APUSH
Ch.21 Short Answer
League of Nations
Excerpt 1: 1920
Excerpt 2:
Source: -Henry Kissinger, Harvard professor and secretary of state under Presidents
Nixon and Ford, Diplomacy, 1994
“The League of Nations failed to take hold in America because the country was not yet
ready for so global a role. Nevertheless, Wilson’s intellectual victory
proved…seminal…For, whenever America has faced the task of constructing a new
world order, it has returned in one way or another to Woodrow Wilson’s precept. At the
end of WWII, it helped build the United Nations on the same principle as those of the
League, hoping to found peace on a concord of the victors. When this hope died,
America waged the Cold War…as a moral struggle for democracy. When communism
collapsed, the Wilsonian idea that the road to peace lay in collective security…was
adopted by administrations of both major American parties.”
Using the excerpts above, answer a, b, and c.
a. Which document has a more positive (or optimistic) view of Wilson’s proposal?
Briefly explain why this document is more positive than the other.
b. Briefly explain ONE cause for the failure of the Treaty of Versailles in the U.S.
Senate.
c. Briefly explain why England and France would accept the terms of the Treaty of
Versailles, particularly if the U.S. Senate rejected the treaty.