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"Wilson and American Neutrality, 1914-1917"
by
Arthur S. Link
For Woodrow Wilson and the American people, who had a positive disinclination to play the game of power politics, events on the international stage intruded in an ironic if fateful way from 1914 to 1917. By the spring of 1915 the United States was the only great power not directly involved in the war then raging from western Europe to the Far East. Desiring only to deal fairly with both sides and to avoid military involvement, the President soon found that neutrality, as well as war, has its perplexities and perils.
The way in which Wilson met the challenges to America's peace and security raised by the death grapple between the opposing alliances has never been fully explained, notwithstanding scores of books and articles. Too often historians, in company with public men, have looked for culprits instead of facts. Too often they have misunderstood the facts even when they found them. Too often they have written as if Wilson and his advisers made policy in a vacuum independent of the interplay of conflicting pressures. If we can see the President's policies of neutrality in the light of his convictions and objectives, the pressures and events (both domestic and foreign) that bore constantly upon him, and the alternatives between which he was often forced to choose--if we can do this, then perhaps we will see that his task in foreign policy at this juncture was not as simple as it has sometimes been described.
Among the most pervasive pressures controlling Wilson's decisions through out the period 1914-1917 were the attitudes and opinions of the American people concerning the war and America's proper relation to it. Few presidents in American history have been more keenly aware of risks that the leader runs when he ceases to speak for the preponderant majority. "The ear of the leader must ring with the voices of the people. He cannot be of the school of the prophets: he must be of the number of those who studiously serve the slow-paced daily need." Thus Wilson had written in 1890;1 thus he believed and practiced while formulating his policies toward the
belligerents in the First World War.
The dominant American sentiment throughout the period of nonintervention can be summarily characterized by the single adjective "neutral." This is not to say that Americans had no opinions on the merits of the war and the claims of the opposing alliances, or that there were no differences among the popular reactions. It is simply to state the fairly obvious fact that the preponderant majority, whose opinions played a decisive role in shaping Wilson's policies, did not believe that their interests and security were vitally involved in the outcome of the war and desired to avoid
participation if that were possible without sacrificing rights that should not be yielded. The prevalence and astounding vitality of neutralism, in spite of the severest provocations and all the efforts of propagandists on both sides, formed at once the unifying principle of American politics and the compelling reality with which Wilson had to deal from 1914 to 1917.
On the other hand, it would be a large error to imply that Wilson was a prisoner of the public opinion of the majority, and that his will to adopt sterner policies toward one group of belligerents or the other was paralyzed by the stronger counterforce of neutralism. Actually, the evidence points overwhelmingly to the conclusion that Wilson personally shared the opinions of the majority, in brief, that he was substantially neutral in attitude, and that his policies were controlled as much by his own convictions as by the obvious wishes of the people.
It followed in Wilson's mind that all the belligerents shared to some degree in the responsibility for the war and that one could not ascribe all blame to one side or the other. Nor could one use simple explanations in talking about conflicting war objectives. It was clear to Wilson that all the belligerents sincerely believed that they were fighting for their existence, but that all of them desired a smashing victory in order to enhance their power, win new territory, and impose crushing indemnities upon their enemies. Because this was true, Wilson reasoned, the best kind of settlement would be a stalemate in which neither alliance would have the power to impose terms upon the other.
In his thinking about war in general, moreover. Wilson shared in a remarkable way the assumptions of the majority of Americans. Like most of his fellow-citizens, he abhorred the very thought of using violence to achieve national objectives; indeed, he was reluctant to use even the threat of force in diplomacy. Like the Socialists, independent radicals, and a large majority of southern and western farmers, he suspected that the financiers and industrialists favored preparedness and a strong foreign policy in order to increase profits and provoke a war that would end the reform movement at home. Like the majority of Americans, he was willing to think of fighting only as a last resort and then only as a means of defending rights that no civilized nation could yield.
Fortified by these convictions, Wilson struggled hard and on the whole successfully to be impartial in thought as well as in deed, as he had asked the American people at the outbreak of the war to do. In fact, he succeeded in this impossible undertaking far better than most of his contemporaries and his historical critics. His method was to rely upon the general assumptions that he was sure were sound and then virtually to seal himself off from the passionate arguments and indictments of partisans of either alliance, by simply refusing to listen to them, "I recall," Secretary Lansing afterward wrote, for example, "that... his attitude toward evidence of German atrocities in Belgium and toward accounts of the horrors of submarine warfare . . . [was that] he would not read of them and showed anger if the details were called to his attention."
This does not mean that Wilson was able completely to subordinate emotional reactions and personal feelings. Like the majority of Americans, he was to a degree pro-British; on two, perhaps three, occasions during the two and a half years of American neutrality he avowed to close friends his personal sympathy for the Allied cause. But it would be a difficult task to prove that Wilson's pro-British sympathies were ever controlling or indeed even very strong. At no time did he act like a man willing to take measures merely to help his supposed friends. On the contrary, all his
policies were aimed either at averting American participation on Britain's side or at ending the war on terms that would have denied the spoils of victory to Britain and her allies. If this is too big an assertion to be taken on faith, then perhaps the reasons for making it will become apparent as we see the way in which Wilson executed policies toward the two leading antagonists.
All authorities, whether friendly or hostile to Wilson, would agree that the acid tests of his neutrality were the policies that he worked out and applied vis-a-vis the British from 1914 to 1917. He has been most condemned by that group of historians highly censorious of his policies, generally known as revisionists, on this score--for becoming the captive of pro Allied influences within his administration, for condoning such sweeping British control of neutral commerce that the Germans were forced to resort to drastic countermeasures: for permitting American prosperity to become dependent upon loans and exports to the Allies, in short, for permitting a situation to develop that made it inevitable that the United States would go to war if the success of Allied arms was ever seriously threatened.
Like most fallacious arguments, this one contains a certain element of plausibility. Wilson did condone a far-reaching British maritime system. American neutrality did work greatly to the benefit of the Allies. The error arises in saying that these things occurred because Wilson and his advisers necessarily wanted them to occur.
Perhaps the best way to gain a clear understanding of why Anglo-American relations developed as they did from 1914 to 1917 is to see how the policies that decisively shaped those relations emerged in several stages in response to certain pressures, events, and forces. The first stage, lasting from August, 1914, to about August, 1915, was in many ways the most critical, because basic American response to the war and to the British maritime system was formulated then. That response was governed in the first instance by two domestic realities: the overwhelming, virtually
unanimous, American desire to be neutral, and the pressures in the United States for a large measure of free trade with Britain's enemies.
In view of the prevailing American sentiment at the outbreak of the war, a policy of strict official neutrality was the only possible course for the United States government. This fact prompted the President's official proclamations of neutrality, supplemented by his appeal to the American people for impartiality in thought; the subsequent working out by the State Department of the elaborate technical rules to preserve American neutrality; and the establishment of a Joint State and Navy Neutrality Board to advise the various departments upon the correct interpretation of international law.
