7.25.2026 – fight without rancor

fight without rancor
or selfish object, seeking
nothing for ourselves

Adapted from Woodrow Wilson’s Joint Address to Congress Leading to a Declaration of War Against Germany (1917) where President Wilson said:

We desire no conquest, no dominion.

We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make.

We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind.

We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of nations can make them.

Just because we fight without rancor and without selfish object, seeking nothing for ourselves but what we shall wish to share with all free peoples, we shall, I feel confident, conduct our operations as belligerents without passion and ourselves observe with proud punctilio the principles of right and of fair play we profess to be fighting for.

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 selves and our fortunes,

every thing that we are and everything that we have,

with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured.

God helping her, she can do no other.

According to the National Gallery of Art website, This painting commemorates the nation’s entry into World War I in spring 1917. Childe Hassam shows Fifth Avenue in New York City decorated with red, white, and blue flags. It had been declared “the Avenue of the Allies” in honor of the military alliance between the United States, Great Britain, and France.

This is part of a series of flag images in which Hassam used brilliant sunlight and color in the style of the French impressionists. The breezy, celebratory air glosses over the horrors of modern warfare that American soldiers would face fighting in Europe.

fight without rancor
or selfish object, seeking
nothing for ourselves

I just holding up the mirror.

You can take from this whatever you bring with it.

For myself, it like talking about an entirely different country sometimes and I wonder where that county went.