Stati Uniti, storia - Dichiarazione di guerra alla Germania - Discorso di Wilson 1917

Wilson's Re-election and the Start of World War I

Wilson's re-election in 1916 owed a great deal to the campaign slogan, "He kept us out of war." But the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare by Germany in 1917 significantly changed the international situation. Several U.S. merchant ships were sunk in March by German U-boats. That April, Wilson called Congress into extraordinary session to ask for a declaration of war against Germany. Within four days, both the Senate and the House voted overwhelmingly to support the President.

It is a war against all nations. American ships have been sunk, American lives taken, in ways which it has stirred us very deeply to learn of, but the ships and people of other neutral and friendly nations have been sunk and overwhelmed in the waters in the same way. There has been no discrimination. The challenge is to all mankind. Each nation must decide for itself how it will meet it. The choice we make for ourselves must be made with a moderation of

counsel and a temperateness of judgment befitting our character and our motives as a nation. We must put excited feeling away. Our motive will not be revenge or the victorious assertion of the physical might of the nation, but only the vindication of right, of human right, of which we are only a single champion.

With a profound sense of the solemn and even tragical character of the step I am taking and of the grave responsibilities which it involves, but in unhesitating obedience to what I deem my con-

The western coasts of Europe or any of the ports controlled by the enemies of Germany within the course of the Imperial German Government to be in fact nothing Mediterranean. That had seemed to be the object of the German less war against the government and people of the United States; submarine warfare earlier in the war, but since April of last year that it formally accept the status of belligerent which has thus been the Imperial Government had somewhat restrained the command- thrust upon it; and that it take immediate steps not only to put the ers of its undersea craft in conformity with its promise then given country in a more thorough state of defense but also to exert all its to us that passenger boats should not be sunk and that due warn- power and employ all its resources to bring the Government of the ing would be given to all other vessels which its submarines might German Empire to terms and end the war.

when no resistance was offered or escape attempt- While we do these things, these deeply momentous things,ed, and care taken that their crews were given at least a fair chance let us be very clear, and make very clear to all the world what ourto save their lives in their open boats. The precautions taken were motives and our objects are. My own thought has not been drivenmeager and haphazard enough, as was proved in distressing from its habitual and normal course by the unhappy events of theinstance after instance in the progress of the cruel and unmanly last two months, and I do not believe that the thought of the Nationbusiness, but a certain degree of restraint was observed. The new has been altered or clouded by them. I have exactly the samepolicy has swept every restriction aside. Vessels of every kind, things in mind now that I had in mind when I addressed the Senatewhatever their flag, their character, their cargo, their destination, on the twenty-second of January last; the

same that I had in mindtheir errand, have been ruthlessly sent to the bottom without warn- when I addressed the Congress on the third of February and on theing and without thought of help or mercy for those on board, the twenty-sixth of February. Our object now, as then, is to vindicatevessels of friendly neutrals along with those of belligerents. Even the principles of peace and justice in the life of the world ashospital ships and ships carrying relief to the sorely bereaved and against selfish and autocratic power and to set up amongst the real-stricken people of Belgium, though the latter were provided with ly free and self-governed peoples of the world such a concert ofsafe conduct through the proscribed areas by the German purpose and of action as will henceforth insure the observance ofGovernment itself and were distinguished by unmistakable marks those principles. Neutrality is no longer feasible or desirableof identity, have been sunk with the same reckless lack of com- where

The peace of the world is involved and the freedom of its passion or of principle. Peoples, and the menace to that peace and freedom lies in the existence of autocratic governments backed by organized force which is controlled wholly by their will, not by the will of their people. I was for a little while unable to believe that such things would in fact be done by any government that had hitherto subscribed to the humane practices of civilized nations. International law had its origin in the attempt to set up some law which would be respected and observed upon the seas, where no nation had right of dominion and where lay the free highways of the world. This minimum of right the German Government has among the individual.

Citizens of civilized states. swept aside under the plea of retaliation and necessity and because We have no quarrel with the German people. We have noit had no weapons which it could use at sea except these which it feeling towards them but one of sympathy and friendship. It wasis impossible to employ as it is employing them without throwing not upon their impulse that their government acted in entering thisto the winds an scruples of humanity or of respect for the under- war. It was not with their previous knowledge or approval. It wasstandings that were supposed to underlie the intercourse of the a war determined upon as wars used to be determined upon in theworld. I am not now thinking of the loss of property involved, old, unhappy days when peoples were nowhere consulted by theirimmense and serious as that is, but only of the wanton and whole- rulers and wars were provoked and waged in the interest of dynas-