Progressive Wilson & Diplomacy 1913-17

Wilson & Foreign Policy in 1913

      On March 11 at a Cabinet meeting President Wilson read a statement
that he wrote for the newspapers on the next day.
It began,

   One of the chief objects of my administration will be
to cultivate the friendship and deserve the confidence
of our sister republics of Central and South America,
and to promote in every proper and honorable way
the interests which are common
to the peoples of the two continents.
I earnestly desire the most cordial understanding
and cooperation between the peoples and leaders
of America and, therefore,
deem it my duty to make this brief statement.
   Cooperation is possible only when supported at every turn
by the orderly process of just government based upon law,
not upon arbitrary or irregular force.
We hold, as I am sure all thoughtful leaders of republican
government everywhere hold, that just government
rests always upon the consent of the governed,
and that there can be no freedom without order based
upon law and upon the public conscience and approval.
We shall look to make these principles the basis
of mutual intercourse, respect, and helpfulness
between our sister republics and ourselves….
   The United States has nothing to seek
in Central and South America except
the lasting interests of the peoples of the two continents,
the security of governments intended for the people
and for no special group or interest,
and the development of personal and trade relationships
between the two continents
which shall redound to the profit and advantage of both
and interfere with the rights and liberties of neither.78

      On March 18 Wilson announced the American government’s position
on the “Six Power Loan” in China negotiated by European bankers.
He repudiated American involvement in the loan to China because
he preferred to open “a door of friendship and mutual advantage.”
Senator La Follette noted that Bryan’s first important
act was to reject the “Dollar Diplomacy” policy of
President Taft and his Secretary of State Philander Knox.
On April 8 and 15 Wilson and the Cabinet endorsed Bryan’s peaceful diplomacy.
El Salvador was the first to sign a “cooling off” treaty on August 7.
On 2 May 1913 President Wilson recognized China’s new President
Yuan Shikai and welcomed China “into the family of nations.”
      At a Cabinet meeting on May 15 Secretary of War Garrison
urged defending the Philippines against Japan, and he implied
that Cabinet members had no value on military matters.
Secretary of Agriculture Houston described how
Secretary of State Bryan responded:

He got red in the face and was very emphatic.
He thundered out that army and navy officers could not
be trusted to say what we should or should not do,
till we actually got into a war;
that we were discussing not how to wage a war,
but how not to get into war, and that,
if ships were moved about in the East, it would incite war.79

The next day Wilson told the Joint Board of the Army and Navy
that if this happened again, he would abolish them.
Wilson’s policy on the Philippines was reflected on October 3
by newly appointed Governor-General Francis Burton Harrison who wrote,

   We regard ourselves as trustees acting
not for the advantage of the United States
but for the benefit of the people of the Philippine Islands.
Every step we take will be taken with a view
to the ultimate independence of the islands
and as a preparation for that independence;
and we hope to move toward that end
as rapidly as the safety and the permanent interests
of the islands will permit.
After each step taken experience will guide us to the next.
   The Administration will take one step at once.
It will give to the native citizens of the islands a majority
in the appointive commission, and thus in the Upper
as well as in the Lower House of the Legislature
a majority representation will be secured to them.
It will do this in the confident hope and expectation
that immediate proof will thereby be given,
in the action of the commission under the new arrangement,
of the political capacity of those native citizens
who have already come forward
to represent and to lead their people in affairs.80

      Wilson and Bryan were committed to a “community of interests
among nations” for “an age of settled peace and good will.”
On April 24 “President Wilson’s Peace Proposal” was presented
to the diplomats of foreign governments in Washington,
and Bryan added a memorandum proposing an international commission.
A year for investigation was suggested so that nations could cool off,
and Bryan promoted the project of the
“Treaties for the Advancement of General Peace.”
      Bryan in May made it clear to Nicaragua’s diplomats that
the Wilson administration had repudiated using the
“dollar diplomacy” of the Taft administration.
Wilson approved a treaty with Nicaragua on June 19.
To overcome opposition Bryan signed a revised treaty with
Nicaragua’s minister Emiliano Chamorro that included a payment
of $3 million for provisions in exchange for the United States
having an option on a Nicaraguan canal.
      On 27 October 1913 Wilson spoke to the
Southern Commercial Congress at Mobile, Alabama
about the Latin American nations.
He said,

   The future, ladies and gentlemen, is going to be
very different for this hemisphere from the past.
These States lying to the south of us,
which have always been our neighbors, will now be drawn
closer to us by innumerable ties, and, I hope, chief of all,
by the tie of a common understanding of each other.
Interest does not tie nations together;
it sometimes separates them.
But sympathy and understanding does unite them,
and I believe that by the new route
that is just about to be opened,
while we physically cut two continents asunder,
we spiritually unite them.
It is a spiritual union which we seek….
   Do you not see now what is about to happen?
These great tides which have been running along
parallels of latitude will now swing southward
athwart parallels of latitude, and that opening gate
at the Isthmus of Panama will open the world
to a commerce that she has not known before,
a commerce of intelligence,
of thought and sympathy between North and South.
The Latin American States, which, to their disadvantage,
have been off the main lines,
will now be on the main lines….
   There is one peculiarity about the history
of the Latin American States
which I am sure they are keenly aware of.
You hear of “concessions”
to foreign capitalists in Latin America.
You do not hear of concessions
to foreign capitalists in the United States.
They are not granted concessions.
They are invited to make investments.
The work is ours, though they are welcome to invest in it.
We do not ask them to supply the capital and do the work.
It is an invitation, not a privilege;
and States that are obliged,
because their territory does not lie within the main field
of modern enterprise and action,
to grant concessions are in this condition,
that foreign interests are apt to dominate
their domestic affairs, a condition of affairs
always dangerous and apt to become intolerable.
What these States are going to see, therefore,
is an emancipation from the subordination,
which has been inevitable, to foreign enterprise
and an assertion of the splendid character which,
in spite of these difficulties,
they have again and again been able to demonstrate.
The dignity, the courage, the self-possession,
the self-respect of the Latin American States,
their achievements in the face of
all these adverse circumstances, deserve
nothing but the admiration and applause of the world.
They have had harder bargains driven with them
in the matter of loans than any other peoples in the world.
Interest has been exacted of them that was not exacted
of anybody else, because the risk was said to be greater;
and then securities were taken that destroyed the risk—
an admirable arrangement
for those who were forcing the terms!
I rejoice in nothing so much as in the prospect that
they will now be emancipated from these conditions,
and we ought to be the first
to take part in assisting in that emancipation.
I think some of these gentlemen have already had occasion
to bear witness that the Department of State
in recent months has tried to serve them in that wise.
In the future they will draw closer and closer to us
because of circumstances of which I wish to speak
with moderation and, I hope, without indiscretion.
   We must prove ourselves their friends,
and champions upon terms of equality and honor….
We must show ourselves friends by comprehending their
interest whether it squares with our own interest or not.
It is a very perilous thing to determine the foreign policy
of a nation in the terms of material interest.
It not only is unfair to those with whom you are dealing,
but it is degrading as regards your own actions.
   Comprehension must be the soil in which shall grow
all the fruits of friendship, and there is a reason
and a compulsion lying behind all this which is dearer
than anything else to the thoughtful men of America.
I mean the development
of constitutional liberty in the world.
Human rights, national integrity, and opportunity
as against material interests—that, ladies and gentlemen,
is the issue which we now have to face.
I want to take this occasion to say that
the United States will never again
seek one additional foot of territory by conquest.
She will devote herself to showing that she knows how
to make honorable and fruitful use of the territory she has,
and she must regard it as one of the duties of friendship
to see that from no quarter are material interests
made superior to human liberty and national opportunity.
I say this, not with a single thought that
anyone will gainsay it, but merely to fix in our consciousness
what our real relationship with the rest of America is.
It is the relationship of a family of mankind devoted
to the development of true constitutional liberty.
We know that that is the soil
out of which the best enterprise springs.
We know that this is a cause
which we are making in common with our neighbors,
because we have had to make it for ourselves.
   Reference has been made here to-day to some
of the national problems which confront us as a Nation.
What is at the heart of all our national problems?
It is that we have seen the hand of material interest
sometimes about to close upon
our dearest rights and possessions.
We have seen material interests
threaten constitutional freedom in the United States.
Therefore we will now know how
to sympathize with those in the rest of America
who have to contend with such powers, not only
within their borders but from outside their borders also.
   I know what the response of the thought and heart
of America will be to the program I have outlined,
because America is created to realize a program like that.
This is not America because it is rich.
This is not America because it has set up for
a great population great opportunities of material prosperity.
America is a name which sounds in the ears of men
everywhere as a synonym with individual opportunity
because a synonym of individual liberty.
I would rather belong to a poor nation that was free than
to a rich nation that had ceased to be in love with liberty.
But we shall not be poor if we love liberty,
because the nation that loves liberty truly
sets every man free to do his best and be his best,
and that means the release of all the splendid energies
of a great people who think for themselves.
A nation of employees cannot be free
any more than a nation of employers can be.
   In emphasizing the points which must unite us
in sympathy and in spiritual interest
with the Latin American peoples
we are only emphasizing the points of our own life,
and we should prove ourselves untrue to our own traditions
if we proved ourselves untrue friends to them.
   Do not think, therefore, gentlemen, that the questions
of the day are mere questions of policy and diplomacy.
They are shot through with the principles of life.
We dare not turn from the principle that morality
and not expediency is the thing that must guide us
and that we will never condone iniquity
because it is most convenient to do so.
It seems to me that this is a day of infinite hope,
of confidence in a future greater than the past has been,
for I am fain to believe that
in spite of all the things that we wish to correct
the nineteenth century that now lies behind us
has brought us a long stage toward the time when, slowly
ascending the tedious climb that leads to the final uplands,
we shall get our ultimate view of the duties of mankind.
We have breasted a considerable part of that climb
and shall presently—it may be in a generation or two—
come out upon those great heights where there shines
unobstructed the light of the justice of God.81

      In 1913 Wilson sent the novelist Thomas Nelson Page
as ambassador to Italy, Frederick C. Penfield to Austria-Hungary in July,
and George W. Guthrie to Japan in August.
Wealthy Joseph E. Willard went to Madrid in October
when James W. Gerard was sent to Germany.
Henry Morgenthau Sr. went to the Ottoman Empire in December.
That month Wilson recalled Gerard for a consultation.
      In his first annual address to Congress on December 2 Woodrow Wilson
was the first President since John Adams to deliver his message in person.
He said,

   The country, I am thankful to say,
is at peace with all the world,
and many happy manifestations multiply
about us of a growing cordiality
and sense of community of interest among the nations,
foreshadowing an age of settled peace and good will.
More and more readily each decade do the nations
manifest their willingness to bind themselves
by solemn treaty to the processes of peace,
the processes of frankness and fair concession.
So far the United States has stood
at the front of such negotiations.
She will, I earnestly hope and confidently believe,
give fresh proof of her sincere adherence to the cause
of international friendship by ratifying the several treaties
of arbitration awaiting renewal by the Senate….
   I present to you, in addition, the urgent necessity
that special provision be made also for facilitating
the credits needed by the farmers of the country.
The pending currency bill does the farmers a great service.
It puts them upon an equal footing with other business men
and masters of enterprise, as it should;
and upon its passage they will find themselves
quit of many of the difficulties
which now hamper them in the field of credit….
   We can satisfy the obligations of generous justice
toward the people of Porto Rico by giving them
the ample and familiar rights and privileges
accorded our own citizens in our own territories
and our obligations toward the people of Hawaii
by perfecting the provisions for self-government
already granted them,
but in the Philippines we must go further.
We must hold steadily in view their ultimate independence,
and we must move toward the time of that independence
as steadily as the way can be cleared
and the foundations thoughtfully and permanently laid.82

      President Wilson and Secretary of State Bryan made appointments
to the State Department that needed more officers to be a first-rate power.
Bryan appointed the State Department’s Assistant, Chief Clerk,
and Solicitor, and he did not change the permanent staff.
Wilson named Columbia University’s expert on international law,
John Bassett Moore, to be Counselor.
Moore had advised Wilson that his deprecation of the political methods
of Huerta, who had murdered Mexico’s President Madero to take power,
should not prevent their dealing with the Mexican government.
Moore resigned because of this on 2 February 1914.
Wilson appointed Robert Lansing to replace Moore.
Lansing had handled four arbitration cases for the United States,
and for several other governments, and he co-founded
the American Society for International Law.
The Congress and President Wilson authorized spending $35 million
to build a railroad in the Alaska Territory from Seward
to the Bering and Matanuska coal fields.

Wilson & Mexican Revolution in 1913-14

      General Victoriano Huerta had seized control of Mexico in the coup
of February 1913 by murdering the previous President Madero and
executing Vice President Suarez, and Huerta became President on the 19th.
As President Wilson read aloud to the Cabinet on March 11 his statement
for the press, Secretary of Agriculture David Houston realized that
Wilson “was going to be his own Secretary of State.”
Houston noted, “Bryan listened with a smile on his face
and nodded approval as the President read.”83
Wilson warned the dictator Huerta, “We can have no sympathy with those
who seek to seize power of government to advance
their own personal interests or ambition.”84
      Julius Kruttschnitt was chairman of the board of the Southern Pacific Railroad,
and in early May he presented Judge Delbert J. Haff’s plan to Col. House that
was approved by officers of two copper companies in Mexico and by
Edward L. Doheny of the Mexican Petroleum Company.
This plan proposed recognizing Huerta if he agreed to hold an early election
in states he controlled, that Constitutionalists should stop fighting and hold
elections where they have control, and that
they should all support the president elected.
Haff also sent a letter to Wilson on May 12.
About that time Wilson sent this note to Mexico City for
Ambassador Henry Lane Wilson to present to President Huerta:

   Please represent to Huerta that our understanding was
that he was to seek an early constitutional settlement
of affairs in Mexico by means of a free popular election,
and that our delay and hesitation about recognition
has been due to the apparent doubt and uncertainty
as to what his plans and purposes really were.
Our sincere wish is to serve Mexico.
We stand ready to assist in any way we can
in a speedy and promising settlement
which will bring peace and the restoration of order.
The further continuation of the present state of affairs
will be fatal to Mexico and is likely to disturb
most dangerously all her international relations.
We are ready to recognize him now on condition that
all hostilities cease, that he call an election at an early date,
the twenty-sixth of October now mentioned being,
in our judgment, too remote, and that he absolutely
pledge himself as a condition of our action in his behalf
that a free and fair election be secured
by all proper machinery and safeguards.
Upon this understanding this Government will undertake
the friendly office of securing from the officials of the states
which are now refusing to acknowledge
the authority of Huerta’s government
an agreement to cease hostilities, maintain the status quo
until the election shall have been held,
and abide by the result of the election
if it be held freely and without arbitrary interference
of any kind as we have suggested.
It should be intimated to Huerta that
the Government of the United States is not likely
to assent to any method of settlement
secured by the Government of Mexico
making interest with European Governments
to lend their countenance and assistance in consideration
of special advantages accorded their citizens or subjects.85

      On May 23 Wilson spoke with Samuel G. Blythe, and the
conversation was published in The Saturday Evening Post.

My ideal is an orderly and righteous government in Mexico;
but my passion is for the submerged
85 percent of the people of that Republic
who are now struggling toward liberty….
   The settled policy of the President
in regard to Mexico will be as follows:
   First. The United States,
so long as Mr. Wilson is President,
will not seek to gain a foot of Mexican territory
in any way or under any pretext….
   Second. No personal aggrandizement
by American investors or adventurers or capitalists,
or exploitation of that country, will be permitted.
Legitimate business interests that seek to develop
rather than exploit will be encouraged.
   Third. A settlement of the agrarian land question
by constitutional means—such as that
followed in New Zealand, for example—will be insisted on….
   Every phase of the Mexican situation is based
on the condition that those in de facto control
of the government must be relieved of that control
before Mexico can realize her manifest destiny.86

      On May 27 US Secretary of State Bryan in
approval of the Kruttschnitt proposal wrote to Wilson,

The suggestion they make is a new one,
and it strikes me very favorably.
Instead of asking for the recognition of Huerta,
they suggest that Huerta be notified that
this Government will recognize a constitutional President,
if the Congress will call an election for an early date,
and supervise the election so as to give a fair chance
for an expression of the opinion of the people….
This seems to offer a way out.87

President Wilson agreed with that.
William Bayard Hale had helped compile Wilson’s book The New Freedom,
and Wilson sent him in late May to Mexico City to investigate.
Hale reported that Huerta was tyrannical and corrupt
and that his government was nearly bankrupt.
On June 14 Wilson sent new instructions to Ambassador Henry L. Wilson.
Although doubting the good faith of Huerta to safeguard
constitutional rights, President Wilson made the following offer:

   If the present provisional government of Mexico
will give the Government of the United States
satisfactory assurances that an early election will be held,
free from coercion or restraint,
that Huerta will observe his original promise
and not be a candidate at that election
and that an absolute amnesty will follow,
the Government of the United States will be glad to exercise
its good offices to secure a genuine armistice
and an acquiescence of all parties in the program.
It would be glad, also, to be instrumental
in bringing about any sort of conference
among the leaders of the several parties in Mexico
that might promise peace and accommodation.88

      Based on Hale’s reports President Wilson
recalled Henry Wilson from Mexico City on July 16.
The President summoned the former Governor John Lind of Minnesota
on July 28 and sent him as a confidential agent to present their offer to
Huerta’s provisional government with a long letter introducing him
that included for a satisfactory settlement these conditions:

   a) An immediate cessation of fighting throughout Mexico,
a definite armistice solemnly entered into
and scrupulously observed;
   b) Security given for an early and free election
in which all will agree to take part;
   c) The consent of General Huerta to bind himself
not to be a candidate for election as President
of the Republic at this election; and
   d) The agreement of all parties to abide by the results
of the election and cooperate in the most loyal way
in organizing and supporting the new administration….
   If Mexico can suggest any better way in which
to show our friendship, serve the people of Mexico,
and meet our international obligations,
we are more than willing to consider the suggestion.89

Lind left Washington with this on August 4, and
the next day newspapers printed his instructions.
On August 8 Huerta replied,

I will resist with arms any attempt by the United States
to interfere in the affairs of Mexico.
The limit of patience has been reached over the policy
of non-recognition made by the United States.
I intend to absolutely ignore Lind’s presence
unless he bears official credentials as Ambassador.90

      Lind reached Mexico City on August 11, and the next day
he was received by the Foreign Minister Federico Gamboa.
Lind presented President Wilson’s proposals on the 14th and
conveyed verbally that Wilson would never recognize Huerta.
On August 22 and 25 Lind promised that the US State Department
would provide a large loan to Mexico’s government if Huerta
would hold a fair election and not be a candidate.
On the 26th Gamboa asked Wilson not to interfere in Mexican affairs,
and he rejected the loan offer because Mexico’s dignity was at stake.
Lind left Mexico on August 27.
On that day President Wilson delivered to a joint session of Congress
a fairly long “Special Message on Mexico,” which included his
detailed instructions to Lind and much of Gamboa’s lengthy response.
Wilson said,

   We are glad to call ourselves the friend of Mexico,
and we shall, I hope, have many an occasion,
in happier times as well as in these days
of trouble and confusion, to show that
our friendship is genuine and disinterested,
capable of sacrifice and every generous manifestation.
The peace, prosperity, and contentment of Mexico
mean more, much more, to us than merely
an enlarged field for our commerce and enterprise….
   The position of outsiders is always particularly trying
and full of hazard where there is civil strife
and a whole country is upset.
We should earnestly urge all Americans to leave Mexico
at once, and should assist them to get away
in every way possible—not because we would mean
to slacken in the least our efforts to safeguard their lives
and their interests, but because it is imperative that
they should take no unnecessary risks
when it is physically possible for them to leave the country.
We should let everyone who assumes to exercise authority
in any part of Mexico know in the most unequivocal way
that we shall vigilantly watch the fortunes
of those Americans who cannot get away,
and shall hold those responsible
for their sufferings and losses to a definite reckoning.
That can be and will be made plain
beyond the possibility of a misunderstanding.
   For the rest, I deem it my duty to exercise the authority
conferred upon me by the law of March 14, 1912,
to see to it that neither side to the struggle now going on in
Mexico receive any assistance from this side of the border.
I shall follow the best practice of nations in the matter of
neutrality by forbidding the exportation of arms
or munitions of war of any kind from the United States
to any part of the Republic of Mexico—a policy suggested
by several interesting precedents and certainly dictated
by many manifest considerations of practical expediency.
We cannot in the circumstances be the partisans
of either party to the contest that now distracts Mexico,
or constitute ourselves the virtual umpire between them.
   I am happy to say that several of the great Governments
of the world have given this Government
their generous moral support in urging
upon the provisional authorities at the City of Mexico
the acceptance of our proffered good offices
in the spirit in which they were made.
We have not acted in this matter
under the ordinary principles of international obligation.
All the world expects us in such circumstances to act
as Mexico’s nearest friend and intimate adviser.
This is our immemorial relation towards her.
There is nowhere any serious question that
we have the moral right in the case or that we are acting
in the interest of a fair settlement and of good government,
not for the promotion of some selfish interest of our own.
If further motive were necessary than our own good will
towards a sister Republic and our own deep concern
to see peace and order prevail in Central America,
this consent of mankind to what we are attempting,
this attitude of the great nations of the world
towards what we may attempt in dealing
with this distressed people at our doors,
should make us feel the more solemnly bound
to go to the utmost length of patience
and forbearance in this painful and anxious business.
The steady pressure of moral force will before many days
break the barriers of pride and prejudice down,
and we shall triumph as Mexico’s friends sooner
than we could triumph as her enemies—
and how much more handsomely, with how much higher
and finer satisfactions of conscience and of honor!91

      On September 24 the Catholic Party in a convention nominated
Federico Gamboa for President of Mexico, and the US Chargé
Nelson O’Shaughnessy wrote that Huerta had promised “uninfluenced elections.”
Hale came to Washington, and on the 28th he warned Wilson not to ignore
the northern rebels in Mexico, the Revolutionary Constitutionalists.
Wilson conferred with Bryan who instructed Lind to tell the provisional government
to encourage the Constitutionalists to participate in the election on October 26.
Carranza was the First Chief of the Constitutionalists, and on October 7
he announced they would not participate in elections controlled by their enemies.
The next day their forces defeated Huerta’s at Torreón in northern Mexico.
Huerta reacted by imprisoning 110 deputies on October 10,
by dissolving the Mexican Congress the next day, and
by assuming dictatorial power until a new Congress was elected.
On October 23 he said he was not a candidate.
The British had extensive oil interests in Mexico, and
Bryan and Wilson criticized them for supporting Huerta.
In November the British Prime Minister Herbert Asquith
declared that his government would not intervene in Mexico.
The US Ambassador Page told the British that the United States
would take full responsibility for eliminating Huerta.
      The Mexican Congress that was elected on October 26
canceled the election for President because of insufficient votes.
They appointed Huerta an interim President until the elections in July 1914.
On November 1 President Wilson denounced the “recent coup d’état by Huerta,”
and he suggested a different provisional government if Huerta did not retire.
He warned that the United States government would
“cut the government of Huerta off” from outside aid.
O’Shaughnessy presented this ultimatum on November 3.
On the 8th Huerta sent a circular to the powers affirming his regime.
He wrote that he was determined “to remain in power until he had pacified Mexico.”
On November 10 Wilson sent Hale with proposals for Carranza and his Cabinet.
The next day Wilson telegraphed Hale,

We desire above all things else to avoid intervention.
If the lives and property of Americans
and all other foreigners are safeguarded
we believe intervention may be avoided.
If not we foresee we shall be forced to it.92

On November 14 Hale wrote to Secretary of State Bryan that
Carranza responded that the Constitutionalists only wanted the right
to purchase arms and munitions from the United States
but not American interference or assistance.
The First Chief Carranza declared,

The Constitutionalists refused to admit
the right of any nation on this continent
acting alone or in conjunction with European Powers
to interfere in the domestic affairs of the Mexican Republic;
that they held the idea of armed intervention from outside
as unconceivable and inadmissible
upon any grounds or upon any pretext.
He desired to warn the United States that
any attempt in this direction would rekindle old animosities
now almost forgotten and be utterly disastrous.93

       Huerta heard about the American talks with the Constitutionalists,
and he asked for a compromise on November 13.
The next day Wilson replied that the conditions were not to assemble
the new Congress and that Huerta would not be in the interim government.
Wilson promised to safeguard Huerta, and he stated that
a provisional government would be under the Mexican Constitution
of 1857 with free elections as early as possible.
On November 15 Huerta surrendered and promised
O’Shaughnessy a list of possible provisional presidents.
      On 3 February 1914 President Wilson revoked
the arms embargo for the Constitutionalists.
On April 9 the USS Dolphin near Tampico sent seven sailors to get supplies.
A Mexican colonel arrested them, and within an hour and a half General Zaragoza
released them and apologized for the breach of international protocol.
US Rear Admiral Henry Mayo sent an armed officer to demand a formal apology,
the arrest of the offending officer, and raising an American flag with a 21-gun salute.
Huerta apologized, arrested the colonel, and ordered an investigation,
but he refused to raise the US flag.
Chargé O’Shaughnessy asked for the exchange of salutes and
complained that a sailor from the USS Minnesota had been arrested.
On April 15 Wilson ordered all warships in the Pacific Fleet
to go to the west coast of Mexico.
On the 18th Bryan directed O’Shaughnessy to give Huerta an ultimatum.
Two days later Wilson met with the foreign affairs committees of the Congress,
and Republican Senator Lodge advised against
asking for a declaration of war against an individual.
Wilson informed them that the German freighter Ypiranga
was going to take cargo from Havana to Huerta’s arsenals,
and he argued that the US Navy seizing the customshouse
at Veracruz and the cargo on the wharf would not be an act of war.
On April 20 Wilson told Congress,

I therefore come to ask your approval that
I should use the armed forces of the United States
in such ways and to such an extent as may be necessary
to obtain from General Huerta and his adherents
the fullest recognition of the rights
and dignity of the United States
even amidst the distressing conditions
now unhappily obtaining in Mexico.94

The House of Representatives approved 337 to 37 the use of
armed forces to enforce demands on Victoriano Huerta.
Admiral Frank F. Fletcher was ordered to keep
war supplies away from the Huerta government.
Mexicans used artillery against the USS Prairie which fought back.
On April 22 Admiral Badger arrived at Veracruz with five battleships,
and 3,000 men went ashore before dawn.
In the battle they killed 126 Mexicans and wounded 195
while losing 19 dead and 71 wounded.
Huerta broke off diplomatic relations and sent soldiers to Veracruz.
Carranza called the invasion a violation of sovereignty,
and he demanded that the American military leave.
Mexicans attacked and looted six American consulates.
      Wilson decided to stop offensive operations,
and on April 25 he accepted an offer by Argentina, Brazil, and Chile
for their diplomats to mediate in Washington.
Carranza was angry about the American invasion and
demanded that American forces leave Vera Cruz.
Wilson then re-instated the arms embargo on the Constitutionalists.
Anti-American riots erupted in several Latin American capitals.
British, French, and German foreign offices persuaded Huerta
to attend the mediation, and he agreed on April 27.
Huerta was cooperative, and Wilson’s program was completed by May 20
for a cessation of hostilities and a provisional government by the Constitutionalists.
That day the delegates and mediators moved to Niagara Falls, Canada
and worked on a comprehensive settlement for two weeks.
On June 3 Wilson made more suggestions for the settlement.
Delegates signed a final agreement on June 24.
The provisional government would proclaim a
political amnesty and compensation for foreigners’ losses.
Carranza refused to negotiate, and the conferees adjourned on July 2.
      Huerta appointed Chief Justice Francisco Carbajal
to the provisional government on July 10.
Huerta yielded to him on July 15 and left the capital
with eight of his generals for exile in Europe.
On July 23 Wilson wrote a warning that was delivered to Carranza
who replied that he would protect foreigners and legitimate contracts
except for Huertistas and the Church.
Wilson warned him again.
On August 2 Carranza demanded the unconditional surrender of Mexico City,
and on the 13th Carbajal’s representatives
made an agreement with General Obregón.
Wilson ordered the US soldiers to withdraw from Veracruz,
and 5,000 troops and marines boarded eight transports and left on November 23.

