Gentlemen of the congress: 

Eight months have elapsed since I last had the honor of addressing you.  They have been months crowded with events of immense and grave significance for us.  I shall not undertake to detail or even to summarize those events.  The practical particulars of the part we have played in them will be laid before you in the reports of the executive departments.  I shall discuss only our present outlook upon these vast affairs, our present duties, and the immediate means of accomplishing the objects we shall hold always in view.

I shall not go back to debate the causes of the war.  The intolerable wrongs done and planned against us by the sinister masters of Germany have long since become too grossly obvious and odious to every true American to need to be rehearsed.  But I shall ask you to consider again and with a very grave scrutiny our objectives and the measures by which we mean to attain them; for the purpose of discussion here in this place is action, and our action must move straight toward definite ends.  Our object is, of course, to win the war; and we shall not slacken or suffer ourselves to be diverted until it is won.  But it is worth while asking and answering the question, When shall we consider the war won?

From one point of view it is not necessary to broach this fundamental matter.  I do not doubt that the American people know what the war is about and what sort of an outcome they will regard as a realization of their purpose in it.

As a nation we are united in spirit and intention.  I pay little heed to those who tell me otherwise.  I hear the voices of dissent-who does not?  I bear the criticism and the clamor of the noisily thoughtless and troublesome.  I also see men here and there fling themselves in impotent disloyalty against the calm, indomitable power of the Nation.  I hear men debate peace who understand neither its nature nor the way in which we may attain it with uplifted eyes and unbroken spirits.  But I know that none of these speaks for the Nation.  They do not touch the heart of anything.  They may safely be left to strut their uneasy hour and be forgotten.

But from another point of view I believe that it is necessary to say plainly what we here at the seat of action consider the war to be for and what part we mean to play in the settlement of its searching issues.  We are the spokesmen of the American people, and they have a right to know whether their purpose is ours.  They desire peace by the overcoming of evil, by the defeat once for all of the sinister forces that interrupt peace and render it impossible, and they wish to know how closely our thought runs with theirs and what action we propose.  They are impatient with those who desire peace by any sort of compromise deeply and indignantly impatient—­but they will be equally impatient with us if we do not make it plain to them what our objectives are and what we are planning for in seeking to make conquest of peace by arms.