemies as well as our friends.
You
catch, with me, the voices of humanity that are in the air. They grow
daily more audible, more articulate, more persuasive, and they come from
the hearts of men everywhere. They insist that the war shall not end in
vindictive action of any kind; that no nation or people shall be robbed
or punished because the irresponsible rulers of a single country have
themselves done deep and abominable wrong. It is this thought that has
been expressed in the formula "No annexations, no contributions, no
punitive indemnities." Just because this crude formula expresses the
instinctive judgment as to right of plain men everywhere it has been
made diligent use of by the masters of German intrigue to lead the
people of Russia astray, and the people of every other country their
agents could reach, in order that a premature peace might be brought
about before autocracy has been taught its final and convincing lesson,
and the people of the world put in control of their own destinies.
But
the fact that a wrong use has been made of a just idea is no reason why
a right use should not be made of it. It ought to be brought under the
patronage of its real friends. Let it be said again that autocracy must
first be shown the utter futility of its claims to power or leadership
in the modern world. It is impossible to apply any standard of justice
so long as such forces are unchecked and undefeated as the present
masters of Germany command. Not until that has been done can Right be
set up as arbiter and peace-maker among the nations. But when that has
been done--as, God willing, it assuredly will be--we shall at last be
free to do an unprecedented thing, and this is the time to avow our
purpose to do it. We shall be free to base peace on generosity and
justice, to the exclusion of all selfish claims to advantage even on the
part of the victors.
Let there be no misunderstanding. Our
present and immediate task is to win the war, and nothing shall turn us
aside from it until it is accomplished. Every power and resource we
possess, whether of men, of money, or of materials, is being devoted and
will continue to be devoted to that purpose until it is achieved. Those
who desire to bring peace about before that purpose is achieved I
counsel to carry their advice elsewhere. We will not entertain it. We
shall regard the war as won only when the German people say to us,
through properly accredited representatives, that they are ready to
agree to a settlement based upon justice and the reparation of the
wrongs their rulers have done. They have done a wrong to Belgium which
must be repaired. They have established a power over other lands and
peoples than their own--over the great Empire of Austria-Hungary, over
hitherto free Balkan states, over Turkey, and within Asia--which must be
relinquished.
Germany's success by skill, by industry, by
knowledge, by enterprise we did not grudge or oppose, but admired,
rather. She had built up for herself a real empire of trade and
influence, secured by the peace of the world. We were content to abide
the rivalries of manufacture, science, and commerce that were involved
for us in her success and stand or fall as we had or did not have the
brains and the initiative to surpass her. But at the moment when she had
conspicuously won her triumphs of peace she threw them away, to
establish in their stead what the world will no longer permit to be
established, military and political domination by arms, by which to oust
where she could not excel the rivals she most feared and hated. The
peace we make must remedy that wrong. It must deliver the once fair
lands and happy peoples of Belgium and northern France from the Prussian
conquest and the Prussian menace, but it must also deliver the peoples
of Austria-Hungary, the peoples of the Balkans, and the peoples of
Turkey, alike in Europe and in Asia, from the impudent and alien
dominion of the Prussian military and commercial autocracy.
We owe
it, however, to ourselves to say that we do not wish in any way to
impair or to rearrange the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It is no affair of
ours what they do with their own life, either industrially or
politically. We do not purpose or desire to dictate to them in any way.
We only desire to see that their affairs are left in their own hands, in
all matters, great or small. We shall hope to secure for the peoples of
the Balkan peninsula and for the people of the Turkish Empire the right
and opportunity to make their own lives safe, their own fortunes secure
against oppression or injustice and from the dictation of foreign
courts or parties.
And our attitude and purpose with regard to
Germany herself are of a like kind. We intend no wrong against the
German Empire, no interference with her internal affairs. We should deem
either the one or the other absolutely unjustifiable, absolutely
contrary to the principles we have professed to live by and to hold most
sacred throughout our life as a nation.
The people of Germany are
being told by the men whom they now permit to deceive them and to act
as their masters that they are fighting for the very life and existence
of their Empire, a war of desperate self-defense against deliberate
aggression. Nothing could be more grossly or wantonly false, and we must
seek by the utmost openness and candor as to our real aims to convince
them of its falseness. We are in fact fighting for their emancipation
from fear, along with our own--from the fear as well as from the fact of
unjust attack by neighbors or rivals or schemers after world empire. No
one is threatening the existence or the independence or the peaceful
enterprise of the German Empire.
