17

PEACE AND WAR

Less than three months after he was reelected president, Woodrow Wilson’s worst fear came to pass. On February 1, 1917, the Germans unleashed their submarines in an onslaught of unrestricted warfare against all shipping, belligerent and neutral, in a broad zone surrounding the British Isles and the coasts of other Allied countries. Wilson now faced the crisis he had been willing to resign over if he had not won the election. How to meet this challenge would be the most important and agonizing decision of his presidency. He had tried to forestall the events that would force this decision with a bolder, more sweeping diplomatic initiative than any he had tried before. As soon as he knew that he would have another term in the White House, he began to lay the groundwork for a multi-pronged peace offensive. At the middle of December 1916, he prepared the way for an offer of American mediation of the war, which he tendered first through proper diplomatic channels and then revealed to the public. He coupled the offer with a proposal to set up a post-war league of nations empowered to maintain peace and in which the United States would be a fully participating member. Then, on January 22, 1917, he escalated this campaign by publicly laying out a program that called for a nonpunitive, compromise peace—“a peace without victory”—together with specific territorial adjustments, international reforms, and a league of nations to enforce peace. This peace offensive of December 1916 and January 1917 would embody his most heartfelt hope and most deeply desired design for the future of the world.

Winning another term as president did not cool Wilson’s sense of urgency about the perils of the submarine situation. At the middle of November, he told House he intended to try to mediate the war before America was dragged in. House tried to talk him out of the idea and urged delay, fearing “that the Allies would consider it an unfriendly act.” Wilson brushed those objections aside, and later in November he wrote what he called a prolegomenon about the war—probably intended for a speech—and a draft of a diplomatic note. In the prolegomenon, he deplored “this vast, gruesome contest of systematized destruction” and argued that if either “German militarism” or “British navalism” prevailed, there would be no lasting peace: “We see it abundantly demonstrated in the pages of history that the decisive victories and defeats of wars are seldom the conclusive ones.” Instead, all nations must recognize the uselessness of this “mechanical slaughter” and join in eliminating war as “a means of attaining national ambition. The world would then be free to build its new peace structure on the solidest foundations it has ever possessed.”¹

In the draft of the diplomatic note, Wilson stressed that the war was disrupting life all over the world and threatened to draw neutrals in. He noted that all the belligerents claimed to be fighting for the same things—self-preservation, security from aggression, and equality of nations—and all disclaimed the goal of conquest or destruction of their foes. Americans sympathized with those objectives and were “ready to join a league of nations that will pledge itself to their accomplishment and definitely unite in the organization not only of purpose but of force as well that will be adequate to assure their realization.” The belligerents should, therefore, state their peace terms and agree to come to a conference to be held under neutral auspices. He disavowed any notion of trying to foist a premature peace on the warring nations and maintained that he wanted to know what the belligerents were fighting for so that the United States “can intelligently determine its future course of action.”² Together with the prolegomenon, this draft note laid out the central ideas for the peace offensive that Wilson was about to launch.

House continued to resist because he thought this note would drive “the Allies frantic with rage.” The plan also posed a personal problem for the colonel. Wilson wanted him to be in London when the note was presented to the British. House countered that such a move would offend Walter Page, but Edith Wilson suggested that House should replace the ambassador: “She thought I ought to do so during the war. The President also expressed a wish that I accept it.”³ House protested that such a move would hamper his ability to move among the belligerent capitals, but his real reason was that he did not want to be separated from Wilson. He did not seem to recognize what an enemy he had in Edith.

Lansing was equally upset over the planned peace initiative. When Wilson read the draft to him, Lansing likewise advised not to rush things, and he privately brooded that the plan could not be implemented, and “I am not sure that it would be a good thing for the world if it could be.” If America entered the war, “we must go in on the side of the Allies, for we are a democracy.” Lansing worried what might happen if the Germans accepted the mediation offer and the Allies refused.⁴

Skepticism and foot-dragging by his closest foreign policy advisers did not deter Wilson. He was also abetting a move by the Federal Reserve that showed his newfound appreciation of the intricacies of relations with the warring nations. Huge Allied purchases in the United States had nearly exhausted Britain’s capacity to borrow against secured assets. In November 1916, officers of the Morgan firm, the Allies’ financial agent, suggested to the Federal Reserve Board that unsecured loans be permitted. The proposal offended the board, which drafted a statement warning against such loans. The chairman of the board, William P. G. Harding, went to the White House on November 25 to show the warning statement to the president. Wilson approved the action and suggested that the board make it a strong, pointed warning, “rather than convey a mere caution.” The warning was not lost on the British, whose ambassador reported that the president was probably behind it.⁵

The planned peace move crowded out nearly everything else on Wilson’s agenda. Despite his talk about transforming the Democrats into a more progressive party, he neglected domestic politics. He had no plans to shuffle cabinet posts unless McAdoo decided to resign from the Treasury. Edith and House talked him into trying to get rid of Tumulty, who balked at a proposed shift to a U.S. customs board. The journalist David Lawrence, who was also a friend of Tumulty’s, went to see the president and told him that “a political cabal” was railroading Tumulty and that his removal would open the president to charges of ingratitude. Wilson relented, and Tumulty would remain his secretary for the rest of his presidency.⁶ Wilson also neglected domestic politics in his State of the Union address on December 5, except for appealing to enact provisions to regulate transportation and labor relations that had been left out of the Adamson Act. He did thank the members of the Sixty-fourth Congress for “the measures of constructive policy with which you have enriched the legislative annals of the country”—pallid praise for men who had put through the second installment of the New Freedom.⁷

Wilson resented even minor distractions from preparing the peace note. “Members of Congress have been sucking the life out of me, about appointments and other matters affecting the destiny of the world,” he told House, “and I have been prevented from perfecting the document. I shall go out of town (on the MAYFLOWER no doubt) for the purpose, if it can be done in no other way.” House was also trying to distract Wilson from the peace initiative with the excuse that a change of government in Britain had brought Lloyd George in as prime minister and removed Grey as foreign secretary. He suggested reviving his own combined scheme of mediation and promised intervention on the Allied side, but Wilson would have none of it. “The time is at hand forsomething!”he shot back. “We cannot go back to those old plans. We must shape new ones.”⁸

In a new draft of the note early in December, Wilson dropped the suggestion for a conference of belligerents and neutrals; otherwise, the document was largely unchanged. Lansing approved the note but recommended omitting the promise of a league of nations because he did not agree with the idea of enforcing peace. He also gingerly aired his concern about how the Allies might reply to this note and said that to enter the war against them would be “a calamity for this nation and for all mankind.” House, who was staying at the White House, also tried to warn of the danger of entering the war against the Allies. Again revealing the new strain in their relationship, he wrote, “I am convinced that the President’s place in history is dependent to a large degree upon luck. If we should get into a serious war and it should turn out disastrously, he would be one of the most discredited Presidents we have had.” The colonel was also back at his old game of collecting complaints from members of the cabinet. “Domestic legislation is the President’s forte,” he observed. “No one has done that better or perhaps so well. But as an administrator he is a failure, and it is only because of a generally efficient Cabinet that things go as well as they do.”⁹