Wilson & Trusts in 1914

      The United States Attorney General James C. McReynolds had begun
in July 1913 a law suit against the powerful Bell telephone system,
the American Telephone & Telegraph Company (A.T.&T.), to prevent
them from getting a monopoly in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho.
The company’s directors accepted a consent decree by McReynolds that
divided the ownership and control over the Western Union Telegraph Company.
They would make no more acquisitions of competing telephone companies,
and they would open long-distance lines to independent companies.
A.T.&T. also agreed to restore telephone systems
with independent owners in the Pacific Northwest.
      On 20 January 1914 President Wilson in a Special Message
on Trusts and Monopolies to a Joint Session of Congress said,

   In the matter of the currency it cleared suddenly
and very happily after the much-debated Act was passed;
in respect of the monopolies which have multiplied about us
and in regard to the various means by which
they have been organized and maintained
it seems to be coming to a clear and all but universal
agreement in anticipation of our action,
as if by way of preparation, making the way easier to see
and easier to set out upon with confidence
and without confusion of counsel….
   The average business man is convinced that
the ways of liberty are also the ways of peace
and the ways of success as well;
and at last the masters of business on the great scale
have begun to yield their preference and purpose,
perhaps their judgment also, in honorable surrender.
   What we are purposing to do, therefore, is, happily,
not to hamper or interfere with business
as enlightened business men prefer to do it,
or in any sense to put it under the ban.
The antagonism between business and government is over.
We are now about to give expression
to the best business judgment of America, to what we know
to be the business conscience and honor of the land.
The Government and business men are ready
to meet each other half-way in a common effort to square
business methods with both public opinion and the law….
   We are all agreed that
“private monopoly is indefensible and intolerable,”
and our program is founded upon that conviction….
   The business of the country awaits also, has long awaited
and has suffered because it could not obtain,
further and more explicit legislative definition
of the policy and meaning of the existing antitrust law….
   Until these things are done, conscientious business men
the country over will be unsatisfied.
They are in these things our mentors and colleagues.
We are now about to write the additional articles
of our constitution of peace,
the peace that is honor and freedom and prosperity.95

      The Wilson administration next brought a suit
against the New York, New Haven, & Hartford Railroad
which monopolized transportation in New England.
They charged the directors for violating the Sherman Act.
J. P. Morgan had acquired control of the prosperous New Haven in 1903.
McReynolds hired the lawyer Thomas W. Gregory
on 20 May 1913 to handle the New Haven case.
In negotiations the New Haven directors agreed to dispose
of their holdings in the Boston & Maine, trolley systems,
and some Long Island Sound steamship lines.
Later the directors refused to comply, warning that
it would cause a catastrophic panic in New England.
On 21 July 1914 McReynolds wrote to President Wilson about the case.
That day Wilson replied writing,

that a proceeding in equity be filed,
seeking the dissolution of the unlawful monopoly
of transportation facilities in New England
now sought to be maintained by the New York,
New Haven & Hartford Railroad Company,
and that the criminal aspects of the case
be laid before a Grand Jury.96

Wilson wanted a peaceful settlement to avoid a trial, and
negotiations by Col. House and McReynolds with Richard Olney
and former Senator Murray Crane produced an agreement on August 11.
Attorney General McReynolds withdrew the suit
and accepted a consent decree on October 17.
      Henry D. Clayton of Alabama was chairman of the House judiciary committee,
and Wilson persuaded him not to run for the Senate so that he could complete
the anti-trust bill which Clayton introduced in the House on 14 April 1914.
This would outlaw unfair trade practices such as price-cutting to eliminate competition,
refusing to sell to responsible persons and firms, and tying contracts.
The law would also make owners and directors criminally responsible for violations,
and it prohibited corporations from having stock
in other companies in order to reduce competition.
Interlocking directorates were banned for big banks and competing railroads,
and private parties could sue for damages under the Sherman Antitrust Act.
      A revised Interstate Trade Commission bill had been introduced on March 16.
On May 12 the caucus of House Democrats bound
themselves to support Wilson’s programs.
Wilson and Samuel Gompers compromised on the labor issues on May 26,
and amendments were added to the Clayton bill by June 2.
On the 5th the House passed the bills by Clayton, Covington, and Rayburn.
On June 10 Wilson invited Louis Brandeis, Rep. Raymond B. Stevens,
and the New York lawyer George Rublee and asked them to include
the Stevens bill as an amendment to the Covington bill.
This improved the Federal Trade Commission bill,
and Wilson signed it on September 26.
The Clayton bill was weakened by the conference report and
was approved by the Senate 35-24 and by the House 245-52,
and Wilson signed it on October 15.
      Progressives on a House public lands committee stopped the
Morgan-Guggenheim syndicate that was called “Cunningham Claims”
from getting larger claims than the smaller operators.
Interior Secretary Franklin K. Lane said this
prevented a monopoly and assured development.
      In 1914 the United States Senate renewed the limited arbitration treaties
that New York’s Senator Elihu Root had negotiated with 24 nations.
For doing that work Root had received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1912.
      Wilson wrote to the chairman of the Civil Service Commission
J. A. McIlhenny on 4 March 1914,

   I have been giving a good deal of thought recently
to the matter of the women employees
joining in the agitation for woman suffrage.
It seems to me that we ought to be
as liberal as possible in this matter,
and I very respectfully suggest a ruling like this:
   If the employees in a department conform
to the regulations of the Civil Service governing such action,
there is no reason why they should not join
a suffrage society or take part in the work
organized by such society.97

      President Wilson had irregular press conferences in 1914.
At the one on March 19 he blamed the reporters for spreading
gossip about his wife and three daughters, saying,

I am a public character for the time being;
but the ladies of my household are not servants
of the government, and they are not public characters.
I deeply resent the treatment they are receiving.98

Wilson spoke to the National Press Club in Washington on March 20 and said,

I am listening; I am diligently trying to collect all the brains
that are borrowable in order that I will not make more
blunders than it is inevitable that a man should make
who has great limitations of knowledge and capacity.99

      British Foreign Minister Edward Grey had protested the exemption
for US coastal ships and lower tolls in the Panama Canal for their ships
in foreign trade, and the British Ambassador conveyed this
to the US State Department on 9 December 1912.
Taft’s Administration had not agreed with the charges.
Col. House at a meeting in New York learned from Joseph H. Choate
who negotiated the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty, and
Senator Elihu Root informed him that the British were correct.
Wilson agreed and asked Grey to wait until the tariff
and currency bills were not before Congress.
      On 26 January 1914 Wilson met with the Senate foreign relations committee,
and on February 5 he made it known that a repeal of the tolls policy was needed.
After House Majority Leader Underwood announced on March 3
that he would oppose repeal, Wilson spoke to Congress
on March 5 demanding a repeal of the exemption.
On March 11 the British ratified the Anglo-American arbitration treaty of 1908.
House Speaker Champ Clark opposed the repeal on March 26.
Yet the House approved the Sims bill for repeal on March 31 by a vote of
247 to 162, and the Senate passed the bill 50 to 35 on June 11.
      The ambitious Treasury Secretary William McAdoo married
the Wilsons’ youngest daughter Eleanor at the White House on May 7.
      War Secretary Garrison in January 1914 had proposed a bill
to empower him to build dams on rivers and
establish machinery to regulate electric power rates.
The bill introduced by the House interstate commerce committee chairman,
William C. Adamson of Georgia, was criticized
by conservationists for granting perpetual leases.
On July 2 Wilson summoned Garrison, Lane, and Adamson to the White House,
and they amended the bill so that it passed the House with a large majority;
but the Senate rejected the bill and eventually
approved one by Senator James K. Shields of Tennessee.
The House developed the Ferris bill in 1915,
and the Senate kept supporting the Shields bill in 1916.
The Water Power Act would not pass until 1920.
      In a speech at Independence Hall in Philadelphia on 4 July 1914 Wilson said,

   The way to success in this great country
with its fair judgments is to show that
you are not afraid of anybody
except God and his final verdict.
If I did not believe that, I would not believe in democracy.
If I did not believe that, I would not believe
that people can govern themselves.
If I did not believe that the moral judgment would be
the last judgment, the final judgment,
in the minds of men as well as at the tribunal of God,
I could not believe in popular government.
But I do believe these things, and, therefore,
I earnestly believe in the democracy not only of America
but of every awakened people that wishes and intends
to govern and control its own affairs….
   My dream is that as the years go on
and the world knows more and more of America
it will also drink at these fountains of youth and renewal;
that it also will turn to America for those moral inspirations
which lie at the basis of all freedom;
that the world will never fear America
unless it feels that it is engaged in some enterprise
which is inconsistent with the rights of humanity;
and that America will come into the full light of the day
when all shall know that she puts human rights
above all other rights and that her flag
is the flag not only of America but of humanity.100

      Wilson sent rich William G. Sharp to be Ambassador to France in 1914.
Senator Lewis of Illinois persuaded Wilson and Bryan
to appoint editor Henry M. Pindell to Russia,
and his extravagant trips caused a scandal and his being replaced.
Bryan appointed Democrats and sent to Latin America older men
who did not know Spanish to replace Roosevelt’s younger men
who knew Spanish because they were chosen by civil service tests.
      Coal miners in Colorado had gone on strike in 1903 and 1904.
Conditions became worse, and early in 1913 the United Mine Workers
organized a strike that began on September 23
with more than 80% of the miners walking out.
Colorado’s Gov. Elias M. Ammons responded to demands from operators
and business leaders, and he sent the National Guard to the mines on October 28.
Bitterness and suspicion caused frequent clashes and the Ludlow Massacre
of 20 April 1914 when state troops burned a tent community of 1,200
at Ludlow killing 8 strikers, 2 mothers, and 11 children.
Wilson asked John D. Rockefeller Jr. to accept federal arbitration in order to
prevent the need for federal troops, but his son and a spokesman refused.
On April 28 Wilson sent the army to occupy the strike community,
and peace returned to the area.
After their resources diminished, the United Mine Workers
ended the strike on December 10.
War Secretary Garrison and army commanders cooperated
with Labor officials to end the occupation in January 1915.
      Col. House had explained his plan to Wilson on 2 December 1913
for a diplomatic visit to Germany and Britain
to bring them together to prevent a major war.
House left Berlin on 2 June 1914 and went to London, and they improved
British-German relations and planned to ease European tensions.
By that June over 30 nations with 80% of the world population
had signed Bryan’s treaties including most of Europe but not Germany.
They agreed to submit their international
disputes to a tribunal during their investigation.

Wilson’s Neutrality & the Great War in 1914

      A business depression began in late 1913
and lasted through 1914 and into 1915.
J. P. Morgan visited Wilson on 2 July 1914,
and Wilson promised to aid legitimate businesses.
Six days later bankers from Illinois and Henry Ford of Detroit
came to talk with Wilson who lifted their spirits.
Wilson had nominated Paul M. Warburg and Thomas D. Jones
for the Federal Reserve Board on June 15.
The Senate banking committee investigated Jones in early July,
and they questioned him on the 6th.
Warburg asked Wilson to withdraw his name on July 3.
Five days later Wilson responded,

   It would be particularly unfair to the Democratic Party
and the Senate itself to regard it
as the enemy of business, big or little.
I am sure it does not regard a man as an object of suspicion
merely because he has been connected
with great business enterprises.
It knows that the business of the country
has been chiefly promoted in recent years
by enterprises organized on a great scale
and that the vast majority of the men
connected with what we have come to call big business
are honest, incorruptible and patriotic.101

In a letter to T. D. Jones that the New York Times printed on July 24
Wilson wrote,

   I believe that the judgment and desire of the country
cry out for a new temper in affairs.
The time has come when discriminations
against particular classes of men should be
absolutely laid aside and discarded
as unworthy of the counsels of a great people.
The effort for genuine social justice, for peace which is
founded in common understanding and for prosperity,
the prosperity of co-operation and mutual trust
and confidence, should be a united effort,
without partisan prejudice or class antagonism.
It is only of such just and noble elements that
the welfare of a great country can be compounded.
We have breathed already too long
the air of suspicion and distrust.
The progress of reform is not retarded
by generosity and fairness.102

      Serbian nationalists on June 28 assassinated the apparent
Austrian heir Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife.
Austria-Hungary declared war against Serbia on July 28.
Financial markets panicked, and the New York Stock Exchange closed on July 31.
On August 1 Germany declared war against Russia.
On the 3rd Germany declared war on France, and Italy declared neutrality.
On August 4 Germany invaded Belgium,
and the British declared war against Germany.
The Great War had begun.
At a press conference on August 3 President Wilson had indicated that
the United States would be neutral in the emerging European war
so that he could work for peace.
He said, “I want to have the pride of feeling that America,
if nobody else has her self-possession to help the rest of the world.”103
      On August 4 President Wilson sent to the
belligerent nations the following message:

   As official head of one of the powers signatory
to The Hague Convention, I feel it to be my privilege
and my duty under article three of that Convention
to say to you in a spirit of most earnest friendship that
I should welcome an opportunity to act in the interest
of European peace, either now or at any other time
that might be thought more suitable, as an occasion
to serve you and all concerned in a way that would
afford me lasting cause for gratitude and happiness.104

Wilson proclaimed neutrality, and he listed eleven acts in the
United States Penal Code that are prohibited by a 1909 law.
He wrote to Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria-Hungary,
Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, France’s President Poincaré,
Britain’s King George V, and Tsar Nicholas II of Russia.
Wilson offered to “act in the interest of European peace,
either now or at any other time that might be thought more suitable.”105
The Senate had 21 of Bryan’s “cooling off” treaties pending,
and Wilson urged their ratification.
The Great War in Europe had begun in August,
and in the spring of 1915 war purchases revived American economies.
      On August 6 the First Lady Ellen Wilson told her husband that
her last wish was for Congress to approve the slum-clearance bill
for the alleys that she used to visit to help the poor.
The Senate passed the bill that day, and
she died of Bright’s disease in the afternoon.
Wilson mourned and talked about her.
He wrote to his best advisor Col. House,

You are the only person in the world
with whom I can discuss everything.
There are some I can tell one thing and others another,
but you are the only one to whom
I can make an entire clearance of mind.106

      The National Civil Service Reform League and editors criticized
Secretary of State Bryan for corrupting the foreign service,
and they made fun of his refusal to serve alcohol and his “grape-juice diplomacy.”
Bryan was condemned for giving lectures for pay bringing in $7,000 a year.
The New York World offered to pay him $8,000
to do his duties and give up lecturing for profit.
The Great War that began in August complicated
the US State Department’s problems.
Later the New York World admitted that Bryan was a hard worker
and had not failed “to promote the common good.”
James Sullivan as Minister to the Dominican Republic
caused the biggest scandal in a transfer of funds.
Not until the New York World exposed the corruption on 8 December 1914
did Wilson have War Secretary Garrison investigate.
Sullivan finally resigned on 8 July 1915.
      In early August 1914 the House of Morgan asked
if the State Department could loan $100 million to France.
Bryan was opposed, but others argued that the laws of war
allowed neutrals to do business with belligerents.
Wilson agreed with Bryan, and on August 15 he banned loans to the belligerents.
      As the Great War began in early August, Wilson asked Congres
to provide funds to help Americans fleeing from the war in Europe.
By August 8 they had shipped about $8,000,000 in gold
from the US Treasury and New York banks.
Wilson and Treasury Secretary McAdoo also arranged by August 4
for New York banks to send $80,000,000 to prevent five bank failures.
      On 10 August 1914 Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan
advised Wilson that loans to belligerents would violate neutrality arguing,

Money is the worst of all contrabands
because it commands everything else….
This influence would make it all the more difficult for us
to maintain neutrality, as our action on various questions
that would arise would affect one side or the other,
and powerful financial interests
would be thrown into the balance….
If the United States were to loan money
to the belligerent nations,
it would be less able to assist the neutrals….
We are under special obligation to render such service
as we can to South and Central America;
it would be difficult to do this if all of our surplus money
was flowing into the war chests of Europe.107

On August 15 Wilson gave the press this statement:

   There is no reason why loans should not be made
to the Governments of neutral nations,
but in the judgment of this Government
loans by American bankers to any foreign nation
which is at war is inconsistent
with the true spirit of neutrality.108

      Wilson received a letter dated August 14 from
Charles W. Eliot that he shared with the Cabinet.
The educator urged the United States to join an alliance
to punish offending nations to guarantee peace and
create an international force of Europe in a federation to cut armaments.
Wilson said,

It is perfectly obvious that
this war will vitally change the relationship of nations.
Four things will be essential to the re-establishment
in the world after peace is made.109

The first condition was that no nation should be allowed to acquire land by conquest.
Second, the rights of small and large nations must be equal.
Third, war munitions must be under public control instead of by citizens
who might manipulate their manufacture to gain profit.
The fourth was:

There must be an association of the nations,
all bound together for the protection of the integrity of each,
so that any one nation breaking from this bond
will bring upon herself war;
that is to say, punishment, automatically.110

      Wilson had met with four leaders from Congress on July 31 and asked
for legislation to provide more ships to carry American commerce to the world.
They passed the law, and Wilson signed it on August 18.
      On August 19 President Wilson in the Senate made
“An Appeal to the American People.”
This is his entire speech:

My Fellow-Countrymen:
   I suppose that every thoughtful man in America
has asked himself, during these last troubled weeks,
what influence the European war may exert
upon the United States, and I take the liberty
of addressing a few words to you in order to point out that
it is entirely within our own choice what its effects upon us
will be and to urge very earnestly upon you
the sort of speech and conduct which
will best safeguard the Nation against distress and disaster.
   The effect of the war upon the United States
will depend upon what American citizens say and do.
Every man who really loves America
will act and speak in the true spirit of neutrality,
which is the spirit of impartiality
and fairness and friendliness to all concerned.
The spirit of the Nation in this critical matter
will be determined largely by what individuals and society
and those gathered in public meetings do and say,
upon what newspapers and magazines contain,
upon what ministers utter in their pulpits,
and men proclaim as their opinions on the street.
   The people of the United States are drawn
from many nations, and chiefly from the nations now at war.
It is natural and inevitable that there should be
the utmost variety of sympathy and desire among them
with regard to the issues and circumstances of the conflict.
Some will wish one nation, others another,
to succeed in the momentous struggle.
It will be easy to excite passion and difficult to allay it.
Those responsible for exciting it will assume
a heavy responsibility, responsibility for no less a thing
than that the people of the United States,
whose love of their country and whose loyalty
to its Government should unite them as Americans all,
bound in honor and affection to think first of her
and her interests, may be divided in camps
of hostile opinion, hot against each other, involved
in the war itself in impulse and opinion if not in action.
   Such divisions among us would be fatal
to our peace of mind and might seriously stand in the way
of the proper performance of our duty
as the one great nation at peace,
the one people holding itself ready to play a part
of impartial mediation and speak the counsels of peace
and accommodation, not as a partisan, but as a friend.
   I venture, therefore, my fellow countrymen, to speak
a solemn word of warning to you against that deepest,
most subtle, most essential breach of neutrality which may
spring out of partisanship, out of passionately taking sides.
The United States must be neutral in fact as well as in name
during these days that are to try men’s souls.
We must be impartial in thought as well as in action,
must put a curb upon our sentiments as well as
upon every transaction that might be construed as a
preference of one party to the struggle before another.
   My thought is of America.
I am speaking, I feel sure, the earnest wish and purpose
of every thoughtful American that this great country of ours,
which is, of course, the first in our thoughts
and in our hearts, 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;
a Nation that neither sits in judgment upon others
nor is disturbed in her own counsels
and which keeps herself fit and free to do
what is honest and disinterested
and truly serviceable for the peace of the world.
   Shall we not resolve to put upon ourselves the restraints
which will bring to our people the happiness and the great
and lasting influence for peace we covet for them?111

Also on the 19th Wilson nominated for the US Supreme Court
his Attorney General James C. McReynolds,
who had prosecuted the tobacco trust.
The Senate confirmed him on August 29,
and he joined the Court on October 12.
McReynolds was from Tennessee, and he would oppose
most of Franklin’s Roosevelt’s New Deal.
      On 4 September 1914 Wilson opened the Democratic
campaign with a public letter, writing,

   In view of the unlooked-for international situation
our duty has taken on an unexpected aspect.
Every patriotic man ought now to “stay on his job”
until the crisis is passed….
My job, as I now know, can be done best
only if I devote my whole thought and attention to it,
and think of nothing but the duties of the hour.
I am not at liberty, and shall not be, so far as
I can now see, to turn away from those duties
to undertake any kind of political canvass.112

      On September 8 President Wilson proclaimed October 4
as a Day of Prayer and Supplication for Peace in Europe, saying,

   WHEREAS great nations of the world have taken up arms
against one another and war now draws millions of men
into battle whom the counsel of statesmen
have not been able to save from the terrible sacrifice;
   And whereas in this as in all things it is our privilege
and duty to seek counsel and succor of Almighty God,
humbling ourselves before Him, confessing our weakness
and our lack of any wisdom equal to these things;
   And whereas it is the especial wish and longing
of the people of the United States, in prayer and counsel
and all friendliness, to serve the cause of peace:
   Therefore I, Woodrow Wilson,
President of the United States of America, do designate
Sunday, the 4th day of October next, a day of prayer
and supplication and do request all God-fearing persons
to repair on that day to their places of worship
there to unite their petitions to Almighty God that,
overruling the counsel of men, setting straight the things
they cannot govern or alter, taking pity on the nations
now in the throes of conflict, in His mercy and goodness,
showing a way where men can see none,
He vouchsafe His children healing peace again
and restore once more that concord among men and nations
without which there can be neither happiness
nor true friendship nor any wholesome fruit of toil
or thought in the world; praying also to this end that
He forgive us our sins, our ignorance of His holy will,
our willfulness and many errors, and lead us in the paths
of obedience to places of vision and to thoughts
and counsels that purge and make wise.
   In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and
caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.113

      On September 14 the British Ambassador in Washington
signed a conciliation treaty with Secretary of State Bryan.
The French ambassador Jean Jules Jusserand got a banker to persuade
the State Department that armies needed supplies
and would purchase them wherever they could.
Instead of loans the American banks could extend lines of credit.
In the next two and half years before the United States entered the war,
the American banks provided $2.3 billion of financing for the Allies
while only 1% of that went to Germany.
      Wilson spoke to Belgian diplomats, and on September 17
the New York Times reported that he said,

Presently, I pray God very soon, this war will be over.
The day of accounting will then come
when I take it for granted the nations of Europe
will assemble to determine a settlement.
Where wrongs have been committed, their consequences
and the relative responsibility involved will be assessed.
The nations of the world have fortunately by agreement
made a plan for such a reckoning and settlement.
What such a plan cannot compass, the opinion of mankind,
the final arbiter in all such matters, will supply.
It would be unwise,
it would be premature for a single government,
however fortunately separated from the present struggle,
it would even be inconsistent with the neutral position
of any nation which like this one has no part in the contest,
to form or express a final judgment.114

      Germans sank an English cruiser Pathfinder on 5 September 1914,
and on the 22nd they destroyed three old English cruisers.
There followed much negotiation between the neutral United States
and the belligerents Germany and Britain.
      On October 17 Wilson issued a long public letter to Rep. Underwood
reviewing the accomplishments of the Congress since March 1913,
and he asked voters to re-elect the Democratic Congress.
He wrote,

   I look forward with confidence to the elections.
The voters of the United States
have never failed to reward real service.
They have never failed to sustain a Congress
and Administration that were seeking, as this Congress
and, I believe, this Administration, have sought,
to render them a permanent and disinterested benefit
in the shape of reformed and rectified laws.115

In the elections on November 3 the Democrats in the
House of Representatives lost 61 seats retaining a 230-196 majority,
and they added three more Democrats in the Senate for a 56-39 majority.
      Col. House avoided publicity so that he could retain Wilson’s confidence.
On November 6 House wrote in his Diary that
Wilson felt justified in lying to reporters about foreign policy.
On November 17 Wilson wrote to McAdoo,
“Our task is henceforth to work, not for any single interest,
but for all the interests of the country as a united whole.”116
On December 9 Wilson got a heavy cold, and on the 23rd he and his family
went to the Gulf Coast of Mississippi to rest for two weeks.
      Wilson in November advised the acting Secretary of State Lansing
that sending submarines even in parts to England
would be against the spirit of neutrality.
In November about fifty Congressmen opposed increasing the armed forces.
      Col. House was working on a Pan-American pact,
and he asked Wilson to draft a statement of purposes.
On December 6 Wilson wrote,

   1st. Mutual guarantees of political independence
under republican form of government
and mutual guarantees of territorial integrity.
   2nd. Mutual agreement that the Government
of each of the contracting parties acquire
complete control within its jurisdiction
of the manufacture and sale of munitions of war.117

