BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
PROCLAMATION. October 19, 1917

Supplication and prayer.

Whereas, the Congress of the United States, by a concurrent resolution adopted on the fourth day of the present month of October, in view of the entrance of our nation into the vast and awful war which now afflicts the greater part of the world, has requested me to set apart by official proclamation a day upon which our people should be called upon to offer concerted prayer to Almighty God for His divine aid in the success of our arms;

And, Whereas, it behooves a great free people, nurtured as we have been in the eternal principles of justice and of right, a nation which has sought from the earliest days of its existence to be obedient to the divine teachings which have inspired it in the exercise of its liberties, to turn always to the supreme Master and cast themselves in faith at His feet, praying for His aid and succor in every hour of trial, to the end that the great aims to which our fathers dedicated our power as a people may not perish among men, but be always asserted and defended with fresh ardor and devotion and, through the Divine blessing, set at last upon enduring foundations for the benefit of all the free peoples of the earth

Now, therefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States, gladly responding to the wish expressed by the Congress, do appoint October twenty-eighth, being the last Sunday of the present month, as a day of supplication and prayer for all the people of the nation, earnestly exhorting all my countrymen to observe the appointed day, according to their several faiths, in solemn prayer that God’s blessing may rest upon the high task which is laid upon us, to the end that the cause for which we give our lives and treasure may triumph and our efforts be blessed with high achievement.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done in the District of Columbia this nineteenth day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and seventeen, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and forty-second.

SEAL.