96 e lusive v ictories
his new British and French partners would continue to have very dif-
ferent conceptions about the goals for which they would now be
fi ghting together.
War without Victory
Wilson told the U.S. Congress in a special session on April 2, 1917, that
the country had no alternative but to recognize that a state of war
existed with Imperial Germany. His speech presented an opportunity to
frame for the American people the purposes for which he would ask
them to fi ght. As the fi rst expression of war aims, the address also let the
president exercise most freely his agency as the political leader of a
nation at war. Th at is, he could choose how to portray the struggle
(including the character of the enemy), what level of destruction the
nation would seek to infl ict, and what kind of peace he would aim to
build. Certainly he had off ered hints earlier, but none of his previous
expressions of his goals, such as a negotiated compromise acceptable to
both sides, bound him now. By contrast, with America now about to go
to war, his framing of what was at stake and what the United States
would aim to achieve stood as fi rm commitments. Barring some dra-
matic change in circumstances (such as when Lincoln had realized that
victory required the destruction of slavery), the initial presidential
assertion of war aims would drive everything that followed. At no other
point, then, would the president have such wide scope for exercising
discretion.
Wilson’s address began with a narrow, almost legalistic case for war
that hinted at quite limited goals. Reminding his audience of the threat
to peaceful trade posed by unrestricted submarine attacks, he reaf-
fi rmed the principle that wartime commerce should be governed by
traditional rules. To this Wilson added a bill of lesser charges that
included German espionage, eff orts to disrupt American industry, and
the recent bid to incite a Mexican attack on the United States. He
blamed the autocratic character of the German regime for these actions,
specifically noting that the German people ought not to be held
responsible for what their leaders had done. Peace would require, then,
the assurance of freedom to trade and an end to the threat of aggression
by Germany. (Wilson refrained from asking Congress to declare war on