Meanwhile, the Germans made an offer to discuss peace terms with the Allies, and Wilson decided to proceed with his own initiative before a harsh Allied reply might spoil the chances for peace. In the final draft of the note, he partially followed Lansing’s advice by dropping the promise to enter a peace-enforcing league but said that Americans stood “ready, and even eager, to cooperate in the accomplishment of these ends” after the war. He also inserted a new sentence: “He [the president] takes the liberty of calling attention to the fact that the objects which the statesmen of the belligerents have in mind in this war are virtually the same.” House, who did not see the note before it was sent, despaired over that insertion when he saw it. “That one sentence will enrage them [the Allies],” he wrote. “I find that the President has nearly destroyed all the work I have done in Europe. He knows how I feel about this and how the Allies feel about it, and yet the refrain always appears in some form or another.”¹⁰

Lansing did see the note and suggested only minor verbal changes; with those alterations, the note went out over the State Department cables to the ambassadors in the belligerent capitals on December 18 and was released to the press two days later. Then Lansing tried to undercut the president’s move. On December 20, he called in the French ambassador, Jean-Jules Jusserand, and explained that this was not a peace note and that Wilson favored the Allies. Lansing also told Jusserand that he believed France should demand the restoration of Alsace-Lorraine, an indemnity for Belgium, and democratic reforms in Germany. He likewise revealed his skepticism about a league of nations.¹¹ Two days later, he said the same things to the British ambassador, Cecil Spring-Rice, and he added that the Allies should demand an autonomous Poland, territory for Italy from Austria-Hungary, and the dissolution of Turkey.

Between his meetings with the ambassadors, Lansing went public with his attempt at sabotage. On December 21—the day the peace note appeared in newspapers—he called in reporters and gave them a statement. The reason for sending the diplomatic note was, he explained, “that the situation is becoming increasingly critical. I mean by that that we are drawing nearer the verge of war ourselves, and therefore we are entitled to know exactly what each belligerent seeks, in order that we may regulate our conduct in the future.” To underscore the point, he reiterated, “The sending of this note will indicate the possibility of our being forced into the war.” This was a blatant act of betrayal and threatened to undo Wilson’s peace initiative. Within an hour or so, Tumulty forwarded a copy of Lansing’s statement to the president, with part of one sentence underlined: “I mean by that that we are drawing nearer the verge of war ourselves.”¹²

Wilson was incensed. “I came very near to asking for his resignation when he gave out that statement to the press,” House quoted him saying shortly afterward. Instead, the president immediately told Lansing in a letter, “I quite understand that you did not realize the impression of your statement of this morning would make.” He instructed the secretary to tell reporters that his statement “had been radically misinterpreted, … and that it was not at all in your mind to intimate any change in the policy of neutrality which the country has so far so consistently pursued in the face of accumulating difficulties.” When Wilson saw Lansing later in the day, he repeated what he had said in the letter. Lansing claimed afterward that he agreed to follow the president’s orders only if he did not have to contradict his earlier statement. That was retrospective rationalization: his second statement to the press, given out right after his meeting with Wilson, parroted what the president had told him to say.¹³

This was a sorry affair and reflected well on no one involved. Lansing committed a dastardly act of duplicity aimed at destroying Wilson’s peace initiative. It was only the latest in a string of betrayals. The difference this time was that he had come out in the open. Previously, Lansing had acted stealthily, such as when he had gone behind Bryan’s back after the sinking of the Lusitania and when he surreptitiously contradicted the president to the British and French ambassadors. Wilson should have fired him on the spot. He probably did not remove him because this was a delicate moment in international relations. Later, wartime conditions would make the secretary’s ouster seem similarly inopportune. Wilson’s keeping Lansing on may also have stemmed from the president’s extraordinary tolerance for disagreement and disloyalty among subordinates, particularly in foreign policy. He retained Page as ambassador in London out of a comparable combination of convenience and indifference.

Lansing’s behavior was even more puzzling than Wilson’s. Why had this normally furtive man crept out of the shadows to commit, by his lights, an act of courage? Why, having done that, did he not avail himself of a golden opportunity to stand up for his convictions and follow the example of his predecessor by resigning in protest? Instead, Lansing knuckled under and stayed on. He would betray the president again, and he would continue to fester in disagreement with Wilson’s most cherished policies and in resentment at being left out of the biggest decisions and weightiest negotiations. It would have been far better if these two men had parted company at this point.¹⁴

House likewise busied himself with attempts to undermine the peace initiative, though, characteristically, he did not operate so openly. He was engaging in more of his private diplomacy with the British. After a meeting with the colonel at his apartment in New York on December 22, Sir Horace Plunkett, a friend of Grey’s successor as foreign secretary, Arthur James Balfour, cabled Balfour with House’s assurance that Wilson was still pro-Allied. Five days later, a pro-Allied newspaper publisher, Roy Howard, cabled the British press baron Lord Northcliffe to say that House had told him Lansing’s “verge of war” revealed the real purpose of the peace note. In his diary, House gloomily remarked that he had promised Lansing he would go to Washington and talk to Wilson, “but I have no stomach for it. It is practically impossible to get the President to have a general consultation.”¹⁵

Even without the fireworks surrounding Lansing’s statement, the peace note was bound to create a stir at home. Lansing’s first pronouncement set off a stock market panic, although his retraction seemed to soothe the nervous men on Wall Street. Most commentators took the note for what it was—a peace move. Democratic senators lauded Wilson as a peacemaker and introduced a resolution commending the note. More belligerent and pro-Allied sorts first privately and then publicly damned him for playing Germany’s game. On January 3, Lodge accused the president of siding against the nations that were “fighting the battle of freedom and democracy as against military autocracy.” He also condemned Wilson for promising to plunge America into European power politics and break with the nation’s traditional isolation. The same day, Roosevelt scorned the note as “profoundly immoral and misleading” and declared that Wilson’s “most preposterous absurdity” was the offer to “guarantee the peace of the world.” That would require “a policy of violent meddling in every European quarrel, and in return invite Old World nations violently to meddle in everything American.”¹⁶

Attacks from that quarter on grounds of pro-Germanism were predictable. What was unexpected and disturbing was the way they pounced on the idea of enforcing peace. Debate on a Senate resolution to commend the peace note provided a forum for such attacks. That was where Lodge gave this public sign of having shifted his stand and now opposed the league idea, and another Republican senator, William Borah of Idaho, took an even stronger stand against it. Borah was an insurgent orator with a square jaw and flowing hair who had previously said little about foreign policy but now condemned Wilson’s implied commitment to a league as requiring automatic entry into foreign wars: “This approaches, to my mind, moral treason.” This debate marked the first skirmish in what would grow into the biggest political fight of Wilson’s life. Lodge and Borah’s stand pointed toward a major realignment of the two parties’ foreign policy positions. Up to then, the bulk of resistance to greater involvement abroad, particularly outside the Western Hemisphere, had come from Democrats, whereas Republicans generally—and, most notably, Roosevelt and Lodge in particular—had advocated a bigger, more committed American role in world politics. The Republicans as a whole were not becoming isolationists, but they were beginning to make common cause with isolationists and talk some of their language, and Borah was embarking on a career that would make him the most prominent isolationist in American politics. Now, however, the Senate adopted the resolution commending the peace note, amended to exclude any mention of a league of nations, by a vote of 48 to 17.¹⁷

