and prosperity threatened by events elsewhere in
the world.
Because of the realities of American politics,
the decision for war rested on the shoulders of
one man, President Wilson. Wilson’s secretary of
state, Robert Lansing, was a convinced interven-
tionist on the Allied side long before Wilson
reached the same conclusion. He saw the war in
Europe as a fight for democracy against the
warlike Prussian Junker spirit; Lansing’s views did
not much affect the president one way or the
other. He listened more to his friend and personal
emissary, Colonel Edward M. House. But Wilson
was very much his own man, supremely confident
of his good judgement at a time when in ques-
tions of foreign policy, of peace and of war, the
presidency was virtually supreme. There can be no
doubt that his personal sympathies lay with the
democracies. The overthrow of the tsar in March
1917 therefore removed one obstacle to the
US siding with the Allies. Nor can there be any
doubt that from the start of the war in Europe
the actual interpretation of American neutrality
enormously favoured the Allied cause in provid-
ing financial credit and war supplies, even though
Germany managed to secure some American
imports through the neutral Scandinavian ports
and Holland. Still, US policy was not even-
handed and did not exemplify Wilson’s own call
to the American people to ‘act and speak in
the true spirit of neutrality’. In November 1916,
Wilson narrowly won a second term as president,
using such slogans as ‘He kept us out of war’.
Was Wilson cynically playing politics when during
the campaign he declared, ‘I am not expecting
this country to get into war’, although five
months later he led the US into just that?
Wilson’s change of stance in April 1917, his
public enthusiasm for the rightness and justice of
the noble cause of war, was not what he felt; he
hated war, and his efforts to keep the US out of
the war before February 1917 were genuine. To
claim that the US did not behave as a proper
neutral from 1914 to 1917, that Wilson hoped
to frustrate a German victory by assisting the
Allies, that he legalistically stretched the concept
of America’s neutral rights, condoning British
infractions and harshly condemning German vio-
lations of these rights, does not prove that Wilson
desired or expected the US to enter the war and
was willing to sacrifice American lives for the
Allied cause. Wilson knew there was a risk of war.
From the outset the Germans had been left in no
doubt, and were indeed themselves in no doubt,
that to resume unrestricted submarine warfare
against American ships supplying the Allies would
lead to war with the US. Expecting to win the
war before America could carry military weight in
Europe, the kaiser, urged by the German mili-
tary, nevertheless on 9 January 1917 finally chose
to use this weapon.
Wilson had wished to save America’s strength
so as to ensure a just and permanent peace after
war was over. The war, he believed, would leave
the world exhausted, ready to listen to his words
of reason. To gain his end, he had attempted as
a first step to lead the warring nations to a com-
promise peace through his personal mediation.
But war was, nevertheless, eventually forced on
him by the German military leaders.
On 22 January 1917, after the failure of his
last effort to mediate, Wilson still proclaimed a
vision of a ‘peace without victory’ and a new
world order or League of Nations to ensure that
peace would prevail. Nine days later the Germans
publicly announced their intention to attack all
neutral shipping. Wilson could not ignore the
challenge, but his reaction stopped short of war.
The next blow to his attempt to keep out of war
was the revelation of the so-called Zimmermann
telegram, a message from the German foreign
minister to the Mexicans encouraging them to go
to war with the US and to recover their lost ter-
ritories in alliance with Germany. The telegram
had been intercepted by British intelligence and
published on 1 March. Anger and indignation
swept America. A few days later American cargo
ships were sunk without warning by German sub-
marines. Still Wilson hesitated. In the confiden-
tial documents and private papers of this time
there is no hint of enthusiasm for war on Wilson’s
part, though his Cabinet were now unanimously
in favour. But on 2 April 1917 Wilson submitted
to Congress a request to recognise that Germany
had made war on the US, which both Houses of
Congress approved on 6 April 1917.