Woodrow Wilson and World
War I: A Reappraisal
J. A. THOMPSON
Woodrow Wilson was the first American President to leave the Western
Hemisphere during his period of office, and, as befitted him, the circumstances in which he did so were neither casual nor frivolous. He went to
Europe in late 1918 to take part in the peace conference following a war
that the United States had played a crucial part in bringing to a decisive
end. His aim was to secure a peace that accorded with the proposals he
had set out in his Fourteen Points address of January 1918 and in other
speeches - a peace that would be based upon justice and thus secure
consent, that would embody liberal principles (the self-determination of
peoples as far as practicable, the prohibition of discriminatory trade
barriers), and that would be maintained by a new international organization
in which the United States, breaking its tradition of isolation, would take
part - a league of nations that would provide a general guarantee of
"political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states
alike."1
The symbolism of this dramatic moment, with the American prophet
coming to bring redemption to the Old World, imprinted on the minds
of contemporaries an image of Wilson which has affected most subsequent
historiography. Viewing events from Vienna, that special victim of the
First World War, Sigmund Freud found "the figure of the American
President, as it rose above the horizon of Europeans, from the first
unsympathetic, and... this aversion increased in the course of years the
more I learned about him and the more severely we suffered from the
J. A. Thompson is a Fellow of St. Catharine's College, Cambridge CB2 iRL. He wishes
to thank Stefan Collini, Richard Crockatt, Sterling J. Kernek, James T. Patterson, David
Reynolds, Michael Sewell, Zara Steiner, and Robert H. Wiebe for their helpful comments
on earlier versions of this paper. He is particularly indebted to Professor Kernek whose
writings and conversation have significantly influenced his views on this subject.
1
Address to Congress, 8 Jan. 1918 in Arthur S. Link et al. (eds.), The Papers of Woodrow
Wilson [hereafter Wilson Papers], 45 (Princeton, N.J., 1984), 538.
Journal of American Studies, 19 (1985), }, 325-348
Printed in Great Britain
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326
]• A. Thompson
consequences of his intrusion into our destiny." Freud - who was eventually
to collaborate in "a psychological study" of Wilson which portrayed him
as suffering from an unresolved Oedipus complex that caused him to
identify his father (who had been a clergyman) with God and himself with
Jesus Christ - saw Wilson as an arrogant, ignorant idealist, whose public
activity produced "the impression of the method of Christian Science
applied to politics."2 The same analogy appealed to the British Foreign
Office where for a time the code word for a league of nations was
"Christian Science."3
Some British liberals, who, like the populations of the defeated Central
Powers, had pinned their hopes on the American President, were equally
savage in their comments. Keynes' famous portrait of Wilson in The
Economic Consequences of the Peace expressed that resentful disdain which has
been a continuing thread in the attitudes of mandarins of all political
persuasions to the representatives and leaders of this new world power.
"The first glance at the President," Keynes wrote, "suggested not only
that, whatever else he might be, his temperament was not primarily that
of the student or scholar, but that he had not much even of that culture
which marks M. Clemenceau or Mr. Balfour as exquisitely cultivated
gentlemen of their class and generation." Keynes decided that the
President was "like a non-conformist Minister, perhaps a Presbyterian,"
self-righteous and slow-witted, easily "bamboozled" by the more sophisticated Clemenceau and Lloyd George.4
This unsympathetic view of Wilson has persisted, particularly in
Europe. Arthur Link, who has devoted a whole lifetime's scholarship to
Wilson, concluded after a year as Harmsworth Professor at Oxford that
the "European image" of Wilson was "one of a well-intentioned idealist,
a man good by ordinary Christian standards, but essentially a destructive
force in modern history because he was visionary, unrealistic, provincial,
and ignorant of European problems, and zealous and messianic in conceit
but devoid of either practical knowledge or the humility to follow others
better informed than he." 5
A broadly similar picture emerged from the writings of the so-called
2
3
4
5
Sigmund Freud and William C. Bullitt, Thomas Woodrow Wilson: A Psychological Study
(London, 1966), pp. xi, xii.
Arthur Walworth, America's Moment: 1918: American Diplomacy at the Endof"World War
I (New York, 1977), p. 65 n.
John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace (London, 1919), pp. 37-8,
50.
ArthurS. Link, The Higher Realism of Woodrow Wilson and Other Essays (Nashville, Tenn.,
1971), p. 128.
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Woodrow Wilson and World War I
327
"Realist school" in the United States. Adopting the perspective of E. H.
Carr's The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919-1939, American writers of the 1940s
and 1950s, such as Walter Lippmann, George Kennan, Hans Morgenthau
and Robert Osgood, accused Wilson of neglecting the central realities of
international politics — power and national interest. He was responsible for
miseducating American public opinion by his emphasis on universal moral
principles, his condemnation of such traditional concepts as the balance
of power and spheres of influence, and his habit of justifying his policies
in terms of ideals rather than a frank avowal of the national interest.6
Wilson's idealism has also, of course, been emphasized by many of his
admirers. One of these, Lord Devlin, has written that " Wilson in the
twentieth century represents idealsim in action." Wilson was, according
to Devlin, "under the control of an ideal" that "sought to introduce into
international affairs the Christian ideal of peace upon earth for men of good
will to be brought about through the Christian ethic of service to others."7
Link's own interpretation is essentially similar. Wilson, he agrees, "was
primarily a Christian idealist... who almost always tended to judge policies
on a basis of whether they were right by Christian standards, not whether
they brought immediate material or strategic advantage," and "whose
foreign policies were motivated by the assumption that a nation as much
as an individual should live according to the law of Christian love, and
by a positive repudiation of the assumptions of the Classical' realists' about
international behaviour"; but he goes on to argue that these policies
constituted a " higher realism " which represented the only chance of an
enduring peace.8
The claim that Wilson was at heart a realist has been presented in a much
more down-to-earth way by historians influenced by the "New Left"
movement of the 1960s. To writers like William Appleman Williams,
Lloyd Gardner and N. Gordon Levin, Wilson's peace programme had the
same objectives as subsequent American foreign policy — it was designed
both to achieve an "open-door world" into which American capitalism
could freely and safely expand, and to contain the threat of communism.
As Levin puts it, "the ultimate Wilsonian goal may be defined as the
6
E. H. Carr, The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919-1939 (London, 1939); Walter Lippmann, U.S.
Foreign Polity: Shield of the Republic (Boston, 1943); George F. Kennan, American
Diplomacy, 1900-19/0 (Chicago, 1951); Hans J. Morgenthau, In Defense of the National
Interest (New York, 1951); Robert Endicott Osgood, Ideals and Self Interest in America's
Foreign Relations: The Great Transformation of the Twentieth Century (Chicago, 1953).