Of more pressing concern to Wilson than those political straws in the wind was how the belligerent governments would respond to the peace note. Contrary to House’s and Lansing’s fears, the Allies did not spurn the overture. The French government was initially inclined to reject the note out of hand, but a different mood prevailed in London. The new prime minister, Lloyd George, believed that rejection would play into the Germans’ hands and that it was essential to maintain American goodwill. Why Lloyd George, who had previously taken a harsh line toward the United States, shifted his ground is not clear. Some interpreters have credited Lansing’s statement with keeping Lloyd George and others in the British cabinet in a receptive frame of mind. Others have stressed the warnings of the British Treasury’s brilliant young economist, John Maynard Keynes, who held that the Allied war effort was becoming totally dependent on supplies and credit from America. The Federal Reserve Board’s statement had also served as a wake-up call to their financial peril. Most important, perhaps, Lloyd George harbored deep suspicions about the promises of his military leaders to win the war by sacrificing still more thousands of men on the Western Front—suspicions that led him to believe that only American intervention could break the stalemate. At any event, after some negotiating, the British and French produced a joint reply at the middle of January stating moderate terms and a desire for peace based upon liberty and justice.¹⁸

It was a different story in Berlin. Nearly everyone in the highest civilian and military circles was infuriated by Wilson’s note, and some took Lansing’s statement as proof that this overture was merely a pretext for American intervention against them. The military high command, which now effectively ruled the country, insisted on steering clear of any mediation schemes. The generals were also pressing for unrestricted submarine warfare, and they were about to get their way. As a result, Germany and Austria-Hungary replied on December 26 that only negotiations among the belligerents could end the war and that consideration of new peacekeeping arrangements must await its conclusion. In the polite equivocations of diplomacy, they were telling the Americans to butt out.¹⁹

That stiff-arm apparently did not register with Wilson. When House came again to stay at the White House on January 3, Wilson told him he wanted to spell out a peace settlement based upon “the future security of the world against wars.” House suggested that the president should present his plan in a speech to Congress, and they discussed such peace terms as an autonomous Poland, restoration of Belgium, and dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. House encouraged him to “do this great and dramatic thing. I said, ‘you are now playing with what the poker players term “the blue chips,” and there is no use sitting by and letting great events swamp you.’” Yet some of Wilson’s thinking alarmed House, as when he said, “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.”²⁰

Wilson then drafted a speech and read it to House on January 11. The colonel called it “a noble document and one which I think will live,” but he got the president to make some verbal changes and asked if Lansing had seen the speech. Wilson said no, not yet, adding, House noted, that “[h]e thought Lansing was not in sympathy with his purpose to keep out of war.” He and House agreed that the text should be cabled in advance to the ambassadors in the belligerent capitals before he delivered it to the Senate. The next day, Wilson read the speech separately to Lansing and Senator Stone and sent it to the State Department for encoding and transmission on January 15. He had to wait a week to deliver the speech, to allow time for the cabled text to be received, decoded, and delivered in the foreign capitals. He worried about leaks, and at a press conference—his third since the election—he declined to say anything about peace. He also said that House had come to town only “to take dinner” and denied having summoned him for “a grand pow-wow.” That was misleading, although House had paid two visits in the past month to attend official events, including a gala dinner at the White House that allowed Edith to show her mettle as a hostess and wear one of her fashionable new gowns.²¹

On January 22, Wilson went to the Capitol with only an hour’s notice and appeared in the Senate chamber at one o’clock. Speaking at first in an uncharacteristically faint voice but quickly warming up, he declared, “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?” Plainly, the choice must be “not a balance of power, but a community of power; not organized rivalries, but an organized common peace.” Just one path pointed to that goal: “It must be a peace without victory. … Only a peace between equals can last.” With those words, he offered another example of his eloquence, but he did not go beyond a gloss on the peace note until he set out the principles on which he believed a lasting peace must rest, such as equality of rights among nations and freely chosen governments, an example of which would be “a united, independent, and autonomous Poland.” He also called again for “freedom of the seas” and limitations on naval and land armaments, which would force world leaders to “plan for peace and nations [to] adjust and accommodate their policy to it as they have planned for war and made ready for pitiless contest and rivalry.”²²

He closed with a plea to heed “the world’s yearning desire for peace,” and he claimed, “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 homes they hold most dear.” He promised that the United States would join in “guaranteeing the permanence of peace upon such terms as I have named,” and he maintained that he was proposing that all nations adopt the Monroe Doctrine “as the doctrine of the world,” so that they would “henceforth avoid entangling alliances which would draw them into competitions of power, catch them in a net of intrigue and selfish rivalry. … There is no entangling alliance in a concert of power. … These are American principles, American policies. We could stand for no others.”²³

Wilson aimed to give a great speech, and he succeeded. The “peace without victory” address anticipated his most important future pronouncements about a just settlement and a new world order. Such components of the Fourteen Points as “freedom of the seas,” disarmament, an independent Poland, and national autonomy were here. A league of nations remained deliberately vague and general, although it was hard to miss where the president meant to go. Nor was there any mistaking what kind of peace he wanted and how he wished to attain it. Wilson believed that a lasting settlement could be attained only through compromise on all sides, where no one would be conquered or punished and no one would feel either the intoxication of victory or the vengefulness of defeat. It was a noble vision, and it had huge practical and emotional barriers in the way of its realization. But it was not necessarily an impossible dream. If both sets of belligerents, particularly the Germans, had been as truly chastened and desirous of peace as they professed to be, he might have been able to broker such a grand settlement among the warring powers, guaranteed by a league of nations. This was the fondest wish that he would have as president.

Among the senators who listened to the speech, some warmed to this move toward peace, others scoffed at a deluded dream, and still others recoiled from a nightmare prospect of entanglement in international power politics. Most Democrats applauded and made effusive statements to the press or on the Senate floor. La Follette led in the cheering and said afterward, “We have just passed through a very important hour in the life of the world.” His fellow insurgent George Norris also endorsed the idea of a league of nations, and another Republican, Porter J. McCumber of North Dakota, announced himself in favor of “a world-enforced peace organization in which the United States shall take an honored part.” Such support from Republican senators was the exception. The party’s leader in the chamber, Jacob Gallinger of New Hampshire, dubbed it “ill-timed and utterly impossible of accomplishment,” and Lawrence Sherman of Illinois said this speech would “make Don Quixote wish he had not died so soon.” Borah warned, “Once in the maelstrom of European politics and it will be impossible to get out.” The only way to promote peace was for America to stand apart, Borah declared, “a great, untrammeled, courageous neutral power, representing not bias, not prejudice, not hate, not conflict, but order and law and justice.”²⁴

Lodge weighed in with a lengthy attack on both “peace without victory” and the league idea. He dismissed Wilson’s principles as meaningless and his proposed compromise as fallacious because true peace could come only through military victory and must rest “upon justice and righteousness.” Wilson’s claim to be extending the Monroe Doctrine was nonsense: “If we have a Monroe doctrine everywhere we may be perfectly certain that it will not exist anywhere.” Lodge confessed to have changed his mind about the idea of enforcing peace because coercion would be required. He claimed to have “no superstition” about traditional American isolation, but he saw nothing “but peril in abandoning our long and well-established policies” for the sake of Wilson’s proposals, which were “collections of double-dealing words under which men can hide and say they mean anything or nothing.”²⁵ Those reactions to “peace without victory” in the Senate were a dress rehearsal for the full-fledged debate that would come two years later over membership in the League of Nations. Partisan divisions would remain as sharp then as they were now, and Borah and Lodge would emerge again as two of Wilson’s strongest opponents.

