be kept safe from unjust injury, and it is of the utmost consequence to the Government itself that all great financial operations should be stabilized and cooerdinated with the financial operations of the Government.  No borrowing should run athwart the borrowings of the federal treasury, and no fundamental industrial values should anywhere be unnecessarily impaired.  In the hands of many thousands of small investors in the country, as well as in national banks, in insurance companies, in savings banks, in trust companies, in financial agencies of every kind, railway securities, the sum total of which runs up to some ten or eleven thousand millions, constitute a vital part of the structure of credit, and the unquestioned solidity of that structure must be maintained.

The Secretary of War and I easily agreed that, in view of the many complex interests which must be safeguarded and harmonized, as well as because of his exceptional experience and ability in this new field of governmental action, the Honorable William G. McAdoo was the right man to assume direct administrative control of this new executive task.  At our request, he consented to assume the authority and duties of organizer and Director General of the new Railway Administration.  He has assumed those duties and his work is in active progress.

It is probably too much to expect that even under the unified railway administration which will now be possible sufficient economies can be effected in the operation of the railways to make it possible to add to their equipment and extend their operative facilities as much as the present extraordinary demands upon their use will render desirable without resorting to the national treasury for the funds.  If it is not possible, it will, of course, be necessary to resort to the Congress for grants of money for that purpose.  The Secretary of the Treasury will advise with your committees with regard to this very practical aspect of the matter.  For the present, I suggest only the guarantees I have indicated and such appropriations as are necessary at the outset of this task.  I take the liberty of expressing the hope that the Congress may grant these promptly and ungrudgingly.  We are dealing with great matters and will, I am sure, deal with them greatly.

THE CONDITIONS OF PEACE

[Address delivered at a joint session of the two Houses of Congress, January 8, 1918.]

GENTLEMEN OF THE CONGRESS: 

Once more, as repeatedly before, the spokesmen of the Central Empires have indicated their desire to discuss the objects of the war and the possible bases of a general peace.  Parleys have been in progress at Brest-Litovsk between Russian representatives and representatives of the Central Powers to which the attention of all the belligerents has been invited for the purpose of ascertaining whether it may be possible