guarantees of peace depended on coöperation by ourselves and all the New World peoples for, as he very lucidly expressed it, "It will be absolutely necessary that a force be created as a guarantor of the permanency of the settlement so much greater than the force of any nation now engaged or any alliance hitherto formed or projected that no nation, no probable combination of nations could face or withstand it.

"If the peace presently to be made is to endure it must be a peace made secure by the organized major force of mankind." 33

The speech belongs to the world's literature of peace. It is a classic-a magnificent statement of the principles of the Federal Constitution now given world-wide application. One cannot quote a passage without desire to quote the whole. But in the paragraph already cited, Wilson the idealist is shown to be decidedly a realist, for no other formula of international peace can readily be conceived. Without creation of a league of nations the war to Wilson seemed in vain. When once the United States became committed to the conflict, the President exerted every ounce of moral energy in his nature to the end that our own dead should not have died in vain. Unlike Roosevelt, whose skepticism regarding the second conference at The Hague was an evident bit of realism untinctured with any of the martyr's spirit, Wilson henceforth labored to convert a generous idealism into the realism of the future.

The project of a league of nations was in truth the highwater mark of Wilsonian diplomacy previous to America's entry into the war. If war should come the President's endeavor must be to translate his thought to action. And war was nearer than he knew. The Germans, dreading the final issue of a warfare of attrition, and doubting their ability to win on land alone, finally followed their Grand Admiral Von Tirpitz into open declaration of unrestricted subsea warfare. The decision was announced on January 31st, to take effect immediately. It resulted three days later in the severance of relations between the United States 33 Ibid. p. 365.

and Germany, and the immediate threat of war. On February 26th the President drew one step nearer to the fatal moment, when he proposed to Congress an armed neutrality. This continued as the nation's status until the great war message of April 2, 1917, finally took up the gage of battle.

WAR

Like others in the Presidential series, with the exception of the first Lusitania note, the war message was a masterpiece. It pilloried the German government, distinguished sharply between the German people and their war lords, and pitched the action of the United States upon a plane of service to mankind. In the felicitous phrasing of the President, "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." 34

Phrases so magnificent are more than rhetoric. In the alchemy of a powerful mind, the President, fortified by years of experience in office, was now transmuting his idealism of peace into a strange and unfamiliar idealism of war. The message came from the heart and reached the heart. Millions in America and throughout the world thrilled to a new concept of life's meaning, and the possibilities for

34 Robinson and West, Op. Cit. pp. 392-393.

service in establishing a new social order. From the moment the war message was delivered, the President emerged as the world's most illustrious figure. And the nation which he guided assumed the leadership which its material resources, its ideals, and its destiny alike commanded. Mankind was at the cross roads.

W

CHAPTER XXVII

THE WORLD WAR

AR is both the weapon and the substitute for diplomacy. Military science and economic forces behind the lines supplant diplomacy. In a sense, therefore, war is the least suggestive of the four main aspects of Wilsonian foreign policy. The climaxes were reserved for the peace conference, when statesmen once more superseded generals as the rulers of the world. Nevertheless early in the war, the President was called to deal with two matters lying mainly in the diplomatic sphere, one, the appeal for peace from Pope Benedict XV; the other, the kaleidoscopic changes precipitated by the Russian Revolution. A third aspect of Wilsonian foreign policy during the war years was a most conciliatory pronouncement toward Mexico. One may speak first of this latter in order to make way for a unified survey of the conduct of the war and of the peace negotiations.

The expedition of General Pershing in 1916 had been undertaken with full approval of the A B C powers of South America. But with them as with most other Latins there still lingered an attitude of suspicion as to what the United States really meant by its Monroe Doctrine, and President Wilson sought a suitable opportunity for a broad pronouncement on the subject. A visit to the White House by a group of Mexican editors on June 7, 1918, afforded the necessary background for a sweeping and far-reaching declaration. Indeed so emphatic a recognition of the Latin view-point was epoch making in American foreign policy and deserves quotation at considerable length. In characteristic phrase, the President declared:

Some time ago, as you probably all know, I proposed a sort of Pan American agreement. I had perceived that one of the diffi

culties of our relationship with Latin America was this: The famous Monroe doctrine was adopted without your consent, without the consent of any of the Central or South American States. If I may express it in terms that we so often use in this country, we said, "We are going to be your big brother, whether you want us to be or not." We did not ask whether it was agreeable to you that we should be your big brother. We said we were going to be. Now, that was all very well so far as protecting you from aggression from the other side of the water was concerned, but there was nothing in it that protected you from aggression from us, and I have repeatedly seen the uneasy feeling on the part of representatives of the States of Central and South America that our self-appointed protection might be for our own benefit and our own interests and not for the interest of our neighbors. So I said, "Very well, let us make an arrangement by which we will give bond. Let us have a common guarantee, that all of us will sign, of political independence and territorial integrity. Let us agree that if any one of us, the United States included, violates the political independence or the territorial integrity of any of the others, all the others will jump on her." I pointed out to some of the gentlemen who were less inclined to this arrangement than others that that was in effect giving bonds on the part of the United States that we would enter into an arrangement by which you would be protected from us.

Now, that is the kind of agreement that will have to be the foundation of the future life of the nations of the world, gentlemen. The whole family of nations will have to guarantee to each nation that no nation shall violate its political independence or its territorial integrity. That is the basis, the only conceivable basis, for the future peace of the world, and I must admit that I was ambitious to have the States of the two continents of America show the way to the rest of the world as to how to make a basis of peace.

1

One discovers in this American vision of the President his ideal of a league of nations. Article X, in particular, so much debated later, is evident in the Wilson readiness to guarantee the existing status quo as permanent. But one must turn to the World War for the more direct approach to Wilson's same world vision.

1 Address of the President of the United States Delivered before a Party of Editors from the Republic of Mexico at the White House, June 7, 1918. 65th Congress 2d Session, Senate Document No. 264. Washington, Government Printing Office, 1918.