Reactions in the press likewise divided mainly along party lines, with Democratic newspapers praising the move and Republican journals criticizing it. Exceptions were William Randolph Hearst’s nominally Democratic paper, which lambasted the league idea, and Republican organs that backed Taft’s work with the LEP, which applauded the speech. Taft announced that all members of his organization “rejoice sincerely” at the president’s words and action. In fact, several Republicans who had previously sided with Taft now broke with the LEP. Roosevelt responded with a sneer: “Peace without victory is the natural ideal of the man who is too proud to fight. … The Tories of 1776 demanded peace without victory. The Copperheads of 1864 demanded peace without victory. These men were Mr. Wilson’s spiritual forbears.” By contrast, Bryan told Wilson, “The phrase ‘Peace without Victory’ was ‘a shot heard round the world’—no one can underestimate its power for good.” Publicly, Bryan said he believed he and the president could work out their previous differences about a league to enforce peace.²⁶

Wilson tried to take reactions at home and abroad in stride. He confessed to Cleveland Dodge that he felt “a little low in my mind” because Republican senators failed to grasp what he meant, but he had “an invincible confidence in the prevalence of the right if it is fearlessly set forth.” Foreign reactions concerned him more. As with the peace note, the press and public spokesmen in Britain, France, and Germany had harsh words for “peace without victory,” although some British liberals praised the move. The belligerent governments, however, remained silent—not only in communicating with the United States but also in their internal discussions—because for them “peace without victory” was a moot point. One side had already made up its mind to escalate the war, and the other side knew what its adversaries were about to do. The days immediately following Wilson’s speech were a time when the leaders of the warring nations were holding their collective breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop.²⁷

It dropped on January 31, realizing Wilson’s worst fear. At ten minutes after four in the afternoon, Bernstorff called Lansing to deliver a diplomatic note. The note stated that Germany would resume “the full employment of all the weapons which are at its disposal. … From February 1, 1917, all sea traffic will be stopped with every available weapon and without further notice … around Great Britain, France, Italy and in the Eastern Mediterranean.”²⁸ The note implemented a decision made three weeks earlier. On the evening of January 9, an imperial council had met at the baroque Pless Castle in the hills of Silesia. The hour and a quarter of discussion around a big table there was a charade. The army chiefs, who effectively controlled the government, had already browbeaten the weak-willed kaiser into unleashing the submarines. The naval chief of staff had also swung around and now maintained that the navy had sufficient submarines to knock Britain out of the war long before the United States could transport any forces across the Atlantic. The kaiser himself signed an order to open the submarine campaign at the beginning of February, and he said he expected America to declare war.

That decision would seal Germany’s fate in World War I. The men around the table at Pless were acting out of a combination of ignorance, willfulness, deceit, and prejudice. After the war, John Maynard Keynes discovered that his opposite numbers in Berlin had known nothing of Britain’s financial plight. Lack of credit was about to crimp and possibly cut off the Allies’ stream of munitions and foodstuffs—the job the submarines were expected to do—with no risk of bringing America into the war. Claims about the number and effectiveness of submarines were overly optimistic and sometimes fraudulent. A good chance existed that a limited submarine campaign might not bring the Americans in; yet no one explored that possibility. Most important, the army chiefs demanded a crushing military victory, to be won either in the field or at sea. These military aristocrats disdained such bourgeois, civilian instruments as economics—“a shopkeeper’s peace”—and diplomacy. In sum, the Germans would richly deserve their future defeat.²⁹

The Germans compounded their blunder by unwittingly tipping their hand to the enemy. In order to make trouble for the United States as a likely future adversary, Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmermann cabled the German embassy in Mexico on January 16 with instructions to offer a military alliance to Carranza, holding out, as spoils, recovery of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. This was the soon-to-be-famous Zimmermann Telegram, and its sender abused a courtesy recently extended by the American embassy that allowed the German foreign office to transmit coded messages over its cables. The telegram began, “It is our purpose on the 1st of February to commence the unrestricted U-boat warfare.” Within hours, the telegram was decoded at Room 40 of the Admiralty in London (which had cracked the German diplomatic codes and was tapping nearly every nation’s diplomatic cables) and given to the director of naval intelligence, Captain William Reginald Hall. Possession of this intelligence posed a problem for Hall, who had to take extreme care not to reveal his code-breaking operation. When and with whom in the British government Hall shared this news is not clear, but the near total lack of internal discussion about “peace without victory” strongly suggests that a number of people knew they did not have to take Wilson’s latest peace overture seriously.³⁰

For Wilson, unrestricted submarine warfare turned the world upside down. Now, instead of pressing forward with his peace offensive, he had to grapple with the specter of war. Ironically, earlier on the day that the Germans announced the unrestricted submarine campaign, he rejected an attempt by Lansing to commit him to go to war if they resumed any kind of submarine warfare, and he left the clear impression that he might be willing to accept the use of submarines against armed Allied merchant ships. When he heard the news about unrestricted submarine warfare just after 4 p.m. on January 31, he acted the way he did at such critical times—by keeping to himself and taking the time to think. When Lansing came to see him in the evening and pushed for an immediate break in diplomatic relations, Wilson said he was “not sure of that” and “he would be willing to bear all the criticism and abuse which would surely follow our failure to break with Germany.”³¹

House rushed to Washington by overnight train and met with Wilson after breakfast the next day. The president seemed sad and depressed, and although he had evidently decided overnight to break relations, he insisted “he would not allow it to lead to war if it could possibly be avoided.” Wilson believed it would be “a crime” for the United States to get involved in such a way “as to make it impossible to save Europe afterward.” The two men waited “listlessly” for Lansing to join them. Wilson paced around the upstairs study and rearranged books, and the men played two games of pool. When Lansing arrived, just before noon, Wilson agreed to break relations three days hence. The journalist Louis Lochner, who saw the president that afternoon, found him looking “haggard and worried,” and when Lochner said he hoped Wilson might find a peaceful way out of the present crisis, the president answered, “[I]f it can be done, I certainly wish it with all my heart.”³²

The following day, February 2, Wilson discussed the situation with the cabinet. He opened the meeting by asking, “Shall I break diplomatic relations with Germany?” and he stated, “With the terrific slaughter taking place in Europe, if we, also, entered the war, what effect would the depletion of man power have upon the relations of the white and yellow races? Would the yellow races take advantage of it and attempt to subjugate the white races?” All of the cabinet members supported a diplomatic break. Secretary of the Treasury McAdoo and Secretary of Agriculture Houston took a tough line against the Germans and wanted to help the Allies, while Secretary of War Baker and Secretary of the Navy Daniels shared the president’s wish to avoid war. In the afternoon, he went to the Capitol, where he spent forty minutes alone with Senator Stone in the Foreign Relations Committee’s ornate hearing room. Then he walked down the corridor to the President’s Room, where he sat in the midst of a hastily gathered group of sixteen senators. Through an open door, reporters could see what was going on—animated talk with much gesturing by senators and the president speaking in a low, grave voice—but they could not distinctly hear what was said.³³

After the cabinet meeting, Josephus Daniels told the president, “I was glad to hear you say you could not at this time fully trust anybody’s judgment, not even your own.” He later recalled that Wilson commended him for his strong stand against war and said he based his own opposition on his not wanting to sacrifice the lives of young men and his fear of losing “[e]very reform we have won since 1912.” War would require cooperation with “Big Business,” which would regain control of government, “and neither you nor I will live to see government returned to the people. More than that—Free Speech and the other rights will be endangered. War is autocratic.” The next day, Wilson aired some of his thinking in public when he spoke to a joint session of Congress. In view of the Germans’ sudden announcement of unrestricted submarine warfare, he asserted that the United States had “no alternative” but to break diplomatic relations, but he refused to believe that the Germans would do “what they have warned us they will feel at liberty to do. … Only actual overt acts on their part can make me believe it even now.” If that hope proved wrong, he promised to ask Congress for “any means that may be necessary” to protect Americans on the seas.³⁴

