constructively dealt with at the earliest possible moment. The pressing need of such legislation is daily becoming more obvious.

The legislation proposed at the last session with regard to regulated combinations among our exporters, in order to provide for our foreign trade a more effective organization and method of coöperation, ought by all means to be completed at this session.

And I beg that the members of the House of Representatives will permit me to express the opinion that it will be impossible to deal in any but a very wasteful and extravagant fashion with the enormous appropriations of the public moneys which must continue to be made, if the war is to be properly sustained, unless the House will consent to return to its former practice of initiating and preparing all appropriation bills through a single committee, in order that responsibility may be centred, expenditures standardized and made uniform, and waste and duplication as much as possible avoided.

Additional legislation may also become necessary before the present Congress again adjourns in order to effect the most efficient coördination and operation of the railway and other transportation systems of the country; but to that I shall, if circumstances should demand, call the attention of the Congress upon another occasion.

If I have overlooked anything that ought to be done for the more effective conduct of the war, your own counsels will supply the ⚫mission. What I am perfectly clear about is that in the present session of the Congress our whole attention and energy should be concentrated on the vigorous, rapid, and successful prosecution of the great task of winning the war.

We can do this with all the greater zeal and enthusiasm because we know that for us this is a war of high principle, debased by no selfish ambition of conquest or spoliation; because we know, and all the world knows, that we have been forced into it to save the very institutions we live under from corruption and destruction. The purposes of the Central Powers strike straight at the very heart of everything we believe in; their methods of warfare outrage every principle of humanity and of knightly honour; their intrigue has corrupted the very thought and spirit of many of our people; their sinister and secret diplomacy has sought to take our very territory away from us and disrupt the Union of the States. Our safety would be at an end, our honour forever sullied and brought into contempt were we to permit their triumph. They are striking at the very existence of democracy and liberty.

It is because it is for us a war of high, disinterested purpose, in

which all the free peoples of the world are banded together for the vindication of right, a war for the preservation of our nation and of all that it has held dear of principle and of purpose, that we feel ourselves doubly constrained to propose for its outcome only that which is righteous and of irreproachable intention, for our foes as well as for our friends. The cause being just and holy, the settlement must be of like motive and quality. For this we can fight, but for nothing less noble or less worthy of our traditions. For this cause we entered the war and for this cause will we battle until the last gun is fired.

I have spoken plainly because this seems to me the time when it is most necessary to speak plainly, in order that all the world may know that even in the heat and ardour of the struggle and when our whole thought is of carrying the war through to its end we have not forgotten any ideal or principle for which the name of America has been held in honour among the nations and for which it has been our glory to contend in the great generations that went before us. A supreme moment of history has come. The eyes of the people have been opened and they see. The hand of God is laid upon the nations. He will show them favour, I devoutly believe, only if they rise to the clear heights of His own justice and mercy.

3. WAR WITH THE IMPERIAL AND ROYAL AUSTROHUNGARIAN GOVERNMENT.

Mr. Flood, from the Committee on Foreign Affairs, submitted the following report:

The Committee on Foreign Affairs, to which was referred the joint resolution (H. J. Res. 169) declaring that a state of war exists between the Imperial and Royal Austro-Hungarian Government and the Government and people of the United States and making provision to prosecute the same, having had the same under consideration, reports it back with amendment, and recommends that the resolution, as amended, do pass. .

The President has asked for the declaration that a state of war exists against Austria-Hungary.

In his address, delivered at the joint session of the two Houses of Congress on December 4, he uses this language:

One very embarrassing obstacle that stands in our way is that we are at war with Germany, but not with her allies. I therefore very earnestly recommend that the Congress immediately declare the United States in a state of war with Austria-Hungary.

The accompanying resolution carries out this recommendation of the President.

The enactment of this declaration involved very little readjustment of the affairs between the United States and Austria-Hungary, because a state of war which this declaration declares to exist actually has been a fact for many months. The depredations on American lives and rights by Austrian naval forces have been small compared with that of Germany, but they have been indulged in to an extent to constitute war upon this country, and this fact, taken in connection with other acts of Austria-Hungary, has more and more brought that Government into a position where the American people have realized that she must be included with Germany as an enemy.

ACTIVITIES OF AUSTRIAN AMBASSADOR AND CONSULS

In September, 1915, it was discovered that Ambassador Dumba and Austrian consuls in St. Louis and elsewhere were implicated in instigating strikes in American manufacturing plants engaged in the production of munitions of war. An American citizen named Archibald, traveling under an American passport, had been intrusted with dispatches in regard to this matter from Dumba and Bernstorff to their Governments. These acts were admitted by Dumba. By reason of the admitted purpose and intent of Dumba to conspire to cripple business industries in the United States, and by reason of the flagrant violation of diplomatic propriety in employing an American citizen protected by an American passport as a secret bearer of official dispatches through the lines of an enemy of AustriaHungary, the Austro-Hungarian Government was requested to recall Dumba.

