NEUTRALITY PROCLAMATIONS

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE United States of AmERICA

A PROCLAMATION

[Neutrality-Italy and Austria-Hungary.]

Whereas a state of war unhappily exists between Italy and AustriaHungary; And Whereas the United States is on terms of friendship and amity with the contending powers, and with the persons inhabiting their several dominions;

[Here follows the identical preamble and warning against violation of quoted law as in the proclamation of neutrality in the case of hostilities between Austria-Hungary and Servia, Germany and Russia, and Germany and France. See pages 7969, 7970, 7971, 7972 and 7973.-Ed.]

Done at the city of Washington this twenty-fourth day of May in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and fif[SEAL.] teen and of the independence of the United States of America the one hundred and thirty-ninth.

By the President:

W. J. BRYAN, Secretary of State.

WOODROW WILSON.

BY THE PRESIDENT of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION

[Neutrality-Italy and Turkey.]

Whereas a state of war unhappily exists between Italy and Turkey; And Whereas the United States is on terms of friendship and amity with the contending powers, and with the persons inhabiting their several dominions;

[Here follows the identical preamble and warning against violation of quoted law as in the proclamation of neutrality in the case of hostilities between Austria-Hungary and Servia, Germany and Russia, and Germany and France. See pages 7969, 7970, 7971, 7972 and 7973.-Ed.]

Done at the city of Washington this twenty-third day of August in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and [SEAL.] fifteen and of the independence of the United States of America the one hundred and fortieth.

By the President:

WOODROW WILSON.

ROBERT LANSING, Secretary of State.

ADDRESSES

[In Convention Hall, Philadelphia, Pa., May 10, 1915, before a Gathering of 4,000 Naturalized American Citizens.]

MR. MAYOR, FELLOW CITIZENS: It warms my heart that you should give me such a reception; but it is not of myself that I wish to think to-night, but of those who have just become citizens of the United States.

This is the only country in the world which experiences this constant and repeated rebirth. Other countries depend upon the multiplication of their own native people. This country is constantly drinking strength out of new sources by the voluntary association with it of great bodies of strong men and forward-looking women out of other lands. And so by the gift of the free will of independent people it is being constantly renewed from generation to generation by the same process by which it was originally created. It is as if humanity had determined to see to it that this great Nation, founded for the benefit of humanity, should not lack for the allegiance of the people of the world.

You have just taken an oath of allegiance to the United States. Of allegiance to whom? Of allegiance to no one, unless it be Godcertainly not of allegiance to those who temporarily represent this great Government. You have taken an oath of allegiance to a great ideal, to a great body of principles, to a great hope of the human race. You have said, "We are going to America not only to earn a living, not only to seek the things which it was more difficult to obtain where we were born, but to help forward the great enterprises of the human spirit-to let men know that everywhere in the world there are men who will cross strange oceans and go where a speech is spoken which is alien to them if they can but satisfy their quest for what their spirits crave; knowing that whatever the speech there is but one longing and utterance of the human heart, and that is for liberty and justice." And while you bring all countries with you, you come with a purpose of leaving all other countries behind you-bringing what is best of their spirit, but not looking over your shoulders and seeking to perpetuate what you intended to leave behind in them. I certainly would not be one even to suggest that a man cease to love the home of his birth and the nation of his origin-these things are very sacred and ought not to be put out of our hearts-but it is one thing to love the place where you were born and it is another thing to dedicate yourself to the place to which you go. You cannot dedicate yourself to America unless you become in every respect and with every purpose of your will thorough Americans. You cannot become thorough Americans if you think

of yourselves in groups. America does not consist of groups. A man who thinks of himself as belonging to a particular national group in America has not yet become an American, and the man who goes among you to trade upon your nationality is no worthy son to live under the Stars and Stripes.

My urgent advice to you would be, not only always to think first of America, but always, also, to think first of humanity. You do not love humanity if you seek to divide humanity into jealous camps. Humanity can be welded together only by love, by sympathy, by justice, not by jealousy and hatred. I am sorry for the man who seeks to make personal capital out of the passions of his fellow-men. He has lost the touch and ideal of America, for America was created to unite mankind by those passions which lift and not by the passions which separate and debase. We came to America, either ourselves or in the persons of our ancestors, to better the ideals of men, to make them see finer things than they had seen before, to get rid of the things that divide and to make sure of the things that unite. It was but an historical accident no doubt that this great country was called the "United States"; yet I am very thankful that it has that word “United" in its title, and the man who seeks to divide man from man, group from group, interest from interest in this great Union is striking at its very heart.