      In his Second Annual Address to Congress on December 8 Wilson said,

   And there is another great piece of legislation
which awaits and should receive the sanction of the Senate:
I mean the bill which gives a larger measure
of self-government to the people of the Philippines.
How better, in this time of anxious questioning
and perplexed policy, could we show our confidence
in the principles of liberty, as the source as well as
the expression of life, how better could we demonstrate
our own self-possession and steadfastness in the courses
of justice and disinterestedness than by thus going calmly
forward to fulfill our promises to a dependent people,
who will now look more anxiously than ever to see whether
we have indeed the liberality, the unselfishness,
the courage, the faith we have boasted and professed.
I cannot believe that the Senate will let this great measure
of constructive justice await the action of another Congress.
Its passage would nobly crown
the record of these two years of memorable labor….
   It may seem a reversal of the natural order of things,
but it is true, that the routes of trade
must be actually opened—by many ships
and regular sailings and moderate charges—
before streams of merchandise
will flow freely and profitably through them.
   Hence the pending shipping bill, discussed
at the last session but as yet passed by neither House….
   We are at peace with all the world.
No one who speaks counsel based on fact
or drawn from a just and candid interpretation of realities
can say that there is reason to fear
that from any quarter our independence
or the integrity of our territory is threatened.
Dread of the power of any other nation we are incapable of.
We are not jealous of rivalry in the fields of commerce
or of any other peaceful achievement.
We mean to live our own lives as we will;
but we mean also to let live.
We are, indeed, a true friend to all the nations of the world,
because we threaten none, covet the possessions of none,
desire the overthrow of none.
Our friendship can be accepted
and is accepted without reservation,
because it is offered in a spirit and for a purpose
which no one need ever question or suspect.
Therein lies our greatness.
We are the champions of peace and of concord.
And we should be very jealous of this distinction
which we have sought to earn.
Just now we should be particularly jealous of it
because it is our dearest present hope that
this character and reputation may presently,
in God’s providence, bring us an opportunity
such as has seldom been vouchsafed any nation,
the opportunity to counsel and obtain peace in the world
and reconciliation and a healing settlement of many a matter
that has cooled and interrupted the friendship of nations.
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.
   From the first we have had a clear and settled policy
with regard to military establishments.
We never have had, and while we retain
our present principles and ideals
we never shall have, a large standing army.
If asked, “Are you ready to defend yourselves?”
we reply, “Most assuredly, to the utmost;
and yet we shall not turn America into a military camp.”
We will not ask our young men to spend the best years
of their lives making soldiers of themselves.
There is another sort of energy in us.
It will know how to declare itself
and make itself effective should occasion arise.
And especially when half the world is on fire
we shall be careful to make our moral insurance
against the spread of the conflagration
very definite and certain and adequate indeed….
   It is right, too, that the National Guard of the States
should be developed and strengthened
by every means which is not inconsistent
with our obligations to our own people
or with the established policy of our Government….
   A powerful navy we have always regarded
as our proper and natural means of defense,
and it has always been of defense that we have thought,
never of aggression or of conquest….
   We shall not alter our attitude toward it
because some amongst us are nervous and excited.
We shall easily and sensibly agree upon a policy of defense.
The question has not changed its aspects
because the times are not normal.
Our policy will not be for an occasion.
It will be conceived as a permanent and settled thing,
which we will pursue at all seasons,
without haste and after a fashion perfectly consistent
with the peace of the world, the abiding friendship of states,
and the unhampered freedom of all with whom we deal….
    I close, as I began, by reminding you of the great tasks
and duties of peace which challenge our best powers
and invite us to build what will last,
the tasks to which we can address ourselves now
and at all times with free-hearted zest and
with all the finest gifts of constructive wisdom we possess.
To develop our life and our resources;
to supply our own people, and the people of the world
as their need arises, from the abundant plenty of our fields
and our marts of trade to enrich the commerce
of our own States and of the world with the products
of our mines, our farms, and our factories,
with the creations of our thought
and the fruits of our character,
this is what will hold our attention and our enthusiasm
steadily, now and in the years to come,
as we strive to show in our life as a nation
what liberty and the inspirations of an emancipated spirit
may do for men and for societies, for individuals,
for states, and for mankind.118

On December 3 Frank I. Cobb wrote in the New York World,

   Exactly ninety years to a day after James Monroe
in a message to Congress defined the Monroe Doctrine,
Woodrow Wilson in an address to Congress
defined the Wilson Doctrine.
   The former was designed to protect
the Latin-American republics from European colonization.
The latter is designed
to save these republics from recurrent anarchy….
   As the Monroe Doctrine was aimed at the Holy Alliance,
so the Wilson Doctrine is aimed
at the professional revolutionists,
the corrupting concessionaires
and the corrupt dictators of all Latin America….
   It is a bold doctrine and a radical doctrine.
Whether it ever gains the force and universal acceptance
of the Monroe Doctrine must depend upon
the attitude of subsequent administrations.119

      In December the League to Limit Armament was founded by
Oswald Garrison Villard, George Foster Peabody, Jane Addams,
Lillian D. Wald, and Dr. Charles E. Jefferson.
A few weeks later Addams and the woman suffrage leader
Carrie Chapman Catt organized the Woman’s Peace Party,
and they gained access to President Wilson who supported them early in 1915.

Wilson’s Neutrality & the Great War in 1915

      On 8 January 1915 President Wilson gave the
Jackson Day Address to Democrats at Indianapolis.
He noted that about one-third of the Republican Party is progressive
while about two-thirds of the Democrats are progressive.
He criticized the selfishness of Republicans who “put additional profits
into the hands of those who are already getting the greater part of the profits.”
He concluded,

I thank God that those who believe in America,
who try to serve her people, are likely to be also
what America herself from the first
hoped and meant to be—the servant of mankind.120

      On January 28 Wilson vetoed the Burnett bill
restricting foreign immigrants who failed a literacy test.
On that day the American ship William P. Frye was taking wheat
from Seattle to England when Germans from a Navy raider
boarded and forced the crew to throw the cargo overboard.
Then they scuttled the ship.
The crew and passengers were taken prisoners.
The Germans had captured 350 people with most from eleven other ships.
The Germans released them at Newport News, Virginia on March 10.
      President Wilson chose Col. House to be his envoy to the Europeans
instead of Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan,
and House and his wife boarded the Lusitania on January 30.
Wilson did not like using starvation as a weapon, and he hoped that the British
would let Americans ship food to German civilians but not to its army.
The US Ambassador to Britain, Walter Hines Page, learned from relief groups
that the German Army was taking food meant for the Belgian people.
      On February 3 Wilson spoke to the United States
Chamber of Commerce in Washington and said,

   When men, I mean, engage in the pursuits of peace
in the same spirit of self-sacrifice and of conscious service
of the community with which, at any rate,
the common soldier engages in war,
then shall there be wars no more.
You have moved the vanguard for the United States in
the purposes of this association just a little nearer that ideal.
That is the reason I am here, because I believe it.121

      On February 10 the US Secretary of State Bryan wrote
in a telegram to the US Ambassador Gerard in Berlin the following:

   If the commanders of German vessels of war should act
upon the presumption that the flag of the United States
was not being used in good faith
and should destroy on the high seas an American vessel
or the lives of American citizens, it would be difficult
for the Government of the United States to view the act
in any other light than as an indefensible violation
of neutral rights which it would be very hard indeed
to reconcile with the friendly relations
now so happily subsisting between the two Governments.
   If such a deplorable situation should arise,
the Imperial Government can readily appreciate that
the Government of the United States would be constrained
to hold the Imperial German Government to a strict
accountability for such acts of their naval authorities
and to take any steps it might be necessary to take
to safeguard American lives and property
and to secure to American citizens the full enjoyment
of their acknowledged rights on the high seas….
   It is added for the information of the Imperial Government
that representations have been made to His Britannic
Majesty’s Government in respect to the unwarranted use
of the American flag for the protection of British ships.122

      On March 1 the British and French advised the United States that
the Allies intended to keep all commodities away from Germany,
and they would search all ships going to Germany.
After conferring with the British and the German diplomats
House headed on March 28 to France, Austria, Italy, and Spain.
      On March 4 Wilson signed the Seaman’s Act “because it seemed
the only chance to get something like justice done to a class of workmen
who have been too much neglected by our laws.”123
      Samuel Gompers said that it “has a rightful place among those
really important legislative acts that dedicated our soil to freedom.”124
      On March 25 Wilson spoke to the
Southern Methodist Conference in Washington and said,

Wars will never have any ending until men cease
to hate one another, cease to be jealous of one another,
get that feeling of reality in the brotherhood of mankind
which is the only bond that can make us think justly
of one another and act righteously before God himself.125

      On March 28 the German Submarine U-28 sank the
British steamship RMS Falaba going from Liverpool toward West Africa,
and more than a hundred died including one American.
On March 30 President Wilson in a note to London made it clear that
the United States would hold the Germans and the British strictly
accountable for any violation of American neutral rights.
On April 15 Wilson set aside for the exclusive use by the Navy
the oil area called “Teapot Dome” which contained 2,481 acres
of rich oil deposits on government land.
      In his address to the Associated Press in New York on April 20 Wilson said,

I am not speaking in a selfish spirit
when I say that our whole duty, for the present at any rate,
is summed up in this motto, “America first.”
Let us think of America before we think of Europe,
in order that America may be fit to be Europe’s friend
when the day of tested friendship comes.
The test of friendship is not now sympathy
with the one side or the other, but getting ready
to help both sides when the struggle is over.
The basis of neutrality, gentlemen, is not indifference;
it is not self-interest.
The basis of neutrality is sympathy for mankind.
It is fairness, it is good will, at bottom.
It is impartiality of spirit and of judgment.
I wish that all of our fellow citizens could realize that.126

Wilson believed that the United States could mediate because Americans
are compounded of the nations of the world and mediate their blood,
traditions, sentiments, tastes, passions, and so are able to understand all nations.
      In late April a German plane dropped a bomb
on the American merchant ship Cushing.
On May 1 a German U30 submarine torpedoed the American tanker
Gulflight, 5,189 tons, from Port Arthur, Texas,
and the captain and two sailors died.
      The British Cunard Liner RMS Lusitania, 30,396 tons, left New York
for Liverpool on May 1 with 1,257 passengers and a cargo of food.
In the Irish Sea on May 7 the German submarine U20
fired on the Lusitania, and the ship sank in 18 minutes.
Captain Turner with 289 crew and 472 passengers survived
while 1,198 died including 270 women, 94 children, and 128 American citizens.
Only 11 US citizens survived.
On May 8 President Wilson had Tumulty release this message:

Of course the President feels the distress and the gravity
of the situation to the utmost,
and is considering very earnestly, but very calmly,
the right course of action to pursue.
He knows that the people of the country wish and expect
him to act with deliberation as well as with firmness.127

The next day Secretary of State Bryan advised Wilson that
ships carrying risky cargo should not be permitted to carry passengers.
Bryan noted that the Lusitania had carried 4,200 cases of cartridges
and 1,250 cases of empty steel shrapnel shells of contraband.
He suggested that England should be held to account
for “using our citizens to protect her ammunition.”
When a citizen sent Wilson a telegram saying
“In the name of God and humanity, declare war on Germany,”
he told his secretary Charles Swem, “War isn’t declared in the name of God;
it is a human affair entirely.”
      Washington Post editors expressed their trust in the
“courage, patience and wisdom of President Wilson …
to uphold the honor and interests of the United States.128
      On May 10 President Wilson spoke at Convention Hall in Philadelphia
to about 4,000 new citizens who had been naturalized, and he said,

You do not love humanity
if you seek to divide humanity into jealous camps.
Humanity can be welded together only by love,
by sympathy, by justice, not by jealousy and hatred.
I am sorry for the man who seeks to make
personal capital out of the passions of his fellowmen.
He has lost the touch and ideal of America,
for America was created to unite mankind
by those passions which lift
and not by the passions which separate and debase….
The example of America must be a special example.
The example of America must be the example
not merely of peace because it will not fight,
but of peace because peace is the healing
and elevating influence of the world, and strife is not.
There is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight.
There is such a thing as a nation being so right
that it does not need to convince others by force
that it is right.129

Also on May 10 Ex-President William Howard Taft wrote to Wilson
that he would be supported if he summoned the
Congress for a special session to declare war.
The next morning Wilson met with his Cabinet for three hours.
He reviewed recent submarine incidents, and he noted that
they could not be used against merchantmen “without an
inevitable violation of many sacred principles of justice and humanity.”
He affirmed that his government would uphold the right of its citizens
to travel on the high seas, and he concluded,

The Imperial German Government will not expect
the Government of the United States to omit
any necessary representation or any necessary act
in sustaining the rights of its citizens or in safeguarding
the sacred duties of international obligation.130

On May 13 Wilson sent his first Lusitania note in a telegram to Berlin, writing,

   The Government and people of the United States
look to the Imperial German Government for just,
prompt, and enlightened action in this vital matter
with the greater confidence because
the United States and Germany are bound together
not only by special ties of friendship
but also by the explicit stipulations of the treaty of 1828
between the United States and the Kingdom of Prussia.131

He also provided the following “tip” to reporters:

         Proposed Notice for Publication
   There is a good deal of confidence
in Administration circles that Germany
will respond to this note in a spirit of accommodation.
It is pointed out that, while Germany is not one of the
many nations which have recently signed treaties
of deliberation and inquiry with the United States
upon all points of serious difficulty,
as a means of supplementing ordinary diplomatic methods
and preventing, so far as feasible, the possibility of conflict,
she has assented to the principle of such a treaty;
and it is believed that she will act in this instance
in the spirit of that assent.
A frank issue is now made, and it is expected that
it will be met in good temper with a desire to reach
an agreement, despite the passions of the hour,—
passions in which the United States, does not share,—
or else submit the whole matter to such processes
of discussion as will result in a permanent settlement.132

Secretary of State Bryan wired a copy of the “Proposed Notice”
to Gerard at the embassy in Berlin.
Bryan also showed it to Lansing and called Tumulty.
Lansing was upset and told War Secretary Garrison what happened.
Wilson told Bryan that the German Ambassador Bernstorff said Wilson was weak.
Wilson asked Bryan to withdraw the supplementary message.
Interior Secretary Lane told Col. House that
the English were holding up American ships.
On May 17 Wilson reviewed the Atlantic Fleet in New York harbor.
On May 19 Col. House met with the Foreign Secretary Edward Grey
who said he would present his proposal to the Prime Minister Asquith.
      Germany’s Government replied that the Lusitania had begun as a navy cruiser,
that British merchantmen followed Admiralty orders, and that the Lusitania
on its last voyage carried Canadian soldiers and munitions
which amplified the explosion that sank the ship.
      On May 24 President Wilson welcomed over 3,000 guests at a reception
for Latin American diplomats to the Pan-American Union Conference
in Washington saying,

   If there is any one happy circumstance, gentlemen,
arising out of the present distressing condition of the world,
it is that it has revealed us to one another:
it has shown us what it means to be neighbors.
And I cannot help harboring the hope, the very high hope,
that by this commerce of minds with one another,
as well as commerce in goods,
we may show the world in part the path to peace.
It would be a very great thing if the Americas
could add to the distinction which they already wear
this of showing the way to peace, to permanent peace.133

      Italy declared war against Austria-Hungary on May 23.
On the 26th a German submarine attacked the
American steamer Nebraskan off the Irish coast.
On June 6 the German Admiralty sent out this order:

   His Majesty the Emperor has ordered,
supplementing the order given June 1, that no large liner,
not even an enemy one, will be sunk until further orders.
His Majesty the Emperor orders you to preserve
absolute secrecy on the subject of the present order.134

      At a Cabinet meeting on June 1 Secretary of State Bryan
complained that they were pro-Ally.
Wilson said his remarks were “unfair and unjust.”
Two days later Bryan said,

A person would have to be very much biased
in favor of the Allies to insist that
ammunition intended for one of the belligerents
should be safe-guarded in transit
by the lives of American citizens.135

      On June 2 Bernstorff reported to his Foreign Office that President Wilson
was emphasizing that Germany and the United States could unite because
they “have always stood for the freedom of the seas.”
In a letter on the 3rd Bernstorff wrote to Germany’s Chancellor
Bethmann Hollweg, “Mr. Wilson has the best chance to gain public approval
for himself if he averts conflict with us honorably, by beginning
a peace movement in a grand style.”136
      On June 4 in his second note on the Lusitania Wilson concluded,

Whatever be the other facts, the principal fact is that
a great steamer, primarily and chiefly a conveyance
for passengers, and carrying more than a thousand souls
who had no part or lot in the conduct of the war,
was sent to the bottom without so much as a challenge
or a warning and that men, women, and children
were sent to their death
in circumstances unparalleled in modern warfare.
The fact that more than one hundred Americans
were among those who perished makes it the duty
of the Government of the United States to speak
of these things and to call the attention of the
Imperial German Government to the grave responsibility
which the Government of the United States
conceives it to have incurred in this tragic occurrence.137

      The Democratic leaders of the Senate committee on foreign affairs
and the House committee on appropriations called on Bryan,
and they asked him to tell the President that the country does
not want war with Germany and expects him to find a way out.
On June 5 Bryan wrote a letter to Wilson repeating his three main points—
arbitration of the Lusitania dispute, preventing American citizens from
traveling on ships carrying ammunition, and protesting Britain’s blockade.
He concluded, “This may be our last chance to speak for peace,
for it will be harder to propose investigation after some unfriendly act than now.”138
On June 8 in his letter of resignation Bryan wrote to President Wilson,

   Obedient to your sense of duty
and actuated by the highest motives, you have prepared
for transmission to the German Government a note
in which I cannot join without violating what I deem to be
an obligation to my country, and the issue involved is
of such moment that to remain a member of the Cabinet
would be as unfair to you as it would be
to the cause which is nearest to my heart,
namely, the prevention of war.139

Bryan planned to begin a crusade for peace.
The second note on the Lusitania dispute was wired to Berlin
and delivered to the Foreign Office by Gerard on June 11.
After a difficult press conference Wilson in private reprimanded
himself for losing his temper and acting like a fool.
In June he stopped having press conferences.
Wilson appointed Robert Lansing the Acting Secretary of State on June 23.
      President Wilson received a text of the German note on July 13,
and he began writing a reply and finished it
before leaving town on the 18th to go to New York.
A torpedo attack on the Cunard liner Orduna, 15,499 tons, had failed on July 9.
Wilson returned to the White House and with Lansing
worked on the third Lusitania note, writing,

The rights of neutrals in time of war
are based upon principle, not upon expediency,
and the principles are immutable.
It is the duty and obligation of belligerents
to find a way to adapt the new circumstances to them.140

Secretary of State Lansing telegraphed the third note
on the Lusitania problem to Germany on July 21.
      On July 23 the Commercial Attaché in the German Embassy left his briefcase
on an elevated train, and the American operative Frank Burke,
who was following the suspected German, picked it up
and took it to Treasury Secretary McAdoo.
They discovered that German actions included buying a large munitions plant
in Bridgeport, Connecticut to keep them from going to the Allies,
cornering chemical products, and provoking Texan resentment
against suppression of cotton exports to Germany.
McAdoo took the evidence to Wilson who told him to confer with Lansing
and Col. House, and they decided to have the materials
published in the New York World without revealing the source.
They were published from August 15 to 23, and many newspapers reprinted them.
Editors suggested that conspirators should be cleaned out of the German Embassy.
US Attorney General Thomas W. Gregory agreed with Wilson
and Lansing that no formal action was needed.
Bogus passports had enabled German reservists to return home by way of
neutral ports, and investigation led to ringleaders being tried and imprisoned.
Emil V. Gaché used a forged Swiss passport to reach America in April 1915,
and he organized several conspiracies to help Germany’s war effort.
      On the first anniversary of the Great War on 4 August 1915
statistics showed that 2.4 million people had died; 5 million were wounded;
and 1.8 million were captured or missing.
The cost of the war to the belligerent nations was about $18.6 billion
which was more than all the Great Powers spent on war
since the Napoleonic Wars ended in 1815.
      On August 19 the U24 German submarine
sank the Arabic with 15,801 tons near Ireland.
Of the 423 passengers and crew 44 died including two US citizens.
Wilson was concerned about these two things:

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.141

On August 22 Wilson released this to the press:

There is much speculation in Government circles
as to what the President will do in case the final reports
on the sinking of the Arabic make the act
of the German submarine “deliberately unfriendly.”
Here is what most likely will happen
if the facts are against Germany:
The President will recall Ambassador Gerard
and all the American Consuls from Germany,
and give to Ambassador Bernstorff
and all of his assistants their passports.
That would sever all relations
between the two Governments….
It was stated on the highest authority to-day that
the President will act quickly and firmly
if the testimony shows that the German Government
wantonly disregarded his solemn warning
in the last note on the Lusitania tragedy.142

In a letter to Secretary of State Lansing on September 1
the German Ambassador Bernstorff wrote,

   Liners will not be sunk by our submarines without warning
and without safety of the lives of noncombatants,
provided that the liners
do not try to escape or offer resistance.143

      On August 19 Bernstorff, the Austria-Hungarian Ambassador Dumba
and the American correspondent James Archibald who was paid
by the German Embassy, met at a hotel in New York.
Archibald collected documents from Germanic agents, and Martin Diennes,
who wrote for a Hungarian-American newspaper, arrived with a memorandum
he gave to Duma which described plans to provoke strikes in munitions
and steel factories in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and Chicago.
The next day Ambassador Dumba sailed for Europe with this and the package
on the Rotterdam which stopped at Falmouth where British authorities
seized his documents and arrested him for violating neutrality.
Documents were sent to London, and US Ambassador Page got copies.
American newspapers printed Dumba’s letter on September 6.
Many editors agreed that Dumba should be given his passport.
Wilson and Lansing agreed he should be recalled, and he was.
More German propaganda and intrigues in Latin America
were exposed on September 25.
      Three days after the German pledge concerning the Arabic disaster,
on September 6 the Allan liner Hesperian,
10,920 tons, with 650 people was attacked.
The explosion killed eight people, and the ship sank after 34 hours.
The German Foreign Minister Gottlieb von Jagow gave US Ambassador Gerard
a note on the 7th repudiating American contentions and demands.
The New York World on September 14 printed “Suspend diplomatic relations!”
Lansing had presented Wilson with evidence that the German submarine
commander could not have believed that the Arabic was trying to ram his ship.
On September 17 Jagow instructed Bernstorff to let disputes be settled
by appealing to The Hague Convention.
The next day the new Admiralty head von Holtzendorff ordered a cease
of submarine activity off England’s west coast and in the Channel,
and they were to stop “submarine operations against all merchant ships.”
On October 2 Bernstorff promised Lansing that Germany would pay
an indemnity for the American lives lost on the Arabic.
On the 6th Bernstorff wrote about Wilson to Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg,

One can think about the President as he likes;
one may consider him neutral or not.
But it cannot be denied that
his whole heart is committed to the cause of peace.
A Republican President could not have resisted the combined
anti-German pressure of Wall Street, the press,
and the so-called high society.144

      On July 30 the US Navy General Board proposed spending $1,600,000,000
to achieve naval equality with the British including 48 dreadnoughts.
Navy Secretary Daniels and Wilson considered this too much,
and on October 12 the General Board advised reducing it to $500,000,000
to pay for 10 battleships, 6 battle cruisers, 10 cruisers, 50 destroyers,
100 submarines, and other ships.
Wilson and Daniels accepted that.
On October 14 War Secretary Garrison suggested
increasing the Army from 108,008 to 141,707.
This did not include the National Guard which was for supporting police.
Garrison also wanted a new reserve Continental Army of 400,000 men.
They would serve in active duty two months a year for three years
and then be a ready reserve for three more years.
      On November 9 news reached Washington that an Austrian U-238 submarine
had sunk the Italian liner Ancona, 8,210 tons, off the coast of Tunisia.
Wilson conferred with Lansing, and the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister
Stephan Burián replied that the indictment had no legal proof.
      Wilson and Secretary of State Lansing wanted the German captains
Karl Boy-Ed and Franz von Papen removed for crimes and “fraudulent practices,”
and Ambassador Bernstorff was informed of this on December 1.

      The beautiful 42-year-old widow Edith Bolling first dined
at the White House on 23 March 1915.
Wilson began writing to her every day on April 28, and he fell in love with her.
On May 4 he asked her to marry him; she was not yet ready for that.
He sent her flowers daily, and in August they became secretly engaged.
The Cabinet chose Wilson’s friend Josephus Daniels to advise him
not to wed her until after the November election.
Wilson after dinner on October 6 gave reporters
the announcement of their engagement.
Former President Taft noted that Wilson came out
for woman suffrage just before the announcement.
New Jersey voters rejected the suffrage amendment by 51,194 votes.
Their wedding took place in her home on December 18.
The next day Wilson sent a diplomatic message to
Austria-Hungary about the Ancona sinking.
Edith was also from Virginia, and they took a train to Alexandria.
In Hot Springs they had a private honeymoon for two weeks.
In the evenings they read dispatches from various countries,
and he would describe each problem and tell her how he planned to respond.
Wilson’s daughter Margaret was for women voting, but Edith was opposed.
Yet the press gave Edith credit for getting Wilson to support female suffrage.
On December 30 Secretary of State Lansing sent to Wilson the note
from Foreign Minister Burián that met American demands on the Ancona disaster.

