44 ANNUAL EEPOETS OF DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



respond to their country's call for men and means to defend its rights. 

 They will not submit to Germany's dictation. They will not permit 

 her to impose illegal restrictions on their privilege of going freely to 

 any part of the world where they have a legal right to go or of send- 

 ing their products into the open markets of the world. They will 

 realize that the dictum of Germany that this country should not send 

 its ships at will to the ports of great nations of Europe was not only 

 unwarranted and impertinent, but also that, if it had been acquiesced 

 in, it would have involved them very particularly in great direct 

 financial loss and suffering. As the meaning of this struggle is more 

 fully revealed, as it becomes increasingly clear that a contest is again 

 being waged to determine whether the world shall be dominated by 

 the will and policies of medieval despotisms or by those of free and 

 enlightened modern States, and whether the mere right of might or 

 the rule of law shall prevail in the world, and as it becomes more 

 obvious that the surest way to force a righteous peace is to employ 

 effectively all the resources of the Nation, the farmers will increas- 

 ingly put forth their strength, send their sons to fight at the front, 

 and see to it that neither this Nation nor those with which we are 

 associated lack anything in the way of materials for food and cloth- 

 ing. It is incumbent upon them, as it is upon all other civilians, to 

 work and to save, to seek no mere selfish advantage, and to reveal the 

 same spirit of devotion and willingness to make sacrifices and to give 

 all they are and have which animate the soldier in the ttenches, if this 

 struggle is to be brought to a satisfactory conclusion. Every facility 

 that this Department can command to assist them will be freely 

 placed at their service. 

 Eespectfully, 



D. F. Houston, 

 Secretary of Agriculture. 

 The President, 



