I have been over great plants there that seemed to the eye to have much of the substantial machinery left, but experts showed me that it could never work again. I have seen great spaces swept of cities and towns as clean as if there had never been anything there except piles of stone and, farther in, in that beautiful country, the factories are standing, the houses there, but everything that could be useful taken out of the factories the machinery taken out and shipped to Germany, because Germany feared the competition of the skillful Belgians, and where it was too bulky to take away it was destroyed under the direction of experts-not broken to pieces, but the very part that made it impossible to use it without absolutely destroyed. I do not know anywhere in history a more inspiring fact than that. Belgium knew that she could get any term of advantage from Germany she pleased, if she would only submit, and at the cost of everything that she had Belgium did nothing less than underwrite civilization. Belgium knew that resistance was useless. It would have been possible for little Belgium at any time to make terms with the enemy. That is the program which all America adopted without respect of party, and shall we now hesitate to carry it out? Shall we now falter at the very critical moment when we are finally to write our name to the standing pledge which we then took? I want to remind you, my fellow citizens, that many other nations were put under a deeper temptation than we. To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and the happiness and the peace which we have treasured. "We shall fight," I said, "for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts, for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as will bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free. Therefore I thought it would not be impertinent on my part if I asked permission to read you the concluding passage of the address in which I requested the Government of the United States to accept Germany's challenge of war: It is so easy, with the strong tides of our life, to be swept away from one situation into another and to forget the real depths of meaning which lie underneath the things that we are merely touching the surface of. I thought that it might be useful if this morning I reminded you of a few things, lest we forget. The shadow of the war is not yet lifted from us, my fellow countrymen, and we have just come out of the depths of the valley of death. I have long wanted to get away from Washington and come into ?contact with the great body of my fellow citizens, because I feel, as I am sure you feel, that we have reached one of the most critical periods in the history of the United States. Chairman, your excellency, my fellow countrymen, it is with very great pleasure that I find myself in your presence.
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