' Patrick Devlin, Too Proud to Fight: Woodrow Wilson's Neutrality (London, 1974), pp. 464,
678.
8
Link, The Higher Realism, pp. 129-30, 136.
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328
J. A. Thompson
attainment of a peaceful liberal capitalist world order under international
law, safe both from traditional imperialism and revolutionary socialism,
within whose stable liberal confines a missionary America could find moral
and economic pre-eminence."9 "Shaping the peace," Samuel Wells has
written, "became for Wilson the means of global reform which would
bring an automatic expansion of America's political and economic
influence .... The man behind the rhetoric on self-determination, the open
door, and international cooperation was at heart the secular evangelist of
American political economy."10
To my mind, all these views of Wilson are misleading. They all suggest
a too positive initiative on his part in regard to foreign policy, and they
under-estimate the extent to which that policy was both responsive and
flexible. With the exception of the New Left interpretation, they also
exaggerate the extent to which his policy was the product of distinctively
personal beliefs and characteristics. As Edward Buehrig, the author of one
of the most intelligent analyses of Wilson's foreign policy, has written,
"When Wilson assumed the presidency, collective security was not a goal
already formed in his mind, waiting for occasion to be born."11 It is, in
fact, a major weakness of the New Left interpretation that the timing of
events does not sustain its reading of Wilson's purposes — the presumed
need to promote American overseas economic expansion did not lead to
any moves to establish a new international system before 1914; on the other
hand Wilson had already committed himself to American participation in
a post-war league of nations before either of the Russian revolutions of
1917. Wilson's peace programme was clearly a response to the First World
War.
However, it was not simply a response to the horrors of that war or
the expression of a personal commitment to an idealistic vision. An
examination of the way in which Wilson first became committed to his
peace programme, and of the uses to which he later put it, suggests that
9
10
11
N. Gordon Levin, Jr., Woodrom Wilson and World Politics: America's Response to War and
Revolution (New York, 1968), p. vii. See also William A. Williams, The Tragedy of
American Diplomacy (New York, 1962), chapters 2 and 3; Lloyd C. Gardner, "American
Foreign Policy 1900-1921: A Second Look at the Realist Critique of American
Diplomacy" in Barton J. Bernstein (ed.), Toward a New Past: Dissenting Essays in
American History (New York, 1969), pp. 202—51.
Samuel F. Wells, Jr. "New Perspectives on Wilsonian Diplomacy: The Secular
Evangelism of American Political Economy," Perspectives in American History, 6 (1972),
389-419.
Edward H. Buehrig (ed.), Wilson's Foreign Policy in Perspective (Gloucester, Mass., 1970),
P- 37-
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Woodrow Wilson and World War I
329
it has to be seen in relation to his whole policy towards the First World
War, and that this policy is best understood as an attempt - in the end,
a notably bold, ambitious, and coherent attempt - to solve the perennial
problem that confronts all those who make American foreign policy: the
problem of how to accommodate both the internal and the external
realities, of how to establish a viable relationship between American
opinion and the outside world. Clearly this is the essential requirement for
any successful foreign policy — since a policy that is not in accordance with
the outside realities is likely, sooner or later, to end in failure, while a policy
that does not command domestic support cannot, under the American
system, long be sustained. But, given the nature both of public opinion
in that largely self-contained and confident society and of the world in this
turbulent century, it has always been a supremely difficult task, and one
that it is hard to think of any President as having accomplished really
successfully. Wilson, of course, eventually failed - substantially abroad
and then comprehensively at home. But the origins and objects of his policy
can best be understood, I think, in terms of this problem.
II
If we adopt this approach, we need first to consider the nature of American
opinion as US policy towards the First World War took shape in the
autumn and winter of 1914—15. Painting necessarily with very broad
strokes, I think the picture Wilson saw contained three main features.
First, it displayed an almost universal endorsement of the traditional
principles of US foreign policy. The chief of these were: (i) abstention from
intervention in European diplomacy or politics; (ii) avoidance of
"entangling alliances"; (iii) preservation of the Western Hemisphere from
the incursions of outside powers, and particularly from European
imperialism (the Monroe Doctrine).
These principles were generally encapsulated in the phrase "our
traditional isolation," but of course they in no way limited the involvement
of American citizens in foreign travel or overseas activity (whether
commercial, missionary or educational), or the duty of the US government
to protect the rights and safety of its citizens beyond its border. Indeed,
during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, the United States
had built up quite a record for insisting upon the rights of the citizens
of neutral powers against belligerent infractions, an insistence that had led
to war with Britain in 1812.
The second important aspect of public opinion was a nationalism that
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330
J. A. Thompson
was unusually ideological in character. Appeals to national pride abounded
in the political oratory and journalism of the time, gathering impetus
presumably both from the concern to over-ride the sectional loyalties of
a Civil War that was still in living memory, and from the growing anxiety
to "Americanize" the large and uniquely diverse communities of
immigrants. A nationalism that could not be founded on race or language
rested largely on geography and history - on a sense of the universal
significance of the "great experiment" in the "New World" of building
a society in which men, liberated from the environmental and social
oppression of the "Old World," could find freedom and fulfillment.
The "Old World" was of course Europe, and the First World War was
from the beginning seen as confirming the superiority of "The American
Way." As one small-town newspaper wrote, "We never appreciated so
keenly as now the foresight exercised by our forefathers in migrating from
Europe."12 Whether they laid the blame on Germany or attributed the
responsibility more widely, most Americans saw the war as the product
of the European political and social system: autocracy and militarism were
the concomitants of an essentially feudal class structure that depended for
its justification upon war. From this, the whole rotten business of
conscription, military alliances, secret diplomacy and power politics
derived. "There will be some accounts to be settled after peace is
declared," one american magazine declared in August 1914, "and the
biggest one will be that which Enlightenment has against Medievalism."13
There was, however, a third element in the American response to the
European War — one that was both more novel and more disturbing. As
Maldwyn Jones has pointed out, "the First World War brought to the
American people a belated realization of what it meant to be a nation of
immigrants" as "millions of American citizens sided with the countries
from which they or their ancestors had come."14 Most middle-class and
articulate Americans were still of British background, and these generally
favoured the Allied cause from the beginning. The strength of their
commitment, however, varied a good deal. It was fiercest in East Coast
metropolitan areas where a WASP elite felt threatened by immigration
and its political, social and cultural consequences. On the other hand, the
very large German-American community resented the pro-Ally view of
12
13
14
Wabash (Ind.) Plain Dealer, quoted in Mark Sullivan, Our Times, 5, Over Here, 1914-1918
(New York, 1933), 32The Independent, 79, 10 Aug. 1914, p. 195.
Maldwyn A. Jones, The Old World Ties of American Ethnic Groups (University College,
London, 1974), p. 4.
