w aging w ar to t ransform the w orld 87wife.) Possibly the president recognized the long-term danger posed by
a German drive for global hegemony, but he did not respond to it in
August 1914. Instead, while urging Americans to remain neutral in
thought as well as deed, Wilson announced that the government would
refrain from favoring either side. He shared the common belief that the
confl ict would end quickly—nations simply could not sustain the cost
of modern warfare for any length of time. ^
Most Americans initially accepted Wilson’s call for neutrality. Th e
war was too distant, separated by a vast ocean from American shores.
Of course, many immigrants had arrived from nations on both sides of
the confl ict, and these newcomers certainly tended to favor their home-
lands. The Allies worked hard to shape American attitudes and
succeeded in stirring fears in elite circles about what a German victory
might mean. Much of the American heartland, though, was unmoved
by Allied propaganda and steadfastly resisted the idea that America had
a real stake in the outcome of the confl ict. Th ere were also pro-German
voices, especially Americans of German descent who objected when
ostensibly neutral policy (e.g., the refusal to ban the sale of arms to
belligerents) in practice favored the Allies. Unfortunately for German
sympathizers, their appeals were nullifi ed when the Wilson adminis-
tration revealed clumsy German propaganda campaigns or plotting by
German and Austro-Hungarian diplomats to subvert American
neutrality.
Whatever Wilson may have thought about the long-term implica-
tions of the war, he realized that it posed immediate risks to American
commercial interests. Trade with Europe was an important element in
domestic prosperity. Cotton prices collapsed almost overnight with the
outbreak of war, for example, an alarming development to a Demo-
cratic president whose political base was the old Confederacy, while the
corresponding decline in customs revenues left the federal government
facing an unexpected deficit. But history suggested the effort to
preserve trade might drag the United States into the war. A century
earlier, as the Napoleonic Wars raged across Europe, the young United
States had faced pressure from both England and France to suspend
commerce with the other. Impressment of American sailors by the
Royal Navy had helped propel the United States into war with Great
Britain. Popular opinion in the United States, moreover, would tolerate