The speech lasted just fifteen minutes and got a good reception. Reporters noticed that senators Lodge and Benjamin R. Tillman led the applause at the announcement of the diplomatic break. They also heard Wilson’s voice quaver at the end. Lodge soon regretted his applause. “His one desire is to avoid war at any cost,” he told Roosevelt, “simply because he is afraid.” Roosevelt agreed, telling Hiram Johnson, “Whether we go to war or not, Heaven only knows, and certainly Mr. Wilson does not.” Such interventionist voices were few and mostly private. Publicly, editors and others nearly unanimously applauded the break with Germany, but most of them also seconded Wilson’s wish to avoid war. The Senate passed a resolution approving the president’s action, 78 to 5, with most of the supporters of the resolution likewise claiming that they wanted to stay out of the war. Peace activists held rallies in several cities and staged a march to the Capitol on February 12. Some of them called for the requirement of a popular referendum in order to declare war. The “double wish” remained as strong as ever.³⁵

The Germans ignored Wilson’s proffered olive branch. Submarines began to sink merchant vessels at an alarming rate, and for the first time in two years they attacked American ships. Those incidents fueled agitation to arm American ships and protect them in convoys with naval vessels. The cabinet discussed the matter six times in February. Wilson held out against hasty action. He was suspicious, he told House, of “the support I am receiving from certain once hostile quarters.” Conservatives wanted to “have a coalition cabinet at my elbow. It is the Junkerthum trying to creep in under cover of the patriotic feeling of the moment. They will not get in.”³⁶

During these weeks, Wilson did turn his attention occasionally to domestic matters, as when he continued to press congressional leaders to pass labor legislation and act on measures for government development of hydroelectric power sites, which would become a big political issue during the next decade. Those efforts came to naught. This last, short session of the Sixty-fourth Congress produced only two important legislative results. One was a new revenue bill, initiated by Representative Kitchin, which raised the inheritance tax by 50 percent and levied an excess-profits tax. The other was a bill requiring all adult immigrants to show that they could read and write in their native language—a measure aimed at shutting out immigrants from southern and eastern Europe. Wilson had vetoed a similar literacy-test bill two years earlier, and he did so again at the end of January, stating, “It is not a test of character, of quality, or of personal fitness, but would operate in most cases merely as a penalty for lack of opportunity.” Both houses overrode the veto, thereby restricting European immigration for the first time. Immigration restriction would become another big issue during the next decade.³⁷

Those matters did not divert Wilson long from the diplomatic crisis. Despite his reluctance, he agreed to arm merchant ships. After the cabinet meeting on February 20, he asked Lansing to prepare a memorandum on the subject, and he spent the afternoon and evening of February 22 writing a speech that he planned to deliver to Congress the following Monday. Making this decision was one thing; liking it was something else. At the cabinet meeting, he lashed out at McAdoo, Houston, and Secretary of the Interior Lane for taking a hard line and charged them, Lane said, “with appealing to the spirit of the Code Duello. We couldn’t get the idea out of his head that we were bent on pushing the country into war.” According to Lane, he also resented Republican efforts to force him to call the next Congress into session: “The President believes, I think, that the munitions makers are back of the Republican plan.”³⁸

On February 26, after meeting with Senator Stone and Representative Flood, Wilson again went to the Capitol to address Congress. He told the senators and representatives that he believed he already possessed the necessary authority to take defensive measures, but he wanted to know that “the authority and power of Congress are behind me” in order to “defend our commerce and the lives of our people in the midst of the present trying circumstances.” Hoping not to have to exercise that authority, he asked Congress only to “authorize me to supply our merchant ships with defensive arms” and said nothing about naval convoys. Wilson maintained, “It is not of material interests merely that we are thinking. … I am thinking of those rights of humanity without which there is no civilization.” This speech also lasted just fifteen minutes, but it did not get as good a reception as its predecessor. One observer noted that La Follette threw up his hands in despair when the president asked for authority to arm ships, while Lodge sat through the speech tapping his fingers together. Democrats cheered when the president left, but Republicans stood in silence. While Wilson was speaking, word arrived of the sinking of the British liner Laconia—without warning, off the coast of Ireland—and the news spread in whispers through the House chamber. The next day, newspapers would report that of the twenty Americans aboard—six passengers and fourteen crewmen—two of the passengers, a mother and daughter from Chicago, died of exposure in an open lifeboat. The reports of the deaths of the two American women helped whip up editorial indignation and support for Wilson’s request to arm ships.³⁹

On February 28, still more sensational news reached the American press—the text of the Zimmermann Telegram. Behind publication of this document lay intrigue by the British and deliberation by Wilson. Once the Germans unleashed the submarines, the leaders in London started scheming to exploit the telegram’s value as propaganda in the United States. To cover the code-breaking operation, they instructed their spies in the German embassy in Mexico City to steal a decoded copy; variations between that copy and the transmitted one would remove any trace of prior interception. Covering their tracks took time, so Balfour had not been able to turn the document over to Page until February 24. Page immediately cabled the text of the Zimmermann Telegram to Washington, and Wilson received it the next day. He decided against immediate publication, and he did not tell Stone and Flood about it when he met with them the next day or drop any hints about it in his speech to Congress. After further reflection, however, he instructed Lansing to release the telegram to the press.⁴⁰

The Zimmermann Telegram stirred up the furor that the British hoped for. Thus far, the controversies with Germany had involved few Americans—crewmen and passengers on foreign ships—and, since February 1, some vessels registered under the Stars and Stripes. Now possible attacks from south of the border and the prospect, though seemingly ludicrous, of losing Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona made the war reach out and touch the United States. Editorial indignation flared across the country. Many newspapers called the Zimmermann Telegram an act of war, and some called for war in response. Some German American leaders claimed that the telegram was a hoax and a British plot, but Zimmermann himself eliminated that defense when he stated publicly on March 3 that he had, indeed, sent it. The furor over the telegram seemed to sweep away resistance to an armed-ships bill on Capitol Hill. The House passed the measure on March 1 by the lopsided margin of 403 to 13. Still, many congressmen who voted for the bill maintained that they did not want war, and an amendment to prohibit armed ships from carrying munitions attracted 125 votes.⁴¹

Swift Senate passage of the armed-ships bill also looked likely. The Republican effort to force Wilson to call the next Congress into session early by filibustering appropriations bills collapsed in the face of this national uproar. The Senate tried to take up the House bill on March 2, but La Follette blocked unanimous consent, delaying consideration for a day. When debate began on March 3, he and three other midwestern insurgent Republicans—George Norris of Nebraska, Albert Cummins of Iowa, and Asle Gronna of North Dakota—repeatedly blocked attempts to bring the measure to a vote. The Senate stayed in session through the night as the clock ticked toward the constitutionally mandated end of the session at noon on March 4. Anxious to avoid blame for the filibustering tactics, Lodge and other Republicans introduced a petition—called a round-robin—in which they stated that if given the opportunity, they would vote for the bill. Seventy-five senators signed the round-robin; eleven refused: La Follette, Norris, Cummins, Gronna, and two other Republican insurgents—Moses Clapp of Minnesota and John Works of California—along with five Democrats—Stone, William F. Kirby of Arkansas, Harry Lane of Oregon, James O’Gorman of New York, and James K. Vardaman of Mississippi.⁴²