One cannot read the records revealing how these policies were formulated without being convinced that their authors were high-minded in their determination to be fair to both sides. Indeed, Wilson and the man who chiefly influenced him in the formulation of the rules of neutrality, Secretary of State Bryan, were so intent upon being fair to the Germans that they adopted policies during the first months of the war that were highly disadvantageous to the British, if not unneutral. One was to prevent the sale of submarine parts, and hence parts for any naval craft, by a private American firm to the British government, on the ground that such a sale would be "contrary to ... strict neutrality." Wilson persisted in supporting Bryan in this matter, in spite of advice from Counselor Lansing and the Joint Neutrality Board to the effect that their position was contrary to international law.
Infinitely more damaging to the Allies was the administration's second effort to lean over backward in being "strictly" neutral--the ban of loans by American bankers to the belligerent governments that the President permitted Bryan to impose in August, 1914. From a technical viewpoint, the ban was not unneutral. but it was highly prejudicial to the Allies because its effect was potentially to deny them their otherwise legal right to purchase supplies in the American market. These two incidents are not to be understood as revealing any anti-British bias on the part of Wilson and Bryan, although British officials at the time were convinced that they did. I mention them only to show what an important role the administration's desire to be impartial played in the formation of policies vis-a-vis the British during the early period of American neutrality.
The other pressure shaping American policies at this time was the force of combined demands at home for the virtually free transit of American ships and goods to the European neutrals and the belligerent Central Powers. So powerful were these demands, especially from cotton growers and exporters and their spokesmen in Congress, that Wilson personally sponsored two measures highly disadvantageous to the British and unneutral in fact as well as in spirit. One was a change in the ship registry law, put into effect by an act approved August 18, 1914, which made it easy for German or their foreign shipping firms to take out American registry for their vessels. The other was a plan to establish a federal corporation to purchase German ships in American ports and to use them to carry supplies to the, belligerents, particularly to Germany. Wilson applied heavy pressure to obtain congressional approval of this, the so-called ship-purchase bill, during the short term from December, 1914, to March, 1915; he failed only because of a stout senatorial filibuster.
In negotiations with the British government during the early months of the war, Wilson fought hard in response to domestic pressures to keep the channels of international commerce open to American ships and goods. He did not go as far in defense of neutral rights as some of his predecessors, but he did suggest a code so sweeping that an enforcement of it would have meant almost total destruction of the British system of maritime controls. Specifically, the President first proposed on August 6, 1914, that the belligerents adopt the rules of naval warfare laid down in the Declaration of London of 1909, a convention never ratified by Great Britain or the United States, which permitted the free transit of all goods except those obviously contraband. When the British rejected this suggestion, the President came back on October 16, proposing a compromise that would have still seriously impaired the effectiveness of British sea power. When this effort also failed. Wilson then announced that his government would assert and defend all its rights under international law and treaties.
I have described these policies and proposals because they so clearly reveal Wilson's neutral intentions and what he would have done in matters of trade had he been able to make the rules himself. But he obviously could not follow his personal preferences alone or respond only to domestic pressures. In seeking to assert and defend American neutral rights he ran head-on into a reality as important as the reality of the pressures at home. It was the British determination to use sea power to prevent American ships and goods from going to the sustenance of the German
economy and military forces.
British assumption of a nearly absolute control of the seas washing western Europe began with relatively mild measures in August, 1914, and culminated in the suppression of virtually all commerce to the Central Powers in March, 1915. For the British, this was not a question of adhering to the laws of blockade or of violating them, or of doing things merely to be nice to American friends. It was a question of achieving their supreme objective, to deprive their enemies of vital raw materials and goods, without risking the alienation of the United States. The controlling fact for the British was the necessity of preserving American friendship, in order to
assure the uninterrupted rhythm of the North Atlantic trade. As the British Foreign Secretary at the time frankly put it:
Blockade of Germany was essential to the victory of the Allies, but the ill-will of the United States meant their certain defeat.... It was better therefore to carry on the war without blockade, if need be, than to incur a break with the United States about contraband and thereby deprive the Allies of the resources necessary to carry on the war at all or with any chance of success. The object of diplomacy, therefore, was to secure the maximum of blockade that could be enforced without a rupture with the United States.
The crucial question all along, therefore, was whether the United States, the only neutral power strong enough successfully to challenge the British measures, would acquiesce or resist to the point of threatening or using force. The American response during the formative period of neutrality was, in brief, to accept the British system and to limit action against it to a vigorous assertion of American legal rights for future adjudication. All this is too well known to require any further exposition. What is not so well understood are the reasons why Wilson and his advisers acquiesced in a solution that denied the objectives that they and a large segment of the American public demanded. These reasons may be briefly summarized, as follows:
First, the British maritime system, in spite of American allegations to the contrary, enjoyed the advantage of being legitimate and usually legal, or nearly so, by traditional criteria. It was legitimate rather than fraudulent, and legal rather than capricious or terroristic, in its major aspects because the British did in fact hold undisputed sea supremacy and were therefore able to execute their controls in an orderly fashion. In asserting their own rights, the Americans could not well deny the advantages that accrued to the British by virtue of their sea power. The British, for example, had an undoubted right to establish a blockade of the Central Powers, and the American attempt to persuade the London government to use techniques effective only in the days of the sailing ship did not have much cogency in the twentieth century.
Second, much of the success of the British in establishing their control depended upon the way in which they went about it. Had they instituted their total blockade at the outset of the war, the American reaction would undoubtedly have been violent. Instead, the British applied their controls gradually, with a careful eye upon American opinion, using the opportunities provided by recurrent crises in German-American relations to institute their severest measures.
Third, the British were careful never to offend so many American interests at one time that retaliation would have been inevitable, or any single interest powerful enough by itself to compel retaliation. There was the case of cotton, which the officials in London were determined to prevent from going to Germany because it was an ingredient of gunpowder. Not until a year after the war
began did they put cotton on the list of absolute contraband; even then they went to the extraordinary length of underwriting the entire American cotton market in order to avert an irresistible southern pressure in Congress for retaliation.4 In addition, although they were ruthless in enforcing their blockade, the British took careful pains to avoid any serious injury to American property interests. They confiscated only the most obvious contraband; in all doubtful cases they paid full value for cargoes or ships seized. Their objective was to control, not to destroy, American commerce.
Fourth, there was great significance in the language and symbolism that the British Foreign Office used in defending the measures of the Admiralty and Ministry of Blockade. By justifying their maritime system in terms of international law and the right of retaliation, and (at least before the summer of 1916) by making an honest effort to meet American objections half way when possible, the British made it almost inevitable that the Washington authorities would have to reply in the same language, thus giving a purely legal character to the issues involved and for the most part
avoiding raising the issues of sovereignty and inherent national rights. The significance of this achievement can be seen in the conviction of Wilson and the majority of Americans that the Anglo-American disputes did involve only property rights, which should be vindicated only by an appeal to much-controverted international law. Moreover, by appealing to the American government and people in the name of friendship and by always professing their devotion to the
cause of humanity, the British succeeded in evoking strong feelings of sympathy and understanding on the other side of the water.