The worst that can happen to the
detriment of the German people is this, that if they should still, after
the war is over, continue to be obliged to live under ambitious and
intriguing masters interested to disturb the peace of the world, men or
classes of men whom the other peoples of the world could not trust, it
might be impossible to admit them to the partnership of nations which
must henceforth guarantee the world's peace. That partnership must be a
partnership of peoples, not a mere partnership of governments. It might
be impossible, also, in such untoward circumstances, to admit Germany to
the free economic intercourse which must inevitably spring out of the
other partnerships of a real peace. But there would be no aggression in
that; and such a situation, inevitable because of distrust, would in the
very nature of things sooner or later cure itself, by processes which
would assuredly set in.
The wrongs, the very deep wrongs,
committed in this war will have to be righted. That of course. But they
cannot and must not be righted by the commission of similar wrongs
against Germany and her allies. The world will not permit the commission
of similar wrongs as a means of reparation and settlement. Statesmen
must by this time have learned that the opinion of the world is
everywhere wide awake and fully comprehends the issues involved. No
representative of any self-governed nation will dare disregard it by
attempting any such covenants of selfishness and compromise as were
entered into at the Congress of Vienna. The thought of the plain people
here and everywhere throughout the world, the people who enjoy no
privilege and have very simple and unsophisticated standards of right
and wrong, is the air all governments must henceforth breathe if they
would live. It is in the full disclosing light of that thought that all
policies must be conceived and executed in this midday hour of the
world's life. German rulers have been able to upset the peace of the
world only because the German people were not suffered under their
tutelage to share the comradeship of the other peoples of the world
either in thought or in purpose. They were allowed to have no opinion of
their own which might be set up as a rule of conduct for those who
exercised authority over them. But the congress that concludes this war
will feel the full strength of the tides that run now in the hearts and
consciences of free men everywhere. Its conclusions will run with those
tides.
All these things have been true from the very beginning of
this stupendous war; and I cannot help thinking that if they had been
made plain at the very outset the sympathy and enthusiasm of the Russian
people might have been once for all enlisted on the side of the Allies,
suspicion and distrust swept away, and a real and lasting union of
purpose effected. Had they believed these things at the very moment of
their revolution and had they been confirmed in that belief since, the
sad reverses which have recently marked the progress of their affairs
towards an ordered and stable government of free men might have been
avoided. The Russian people have been poisoned by the very same
falsehoods that have kept the German people in the dark, and the poison
has been administered by the very same hands. The only possible antidote
is the truth. It cannot be uttered too plainly or too often.
From
every point of view, therefore, it has seemed to be my duty to speak
these declarations of purpose, to add these specific interpretations to
what I took the liberty of saying to the Senate in January. Our entrance
into the war has not altered our attitude towards the settlement that
must come when it is over. When I said in January that the nations of
the world were entitled not only to free pathways upon the sea but also
to assured and unmolested access to those pathways I was thinking, and I
am thinking now, not of the smaller and weaker nations alone, which
need our countenance and support, but also of the great and powerful
nations, and of our present enemies as well as our present associates in
the war. I was thinking, and am thinking now, of Austria herself, among
the rest, as well as of Serbia and of Poland. Justice and equality of
rights can be had only at a great price. We are seeking permanent, not
temporary, foundations for the peace of the world and must seek them
candidly and fearlessly. As always, the right will prove to be the
expedient.
What shall we do, then, to push this great war of
freedom and justice to its righteous conclusion? We must clear away with
a thorough hand all impediments to success and we must make every
adjustment of law that will facilitate the full and free use of our
whole capacity and force as a fighting unit.
One very embarrassing
obstacle that stands in our way is that we are at war with Germany but
not with her allies. I therefore very earnestly recommend that the
Congress immediately declare the United States in a state of war with
Austria-Hungary. Does it seem strange to you that this should be the
conclusion of the argument I have just addressed to you? It is not. It
is in fact the inevitable logic of what I have said. Austria-Hungary is
for the time being not her own mistress but simply the vassal of the
German Government. We must face the facts as they are and act upon them
without sentiment in this stern business. The government of
Austria-Hungary is not acting upon its own initiative or in response to
the wishes and feelings of its own peoples but as the instrument of
another nation. We must meet its force with our own and regard the
Central Powers as but one. The war can be successfully conducted in no
other way. The same logic would lead also to a declaration of war
against Turkey and Bulgaria. They also are the tools of Germany. But
they are mere tools and do not yet stand in the direct path of our
necessary action. We shall go wherever the necessities of this war carry
us, but it seems to me that we should go only where immediate and
practical considerations lead us and not heed any others.
The
financial and military measures which must be adopted will suggest
themselves as the war and its undertakings develop, but I will take the
liberty of proposing to you certain other acts of legislation which seem
to me to be needed for the support of the war and for the release of
our whole force and energy.