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Woodrow Wilson and World War I
331
the war presented in most of the American press and what it came to feel
was the bias of US policy. The smaller but very substantial number of
Irish—Americans and Jewish—Americans also tended to be anti-Ally — out
of hostility to Britain in the former case and to Czarist Russia in the latter.
There seems little doubt that Wilson shared, particularly in the early part
of the war, the pro-Allied feelings common to men of his background. 15
However, he seems to have felt obliged to discount these when, as
President, he came to shape American policy. He gave his own account
of how he saw his responsibility in remarks to the press in April 1915:
What I try to remind myself of every day, when I am almost overcome by
perplexities, what I try to remember, is what the people at home are thinking
about. I try to put myself in the place of the man who does not know all the
things that I know and ask myself what he would like the policy of this country
to be ... If I permitted myself to be a partisan in the present struggle, I would
be unworthy to represent you.16
It is, indeed, clear that from the beginning Wilson, like other political
leaders, was worried about the effect of the war in creating divisions and
heightening tensions at home. In the third week of the war, he issued his
famous appeal for Americans to "be impartial in thought as well as in
action," and a month later, when he learned that audiences in motion-picture
theatres were demonstrating during newsreels, he drafted a message to be
shown on the screen beforehand:
It would be a patriotic act in the interest of the neutrality of the nation and the
peace of mankind if the audience in this theatre would refrain during the showing
of pictures connected with the present war from expressing either approval or
disapproval. Woodrow Wilson.17
The German ambassador, BernstorfF, reported at this time that Wilson had
said to him, " We definitely have to be neutral, since otherwise our mixed
populations would wage war on each other." 18
Wilson's response to the danger presented to American unity by
conflicting partisanship in the European struggle was to emphasize the
supremacy of allegiance to America, and the need for the United States
to remain detached from the passions that were tearing the Old World
apart. "My thought is of America," he wrote in his August appeal. "This
15
See Arthur S. Link, Wilson: The Struggle for Neutrality, 1914-191; (Princeton, N.J.,
i960), pp. 50-51.
Remarks to the Associated Press in New York, 20 April 1915. Wilson Papers, 33,
(Princeton, N.J., 1980), 41.
1?
.Link, Wilson: The Struggle for Neutrality, pp. 65-67.
18
Ibid., p. 31.
16
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332
J. A. Thompson
great country of ours... should show herself in this time of peculiar trial
a Nation fit beyond others to exhibit the fine poise of undisturbed
judgment, the dignity of self-control, the efficiency of dispassionate
action." In December 1914 he dismissed the calls from Theodore Roosevelt
and others for greater " preparedness" —i.e. a build-up of naval and
military forces - by saying that " this is the time above all others when we
should wish and resolve to keep our strength by self-possession, our
influence by preserving our ancient principles of action."19
This emphatic re-affirmation of America's traditional policy implied, of
course, the defence of the rights of American citizens to trade in
non-contraband goods and with other neutral countries. Wilson's commitment to this policy, too, seems to have owed something to his concern
about the divisions of opinion at home, as he explained to his old friend,
Walter Hines Page, the American ambassador to Britain, in October 1914:
More and more, from day to day, the elements (I mean the several racial elements)
of our population seem to grow restless and to catch more and more the fever
of the contest. We are trying to keep all possible spaces cool, and the only means
by which we can do so is to make it demonstrably clear that we are doing
everything that is possible to do to define and defend neutral rights.20
However, with the British determined to impose a more or less total
blockade of Germany, it was not easy to maintain the rights of neutrals
under international law. Doing so would have required a threat, if not of
war at least of an effective embargo on the export of munitions and other
supplies to the Allies. Wilson was not prepared to make such a threat at
this time — partly perhaps because of its effects on the American economy
which was currently suffering from a recession, but primarily, surely,
because a measure that would so have aided the German war effort would
have given rise to far more criticism at home than did the ineffectualness
of American protests to the British about the violation of neutral rights.21
The embarrassment of such a position, as well as his anxiety about the
effects of the war on America's mixed population, doubtless strengthened
Wilson's desire to see peace restored in Europe. In early 1915, he sent
19
20
21
Ibid., pp. 66, 139.
Ibid., p . 55.
The force of these considerations is implicitly conceded by John W. Coogan in his very
critical account of American neutrality policy in these months, although he lays much
greater stress on Wilson's "personal pro-British, anti-German attitudes" and "his
ability to impose his view on the nation he led." John W. Coogan, The End of Neutrality:
The United States, Britain, and Maritime Rights, rfyp-ipij. (Ithaca, N.Y., and London,
1981), pp. 251-52, 179, 240-41.
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Woodrow Wilson and World War I 333
Colonel House to London, Paris and Berlin in an effort to probe the
prospects of a negotiated peace. However, it was clear that this diplomatic
foray involved nothing more than an offer of American mediation. When
Sir Edward Grey said that if the United States would be prepared to take
an active part in "the making of a programme of forcible security for
the future - in that event England might consent to end the war as a drawn
contest and trust to the subsequent discussion and world-wide agreement
to secure safety for the future," House replied emphatically that such a
proposal was contrary to "not only the unwritten law of our country but
also our fixed policy not to become involved in European affairs."22
After six months of war, then, it seemed that the traditional pattern of
America's relations with Europe had been disturbed neither by the great
increase in the power and economic importance of the United States since
the early nineteenth century, nor by the unprecedented scale and character
of the conflict. Indeed, the most salient recent development appeared to
be the increased awareness of the implications of America's ethnic
heterogeneity, and the net effect of this had been to reinforce the traditional
pattern.
Ill
The situation was changed in 1915 as a result of external events with
dramatic internal repercussions. As retaliation for the British "food
blockade," the Germans in the spring of 1915 embarked on a campaign
of submarine warfare against merchant shipping. This quickly produced
some thorny diplomatic problems for the American government, but it
was the sinking of the husitania on 7 May 1915 that generated a crisis. The
news created an unforgettable shock — comparable to that caused by the
assassination of President Kennedy. According to Mark Sullivan, people
years after could " remember the surroundings in which they read it, the
emotions they had, their actions the rest of the day."23 Of the 1200 who
drowned, 124 were Americans, and in the mood of outrage which prevailed,
Wilson evidently felt that he could do no less than demand disavowal of
the action and the abandonment of U-boat warfare against ships carrying
passengers (even if the ships were, like the Lusitania, of belligerent nations
and carried munitions).
The uncompromising character of Wilson's stand evidently raised the
22
23
L i n k , Wilson: The Struggle for Neutrality, p p . 2 1 8 - 1 9 ; Charles S e y m o u r , The
Papers of Colonel House, ( L o n d o n , 1926), 1, 375.
M a r k Sullivan, Our Times, 5, 120 n . 5.