Finally, the British were able partially to justify their own blockade measures as legitimate adaptations to a changing technology by pointing to precedents established by the Washington government itself during the American Civil War. To be sure, the British drew some incorrect analogies (as Lansing pointed out) between American and British practice; even so, their main contention--that the American government had also stretched the rules of blockade to allow for technological changes--was essentially correct.
Wilson's refusal to challenge the British maritime system, in short, to break the British blockade, was almost inevitable in view of the facts we have just reviewed, if the President's objective was simply to maintain as best he could the neutral position of the United States. An absolute neutrality was in any event impossible because of the total character of the war and America's importance in the world economy. It often happened that any action by the United States inevitably conferred a benefit on one side and thereby injured the other, at least indirectly. In these circumstances, neutrality often consisted of doing the things that would give the least unwarranted or undeserved advantages.
By this standard, it would have been more unneutral than neutral for Wilson to have broken the British maritime system by enforcing highly doubtful technical rights under international law. Judged by practical standards rather than by the often conflicting criteria of neutrality, Wilson's acceptance of the British system seems realistic and wise--indeed, the only choice that he could have made in the circumstances. This is true because the results of destroying the British blockade would have been the wrecking of American friendship with the two great European democracies and the probable victory of the Central Powers, without a single compensating gain for the interests and security of the United States. Only the sure achievement of some great political objective like a secure peace settlement, certainly not the winning of a commercial advantage or the defense of doubtful neutral rights, would have justified Wilson in undertaking a determined challenge to British sea power.
The second stage in Anglo-American relations, lasting from the summer of 1915 to the late spring of 1916, saw the development of the natural economic consequence of the American adjustment to tightening British control of the seas. That consequence was the burgeoning of an enormous war trade between the United States and the Allies. The United States became the storehouse and armory of the Allies neither because there was any conspiracy on the part of certain pro-Allied leaders in Washington to make American prosperity dependent upon an Allied victory, nor because American businessmen and bankers were willing to incur the risks of war in order to increase their profits. The United States became the storehouse of the Allies for the simple reason that Great Britain and not Germany controlled the seas.
The war trade itself was entirely neutral. Indeed, any action by the United States government to impede it, unless undertaken for overriding political motives, would have been grossly prejudicial and unneutral. If it had been permitted to develop in a normal way, this commerce would have raised no important problems in the relations of the United States with the Allies. A problem of the first magnitude did arise, however, because the President, in the summer of 1914, had permitted Secretary Bryan to enforce his own private moral views by imposing a ban on loans by American bankers to the belligerents.
There was no difficulty so long as the British and French governments could find gold and dollars to settle their adverse trade balances. By the summer of 1915, however, Allied gold and dollar resources were near the point of exhaustion; and American insistence upon a continuation of cash payments could result only in gravely damaging the Allied economies and ending the North Atlantic trade altogether. Credit could be found only in the United States, but credit meant floating loans, and loans to the belligerents were as much a political as an economic question because of the existence of Bryan's ban.
It is well known that the State Department under Bryan's direction substantially relaxed its credit embargo during the spring of 1915 and that Wilson and Bryan's successor, Lansing, lifted the ban altogether a few months later, at a time when the credit needs of the Allied governments were demonstrably acute. Even though the full facts bearing upon this matter have been available to scholars for more than twenty years, the reasons for the administration's reversal are still not
properly understood.
Bryan's ban could not survive the development of the war trade on a large scale because, in the first place, it (like the Embargo of 1808) was potentially nearly as disastrous to the United States as to the Allies. American material well-being was in large measure dependent upon foreign trade, and particularly upon trade with the Allied world. Such trade was possible during wartime only if American businessmen were willing to do for the Allies what they always did for solvent customers in temporary straits, namely, sell them goods on credit.
The most important reason that Bryan's embargo could not survive, however, was that it was an essentially unneutral policy that impeded the growth of the chief economic consequence of American neutrality, the legitimate war trade. The credit embargo and the war trade could not both survive. The former gave way because Wilson finally realized that it would be as unneutral to interfere with the extension of credit as it would be to stop the flow of goods. Bryan's ban was in a sense, therefore, a casualty chiefly of American neutrality....
The second stage in Anglo-American relations also witnessed the apparent convergence of the diplomatic policies of the two countries on the high level. During the summer and autumn of 1915 Colonel Edward M. House, Wilson's confidante and principal adviser on foreign policy, conceived a plan by which the American and British leaders would join hands to press for an end to the war through Wilson's mediation. The British Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, replied that his
government would co-operate only if the Washington administration were willing to go beyond simple mediation and would agree to join a postwar international organization established for the purpose of effecting disarmament, maintaining freedom of the seas, and preserving peace. Wilson hopefully consented, and House went to Berlin, Paris, and London in January, 1916, to lay the diplomatic basis of mediation.
In London, House worked out in documentary form with Grey and the other members of the British Cabinet the specific terms of Anglo-American co-operation. Initialed by House and Grey on February 22, 1916, and known as the House-Grey Memorandum or Agreement, this document declared that President Wilson was ready, upon hearing from. England and France that the time was ripe, to propose that a conference be called to end the war. Should the Allies accept and Germany refuse the invitation, the United States would "probably" enter the war against Germany. Should the conference meet and Germany refuse to accept a reasonable settlement, then the United States would also "probably" enter the war on the Allied side.
To the so-called revisionists the conclusion of the House-Grey Agreement is irrefutable proof that Wilson had abandoned neutrality and meant to take the country into war at the first opportunity. To remove all doubt that this was true, they point to what happened during the weeks immediately following the initialing of the agreement.
While House had been carrying his negotiations in London to a successful conclusion, Wilson and Lansing had undertaken to avert the possibility of conflict with Germany over the issue of submarine attacks against armed merchantmen by proposing that the Allies disarm their merchant ships and that U-boats follow the old rules of cruiser warfare in attacking them. Using President's suggestion as a pretext, the German authorities announced on February 10, 1916, that submarines would attack armed enemy merchantmen without warning after February 29. Then
without warning Wilson and Lansing reversed themselves and announced that the American government would insist upon the right of Americans to travel on ships defensively armed and would hold the German government to strict account for the loss of any American lives on armed merchantmen. Adhering doggedly to this position in the face of a threatened rebellion in Congress, the President proceeded to use the opportunity afforded by the torpedoing without warning of the French Channel packet Sussex by a German submarine, "in contravention of earlier pledges," to threaten a break in diplomatic relations with Germany and to force the Imperial government to make sweeping concessions in its conduct of submarine warfare.
To the revisionist critics, the case is so clear that it needs no further proof. The House-Grey Agreement, they say, was conceived and concluded for the purpose of promoting early American
intervention. Wilson at once sought to accomplish this goal by taking a position on armed merchant ships that was bound to provoke a crisis with Germany, and by pressing the German government so hard during the Sussex controversy that a break in relations would probably ensue. The plan failed, the revisionists explain, only because the violent opposition in Congress convinced the President that the lawmakers would never approve a declaration of war to uphold the right of Americans to travel on belligerent armed merchant ships, and only because the German authorities proved to be more conciliatory than Wilson had expected.