Wilson’s Peace Messages in Fall 1915

      On 28 September 1915 President Wilson addressed
the Grand Army of the Republic briefly and concluded,

   Democracy is the most difficult form of government,
because it is the form under which you have to persuade
the largest number of persons to do anything in particular.
But I think we were the more pleased to undertake it
because it is difficult.
Anybody can do what is easy.
We have shown that we could do what was hard,
and the pride that ought to dwell in your hearts tonight
is that you saw to it that that experiment
was brought to the day of its triumphant demonstration.
We now know and the world knows that
the thing that we then undertook, rash as it seemed,
has been practicable, and that we have set up in the world
a government maintained and promoted
by the general conscience and the general conviction.
So I stand here not to welcome you to the Nation’s Capital
as if I were your host, but merely to welcome you
to your own Capital, because I am,
and am proud to be, your servant.
I hope I shall catch, as I hope we shall all catch,
from the spirit of this occasion a new consecration
to the high duties of American citizenship.145

      Secretary Lansing wrote a long draft to the British;
Wilson made changes on October 21, and Ambassador Page
presented it to Foreign Affairs Secretary Edward Grey on November 5.
Here are some points:

It is incumbent upon the United States Government,
therefore, to give the British Government notice that
the blockade, which they claim to have instituted
under the order in council of March 11, cannot
be recognized as a legal blockade by the United States….
American citizens, therefore,
had only one means of redress—
to appeal to their own government for protection….
The methods sought to be employed by Great Britain
to obtain and use evidence of enemy destination of cargoes
bound for neutral ports, and to impose a contraband
character upon such cargoes, are without justification;
that the blockade, upon which such methods
are partly founded, is ineffective, illegal, and indefensible;
that the judicial procedures offered as a means of reparation
for an international injury is inherently defective
for the purpose; and that in many cases
jurisdiction is asserted in violation of the law of nations.
The United States, therefore, cannot submit
to the curtailment of its neutral rights by these measures,
which are admittedly retaliatory, and therefore illegal,
in conception and in nature,
and intended to punish the enemies of Great Britain
for alleged illegalities on their part….
It is of the highest importance to neutrals,
not only of the present day, but of the future,
that the principles of international right
be maintained unimpaired….
   This task of championing the integrity of neutral rights,
which have received the sanction of the civilized world,
against the lawless conduct of belligerents
arising out of the bitterness of the great conflict
which is now wasting the countries of Europe,
the United States unhesitatingly assumes,
and to the accomplishment of that task
it will devote its energies, exercising always that impartiality
which from the outbreak of the war it has sought
to exercise in its relations with the warring nations.146

      On November 4 Wilson spoke on the “The Outline of the
Administration’s Program of Preparedness for National Defense”
to the Manhattan Club at the Biltmore Hotel in New York, saying,

   We believe in political liberty
and founded our great government to obtain it,
the liberty of men and of peoples—
of men to choose their own lives
and of peoples to choose their own allegiance.
Our ambition, also, all the world has knowledge of.
It is not only to be free and prosperous ourselves,
but also to be the friend and thoughtful partisan of those
who are free or who desire freedom the world over.
If we have had aggressive purposes
and covetous ambitions,
they were the fruit of our thoughtless youth as a nation,
and we have put them aside.
We shall, I confidently believe,
never again take another foot of territory by conquest.
We shall never in any circumstances seek
to make an independent people subject to our dominion;
because we believe, we passionately believe, in the right
of every people to choose their own allegiance
and be free of masters altogether.
For ourselves we wish nothing
but the full liberty of self-development;
and with ourselves in this great matter
we associate all the peoples of our own hemisphere.
We wish not only for the United States but for them
the fullest freedom of independent growth and of action,
for we know that throughout this hemisphere
the same aspirations are everywhere being worked out,
under diverse conditions
but with the same impulse and ultimate object.
   All this is very clear to us and will, I confidently predict,
become more and more clear to the whole world
as the great processes of the future unfold themselves.
It is with a full consciousness of such principles
and such ambitions that we are asking ourselves
at the present time what our duty is
with regard to the armed force of the Nation.
Within a year we have witnessed
what we did not believe possible, a great European conflict
involving many of the greatest nations of the world.
The influences of a great war are everywhere in the air.
All Europe is embattled.
Force everywhere speaks out with a loud
and imperious voice in a titanic struggle of governments
and from one end of our own dear country to the other
men are asking one another what our own force is,
how far we are prepared to maintain ourselves against
any interference with our national action or development.
   In no man’s mind, I am sure, is there even raised
the question of the willful use of force on our part
against any nation or any people.
No matter what military or naval force
the United States might develop,
statesmen throughout the whole world might rest assured
that we were gathering that force,
not for attack in any quarter, not for aggression of any kind,
not for the satisfaction
of any political or international ambition,
but merely to make sure of our own security.
We have it in mind to be prepared, not for war,
but only for defense;
and with the thought constantly in our minds that
the principles we hold most dear can be achieved
by the slow processes of history only in the kindly
and wholesome atmosphere of peace,
and not by the use of hostile force.
The mission of America in the world is essentially
a mission of peace and good will among men.
She has become the home and asylum
of men of all creeds and races.
Within her hospitable borders they have found homes
and congenial associations and freedom
and a wide and cordial welcome,
and they have become part
of the bone and sinew and spirit of America itself.
America has been made up out of the nations of the world
and is the friend of the nations of the world.
   But we feel justified in preparing ourselves
to vindicate our right to independent and unmolested action
by making the force that is in us ready for assertion.
   And we know that we can do this in a way that
will be itself an illustration of the American spirit.
In accordance with our American traditions we want
and shall work for only an army adequate to the constant
and legitimate uses of times of international peace.
But we do want to feel that there is a great body of citizens
who have received at least the most rudimentary
and necessary forms of military training;
that they will be ready to form themselves
into a fighting force at the call of the Nation;
and that the Nation has the munitions and supplies
with which to equip them without delay
should it be necessary to call them into action.
We wish to supply them with the training they need,
and we think we can do so without calling them
at any time too long away from their civilian pursuits….
   In the fulfillment of the program I propose
I shall ask for the hearty support of the country, of the rank
and file of America, of men of all shades of political opinion.
For my position in this important matter is
different from that of the private individual
who is free to speak his own thoughts
and to risk his own opinions in this matter.
We are here dealing with things
that are vital to the life of America itself.
In doing this I have tried to purge my heart
of all personal and selfish motives.
For the time being, I speak as the trustee and guardian
of a Nation’s rights, charged with the duty of speaking
for that Nation in matters involving her sovereignty—
a Nation too big and generous to be exacting
and yet courageous enough to defend its rights
and the liberties of its people wherever assailed or invaded.
I would not feel that I was discharging the solemn obligation
I owe the country were I not to speak in terms
of the deepest solemnity of the urgency and necessity
of preparing ourselves to guard and protect
the rights and privileges of our people,
our sacred heritage of the fathers
who struggled to make us an independent nation.
   The only thing within our own borders that has given us
grave concern in recent months has been that
voices have been raised in America professing to be
the voices of Americans which were not indeed
and in truth American, but which spoke alien sympathies,
which came from men who loved other countries
better than they loved America, men who were
partisans of other causes than that of America
and had forgotten that their chief and only allegiance
was to the great government under which they live.
These voices have not been many,
but they have been loud and very clamorous.
They have proceeded from a few
who were bitter and who were grievously misled.
America has not opened its doors
in vain to men and women out of other nations.
The vast majority of those who have come
to take advantage of her hospitality
have united their spirits with hers as well as their fortunes.
These men who speak alien sympathies
are not their spokesmen but are the spokesmen
of small groups whom it is high time
that the Nation should call to a reckoning.
The chief thing necessary in America in order that
she should let all of the world know that she is prepared
to maintain her own great position is that the real voice
of the Nation should sound forth unmistakably
and in majestic volume, in the deep unison
of a common, unhesitating national feeling.
I do not doubt that upon the first occasion,
upon the first opportunity, upon the first definite challenge,
that voice will speak forth in tones which no man can doubt
and with commands which no man dare gainsay or resist.
   May I not say, while I am speaking of this,
that there is another danger that we should guard against?
We should rebuke not only manifestations of racial feeling
here in America where there should be none,
but also every manifestation
of religious and sectarian antagonism.
It does not become America that within her borders,
where every man is free to follow the dictates
of his conscience and worship God as he pleases,
men should raise the cry of church against church.
To do that is to strike at
the very spirit and heart of America….
   We are yet only in the youth
and first consciousness of our power.
The day of our country’s life is still but in its fresh morning.
Let us lift our eyes to the great tracts of life
yet to be conquered in the interests of righteous peace.
Come, let us renew our allegiance to America,
conserve her strength in its purity,
make her chief among those who serve mankind,
self-reverenced, self-commanded,
witness of all forces of quiet counsel,
strong above all others in good will
and the might of invincible justice and right.147

      On November 26 a delegation of the Woman’s Peace Conference
led by Jane Addams, Ethel Snowden, and Rosika Schwimmer met with Wilson.
On that day about 20,000 telegrams arrived,
most with the message “We work for peace.
The mothers of America pray for it.”
      On December 7 President Wilson gave his
third Annual Message to Congress beginning,

GENTLEMEN OF THE CONGRESS:
   Since I last had the privilege of addressing you
on the state of the Union the war of nations
on the other side of the sea, which had then
only begun to disclose its portentous proportions,
has extended its threatening and sinister scope
until it has swept within its flame
some portion of every quarter of the globe,
not excepting our own hemisphere,
has altered the whole face of international affairs,
and now presents a prospect of reorganization
and reconstruction such as statesmen and peoples
have never been called upon to attempt before.
   We have stood apart, studiously neutral.
It was our manifest duty to do so.
Not only did we have no part or interest in the policies
which seem to have brought the conflict on;
it was necessary, if a universal catastrophe
was to be avoided, that a limit should be set
to the sweep of destructive war
and that some part of the great family of nations
should keep the processes of peace alive,
if only to prevent collective economic ruin
and the breakdown throughout the world of the industries
by which its populations are fed and sustained.
It was manifestly the duty of the self-governed nations
of this hemisphere to redress, if possible,
the balance of economic loss and confusion in the other,
if they could do nothing more.
In the day of readjustment and recuperation we earnestly
hope and believe that they can be of infinite service….
   While we speak of the preparation of the nation
to make sure of her security and her effective power
we must not fall into the patent error of supposing
that her real strength comes from armaments
and mere safeguards of written law.
It comes, of course, from her people, their energy,
their success in their undertakings, their free opportunity
to use the natural resources of our great home land
and of the lands outside our continental borders
which look to us for protection, for encouragement,
and for assistance in their development;
from the organization and freedom
and vitality of our economic life….
   For what we are seeking now,
what in my mind is the single thought of this message,
is national efficiency and security.
We serve a great nation.
We should serve it in the spirit of its peculiar genius.
It is the genius of common men for self-government,
industry, justice, liberty and peace.
We should see to it that it lacks no instrument,
no facility or vigor of law, to make it sufficient
to play its part with energy, safety, and assured success.
In this we are no partisans
but heralds and prophets of a new age.148

He also considered borrowing money “short-sighted finance,”
and he suggested a “tax of one cent per gallon on gasoline”
and a tax on automobiles with “internal explosion engines”
as well as taxes on iron and steel.
      On December 4 Henry Ford initiated a series of peace conferences
in the neutral nations in Europe, and he chartered a Scandinavian ocean liner
Oscar II that took 166 pacifists, activists, students, and journalists to
Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Holland.
Bryan and Thomas Edison saw them off at Hoboken.
H. G. Wells in 1933 recognized its failure, yet he believed the effort
to stop the war would be remembered more than the generals.
      Col. House asked Wilson for written instructions for his diplomatic mission
to Europe, and on December 24 the President wrote,

   a) military and naval disarmament and
   b) a league of nations to secure each nation against
aggression and maintain absolute freedom of the seas.
If either party to the present war will let us say to the other
that they are willing to discuss peace on such terms,
it will clearly be our duty to use our utmost moral force
to oblige the other to parley,
and I do not see how they could stand
in the opinion of the world if they refused.149

With this advice House left for his third mission to Europe
and arrived in London on 6 January 1916.

Wilson & Mexican Revolution in 1915-17

      On 8 January 1915 in his Jackson Day address President Woodrow Wilson said,

I hold it as a fundamental principle, and so do you, that
every people has the right to determine its own form
of government, and until this recent revolution in Mexico,
until the end of the Diaz regime,
80 percent of the people of Mexico never had a “look-in”
in determining who should be their Governors,
or what their Government should be.
Now, I am for the 80 percent….
The country is theirs. The Government is theirs.
The liberty, if they can get it,
and God speed them in getting it, is theirs.
And so far as my influence goes, while I am President
nobody shall interfere with them.150

Wilson sent a former federal district attorney and student of Mexican issues,
Duval West, to report on Mexico, saying,

I am very anxious to know just what the moral situation is,
therefore, and just what it behooves us to do
to check what is futile and promote
what promises genuine reform and settled peace.”151

On March 6 Wilson wrote to Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan,

I had seen these dispatches, and they had given me
deep anxiety and perplexity, as they have given you.
Nothing better than what Mr. Lansing suggests
occurs to me, and I hope that
you will act at once on his suggestion.
In addition, I hope that you will say to Carranza that
the extraordinary and unpardonable course
pursued by General Obregón, under his command,
has renewed the talk of joint action
by several of the chief governments of the world
to protect their embassies and their nationals in Mexico City,
and that he is running a very serious risk.152

He asked Bryan if Navy Secretary Daniels has ships with long-range guns
at Veracruz, and on March 8 he sent the battleship USS Georgia and
the armored cruiser USS Washington from Guantánamo, Cuba to Veracruz.
After talking with his Cabinet the President on March 12 wrote to Bryan,

I think that we are justified, in all the circumstances,
in saying to Carranza that we cannot recognize his right
to blockade the port to the exclusion of our commerce;
that we must beg him to recall his orders to that effect;
and that we shall feel constrained,
in case he feels he cannot do so,
to instruct our naval officers there to prevent
any interference with our commerce to and from the port.
He should be told, at the same time, that we are doing this
in the interest of peace and amity between the two countries
and with no wish or intention
to interfere with her internal affairs, from which
we shall carefully keep our hands off.153

First Chief Carranza lifted the blockade before getting the dispatch,
and he and Obregón evacuated Mexico City by March 10.
The next day Wilson wrote to General Carranza,

   We seek always to act as the friends
of the Mexican people, and as their friends it is our duty
to speak very plainly about the grave dangers
which threaten her from without whenever
anything happens within her borders which is calculated
to arouse the hostile sentiment of the whole world.
   Nothing will stir that sentiment more promptly
or create greater dangers for Mexico than any,
even temporary disregard for the lives, the safety
or the rights of the citizens of other countries,
resident within her territory, or any apparent contempt
for the rights and safety of those who represent religion;
and no attempt to justify or explain these things
will in the least alter the sentiment
or lessen the dangers that arise from them.
   To warn you concerning such matters
is an act of friendship, not of hostility,
and we cannot make the warning too earnest.
To speak less plainly or with less earnestness
would be to conceal from you a terrible risk
which no lover of Mexico should wish to run.154

On April 23 Carranza sent a message to the US State Department
promising a civilian government in Mexico.
On May 27 correspondent David Lawrence wrote to Wilson advising
him to open negotiations with all Mexican leaders and generals
as well as Carranza, Pancho Villa, and Emiliano Zapata.
On June 2 Wilson sent them a letter with the following warning:

   It is time, therefore, that
the Government of the United States should frankly state
the policy which, in these extraordinary circumstances,
it becomes its duty to adopt.
It must presently do what it has not hitherto done
or felt at liberty to do, lend its active moral support
to some man or group of men, if such may be found,
who can rally the suffering people of Mexico to their support
in an effort to ignore, if they cannot unite,
the warring factions of the country, return
to the Constitution of the republic so long in abeyance,
and set up a Government at Mexico City which
the great powers of the world can recognize and deal with—
a government with whom the program of the revolution
will be a business and not merely a platform.
   I, therefore, publicly and very solemnly,
call upon the leaders of factions in Mexico to act,
to act together, and to act promptly
for the relief and redemption of their prostrate country.
   I feel it to be my duty to tell them that,
if they cannot accommodate their differences
and unite for this purpose within a very short time,
this Government will be constrained to decide
what means should be employed by the United States
in order to help Mexico
to save herself and serve her people.155

Carranza had allowed food into the capital since June 1,
and on the 11th he called upon rivals to accept his authority.
A few days later the Constitutionalist General Pablo González Garza
began a campaign to take over Mexico City.
They overcame the previous regime, and the Zapatistas withdrew to Morelos.
General Villa wrote to Carranza and to Wilson calling
for concord and union based on revolutionary principles.
      On 5 July 1915 the new Secretary of State Robert Lansing wrote out
a six-point plan which the United States would accept and that Wilson endorsed.
General González and his men entered Mexico City on July 11.
On the 17th they left in pursuit of Zapatistas, leaving the city in chaos.
González returned on August 2 with food and supplies, and they opened the railway.
By the 11th threats against foreigners had ceased.
Agriculture Secretary Houston allowed General Villa to sell beef in El Paso.
Chile’s ambassador pleaded for general elections in Mexico.
Wilson noted that the revolutionary plan was to form a provisional
government before decreeing a constitution, and he allowed that.
Those who resisted Madero’s revolution or supported the
dictatorial Huerta were excluded from the new government.
      On August 13 telegraphed to Mexico was “A communication,
made generally and independently, to all prominent civil and military authorities
in Mexico, from the Secretary of State and the diplomatic representatives at
Washington of Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Uruguay, and Guatemala”156
Wilson accepted Secretary Lansing’s suggestion,
and on September 13 he directed him saying,

   We are to call our Latin American colleagues together
and suggest to them a conference with representatives
of Carranza at Washington, on substantially the basis
he proposes, to discuss the advisability of recognizing him
as the de facto head of the Republic;
having it clearly understood that we think
the acceptance of the Revolution absolutely necessary.
   We are also to keep faith with the leaders
of the other factions, who have accepted our proposal
for a conference on Mexican affairs,
and are to call such a conference of their representatives
to be convened and held in Mexico.157

On October 18 at the conference the representatives of the United States,
Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Uruguay, and Guatemala were joined
by officials of Colombia and Nicaragua in this unity.
The next day President Wilson signed a proclamation
banning the export of munitions to Mexico with an order to exempt
the de facto government from the embargo, and he recognized
Venustiano Carranza as the First Chief of the Constitutionalist Party
and ended the embargo on shipping arms to Carrancistas.
On the 22nd an American Special Agent in the Carranza camp
talked with Mexico’s Secretary of Foreign Relations Jesús Acuña.
They discussed how to resolve Mexican-US conflicts.
      Also on October 18 the bandit Luis de la Rosa led an attack
on a southbound train five miles from Brownsville,
and they killed an American soldier and two civilians.
Carranza sent troops to Reynosa in late November, and they cooperated
with American and Mexican officers in Brownsville
pursuing bandits on both sides of the border.
      On November 1 and 2 Pancho Villa’s army of about 14,000 men
attacked Agua Prieta on the border.
They suffered heavy losses against 6,500 Constitutionalists
and withdrew to Chihuahua.
Carranza sent General Álvaro Obregón’s army north
to drive Villistas out of port towns.
Villa’s army was also defeated at Alomita about
November 20 and at Nogales on the 26th.
Villa captured about 30 Americans and threatened to kill them
if the United States did not stop supporting Carranza.
There is no evidence that happened.
      In his annual message to Congress on December 7
President Wilson said,

   Our concern for the independence and prosperity
of the states of Central and South America is not altered.
We retain unabated the spirit that has inspired us
throughout the whole life of our government and which
was so frankly put into words by President Monroe.
We still mean always to make
a common cause of national independence
and of political liberty in America….
All the governments of America stand,
so far as we are concerned, upon a footing
of genuine equality and unquestioned independence.
   We have been put to the test in the case of Mexico,
and we have stood the test.
Whether we have benefited Mexico
by the course we have pursued remains to be seen….
We will aid and befriend Mexico, but we will not coerce her;
and our course with regard to her ought to be
sufficient proof to all America that
we seek no political suzerainty or selfish control.
   The moral is, that the states of America
are not hostile rivals but cooperating friends,
and that their growing sense of community or interest,
alike in matters political and in matters economic,
is likely to give them a new significance as factors in
international affairs and in the political history of the world.
It presents them as in a very deep and true sense
a unit in world affairs, spiritual partners,
standing together because thinking together,
quick with common sympathies and common ideals.
Separated they are subject to all the cross currents
of the confused politics of a world of hostile rivalries;
united in spirit and purpose
they cannot be disappointed of their peaceful destiny.
   This is Pan-Americanism.
It has none of the spirit of empire in it.
It is the embodiment, the effectual embodiment,
of the spirit of law and independence
and liberty and mutual service….
   No one who really comprehends the spirit
of the great people for whom we are appointed to speak
can fail to perceive that their passion is for peace,
their genius best displayed
in the practice of the arts of peace.
Great democracies are not belligerent.
They do not seek or desire war.
Their thought is of individual liberty
and of the free labor that supports life
and the uncensored thought that quickens it.
Conquest and dominion are not in our reckoning,
or agreeable to our principles.
But just because we demand unmolested development
and the undisturbed government of our own lives
upon our own principles of right and liberty,
we resent, from whatever quarter it may come,
the aggression we ourselves will not practice.
We insist upon security in prosecuting
our self-chosen lines of national development.
We do more than that.
We demand it also for others.
We do not confine our enthusiasm for individual liberty
and free national development to the incidents
and movements of affairs which affect only ourselves.
We feel it wherever there is a people that tries to walk
in these difficult paths of independence and right.
From the first we have made common cause
with all partisans of liberty on this side of the sea,
and have deemed it as important that
our neighbors should be free from all outside domination
as that we ourselves should be;
have set America aside as a whole for the uses
of independent nations and political freemen.158

      On December 17 Villa sent one of his generals
to meet the American Consul at Ciudad Juárez.
The next day the US Secretary of State Lansing announced,

I am authorized by the President, to state that
in case General Villa decides to take refuge
in the United States immediately,
this Government will grant refuge to him,
and will extend to him the full guarantees and immunity of a
political refugee, provided he will, in turn, in his own behalf,
and that of such leaders as may remain on the other side
of the border, extend full guarantees to all Americans
in territory controlled by him,
and provided Americans reported detained in Chihuahua
be immediately released.159

On December 30 Lansing reported that the De facto government
of Carranza controlled almost all of the border territory.
      On 6 January 1916 President Wilson gave an address to the
Pan-American Scientific Congress in Washington and said,

   Truth recognizes no national boundaries.
Truth permits no racial prejudices;
and when men come to know each other and to recognize
equal intellectual strength and equal intellectual sincerity
and a common intellectual purpose,
some of the best foundations of friendship
are already laid….
   No one who reflects upon the progress of science
or the spread of the arts of peace or the extension
and perfection of any of the practical arts of life
can fail to see that there is only one atmosphere
of mutual confidence and of peace
and of ordered political life among the nations….
   If America is to come into her own,
into her legitimate own, in a world of peace and order,
she must establish the foundations of amity
so that no one will hereafter doubt them.160

      On January 10 Pancho Villa’s chief lieutenant Pablo López
with some soldiers held up a train at the Santa Ysabel
cattle station 50 miles west of Chihuahua City.
They captured 18 American passengers who worked for
La Cusi Mining Company that was owned by an American,
and they killed all but Thomas B. Holmes who escaped.
Several US Senators proposed a Pan-American
occupation of Mexico to protect foreigners.
On January 12 Wilson had Lansing send a telegram to Villa requesting
that he punish the Santa Ysabel murderers and asked him
to send forces to protect American mines in Chihuahua.
Wilson informed senators that he would not order an armed invasion.
The US State Department had warned the
miners of the danger in that part of Mexico.
      At the Gridiron Dinner in Washington on February 26
Wilson noted that Senator Harding had referred to “our forefathers.”
Wilson talked about justice and concluded
his short speech with a statement on valor.

   They were ready to stake everything for an idea,
and that idea was not expediency, but justice.
And the infinite difficulty of public affairs, gentlemen,
is not to discover the signs of the heavens
and the directions of the wind,
but to square the things you do
by the not simple but complicated standards of justice.
Justice has nothing to do with expediency.
Justice has nothing to do
with any temporary standard whatever.
It is rooted and grounded
in the fundamental instincts of humanity.
   America ought to keep out of this war.
She ought to keep out of this war at the sacrifice
of everything except this single thing
upon which her character and history are founded,
her sense of humanity and justice….
I would be just as much ashamed to be rash
as I would to be a coward.
Valour is self-respecting. Valour is circumspect.
Valour strikes only when it is right to strike.
Valour withholds itself from all small implications
and entanglements and waits for the great opportunity
when the sword will flash
as if it carried the light of heaven upon its blade.161

      On March 9 Newton Baker became the US Secretary of War.
On that day Villa’s army of 1,500 attacked Columbus, New Mexico,
and after an hour the United States 13th Cavalry forced them to retreat.
The dead included 67 Mexicans, 8 American civilians, and 7 American soldiers,
and four more Americans died from their wounds.
The next day news arrived that Villa had killed
four Americans before the Columbus raid.
Wilson declined to order a major military intervention that could
start a war and chose to send a small force to punish Villa.
He announced,

An adequate force will be sent at once in pursuit of Villa
with the single object of capturing him
and putting a stop to his forays.
This can and will be done in entire friendly aid
of the sovereignty of that republic.162

      On March 10 Brigadier General John J. Pershing was put in command
of the force, and they were authorized to pursue similar raids
that cross the border into the United States.
Airplanes from San Antonio could be used for observation.
Carranza sent his General Luis Gutiérrez to attack the Villistas.
He also asked for permission to let Mexican troops
cross the border in pursuit of bandits,
and he allowed United States troops to cross into Mexican territory.
Carranza also ordered his commanders in Sonora and Veracruz
to resist any American invasion by land and sea.
Wilson and his Cabinet agreed to Carranza’s request
for hot pursuit across both sides of the border.
Pershing reported that he heard Carranza troops might oppose his force.
Wilson replied that if that is correct, then US troops
were not to enter Mexico in order to prevent a war from starting.
      On March 15 Pershing’s force of about 4,000 men
with some of Carranza’s troops crossed the Mexican border.
Carranza’s commanders reported that the new Minister of War and Navy,
General Obregón, had directed all his troops
to cooperate with the American force.
On that day the American troops were ordered
not to attack forces of the de facto government.
Wilson was concerned how the Punitive Expedition might be reported,
and on March 26 he appealed to journalists,

   The people of the United States should know
the sinister and unscrupulous influences
that are afoot and should be on their guard
against crediting any story coming from the border;
and those who disseminate the news should make it
a matter of patriotism and of conscience
to test the source and authenticity
of every report they receive from that quarter.163

      Pershing’s’ expedition after marching 54 miles
without a rest found Villa’s army at dawn on April 1.
Villa was wounded or ill and quickly escaped in a carriage.
On April 10 General Funston sent a dispatch to the US War Department advising,

   Villa’s continued retreat … makes our present line
of communication and supply preposterous both
on account of its length and because of conditions of roads.
Only our advance cavalry which has probably reached
Parral or is farther south can have any effect on chase.
All the remainder of the thousands of troops
are keeping up a line of communication
that is unable to get supplies to the extreme front.164

