ADDRESS TO FELLOW CITIZENS. July 4, 1918

Read to Patriotic Meetings Throughout the United States on July 4, 1918.

You are met, my fellow citizens, to commemorate the signing of that Declaration of Independence which marked the awakening of a new spirit in the lives of nations. Since the birth of our Republic, we have seen this spirit grow. We have heard the demand and watched the struggle for self-government spread and triumph among many peoples. We have come to regard the right to political liberty as the common right of humankind. Year after year, within the security of our borders, we have continued to rejoice in the peaceful increase of freedom and democracy throughout the world. And yet now, suddenly, we are confronted with a menace which endangers everything that we have won and everything that the world has won.

In all its old insolence, with all its ancient cruelty and injustice, military autocracy has again armed itself against the pacific hopes of men. Having suppressed self-government among its own people by an organization maintained in part by falsehood and treachery, it has set out to impose its will upon its neighbors and upon us. One by one, it has compelled every civilized nation in the world either to forego its aspirations or to declare war in their defense. We find .ourselves fighting again for our national existence. We are face to face with the necessity of asserting anew the fundamental right of free men to make their own laws and choose their own allegiance, or else permit humanity to become the victim of a ruthless ambition that is determined to destroy what it cannot master.

Against its threat the liberty-loving people of the world have risen and allied themselves. No fear has deterred them, and no bribe of material well-being has held them back. They have made sacrifices such as the world has never known before, and their resistance in the face of death and suffering has proved that the aim which animates the German effort can never hope to rule the spirit of mankind. Against the horror of military conquest, against the emptiness of living in mere bodily contentment, against the desolation of becoming part of a State that knows neither truth nor honor, the world has so revolted that even people long dominated and suppressed by force have now begun to stir and arm themselves.

Centuries of subjugation have not destroyed the racial aspirations of the many distinct peoples of eastern Europe, nor have they accepted the sordid ideals of their political and military masters. They leave survived the slow persecutions of peace as weld as the agonies of ,war and now demand recognition for their just claims to autonomy and self-government. Representatives of these races are with you to-day, voicing their loyalty to our ideals and offering their services in the common cause. I ask you,. fellow-citizens, to unite with them in making this our Independence Day the first that shall be consecrated to a declaration of independence for all the peoples of the world.