My heart bleeds when I see such measures inevitable and when I think of the many innocent people who have lost their houses and property as a result of the misdeeds of the guilty.
WILHELM I. R.
REPLY TO THE KAISER.
Made by President Wilson at Washington, Sept. 16.
I received your Imperial Majesty's important communication of the 7th and have read it with the gravest interest and concern. I am honored that you should have turned to me for an impartial judgment as the representative of a people truly disinterested as respects the present war and truly desirous of knowing and accepting the truth.
You will, I am sure, not expect me to say more. Presently, I pray God very soon, this war will be over. The day of accounting will then come, when I take it for granted the nations of Europe will assemble to determine a settlement. Where wrongs have been committed, their consequences and the relative responsibility involved will be assessed.
The nations of the world have fortunately by agreement made a plan for such a reckoning and settlement. What such a plan cannot compass the opinion of mankind, the final arbiter in all such matters, will supply. It would be unwise, it would be premature, for a single Government, however fortunately separated from the present struggle, it would even be inconsistent with the neutral position of any nation which, like this, has no part in the contest, to form or express a final judgment.
I speak thus frankly because I know that you will expect and wish me to do so as one friend speaks to another, and because I feel sure that such a reservation of judgment until the end of the war, when all its events and circumstances can be seen in their entirety and in their true relations, will commend itself to you as a true expression of sincere neutrality.
WOODROW WILSON.