On April 12 when about 150 troops in the 13th cavalry entered Parral
on the border of Chihuahua and Durango to purchase food and forage,
civilians shouted in favor of Villa and Mexico while abusing American invaders.
A mob with 300 soldiers from the garrison
attacked the Americans, killing 5 and wounding 6.
About 550 Carrancistas attacked the American soldiers.
General Obregón ordered the Parral commander to stop the fighting.
Carranza wired Washington that the Mexicans were wrong,
and he asked that the Punitive Expedition be withdrawn
so that worse violence would not occur.
Wilson and Lansing responded to these friendly messages by suggesting that
Generals Scott and Funston could meet with Obregón and other leaders in El Paso.
Carranza hoped to negotiate Pershing’s forces moving north.
Wilson responded on April 30 that American forces would move closer
to the border to a place approved by Obregón and that the Punitive Expedition
would cooperate with Carranza’s government.
On May 1 Carranza asked that American forces be removed.
Eliseo Arredondo was sent as the US Ambassador to Mexico.
      On May 5 and 6 about 200 Villistas crossed the Rio Grande
and raided Glen Springs and Boquillas in Texas,
killing three and wounding two American soldiers.
Texas Governor James Ferguson wanted Mexico occupied.
On the 6th Carranza ordered Obregón to negotiate
the withdrawal of Pershing’s Expedition.
On May 9 Wilson called out 4,500 National Guards from Texas, Arizona,
and New Mexico to patrol the border, and he ordered
the War Secretary Newton Baker to send 4,000 more troops.
General Scott continued to argue that the
Mexican government could control the problems.
On June 12 Wilson and Baker sent 1,200 more regular troops to the border.
On the 15th Mexican irregulars attacked a border patrol in Texas,
killing three and wounding seven soldiers.
The next day Carranza had the Chihuahua commander,
General Jacinto B. Treviño, telegraph General Pershing that
he was ordered to prevent American forces from moving south.
Pershing replied that the Mexican Government would be responsible.
On June 17 Wilson and Baker decided to send at least 100,000
National Guards to the border to allow regulars to fight in Mexico.
On June 21 Captain Charles Boyd led 200 soldiers and killed 27 Mexican soldiers
at Carrizal while 12 Americans died including their officers Boyd and Adair.
Mexicans held 17 American soldiers as prisoners.
The Mormon scout Spillsbury reported that
the Americans were the aggressors at Carrizal.
The US Government demanded the release of the captives.
      On June 26 about 15,000 Mexican troops occupied Naco, Arizona.
The American Union Against Militarism began a campaign through newspapers,
and the White House got hundreds of telegrams that were ten to one against war.
The prisoners were released at El Paso on June 29.
The next day Wilson gave an extemporaneous speech
at the Press Club in New York, saying,

   No man has to think before he takes aggressive action;
but before a man really conserves the honor by realizing
the ideals of the Nation he has to think
exactly what he will do and how he will do it.
   Do you think the glory of America
will be enhanced by a war of conquest in Mexico?
Do you think that any act of violence by a powerful nation
like this against a weak and destructive neighbor would
reflect distinction upon the annals of the United States?...
   I have constantly to remind myself that
I am not the servant of those who wish to enhance
the value of their Mexican investments,
that I am the servant of the rank and file
of the people of the United States….
   I have not read history without observing that
the greatest forces in the world
and the only permanent forces are the moral forces….
   Force will not accomplish anything that is permanent,
I venture to say, in the great struggle which is going on
on the other side of the sea.
The permanent things will be accomplished afterwards,
when the opinion of mankind is brought to bear
upon the issues, and the only thing that
will hold the world steady is this same silent,
insistent, all-powerful opinion of mankind….
   I venture to say that a decent respect
for the opinions of mankind demand that
those who started the present European war
should have stated their reasons;
but they did not pay any heed to the opinion of mankind,
and the reckoning will come when the settlement comes….
   I know that among the silent, speechless masses
of the American people is slowly coming up the sap
of moral purpose and love of justice
and reverence for humanity which constitutes
the only virtue and distinction of the American people….
   The United States … is something bigger and greater
and finer than any of us; that it was born in an ideal,
and only by pursuing an ideal in the face of
every adverse circumstance will it continue to deserve
the beloved name which we love and for which
we are ready to die, the name “America.”165

      On July 3 Mexico’s Foreign Secretary Cándido Aguilar expressed
a desire for a peaceful solution, and he cited the release of
American prisoners at Chihuahua as proof of peaceful intentions.
He understood the US Government’s desire to protect the border
and Mexico’s resentment against the American violation of its sovereignty.
He wrote that Mexico is ready to find a solution and would accept mediation
by some Latin American governments, and Washington
could choose between negotiation and mediation.
He instructed Carranza’s diplomat Eliseo Arredondo in
Washington to find a peaceful solution to maintain good relations.
On July 5 Arredondo gave the note to Lansing who
asked Wilson if he should talk with Arredondo.
Wilson agreed and began to prepare for appointing
a Mexican-American Joint High Commission.
Arredondo liked the plan, and Wilson and Lansing decided
to let the suggestion for it come from the Mexicans.
On July 12 Carranza wrote to Arredondo suggesting a commission
with three representatives of each government to arrange the
evacuation by the Punitive Expedition and resolve other conflicts.
Wilson and Counselor Frank Polk also wanted to discuss
internal Mexican problems, but Carranza opposed that.
Wilson directed Polk to reply that the Commission would be authorized to:

consider such other matters the friendly arrangement
of which would tend to improve the relations
of the two countries; it being understood that
such recommendations as the Commission may make
shall not be binding upon the respective Governments
until formally accepted by them.166

Carranza agreed to that, and he insisted on giving priority to withdrawing
the Punitive Expedition and to Mexican-American protection of the border.

      While the Mexican-American Joint High Commission was trying
to agree on how and when to withdraw the Punitive Expedition,
Wilson was concerned that the lives and property of foreigners be protected.
The Commissioners agreed on a protocol on November 24
while Villa’s army was fighting to regain Chihuahua City.
On 6 January 1917 General Murguia’s forces defeated
the Villistas at Jiminez north of Torreón.
On January 28 War Secretary Baker informed reporters that
General Pershing had been ordered to withdraw the US troops from Mexico,
and they crossed the border on February 5,
the day Mexico’s new constitution was proclaimed.
On March 3 the US Ambassador Henry P. Fletcher presented his
credentials to Carranza who would be elected president on March 11.

Wilson & the Caribbean 1913-17

      Haiti had another revolution on 1 January 1914.
The banker Roger L. Farnham met with US Secretary of State
William Jennings Bryan on January 22, and they discussed
how to give Haiti a stable government.
President Michel Oreste resigned on the 27th.
Oreste Zamor with his army took over the government
on February 1 and was elected a week later.
Bryan recognized the government on March 1.
On June 25 President Wilson approved a project to allow American
collection of Haitian customs and appointed a financial advisor
that President Zamor accepted on July 1.
Zamor said he would agree to the Farnham Plan
if Americans occupied Port-au-Prince during disorder.
That occurred on July 20.
On October 29 the transport Hancock with 800 marines was sent
from Guantánamo and the battleship Kansas from Mexico to Port-au-Prince.
Before their arrival President Oreste Zamor resigned,
and troops were disbanded with some joining the revolution.
US Minister Blanchard advised that “armed intervention alone from the
Government of the United States could save the country from anarchy.”167
      On November 3 Dalmar Théodore arrived with his troops,
and he was elected president for seven years.
On December 14 the new Foreign Minister Louis Borno agreed
to settle all Haitian-American conflicts in exchange for
the United States recognizing Théodore’s government.
Five days later Bryan wrote to Blanchard,

While we desire to encourage in every proper way
American investments in Haiti, we believe that this can
better be done by contributing to stability and order than by
favoring special concessions to Americans….
If the United States can, as a neighbor and friend,
assist the Government and people of Haiti as it has
assisted the Government and people of Santo Domingo,
it will gladly do so provided that assistance is desired;
but … this Government does not care
to assume these responsibilities
except on request of the Haitian Government.168

      Vilbrun Guillaume Sam led the cacos and took over Cap Haitien
on 18 January 1915, and he was elected president on March 4.
On March 27 Farnham learned that French interests had taken control
of the National Bank of Haiti and the Môle St. Nicholas.
On April 3 Bryan wrote to Wilson,

The American interests are willing to remain there,
with a view of purchasing a controlling interest
and making the Bank a branch of the American bank—
they are willing to do this provided this Government
takes the steps necessary to protect them,
and their idea seems to be that no protection
will be sufficient that does not include
a control of the Custom House.169

      On July 27 an insurrection overpowered the
presidential guard and besieged the palace.
General Oscar Etienne was Governor of Port-au-Prince, and he ordered the
execution of about 200 political prisoners including former president Oreste Zamor.
Mobs roamed in anarchy until nightfall,
and Gov. Etienne was shot dead as he left the prison.
President Sam escaped by going to the French Legation
which was attacked the next day.
The mob found Sam and hacked his body to pieces.
The USS Washington arrived that morning, and Admiral William B. Caperton
landed 400 marines and sailors who restored law and order.
      Wilson in a letter to the new Secretary of State Lansing on August 4
wrote that they must send a force to control the city and the country
to protect the food and the Congress as long as they put an end to revolution,
and to stop the payment of debts that finance revolution.
He concluded,

   1. We must send to Port au Prince a force
Sufficient to absolutely control the city not only
but also the country immediately about it
from which it draws its food.
I would be obliged if you would ascertain
from the Secretary of the Navy whether
he has such a force available that can reach there soon.
   2. We must let the present [Haitian] Congress know that
we will protect it but that we will not recognize any action
on its part which does not put men in charge of affairs
whom we can trust to handle and put an end to revolution.
   3. We must give all who now have authority there
or desire to have it or who think they have it
or about to have it to understand that we shall take steps
to prevent the payment of debts
contracted to finance revolution: in other words,
that we consider it our duty to insist on
constitutional government there and will,
if necessary (that is, if they force us to it as the only way)
take charge of elections and see that
a real government is erected which we can support….
   **This will probably involve making the city authorities
virtually subordinate to our commanders.
They may hand the city government
over to us voluntarily.170

By August 9 the American marines had taken over Haiti’s government
offices, military installations, the Pacifique gunboat, and customhouses.
Caperton let the Haitian National Assembly elect
Senator Sudre Dartiguenave the President on the 12th.
Caperton threatened a military government if they did not sign a treaty.
They signed, and the United States Senate ratified it on 28 February 1916.

      On 14 April 1913 the Horacista José Bordas Valdés was
elected Provisional President of the Dominican Republic.
On August 12 the US Secretary of State Bryan appointed the
New York lawyer James M. Sullivan the minister to that country.
On September 17 he read his instructions to the revolutionary leaders and
warned them that he would use power to maintain the Bordas government.
He advised them to treat revolutionaries as outlaws.
On September 25 Bryan advised them to remove all the Horacista governors,
and he asked the Navy Secretary to send warships to help maintain the blockade.
Wilson in December ordered three diplomats and thirty agents from the
Governor’s office in Puerto Rico to go to the
Dominican Republic to monitor their elections.
Those opposing Bordas won.
Bordas agreed to accept an American financial advisor
to supervise the government’s daily expenditures.
General Desiderio Arias intended to lead a revolt to overthrow Bordas
who dismissed four governors who were supporting Arias.
Three factions formed the Legalistas coalition.
Bordas had conferences on US warships, and he was re-elected in June 1914.
A Wilson Plan devised on July 27 to improve the government advised,

   The Government of the United States desires nothing
for itself from the Dominican Republic and no concessions
or advantages for its citizens
which are not accorded citizens of other countries.
It desires only to prove its sincere and disinterested
friendship for the republic and its people and to fulfill
its responsibilities as the friend to whom in such crises
as the present all the world looks
to guide Santo Domingo out of its difficulties.
   It therefore, makes the following earnest representations
not only to the existing de facto Government of the
Dominican Republic, but also to all who are in any way
responsible for the present posture of affairs there:
   I. It warns everyone concerned that
it is absolutely imperative that the present hostilities
should cease and that all who are concerned in them
should disperse to their several homes,
disbanding existing armed forces and returning
to the peaceful occupations upon which
the welfare of the people of the republic depends….
   II. It is also necessary that there should be an immediate
reconstitution of political authority in the republic.
To this end the Government of the United States
very solemnly advises all concerned with the public affairs
of the republic to adopt the following plan:…
   III. A regular and constitutional government
having thus been set up,
the Government of the United States would feel at liberty
thereafter to insist that revolutionary movements cease
and that all subsequent changes in the Government
of the Republic be effected by the peaceful processes
provided in the Dominican Constitution.171

On August 23 Wilson ordered, “Bordas should be
given distinctly to understand that the U.S. means business.
This government will not brook refusal,
changes of purpose, or unreasonable delay.”172
On October 27 the Dominicans elected
General Juan Isidro Jiménez their President.
      In April 1915 Dominican leaders in the Congress tried to impeach
Jiménez for refusing to remove Charles M. Johnston as the Financial Adviser.
Secretary of State Bryan promised that the American troops
would suppress insurrections and troublemakers.
President Jiménez sent a commission to Washington to negotiate,
and he agreed to let Johnston control Dominican expenditures.
Jiménez in August had a physical and mental breakdown.
      By the end of April 1916 War Minister Arias
had his troops controlling the capital.
On May 2 Commander W. S. Crosley on the USS Prairie with many
marines reinforced the USS Castine in the harbor of Santo Domingo.
President Jiménez resigned and went home.
Lansing sent destroyers to three Dominican ports on May 6.
Admiral Caperton was sent on the USS Dolphin,
and he arrived at Santo Domingo on May 13,
and by the 15th about 600 marines and sailors controlled the capital.
By July about 2,000 marines and bluejackets occupied the country,
and Arias surrendered to the Governor of Santiago.
Most Dominican forces did not resist.
Dr. Federico Henríquez y Carvajal was president of the Supreme Court
and a friend of Arias, and Dominicans hoped to elect him.
Americans used the Council of Ministers to arrest seven senators
and one deputy on June 4, blocking a quorum in the Congress.
The congressmen were released on the 6th,
and Federico Henríquez withdrew as a candidate.
In late July the Congress elected his brother Francisco Henríquez
as provisional president for five months.
Americans insisted that he agree to their demands,
but he refused to violate the constitution.
Because all his advisers agreed, Wilson approved what he called
“the least of the evils in sight in this very perplexing situation,”
though he ruled out removing judges at that time.
Captain Knapp went to Santo Domingo on the USS Olympia
and issued the proclamation of “Military Occupation” on November 29.
The US Marines would stay in the Dominican Republic until 1924.
      The United States had troops in Nicaragua since 1912.
On 5 August 1914 Secretary of State Bryan and Emiliano Chamaorro
signed a treaty allowing the United States to build a canal through Nicaragua.
The United States Senate ratified by 55 to 18
the Nicaragua treaty on 18 February 1916.
When Nicaragua’s President Adolfo Díaz threatened to defy the United States,
Secretary of State Lansing told Navy Secretary Daniels to send
US warships to both coasts of Nicaragua and more Marines to Managua.
Chamorro was then elected President of Nicaragua
on October 3 and served during the years 1917-20.
      On 24 June 1916 the United States ratified a convention that
protected the existing rights of Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Honduras.
      The Colombian minister in Washington on 3 May 1913 had suggested
that the United States settle the dispute with Colombia
using arbitration by the Hague Tribunal.
Wilson directed Bryan to negotiate, and on September 29 Wilson instructed
Bryan and the US minister in Bogotá to offer paying the Republic of Colombia
$20 million to settle all claims with Colombia and Panama.
After more bargaining the United States agreed to pay $25 million,
and Colombia signed a treaty on 6 April 1914.
This generous act raised European public opinion for Wilson.
Bryan presented the treaty to the Senate foreign relations committee on June 17.
Theodore Roosevelt criticized it on June 25,
and on July 11 the Senate foreign relations chairman called it
“a crime against the United States” even though the New York World
was publishing a series of articles proving that
the United States had wronged Colombia.
On 2 February 1916 the Senate committee reported the treaty favorably.
Amendments reduced the indemnity to $15 million.
Wilson made an appeal for the treaty on the 17th, but the Senate
sent the treaty back to the committee and adjourned on 16 March 1917.

Wilson’s Neutral Diplomacy in 1916

      On 4 January 1916 President Wilson learned that
the British steamship Persia, 7,964 tons had been torpedoed
with two Americans among the 350 killed, and he returned to Washington.
On that day Wilson told his secretary Tumulty that if he had to get into war
to be re-elected, he did not want to be President.
Wilson’s top advisor Col. Edward M. House with his wife and secretary
had sailed on the Rotterdam and began meeting with the
British Foreign Secretary Edward Grey in London on January 6.
On the 10th they met with the First Lord of the Admiralty, Arthur Balfour,
and later the Munitions Minister Lloyd George joined their conversations.
House also conferred with Prime Minister Herbert Asquith.
He discussed Wilson’s mediation project only with Grey on January 19.
      Wilson and Lansing began a diplomatic campaign
to disarm all ocean-liners and merchant ships.
On January 12 Wilson informed the military affairs committee
that he opposed compulsory military service.
The German Ambassador Bernstorff resumed negotiations on the Lusitania
tragedy on January 7, and on the 18th the German government decided
to grant an indemnity for American lives lost in that sinking.
Also that day Kaiser Wilhelm II approved this order
requested by Admiral Henning von Holtzendorff:

Enemy merchant ships are to be destroyed
by all means possible.
Merchant ships under neutral flags are to be treated
as enemy vessels unless they can be positively identified
as neutral—even by surfaced submarines.173

On the 26th the German Ambassador Bernstorff revised
a memorandum and offered to make reparation for the
American lives lost in the sinking of the Lusitania.
      On January 27 Wilson began a campaign for preparedness
by speaking to three different groups in New York.
His wife Edith accompanied him, and at Aeolian Hall he said,

   The greatest thing in the world,
the greatest force in the world, is character,
and I believe that character can be expressed
upon a national scale and by a nation;
that every act of a nation, at any rate of a nation which
opens its counsels to the voice of the people themselves,
expresses its character in its attitude toward its own affairs,
and in its attitude toward the affairs of other nations.
America has always stood resolutely and absolutely
for the right of every people
to determine its own destiny and its own affairs….
Peace does not mean inaction.
There may be infinite activity;
there may be almost violent activity in the midst of peace.
   Peace dwells, after all, in the character and in the heart,
and that is where peace is rooted
in this blessed country of ours….
We are all one spiritual kith and kin,
and a great family is building up here which
I believe in my heart will set an example to the world
of those things which elevate and purify
and strengthen mankind.174

That night he spoke to the Railway Business Association
at the Waldorf Astoria and said,

I have sought to maintain peace
against very great and sometimes very unfair odds.
I have had many a time to use every power
that was in me to prevent
such a catastrophe as war coming upon this country….
   The first and primary obligation is
the maintenance of the integrity of our own sovereignty.
That goes as of course.
There is also the maintenance of our liberty
to develop our political institutions without hindrance;
and, last of all, there is the determination and the obligation
to stand as the strong brother of all those in this hemisphere
who mean to maintain the same principles
and follow the same ideals of liberty.175

In Cleveland on January 29 he explained,

   The United States is trying to keep up the processes
of peaceful commerce while all the world is at war
and while all the world is in need of essential things
which the United States produces, and yet by an oversight
for which it is difficult to forgive ourselves
we did not provide ourselves with a mercantile marine,
by means of which we could carry the commerce
of the world without the interference
of the motives of other nations
which might be engaged in controversy not our own;
and so the carrying trade of the world
is for the most part in the hands of the nations
now embroiled in this great struggle.176

      On January 31 he spoke to 15,000 people in Milwaukee and said,

I know you are depending on me
to keep this Nation out of the war.
So far I have done so, and I pledge you my word that,
God helping me, I will if it is possible.
But you have laid another duty upon me.
You have bidden me see to it that nothing stains or impairs
the honor of the United States,
and that is a matter not within my control;
that depends upon what others do,
not upon what the Government of the United States does.
Therefore there may at any moment come a time
when I cannot preserve both the honor
and the peace of the United States.
Do not exact of me an impossible and contradictory thing,
but stand ready and insistent that everybody
who represents you should stand ready to provide
the necessary means for maintaining
the honor of the United States.177

President Wilson gave a long speech in Chicago on January 31,
and he ended by promising,

   Look at the task that is assigned to the United States,
to assert the principles of law in a world
in which the principles of law have broken down—
not the technical principles of law,
but the essential principles of right dealing
and humanity as between nation and nation….
This war was brought on by rulers, not by the people;
and I thank God that there is no man in America
who has the authority to bring war on
without the consent of the people….
I stand ready to counsel and to help;
I stand ready to assert whenever the flame is quenched
those infinite principles of rectitude and peace
which alone can bring happiness and liberty to mankind.178

He spoke at Des Moines, Iowa on February 1.
The next day he made a speech in Topeka, Kansas, and in his speech
in Kansas City to 18,000 he promised that they would
have the “greatest navy in the world” to defend their honor.
He gave two speeches in St. Louis on February 3,
and in the first at the Coliseum he said,

   America is at peace with all the world
because she entertains a real friendship
for all the nations of the world.
It is not, as some have mistakenly supposed,
a peace based upon self-interest.
It is a peace based upon some of the most generous
sentiments that characterize the human heart.179

In the other one to the Business Men’s League of St. Louis he concluded,

   I have come out to appeal to America,
not because I doubted what America felt,
but because I thought America wanted the satisfaction
of uttering what she felt and of letting the whole world know
that she was a unit in respect of every question
of national dignity and national safety.180

Wilson returned to Washington and expressed his opposition to the
Clark amendment to the bill extending self-government in the Philippines
because he believed it was a breach of trust.
The Philippine Assembly approved the amendment unanimously on January 25.
This allowed the Jones bill to pass as Wilson
would not veto what promised Filipinos independence.
The Clark amendment then passed with Vice President Marshall
breaking the tie in the Senate.
On August 29 Wilson signed the Jones bill saying,

There have been times when the people
of the Philippine Islands doubted our intentions
to be liberally just to them.
I hope and believe that this bill
is a sufficient earnest to them of our real intentions.
It is a very satisfactory advance in our policy
of extending to them genuine self-government
and control of their own affairs.
It is only by such means that any people
comes into contentment and into political capacity,
and it is high time that we did this act of justice
which we have now done.181

The first Philippine legislature with only Filipinos met on October 16.
      On February 2 Col. House had begun meeting
with the diplomat Jules Cambon at the French Ministry.
House also talked with France’s Prime Minister Aristide Briand.
On the 7th House shared with them a confidential
House-Grey Memorandum that begins,

   Colonel House told me that President Wilson was ready,
on hearing from France and England that
the moment was opportune, to propose that a Conference
should be summoned to put an end to the war.
Should the Allies accept this proposal,
and should Germany refuse it, the United States
would probably enter the war against Germany.182

House visited King Albert of Belgium on February 8.
      On the 10th the German Admiralty announced that starting on February 29
German submarines would attack all armed merchantmen without warning.
Also on the 10th Secretary of War Garrison
and the Assistant Henry Breckinridge resigned.
Wilson chose Newton D. Baker of Cleveland to be Secretary of War,
and after his announcement Baker’s pacifism and
opposition to preparedness became known.
When journalists asked him about his pacifism, Baker replied,
“So much so that I would fight for peace.”
      On February 16 Wilson sent Lansing
to speak to the German Ambassador Bernstorff.
      Confusion as to when belligerent submarines might attack armed ships
concerned the Congress, and on February 17 Rep. Jeff McLemore of Texas
introduced a resolution asking the President to warn American citizens
not to travel on armed merchant ships.
Senator William J. Stone of Missouri wrote
a letter to President Wilson on the 24th.
With suggestions from his secretary Tumult the President explained
his policy in a letter to Senator Stone in which he wrote,

You are right in assuming that
I shall do everything in my power
to keep the United States out of war….
   No nation, no group of nations has the right
while war is in progress to alter or disregard the principles
which all nations have agreed upon
in mitigation of the horrors and sufferings of war;
and if the clear rights of American citizens
should ever unhappily be abridged or denied
by any such action we should, it seems to me, have in honor
no choice as to what our own course should be.
   For my own part, I cannot consent to any abridgment
of the rights of American citizens in any respect.
The honor and self-respect of the nation is involved.
We covet peace, and shall preserve it
at any cost but the loss of honor.
To forbid our people to exercise their rights
for fear we might be called upon to vindicate them
would be a deep humiliation indeed….
   What we are contending for in this matter
is of the very essence of things
that have made America a sovereign nation.183

Copies of the letter were given to correspondents, and Wilson invited
Speaker Clark and Reps. Flood and Kitchin to the White House the next day.
      On February 27 Ambassador Bernstorff announced that Germany was
ready to discuss offensive and defensive armaments with the United States
and that the German government warned Americans
not to travel on armed merchant ships of the “enemy.”
      Col House had met with Prime Minister Asquith again on February 22
and with Grey the next day for final arrangements
before sailing for New York on the 25th.
House returned to Washington on March 5, and he told Wilson that
the English and French approved Wilson’s mediation under House’s plan.
On the 8th Wilson had House wire Grey to add the word “probably”
before the word “leave” in the statement, that if the peace plan failed,
“the United States would (probably) leave the Conference as a belligerent
on the side of the Allies, if Germany was unreasonable.”184
Because of that change Grey decided not
to send the Memorandum to the Allies.
      Wilson wanted to show that the Congress supported
his position by repealing the McLemore resolution which
the House did 276-142 on 7 March 1916.
On March 13 Admiral von Holtzendorff sent
to the German Navy the following orders:

1. Enemy merchant ships encountered in the war zone
are to be sunk without warning.
2. Enemy merchantmen encountered outside the war zone
are to be destroyed without warning only if they are armed.
3. Enemy liners must not be attacked
by submerged submarines either within or without
the war zone, whether they are armed or not.185

On March 24 the English steamer Sussex 1,353 tons, with 325 passengers
was torpedoed by the submarine UB29 and was towed to Boulogne.
There were 80 casualties, and only four of the 25 Americans were injured.
On March 29 news arrived that the British steamer Eagle Point was torpedoed.
Neither steamer had been armed.
The next day Wilson through Col. House warned the German Ambassador
Bernstorff that if they did not change the German submarine policy,
the United States would enter the war.
On April 3 the English ship Berwindvale carrying Americans was also torpedoed.
On April 6 Wilson sent a message to Edward Grey begging him
to act immediately on their plan for mediation, and
Grey cabled Col. House that they must continue the war.
On April 11 Wilson discussed with House an ultimatum he wrote
threatening to sever diplomatic relations with Germany
if they did not abandon their current submarine warfare.
Wilson worked on a note proposed by Lansing, and on the 15th the President
wired the note to Berlin and arranged for a joint session of the Congress.
The next day Wilson wrote to Col. House that they must “move toward peace
or insist to the limits on our rights of trade.”
The German Foreign Minister Jagow sent a new note saying,

We have modified submarine war
to maintain friendly relations with America,
renouncing important military advantages
and in contradiction with excited public opinion here.
We trust that American Government will appreciate this
and not put forward new demands
which might bring us into impossible situation.186

On 19 April 1916 President Wilson spoke to the Congress,
and he concluded by warning,

Unless the Imperial German Government should now
immediately declare and effect an abandonment
of its present methods of warfare
against passenger and freight carrying vessels
this Government can have no choice
but to sever diplomatic relations with
the Government of the German Empire altogether.
   This decision I have arrived at with the keenest regret;
the possibility of the action contemplated
I am sure all thoughtful Americans
will look forward to with unaffected reluctance.
But we cannot forget that we are in some sort
and by the force of circumstances
the responsible spokesmen of the rights of humanity,
and that we cannot remain silent while those rights
seem in process of being swept utterly away
in the maelstrom of this terrible war.
   We owe it to a due regard for our own rights as a nation,
to our sense of duty as a representative
of the rights of neutrals the world over,
and to a just conception of the rights of mankind to take
this stand now with the utmost solemnity and firmness.
   I have taken it, and taken it in the confidence
that it will meet with your approval and support.
All sober-minded men must unite in hoping
that the Imperial German Government,
which has in other circumstances stood
as the champion of all that we are now contending for
in the interest of humanity, may recognize the justice
of our demands and meet them
in the spirit in which they are made.187

The Congress listened in silence to the end and then applauded.
The New York World editorial declared, “There can be no war
unless Germany commits an overt act of war.”
The French and the British hoped to gain the United States as an ally.
On May 3 Wilson said to Col. House that he
“thought those guilty should have personal punishment.”
A cable from Berlin reached Washington on May 5, and another on the 9th
accepted the American evidence on the Sussex incident and
promised to pay an indemnity to the injured Americans.
On May 9 the American press published Wilson’s response
to Germany’s amicable settlement and altered policy.
Wilson’s note was published in Germany on May 10,
and stock prices rose on the Berlin Bourse.
      On March 4 the Senate military affairs committee led by
George E. Chamberlain of Oregon had approved a bill authorizing
a national volunteer force of up to 250,000 men and
increasing the Regular Army to 178,000 in five years.
Rep. James Hay was chairman of the military affairs committee
in the House, and they approved his bill unanimously on March 6.
That bill would increase the regular army from 100,000 to 140,000 and
would put the 129,000 National Guards under control by the War Department.
An amendment added short-term enlistments
followed by inactive reserve for six years.
On March 13 Wilson discussed his legislative agenda with House Speaker Clark
and Rep. Kitchin, and he added a bill to extend Puerto Rico’s self-government.
The military and ships were major issues.
On March 23 the House of Representatives
passed the Hay bill by a vote of 403 to 2.
      A few hours after Secretary of State Lansing sent the Sussex ultimatum
to Germany on April 18, the Senate passed the Chamberlain bill that
federalized the National Guard authorizing 280,000 men.
The conference committee on May 1 reduced the peacetime Regular Army
to 180,000 and allowed the President to increase it to 218,000.
Conferees authorized 400,000 National Guards on May 3,
and the Senate conferees demanded 250,000 in the Army.
House conferees rejected that, and the committee agreed to an Army of 206,169
with expansion by presidential order up to 254,000 with National Guards
increases up to 425,000 with authority to draft men into service during a war.
Both houses of Congress passed the Army Reorganization
by May 20, and President Wilson signed it on June 3.
      The House naval affairs committee on May 18 approved an
appropriation bill with a 5-year plan to build 5 battle cruisers,
20 submarines, 4 cruisers, 10 destroyers, and other crafts.
Money for naval aviation was increased from $2 million to $3.5 million.
An amendment by Rep. Walter L. Hensley of Missouri passed authorizing
a postwar conference to discuss disarmament and
means for arbitration of international disputes.
On June 2 the naval appropriations passed.