The revisionists are correct in asserting that the conclusion of the House-Grey Agreement marked the beginning of a new and epochal phase in Wilson's policies toward the belligerents. Otherwise they have missed the entire meaning of the affair, for the House-Grey Agreement was in Wilson's purpose not an instrument of intervention, but a means of averting American involvement. The truth of this important generalization will perhaps become evident when we recall the realities of
the American diplomatic situation during late 1915 and early 1916, and when we understand Wilson's motives and intentions in devising a solution.
The overshadowing reality confronting the makers of American foreign policy at this time was the grave possibility of war with Germany over the submarine issue. It caused Wilson and Lansing, for example, to abandon ambitious plans for further intervention in Mexico. It speeded the American acquiescence in the British maritime system. Most important, it prompted the President and his advisers to search for ways to avert the rupture that might draw the United States into the maelstrom.
One way out of the predicament was to come to a full understanding with the German government over the issues involved in the submarine controversy. This is what Lansing attempted to do and almost succeeded in accomplishing during his negotiations over the Lusitania affair. Another way out and a surer means of averting the peril of American involvement in the future was to bring the
war itself to an end through Wilson's mediation. It seemed at the time that the best hope of peace lay in Anglo-American co-operation for a peace of compromise, specifically in the kind of co-operation detailed in the House-Grey Agreement.
Thus Wilson approved this plan of mediation, but with a full realization that certain obligations and risks were involved. There was the necessity of giving positive assurances to the Allies, for they would have been at a fatal disadvantage in a peace conference without American support, in view of the strategic advantages that the Germans then enjoyed on the Continent of Europe. There was, moreover, the risk of war if the Germans refused to approve an armistice or proved to be
unreasonable at a peace conference after agreeing to end the fighting. However, Wilson gave the necessary assurances in the belief that the risk of war involved was insignificant as compared to the greater danger of hostilities with Germany if he could not somehow bring the war to an end. This, then, was his dominant motive in sending House to Europe in January, 1916, and in approving the House-Grey Agreement at the cost of Lansing's proposed compromise for submarine warfare.
In the final analysis, our judgment of Wilson's mediation plans must depend upon the kind of settlement that he had in mind and for which he was willing to run the risk of war in order to achieve peace. It is clear that Wilson envisaged a "reasonable" settlement based upon recognition that the war was a stalemate and upon a return for the most part of the status quo ante bellum. It meant, Wilson also hoped, the kind of settlement in which all the belligerents would forego annexations and indemnities, put aside past differences, and join hands with the United States to create a new international order. In his final discussions with the British Cabinet, Colonel House made it clear that this, and this only, was the kind of settle the House-Grey Agreement to achieve. In other words, the British leaders, the President would "throw the weight of the United States on the side of those wanting a just settlement--a settlement which would make another such war impossible."
Granted that Wilson's purpose was a genuinely neutral mediation, we can almost hear the critics say, how can one explain his seemingly provocative stand during the crises over armed merchant men and the Sussex? Was he not making such a bold assertion of American rights in the hope that the German government would deny them and thereby give him an excuse for going to Congress for a declaration of war?
The answer, again, is that Wilson was trying desperately to prepare the way for peace and not for war. He and Lansing had proposed the disarming of merchant ships in the hope that this would facilitate a definitive understanding with Germany. But, as House and Page pointed out in urgent telegrams from London, such a proposal was unnatural in spirit and if implemented might mean the destruction of the British merchant marine; and Wilson's insistence upon it would assuredly disqualify him as a mediator acceptable to the Allies.
Wilson suddenly reversed himself on the armed ship issue, therefore, primarily in order to restore his neutral standing. Then, following the conclusion of the House-Grey Agreement, the President pressed the Germans for guarantees of good behavior in the conduct of their submarine operations. But he did this with agonizing reluctance because of the risk of war involved and only in order to create a situation in which he might begin to move for peace.
All of Wilson's actions during the third and final stage in American neutrality, lasting from early May, 1916, to early February, 1917, confirm these conclusions. I will discuss his efforts to avert American involvement and his plans for peace in the next lecture. Let us now see how he had meanwhile worked out his response to the continuing challenge of the submarine, and why.
So long as the British controlled the seas and the Germans commanded the strategic territories and resources of Europe, the American task of neutrality was the relatively easy one of accepting a de facto situation and of pursuing the most impartial policies possible within this framework of power. Thus Wilson permitted the German invasion of Belgium to pass without protest, even though some Americans contended that he was morally obliged to denounce such a gross violation
of international law; thus he accepted the British maritime system. In this situation of actual stalemate, there was little likelihood of an Anglo-American rupture and no possibility of a German-American conflict, because there were no points of friction between the two governments. But the German decision to attempt to break the stalemate by using an untried weapon, the submarine, created a situation of great peril for the United States because it raised the issue of fundamental national rights and made it exceedingly difficult for the President to continue to steer a neutral course. Before we see how he struggled to find some adjustment to this new situation, let us consider for a moment some of the underlying factors that helped to govern German submarine policy and Wilson's response.
First, German decisions regarding the use of the submarine were determined almost exclusively by internal and objective considerations--the number of submarines on hand and their calculated effectiveness, the military situation in Europe and how it might be affected by American intervention, and the like--and in no essential way by American policies vis-a-vis the British, or by the rules of international law for cruiser warfare.... That is to say, calculations of sheer military advantage or disadvantage and not American or even British maritime policies dictated the way in
which the Germans would prosecute their underseas campaign.
Second, the submarine was in 1915 a new weapon of naval warfare. This was an important fact, for it meant that there was no special international law to govern its use when the rights of neutrals were involved. The only laws that could be applied were the rules of cruiser warfare, which required attacking warships to warn merchant ships before sinking them and to make provision for the safety of passengers and crew. The trouble was that the submarine was not a cruiser, but a frail craft that had to rely upon deception and quick striking power for safety and effectiveness. If its\ use had been an issue only between the belligerents, then international law would not have been much involved. But international law was directly involved, because its provisions defined not only the rights of neutrals, but their obligations to the belligerent powers as well. Having chosen a course of neutrality under international law, Wilson had to work within accepted rules in formulating his response to the submarine challenge insofar as American rights were concerned. The Allies, understandably, would not consent to modifications to permit enemy submarines to operate at their peak deadly efficiency; their refusal made it difficult for Wilson to insist upon changing the rules without seeming to be unnatural in spirit and without in fact conferring enormous advantages upon the Germans.
Third, all questions of international law aside, a great power like the United States could not view the submarine blockade as a legitimate weapon, one that should be considered and perhaps accepted on grounds of expediency or necessity. This was true because at the time of its inauguration in February, 1915, the submarine blockade was actually a sham, since the Germans were then able to\ keep at most only seven U-boats at one time in all the waters surrounding the British Isles. The Germans, in fact, inaugurated the "blockade" with four submarines in service in the area. A year later, at the time of the Sussex crisis, the German Admiralty could send only eleven or twelve way in which Wilson and his advisers viewed the so-called blockade and formulated policies regarding it, for it was one of the oldest and most generally recognized rules of international law that a blockade must be effective in order to be legal.