Intimate
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334
/• -A. Thompson
possibility of war with Germany. For this reason, William Jennings Bryan
resigned as Secretary of State rather than sign the second"Lusitanianote.
In reply to Bryan's protestations, Wilson had written:
I wish with all my heart that I saw a way to carry out the double wish of our people,
to maintain a firm front in respect of what we demand of Germany and yet do
nothing that might by any possibility involve us in the war.24
There was, of course, no sure way of securing this double wish. By
maintaining his firm stand against submarine warfare, Wilson was handing
to the German government the power, if not to force him into the war,
at least to confront him with a situation where the only alternative to war
would be the humiliation of the United States and the destruction of his
own credibility. It was Wilson's desperate desire to avoid such a choice
that shaped his policy from the summer of 1915 until American entry into
the war in April 1917.
In late July 1915, the German Ambassador reported to Berlin that "Mr
Wilson was carried away by his emotions about the sinking of the
Lusitania. Stimulated by this emotion, he has taken such an inflexible
position that he cannot retreat without making himself impossible in the
eyes of public opinion here." But, unlike "the eastern press in the United
States," "Mr Wilson and the overwhelming majority of the American
people" did not want war with Germany.25 Wilson tended to confirm
the accuracy of this analysis when he wrote to House in August 1915:
Two things are plain to me: (1) The people of this country count on me to keep
them out of the war; (2) It would be a calamity to the world at large if we should
be drawn actively into the conflict and so deprived of all disinterested influence
over the settlement.26
It was in this new and threatening situation that Wilson came to make
important changes in American policy.
In the first place, he reversed himself over "preparedness." Although
it was not until November that the Administration presented Congress
with a programme for substantial increases in both the Army and the Navy,
it was in July 1915 that Wilson gave instructions for such a programme
to be drawn up. This suggests that the chief reason for his change of tack,
which created trouble for him in his own party in Congress, was a desire
to make American belligerency a more formidable prospect and hence
deter Germany from pushing him too far.27
24
26
26
27
Wilson to W. J. Bryan, 7 June 1915, Wilson Papers, 33, 349.
Link, Wilson: The Struggle for Neutrality, p. 452.
Ibid., p. 567.
Osgood, Ideals and Self-interest in America's Foreign Relations, pp. 206-7.
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Woodrow Wilson and World War 1 335
The second important effect of the crisis of 1915 on American, policy
was that it added urgency and force to Wilson's efforts to bring the war
to an end. This, after all, was the only secure and lasting way in which
he could avoid the risk of having to choose between humiliation and an
unpopular war. It was in the attempt to achieve this goal that Wilson
committed the United States to participation in a postwar League of
Nations — and thereby challenged the isolationist tradition.
Wilson made two major, and significantly different, attempts to end the
war between 1915 and 1917. The first involved secret collaboration with
the Allies through the negotiations which Colonel House conducted in
London in early 1916. These culminated in the so-called House-Grey
memorandum of February 1916, according to which the United States
government undertook to call for a peace conference "on hearing from
France and England that the moment was opportune." Should the Allies
accept the invitation and the Germans refuse, the US would "probably"
(a word added by Wilson to the draft) enter the war against Germany.
Whatever House (let alone Grey) hoped to achieve by this agreement,
there seems no doubt that Wilson was interested in it simply as a means to
bring the war to an end.28
It was in an exchange of messages preliminary to House's negotiations
that Wilson had in November 1915 privately assented to Grey's request
that he, Wilson, propose "that there should be a League of Nations
binding themselves to side against any Power which broke a treaty; which
broke certain rules of warfare on sea or land... or which refused, in case
of dispute, to adopt some other method of settlement than that of war."29
A similar sort of proposal was being canvassed in the US by a private
organization, known as the League to Enforce Peace, whose diverse
support included some strong pro-Allied partisans, other more neutral and
legalistically-minded Republicans like former President Taft, and some
liberal pacifist spokesmen.
It was in an address to the League to Enforce Peace on 27 May 1916,
that Wilson publicly committed himself to US participation in a League of
Nations. In doing so, he was seeking to encourage the Allies to initiate
the process set out in the House-Grey memorandum.30 The Sussex crisis
of March-April 1916, in which the President had sent a virtual ultimatum
28
29
30
Arthur S. Link, Wilson: Confusions and Crises, 191J-1916 (Princeton, N.J., 1964), chapter
4L i n k , Wilson: Confusions and Crises, p p . 1 0 3 - 4 , 1 0 6 - 7 .
E r n e s t R. M a y , The World War and American Isolation 1914-1917 ( C a m b r i d g e , M a s s . ,
' 9 5 9 ) . PP- 3 5 8 - 5 9 .
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336
/• A. Thompson
to the German government over submarine warfare, had added urgency
to his desire to end the war.
In recommending the League, Wilson sought to minimize the departure
from traditional American principles. "I shall never, myself, consent to
an entangling alliance," he declared. "But I would gladly assent to a
disentangling alliance — an alliance which would disentangle the people of
the world from those combinations in which they seek their own separate
and private interests and unite [them]... to preserve the peace of the world
upon a basis of common right and justice." The first task he set the
"universal association of the nations" for which he called was "to
maintain the inviolate security of the highway of the seas." And he insisted
that the United States would not be involved in the actual terms of the
peace settlement. "We ... are quite aware that we are in no sense or degree
parties to the present quarrel."31
When, notwithstanding this public appeal, the Allies showed no interest
in activating the House—Grey memorandum and indeed seemed to be
committed to a total victory in pursuit of extreme war aims, Wilson
abandoned the attempt to collaborate with them. After his re-election in
November 1916, he embarked on an independent and more neutral peace
initiative.
His determination to pursue this course - against the advice and wishes
of his closest advisers, House and Secretary of State Lansing - surely
reflected a lively sense of the exposed nature of his position. On the one
hand, the recent election campaign had shown the breadth and depth of
peace sentiment in America. Politicians of both parties seem to have been
surprised by its strength. Wilson himself had originally intended to make
"Americanism" the theme of his campaign, but he was quick to exploit
fears that a Republican victory would lead to embroilment in the European
conflict.32 Privately, however, he seems to have had misgivings over the
Democrats' favourite slogan: "He Kept Us Out of War." "I can't keep
the country out of war," he reportedly said to his Secretary of the Navy.
" They talk of me as though I were a god. Any little German lieutenant
can put us into the war at any time by some calculated outrage."33
Indeed, Wilson was well-informed, through the reports of his Ambas31
Memorial Day address, 30 May 1916; Address to the League to Enforce Peace, 27 May
1916. Wilson Papers, 37 (Princeton, N.J., 1981), 126, 116.
32
O t i s L . G r a h a m J r . , The Great
Campaigns:
Keform
and War in America,
1900—1928
(Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1971), p. 84.; John Milton Cooper, Jr., The Warrior and the
33
Priest: Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt ( C a m b r i d g e , M a s s . , 1983), p p . 3 0 7 - 8 .