Wilson Speaks to a League for Peace in May 1916

      On 10 May 1916 President Wilson had Col. House send a cable
to the British Foreign Secretary Edward Grey to promote the plan for
Wilson to mediate a convention for maintaining peace after the war.
On May 16 Wilson wrote to House,

   If we move for peace, it will be along these lines:
1) Such a settlement with regard to their own immediate
   interests as the belligerents may be able to agree upon.
   We have nothing material of any kind to ask for ourselves
   and are quite aware that
   we are in no sense or degree parties to the quarrel.
   Our interest is only in peace and its guarantees;
2) a universal alliance to maintain freedom of the seas
3) a universal alliance to maintain freedom of the seas
   a) contrary to treaty covenants or
   b) without warning and full inquiry,—a virtual guarantee
         of territorial integrity and political independence.188

      On May 24 US Secretary of State Lansing sent a letter to the French
Ambassador complaining that British and French authorities were capturing mail
between the United States and other neutrals and belligerent Central Powers
who also did not get hospital supplies from the United States.
      The League to Enforce the Peace had been founded in 1905
by Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, and
William Howard Taft who became its head in 1915.
On 27 May 1916 Wilson addressed the
League to Enforce the Peace in Washington.
He believed it may be the most important speech
he would ever make, and this is most of what he said,

   The desire of the whole world now turns eagerly,
more and more eagerly, towards the hope of peace,
and there is just reason why we should take our part
in counsel upon this great theme.
It is right that I, as spokesman of our Government,
should attempt to give expression to what I believe to be
the thought and purpose of the people of the United States
in this vital matter….
Our own rights as a Nation, the liberties, the privileges, and
the property of our people have been profoundly affected.
We are not mere disconnected lookers-on.
The longer the war lasts, the more deeply
do we become concerned that it should be brought to an end
and the world be permitted to resume
its normal life and course again.
And when it does come to an end
we shall be as much concerned as the nations at war
to see peace assume an aspect of permanence,
give promise of days from which the anxiety of uncertainty
shall be lifted, bring some assurance that peace and war
shall always hereafter be reckoned
part of the common interest of mankind.
We are participants, whether we would or not,
in the life of the world.
The interests of all nations are our own also.
We are partners with the rest.
What affects mankind is inevitably our affair
as well as the affair of the nations of Europe and of Asia….
   If we ourselves had been afforded some opportunity
to apprise the belligerents of the attitude
which it would be our duty to take,
of the policies and practices against which we would feel
bound to use all our moral and economic strength,
and in certain circumstances
even our physical strength also,
our own contribution to the counsel
which might have averted the struggle
would have been considered worth weighing and regarding.
   And the lesson which the shock of being taken by surprise
in a matter so deeply vital to all the nations of the world
has made poignantly clear is, that
the peace of the world must henceforth depend
upon a new and more wholesome diplomacy.
Only when the great nations of the world have reached
some sort of agreement as to what they hold
to be fundamental to their common interest,
and as to some feasible method of acting in concert
when any nation or group of nations
seeks to disturb those fundamental things,
can we feel that civilization is at last in a way of justifying
its existence and claiming to be finally established.
It is clear that nations must in the future
be governed by the same high code of honor
that we demand of individuals….
If this war has accomplished nothing else
for the benefit of the world,
it has at least disclosed a great moral necessity
and set forward the thinking
of the statesmen of the world by a whole age.
Repeated utterances of the leading statesmen
of most of the great nations now engaged in war
have made it plain that their thought has come to this,
that the principle of public right must henceforth
take precedence over the individual interests
of particular nations, and that the nations of the world
must in some way band themselves together to see that
that right prevails as against any sort of selfish aggression;
that henceforth alliance must not be set up against alliance,
understanding against understanding, but that
there must be a common agreement for a common object,
and that at the heart of that common object
must lie the inviolable rights of peoples and of mankind.
The nations of the world
have become each other’s neighbors.
It is to their interest that they should understand each other.
In order that they may understand each other,
it is imperative that they should agree
to cooperate in a common cause, and that they should
so act that the guiding principle of that common cause
shall be even-handed and impartial justice.
   This is undoubtedly the thought of America.
This is what we ourselves will say
when there comes proper occasion to say it.
In the dealings of nations with one another
arbitrary force must be rejected, and we must move
forward to the thought of the modern world,
the thought of which peace is the very atmosphere.
That thought constitutes a chief part
of the passionate conviction of America.
We believe these fundamental things:
First, that every people has a right to choose
the sovereignty under which they shall live.
Like other nations, we have ourselves no doubt
once and again offended against that principle
when for a little while controlled by selfish passion, as our
franker historians have been honorable enough to admit;
but it has become more and more our rule of life and action.
Second, that the small states of the world have
a right to enjoy the same respect for their sovereignty
and for their territorial integrity
that great and powerful nations expect and insist upon.
And, third, that the world has a right to be free from every
disturbance of its peace that has its origin in aggression
and disregard of the rights of peoples and nations.
   So sincerely do we believe in these things that I am sure
that I speak the mind and wish of the people of America
when I say that the United States is willing to become
a partner in any feasible association of nations
formed in order to realize these objects
and make them secure against violation.
   There is nothing that the United States wants for itself
that any other nation has.
We are willing, on the contrary, to limit ourselves
along with them to a prescribed course of duty
and respect for the rights of others
which will check any selfish passion of our own,
as it will check any aggressive impulse of theirs.
   If it should ever be our privilege to suggest or initiate
a movement for peace among the nations now at war,
I am sure that the people of the United States
would wish their Government to move along these lines:
First, such a settlement with regard to their own
immediate interests as the belligerents may agree upon.
We have nothing material of any kind to ask for ourselves,
and are quite aware that we are in no sense or degree
parties to the present quarrel.
Our interest is only in peace and its future guarantees.
Second, an universal association of the nations to maintain
the inviolate security of the highway of the seas for the
common and unhindered use of all the nations of the world,
and to prevent any war begun either contrary
to treaty covenants or without warning and full submission
of the causes to the opinion of the world,—
a virtual guarantee of territorial integrity
and political independence….
   I feel that the world is even now upon the eve
of a great consummation, when some common force
will be brought into existence which shall safeguard right
as the first and most fundamental interest of all peoples
and all governments, when coercion shall be summoned
not to the service of political ambition or selfish hostility,
but to the service of a common order,
a common justice, and a common peace.
God grant that the dawn of that day of frank dealing
and of settled peace, concord,
and cooperation may be near at hand!189

      The New Republic responded by publishing
“Mr. Wilson’s Great Utterance” which observed,

   Mr. Wilson has broken with the tradition of American
isolation in the only way which offers any hope to men.
Not only has he broken with isolation,
he has ended the pernicious doctrine of neutrality,
and has declared that in the future
we cannot be neutral between the aggressor and the victim.
That is one of the greatest advances ever made
in the development of international morality.190

      Secretary of War Newton D. Baker suggested a civilian agency
to study the US economy and human resources in order to mobilize them.
Rep. James Hay introduced it as the President’s bill on May 23,
and the Council of Executive Information for the Coordination of
Industries and Resources for the National Security and Welfare
became part of the Army bill and involved the secretaries of War,
Navy, Commerce, Agriculture, Labor, and Interior.
The Senate reduced the name to the Council of National Defense.
On October 11 Wilson would appoint seven leaders to an Advisory Committee.
The Congress passed a Shipping Act by August 18,
and Wilson signed it on September 7.
      The Tariff Commission was formed, and they passed the Revenue Act
raising the tax on income over $4,000 to 2% and a
surtax on incomes more than $2 million to 13%.
The estate tax on $5 million legacies would be 10%.
The Federal Farm Board with five members supervised at least 12
Federal Land Banks, and the US Treasury provided $6 million at 2% interest.
Even conservatives supported the farmers’ cooperatives.
Senator Henry F. Hollis of New Hampshire introduced a bill that
the Senate passed 58-5 and the House 295-10 on May 15.
After differences were worked out, Wilson signed it on July 17
before farm organization representatives at the White House.
He named members of the Federal Farm Loan Board,
and this rural credit system was operating before the election in November.
Agriculture Secretary Houston proposed bonded warehouses to issue
receipts on commodities that became collateral for loans.

      The death of Joseph R. Lamar on 2 January 1916
had created a vacancy on the United States Supreme Court.
The US Attorney General Thomas W. Gregory urged President Wilson
to choose Louis Brandeis as the first Jew to be nominated.
Wilson did so on January 28 without consulting the two Senators
from Massachusetts—Henry Cabot Lodge and John W. Weeks.
Former President Taft criticized the choice severely.
The Progressive Senator La Follette praised the controversial choice, writing,

To take him after these years of identification
with the struggle for social justice,
knowing the powerful forces arrayed against him
is proof indisputable that when the President
sees the light he is not afraid to follow it.191

The nomination pleased Jews, and organized labor praised the choice.
Senate judiciary committee chairman Culbertson of Texas asked
President Wilson to explain his reasons for nominating Brandeis.
On May 5 Wilson wrote a fairly long letter that included these passages:

   In every matter in which I have made test of his judgment
and point of view I have received from him counsel
singularly enlightening, singularly clear-sighted and judicial,
and, above all, full of moral stimulation.
He is a friend of all just men and a lover of the right;
and he knows more than how to talk about the right—
he knows how to set it forward in the face of its enemies.
I knew, from direct personal knowledge of the man,
what I was doing when I named him for the highest
and most responsible tribunal of the nation….
   I cannot speak too highly of his impartial, impersonal,
orderly, and constructive mind, his rare analytical powers,
his deep human sympathy, his profound acquaintance
with the historical roots of our institutions
and insight into their spirit, or of the many evidences
he has given of being imbued, to the very heart, with
our American ideals of justice and equality of opportunity;
of his knowledge of modern economic conditions
and of the way they bear upon the masses of the people,
or of his genius in getting persons to unite
in common and harmonious action and look with frank
and kindly eyes into each other’s minds,
who had before been heated antagonists.192

This letter was printed in the New York Times on May 9, and on June 1
the Senate approved the Brandeis appointment by a vote of 47 to 22.

Democrats Nominate Wilson Again in 1916

      On 30 May 1916 President Wilson proclaimed June 14 “Flag Day”
as a day to rededicate oneself to all the ideals of the United States.
The Second Continental Congress had approved a resolution
on 14 June 1777 making the flag with the 13
red and white stripes represent the 13 United States.
On the first Flag Day in Chicago a parade of 130,000 people lasted eleven hours.
Wilson led a parade of 66,000 on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington.
Carl Laemmle of the Universal Film Manufacturing Company
released the serial Liberty in 40 reels.

     The Naval Act (a.k.a. the “Big Navy Act”) authorized building
10 battleships, 6 battlecruisers, 10 scout cruisers, 50 destroyers, and 67 submarines.
The House of Representatives passed the bill on June 2,
and the Senate did so on July 21.
The House accepted a Senate amendment on August 15,
and President Wilson made it law on the 29th.
Construction was to begin in 1919 to be completed by 1923.
When the United States entered the war in April 1917, smaller ships
were put ahead of the battleships in order to counter German submarines.
      Charles Evans Hughes had been Governor of New York from 1907
until he became a Justice on the US Supreme Court in October 1910.
He was the most viable Republican candidate in 1916,
and they nominated him on the third ballot in Chicago on June 10.
He resigned from the court that day, and Wilson nominated for the
US Supreme Court the progressive John Hessin Clarke,
whom he had appointed as a District Court Judge.
Wilson was disappointed when Clarke resigned in September 1922.
Theodore Roosevelt declined the Progressive Party’s nomination
and persuaded their committee to support the Republican candidates.
      German-American Democrats in New York City
formed a campaign committee for Speaker Champ Clark.
He declined and announced that he would support the re-election of the President.
Wilson wanted to replace the Democratic National Chairman McCombs,
and the broker Bernard M. Baruch persuaded McCombs to resign.
Wilson appointed the Progressive newspaper
publisher Vance McCormick to be chairman.
Democrats worked on their platform in early June.
Wilson asked Congress for suggestions and assembled a draft
that he read to his Cabinet on June 9.
      On June 13 Wilson gave a graduation address to the Military Academy
at West Point that was printed in the New York Times.
He said,

   You know that the chief thing that is holding many people
back from enthusiasm for what is called preparedness
is the fear of militarism….
The purpose of militarism is to use armies for aggression.
The spirit of militarism is the opposite of the civilian spirit,
the citizen spirit….
   You know that one thing in which our forefathers
took pride was this, that the civil power is superior
to the military power in the United States….
   We must all stand together in one spirit
as lovers and servants of America.
And that means something more than
lovers and servants merely of the United States.
You have heard of the Monroe Doctrine, gentlemen.
You know that we are already spiritual partners
with both continents of this hemisphere
and that America means something
which is bigger even than the United States,
and that we stand here with the glorious power
of this country ready to swing it out into the field of action
whenever liberty and independence and political integrity
are threatened anywhere in the Western Hemisphere.
And we are ready—nobody has authorized me to say this,
but I am sure of it—we are ready to join with
the other nations of the world in seeing that
the kind of justice prevails everywhere
that we believe in.193

      The Democratic convention would approve
the platform on its last day the 16th.
Wilson and his secretary Tumulty made minor suggestions to the
keynote speech by the former New York Governor Martin H. Glynn.
His speech on June 14 received a rousing response by the convention.
He named the presidents Adams, Jefferson, Van Buren,
Pierce, and Grant who did not go to war.
They settled troubles by negotiation just as President Wilson was doing.
The foreign policy plank included this:

   The circumstances of the last two years
have revealed necessities of international action
which no former generation can have foreseen.
We hold that it is the duty of the United States
to use its power, not only to make itself safe at home,
but also to make secure its just interests
throughout the world, and, both for this end
and in the interest of humanity,
to assist the world in securing settled peace and justice.
We believe that the time has come when it is the duty
of the United States to join the other nations of the world
in any feasible association that will
effectively serve those principles, to maintain inviolate
the complete security of the highway of the seas
for the common and unhindered use of all nations.194

The permanent chairman Senator Ollie M. James of Kentucky
in his speech described what Wilson had accomplished, saying,

Without orphaning a single American child,
without widowing a single American mother,
without firing a single gun,
without the shedding of a single drop of blood,
he wrung from the most militant spirit
that ever brooded above a battlefield
an acknowledgement of American rights
and an agreement to American demands.195

During nominations Judge Westcott of New Jersey
said, “The nation is at work.
The nation is at peace.
The nation is accomplishing the destiny of Democracy.”
Then after 30 minutes more he concluded,

Therefore, my fellow-countrymen, not I,
but his deeds and achievements; not I,
but the spirit and purposes of America; not I,
but civilization itself, nominates to succeed himself
to the Presidency of the United States,
to the Presidency of one hundred million free people,
bound in impregnable union, the scholar, the statesman,
the financier, the emancipator, the pacificator,
the moral leader of Democracy, Woodrow Wilson.196

The crowd cheered, sang, and shouted for 45 minutes.
After seconding speeches Wilson was nominated by acclamation
with Vice President Thomas R. Marshall.
On June 16 they went over the platform and added more
based on Glynn’s speech including this:

In particular, we commend to the American people
the splendid diplomatic victories of our great President,
who has preserved the vital interests of our Government
and its citizens, and kept us out of war.197

“He kept us out of war” would become a slogan of the campaign,
though their official slogan was “Peace, Prosperity, Preparedness.”
They also added a plank for the Democratic Party’s
“profound sympathy with the aspirations of the people of Ireland
for the complete independence of their country.”

      Rep. Edward Keating of Colorado and Senator Robert L. Owen
of Oklahoma sponsored a bill to regulate child labor and to ban the
shipping of manufactured products in interstate commerce on which
children under 14 worked and mining products involving those under 16
or those who worked over 8 hours a day.
The House of Representatives passed the bill 337 to 46 on 2 February 1916.
In the Senate the National Association of Manufacturers
(NAM) and southern senators waylaid the bill.
      On July 4 Wilson spoke at the dedication of the
Federation of Labor Building in Washington and said,

   Mr. Gompers spoke just now, and I dare say truthfully,
if it were somewhat a matter of surprise that
the President of the United States should recognize the great
labor movement by his presence on an occasion like this.
I am sorry for any President of the United States who
does not recognize every great movement in the Nation.
The minute he stops recognizing it
he has become a back number.
And how anybody could overlook this movement
I cannot imagine—a movement so fraught with all sorts
of things that appeal to the reason and the heart.
You cannot go deep into any argument with a workingman
interested in the rights of other workingmen
as well as his own without finding
that a deep emotion underlies the argument.
And, my fellow citizens, I want to remind you that
we are governed by our emotions very much more
than we are governed by our reason.
It is a very dangerous fact,
but a very profoundly interesting one, that a man
follows his heart more often than he follows his head,
and when he follows his heart it is of primary importance
that his heart should be right and not wrong.198

      Wilson spoke to the Salesmanship Congress
in Detroit on July 10 and said,

   We must play a great part in the world
whether we choose it or not.
Do you know the significance of this single fact, that within
the last year or two we have, speaking in large terms,
ceased to be a debtor nation and become a creditor nation?
We have more of the surplus gold of the world
than we ever had before, and our business hereafter
is to be to lend and to help and to promote
the great peaceful enterprises of the world.
We have got to finance the world in some important degree,
and those who finance the world must understand it
and rule it with their spirits and with their minds….
   I hear some gentlemen say that they want to help Mexico,
and the way they propose to help her
is to overwhelm her with force.
That is the long way to help Mexico
as well as the wrong way because after the fighting
you have a nation full of justified suspicion
and animated by well-founded hostility and hatred,
and then will you help them?...
What makes Mexico suspicious of us is that
she does not believe as yet that we want to serve her.
She believes that we want to possess her,
and she has justification for the belief
in the way in which some of our fellow-citizens
have tried to exploit her privileges and possessions.
For my part, I will not serve the ambitions
of these gentlemen, but I will try to serve all America,
so far as intercourse with Mexico is concerned,
by trying to serve Mexico herself.199

      Senator John W. Kern of Indiana and
Rep. Daniel J. McGillicuddy of Maine
introduced a federal workmen’s compensation bill regulating
hours and wages that passed the House 287 to 3 on July 12.
Democratic senators promised Wilson,
and in August the Senate passed both bills.
Wilson signed the child labor bill on September 1.
That summer he added provisions for the Tariff Commission that protected
the chemical industry, and this gained votes for Democrats in November.
      In July progressives managed to double the normal income tax from 1% to 2%,
and they raised the surtax on income over $40,000 from 6% to 10%.
A new federal estate tax provided 1% on net estates over $50,000
and 5% on those worth more than $450,000.
The bill also imposed taxes on munitions manufacturers
ranging from 5% to 8% of gross income.
Claude Kitchin of North Carolina was House Majority Leader, and he said
it would increase revenues by $250 million to pay for military expenses.
Both houses approved the revenue bill on September 7,
and Wilson signed it the next day.
      On July 18 the British Government published a blacklist
of 87 American and 350 Latin American businesses
accusing them of trading with the Central Powers.
Four days later the British Foreign Office gave US Ambassador Page
an unresponsive reply to the mail problem raised by Lansing’s note on May 24.
Wilson and Polk wrote a sharp note to the British
and wired it to London on July 26.
      The Republican nominee Hughes made his acceptance speech
in New York’s Carnegie Hall on July 31, and Theodore Roosevelt attended.
Roosevelt would spend a month campaigning for Hughes in 13 states.
Yet he privately criticized him.
The Republicans’ running mate for Hughes was Charles W. Fairbanks
who had been Vice President of the United States in 1905-09.
      A rumor that Germany might try to take control of the Virgin Island
stimulated Wilson to let Secretary of State Lansing negotiate with Denmark
to allow the United States to occupy those islands to prevent Denmark
from losing sovereignty over them.
In July the United States offered Denmark $25 million,
and a treaty was signed on 4 August 1916.
The United States also recognized the right of Denmark
to take over all of Greenland.
The US Senate ratified the treaty in September, and after a
national plebiscite the Danish parliament did so in December.
On 31 March 1917 the gold was transferred, and the
United States took possession of the Virgin Islands.
      On August 8 in New York railroad brotherhoods informed the
United States Board of Mediation and Conciliation that
94% of their members voted to strike if they did not get the 8-hour day.
On the 14th Wilson met with brotherhood officials,
and in the afternoon 17 railway presidents joined them.
The Managers’ speaker Elisha Lee claimed that the 8-hour day
would cost the railroads $100 million a year,
and that time and a half for overtime would bankrupt them.
The Interstate Commerce Commission would have to let them raise their rates.
Wilson suggested that they accept the 8-hour day,
and later overtime could be decided by arbitration.
He sent his written proposal to Lee who sent back the managers’ refusal.
On August 16 Wilson sent telegrams summoning major railroad presidents
to Washington, and that day he met with 600 brotherhood chairmen.
Wilson in the White House pleaded with 31 railroad presidents to cooperate.
He said he would persuade the Interstate Commerce Commission
to grant rate increases if the 8-hour day proved to be a burden.
On August 21 Wilson met with 50 railroad presidents.
One week later the railroad executives granted some concessions,
but they rejected the 8-hour day.
On August 25 Wilson signed the bill that created the National Park Service.
      The national railroad strike by 400,000 workers
was set to begin on September 4.
On August 29 Wilson told a joint session of the Congress that
the brotherhoods accepted his plan while the railroad presidents had not.
He urged them to pass the following plan:

First, immediate enlargement of the Interstate Commerce
   Commission.
Second, establishment of the eight-hour day “as the legal
   basis alike of work and of wages in the employment
   of all railway employees who are actually engaged in
   the work of operating trains in interstate transportation.”
Third, appointment of a commission to study the
   practical effects of the application of the eight-hour day.
Fourth, approval by Congress of the Interstate Commerce
   Commission’s consideration of increased freight rates
   should institution of the eight-hour day
   increase operating costs.
Fifth, amendment of existing legislation to require arbitration
   of railroad labor disputes
   before a strike or lockout could occur.
Sixth, power for the President to take control of the railroads
   and draft into the military service of the United States
   such crews and management officials
   as might be required for safe and efficient operation.200

Wilson went back to the Capitol on August 31, and William C. Adamson
introduced an 8-hour day bill that passed the House 239 to 56 the next day.
The Senate approved it on September 2, and it
was delivered to the White House at 7:10 p.m.
The Labor Secretary William B. Wilson told the presidents of the
brotherhoods that President Wilson promised to sign the bill, and
at 8:35 p.m. the brotherhoods sent messages calling off the strike.
Wilson signed it the next day at 9:11 a.m. in a railroad car at Union Station.
      On September 2 Wilson at Shadow Lawn in New Jersey accepted
the nomination for President again and spoke to 20,000 supporters.
He explained his motivations, criticized the inadequate policies of the
Republicans and despite his reluctance to boast, he did review many
of the reforms and accomplishments of his first term.
Then he described his hopes for the future after the war.
In a long speech here is some of what he said:

