the belligerent powers, asking them to state their peace terms.
The Germans maintained their reserve. The Allies, indignant at being called on to lay their cards on the table, sent a joint reply which slammed, bolted, and barred the door to any prospect of negotiated peace. Besides the evacuation of all invaded territory, with indemnities, they called for “the restitution of provinces or territories wrested in the past from the Allies by force or against the will of their populations, the liberation of Slavs, Rumanians, and Czechs from foreign domination, the enfranchisement of populations subject to the bloody tyranny of the Turks, the expulsion from Europe of the Ottoman Empire.”
Such terms could only be imposed on defeated enemies. There was also a strong annexationist flavor in the German conditions, which were published late in January. These included “a frontier which would protect Germany and Poland strategically against Russia”; restitution of France “under reservation of strategic and economic changes of the frontier and financial compensation,” restitution of Belgium “under special guaranty for the safety of Germany,” restitution of colonies, “in the form of an agreement which would give Germany colonies adequate to her population and economic interest.”
All prospect of a peace in which the United States might have played a mediating role disappeared on January 31, 1917, when Germany announced the resumption of unlimited submarine warfare. The naval and military leaders had convinced the Kaiser that they possessed sufficient submarine strength to cut the lifeline of British communications.
This German decision was not irrational. The figures of sinkings soon rose to formidable heights. But in retrospect the calculated breach with the United States was a fatal blunder. It is very doubtful whether the United States would have entered the war actively without the submarine provocation. Wilson said to House as late as January 4, 1917:
“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 today, and it would be a crime against civilization for us to go in.”
The Russian Revolution occurred on March 12, a few weeks after the fateful German decision. One of its consequences was to eliminate Russia from participation in the war. The Russian front crumbled during 1917, and early in 1918 Germany was able to impose the Peace of Brest-Litovsk on the Soviet Government, which had come into power on November 7, 1917.
Now it is highly doubtful whether Britain, France, Italy, and the smaller Allies, deprived of Russia’s vast manpower and receiving only economic aid from the United States, could have won a decisive military victory. The war would probably in this case have ended either in a German victory or in a stalemate, with Germany perhaps making some concessions in the West, but expanding on a large scale in the East.
The German leaders, however, did not anticipate the good fortune that was awaiting them in the East. They decided to stake everything on the submarine card. Wilson promptly broke off diplomatic relations. Then there was a pause, a period of waiting for some “overt act.” Sir Cecil Spring Rice, the British Ambassador in Washington, was praying for “the destruction of an American ship with American passengers.”2
Lloyd George, the new British Prime Minister, was trying to insure America’s entrance into the conflict by subtler methods. No one, as he told Page, could have so commanding a voice at the peace conference as the President. The President’s presence at this conference, Lloyd George suggested, was necessary for the proper organization of the peace. These were just the considerations that were most likely to appeal to Wilson’s self-esteem and to his sincere belief that he might deserve well of his country and of the world by laying the foundations of a new international order, with safeguards against war.
The President, however, showed no disposition to rush the country into war. He was influenced by the doubts which he had confessed to Cobb. The pace of events was hastened by the revelation on February 24 that German Foreign Secretary Zimmermann had proposed, in the event of war with the United States, a treaty of alliance with Mexico, on the following basis:
“Make war together, make peace together, generous financial support and an understanding on our part that Mexico is to reconquer the lost territory in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.”
Japan was also to be invited to adhere to this pact. From a moral standpoint Zimmermann’s proposal is indistinguishable from the territorial bribes with which the Allies induced Italy and Rumania to enter the war. But in view of Mexico’s military weakness the proposal was extremely stupid and helped to speed up the development of American war psychology.
Despite the stubborn filibuster of a minority of antiwar senators (a little group of willful men, as Wilson called them), the government hastened to arm American merchant ships. By April 2 there had been enough “overt acts” to induce Wilson to ask Congress for a declaration of war. America’s war aims were described in the following glowing and abstract terms in the peroration:
We shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest to our hearts—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 crusading note was further emphasized by such phrases as:
We have no quarrel with the German people. We have no feeling towards them but one of sympathy and friendship. . . . The world must be made safe for democracy.
Opposition voices were heard in the debate on the war resolution. Senator Robert M. La Follette delivered a four-hour speech attacking the idea that this was or could be a war for democracy, suggesting that true neutrality would have kept the United States out of the war. Senator George Norris spoke of “the enormous profits of munitions manufacturers, steel brokers and bond dealers” and cried out: “We are about to put the dollar sign upon the American flag.”
Six senators and fifty representatives voted against the declaration of war. Most of them were from the Middle West, where pro-Ally feeling was less pronounced than it was in the East and the South. By becoming involved in a European war, a fateful departure was made in American policy. Giving up our historic limited goal of protecting this hemisphere against foreign aggression, we were committing ourselves to an ambitious crusade with such alluring but vague objectives as “making the world safe for democracy” and “making the world itself at last free.”
One reason for growing skepticism about the success of this crusade was Wilson’s inability to inspire the majority of his countrymen with enthusiasm for, or even understanding of, his great design for future world peace. One wonders how many Americans carefully studied the Fourteen Points, laid down by the President as America’s peace aims, or the supplementary statements of principle which amplified these points.3
The main principles of Wilsonism were government by consent of the governed, national self-determination, an end of secret treaties, a nonvindictive peace, and an association of nations strong enough to check aggression and keep the peace in the future. The mood that developed in wartime America did not make for intelligent popular support of Wilson’s aims. The nation had not been involved in a major foreign war within the memory of a living man. It went on a prodigious emotional debauch.
American soil had not been invaded and the immediate cause of the conflict, the right to carry on one-sided trade with one set of belligerents, was not an ideal trumpet call for martial action. As Wilson’s ideals, to the average man, were too abstract and rarefied to serve as fighting slogans, the builders of national morale concentrated on building up belief in the supreme wickedness of the “Hun,” for whom “unspeakable” was one of the mildest adjectives in general use.
“Four-minute men” rushed about the land, selling war bonds and hate with equal vigor. Their favorite peroration was: “I’d compare those Huns with snakes, only that would be insulting the snakes.” Some pastors found relief from previously repressed lives by shouting dramatically: “I say God damn the Kaiser—and I’m not swearing, either.”
Pittsburgh