O s g o o d , Ideals and Self-interest, p . 234 n .
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Woodrow Wilson and World War I
337
sador to Berlin and others, of the strength of the pressures within Germany
for a resumption of submarine warfare, and the likelihood that these would
be successful before long.
Wilson's drive for peace in the winter of 1916-17 involved several
moves. First, his prompting of the Federal Reserve Board's warning to
American banks on 27 November against extending credit to the Allies
should surely be seen, as John Milton Cooper has suggested, as a
preliminary piece of softening up. 34 The identical note to the belligerent
powers of 18 December 1916 combined an eloquent denunciation of the
war's costs with a plea for a statement of "the precise objects" for which
each side was fighting. When he received replies that left no opening for
a peace conference, Wilson responded with an Address to the Senate on
22 January 1917, in which he attempted to appeal to the war-weary peoples
of Europe over the heads of their governments.
Now, he did express a view about the terms upon which the present
conflict should be e n d e d - " I t must be a peace without victory....
Victory would mean peace forced upon the loser, a victor's terms imposed
upon the vanquished. It would be accepted in humiliation, under duress,
at an intolerable sacrifice, and would leave a sting, a resentment, a bitter
memory upon which terms of peace would rest, not permanently, but only
as upon quicksand."
However, for Wilson at this stage, the chief merit of " a peace without
victory" was surely less its durability than its accessibility — it was the
only conceivable sort of early peace. In an attempt to increase his leverage
upon the European situation, he now threatened to withdraw the carrot
of American participation in a postwar security organization - the peace
he outlined, he stressed, was the "only . . . sort of peace that the peoples
of America could join in guaranteeing."
I am proposing, as it were, that the nations should with one accord adopt the
doctrine of President Monroe as the doctrine of the world. ... I am proposing
that all nations henceforth avoid entangling alliances
There is no entangling
alliance in a concert of power....
I am proposing government by the consent of the governed... freedom of the
seas... moderation of armaments.
These are American principles, American policies. We could stand for no others.
And they are also the principles and policies of forward-looking men and women
34
"The Command of Gold Reversed: American Loans to Britain. 1915-1917," Pacific
Historical Review, 45, (May 1976), 225.
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338
J. A. Thompson
everywhere, of every modern nation, of every enlightened community. They are
the principles of mankind and must prevail.35
IV
Some historians have seen the failure of this peace initiative as itself giving
Wilson a reason to bring the United States into the war - as he did in April
1917 — because that was now the only remaining way in which he could
secure the new world order to which he was dedicated. Lord Devlin, for
example, sees Wilson's foreign policy as goal-orientated: "he was under
the control of an ideal."
To translate his ideal into action Wilson needed a place, and a dominating one,
at the Peace Conference. This was the strategic objective of his foreign policy.
There were three tactical approaches to it. The first was by joining the better side
and buying a place by a contribution to the war.... The second approach was made
from neutrality and was by angling for an invitation to mediate.... The third
approach was a novel compound of the first two. Like the second it was made
from neutrality. Like the first it was not empty-handed. Gifts would be brought
to the peace table in the form of a contribution not to the war effort but to the
future peace of the world
The destruction of the third approach left Wilson ostensibly with a choice between
the other two. But it was not a real choice. The second approach led only to the
chair of a conciliator, not of an arbiter. If it was still conceivable that exhaustion
might lead the belligerents to accept Wilson as a conciliator, it would give him
a place without influence, for he would have nothing of value to offer....
It would be idle for Wilson to go to the Peace Conference without a seat in the
Cabinet of Nations. The price of the seat was now war. Wilson himself had no
doubt of that. As he put it to the Emergency Peace Federation on 28 February,
"If America stayed neutral, the best she could hope for was to 'call through a
crack in the door.'" 36
The weakness of this interpretation is the improbability of American
intervention had it not been for the German campaign of unrestricted
submarine warfare launched on 1 February 1917. It is true, as Devlin
stresses, that a failure to respond effectively to this deliberate assault upon
frequently proclaimed American rights and interests would have fatally
undermined the credibility of any postwar commitment to European
security: "What weight could anyone attach to guarantees given by a
nation which quaked at the thunder of the guns?" 3 7 However, it is quite
35
36
37
A d d r e s s t o the Senate, 22 J a n . 1917. Wilson Papers, 40, (Princeton, N . J . , 1982), 535,
5 36, 5 39Devlin, Too Proud to Fight, p p . 678, 6 7 9 - 8 1 .
Ibid., p. 680.
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Woodrow Wilson and World War 1 339
conceivable that Wilson's peace initiative might have been brushed aside
without there being such a direct challenge to the United States. In such
a case, it is difficult to believe that Wilson would seriously have
contemplated intervention, however poor the prospects for American
mediation or participation in the peace conference. Indeed, on my reading
of his policy it would have been quite illogical for him to have done so,
since the most impelling motive of his peace initiative had been to avert
the risk of war.
Even after the German announcement of submarine warfare, Wilson
was clearly reluctant to enter the war. His first response was simply to break
off diplomatic relations and await "actual overt acts" while attempting to
engage in secret negotiations with Austria. He then tried the expedient
of "armed neutrality."
Eventually, after the Germans had torpedoed some American ships and
sent the Zimmermann telegram, Wilson decided that he had no alternative
but to ask for a declaration of war.38 In view of the stand he had taken
in the Lusitania and Sussex disputes, this was hardly surprising. Failure to
respond to the German challenge would have involved some economic
costs, but much heavier ones in terms of national honour and diplomatic
credibility. For Wilson himself, it would have been personally humiliating
and politically damaging.
In these circumstances, the slowness of his path to war testifies to
Wilson's recognition of how reluctant many Americas were to enter the
conflict. " It was necessary for me," he explained to a friend, " by very slow
stages indeed and with the most genuine purpose to avoid war to lead the
country on to a single way of thinking. " 39 His problem in rallying
the overwhelming public support a war would need was aggravated by the
apparent triviality of the issues at stake in the submarine dispute. As
Lansing put it on 20 March, "to go to war solely because American ships
have been sunk and Americans killed would cause debate."40 In particular,
it would not appeal to the more pacifist and progressive segments of
American opinion, which had provided Wilson with valuable support in
his election victory. The argument that intervention would strengthen his
hand for securing a liberal peace was Wilson's way of trying to retain such
38
39
40
A r t h u r S. L i n k , Wilson: Campaigns for Progressivism and Peace ( P r i n c e t o n , N . J . ) , p . 5 9 8 ;
S e y m o u r , Intimate Papers, 2 , 4 6 7 .