The last hours of the debate witnessed one of the wildest scenes ever enacted in the halls of Congress. A flamboyant actor and orator since his youth, La Follette intended to take up the last two hours of the debate with one of his grand speeches. Democrats who supported the bill denied him that chance to take center stage by holding the floor themselves. Fighting Bob was enraged. At several points, he and some Democrats appeared on the verge of violence. La Follette had brought a loaded pistol into the Senate chamber and put it in his desk. One of his supporters, Harry Lane, was prepared to use a small file as a dagger if anyone laid a hand on La Follette. La Follette’s son, Robert Junior, surreptitiously removed the pistol and scribbled a note to his father: “You are noticeably extremely excited. For God’s sake make your protest & prevent passage of the bill if you like but … do not try to fight Senate physically. I am almost sick with worry.” At noon, the bill died without a vote when the vice president pronounced the Senate adjourned sine die.⁴³

Wilson was nearby, in the President’s Room, when that drama transpired. He had come to the Capitol to take the oath of office for his second term in a private ceremony. It was a Sunday, and the public inaugural ceremonies would take place the following day. When Wilson got back to the White House, he railed at the antics in the Senate. Colonel House urged him to “say to the public what he was saying to me, and say it immediately.” Wilson thought it would be unseemly to raise the subject in his inaugural address, but House urged him “to strike while the iron is hot.” The president spent the afternoon writing a statement, which he showed to McAdoo, Burleson, and Tumulty, who all approved it. That statement, which appeared in newspapers the next day, called for changing Senate rules to cut off debate and affirmed the president’s authority under existing laws to arm merchant vessels. Wilson also threw out a stinging rebuke: “A little group of willful men, representing no opinion but their own, have rendered the great Government of the United States helpless and contemptible.”⁴⁴ His opponents were not the only ones who had let their passions get the better of them.

Inauguration day was cold, windy, and overcast, and the ceremony was subdued. In his address, Wilson noted that “matters lying outside our own life as a nation … have drawn us more and more irresistibly into their own current and influence.” Despite being “deeply wronged upon the seas,” Americans remained determined “to play … the part of those who mean to vindicate and fortify peace.” He reaffirmed armed neutrality, but he left the door open for “a more active assertion of our rights,” without specifying what that might be. Above all, he pledged to serve larger purposes in the world: “We are provincials no longer. The tragical events of the thirty months of vital turmoil through which we have just passed have made us citizens of the world.” He reiterated some of his earlier principles for a lasting peace, including equality of nations, freedom of the seas, and reduction of armaments, and he concluded, “The shadows that now lie dark upon our path will soon be dispelled and we shall walk with the light all about us if we be but true to ourselves.”⁴⁵ If this second inaugural address seemed to sound notes from an uncertain trumpet, it was because the trumpeter was uncertain about the song he wished to play.

Back at the White House, Wilson reviewed the inaugural parade, the first to include women, and afterward he and Edith and House had dinner upstairs and watched the fireworks. “The President was holding Mrs. Wilson’s hand and leaning his face against [hers],” House reported. “We talked quietly of the day, and I spoke my joy that we three, rather than the Hughes family, were looking at the fireworks from the White House windows.” Wilson insisted that they take a ride around town, where people on the streets recognized them and cheered. The situation made House nervous: “I sat with my automatic in my hand ready to act if the occasion arose.” Later, the colonel sat with them and talked until eleven o’clock. Edith again pressed House to become ambassador in London, but Wilson said he had inadvertently promised to keep Page on. That promise saved House from being separated from Wilson, but it did not stop him from soon trying to get someone else who had influence with Wilson sent to London. “I suggested taking Baker from the War Department and sending him to England in place of Page,” House wrote, but the president reiterated that “in a misguided moment” he had told Page to stay on.⁴⁶ If the world had turned upside down for Wilson in February 1917, the following month brought its weight pressing down on his shoulders. March 1917 became a time of peculiar trial for him. This was the time that would lead Winston Churchill to say “that the action of the United States with its repercussions on the history of the world depended … upon the workings of this man’s mind and spirit to the exclusion of almost every other factor.” Wilson sought an alternative to war, but armed neutrality proved to be a complicated and burdensome business. Naval crews had to outfit merchant ships with guns, and naval vessels assumed some convoy duties. The British, through the Morgan firm, began to disclose hints of their financial straits, and the Federal Reserve Board nullified its earlier warning against foreign loans.⁴⁷ On the seas, submarines sank ships in ever mounting numbers, including more American vessels. At the middle of March, a revolution in Russia toppled the czar’s autocracy and established a liberal provisional government.

Surprisingly to some, there was no great rise in interventionist sentiment. Roosevelt predictably scorned armed neutrality, and a cadre of northeastern Republicans joined him in pressing for intervention. Metropolitan newspapers such as the Chicago Tribune also came out for war, while the revolution in Russia excited progressives by removing an autocratic stain from the Allied cause. Most newspapers and magazines did not take a stand, however, and ordinary citizens did not seem to be in a belligerent mood. In Congress, several observers commented that more than half the members of the House would vote against war if there could be a secret ballot. Clearly, the president was not feeling a push for war from Congress or the public.⁴⁸

Wilson once more kept to himself, receiving few callers and conducting mostly routine correspondence. He declined speaking engagements and usually left the White House only to play golf. Also, for more than a week at the middle of the month, he did not go to his office because he was confined to his bedroom with a bad cold and sore throat. Two matters did intrude on his bed rest. One was the next Congress. The Senate was meeting in special session before the new Congress convened, to consider the treaty of indemnity with, and apology to, Colombia, stemming from the 1903 Panamanian revolution, an issue that had languished through Wilson’s first term and then come alive again when Colombia sought to take advantage of America’s security concerns. The senators pleased the president by adopting a cloture rule, under which a two-thirds vote could shut off filibusters, but Lodge and other Republicans succeeded in blocking the treaty nevertheless. Because of the urgency of the international situation, Wilson also issued a call for the Congress to convene on April 16 rather than the following December, as mandated by the Constitution.

The other matter that Wilson had to deal with was a threatened railroad strike, together with the Supreme Court’s ruling on the law mandating an eight-hour workday for railway workers. Mediation by McAdoo and Secretary of Labor Wilson averted a strike, and the Court narrowly upheld the law. At one point, McAdoo barged into Wilson’s bedroom to talk about the strike. “Damn it, he makes me tired,” a White House servant quoted the president as saying. “He’s got too much nerve and presumes on the fact that he’s my son-in-law to take up with me in my private apartment matters that a Cabinet Officer ought to take up in my office. I’m getting damn sick of it.”⁴⁹

Wilson left few clues about what he thought during this time. Given his habits, he almost certainly prayed. He harbored no illusions that God would tell him what to do, but the words with which he ended the speech that he would soon give to Congress indicated that he had reached back to his youth and religious background. Wilson did not write to or send for House. The colonel came to the White House only at the end of the month, on his own initiative and after the president had probably already made his decision about whether to go to war. Wilson did reveal his inner turmoil about that decision to two people in addition to his wife. One was Congressman Adamson, the author of the eight-hour law, who later recalled how passionately Wilson wanted to avoid war. Besides the loss of lives, the president feared the war’s effects at home: “He said that a state of war suspended the law, and legal and moral restraints being relaxed,” things would get so bad that “it would require a generation to restore normal conditions.”⁵⁰

