He wrote it himself in a day's time.

As March gave way to April 1917, President Woodrow Wilson prepared an address to Congress

and to the nation that would, in its way, signal the unmistakable arrival of modernity in

the new world.

For nearly three years, since the late summer of 1914, Wilson had resisted calls for America

to enter the Great War, a European struggle of staggering magnitude.

Now circumstances had, he believed, forced his hand.

He'd take the nation into the storm.

And so on Monday, April 2, 1917, Woodrow Wilson went to Capitol Hill and addressed a crowded

chamber.

He said, it is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most

terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance.

But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have

always carried nearest our hearts.

For democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own

governments.

For the rights and liberties of small nations.

For a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples, as shall bring peace

and safety to all nations, and make the world itself at last free.

To such a task, we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are, and

everything that we have.

They were noble words, but what no one could know then was that among the wages of war

...