Woodrow Wilson to Cleveland H. Dodge, 4 April 1917, quoted in David M. Kennedy,
Over Here: The First World War and American Society ( N e w Y o r k , 1980), p . 1 1 .
A r n o J . M a y e r , Political Origins of the New Diplomacy, 1917—11)18 ( N e w H a v e n , C o n n . ,
1959), p . 167.
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340
/. A. Thompson
support. It was not by chance that the remark Devlin quotes was made
to a peace delegation.
And so in his War Message Wilson stressed the continuity of his
policy — "I have exactly the same things in mind now that I had in mind
when I addressed the Senate on the 22nd January last 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 amongst the
really free and self-governed peoples of the world such a concert of
purpose and of action as will henceforth ensure the observance of those
principles."
But the claim to continuity was misleading. The difference between the
Address to the Senate and the War Message was not, as Devlin suggests,
that of different means to the same end. Indeed, one could see it as a
reversal of the relationship of means and ends. On 22 January, Wilson had
offered American participation in a post-war league on a conditional basis
as an inducement to an early, negotiated peace. On 2 April, he demanded
war as the means to a new world order capped by a league of nations.
The extent of this change was to become even clearer in the early months
of American belligerency. It was not only that Wilson now denounced all
talk of an early, negotiated peace. In June 1917, he described the movement
for an international Socialist conference in Stockholm as a "sinister
intrigue."41 That might have been no more than a refusal to countenance
peace while Germany held the upper hand. But Wilson also denounced
the idea of a peace based on he status quo ante, since " it was the status quo
ante out of which this iniquitous war issued forth, the power of the
Imperial German Government within the Empire and its widespread
domination and influence outside of that Empire."42 This was surely a long
way from "peace without victory," by any account.
It was not only liberal pacifist opinion that Wilson sought to rally to
the war through emphasis on the peace programme. It was also those
Americans who viewed the Allied cause with some suspicion - whether
because of Anglophobia or pro-German feeling, or simply out of a
comprehensive distrust of Europeans and their power politics. A week
before Wilson delivered his war message, his secretary, Joseph Tumulty
(to whom he always listened attentively) had concluded from a survey of
newspaper opinion that:
41
42
A Flag D a y Address, 14 J u n e 1917. Wilson Papers, 42 (Princeton, N . J . , 1983), 503.
To the Provisional Government of Russia, 22 May 1917, ibid., 42, 366.
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Woodrow Wilson and World War I
341
If we are driven into war by the course of Germany, we must remain masters of our
destiny.
If we take up arms against Germany, it should be on an issue exclusively between
that Empire and this Republic;
And that the United States must retain control of that issue from beginning to
end.43
Wilson's course followed this advice. In the peroration to his War
Message, he again demonstrated his facility at fusing idealism and
patriotism.
We shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest to 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 least free ... 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.44
Wilson was insistent during the war that American independence be
maintained. Formally, the United States remained an "Associated Power,"
rather than an "Ally." Militarily, Wilson firmly supported General
Pershing's refusal to integrate American units into the Allied armies. He
was reluctant to authorise American participation in inter-Allied councils,
and when he did so he insisted that his delegates did not discuss war aims
or political questions. His own diplomatic communications (for example,
his reply to the Pope in August 1917 and his pre-Armistice correspondence
with the German government) were drafted without prior consultation
with the Entente powers.
On the other hand, Wilson did not take advantage of the Allies'
dependence on the United States, in the perilous years of 1917 and 1918,
to try to compel them to repudiate the secret treaties (of which he was
aware) and endorse his programme. As critics at the time pointed out, this
would have been the best strategy for maximizing American influence on
the peace settlement. 45 The reason Wilson did not adopt it was presumably
43
44
45
J. P. Tumulty to Woodrow Wilson, 24 March 1917. Wilson Papers, 41 (Princeton, N.J.,
1983), 462.
Address to Congress, 2 April 1917, ibid., 41, 526-7.
e.g. Randolph S. Bourne, " The Collapse of American Strategy," The Seven Arts, 2
(August 1917), 409-24, cf. Victor S. Mametey, The United States and East Central Europe
rpij-iyit: A Study in Wilsonian Diplomacy and Propaganda (Princeton, N.J., 1957),
p. 90.
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342 / . A. Thompson
that it would have damaged the common war effort at a vital time and
exposed him to criticism abroad and at home. But this, too, gives some
indication of his priorities.
Foreign as well as domestic exigencies affected both the content of
Wilson's peace programme and the use he made of it. The most striking
instance of this was the issue of national self-determination, particularly
as it concerned the Austro-Hungarian Empire. " That every people has a
right to choose the sovereignty under which they shall live" was the first
of the three principles Wilson had set out as the basis of a lasting peace
in the speech in which he had first suggested that the United States might
take part in a post-war league.46 In emphasizing the principle, Wilson was,
of course, again invoking a traditional aspect of American thinking about
world affairs. In his Senate address of January 1917, he reaffirmed that "no
peace can last, or ought to last, which does not recognize and accept the
principle that governments derive all their just powers from the consent
of the governed."47
However, the interpretation of this principle, as Victor Mamatey and
Sterling Kernek have demonstrated, was dramatically affected by changing
circumstances.48 In February 1917, when he was hoping to use the
Austrian government in a last-ditch effort to end the war before the United
States was dragged into it, Wilson sought from the Entente governments
authority to assure Austria that " the large measure of autonomy already
secured to those older units [of the Empire] is a sufficient guarantee of
peace and stability in that part of Europe so far as national and racial
influences are concerned..." —i.e. that the Austro-Hungarian Empire
would not be dismembered.49 Hopes that Austria might be induced to
make a separate peace persisted in Washington until the resignation of
Count Czernin in April 1918. During this period, Wilson continued to
maintain that " we do not wish in any way to impair or to re-arrange the
Austro-Hungarian Empire."50 Even in the Fourteen Points address of
January 1918, he went no further than to say that "the peoples of
Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to see
46
47
48
49
50
A d d r e s s t o t h e L e a g u e t o E n f o r c e P e a c e , 27 M a y 1916. Wilson Papers, 3 7 , 115.
Address to the Senate, 22 Jan. 1917, Ibid., 40, 536-7.
M a m a t e y , The United States and East
Central Europe;
Sterling J. K e r n e k , " W o o d r o w
Wilson and National Self-determination Along Italy's Frontier: A Study of the
Manipulation of Principles in the Pursuit of Political Interests," Proceeding of the
American Philosophical Society, 126 (1982), 245-7.
Lansing to W. H . Page, 8 Feb. 1917, cited in Mamatey, p . 57.
Annual Message o n the State of the Union, 4 Dec. 1917, Wilson Papers, 45, 197.
