Our object now, as then, is to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the life of the world as against selfish and autocratic power, and to set up among the really free and self-governed peoples of the world such a concert of purpose and of action as will henceforth insure the observance of those principles.

Address of the President of the United States Delivered at a Joint Session of the Two Houses of Congress, April 2, 1917 (ed. 1917)