Presidents -- United States -- Messages; United States -- Politics and government -- Sources
We must face the facts as they are and act upon them without sentiment in
this stern business. The Government of Austria and Hungary is not acting
upon its own initiative or in response to the wishes and feelings of its
own peoples, but as the instrument of another nation. We must meet its
force with our own and regard the Central Powers as but one. The war can be
successfully conducted in no other way.
The same logic would lead also to a declaration of war against Turkey and
Bulgaria. They also are the tools of Germany, but they are mere tools and
do not yet stand in the direct path of our necessary action. We shall go
wherever the necessities of this war carry us, but it seems to me that we
should go only where immediate and practical considerations lead us, and
not heed any others.
The financial and military measures which must be adopted will suggest
themselves as the war and its undertakings develop, but I will take the
liberty of proposing to you certain other acts of legislation which seem to
me to be needed for the support of the war and for the release of our whole
force and energy.
It will be necessary to extend in certain particulars the legislation of
the last session with regard to alien enemies, and also necessary, I
believe, to create a very definite and particular control over the entrance
and departure of all persons into and from the United States.
Legislation should be enacted defining as a criminal offense every wilful
violation of the presidential proclamation relating to alien enemies
promulgated under section 4o67 of the revised statutes and providing
appropriate punishments; and women, as well as men, should be included
under the terms of the acts placing restraints upon alien enemies.
It is likely that as time goes on many alien enemies will be willing to be
fed and housed at the expense of the Government in the detention camps, and
it would be the purpose of the legislation I have suggested to confine
offenders among them in the penitentiaries and other similar institutions
where they could be made to work as other criminals do.
Recent experience has convinced me that the Congress must go further in
authorizing the Government to set limits to prices. The law of supply and
demand, I am sorry to say, has been replaced by the law of unrestrained
selfishness. While we have eliminated profiteering in several branches of
industry, it still runs impudently rampant in others. The farmers for
example, complain with a great deal of justice that, while the regulation
of food prices restricts their incomes, no restraints are placed upon the
prices of most of the things they must themselves purchase; and similar
inequities obtain on all sides.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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