Fourth, unlike the Angle-American disputes over trading rights, which involved only property interests, the German submarine campaign as it was often prosecuted raised an issue which no great power should ever evade or arbitrate--the safety and welfare of its people in pursuits and areas where they have a right to be. It is almost inconceivable that Wilson and the American people could have thought of going to war with the British over issues of search and seizure or of blockade. It is also inconceivable that they would not have been willing to think in terms of war
with a government that permitted, indeed, instructed, its naval commanders to slaughter Americans indiscriminately upon the high seas.
It would, however, be a mistake of almost fatal magnitude to conclude, as so many writers have done, that Wilson's response to the submarine challenge was a simple and automatic reaction governed entirely by these factors. Although they played an important role, Wilson actually formed and executed, not a single consistent submarine policy, but a series of policies in response to changing issues and circumstances and in response to his own larger diplomatic objectives.
His first policy was formed in answer to the original German proclamation of submarine warfare. Avoiding the more difficult issue raised, the one involving the right of Americans to travel in safety on belligerent ships, Wilson replied by simply but strongly affirming the right of American vessels to use the seas subject to limitations permitted by international law, and by warning that the United States would hold Germany to a "strict accountability" (Counselor Lansing's words) for lives and property lost as a consequence of illegal submarine attacks against American neutral shipping. It was the only position that the President could have taken without abandoning the pretense of neutrality and national dignity, and the Germans soon retreated and gave such sweeping guarantees regarding American ships that this issue was never again a point of conflict between the two governments before 1917.
There still remained the necessity of devising a policy to deal with the more controversial issue of the right of American citizens to travel and work on belligerent merchant ships under conditions of safety specified by international law. When a German submarine sank the British liner Falaba without warning in March, 1915, killing an American citizen, Wilson's advisers in the State Department squared off in a momentous debate over the formulation of a proper response. One group, headed by Secretary Bryan, argued that American interests were not sufficiently involved to warrant a stern protest against submarine attacks on Allied ships, even when Americans were traveling on them, and that the spirit of neutrality demanded that the United States condone German violations of international law as it had done with British violations. The other group, headed by Counselor Lansing, replied that the attack on the Falaba had been such a flagrant infraction of international law that the United States must protest uncompromisingly in order to defend its neutrality and honor.
The records reveal that Wilson would have preferred to avoid any involvement while the two giant belligerents fought it out on the seas. In legal theory he agreed with Lansing, but he was so strongly moved by Bryan's pleading that he had apparently decided by the end of the debate over Falaba note to make no protest at all. This is the course that he would probably 'have followed in the future if the Germans, by confining their underseas campaign to attacks against Allied cargo ships and by showing a desire to avoid the loss to the new situation, had made it possible for him to find a means of adjusting a policy of noninvolvement, however, became impossible when a German U-boat sank the British passenger liner Listen without warning on May 7, 1915, with the loss of almost 1,200 civilians, including 128 Americans, men, women, and children. Wilson had to make some positive response now, so atrocious was the deed in the eyes of the American people, so flagrant was the violation of elemental national rights, so unnatural and degrading would be an acceptance of the terror campaign against the North Atlantic passenger liners.
The strategic facts of the situation--the German inability to maintain any effective blockade of British Isles and the consequent serious dangers to Germany from a break with the United States--would have justified the President in peremptorily demanding prompt disavowal and guarantees. Wilson's response, however, reflected his own desire and that of the majority of Americans to preserve neutrality and to avoid taking any position short of yielding essential rights that might lead to hostilities with Germany. Thus all during the summer of 1915 Wilson pounded
out notes on his typewriter, for the sole purpose of persuading the German government to disavow the sinking of the Listen and to abandon its campaign against unarmed passenger vessels. Threatening to break relations after a U-boat sank the liner Arabic on August 19, 1915, Wilson finally won the promise that he demanded.
By the end of the summer of 1915 the President had thus worked through two stages of policy and had won immunity from ruthless submarine attacks on American neutral ships and unarmed belligerent passenger liners. Up to this time, at any rate. Wilson had been patient, conciliatory, & firm only in his demand that the Germans give up measures that had already taken American lives and threatened untold others.
The third stage in the formulation of Wilson's policies toward the submarine, lasting from the early autumn of 1915 through the Sussex crisis in the spring of 1916, saw the President attempting to reach a definitive understanding with the Berlin authorities over all phases of submarine warfare against merchant shipping. The issue was daily becoming more difficult to solve by the application of traditional law, because the Allies since March, 1915, had been arming some passenger and cargo ships and ordering them to attack submarines that showed "hostile intent." But Wilson and Lansing persisted in trying to find a solution in spite of the obstacles because they (Or Wilson. at any rate) and the majority of Americans still earnestly desired to avoid conflict over merely technical issues.
By patient negotiation Lansing finally won something resembling a German apology for the loss of American lives on the Listen and an implicit reaffirmation of the Arabic pledge. In order to hasten this German concession and to avert even the possibility of future contention, Lansing proposed his mods vivendi of January 18, 1916 (already mentioned), designed to provide a new code to govern the German underseas campaign against maritime commerce. This was the proposal that the Allies disarm their merchant ships and that the German submarines observe the rules of cruiser warfare in attacking them.
Adoption of the proposal by the opposing belligerents, or by the United States and (Germany alone, would have achieved Wilson's objective of a comprehensive settlement of the submarine issue. And yet, for reasons that we have already seen, Wilson jettisoned the mods vivendi in order to save the House-Grey Agreement. Soon afterward, during the Sussex controversy (as we have also seen), he launched a new campaign to force the German government to conduct submarine
operations against all merchant ships. armed and unarmed, within the rules of cruiser warfare.
Wilson's rejection of the opportunity to come to a seemingly definitive understanding with Germany seems altogether logical and wise when we remember his objectives and the circumstances in which he made these decisions during the third stage in German-American relations. Wilson's supreme objective now was peace through his own mediation. Mediation seemed possible at this time only through the co-operation of the British government. But the British would co-operate only if they believed that the President was genuinely neutral, and certainly not if he insisted upon a code of submarine warfare that minimized the risks to Americans at the expense of British sea power to the advantage of an essentially illegitimate weapon.
Mediation was a noble objective with such great benefits to the United States that .it justified taking a few risks to achieve. But Wilson could have followed no other course than the one he followed during the crises over armed merchant men and the Sussex, even if his objective had been merely to maintain American neutrality. In the circumstances prevailing in the late winter of 1916, Wilson had to choose between continuing to accept the British maritime system, mooted by American Civil War precedents, or acquiescing in the challenge to that system, the German submarine blockade. The first was legitimate because it was based upon de facto power as well as legal precedent; the second was not legitimate because it was still a paper blockade without any power of effective enforcement. By insisting upon adherence to traditional rules insofar as the rights of Americans were concerned, Wilson was not at this time depriving the Germans of a weapon essential for their survival or one the free use of which would bring them victory at this time. This, essentially, was the reason that they yielded (for the time being) to Wilson's demands in the Sussex crisis. By insisting upon the adoption of Lansing's mods vivendi, on the other hand, Wilson in effect would have changed the traditional rules and aimed a heavy blow at the British maritime system, and only for the illusory purpose of averting the possibility of a conflict with Germany.
