Going to War for Peace
OSHINSKY, DAVID M.
Going to War for Peace Too Proud to Fight: Woodrow Wilson's Neutrality By Patrick Devlin Oxford. 731 pp. $19.50. Reviewed by David M. Oshinsky Assistant Professor of History, Douglass College,...
...He was told nothing of the amending offer of 24 February exempting liners" Devlin also spends so many paragraphs describing and analyzing the Law of the Seas, Prize Law, contraband, Black Lists, etc...
...We left the classroom somewhat bewildered, but impressed nonetheless by their good fortune to die in office...
...It is a shame that so many of the major issues surrounding America's decision to intervene in this country's first great European struggle-domestic political pressures, the quest for foreign markets, Wilson's belief in a politically and economically open world-are never thoughtfully considered...
...security depended on events beyond the seas...
...neutrality and an assault on human rights as well...
...public opinion, while clearly against military involvement, was solidly behind the Allies, England dared to bleed Germany by means of a sea blockade...
...To begin with, as the Kaiser's military staff was well aware, in the years 1914-17 America had become not simply England's leading trading partner but its very lifeline...
...This, Wilson knew, meant he had to have a seat at the postwar peace table...
...With its armies bogged down in central France, it too was forced to rely on a blockade as a military weapon...
...Indeed, Devlin has written a book that is too complicated and wordy for the layman, and too unoriginal for the historian...
...Counting on its "common heritage" with America and its understanding that U.S...
...For Germany the situation was far more complicated...
...Oversights such as these-in a work that devotes literally hundreds of pages to analyzing each conversation and scrap of paper between and among every conceivable military and diplomatic leader in Europe-are both puzzling and inexcusable...
...Desiring neither arbitration nor moral condescension, they wished merely to pursue their military objectives without alienating the United States...
...But this turned out to be one of the most momentous military blunders of the War...
...Thus he hoped for a military stalemate that would allow him to act as the arbiter-the voice of moral conciliation-and to introduce a new world order based on Christian doctrine rather than power politics...
...After a series of bitter debates between civilian and military leaders, a decision was made in 1917 to unleash the U-boats...
...His volume is filled with interesting (if mostly familiar) snippets of Wilson's personal life, keen insights into the murky world of diplomacy, and superb little portraits of Colonel House, U.S...
...Wilson, the Germans realized, would view such incidents as flagrant violations of U.S...
...But Wilson did not understand how deeply the opposing countries hated each other, and how committed they were to a fight to the finish...
...Lacking the size or fire-power of the British Navy, however, it based its hopes on a frightening new weapon-the submarine...
...God helping her, she can do no other...
...It is startling to find a work of this size that makes only two passing references to Senator Robert M. LaFollette and one to Senator William E. Borah...
...neutrality...
...Both were "liberal" Southerners with concrete programs for the nation...
...Reviewed by David M. Oshinsky Assistant Professor of History, Douglass College, Rutgers My political science professor in college loved to draw parallels between Woodrow Wilson and (then President) Lyndon Johnson...
...He takes the reader through a maze of cables, memoranda, and official documents in an effort to clarify the various positions of leading British, German and American diplomats...
...The British approach was simple and straightforward...
...The risks were enormous...
...ships and searching for weapons and other forms of contraband...
...that one finds oneself skipping pages in bulk...
...Any disturbance of this mutually profitable relationship would surely upset the President...
...Devlin tells us that the decision to use unrestricted submarine warfare ultimately persuaded Wilson that "an order of things erected on a German victory would not be safe for America or for the world...
...Despite his professed love for the English countryside and the English legal tradition, he feared the imposition of an unjust peace if either party won a clear-cut victory...
...In theory, this meant stopping U.S...
...For example: "On 27 February, Bernstoff received a dis- patch sent on 18 February containing a long justification of the declaration of 11 February which Berlin then believed to accord with the American position...
...From the onset of war in 1914, says Devlin, Wilson viewed each side as essentially undemocratic and uninterested in the rights of others...
...In addition, since surfacing would make the submarine totally vulnerable, it would have to fire on wholly innocent ships without warning...
...He was determined not only to crush German militarism but to establish the principle that nations, like individuals, must act decently and responsibly toward each other...
...The lesson, we were told, was that war unleashes disruptive forces that even the best of politicians cannot control...
...Indeed, it was added, had Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt lived to serve...
...And the Russian Revolution (which greatly facilitated Wilson's decision by freeing him from the embarrassment of entering the War on the side of Russian autocracy) is not mentioned at all...
...out their terms, they too might have become tarnished, pathetic figures...
...in practice, it meant ending American trade with Germany, inspecting American mail bound for the Continent, and countless other affronts to U.S...
...Devlin's argument, albeit hardly novel, is nevertheless partially convincing...
...and the price of the ticket was America's entry into World War I. As the President told his countrymen: " 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...
...Ambassador to England Walter Hines Page, Secretaries of State Robert Lansing and William Jennings Bryan, Field-Marshall Paul von Hindenburg, and others...
...As Devlin cleverly demonstrates, this goal engaged the full attention of British and German diplomats alike...
...Moreover, although Wilson was a "moralist" and Johnson a "pragmatist," both saw their dreams for America shattered by foreign wars and elusive peace proposals...
...Unfortunately, in the name of thoroughness he often sacrifices readability and one is forced to move slowly through sentences that begin to resemble German minefields...
...Patrick Devlin's volume comes right out of this mold...
...Yet far more distressing is what has been omitted...
...In short, the domestic political ramifications of American neutrality are hardly mentioned...
...The horrors of war brought home so vividly by the Lusitania incident and similar unprovoked attacks convinced him that U.S...
...To put it briefly, Wilson emerges as a self-righteous yet compassionate progressive, convinced of his own (and his nation's) moral superiority...
...German rnilitary strategists hoped their new invention might bring England to its knees before America could effectively mobilize...
Vol. 58 • April 1975 • No. 9