The other person to whom Wilson opened his heart and mind was Frank Cobb, the editor of the New York World, who came to the White House on the afternoon of March 19. Cobb later recalled that Wilson believed going to war would mean “there would be a dictated peace, a victorious peace,” which would require “an attempt to reconstruct a peacetime civilization with war standards. … There won’t be any peace standards left to work with. There will be only war standards.” The war’s effects at home frightened him even more. “Once lead this people into war,” Cobb also quoted him as saying, “and they’ll forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance. To fight you must be brutal and ruthless, and the spirit of ruthless brutality will enter into the very fibre of our national life, infecting congress, the courts, the policeman on the beat, the man in the street. … If there is any alternative, for God’s sake, let’s take it!” This was possibly the most anguished cry from the heart ever uttered in the White House by a president. The most eloquent argument against going into this war came from the lips of the man who would take the country into it.⁵¹

When and how he made that decision is not completely clear. At a cabinet meeting the day after he talked with Cobb, Wilson asked whether he should call Congress into session before April 16 and, if so, what message he should send. The cabinet members were unanimous for war, including Daniels, who was the most reluctant. When Burleson said that people were demanding war, Wilson answered, “I do not care for popular demand. I want to do right, whether popular or not.” After everyone had spoken, he said, “Well, gentlemen, I think there is no doubt as to what your advice is. I thank you.” When Lansing asked Wilson whether he was going to call Congress into session earlier, he reportedly replied, “Oh, I think I will sleep on it.” The following day, March 21, he did issue a call for Congress to meet on April 2. He also authorized Baker and Daniels to federalize the National Guard, increase the size of the regular army, take anti-submarine actions at sea, and explore cooperation with the Royal Navy. Outreach to the British included ordering a senior naval officer, Rear Admiral William S. Sims, and an aide to depart at once for London, traveling in civilian clothes and under assumed names. Yet Lansing lamented to House that he no idea what Wilson was going to do, and he asked the colonel to come to Washington to try to smoke him out.⁵²

The colonel arrived late in the afternoon on March 27, and before dinner he and Wilson discussed whether the president should ask for a declaration of war. House said he should, but, curiously, he also told Wilson that he was “not well fitted” to be a war president; “he was too refined, too civilized, too intellectual, too cultivated not to see the incongruity and absurdity of war.” Even more curiously, Edith told House that his opinion had encouraged her husband. The colonel argued for replacing Daniels and Baker as unsuited for war, and Wilson listened noncommittally. The next morning, he showed House a memorandum he had written overnight on subjects he wanted to address when he spoke to Congress. House liked the memorandum, “which could not please me better had I written it myself.” He particularly liked Wilson’s intention to draw a distinction between the German people and their rulers: “This is a war for democracy and it is a war for the German people as well as for other nations.” House also had to listen to complaints about Lansing, who Wilson said “was the most unsatisfactory Secretary in his Cabinet; that he was good for a second place but unfitted for the first. That he had no imagination, no constructive ability, and but little real ability.”⁵³

It is doubtful that Wilson made up his mind to go to war during House’s visit. It is more likely that he had already made his decision out of a mixture of practical, temperamental, and philosophical considerations. One practical matter was the unsatisfactory nature of armed neutrality. Daniels had made this point at the cabinet meeting when he reluctantly recommended war. Wilson evidently agreed, because he told a political supporter, “Apparently, to make even measures of defense we must obtain the status of belligerents.” Another practical consideration was how to pursue the goal of a league of nations. Lansing noted in his memorandum that he had said at the cabinet meeting that “no League of Peace would be of value with a powerful autocracy as a member.” House made the same point when he urged Wilson to say to Congress “that the United States would not be willing to join a league of peace with an autocracy as a member.”⁵⁴ Whether or not Wilson bought those arguments, they almost certainly struck a responsive chord in his mind.

Yet other aspects of going to war did not strike a responsive chord in him. He had long since gotten over his Roosevelt-style penchant for armed intervention. His horror at the slaughter in Europe was heartfelt, as he had revealed in his “prolegomenon.” Moreover, this preacher of self-control viewed this moment as one above all others in which to practice that virtue. The man who had once carried Kipling’s poem “If” in his wallet knew by heart the opening lines:

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you …

When cabinet members maintained that people were demanding war, Lansing noted, “I could almost feel the President stiffen as if to resist and see his powerful jaw set.”⁵⁵

Still, other aspects of his mind and spirit did incline him toward war. Despite Roosevelt’s and Lodge’s aspersions, Wilson was not and never had been a pacifist, and this war repelled him because of its “mechanical slaughter.” Moreover, he possessed an incorrigibly activist temperament. Presented with alternatives, he almost always chose the path of boldness. That was what armed neutrality lacked, in addition to its practical shortcomings. It would be complicated, frustrating, and, worst of all, passive and reactive. War, for all its destruction and danger, was active and might lead to better results. Wilson knew full well war’s awful consequences, and he was keenly aware of the terrible risk he was taking. Yet given his temperament, it would have been nearly impossible for him not to choose war. Besides, he had a deeper philosophical reason for this choice, which he would implicitly reveal in the speech he was about to give to Congress.

When he closeted himself to write that speech, his labors exacted an emotional cost. Several people noted that he seemed out of sorts. The White House head usher said he never knew the president “to be more peevish. … Soon after lunch he went to the study, leaving word that he desired quiet.” On April 1, a Sunday, he sent Lansing a sentence from the speech that asked Congress to declare that a state of war existed with Germany, so that it could be used in drafting the necessary legislation. Otherwise, he shared none of the speech with cabinet members or anyone else, except possibly Edith, until he read it to House the next day. The colonel got to hear the speech in advance only because the machinations in organizing the new Congress delayed the president from going to the Capitol until the evening. “Neither of us did anything except ‘Kill time’ until he was called to the Capitol,” House noted.⁵⁶

At eight-thirty, the president entered the House chamber to tumultuous applause. Many senators and congressmen were waving small American flags, although some, most notably La Follette, declined to join in the demonstration. Resting his hands on the desk, Wilson read from his manuscript, neither gesturing nor glancing up. After reviewing events since the Germans unleashed their submarines, he declared this “a war against all nations,” to which Americans must respond deliberately in order to seek “only the vindication of right, of human right, of which we are only a single champion.” He had hoped that armed neutrality might be enough to meet the challenge, but he now knew that it would not work and “we will not choose the path of submission and suffer the most sacred rights of our nation … to be ignored or violated.” Up to then, the audience had sat in tense silence. When Wilson rejected “the path of submission,” Chief Justice Edward White, who was sitting in the front row, dropped the big hat he was holding and raised his hands above his head to give an explosive clap. That broke the suspense. The chamber erupted into a prolonged roar of applause and then lapsed back into silence.⁵⁷

Wilson now came to the action portion of the speech, which he introduced in a somber tone, noting the “profound sense of the solemn and even tragical character of the step that I am taking.” He advised Congress to declare that a state of war existed between the United States and Germany. At this point, the chief justice, with tears streaming down his cheeks, again led the applause with his hands above his head. Wilson proceeded to outline what belligerency would require: large-scale military and industrial mobilization, to be financed “by well conceived taxation,” together with continued material aid to the Allies. He also specified what kind of peace he sought, and here he began to inject emotion into the speech. “I have exactly the same things in mind now that I had in mind when I addressed the Senate on the twenty-second of January last. … Our object now, as then, is to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the life of the world as against selfish and autocratic power and to set up amongst the really free and self-governed peoples of the world such a concert of purpose and of action as will henceforth ensure the observance of those principles.” He insisted that America had no quarrel with the German people, only with their criminal autocratic rulers. The establishment of democracy would ensure that such crimes as have been committed would never be committed again.⁵⁸

