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宣战演讲名篇
南郭点评：伍德罗总统的这篇宣战演讲十分精彩。当对手完全丧失人性，不顾法律道德原则，无视公约义务，以无赖流氓手段对付他国或人民时，任何国家或人民皆有权为自由正义而战，因为权利比和平更重要。
当今中共流氓政权同样抛弃了一切正义、公道、法律、道德原则，沦落为主要依赖暴力强权欺骗流氓黑社会法西斯手段的强权反人类的专制暴政。因此，中国人民完全有权起义反抗推翻暴政；正义自由必将最终战胜非正义与奴役。
伍德罗总统指出：“我們沒有什麽私利可圖。我們不想要征服，不想要統治。我們不爲自己索取賠償，對我們將慷慨作出的犧牲不求物質補償。我們只不過是爲人類權利而戰的鬥士之一”。客观地说，美国自立国以降，一直奉行该价值观，为维护世界和平与安全，促进世界各国走向民主自由，维护人类的尊严作出了最伟大的贡献；她从未侵略任何国家也未侵占任何国家的领土。无论是第一次世界大战，还是第二次世界大战，朝鲜战争，越南战争，两次海湾战争以及伊拉克解放战争，美国人民实际上始终站在正义与自由一边。这个世界不能没有美国，如果没有伟大的美国人民捍卫民主自由正义公道的巨大奉献牺牲，这个世界早已面目全非。今天全球有120个以上国家和地区已经实现了民主自由政体，但仍有45个国家处于专制极权独裁暴政奴役之下。然而暴政必定灭亡，因为没有人民喜欢暴政而拒绝民主自由；因为没有人民欢喜奴役与专制；因为自由、公道与正义是上帝的本意。凡与人民为敌，悖上帝旨意，弃真理于不顾，践踏法律，毁灭道德，反人类的任何政权，无论其如何强大，也不论其如何得呈一时，更不用说其欺天悖理叛道，没有任何理由永世长存！
该篇宣战宣言充分体现了美国人民爱好和平自由与权利公道正义的价值观，其论述说理充分令人信服，当之无愧地成为最佳演讲历史名篇。
Woodrow Wilson Asking Congress to Declare War on Germany
In this speech before a joint session of Congress, President Woodrow Wilson called for a declaration of war against Germany, bringing the U.S. into World War I about two years after the war had begun.
I have called the Congress into extraordinary session because there are serious, very serious, choices of policy to be made, and made immediately, which it was neither right nor constitutionally permissible that I should assume the responsibility of making.
On the third of last February, I officially laid before you the extraordinary announcement of the Imperial German Government that on and after the first day of February it was its purpose to put aside all restraints of law or of humanity and use its submarines to sink every vessel that sought to approach either the ports of Great Britain and Ireland or the western coasts of Europe or any of the ports controlled by the enemies of Germany within the Mediterranean. That had seemed to be the object of the German submarine warfare earlier in the war, but since April of last year the Imperial Government had somewhat restrained the commanders of its undersea craft in conformity with its promise then given to us that passenger boats should not be sunk and that due warning would be given to all other vessels which its submarines might seek to destroy when no resistance was offered or escape attempted, and care taken that their crews were given at least a fair chance to save their lives in their open boats. The precautions taken were meager and haphazard enough, as was proved in distressing instance after instance in the progress of the cruel and unmanly business, but a certain degree of restraint was observed. The new policy has swept every restriction aside. Vessels of every kind, whatever their flag, their character, their cargo, their destination, their errand, have been ruthlessly sent to the bottom: without warning and without thought of help or mercy for those on board, the vessels of friendly neutrals along with those of belligerents. Even hospital ships and ships carrying relief to the sorely bereaved and stricken people of Belgium, though the latter were provided with safe conduct through the proscribed areas by the German Government itself and were distinguished by unmistakable marks of identity, have been sunk with the same reckless lack of compassion or of principle. I was for a little while unable to believe that such things would in fact be done by any government that had hitherto subscribed to the humane practices of civilized nations. International law had its origin in the attempt to set up some law which would be respected and observed upon the seas, where no nation had right of dominion and where lay the free highways of the world.... This minimum of right the German Government has swept aside under the plea of retaliation and necessity and because it had no weapons which it could use at sea except these which it is impossible to employ as it is employing them without throwing to the winds all scruples of humanity or of respect for the understandings that were supposed to underlie the intercourse of the world. I am not now thinking of the loss of property involved, immense and serious as that is, but only of the wanton and wholesale destruction of the lives of noncombatants, men, women, and children, engaged in pursuits which have always, even in the darkest periods of modern history, been deemed innocent and legitimate. Property can be paid for; the lives of peaceful and innocent people cannot be. The present German submarine warfare against commerce is a warfare against mankind.
It is a war against all nations. American ships have been sunk, American lives taken, in ways which it has stirred us very deeply to learn of, but the ships and people of other neutral and friendly nations have been sunk and overwhelmed in the waters in the same way. There has been no discrimination. The challenge is to all mankind. Each nation must decide for itself how it will meet it. The choice we make for ourselves must be made with a moderation of counsel and a temperateness of judgment befitting our character and our motives as a nation. We must put excited feeling away. Our motive will not be revenge or the victorious assertion of the physical might of the nation, but only the vindication of right, of human right, of which we are only a single champion.
When I addressed the Congress on the twenty-sixth of February last I thought that it would suffice to assert our neutral rights with arms, our right to use the seas against unlawful interference, our right to keep our people safe against unlawful violence. But armed neutrality, it now appears, is impracticable. Because submarines are in effect outlaws when used as the German submarines have been used against merchant shipping, it is impossible to defend ships against their attacks as the law of nations has assumed that merchantmen would defend themselves against privateers or cruisers, visible craft giving chase upon the open sea. It is common prudence in such circumstances, grim necessity indeed, to endeavor to destroy them before they have shown their own intention. They must be dealt with upon sight, if dealt with at all. The German Government denies the right of neutrals to use arms at all within the areas of the sea which it has proscribed, even in the defense of rights which no modern publicist has ever before questioned their right to defend. The intimation is conveyed that the armed guards which we have placed on our merchant ships will be treated as beyond the pale of law and subject to be dealt with as pirates would be. Armed neutrality is ineffectual enough at best; in such circumstances and in the face of such pretensions it is worse than ineffectual: it is likely only to produce what it was meant to prevent; it is practically certain to draw us into the war without either the rights or the effectiveness of belligerents. There is one choice we cannot make, we are incapable of making: we will not choose the path of submission and suffer the most sacred rights of our Nation and our people to be ignored or violated. The wrongs against which we now array ourselves are no common wrongs; they cut to the very roots of human life.
With a profound sense of the solemn and even tragical character of the step I am taking and of the grave responsibilities which it involves, but in unhesitating obedience to what I deem my constitutional duty, I advise that the Congress declare the recent course of the Imperial German Government to be in fact nothing less than war against the government and people of the United States; that it formally accept the status of belligerent which has thus been thrust upon it, and that it take immediate steps not only to put the country in a more thorough state of defense but also to exert all its power and employ all its resources to bring the Government of the German Empire to terms and end the war.
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