It is a very interesting circumstance to me, in thinking of those of you who have just sworn allegiance to this great Government, that you were drawn across the ocean by some beckoning finger of hope, by some belief, by some vision of a new kind of justice, by some expectation of a better kind of life. No doubt you have been disappointed in some of us. Some of us are very disappointing. No doubt you have found that justice in the United States goes only with a pure heart and a right purpose as it does everywhere else in the world. No doubt what you found here did not seem touched for you, after all, with the complete beauty of the ideal which you had conceived beforehand. But remember this: If we had grown at all poor in the ideal, you brought some of it with you. A man does not go out to seek the thing that is not in him. A man does not hope for the thing that he does not believe in, and if some of us have forgotten what America believed in, you, at any rate, imported in your own hearts a renewal of the belief. That is the reason that I, for one, make you welcome. If I have in any degree forgotten what America was intended for, I will thank God if you will remind me. I was born in America. You dreamed dreams of what America was to be, and I hope you brought the dreams with you. No man that does not see visions will ever realize any high hope or undertake any high enterprise. Just because you brought dreams with you, America is more likely to realize

dreams such as you brought. You are enriching us if you came expecting us to be better than we are.

See, my friends, what that means. It means that Americans must have a consciousness different from the consciousness of every other nation in the world. I am not saying this with even the slightest thought of criticism of other nations. You know how it is with a family. A family gets centered on itself if it is not careful and is less interested in the neighbors than it is in its own members. So a nation that is not constantly renewed out of new sources is apt to have the narrowness and prejudice of a family; whereas, America must. have this consciousness, that on all sides it touches elbows and touches hearts with all the nations of mankind. The example of America must be a special example. The example of America must be the example not merely of peace because it will not fight, but of peace because peace is the healing and elevating influence of the world and strife is not. There is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight. There is such a thing as a nation being so right that it does not need to convince others by force that it is right.

You have come into this great Nation voluntarily seeking something that we have to give, and all that we have to give is this: We cannot exempt you from work. No man is exempt from work anywhere in the world. We cannot exempt you from the strife and the heartbreaking burden of the struggle of the day-that is common to mankind everywhere; we cannot exempt you from the loads that you must carry. We can only make them light by the spirit in which they are carried. That is the spirit of hope, it is the spirit of liberty, it is the spirit of justice.

When I was asked, therefore, by the Mayor and the committee that accompanied him to come up from Washington to meet this great company of newly admitted citizens, I could not decline the invitation. I ought not to be away from Washington, and yet I feel that it has renewed my spirit as an American to be here. In Washington men tell you so many things every day that are not so, and I like to come and stand in the presence of a great body of my fellow-citizens, whether they have been my fellow-citizens a long time or a short time, and drink, as it were, out of the common fountains with them and go back feeling what you have so generously given me the sense of your support and of the living vitality in your hearts of the great ideals which have made America the hope of the world.

[At a Luncheon Tendered to Him by the Mayor's Committee at the Hotel Biltmore, New York, N. Y., May 17, 1915.]

MR. MAYOR, MR. SECRETARY, ADMIRAL FLETCHER, AND GENTLEMEN OF THE FLEET: This is not an occasion upon which, it seems to me, it

would be wise for me to make many remarks, but I would deprive myself of a great gratification if I did not express my pleasure in being here, my gratitude for the splendid reception which has been accorded me as the representative of the Nation, and my profound interest in the Navy of the United States. That is an interest with which I was apparently born, for it began when I was a youngster and has ripened with my knowledge of the affairs and policies of the United States.

I think it is a natural, instinctive judgment of the people of the United States that they express their power most appropriately in an efficient navy, and their interest in their ships is partly, I believe, because that Navy is expected to express their character, not within our own borders where that character is understood, but outside our borders where it is hoped we may occasionally touch others with some slight vision of what America stands for.

Before I speak of the Navy of the United States, I want to take advantage of the first public opportunity I have had to speak of the Secretary of the Navy, to express my confidence and my admiration, and to say that he has my unqualified support. For I have counseled with him in intimate fashion; I know how sincerely he has it at heart that everything that the Navy does and handles should be done and handled as the people of the United States wish it handled. Efficiency is something more than organization. Efficiency runs to the extent of lifting the ideals of a service above every personal interest. So when I speak my support of the Secretary of the Navy I am merely speaking my support of what I know every true lover of the Navy to desire and to purpose; for the Navy of the United States is, as I have said, a body specially entrusted with the ideals of America.

I like to imagine in my thought this idea: These quiet ships lying in the river have no suggestion of bluster about them, no intimation of aggression. They are commanded by men thoughtful of the duty of citizens as well as the duty of officers, men acquainted with the traditions of the great service to which they belong, men who know by touch with the people of the United States what sort of purposes they ought to entertain and what sort of discretion they ought to exercise in order to use those engines of force as engines to promote the interests of humanity.

The interesting and inspiring thing about America, gentlemen, is that she asks nothing for herself except what she has a right to ask for humanity itself. We want no nation's property. We mean to question no nation's honor. We do not wish to stand selfishly in the way of the development of any nation. We want nothing that we cannot get by our own legitimate enterprise and by the inspiration of our own example; and, standing for these things, it is not preten