It will be necessary to extend in
certain particulars the legislation of the last session with regard to
alien enemies; and also necessary, I believe, to create a very definite
and particular control over the entrance and departure of all persons
into and from the United States.
Legislation should be enacted
defining as a criminal offense every willful violation of the
presidential proclamations relating to alien enemies promulgated under
section 4067 of the Revised Statutes and providing appropriate
punishments; and women as well as men should be included under the terms
of the acts placing restraints upon alien enemies. It is likely that as
time goes on many alien enemies will be willing to be fed and housed at
the expense of the Government in the detention camps and it would be
the purpose of the legislation I have suggested to confine offenders
among them in penitentiaries and other similar institutions where they
could be made to work as other criminals do.
Recent experience has
convinced me that the Congress must go further in authorizing the
Government to set limits to prices. The law of supply and demand, I am
sorry to say, has been replaced by the law of unrestrained selfishness.
While we have eliminated profiteering in several branches of industry it
still runs impudently rampant in others. The farmers, for example,
complain with a great deal of justice that, while the regulation of food
prices restricts their incomes, no restraints are placed upon the
prices of most of the things they must themselves purchase; and similar
inequities obtain on all sides.
It is imperatively necessary that
the consideration of the full use of the water power of the country and
also the consideration of the systematic and yet economical development
of such of the natural resources of the country as are still under the
control of the federal government should be immediately resumed and
affirmatively and constructively dealt with at the earliest possible
moment. The pressing need of such legislation is daily becoming more
obvious.
The legislation proposed at the last session with regard
to regulated combinations among our exporters, in order to provide for
our foreign trade a more effective organization and method of
cooperation, ought by all means to be completed at this session.
And
I beg that the members of the House of Representatives will permit me
to express the opinion that it will be impossible to deal in any but a
very wasteful and extravagant fashion with the enormous appropriations
of the public moneys which must continue to be made, if the war is to be
properly sustained, unless the House will consent to return to its
former practice of initiating and preparing all appropriation bills
through a single committee, in order that responsibility may be
centered, expenditures standardized and made uniform, and waste and
duplication as much as possible avoided.
Additional legislation
may also become necessary before the present Congress again adjourns in
order to effect the most efficient coordination and operation of the
railway and other transportation systems of the country; but to that I
shall, if circumstances should demand, call the attention of the
Congress upon another occasion.
If I have overlooked anything that
ought to be done for the more effective conduct of the war, your own
counsels will supply the omission. What I am perfectly clear about is
that in the present session of the Congress our whole attention and
energy should be concentrated on the vigorous, rapid, and successful
prosecution of the great task of winning the war.
We can do this
with all the greater zeal and enthusiasm because we know that for us
this is a war of high principle, debased by no selfish ambition of
conquest or spoliation; because we know, and all the world knows, that
we have been forced into it to save the very institutions we live under
from corruption and destruction. The purposes of the Central Powers
strike straight at the very heart of everything we believe in; their
methods of warfare outrage every principle of humanity and of knightly
honor; their intrigue has corrupted the very thought and spirit of many
of our people; their sinister and secret diplomacy has sought to take
our very territory away from us and disrupt the Union of the States. Our
safety would be at an end, our honor forever sullied and brought into
contempt were we to permit their triumph. They are striking at the very
existence of democracy and liberty.
It is because it is for us a
war of high, disinterested purpose, in which all the free peoples of the
world are banded together for the vindication of right, a war for the
preservation of our nation and of all that it has held dear of principle
and of purpose, that we feel ourselves doubly constrained to propose
for its outcome only that which is righteous and of irreproachable
intention, for our foes as well as for our friends. The cause being just
and holy, the settlement must be of like motive and quality. For this
we can fight, but for nothing less noble or less worthy of our
traditions. For this cause we entered the war and for this cause will we
battle until the last gun is fired.
I have spoken plainly because
this seems to me the time when it is most necessary to speak plainly,
in order that all the world may know that even in the heat and ardor of
the struggle and when our whole thought is of carrying the war through
to its end we have not forgotten any ideal or principle for which the
name of America has been held in honor among the nations and for which
it has been our glory to contend in the great generations that went
before us. A supreme moment of history has come. The eyes of the people
have been opened and they see. The hand of God is laid upon the nations.
He will show them favor, I devoutly believe, only if they rise to the
clear heights of His own justice and mercy.
Those concerns probably motivated the large headline in the Cheyenne State Leader, but that is also not the reason I'm putting this one up. Rather, even though it had happened a couple of days prior, the news of the border skirmish on the border with Mexico had finally made it to the front page. Again, with the nation engaged in sending men to Europe, renewed clashed on the Mexican border couldn't have been welcome news.