The final test of any foreign policy is whether it serves the national interest. If it was to the interest of the United States to avoid participation in the war at any cost, regardless of its outcome, and if implementing the mods vivendi would have averted all possibility of American involvement, then Wilson's policies at this time were unwise. This generalization, however, is faulty in all its assumptions. To begin with, American interests would be best served by a stalemate and by a peace of reconciliation through Wilson's mediation, not by driving the Allies into sullen opposition, thereby making mediation impossible, and not by promoting a German victory. More important\ was the fact that implementing the mods vivendi would not have prevented the conflict with Germany that Wilson wished to avoid. As we now know, and as Wilson did not know, conflict would come inevitably when the Germans had enough submarines to institute an effective blockade. In that event neither right nor law nor concessions by the United States would dissuade the Germans from making an all-out bid for victory through a devastating attack upon all maritime commerce to the Allied nations.
With the conclusion of the Sussex crisis, Wilson's task of erecting a solid structure of neutral policies to govern relations with Britain and Germany was complete, and the next great effort of American foreign policy would be aimed at the higher goal of peace. Operating within the limitations imposed by American public opinion, external realities, and his own conception of the right role for the United States to play, Wilson had made the only kind of adjustments possible in view of American rights and duties as the leading neutral power. He was now in a position from
which he could launch his peace campaign. Thus by virtue of Wilson's leadership, American neutrality was not merely a fact in the spring of 1916, but the most important and the most hopeful fact of international life at the time....
WILSON AND THE DECISIONS FOR WAR
The interval between May 1, 1916, and February 1, 1917, was one of the fateful turning points of modern history, because the decisions that the leaders of the great powers made during this brief period determined the future of mankind for generations to come. It was a time of gloom, because by the spring of 1916 the war had become a bloody stalemate in the trenches and upon the seas, and its futile continuation could mean only the attrition and perhaps the ruin of Western
civilization. It was also a time of hope, for, as events turned out, statesmen had the opportunity to end the war on terms that might have promised a secure and peaceful future....
Wilson made the first decision during the period under review. It was to press for mediation under the terms of the House-Grey Agreement, a choice almost foreordained by developments that I described in the preceding chapter. Indeed, he began even before the end of the Sussex crisis, only to encounter a firm refusal by Sir Edward Grew, the British Foreign Secretary, who made it plain that he preferred American belligerency and that he did not have much hope for the President's mediation in any event.
Undaunted by these early rebuffs, Wilson, assisted by Colonel House, returned to the task with a new zeal born of the hope engendered by the happy resolution of the Sussex affair and his and House's still strong belief that the British leaders sincerely wanted peace. From May 10 through July 15, 1916, the two American leaders applied a mounting pressure upon the British Foreign Office, appealing, pleading, and warning that British refusal to co-operate with the President would drive the United States into complete isolation and compel the Washington government to reexamine its attitude toward British maritime measures. As Wilson put it:
We are plainly face to face with this alternative, therefore. The United States must either make a decided move for peace (upon some basis that promises to be permanent) or, if she postpones that, must insist to the limit upon her rights of trade and upon such freedom of the seas as international law already justifies her in insisting on as against Great Britain, with the same plain speaking and firmness that she has used against Germany. And the choice must be made immediately. Which does Great Britain prefer? She cannot escape both. To do nothing is now, for us, impossible.
In the beginning Grew tried to avoid a plain refusal by saying that the time for calling a peace conference was not yet ripe, and by urging the President to raise the question with the French government, which he knew would reject outright any suggestions of peace. But when pressed for a direct answer, the Foreign Secretary finally had to reply frankly that the Allies, and not the United States, would decide when the time for peace talks had come, and that there was no chance of implementing the House-Grey Agreement so long as the Allies had any hope of winning a military decision. In addition, other spokesmen of the British and French governments, who were not as much personally involved as Grew, made it plain by private conversation and public statement that the Allies would regard any mediation move by the President as/a hostile act designed to deprive them of their chance of victory. ... Wilson's response was a decision with momentous possibilities for good or for ill--to strengthen American neutrality and then to press forward in his own independent campaign for peace. It was the grand culmination of American
neutrality and the almost inevitable outgrowth of pressures and events at home and abroad that were converging during the summer and autumn of 1916 to cause a radical shift in American foreign policy.
One of these events was Wilson's mounting anger with the British and his growing disillusionment about the merits of the whole Allied cause as a consequence of the British rejection (as he saw it) of his right hand of fellowship. Going far beyond mere irritation, this anger and disillusionment culminated in convictions powerful enough to affect national policy--that the Allies were fighting for selfish motives and domination, and that they would prolong the carnage rather than consent to a fair and liberal settlement.
Developments in the official relations of the United States and Great Britain during the summer and autumn of 1916 also speeded the disillusionment in Washington and prepared the way for a change of American policy. To state the matter briefly, the Admiralty and Ministry of Blockade tightened the British maritime system to the point of denying the last vestiges of the freedom of the seas. This they did by such measures as the search and seizure of American mail, carrying the economic war to America by forbidding British subjects to have any dealings with neutral individuals and firms suspected of trading with the Central Powers, and attempting to bring all
American shipping under British control by denying ship masters the right to purchase coal in distant British ports if they refused to submit to the Admiralty's control.
A force of even greater power propelling Wilson toward policies of stern neutrality and independent mediation was the extraordinary growth of American neutralism following the settlement of the Sussex affair. In part it was the result of a sharp increase in anti-British sentiment as a consequence of the tightening of the maritime system and the American revulsion against the ruthless way in which the -British army suppressed the Irish Rebellion in April, 1916. In larger measure it was a reflection of the overwhelming desire to avoid participation in a war the outcome of which did not concern most Americans. Whatever the causes for its spectacular increase, neutralism became the reigning passion during the summer and autumn of 1916....
There was a final and irresistible force propelling Wilson toward a new diplomatic course at this time--his fear that the war was entering a new and more desperate stage in which the aggressions of the belligerents might drive the American people to war in sheer anger. If this happened, then Americans would be fighting in blind defense of national rights, not knowing really why they fought, and only to the end that one side might win a smashing victory and thus be able to impose a peace that could not endure....
It was to avoid being caught in such a predicament as this that Wilson embarked upon the policies that I will now describe.
First, he began to move in a really menacing way to defend alleged American neutral rights in the face of the new British maritime measures. No longer couched in friendly terms, the State Department's protests now accused the London government of "lawless" conduct and warned that the United States would not tolerate the continuation of "repeated violations of international law." To give teeth to these warnings, Wilson obtained legislation from Congress in early September
empowering him to deny clearance and port facilities to ships of any nation that discriminated against American commerce, and to use the armed forces to enforce the prohibition. In addition, he persuaded the Federal Reserve Board to warn American bankers to exercise caution in financing the war trade with the Allies. The consequences of this new sternness--a sharp increase in Anglo-American tension and vigorous protests from London--were also a calculated component of Wilson's plan. His grand objective was independent mediation, and such mediation would be
possible only from a posture of severe neutrality. In other words, mediation could succeed only if the President convinced the British that he meant to use his powers of retaliation to force them to co-operate, and the Germans that he was determined to compel as much respect for American rights from their enemies as he had from them.