   I shall seek, as I have always sought,
to justify the extraordinary confidence thus reposed in me
by striving to purge my heart and purpose
of every personal and every misleading party motive
and devoting every energy I have to the service
of the nation as a whole, praying that I may continue
to have the counsel and support of all forward-looking men
at every turn of the difficult business….
   This record must equally astonish those who feared that
the Democratic Party had not opened its heart
to comprehend the demands of social justice.
We have in four years come very near to carrying out
the platform of the Progressive Party as well as our own;
for we also are progressives….
   We have been neutral not only because it was the fixed
and traditional policy of the United States
to stand aloof from the politics of Europe
and because we had had no part either of action or of policy
in the influences which brought on the present war,
but also because it was manifestly our duty to prevent it,
if it were possible, the indefinite extension of the fires
of hate and desolation kindled by that terrible conflict
and seek to serve mankind by reserving our strength
and our resources for the anxious and difficult days
of restoration and healing which must follow,
when peace will have to build the house anew.
   The rights of our own citizens of course became involved:
that was inevitable.
Where they did, this was our guiding principle:
that property rights can be vindicated
by claims for damages when the war is over,
and no modern nation can decline to arbitrate such claims;
but the fundamental rights of humanity cannot be.
The loss of life is irreparable.
Neither can direct violations of a nation’s sovereignty
await vindication in suits for damages.
The nation that violates these essential rights
must expect to be checked and called to account
by direct challenge and resistance.
It at once makes the quarrel in part our own.
These are plain principles, and we have
never lost sight of them or departed from them,
whatever the stress or the perplexity of circumstance
or the provocation to hasty resentment.
The record is clear and consistent throughout
and stands distinct and definite for anyone to judge
who wishes to know the truth about it….
   There must be a just and settled peace,
and we here in America must contribute the full force
of our enthusiasm and of our authority as a nation
to the organization of that peace
upon world-wide foundations that cannot easily be shaken.
No nation should be forced to take sides in any quarrel
in which its own honor and integrity
and the fortunes of its own people are not involved;
but no nation can any longer remain neutral
against any willful disturbance of the peace of the world.
The effects of war can no longer
be confined to the areas of battle.
No nation stands wholly apart in interest when the life and
interests of all nations are thrown into confusion and peril.
If hopeful and generous enterprise is to be renewed,
if the healing and helpful arts of life
are indeed to be revived when peace comes again,
a new atmosphere of justice and friendship must
be generated by means the world has never tried before.
The nations of the world must unite in joint guarantees that
whatever is done to disturb the whole world’s life
must first be tested in the court of the whole world’s opinion
before it is attempted.
   These are the new foundations
the world must build for itself,
and we must play our part in the reconstruction, generously
and without too much thought of our separate interests.
We must make ourselves ready
to play it intelligently, vigorously and well….
   We hope to see the stimulus of that new day
draw all America, the republics of both continents,
on to a new life and energy
and initiative in the great affairs of peace.
We are Americans for Big America,
and rejoice to look forward to the days in which
America shall strive to stir the world without irritating it
or drawing it on to new antagonisms,
when the nations with which we deal shall at last come
to see upon what deep foundations of humanity and justice
our passion for peace rests,
and when all mankind shall look upon our great people
with a new sentiment of admiration, friendly rivalry
and real affection, as upon a people who,
though keen to succeed, seeks always to be
at once generous and just and to whom
humanity is dearer than profit or selfish power.
   Upon this record and in the faith of this purpose
we go to the country.201

Wilson’s Campaign for Re-election in 1916

      Wilson and his wife Edith attended the convention of the National
American Woman Suffrage Association on September 8 in Atlantic City.
After Wilson spoke, their president Carrie Chapman Catt
told Wilson, “You touched our hearts and won our fealty.”
He said,

   The astonishing thing about the movement
which you represent is, not that it has grown so slowly,
but that it has grown so rapidly….
   It is not merely because the women are discontented.
It is because the women have seen visions of duty,
and that is something which we not only cannot resist,
but, if we be Americans, we do not wish to resist.
America took its origin in visions of the human spirit,
in aspirations for the deepest sort of liberty of the mind
and of the heart, and as visions of that sort come up
to the sight of those who are spiritually minded in America,
America comes more and more into her birthright
and into the perfection of her development.202

      The Democratic National Chairman Vance McCormick
organized the campaign with headquarters in New York City.
A publicity bureau turned out and distributed magazine sections,
books, pamphlets, and other materials.
Senator Thomas J. Walsh of Montana headed
the western headquarters in Chicago.
The finance committee was led by the treasurer and
chairman Henry Morgenthau and Wilbur W. Marsh.
Wilson’s friend Cleveland H. Dodge in June promised to contribute $100,000.
The New York lawyer Breckinridge Long wrote a check for $5,000
and said he would loan them $100,000 if necessary.
McCormick did have to borrow $30,000 to keep the office running.
      On September 23 Wilson spoke to the Business Men’s National League,
and he explained why the 8-hour day passed.
He said,

   We believe in the eight-hour day
because a man does better work within eight hours
than he does within a more extended day,
and that the whole theory of it,
a theory which is sustained now by abundant experience,
is that his efficiency is increased,
his spirit in his work is improved, and the whole moral
and physical vigor of the man is added to.
This is no longer conjectural.
Where it has been tried, it has been demonstrated.
The judgment of society, the vote of every legislature
in America that has voted upon it
is a verdict in favor of the eight-hour day.
And therefore, I said to these gentlemen
on both sides at the very beginning,
“The eight-hour day ought to be conceded.”203

      During the campaign Wilson traveled to
Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and as far west as Nebraska.
On September 30 Wilson spoke at Shadow Lawn to
Young Men’s Democratic Clubs, and he said,

   I am a progressive.
I do not spell it with a capital P,
but I think my pace is just as fast as those who do.
It does not interfere with the running,
and I am very much astonished to see
the company that some gentlemen
who spell their name with a capital are keeping.
They are engaged in the interesting enterprise of trying
to capture a party which is fortified against them
and refusing to enter a party which is already captured
by those who believe in their principles….
   But you will notice that a party that merely wants control
does not have to have any principles….
Look over the ranks of the supporters
of the Republican party.
Did you ever see a more motley company in your life?
Did you ever see elements so absolutely contradictory
of each other as the elements of that party?...
   Am I not right that we must draw the conclusion that
if the Republican party is put into power at the next election
our foreign policy will be radically changed?
I cannot draw any other inference.
All our present foreign policy is wrong, they say,
and if it is wrong and they are men of conscience,
they must change it.
And if they are going to change it,
in what direction are they going to change it?
   There is only one choice against peace, and that is war.
Some of the supporters of that party,
a very great body of the supporters of that party,
outspokenly declare that they want war, so that
the certain prospect of the success of the Republican Party
is that we shall be drawn in one form or another
into the embroilments of the European war,
and that to the south of us the force of the United States
will be used to produce in Mexico the kind of law and order
which some American investors in Mexico
consider most to their advantage….
   The conference which is being held with regard to
Mexican affairs is being embarrassed every day
by the apparent evidence which is being produced that
hostility to Mexico is being traded upon
by one of the great political parties….
   Wall Street thus selected formerly
controlled the Treasury of the United States.
Why, my fellow-citizens,
it even had a desk in the Treasury Department….
   It was no doubt shocking to see the money deposited
in country banks and not in Wall Street
but the country banks knew how to use it,
and they were very much nearer the great masses
of the people who need it than were
the great depositaries of financial resource in New York….
   They used to be able to do a great deal
in the way of legislation by means of a lobby
the people knew very little about,
and the lobby, thank God, has disappeared.
I do not mean the legitimate lobby,
the lobby that will go to hearings of committees
and argue their case in public with the reporters present,
but I mean the button-holing lobby;
I mean the lobby that uses influence and not argument,
that uses inducement, and not the fact,
that understands some special interests
and does not give a cent for the general interest….
   What it is our imperative duty to do, my fellow-citizens,
is to make everybody we know understand what
the Democratic party stands for and what it intends to do.
It has begun a great process of liberalization
for the business of this country,
and it intends to strengthen that system at every point,
extend it wherever it needs extension,
strengthen and fortify it against all attacks
and once for all make good the domination
of the American people in their own affairs.204

      At Omaha on October 5 Wilson said,

   And then the Spanish War startled us by its consequences.
We had, as it were, touched a house of cards,
and it had collapsed, and when the war was over
we found the guardianship of Cuba,
the possession of Porto Rico,
the possession of the Philippines in our hands.
And that frontier which no man could draw upon
this continent since 1890 had been flung across the sea
7,000 miles to the untrodden forests
of some part of the Philippine Islands.
Ever since then we have been caught inevitably
in the net of the politics of the world….
   We want always to hold the force of America
to fight for what?
Not merely for the rights of property or of national ambition,
but for the rights of mankind….
   What disturbs the life of the whole world
is the concern of the whole world,
and it is our duty to lend the full force of this nation,
moral and physical, to a league of nations which
shall see to it that nobody disturbs the peace of the world
without submitting his case first to the opinion of mankind….
   It has been necessary for nearly four years past,
my fellow-citizens, for me to think of America as a whole,
not to think of any special interests,
not to think of any special position,
not to think of any special sympathy,
merely to try to conceive in my own heart
what the America that you and I love is, what it has been,
and what it ought to be;
and to try to guide the counsels of this nation so that men
may see afterward stamped upon the conduct of that time
some guiding principle, some ruling passion of the mind,
some persistent conception of what America stands for
so that along the horizon under the dark, murky clouds
of doubt that have shadowed our time there may appear
a gleaming clear light of a day that is going to dawn
when the liberties of mankind shall have behind them the
united force and affection of all the people of the world.205

      Hughes spoke one way to pro-German audiences
and in another manner to pro-British crowds,
and he was called “Charles Evasive Hughes.”
In an October interview with the Ladies Home Journal Wilson said,

The two Americas can be knitted together only by process
of peace, friendship, helpfulness, and good will,
and the nation which must of necessity take the initiative
in proving the possibility of these processes
is the United States….
   America will honor herself and prove the validity
of her own principles by treating Mexico
as she would wish Mexico to treat her.206

      On October 7 the large German submarine U-53
surfaced in the harbor at Newport, Rhode Island.
The captain delivered a message to the German ambassador
and gathered local newspapers.
In the next two days the U-53 sank nine ships after their commander Rose
allowed the passengers and crew to leave and be rescued by US destroyers.
Thus no one died, and neither the Sussex pledge
nor international law were violated.
The British became concerned that they would not
be getting ammunition from the United States.
      On October 12 Wilson at Indianapolis said,

   Now, my fellow citizens,
we have had time and opportunity until the present
to do pretty much what we wanted in America
and to do different things in different parts of America.
But just as soon as this great European war is over
America has got to stand for one thing
and only one thing in the world,
and she must be ready with united force.
We can’t play with the elements of our life any more.
   America came into existence, my fellow citizens,
not in order to show the world
the most notable example it had ever had
of the accumulation and use of material wealth,
but in order to show the way to mankind in every part
of the world to justice, and freedom, and liberty….
   Instead of exclusive combinations,
I want to see universal cooperation.
There are good signs in the air.
Have you not noticed how almost every great industry,
every great profession, every year
holds a congress of some sort?...
And so in profession after profession men are
getting together by way of co-operation
instead of by way of mutual destruction.
   I hold this to be a happy omen.
I see the growth in America of this conception of solidarity
of the interest of each being the interest of all,
and the interest of each growing out of the interest of all….
   The parties are not going to settle.
The Nation is going to settle,
and I am counsel for the Nation….
   We have got to know each other.
We have got to co-operate with each other.
We have got to stand together.
That is all that politics is for.
As a contest for office, it is contemptible,
but as a combination of thoughtful men
to accomplish something for the Nation, it is honorable….
   I have said, and shall say again,
that when the great present war is over
it will be the duty of America to join with the other nations
of the world in some kind of league
for the maintenance of peace.
Now, America was not a party to this war,
and the only terms upon which we will be admitted
to a league, almost all the other powerful members of which
were engaged in the war and made infinite sacrifices
when we apparently made none,
are the only terms which we desire, namely,
that America shall not stand for national aggression,
but shall stand for the just conceptions and bases of peace,
for the competitions of merit alone,
and for the generous rivalry of liberty.
   Are we ready always to be friends of justice, of fairness,
of liberty, of peace, and of those accommodations
which rest upon justice and peace?...
   I do not regard politics as an opportunity to talk,
but as an opportunity to unite with other men
in accomplishing something.207

      On October 20 Mrs. Wilson sat with Jane Addams
in the Chicago Auditorium as Wilson spoke to 4,000.

   Society is now organizing its whole power in order that
it may understand itself, in order that it may
have a new organization and instrument of civilization,
and I am ambitious that America
should show the way in this great enterprise….
   The whole spirit of the law
has been to give leave to the strong,
to give opportunity to those who could dominate,
but it seems to me that the function of society
now has another element in it, and I believe that
it is the element which women are going to supply.
It is the element of mediation,
of comprehending and drawing elements together.
It is the power of sympathy,
as contrasted with the power of contests….
   Let us show that we want no boundaries
to the rights of mankind.208

      In the campaign prominent progressives and leftists who supported Wilson
included Lincoln Steffens, George Creel, William Kent, Frederic C. Howe,
A. J. McKelway, Ben B. Lindsey, Jane Addams, John Dewey, Amos Pinchot,
Herbert Croly, John Reed, and George Foster Peabody.
The Socialist Max Eastman was the editor of The Masses,
and on October 13 he wrote,

I would rather see Woodrow Wilson elected
than Charles E. Hughes because Wilson
aggressively believes not only in keeping out of war,
but in organizing the nations of the world to prevent war…
His announcement that the best judgment of mankind
accepts the principle of the eight-hour day is another proof
that he has vision and sympathy with human progress.209

The Socialist William English Walling estimated that
about 150,000 Socialists would vote for Democrats.
A majority of the committee that wrote the Progressive Party’s
platform of 1912 endorsed Wilson on October 31 and noted
that his party had enacted 22 of the 33 planks in that platform.
The New Republic editors Walter Lippmann and Herbert Croly
supported Wilson for having become a modern social Democrat.
In addition to Dodge and Peabody, the philanthropists Henry Morgenthau,
Andrew Carnegie, and Charles R. Crane backed Wilson while
Henry Ford and many other business owners and
executives supported the Republican Hughes.
The Republicans raised and spent $15 million.
Intense opposition to Wilson came from Theodore Roosevelt,
William Howard Taft, Henry Cabot Lodge, and Elihu Root.
      On October 21 Wilson to 3,000 farmers said,

   I would not advocate favoring the farmer, but I do
advocate doing absolute and full justice to the farmer.
And the farmers of this country
not only have not been favored,
but they have been absolutely neglected in many respects….
   The task of this Administration, therefore,
has been to see that the farmer did not get the benefit
that was handed down, but get the benefit
which was directly distributed on the level
upon which all citizens ought to stand….
   The recent legislation and the recent appropriations
of Congress make it possible to put two demonstrators
and experts in every rural county of the Union, in order that
by the way of demonstration in the neighborhood itself,
the scientific knowledge and experience of the world
in agriculture should be carried to the farmer….
   America has no distinction
unless it is a spiritual distinction,
and America must use her farming resources
and all her other resources to make citizens
incomparably more interested in the general welfare
than the citizens of any other country.210

      On October 26 Wilson gave four speeches in Cincinnati
including one at the Women’s City Club.
At another he noted that 25 million men were fighting in the war.
He said,

   What I intend to preach from this time on is that
America must show that as a member of the family
of nations she has the same attitude
toward the other nations that she wishes her people
to have toward each other:
That America is going to take this position,
that she will lend her moral influence, not only,
but her physical force, if other nations will join her,
to see to it that no nation and no group of nations
tries to take advantage of another nation
or group of nations, and that the only thing ever fought for
is the common rights of humanity….
   The world’s peace ought to be disturbed
if the fundamental rights of humanity are invaded,
but it ought not to be disturbed for any other thing
that I can think of, and America was established
in order to indicate, at any rate in one Government,
the fundamental rights of man.211

      On October 28 the British merchant ship
Marina was sunk without any warning.
On November 6 a German torpedo sank the ocean-liner Arabia
carrying 187 Australians, and some survivors were rescued.
      His secretary Tumulty advised Wilson to give intimate interviews
to the trustworthy correspondents Samuel G. Blythe, Ray Stannard Baker, and
Ida M. Tarbell who published an interview of Wilson in Collier’s on October 28.
She wrote, “Here at last we have a president whose real interest in life
centers around the common man, and on whom we can count to serve
that man so far as his ability goes.”
Wilson said,

   The Democratic party is offering a program of principles
based on a belief of the control of the people.
The policy of the other side is and will be determined
by those who have the largest stake.
They are not interested in politics;
to them policy is neither here nor there if they can control.
For instance, they are not opposed
to the Federal Reserve Bank,
but they don’t want the people to control it.
They will consent to almost any policy
if you allow them to manage it….
They have no other ambition or desire
but to control men’s thoughts and lives.
We are up against the very essence of privilege to-day.
Nobody can predict the hold on the country
that privilege is going to take again
if this class is put in power.212

      On November 1 Wilson at Buffalo said,

   America is not interested in seeing one nation
or one group of nations prevail over another,
but she is interested in seeing justice
founded upon peace throughout the world.”213

The next day 25,000 people gathered outside
Madison Square Garden in New York City while
15,000 inside cheered Wilson for 30 minutes as he entered.
He talked about social justice with compassion and progress.
On November 4 at Shadow Lawn he said,

   For my part, I thank God that
the era of the Old Guard has gone by.
They never conceived or understood
an unselfish purpose in their lives.
They had as their motto: “Enlightened Selfishness.”
The only thing that is enlightened is unselfishness….
   Every man who has read and studied the great annals
of this country may feel his blood warm as he feels
these great forces of humanity growing stronger
and stronger, not only, but knowing better and better
from decade to decade how to concert action
and unite their strength.
In the days to come men will no longer wonder
how America is going to work out her destiny,
for she will have proclaimed to them that
her destiny is not divided from the destiny of the world,
that her purpose is justice and love of mankind.214

That night Wilson handed Polk a letter to take to
Secretary of State Lansing in which he had written,

   What would it be my duty to do
were Mr. Hughes to be elected?
Four months would elapse before he could take charge
of the affairs of the government,
and during those four months I would be
without much moral backing from the nation
as would be necessary to steady and control
our relations with other governments.
I would be known to be the rejected,
not the accredited, spokesman of the country;
and yet the accredited spokesman would be
without legal authority to speak for the nation.
Such a situation would be fraught with the gravest dangers.
The direction of the foreign policy of the government
would in effect have been taken out of my hands
and yet its new definition would be impossible until March.
   I feel it would be my duty to relieve the country
of the perils of such a situation at once.
The course I have in mind is dependent upon the consent
and cooperation of the Vice President;
but, if I could gain his consent to the plan,
I would ask your permission to invite Mr. Hughes
to become Secretary of State and would then join
the Vice President in resigning, and thus open to
Mr. Hughes the immediate succession to the presidency.215

      On that day the betting odds in New York were ten to seven against Wilson.
The election on November 7 was very close, and the early results
from the big eastern and midwestern states showed that Hughes already
had 247 electoral votes out of the 266 needed for election.
At 9:30 p.m. the New York World reported that Hughes had won.
Yet Wilson was winning most of the western and southern states.
At midnight Wilson was ahead 251 to 247.
Yet on November 8 the New York Times ran the headline
“Charles E. Hughes Has Apparently Been Elected President.”
      The election results were not certain until the night of November 9.
Wilson won the popular vote with 9,129,606 to 8,538,221 for Hughes,
and Wilson received 277 electoral votes to 254 for Hughes.
Wilson had 2,830,000 more votes in 1916 than he got in 1912.
He had the most votes of any US President so far.
Observers noted that Wilson received most of the women’s votes
from the Middle and Western states, and that was because of the peace issue.
Wilson won in 10 of the 11 states where women could vote and lost only in Oregon.
He also got much of the social justice votes that Roosevelt had in 1912.
The Socialist candidate Allan Louis Benson of New York received 590,524 votes
and prevented Wilson from getting a majority of the popular vote.
Five states with 52 electoral votes were decided by less than 1% of the votes
including California that decided the election by only 3,773 votes (0.38%).
About 36,000 fewer Socialists voted for their party than they did in 1912,
and they helped Wilson win California.
When the California votes were all counted on November 22,
Hughes sent Wilson a telegram conceding that he had lost the election.
Democrats lost two seats in the US Senate but retained a 54-42 advantage.
In the House of Representatives they lost 16 seats while Republicans gained 19.
Although there were 215 Republicans to 214 Democrats,
the three Progressives caucused with the Democrats.

Wilson in Late 1916

      On 14 November 1916 President Wilson addressed the
National Grange in Washington, and he said,

   Most of the methods which the demonstrators
of the Department of Agriculture have been busy to spread
as far and wide as possible have been methods which
they have learned from the most accomplished
and best instructed farmers in the United States.
   In other words, the Department of Agriculture has had,
as one of its most important duties, to put all the farmers
of the United States, so far as possible, where the best
of the farmers of the United States had got
of their own initiative and of their own intelligence.
That, after all, is the business of education anyhow—
to spread the product of the best minds far and wide,
so that they may be accessible to everybody.
   But in the future we have got to bring more of the area
of the United States under cultivation
than is under cultivation now.
We have got to increase the product at every point
where it is susceptible of being increased.
We have got to study the variation of crops.
We have got to study how to assist nature,
or at any rate understand nature, by making
the most suitable use of our several and varied soils….
   Credit based on cattle is as good as credit
based on bills of lading, and the astonishing thing is not
that it has been done now, but that it took so long to do it.
And when you add to that what has been done
by the Rural Credit bill in the way of long-extended credits
you will see that we have so to say, got ready
for the first time to use the capital of this country
to push forward the agricultural industry of this country.
We have liberated the credits of the banks
and we have mobilized, through the Department
of Agriculture, the scientific intelligence of the world.
   With that combination, every nation in the world
ought to come to us to learn how to raise big crops….
   I am very proud to have lived in a time
when these things were becoming manifest,
and the duty of the Government toward the farmer
was partially performed.216

      On November 19 Wilson gave a short address to the
American Federation of Labor at the White House.
Here is that speech:

   I need not say that, coming to me
as you do on such an errand,
I am very deeply gratified and very greatly cheered.
It would be impossible for me offhand to say just what
thoughts are stirred in me by what Mr. Gompers
has said to me as your spokesman,
but perhaps the simplest thing I can say is,
after all, the meat of the whole matter.
What I have tried to do is to get rid of
any class division in this country,
not only, but of any class consciousness and feeling.
The worst thing that could happen to America would be that
she should be divided into groups and camps in which
there were men and women who thought
that they were at odds with one another,
that the spirit of America was not expressed except in them,
and that possibilities of antagonism
were the only things we had to look forward to.
   As Mr. Gompers said,
achievement is a comparatively small matter,
but the spirit in which things are done is of the essence
of the whole thing, and what I am striving for,
and what I hope you are striving for,
is to blot out all the lines of division in America, and create
a unity of spirit and of purpose founded upon this,
the consciousness that we are all men and women
of the same sort, and that if we do not understand
each other we are not true Americans.
If we cannot enter into each other’s thoughts,
if we cannot comprehend each other’s interests,
if we cannot serve each other’s essential welfare,
then we have not yet qualified
as representatives of the American spirit.
   Nothing alarms America so much as rifts, divisions,
the drifting apart of elements among her people, and
the thing we ought all to strive for is to close up every rift;
and the only way to do it, so far as I can see,
is to establish justice not only, but justice with a heart in it,
justice with a pulse in it, justice with sympathy in it.
Justice can be cold and forbidding,
or can be warm and welcome, and the latter
is the only kind of justice that Americans ought to desire.
I do not believe I am deceiving myself
when I say that I think this spirit is growing in America.
I pray to God it may continue to grow,
and all I have to say is to exhort every one
whom my voice reaches here or elsewhere
to come into this common movement of humanity.217

      In November 18-21 the New York Times published a series
by Cosmos (Columbia University president Murray Butler)
proposing a negotiated peace.
On the 22nd the Earl of Derby, a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of War,
told a reporter in London that the Allies would consider a German peace proposal.
Wilson wrote a peace note on November 25.
Here is much of what he wrote:

Reasons why I have the right to speak:
   The war is disturbing the whole life of the world
making it hard everywhere for governments to serve
and safeguard the life of the nations they serve,
and all but impossible for the poor to live at all
(governments are for the poor
if they are for the bulk of mankind)
   The war is making the task of neutrals impracticable,
the position of neutrals intolerable.
   The character to which the war has settled down:
a war of exhaustion and attrition,
and the result to be expected.
   The professions of each side: that they do not desire
conquest or the destruction of their antagonists:
that they wish to safeguard the rights of small nations
and of peoples: that they desire to end war (which cannot
be done by conquest or destruction of nationalities)
   The danger that the whole future will be prejudiced.
A common object has been professed by the leaders
of the governments at war, viz. such a league
to enforce peace as will make the future secure.
The United States is willing to lend its whole force of every
kind to that end, with equal resolution and enthusiasm.
A little while and it may be too late to realize this object,
because of exhaustion and reaction.
Triumph and hate cannot accomplish it.
   In such circumstances and in the interest not only
of all concerned directly in the war itself of the whole world,
rather, I feel that I have the right with the utmost respect
for the rights of all to call for a parley, [without even
a suggestion of terms of peace, which, probably
only the belligerents have the right to name.]
   My objects:
To stop the war before it is too late
to remedy what it has done;
To reconsider peace on the basis of the rights of the weak
along with the rights of the strong,
the rights of peoples as well as the rights of governments;
To effect a league of nations based upon a peace which
shall be guaranteed against breach by the common force
and an intelligent organization of the common interest….
   The position of neutral nations, in particular,
has been rendered all but intolerable.
Their commerce is interrupted,
their industries are checked and diverted,
the lives of their people are put in constant jeopardy,
they are virtually forbidden the accustomed highways
of the sea, their energies are drawn off
into temporary and novel channels,
they suffer at every turn though disengaged and disposed
to none but friendly and impartial offices….
   If any other nation now neutral should be drawn in,
it would know only that it was drawn in
by some force it could not resist,
because it had been hurt and saw no remedy
but to risk still greater, it might be even irreparable injury,
in order to make the weight
in the one scale or the other decisive;
and even as a participant it would not know how far
the scales must tip before the end would come
or what was being weighed in the balance!...
   Leaders on both sides have declared very earnestly
and in terms whose sincerity no one can justly doubt
that it was no part of their wish or purpose
to crush their antagonists, make conquest of their territories
or possessions, deprive them of their equal place
and opportunity among the great peoples of the world.
They have declared also that they are fighting
no less for the rights of small and weak nations and peoples
than for those of the great
and powerful states immediately involved.
They have declared their desire for peace,
but for a peace that will last,
a peace based, not upon the uncertain balance
of powerful alliances offset against one another,
but upon guarantees in which the whole civilized world
would join, that the rights and privileges of every nation
and people should be the common
and definite obligation of all governments….
   In such circumstances and moved by such considerations,
I deem myself to be clearly within my right
as the representative of a great neutral nation whose
interests are being daily affected and as the friend
of all the nations engaged in the present struggle,
and speaking with the utmost respect
for the rights of all concerned, in urging,
as I do most earnestly urge, that some means
be immediately taken, whether by conference
or by a separate formulation of demands and conditions,
to define the terms upon which a settlement
of the issues of the war may be expected.
It has become necessary that the nations
that are now neutral should have some certain
and definite guide for their future policy.
It is necessary that they should have some certain means
of determining what part they shall henceforth play
should the terms defined be impossible of realization
and the end of the war be indefinitely postponed.
   The simplest means of arriving at this end would be
a conference of representatives of the belligerent
governments and of the governments not now engaged
in the war whose interests may be thought to be
most directly involved, and it is such a conference that
I take the liberty of urging, whatever its outcome may be.
If that be not feasible, it is possible that other means may
be found which will in effect accomplish the same result….
   I am asking, and assuming that I have the right to ask,
for a concrete definition of the guarantees
which the belligerents on the one side and the other
deem it their duty to demand as a practical satisfaction
of the objects they are aiming at in this contest of force,
in addition to the very great and substantial guarantee
which will, I feel perfectly confident, be supplied
by a league of nations formed to unite their force
in active cooperation for the preservation
of the world’s peace when this war is over.
To answer these questions need not commit
any belligerent to peace at this time;
but until they are answered no influential nation of the world
not yet involved in the struggle can intelligently determine
its future course of action.
The United States feels that
it can no longer delay to determine its own.218