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Woodrow Wilson and World War I
343
safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the freest opportunity of
autonomous development" (Point io).51
After the demise of hopes of a separate peace, American policy swiftly
took a new tack. In May 1918, Lansing issued a public declaration of the
government's "earnest sympathy" with "the nationalistic aspirations of
the Czecho-Slovaks and Jugo-Slavs for freedom," and in September the
Czechoslovak National Council was recognized as a de facto government.52
Impelling the Administration along this path were not only the agitation
and activity of the nationalities themselves, but the adoption of their cause
by leading Republicans who had never had any hankering for a compromise
peace. In July 1917, Theodore Roosevelt had emphatically affirmed "the
right of each people to govern itself and to control its own destinies...,"
and by November he was insisting that "unless we resolutely intend to
break up Austria and Turkey and insist on liberty for the subject races in the
two countries, our talk about making the world safe for democracy is a
sham."53 When, in October 1918, the Austrian government sued for peace,
Wilson made it clear that Point 10 no longer stood:
The President is ... no longer at liberty to accept the mere "autonomy" of these
peoples as a basis of peace, but is obliged to insist that they, and not he, shall
be the judges of what action on the part of the Austro-Hungarian Government
will satisfy their aspirations and their conception of their rights and destiny as
members of the family of nations.54
It was not only in respect to Point 10 that his speech outlining
the Fourteen Points — the basis of the pre-Armistice agreement and
often taken as a canonical statement of Wilson's peace programme — was
shaped by the immediate purposes it was designed to serve. The speech
was a response, as Arno Mayer stressed many years ago, to the peace
propaganda emanating from the new Bolshevik regime in Russia which
had included publication of the secret treaties between the Allies.55 Indeed,
the Inquiry Memorandum which served as the basis for the points dealing
with territorial questions was, according to the recollection of its principal
author, " all keyed upon the secret treaties," which had thus " decided what
51
52
53
54
55
Address to Congress, 8 Jan. 1918, 45, 537.
M a m a t e y , p p . 2 6 1 , 309.
"The Peace of Victory for Which We Strive," Metropolitan, 46 (July 1917), 24;
M a m a t e y , The United States and East Central Europe, p p . 156, 162, 308—9.
Lansing t o E k e n g r e n , 19 O c t . 1918, cited in W a l w o r t h , America's Moment, p . 29.
Mayer, Political Origins of the New Diplomacy, pp. 352-78. See also Mamatey, pp. 172-88.
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344
]• -A. Thompson
went into the Fourteen Points."56 Wilson's immediate concern was to rally
support for the war, if possible in Russia itself, and certainly among liberal
and labour circles in the Allied countries and America. He hoped to weaken
German morale, and if possible to detach Austria-Hungary. Also, of
course, the speech was an opening shot in the battle he foresaw with the
Allied Governments after the war over the nature of the peace.
V
The object Woodrow Wilson was trying to achieve in Paris in 1919 was
not, then, simply the expression of some personal, idealistic vision, or a
pre-designed programme to make the world safe for American capitalism.
Rather, it has to be seen as the culmination of an attempt to shape a foreign
policy that would both be effective abroad and command broad support
at home. To emphasize the tactical purposes which led to Wilson's
becoming committed to his peace programme, and which later shaped both
his use of it and the significant changes in its content at different times,
is not at all to denigrate him. The task in which he was engaged was a
difficult as well as an inescapable one, and the manner in which he
undertook it was responsible, intelligent and bold. But, as Victor Mamatey
stressed in his classic study, The United States and East Central Europe,
1914—1918, Wilson was a " practicing politician in a land where a pragmatic
approach to politics has always been the rule."57
This view of Wilson might be thought to possess an intrinsic
plausibility — it is surely hard to see how the man portrayed by Keynes
or Devlin ever got to the White House. Nonetheless, we have to consider
how well it fits with the rest of his career. It is, of course, particularly from
the events of 1919—20 that the image of him as a dogmatic idealist derives.
There is not space here to provide a thorough analysis of his conduct of
the peace negotiations, but this, too, can best be understood as an effort
to reconcile internal and external realities, in circumstances in which both
had assumed new forms. At home, foreign policy had by now become
entwined with domestic partisan politics, and it was apparent that his
Republican opponents were concerned to deny Wilson the prestige that
would accrue to him if he could plausibly claim to have successfully
accomplished his goals. The best-known and most clearly defined goal was,
56
57
Walter Lippmann, quoted in Ronald Steel, Walter'Lippmannand the American Century
(London, 1980), p. 609. For a comparison of the Inquiry Memorandum and the
Fourteen Points, see Wilson Papers, 45, 459-539.
Mamatey, p. 107.
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Woodrow Wilson and World War I
345
of course, the League of Nations. The supreme importance Wilson
attached to establishing the sort of League of Nations he had become
committed to has been acknowledged by all historians of the peace
conference. His commitment to it foreclosed the possibility of withdrawal
and compelled him to make concessions on many issues (even those other
of the Fourteen Points he had once described as "essentially American").58
Indeed, his course in a Paris has been criticized more for over-flexibility
than inflexibility. Yet the extent and nature of his compromises still seem
to have reflected his sense of their acceptability to American opinion, for
he recognized that the prospects of American participation in the League
of Nations would be affected by views of the justice of the settlement.59
It was not until it came to the struggle over Senate ratification that
Wilson's political sense can be said to have deserted him. By this stage,
his room for manoeuvre was much reduced, and of course he was no longer
well. Although interpretations of his earlier medical history may be
disputed, there seems little doubt that he was in poor health in the summer
of 1919 even before his crippling stroke in the fall.60
On the other hand, the picture of Wilson presented here accords well
with his earlier career — and he was, after all, 5 7 years old when the First
World War broke out. He was no ivory-towered academic. He had
dreamed of a political career since his adolescence, when he had placed
a portrait of Gladstone above his desk and practised his oratory in his
father's church. At the age of 26, sadly convinced that "no man can safely
enter political life nowadays who has not an independent fortune," he
abandoned the law for academic life, which appealed to him as what his
latest biographer, John Milton Cooper, Jr., has called "a parapolitical
career," as a student of, and commentator on, politics. In this capacity,
the writers who most influenced him were Bagehot and Burke. From the
first, he learnt to analyse in detached, unsentimental fashion the real
processes that lay behind the formal structure of representative govern58
59
60
Wilson used this phrase to describe Points i, 2, 3 and 14 in a message to House on
31 Oct. 1918. See Seymour, Intimate Papers, 4, p. 188.
There is, of course, a vast literature on the peace conference, but for these points, see
particularly, Inga Floto, Colonel House in Paris: A Study of American Policy at the Paris
Peace Conference 1919 (Princeton, N.J., 1980), especially pp. 174-77, 243-62, and Kernek,
"Woodrow Wilson and National Self-determination Along Italy's Frontier," especially
pp. 248-55.