Wilson proceeded with his preparations for a climactic peace campaign once the voters had decreed that he should have charge of foreign relations for another four years. Protracted discussions among Wilson, Lansing. and House during late November, 1916, pointed up the possibilities and dangers of the situation. The Allies were now even more violently opposed to peace talk of any kind than they had been during the preceding summer. The German leaders, on the other hand, were not only increasing their pressure on Wilson for a peace move, but were now even promising (at least so the German Ambassador in Washington said) to evacuate Belgium and
France if the Allies consented to an armistice. There was the danger, therefore, as House and Lansing pointed out, that Germany would respond favorably to a call for peace: and that the Allies would reject it. If this happened, the President's advisers further warned, then the United Stares might drift into a sympathetic alliance with Germany and into a naval war with England and Japan. Would it not be safer, House asked, to attempt to revive the House-Grey Agreement and to move for mediation under its terms?
These were weighty issues, and in dealing with them Wilson revealed for the first time his innermost thoughts about the war and America's duty toward the belligerents. Old plans like the House-Grey Agreement based upon the assumption of intimate Anglo-American co-operation were, he exclaimed, out of date. He must stand for peace alone, free and compelling, no matter what the risks might be. If the Germans responded favorably, he would work with them. If the Allies resisted, he would attempt to coerce them. There was the risk of a rupture and war, but he
did not think that it was great. "This morning in discussing these matters with the President," House wrote in his Diary on November 15, 1916,
³he went so far as to say that if the Allies wanted war with us we would not shrink
from it.... He thought they would not dare resort to this and if they did, they could do this country no serious hurt. I disagreed with him again. I thought Great Britain might conceivably destroy our fleet and land troops from Japan in sufficient
numbers to hold certain parts of the United States. He replied they might get a good
distance but would have to stop somewhere.²
Neither these somber warnings, which he did not take seriously, nor the call by the German government for a peace conference, issued on December 12, diverted Wilson from the course that he had decided to pursue, and he sent a message to the belligerent capitals on December 18, 1916. In order to avoid the appearance of supporting the German maneuver, the President eliminated a demand for the assembling of a peace conference and simply asked the belligerents to say frankly
what they were fighting for and upon what terms they would consent to end the war. The whole world knew, however, that it was merely the first step in a bold campaign.
The time was now at hand when the belligerent leaders had to choose between peace and prolonging the war at the risk of incurring American intervention. To provide the opportunity for frank discussions, Wilson opened secret negotiations through Colonel House with the British Ambassador in Washington, with Sir William Wise man, an agent accredited to the British Embassy, and with the German Ambassador to the United States. While waiting for their replies, moreover, the President went before the Senate on January 22, 1917, to describe the kind of settlement that he hoped to achieve.
The British gave their answer first, on January 26, 1917, when Wise man told House that his government would agree to the meeting of an early peace conference, provided that the Germans returned a favorable reply to the President's appeal. It was a startling announcement in view of the hitherto bitter opposition of the British Cabinet to any suggestion of mediation and the Allied public answer of January 10, 1917, to Wilson's peace note, which had revealed ambitions so sweeping that they could be realized only by the defeat of Germany....
At this point, however, it mattered comparatively little what the British said, or why they said it. Wilson had the power of life or death over the Allies and was prepared to use it to force them to the peace table, provided that the Germans approved his objectives and accepted his leadership. As he put it:
If Germany really wants peace she can get it, and get it soon, if she will but confide in me and let me have a chance....Feelings, exasperations are neither here nor there. Do they want me to help? I am entitled to know because I genuinely want to help and have now put myself in a position to help without favor to either side.
The High Command had already made the decision by late December; it was confirmed by a conference of all leaders at Press Castle on January 9, 1917. That decision was, in brief, to begin unrestricted submarine warfare against all shipping, belligerent and neutral, in the approaches to the British Isles and the eastern Mediterranean after January 31.
It was easily the most fateful decision made by any government during the course of the war, and the German records fully reveal the reasons for its adoption ... on a basis of elaborate calculations the Admiralty spokesmen guaranteed absolutely to reduce the British to actual starvation within five months after the submarine blockade began. If this were possible, then Germany had it within her power to win a total victory and a settlement that would establish the Reich in an unassailable
position. To the military leaders, who had despaired of winning the war in the trenches, it was an opportunity that could not be refused.
Fear of American belligerency no longer had any effect on German policy in such an atmosphere of confident expectation. The German leaders all assumed that a wholesale attack on American maritime commerce would drive the United States into the war. These same leaders also concluded that American belligerency would not make any difference. On the contrary, American participation would have certain positive advantages, for it would mean the diversion of huge quantities of food and materiel to an American army in training during the very period when the
U-boats would be winning the war on the seas. But in any event, American participation was in the circumstances necessary to the success of the German plans, because the submarine blockade could succeed only if it were total, that is, only if American as well as British ships were prevented from carrying life-giving supplies to the beleaguered British Isles.
Of course, no German leader wanted recklessly to provoke an American declaration of war; all Germans, however, were prepared to incur American belligerency if they could win the war by so doing....
There remains only one further question, whether the Germans decided to go the whole length and to attack American shipping because they believed that the United States would enter the war in any case if they violated the Sussex pledge. In other words, did the Germans conclude that there was little point in confining unrestricted attacks to armed merchant men or to belligerent shipping, armed and unarmed, because any deviations from the rules of cruiser warfare would provoke American intervention? This is an academic question, but an important one, because the answer to it sheds additional light upon Wilson's intentions and the German choice of alter natives.
There is much evidence that by the end of 1916 Wilson was prepared to effect a sharp diplomatic withdrawal if both belligerent groups refused to heed his peace appeal.... It seems almost certain that he would have accepted unrestricted submarine attacks against armed merchant men. On January 10, 1917, the German government informed the State Department that its submarines would hereafter attack armed merchant ships without warning, because these ships had all been offensively armed and instructed to attack submarines. The German proclamation was, technically, a violation of the Sussex pledge, but Wilson's only response was to indicate that he doubted that his earlier position on armed ships had been sound.
We can go further and say that it seems also possible that Wilson would not have broken
diplomatic relations over unrestricted submarine attacks against all belligerent merchant men, exclusive, perhaps, of passenger liners....
The Germans never seriously considered adopting these limited alternatives not because they believed that any infraction of the Sussex pledge would automatically provoke American intervention, but because they thought that they could win only by enforcing a total blockade....
President Wilson's response to the German blockade proclamation lends additional evidence to my theory that the United States might not have broken diplomatic relations if the Germans had exempted American shipping from the wrath of their underseas campaign. The German Ambassador delivered copies of the German blockade announcement to Lansing and House on January 31, 1917. Wilson did not act like a man who had a predetermined course of action in mind. Even in the face of a German declaration of war against American commerce, he hesitated to take any step that might lead to war. He was willing, he told Lansing, to go to almost any lengths
"rather than to have this nation actually involved in the conflict."