The Austrian consuls at St. Louis and New York were implicated with Dumba in these transactions, particularly in the circulation of strike propaganda. They were implicated in procuring forged passports from the United States for the use of their countrymen in going home.

Long before the above activities were made public, our Government had evidence that the Austrian diplomatic and consular service was being used in this country for Germany's warlike purposes.

AUSTRIA'S POSITION AS TO SUBMARINE WARFARE

While Austria's submarine warfare has been of a very limited character, they have adopted and adhered to the policy of the ruthless submarine warfare of the Imperial German Government.

After diplomatic relations with Germany had been broken, the department on February 14, 1917, dispatched the following telegram to the American embassy at Vienna, surveying briefly the position of the Austrian Government on submarine warfare:

In the American note of December 6, 1915, to the AustroHungarian Government in the Ancona case, this Government called attention to the views of the Government of the United States on the operations of submarines in naval warfare which had been expressed in no uncertain terms to the ally of AustriaHungary, and of which full knowledge on the part of the AustroHungarian Government was presumed. In its reply of December 15, 1915, the Imperial and Royal Government stated that it was not possessed with authentic knowledge of all of the pertinent correspondence of the United States, nor was it of the opinion that such knowledge would be sufficient to cover the Ancona case, which was of essentially a different character from those under discussion with the Berlin Government. Nevertheless, in reply to the American note of December 19, 1915, the Austro-Hungarian Government, in its note of December 29, stated:

"As concerns the principle expressed in the very esteemed note that hostile private ships, in so far as they do not flee or offer resistance, may not be destroyed without the persons on board having been placed in safety, the Imperial and Royal Government is able substantially to assent to this view of the Washington Cabinet."

Moreover, in the case of The Persia, the Austro-Hungarian Government, in January, 1916, stated in effect that while it had received. no information with regard to the sinking of The Persia, yet, in case its responsibility were involved, the Government would be guided by the principles agreed to in the Ancona case.

Within one month thereafter, the Imperial and Royal Government, coincidently with the German declaration of February 10, 1916, on the treatment of armed merchantmen announced that "All merchant vessels armed with cannon for whatever purpose, by this very fact lose the character of peaceable vessels," and that, "Under these conditions orders have been given to Austro-Hungarian naval forces to treat such ships as belligerent

vessels."

In accordance with this declaration several vessels with Americans on board have been sunk in the Mediterranean, presumably by Austrian submarines, some of which were torpedoed without warning by submarines flying the Austrian flag, as in the cases of the British steamers Secondo and Welsh Prince. Inquiries made through the American ambassador at Vienna as to these cases have so far elicited no information and no reply.

Again, on January 31, 1917, coincidently with the German declaration of submarine danger zones in waters washing the coasts of the entente countries, the Imperial and Royal Government announced to the United States Government that AustriaHungary and its allies would from February 1 "prevent by every means any navigation whatsoever within a definite closed area."

From the foregoing it seems fair to conclude that the pledge given in the Ancona case and confirmed in the Persia case is essentially the same as that given in the note of the Imperial German Government dated May 4, 1916, viz., "In accordance with the general principles of visit and search and destruction of merchant vessels recognized by international law, such vessels, both within and without the area declared as a naval war zone, shall not be sunk without warning and without saving human lives, unless these ships attempt to escape or offer resistance,' and that this pledge has been modified to a greater or less extent by the declarations of the Imperial and Royal Government of February 10, 1916, and January 31, 1917. In view, therefore, of the uncertainty as to the interpretation to be placed upon those declarations, and particularly this latter declaration, it is important that the United States Government be advised definitely and clearly of the attitude of the Imperial and Royal Government in regard to the prosecution of submarine warfare in these circum

stances.

Please bring this matter orally to the attention of the Austrian Government and request to be advised as to whether the pledge given in the Ancona and Persia cases is to be interpreted as modified or withdrawn by the declarations of February 10, 1916, and January 31, 1917. If after your conversation it seems advisable, you may hand to the Minister for Foreign Affairs a paraphrase of this instruction, leaving the quoted texts verbatim.

In reply, the Austrian Government, in an aide mémoire of March 2, 1917, after reviewing the illegal blockade measures of the allies, stated that "it now as heretofore firmly adheres to the assurances given by it" in the Ancona case.

The Austro-Hungarian Government also stated that Austro-Hungarian submarines had taken no part in the sinking of the British steamers Secondo and Welsh Prince, and that "the assurance which it gave the Washington Cabinet in the Ancona case, and renewed in