Vol. XXXI, No. 4 



WASHINGTON 



April, 1917 



DO YOUR BIT FOR AMERICA 



A Proclamation by President Wilson to the American 



People 



MY Fellow-Countrymen : 

 The entrance of our own be- 

 loved country into the grim and 

 terrible war for democracy and human 

 rights which has shaken the world creates 

 so many problems of national life and 

 action which call for immediate consid- 

 eration and settlement that I hope you 

 will permit me to address to you a few 

 words of earnest counsel and appeal with 

 regard to them. 



We are rapidly putting our navy upon 

 an effective war footing and are about to 

 create and equip a great army, but these 

 are the simplest parts of the great task 

 to which we have addressed ourselves. 



There is not a single selfish element, 

 so far as I can see, in the cause we are 

 fighting for. We are fighting for what 

 we believe and wish to be the rights of 

 mankind and for the future peace and 

 security of the world. 



To do this great thing worthily and 

 successfully we must devote ourselves to 

 the service without regard to profit or 

 material advantage and with an energy 

 and intelligence that will rise to the level 

 of the enterprise itself. We must realize 

 to the full how great the task is and how 

 many things, how many kinds and ele- 

 ments of capacity and service and self- 

 sacrifice it involves. 



These, then, are the things we must do, 

 and do well, besides fighting — the things 



without which mere fighting would be 

 fruitless : 



We must supply abundant food for 

 ourselves and for our armies and our sea- 

 men, not only, but also for a large part 

 of the nations with whom we have now 

 made common cause, in whose support 

 and by whose sides we shall be fighting. 



THE THOUSAND NEEDS TOR VICTORY 



We must supply ships by the hundreds 

 out of our shipyards to carry to the other 

 side of the sea, submarines or no sub- 

 marines, what will every day be needed 

 there, and abundant materials out of our 

 fields and our mines and our factories 

 with which not only to clothe and equip 

 our own forces on land and sea, but also 

 to clothe and support our people, for 

 whom the gallant fellows under arms can 

 no longer work ; to help clothe and equip 

 the armies with which we are cooperating 

 in Europe, and to keep the looms and 

 manufactories there in raw material ; coal 

 to keep the fires going in ships at sea and 

 in the furnaces of hundreds of factories 

 across the sea ; steel out of which to make 

 arms and ammunition, both here and 

 there ; rails for worn-out railways back 

 of the fighting fronts ; locomotives and 

 rolling stock to take the place of those 

 every day going to pieces ; mules, horses, 

 cattle, for labor and for military service ; 

 everything with which the people of Eng- 