There was, however, only one decision that Wilson could now make. No great power could continue to maintain diplomatic intercourse with a government that promised to destroy its shipping and slaughter its citizens in violation of national and treaty rights and solemn pledges.... The remarkable thing is not that Wilson severed diplomatic relations as he did on February 3, but that he hesitated at all.
To engage in a debate at this point over the reasons for Wilson's severance of diplomatic relations with Germany would obscure a development that was vastly more important than the handing of passports to the German Ambassador. It was Wilson's announcement, made in an address to Congress on February 3, 1917, that the United States would accept the new submarine blockade and would not go to war, in spite of the break in relations, provided that the Germans did not carry out their threat to destroy American ships and lives.
In short, Wilson was saying that he would follow a policy of watchful waiting and govern his future policies in response to what the Germans did. If they spared American ships and lives, presumably upon American ships of all categories and upon belligerent unarmed passenger vessels, then he would do nothing. If they attacked American ships, then he would defend them by an armed neutrality. This, obviously, was not the language of war, such as Lansing had urged the
President to use. It was the language of a man determined to avoid such full-fledged commitment as a war declaration would imply, willing in the worst event only to protect "our seamen and our people in the prosecution of their peaceful and legitimate errands on the high seas."
As the days passed, however, the pressures for an end to watchful waiting and for the adoption of at least an armed neutrality mounted almost irresistibly. Members of the Cabinet, ship owners. a large majority of the newspapers, and a growing body of public opinion combined in the demand that the President either convoy merchant men or arm them with naval guns and crews. Still protesting that the people wanted him to avert any risk of war, Wilson gave in to their wishes on
about February 25. Going to Congress the following day to request authority to arm merchant men
and to "employ any other instrumentalities or methods that may be necessary and adequate to protect our ships and our people in their legitimate and peaceful pursuits on the seas," he carefully explained that he was not contemplating war or any steps that might lead to war.
Although a small group of senators prevented approval of a bill authorizing Wilson to arm merchant men, the President took such action anyway on March 9, 1917.
By the middle of March, therefore, it seemed that Wilson had made his decision in favor of a limited defensive war on the seas. "We stand firm in armed neutrality," he declared, for example, in his second inaugural address on March 5, "since it seems that in no other way we can demonstrate what it is we insist upon and cannot forego." Yet on April 2 (he had meanwhile convened Congress for this earlier date), scarcely more than a month after he had uttered these words, he stood before Congress and asked for a declaration of full-fledged war. What events occurred, what forces were at work, what pressures were applied during this brief interval to
cause Wilson to make the decision that he had been trying so desperately to avoid? We should perhaps put the question in a less positive way, as follows: What caused the President to abandon armed neutrality and to accept the decision for war?
There was first the fact that from the end of February to the end of March the Germans gave full evidence of their determination to press a relentless, total attack against all ships passing through the war zones that enveloped western Europe.
The immediate reason why Wilson made his decision of war was simply that the German assault upon American lives and property was so overwhelming and so flagrant that the only possible way to cope with it was to claim the status of a belligerent in order to strike at the sources of German power. "I would be inclined to adopt ... [armed neutrality]," the President wrote only two days before his delivered his war message, "indeed, as you know, I had already adopted it, but this is the difficulty: ... To make even the measures of defense legitimate we must obtain the status of belligerents."
Certainly Wilson had convinced himself that this was true, but I have a strong suspicion that he would have stood doggedly by his first decision to limit American action to a defense of rights on the seas if this decision had not been overridden by convictions, events, pressures, and ambitions that were themselves decisive in Wilson's final shift from armed neutrality to war, in forcing him to the conclusion that the immediate circumstances left the United States with no choice but
full-scale participation.
One of the most important of these factors was the subtlest and the one for which the least direct evidence can be adduced. It was Wilson's apparent fear that the threat of a German victory imperiled the balance of power and all his hopes for the future reconstruction of the world community.
We must be careful here not to misinterpret his thoughts and motives. There is little evidence that he accepted the decision for war because he thought that a German victory would seriously endanger American security, because he wanted to preserve Angle-American control of the North Atlantic sea lanes, or because he desired to maintain the traditional balance of European power because it served American interests. Nor is there any convincing evidence that Wilson's attitude toward the objectives of the rival alliances had changed by the time that he made his final decision.
On the other hand, there was now a great and decisive difference in the relative position of the belligerents: The Allies seemed about to lose the war and the Central Powers about to win it. This, almost certainly, was a governing factor in Wilson's willingness to think in terms of war. Germany, he told Colonel House, was a madman who must be curbed. A German victory meant a peace of domination and conquest; it meant the end of all of Wilson's dreams of helping to build a secure future.
As the President pondered America's duty at this juncture in history, the answer must have seemed obvious to him--to accept belligerence. because now only through belligerency could the United States fulfill its mission to insure a just and lasting peace of reconciliation. This could be accomplished only by preventing a German victory and only by the assertion of such power and influence among the Allies as would come to the United States by virtue of its sacrifice of blood
and treasure.
If the immediate events made a war resolution necessary, then the goal of a righteous peace was the objective that justified full-scale participation in Wilson's mind and raised that effort to a high and noble plane. It was, there fore, not war in anger that he advocated, not war sheerly in defense of national rights, but, as he put it in his war message,
[war] for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free.
The combined weight of official and public opinion was another pressure meanwhile driving Wilson toward acceptance of the decision for war. It was a fact of no little consequence that by the end of March every important member of the administration, including those members of the Cabinet who had heretofore opposed any bellicose measures, urged the President to admit that a state of war with Germany in fact existed. Public opinion had remained stubbornly pacific until near the end of February, 1917. Then the publication of the Zimmermann telegram, in which the
German government proposed to Mexico a war alliance against the United States, the sinking of the Laconin, and, above all, the destruction of American ships in the war zones after mid-March generated a demand for war that grew with mounting crescendo in all sections and among all classes, until it seemed beyond doubt to be a national and a majority demand. It was further stimulated by news of the downfall of the czarist regime and the establishment of a provisional republican government in Russia--news that convinced many wavering Americans that the Allies were indeed fighting for democracy and also changed overnight the large and influential American Jewish community from a position of strong hostility toward the Allies to one of friendship.
This was all a development of profound importance for a leader as keenly sensitive to public opinion as was Woodrow Wilson. He could have joined forces with the large antiwar minority to resist the demand for war; indeed, he probably would have done so had he been convinced that it was the wise and right thing to do. The point is not, therefore, that public opinion forced Wilson to accept the decision for war, but that it facilitated doing what Wilson for other reasons now thought was necessary and right to do.
All this is said without any intention of implying that Wilson ever wanted war. The agony of his soul was great as he moved through the dark valley of his doubts. He had no illusions about the merits of the conflict into which he and his people were being drawn. He saw the risks of intervention, both to his own nation and to the world, with remarkable clarity. But he could devise no alternative; and he set aside his doubts in the hope that acting now as a belligerent, with all the power and idealism of the American people sustaining him, he could achieve objectives to justify the misery of mankind.