Now, to repeated cheers, he unveiled his vision of democracy and peace. “A steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained except by a partnership of democratic nations,” he avowed. It was for this vision that America would fight: “The world must be made safe for democracy.” At those words, Senator John Sharp Williams of Mississippi, who was partially deaf and cupping his hands behind his ears to hear, began to clap alone, and the applause turned into an uproar. Of all that Wilson said in this speech, this sentence would take on a life of its own, for better and worse. On other matters, Wilson welcomed the new government in Russia and pointed out that the United States was going to war only with Germany, not with the rest of the Central powers, although relations with Austria-Hungary were strained. He affirmed that most citizens of German extraction were “true and loyal Americans,” but he warned that disloyalty “will be dealt with with a firm hand of stern repression.”⁵⁹

He was coming to the end of this half-hour speech. He sought to conclude with inspiring words that would encapsulate his message:

It is a distressing and oppressive duty, Gentlemen of the Congress, which I have performed in thus addressing you. There are, it may be, many months of fiery trial … ahead of us. It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest 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. To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no other.⁶⁰

Wilson had delivered not only the most important but also the greatest speech of his life. This was no lusty assertion of righteous wrath; this was not Roosevelt crying out to stand at Armageddon and battle for the Lord. The words solemn, distressing, oppressive, and tragical ran through the speech like a leitmotif. Wilson spoke the language of exalted idealism, but he did it in a humble, circumspect way. America was “only a single champion” of right. “The world must be made safe for democracy”—a world of difference lay in that self-conscious use of the passive voice by this most punctilious of stylists to sit in the White House. He did not say that Americans must make the world safe for democracy; he did not believe that they could. They could only do their part, join with other like-minded nations, and take steps toward that promised land. Above all, this speech was not a call to a holy war. America was making an unsought, inescapable choice. The actions of others had rendered it necessary, he believed, to plunge into the most terrible war yet in human history. After a deliberately downbeat opening, the speech had gradually taken on a somber beauty. The ending, with evocations of fear and cherished values and the shedding of blood, brought back memories of Abraham Lincoln, especially the last words. Its last sentences and last words made this the greatest presidential speech since Lincoln’s second inaugural address.

“God helping her, she can do no other”—what a haunting but strange way to close a call to arms. No other speaker would have said those words. Wilson was in the habit of occasionally saying things like “God grant” or “God helping me” at the close of speeches. But this usage was something different. As many people recognized, it was an exact paraphrase of Martin Luther’s declaration, “God helping me, I can do no other.” Here was possibly the clearest instance of where Wilson’s learned, sophisticated Protestant upbringing may have shaped his conduct as a political leader. He was casting America in the same role that Luther cast the Christian believer. For Luther, no one could know God’s will; the Christian could rely only on faith and scripture in trying hesitantly, imperfectly, often mistakenly to follow God’s will. Nor could the Christian avoid sin; he or she must, Luther declared, “sin boldly.” This is what Wilson was asking his country to do. This war was the greatest collective sin in history, and America would be taking part in that sin. And, like Luther, Wilson wanted to sin boldly in hopes of securing a more just and peaceful world. He was taking the boldest gamble of his life, and he knew that he might be doing the wrong thing.

As a piece of public persuasion, Wilson’s war address succeeded splendidly. When he finished, the House chamber exploded in an uproar of cheers, rebel yells, and the waving of little flags. Men flocked to congratulate the president as he left the podium. Lodge shook Wilson’s hand and said, “Mr. President, you have expressed the sentiments of the American people in the loftiest possible manner.” Not everyone joined in the cheering, however. Reporters noticed that Senator La Follette sat with his arms folded in front of his chest as he grimly chewed on a wad of gum. Editorial opinion across the country echoed the cheers in the Capitol, and opponents outside also rushed to heap praise. A flood of letters and telegrams offering congratulations and support swept into the White House. Wilson did not feel entirely comfortable with the way people reacted to his speech. “My message tonight was a message of death for our young men,” Tumulty later recalled him saying back at the White House. “How strange it seems to applaud that.”⁶¹

Congress made quick work of declaring war. The Senate acted first. When the war resolution was introduced the next morning, La Follette objected to the suspension of the rules required for immediate consideration, thereby delaying debate for a day. The Senate took up the resolution at ten o’clock on April 4, and debate lasted for thirteen hours. The majority of the speeches expressed support. Some senators were enthusiastic for war; others endorsed the move grudgingly. On the other side, La Follette would not be denied his say this time, and in a four-hour speech he tore apart Wilson’s claim to be defending democracy by joining the Allies. Norris was even more bitterly eloquent when he blamed intervention on Wall Street moguls: “We are going into war upon command of gold.” When the vote came, at eleven minutes after eleven that night, only six senators opposed the resolution—three insurgent Republicans and three Democrats.⁶²

House debate also started on April 4, and it took seventeen hours, spread over two days. Under rules that limited each speech to twenty minutes, 100 representatives spoke in a debate that David Lawrence later described as desultory and at times flippant. Many of those who favored war seemed lukewarm, and almost none of them envisioned American troops fighting on the Western Front. “On the whole,” Lawrence also recalled, “the pacifist speeches seemed to be better received than those favoring war.” The dramatic high point of the debate came when Claude Kitchin rose to speak. Few knew what Kitchin planned to say, and he drew cheers even from opponents when he broke ranks with his party and remained true to his Bryanite convictions. For his part, Bryan opposed intervention only perfunctorily and declined to come to Washington to lobby against the war resolution. Reporters noticed that La Follette was sitting at the back of the House chamber, smiling broadly, as Kitchin spoke.⁶³

When the time came for the roll call vote in the House during the early morning hours of April 6, there was one more moment of drama. All eyes in the galleries were on the first woman elected to Congress, Jeannette Rankin of Montana. She was a pacifist, but she was under pressure from suffrage organizations to vote for the resolution because they planned to use women’s patriotic support for the war as another argument for a constitutional amendment. When her name was called the first time, Rankin did not respond. According to one report, she sat staring at the ceiling, clasping and unclasping her hands. An old bull of the House came over and told her, “Little woman you cannot afford not to vote. You represent the womanhood of the country in the American Congress.” On the second call, Rankin stood up and said in a cracking voice, reportedly with tears in her eyes, “I want to stand by my country, but I cannot vote for war. I vote no.” Speaking during a roll call was against the rules, and some congressmen yelled, “Vote! Vote!” Speaker Clark sent the chief clerk to ask Rankin if she intended to vote no. She nodded, sat down, and threw her head back on her seat and sobbed. When the roll call was completed, at three-twelve in the morning, the clerk handed the tally to the Speaker, who banged down the gavel and announced, “On this motion the Ayes are 373 and the Noes are 50.” Voting against the resolution were eighteen Democrats, thirty-one Republicans—nearly all insurgents or midwesterners, including nine of Wisconsin’s eleven congressmen—and the lone Socialist, Meyer London of New York.⁶⁴

Only formalities remained before the country officially went to war. The war resolution arrived at the White House at 1 p.m., while the president was having lunch with the First Lady and his cousin Helen Bones. They came out to the main lobby, where Wilson sat down at the head usher’s desk and wrote, “Approved 6 April 1917, Woodrow Wilson.” With those strokes of a pen, the United States was at war, and Woodrow Wilson was now a war president. War was something he had even less “preparation” for than foreign affairs and something he thought he was ill suited for. He was going to have to harness passion—other people’s and his own—and he would be resorting to bloodshed and destruction to try to realize his dream of a just, nonpunitive peace and new world order. God helping him, he could do no other.⁶⁵