Germany notified the United States that she intended to carry on unrestricted submarine warfare, to become the lawless pirate of the seas. President Wilson handed the German Ambassador his passports and waited to see if Germany intended to carry out her threat. As usual, the House of Hohenzollern would not listen to reason. Germany turned pirate, throwing away the last vestige of any respect for law. And when this was plain the President went to Congress on April 2, 1917, and advised the representatives of the nation to accept the challenge of war thrust upon us by the German Empire. “Let us be very clear,” said the President, “and make very clear to all the world what our motives and our objects are.... Our object ... is to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the life of the world as against selfish and autocratic power and to set up amongst the really free and self-governed peoples of the world such a concert of purpose and of action as will henceforth ensure the observance of those principles. Neutrality is no longer feasible or desirable where the peace of the world is involved and the freedom of its 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.... “We are now about to accept gauge of battle with this natural foe to liberty and shall, if necessary, spend the whole force of the nation to check and nullify its pretentions and its power.... The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of nations can make them.” Let us be thankful that our President could voice the same spirit in 1917 that Jefferson wrote into the Declaration of Independence and that Lincoln proclaimed on the field at Gettysburg. Our country bore malice toward none, we wanted to be friends to all, we had no selfish desires for power or dominion. But as Lafayette heard the call to battle for the freedom of men in America in 1776, so America now heard the same call from the fields of Europe. On April 6, 1917, the United States formally declared war against the autocracy of Germany.