On the controversial matter of Wilson's medical history, see Edwin A. Weinstein,
Woodrow Wilson: A Medical and Psychological Biography (Princeton, N.J., 1981), and
Juliette George, Michael F. Marmor, and Alexander L. George, "Issues in Wilson
Scholarship: Reference to Early 'Strokes' in the Papers of Woodrow Wilson" Journal of
American History, 70 (March 1984), 845—53.
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346 /• A. Thompson
ment. From the second, he acquired a fondness for the organic analogy,
which expressed his view of the nature of politics and the tasks of the
statesman. In 1912, Wilson proclaimed himself "a disciple of Edmund
Burke, who was opposed to all ambitious programmes on the principle
that no man, no group of men can take a piece of paper and reconstruct
society." He frankly extolled "the philosophy of expediency," which in
the last year of his life he denned as "the wisdom of circumstances."61
Wilson's practice of politics was to be consistent with this view of it.
He did not behave as what Mrs Thatcher has called "a conviction
politician." Rather, both as President of Princeton and after he entered
public life in 1910 as Governor of New Jersey, his course reflected the
pressures and opportunities of the situation in which he found himself.
He was an active and reforming President of Princeton, but, as Cooper
says, "none of his three major departures arose solely from his own mind
or as part of a larger scheme of' liberal culture.' " 62 They reflected Wilson's
skill in guiding the faculty towards a consensus and then energetically
pursuing the goal that emerged. This is not to deny that these goals were
boldly set and confidently (in the end over-confidently) pursued. The same
pattern was to be seen in Wilson's conduct as Governor of New Jersey,
and as President when he secured a body of reform legislation that only
Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson among 20th-century presidents
can match. He was candid about his techniques and priorities. " I haven't
had a tariff program," he told the press in November 1913. "I haven't had
a currency program. I have conferred with the men who handle these
things and have asked the questions, and then have gotten back what they
sent to me — the best of our common counsel."" I do not know how to
wield a big stick, but I do know how to put my mind at the service of
others for the accomplishment of a common purpose."63
The art of political leadership, as Wilson saw it, was that of building
a majority. In large part this was a matter of being sensitive to public
opinion and setting one's course accordingly. "A politician," he declared
frankly in November 1907, " must be an opportunist... If you want to win
in party action, I take it for granted you want to lure the majority to your
side. I never heard of any man in his senses who was fishing for a
minority." Beyond this, it was a matter of persuasion, of developing a
broad appeal. "The whole art and practice of government consists, not
in moving individuals but in moving masses," he said in 1916. "It is all
61
62
Cooper, The Warrior and the Priest, pp. 22, 24-5, 44-6, 53-6, 18;, 265.
Ibid., p. 91.
*3 Ibid., p. 256.
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Woodrow Wilson and World War I
347
very well to run ahead and beckon, but, after all, you have got.to wait
for the body to follow." About his own proficiency in these skills - of
listening, and of speaking - Wilson had a justified confidence. At a low
point in his campaign for the Democratic nomination in 1912, he wrote
despairingly - "It begins to look as if I must merely sit on the sidelines
and talk, as a mere critic of the game I understand so intimately - throw
all my training away and do nothing."64
Wilson's response to the enormous challenge of charting a course for
the United States through the maelstrom of the European war does much
to vindicate this self-confidence. That course represented less the consistent
pursuit of a pre-determined objective than a series of adjustments and
manoeuvres in response to unforeseen events and pressing contingencies.
But in making these adjustments and manoeuvres, Wilson remained
sufficiently sensitive to the balance of American opinion, and to its latent
as well as expressed aspects, to retain broad public support for his policy,
at least until 1919. Moreover from 1916, though not really before, he
possessed a formula for legitimating departures from the traditional policy
of isolation in terms of the values central to American nationalism — though
there remained some ambiguity as to whether such departures were
necessary or conditional. The persistence of this formula in American ways
of thinking about foreign policy - the periodic revivals and various
mutations of " Wilsonianism " — can be taken to demonstrate its merits as
a solution to the problem of how to build a bridge between the internal
and external realities.
The essence of this solution can be unkindly described as the attempt
to make the world like America so that the United States could take part
in it. It is, therefore, a trifle paradoxical that it was the domestic pier of
the bridge which collapsed first. Nevertheless, a closer look reveals
that Wilson had already experienced a great deal of failure in achieving
his foreign policy objectives. He had failed to maintain American neutrality
and to keep the United States out of the war. He had failed to bring the
war to an end, 1915-17, and to achieve a "peace without victory." He had
failed to secure a peace settlement in accordance with the Fourteen Points.
Wilson has been much criticized for these failures but to my mind they
were due much less to mistakes on his part (though he did make some)
than to the extremely difficult, if not impossible, character of the problem
which confronted him, as it has subsequent American presidents. It may
not be the least mark of his stature that he had recognized the crucial
elements in that problem by the spring of 1915.
64
Ibid., pp. 127, 2; 5, 184.
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348
J. A. Thompson
The first was the inescapable nature of American power. "We are more
and more becoming, by the force of circumstances, the mediating nation
of the world," he observed in April 1915.65
The second was the lack of a traditional policy appropriate to the
circumstances. Wilson's sense of this found expression in the assertion that
the United States did not have a traditional policy. " Did you ever reflect
upon how almost every other nation has through long centuries been
headed in one direction?," he asked. "That is not true of the United
States." "The opinion of America, the action of America, is ready to turn,
and free to turn, in any direction."66
The freedom of American choice was extended by the lack of specific,
concrete, national interests. "America is particularly free in this — that she
has no hampering ambitions as a world power.... We do not want
anything that does not belong to us." 67 Wilson consistently made a virtue
of this, stressing during neutrality, belligerency, and peacemaking alike
that "We have nothing material of any kind to ask for ourselves," that
" There is not a single selfish element, so far as I can see, in the cause we
are fighting for," and that the Americans were the "only disinterested
people at the Peace Conference."68
Yet it is surely reasonable to suggest that the possession of some interest
which had a clear and important relationship to American security or
prosperity would have provided U.S. foreign policy with both a more
definite objective and a greater inducement to realism. Without such
ballast, the tides of war and the winds of opinion made it impossible for
the most skilful helmsman to steer a straight course.
65
66
67
68
R e m a r k s t o t h e A s s o c i a t e d Press, 20 A p r i l 1915, Wilson Papers, 3 3 , 38.
Ibid., p. 39.
Ibid., p . 39.
A d d r e s s t o t h e L e a g u e t o E n f o r c e Peace, 27 M a y , 1916, Wilson Papers, 37, 116; A n
A p p e a l t o t h e A m e r i c a n People, 15 April 1917, Wilson Papers, 42, 7 2 ; T h o m a s A . Bailey,
Woodrow Wilson and the Lost Peace (New York, 1944), p. 109.
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