      On December 5 President Wilson in his fourth annual address
asked the Congress to pass legislation related to the recent reforms
for the 8-hour day, expanding the Interstate Commerce Commission,
and resolving the differences between the railroads and their employees.
He asked for an amendment to provide for “mediation, conciliation,
and arbitration of such controversies,” and to allow the Executive
to take control of railways “in case of military necessity.”
He recommended a bill for “a more thorough and systematic
regulation of the expenditure of money in elections,
commonly called the Corrupt Practices Act.”
Here is what he said about laws in Puerto Rico
and on vocational and industrial education:

   The argument for the proposed amendments
of the organic law of Porto Rico is brief and conclusive.
The present laws governing the island and regulating
the rights and privileges of its people are not just.
We have created expectations of extended privilege
which we have not satisfied.
There is uneasiness among the people of the island
and even a suspicious doubt with regard to our intentions
concerning them which the adoption
of the pending measure would happily remove.
We do not doubt what we wish to do
in any essential particular.
We ought to do it at once.
   At the last session of the Congress a bill was passed
by the Senate which provides for
the promotion of vocational and industrial education,
which is of vital importance to the whole country
because it concerns a matter, too long neglected,
upon which the thorough industrial preparation
of the country for the critical years
of economic development immediately ahead of us
in very large measure depends.219

      On December 5 the Liberal Lloyd George, who had been
the War Secretary, became the British Prime Minister.
Conservative Arthur Balfour became Foreign Secretary
as Conservatives dominated the new coalition.
Col. House in London learned from J. Howard Whitehouse that
the government would go along with a mediation effort by Wilson.
House wrote to Wilson who revised his peace note
and called for an early peace conference.
Secretary of State Lansing edited it.
On December 12 Germany’s Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg
writing in French proposed peace negotiations.
The Russian Duma rejected the German offer on the 15th.
      On December 18 Lansing sent Wilson’s “Note to the Belligerent
Governments Suggesting That Respective Peace Terms be Stated.”
The third paragraph sent to the four Central Powers—Germany,
Austria-Hungary, Turkey, and Bulgaria included the words
“a desire to play a part in connection with” that were not in the version
that went to the ten Entente Allies—Britain, France, Italy, Japan, Russia,
Belgium, Montenegro, Portugal, Rumania, and Serbia.
Here are highlights:

   The President suggests that an early occasion be sought
to call out from all the nations now at war such an avowal
of their respective views as to the terms upon which
the war might be concluded and the arrangements
which would be deemed satisfactory as a guaranty
against its renewal or the kindling of any similar conflict
in the future as would make it possible to compare them….
   He takes the liberty of calling attention to the fact that
the objects, which the statesmen of the belligerents
on both sides have in mind in this war,
are virtually the same, as stated in general terms
to their own people and to the world.
Each side desires to make the rights and privileges
of weak peoples and small States as secure
against aggression or denial in the future as the rights
and privileges of the great and powerful States now at war.
Each wishes itself to be made secure in the future,
along with all other nations and peoples,
against the recurrence of wars like this
and against aggression or selfish interference of any kind.
Each would be jealous of the formation
of any more rival leagues to preserve
an uncertain balance of power amid multiplying suspicions;
but each is ready to consider the formation
of a league of nations to insure
peace and justice throughout the world.
Before that final step can be taken, however,
each deems it necessary first to settle the issues
of the present war upon terms
which will certainly safeguard the independence,
the territorial integrity, and the political and
commercial freedom of the nations involved….
   The President is not proposing peace;
he is not even offering mediation.
He is merely proposing that soundings be taken in order that
we may learn, the neutral nations with the belligerent,
how near the haven of peace may be for which
all mankind longs with an intense and increasing longing.
He believes that the spirit in which he speaks
and the objects which he seeks will be understood
by all concerned, and he confidently hopes for a response
which will bring a new light into the affairs of the world.220

      On December 23 the German Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg wrote
that the advantages of ruthless submarine attacks would be greater
than the disadvantages of the United States joining the Allies.
On the 26th Germany’s Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmerman
handed a reply to Wilson’s peace note to the US Ambassador Gerard.
On December 29 Ambassador Bernstorff wrote Telegram No. 192
to the German Foreign Office saying that Wilson planned to go forward
using confidential mediation and wanted to know the German terms,
and it reached Berlin on 3 January 1917.
The next day Bethmann Hollweg wrote to the
General Staff Chief Paul von Hindenburg,

If a preliminary peace is reached
between belligerents on this basis,
we will be obligated to come out in a general conference
for arbitration treaties and a peace league
and in effect to look for ways and means of achieving
limited disarmament on land and sea by means of which
freedom of the seas might be achieved.221

On the 9th Admiral Holtzendorff decreed that German submarines
could sink only armed freighters without warning until February 1.
After that they could attack all armed ships,
and that order was sent on January 12.
Starting on February 1 every “enemy merchantman”
could be attacked without warning.
Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmerman and his undersecretary
Wilhelm von Stumm sent instructions to Bernstorff that they could
sign treaties with the United States and tell them that
German terms were more moderate than the Entente’s.
They hoped that unrestricted U-boat warfare
could be attained without breaking with America.
Bethmann then chose Zimmerman’s draft instead of his own.
Emperor Wilhelm and the Field Marshal approved that
before it was sent to Washington on January 7.

Wilson’s Essential Peace Speech in 1917

      On 4 January 1917 Col. Edward House noted in his diary that
when he said that the United States was “poorly prepared for war,”
President Wilson told him,

There will be no war.
This country does not intend to become involved in this war.
We are the only one of the great white nations
that is free from war to-day,
and it would be a crime against civilization
for us to go in.222

      On January 10 the United States Ambassador to France
William Graves Sharp reported that the objectives of the Allies
were for restoring areas the Central Powers had conquered in the war
and were to liberate Italians, Rumanians, Slavs, and Czecho-Slovaks.
Wilson had his speech for the US Senate prepared by January 11,
and on the 15th he sent copies to the major American embassies in Europe.
Wilson had Vice President Marshall convene the Senate,
and Marshall read Wilson’s letter to them on January 22 at noon.
Wilson appeared an hour later and made his historic speech
on “Essential Terms of Peace in Europe.”
I present the entire speech that offered the world that was suffering
from a catastrophic war a way of lasting peace and because,
even as I write in 2023, the world is still more than ever in need of such a plan.

Gentlemen of the Senate:
   On the eighteenth of December last I addressed
an identic note to the governments of the nations
now at war requesting them to state, more definitely than
they had yet been stated by either group of belligerents,
the terms upon which
they would deem it possible to make peace.
I spoke on behalf of humanity and of the rights
of all neutral nations like our own, many of whose
most vital interests the war puts in constant jeopardy.
The Central Powers united in a reply which stated merely
that they were ready to meet
their antagonists in conference to discuss terms of peace.
The Entente Powers have replied much more definitely
and have stated, in general terms, indeed,
but with sufficient definiteness to imply details,
the arrangements, guarantees, and acts of reparation
which they deem to be the indispensable conditions
of a satisfactory settlement.
We are that much nearer a definite discussion
of the peace which shall end the present war.
We are that much nearer the discussion of the international
concert which must thereafter hold the world at peace.
In every discussion of the peace that must end this war
it is taken for granted that that peace must be followed
by some definite concert of power which will make it
virtually impossible that any such catastrophe
should ever overwhelm us again.
Every lover of mankind, every sane
and thoughtful man must take that for granted.
   I have sought this opportunity to address you
because I thought that I owed it to you,
as the council associated with me in the final determination
of our international obligations, to disclose to you
without reserve the thought and purpose
that have been taking form in my mind in regard to the duty
of our Government in the days to come
when it will be necessary to lay afresh and upon a new plan
the foundations of peace among the nations.
   It is inconceivable that the people of the United States
should play no part in that great enterprise.
To take part in such a service will be the opportunity
for which they have sought to prepare themselves
by the very principles and purposes of their polity
and the approved practices of their Government
ever since the days when they set up a new nation
in the high and honorable hope that it might
in all that it was and did show mankind the way to liberty.
They cannot in honor withhold the service
to which they are now about to be challenged.
They do not wish to withhold it.
But they owe it to themselves and to the other nations
of the world to state the conditions
under which they will feel free to render it.
   That service is nothing less than this,
to add their authority and their power
to the authority and force of other nations
to guarantee peace and justice throughout the world.
Such a settlement cannot now be long postponed.
It is right that before it comes this Government should
frankly formulate the conditions upon which it would feel
justified in asking our people to approve its formal
and solemn adherence to a League for Peace.
I am here to attempt to state those conditions.
   The present war must first be ended;
but we owe it to candor and to a just regard
for the opinion of mankind to say that, so far as
our participation in guarantees of future peace is concerned,
it makes a great deal of difference in what way
and upon what terms it is ended.
The treaties and agreements which bring it to an end
must embody terms which will create a peace
that is worth guaranteeing and preserving,
a peace that will win the approval of mankind,
not merely a peace that will serve the several interests
and immediate aims of the nations engaged.
We shall have no voice in determining
what those terms shall be, but we shall, I feel sure,
have a voice in determining whether they shall be made
lasting or not by the guarantees of a universal covenant;
and our judgment upon what is fundamental and essential
as a condition precedent to permanency should be
spoken now, not afterwards when it may be too late.
   No covenant of cooperative peace that does not include
the peoples of the New World can suffice
to keep the future safe against war;
and yet there is only one sort of peace
that the peoples of America could join in guaranteeing.
The elements of that peace must be elements
that engage the confidence and satisfy the principles
of the American governments, elements consistent
with their political faith and with the practical convictions
which the peoples of America have once for all
embraced and undertaken to defend.
   I do not mean to say that any American government
would throw any obstacle in the way of any terms of peace
the governments now at war might agree upon,
or seek to upset them when made, whatever they might be.
I only take it for granted that mere terms of peace
between the belligerents will not satisfy
even the belligerents themselves.
Mere agreements may not make peace secure.
It will be absolutely necessary that a force be created
as a guarantor of the permanency of the settlement
so much greater than the force of any nation now engaged
or any alliance hitherto formed or projected
that no nation, no probable combination of nations
could face or withstand it.
If the peace presently to be made is to endure,
it must be a peace made secure
by the organized major force of mankind.
   The terms of the immediate peace agreed upon
will determine whether it is a peace
for which such a guarantee can be secured.
The question upon which the whole future peace
and policy of the world depends is this:
Is the present war a struggle for a just and secure peace,
or only for a new balance of power?
If it be only a struggle for a new balance of power,
who will guarantee, who can guarantee,
the stable equilibrium of the new arrangement?
Only a tranquil Europe can be a stable Europe.
There must be, not a balance of power,
but a community of power;
not organized rivalries, but an organized common peace.
   Fortunately we have received
very explicit assurances on this point.
The statesmen of both of the groups of nations
now arrayed against one another have said,
in terms that could not be misinterpreted,
that it was no part of the purpose they had in mind
to crush their antagonists.
But the implications of these assurances
may not be equally clear to all—
may not be the same on both sides of the water.
I think it will be serviceable if I attempt to set forth
what we understand them to be.
   They imply, first of all, that
it must be a peace without victory.
It is not pleasant to say this.
I beg that I may be permitted
to put my own interpretation upon it
and that it may be understood
that no other interpretation was in my thought.
I am seeking only to face realities
and to face them without soft concealments.
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.
Only a peace between equals can last.
Only a peace the very principle of which is equality
and a common participation in a common benefit.
The right state of mind, the right feeling between nations,
is as necessary for a lasting peace as is
the just settlement of vexed questions of territory
or of racial and national allegiance.
   The equality of nations upon which peace
must be founded if it is to last must be an equality of rights;
the guarantees exchanged must neither recognize
nor imply a difference between big nations and small,
between those that are powerful and those that are weak.
Right must be based upon the common strength,
not upon the individual strength,
of the nations upon whose concert peace will depend.
Equality of territory or of resources
there of course cannot be; nor any other sort of equality
not gained in the ordinary peaceful
and legitimate development of the peoples themselves.
But no one asks or expects anything
more than an equality of rights.
Mankind is looking now for freedom of life,
not for equipoises of power.
   And there is a deeper thing involved
than even equality of right among organized nations.
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,
and that no right anywhere exists to hand peoples about
from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were property.
I take it for granted, for instance,
if I may venture upon a single example,
that statesmen everywhere are agreed that there should be
a united, independent, and autonomous Poland,
and that henceforth inviolable security of life, of worship,
and of industrial and social development
should be guaranteed to all peoples
who have lived hitherto under the power of governments
devoted to a faith and purpose hostile to their own.
   I speak of this, not because of any desire to exalt
an abstract political principle which has
always been held very dear by those
who have sought to build up liberty in America,
but for the same reason that I have spoken
of the other conditions of peace
which seem to me clearly indispensable—
because I wish frankly to uncover realities.
Any peace which does not recognize and accept
this principle will inevitably be upset.
It will not rest upon the affections
or the convictions of mankind.
The ferment of spirit of whole populations
will fight subtly and constantly against it,
and all the world will sympathize.
The world can be at peace only if its life is stable,
and there can be no stability where the will is in rebellion,
where there is not tranquillity of spirit
and a sense of justice, of freedom, and of right.
   So far as practicable, moreover, every great people
now struggling towards a full development of its resources
and of its powers should be assured
a direct outlet to the great highways of the sea.
Where this cannot be done by the cession of territory,
it can no doubt be done by the neutralization
of direct rights of way under the general guarantee
which will assure the peace itself.
With a right comity of arrangement
no nation need be shut away from free access
to the open paths of the world’s commerce.
   And the paths of the sea
must alike in law and in fact be free.
The freedom of the seas is the sine qua non
of peace, equality, and cooperation.
No doubt a somewhat radical reconsideration of many
of the rules of international practice hitherto thought to be
established may be necessary in order to
make the seas indeed free and common
in practically all circumstances for the use of mankind,
but the motive for such changes
is convincing and compelling.
There can be no trust or intimacy
between the peoples of the world without them.
The free, constant, unthreatened intercourse of nations
is an essential part of the process
of peace and of development.
It need not be difficult either to define or to secure
the freedom of the seas if the governments of the world
sincerely desire to come to an agreement concerning it.
   It is a problem closely connected with the limitation
of naval armaments and the cooperation of the navies
of the world in keeping the seas at once free and safe.
And the question of limiting naval armaments
opens the wider and perhaps more difficult question
of the limitation of armies
and of all programs of military preparation.
Difficult and delicate as these questions are,
they must be faced with the utmost candor
and decided in a spirit of real accommodation
if peace is to come with healing in its wings,
and come to stay.
Peace cannot be had without concession and sacrifice.
There can be no sense of safety and equality
among the nations if great preponderating armaments
are henceforth to continue here and there
to be built up and maintained.
The statesmen of the world must plan for peace
and nations must adjust and accommodate their policy to it
as they have planned for war
and made ready for pitiless contest and rivalry.
The question of armaments, whether on land or sea,
is the most immediately and intensely practical question
connected with the future fortunes of nations
and of mankind.
   I have spoken upon these great matters
without reserve and with the utmost explicitness
because it has seemed to me to be necessary
if the world’s yearning desire for peace
was anywhere to find free voice and utterance.
Perhaps I am the only person in high authority
amongst all the peoples of the world
who is at liberty to speak and hold nothing back.
I am speaking as an individual,
and yet I am speaking also, of course,
as the responsible head of a great government,
and I feel confident that I have said
what the people of the United States would wish me to say.
May I not add that I hope and believe that
I am in effect speaking for liberals and friends of humanity
in every nation and of every program of liberty?
I would fain believe that I am speaking
for the silent mass of mankind everywhere
who have as yet had no place or opportunity to speak
their real hearts out concerning the death and ruin
they see to have come already upon the persons
and the homes they hold most dear.
   And in holding out the expectation that
the people and Government of the United States will join
the other civilized nations of the world in guaranteeing
the permanence of peace upon such terms as I have named
I speak with the greater boldness and confidence
because it is clear to every man who can think that
there is in this promise no breach in either our traditions
or our policy as a nation, but a fulfilment, rather,
of all that we have professed or striven for.
   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:
that no nation should seek to extend its polity
over any other nation or people,
but that every people should be left free
to determine its own polity, its own way of development,
unhindered, unthreatened, unafraid,
the little along with the great and powerful.
   I am proposing that all nations henceforth
avoid entangling alliances which would draw them
into competitions of power, catch them in a net of intrigue
and selfish rivalry, and disturb their own affairs
with influences intruded from without.
There is no entangling alliance in a concert of power.
When all unite to act in the same sense
and with the same purpose all act in the common interest
and are free to live their own lives
under a common protection.
   I am proposing government
by the consent of the governed;
that freedom of the seas which in international conference
after conference representatives of the United States
have urged with the eloquence of those
who are the convinced disciples of liberty;
and that moderation of armaments which makes
of armies and navies a power for order merely,
not an instrument of aggression or of selfish violence.
   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 everywhere,
of every modern nation, of every enlightened community.
They are the principles of mankind and must prevail.223

Progressive Senator La Follette commented, “We have just
passed through a very important hour in the life of the world.”
Senator Shafroth of Colorado called it “the greatest message of a century.”
The New York Times reported, “This is not merely a guarantee of peace,
it is a moral transformation.”219
On January 23 the London Times declared, “His project is
nothing less ambitious, less splendid than the establishment
of a perpetual and universal reign of peace.”
In the French Chamber of Deputies 89 Socialists
called Wilson’s speech “the charter of the civilized universe.”
On January 26 the Russian Foreign Office announced that
the Russian Imperial Government would cooperate
in achieving a negotiated settlement.
Wilson on the 29th wrote to a journalist that he had spoken
mostly to “the people of the countries now at war.”

Wilson & Germany’s War Escalation in 1917

      President Wilson knew that his peace plan would depend most on the
Germans who would be most likely to resist giving up submarine warfare.
He asked Col. House to meet again with
Ambassador Bernstorff this time privately.
On January 26 Bernstorff told House that military leaders had taken
control of German policy and that submarine attacks would be renewed.
The next day Bernstorff sent a long cable to Berlin writing,

  Wilson hoped that we would disclose peace conditions
to him which could be made public
both here and in Germany, in order that they could
become openly known throughout the entire world;
that if we would only trust him, he was convinced that
he would be able to bring about both peace conferences.224

Thus the unnecessary bloodshed of the spring offensive could be avoided.
The British had decoded Bethmann’s telegram and knew that
Germans intended to increase submarine attacks on February 1.
The British believed that this would bring America into the war.
If Russia defected, the Germans might win the war.
The British asked Ambassador Page to learn if the United States
would approve of the British using heavy armaments on merchant ships.
On January 29 Kaiser Wilhelm II made it clear that he would not accept
Wilson as a mediator or the United States as a participant in the peace conference.
On that day Chancellor Bethmann wired Bernstorff that the Entente Allies
having announced their conditions that would degrade and destroy Germany
made it impossible for Germans to give conditions, and the submarine warfare
was already in process and would not be stopped
unless Wilson brought about a peace acceptable to Germany.
On January 31 Bernstorff notified Lansing that Germany would
be resuming unrestricted submarine warfare the next day.
      On February 2 an emergency committee of the Socialists in Chicago
sent an appeal to Wilson to impose an embargo on ships
going to belligerent nations as a way to avoid war.
Germany had essentially declared war on peaceful neutral shipping.
After meeting with his Cabinet and then with 16 Democratic senators
Wilson decided to break off relations with Germany.
On February 3 he addressed the Congress and concluded his speech saying,

   We do not desire hostile conflict
with the Imperial German Government.
We are the sincere friends of the German people
and earnestly desire to remain at peace
with the Government which speaks for them.
We shall not believe that they are hostile to us
unless and until we are obliged to believe it;
and we purpose nothing more than the reasonable defense
of the undoubted rights of our people.
We wish to serve no selfish ends.
We seek merely to stand true alike in thought and in action
to the immemorial principles of our people
which I sought to express in my address
to the Senate only two weeks ago,—
seek merely to vindicate our right
to liberty and justice and an unmolested life.
These are the bases of peace not war.
God grant we may not be challenged to defend them
by acts of willful injustice
on the part of the Government of Germany!225

      On February 5 President Wilson announced that all German territory
and property in the United States would be protected by law.
On the 7th the Senate voted 78 to 5 for a resolution
approving the break of relations with Germany.
The Columbia University History Professor Carlton J. H. Hayes
wrote an article for The Survey on February 8 proposing to
defend neutral rights against aggressors by organizing a league
of neutral nations to arm their ships to protect legitimate commerce.
The humanitarian nurse Lillian D. Wald and Col. House
sent Wilson copies of that article,
and the New York Evening Post reprinted it on February 10.
The new Committee for Democratic Control led by Amos Pinchot
provided copies of the plan for members of Congress on the 13th.
The Springfield Republican published the public sentiment
that most Americans wanted to avoid war,
approved breaking diplomatic relations with Germany,
approved protecting American rights at sea with force,
and supported Congress and the President taking necessary actions.
Most Americans opposed sending American soldiers
to Europe or joining a military alliance.
      The Wilson administration hoped to maintain diplomatic relations
with Austria-Hungary, and Secretary of State Lansing conveyed that
to the new Ambassador Adam Tarnowski on February 3.
The Hapsburg Empire’s Foreign Minister Ottokar Czernin wrote back,

   I need not say I, too, would be very pleased
if the diplomatic relations between us
and the United States could be maintained intact….
   We have declared—openly and honestly—
that we only wage a war of defense, that is, that
we are ready to negotiate honorable conditions of peace,
a peace without victory….
As long as the Entente will not give up the program
published in their last note, a program
which aims at the dismemberment of Austria-Hungary,
it is impossible for us to talk about peace,
and we are forced to defend ourselves
with every means at our disposal….
   I trust that the President of the United States will continue
the work of peace he began in a spirit of impartiality
and I sincerely hope that he will induce the powers
of the Entente to accept, like us, the American point of view,
that there should be neither victor nor loser
and that the peace concluded should be an honorable one
for both sides—a lasting one for the whole world.226

Ambassador Frederick E. Penfield sent this message, and a few hours later
he wired that Austria-Hungary was suffering misery and destitution,
and people in all classes are praying for peace.
Wilson was excited by the message, and
he worked on a note for London on February 8.
Lansing conveyed it in code to Page that night.
Ambassador Page talked about Wilson’s message with
British Prime Minister Lloyd George on February 10,
and he learned that the British and French were
secretly negotiating with Austria-Hungary.
Lloyd George sent a message to Wilson saying,

We want him to come into the war
not so much for help with the war as for help with peace….
American participation is necessary for the complete
expression of the moral judgment of the world on the most
important subject ever presented to the civilized nations.
For America’s sake, for our own sake,
for the sake of free government,
and for the sake of democracy,
military despotism must now be ended forever.
The President’s presence at the peace conference
is necessary for the proper organization of the world
which must follow peace….
He must help make peace if the peace
made at that conference is to be worth keeping.
American participation in the war would enable him
to be there, and the mere moral effect of this participation
would shorten the war, might even end it very quickly.227

      The Germans were also eager to find a way
to protect American shipping in the war zones.
George Barthelme, the Washington correspondent for Kölnische Zeitung,
sent a message from Bernstorff to the German Foreign Office urging negotiation.
Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmerman, who had criticized
Czernin’s note to Wilson, received the message on February 8.
Zimmer warned that Germany would reject Wilson’s mediation.
      President Wilson was working on getting progressive legislation passed.
On January 29 he vetoed the Burnett bill that limited immigrants to those
who could pass a literacy test, and Congress overrode his veto by February 5.
On February 23 his vocational education bill became law.
An emergency revenue bill was passed by both houses of Congress
by February 28, and Wilson signed the Puerto Rican bill on March 2.
      On February 24 Foreign Secretary Balfour gave the US Ambassador Page
a deciphered telegram that Germany’s Foreign Secretary Zimmerman had sent
to the German minister in Mexico from the
German Embassy in Washington which stated,

   It is our purpose on the 1st of February
to commence the unrestricted U-boat war.
The attempt will be made to keep America neutral
in spite of it all.
   In case we should not be successful in this,
we propose Mexico an alliance upon the following terms:
Joint conduct of the war. Joint conclusion of peace.
Ample financial support and an agreement on our part that
Mexico shall gain back by conquest the territory lost by her
at a prior period in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.
Arrangement as to details is entrusted to your Excellency.
   Your Excellency will make the above known
to the President [Carranza] in strict confidence
at the moment that war breaks out with the United States,
and you will add the suggestion that Japan be requested
to take part at once and that
he simultaneously mediate between ourselves and Japan.
   Please inform the President that the unrestricted use
of our U-boats now offers the prospect of forcing England
to sue for peace in the course of a few months.228