home | 1901-World War II | War and the Bolshevik Revolution

President Woodrow Wilson, 1917

Kaiser Wilhelm. After 1916 Germany
was largely in the hands of his military.

Eugene Debs (1912). In 1917 he described
the war as a squabble over profits

Woodrow Wilson

In 1912, after having captured the mantel of reform from the Republicans, Woodrow Wilson was elected President of the United States. His victory was helped by the Democrat Party's traditional hold on the south and by a split among the Republicans, with William Taft as the candidate of the Republican Party and Theodore Roosevelt running on the "Bull Moose" ticket.

Wilson was one of the nation's more talkative presidents. He was the first president to hold press conferences and the first since Jefferson to speak before the Senate or the House of Representatives. In trying to influence public opinion he made more public addresses than his predecessors.

For the sake of American consumers, Wilson had tariffs reduced. He signed the Federal Reserve Act in order to make banking more stable, to free smaller banks from control by bigger firms, and to create easier credit for people. He signed anti-trust legislation that included the prohibition of injunctions by federal courts against striking unions. To curb unfair business practices, he helped create the Federal Trade Commission. In 1916, to help farmers, he signed the Rural Credits Act. He initiated a bill that gave railroad workers the eight-hour workday. Also in 1916, Wilson supported the passage of tax reform designed to make the wealthy pay a larger share in taxes, and some supported this increase in taxes on the grounds that manufacturers were making huge profits on armament production and ought to help more in paying for the recent rise in government spending on arms.

The possibility of the United States entering the war had increased, and in his 1916 campaign for re-election Wilson complained to advisors about his campaign slogan "he kept us out of war." Mindful of the emotionalism in 1915 with the sinking of the Lusitania, he spoke of his being powerless before any tide of opinion that might sweep the nation as the result of some "damned" submarine captain's "calculated outrage." But, during the remainder of his 1916 electioneering, Wilson went along with the campaign slogan, while his campaign rode also on other slogans such as "peace with honor," prosperity, preparedness, and the eight-hour day. Wilson's Republican opponent, Charles Evan Hughes, attacked Wilson for not being tough enough on the Entente powers, meaning the British - a position that appealed to the Irish. Theodore Roosevelt sided with the Republicans and attacked Wilson for using "high sounding words" and, referring to Wilson's failures in Mexico, giving the nation "shabby deeds."

Wilson in 1916 won 49 percent of the vote to 46 percent for Hughes. Wilson then turned his attention to urging Europe's warring nations to negotiate a compromise settlement - a peace without victory for either side. Opposing the kind of alliances that had accompanied Europe's going to war, Wilson proposed a peace in which all the warring parties and neutrals would join a League of Nations, a league that would guarantee to all nations "fundamental rights, equal sovereignty, freedom from aggression, freedom of the seas, and eventual disarmament." The League of Nations, he announced, would "insure peace and justice throughout the world."

Wilson's call for a negotiated end to the war created a stir in Europe. Britain's response was that Germany should withdraw from the territories it occupied and pay the Entente powers for damages it had caused, and the French continued to insist that Germany withdraw from their territory. In Germany, the Social Democratic Party announced that it favored a compromise peace, a peace without annexations of territory - a reestablishment of the borders of 1914. In the United States, hostility toward Britain was at a high point because of Britain's handling of the Irish rebellion, and Wilson was fed up with Britain for its indifference to his peace proposals, its continuing violation of the rights of U.S. and other neutral shipping on the high seas, its censoring American mail, and its blacklisting U.S. companies that traded with Germany and Austria-Hungary.

Germany missed another opportunity. It took no advantage of opinion in the United States. The opinions of Germany's Social Democratic Party did not prevail while the nation's hawkish newspapers and others continued to oppose any compromise. For them there was no substitute for military victory. Again Germany was erring on the side of toughness. Some Germans believed that the United States was already in effect in the war on the side of Britain. Germany's Supreme Command assured King William that if submarine warfare brought the United States into the war, Britain would be forced to sue for peace before U.S. troops could arrive in significant numbers. Many were inclined to accept the judgment of their nation's leading military men on military matters. And so too was Kaiser Wilhelm, who accepted their analysis.

Wilhelm was nervous and wanted peace, but he also wished for a military victory, and he was determined to carry out his role as Germany's God-appointed ruler. His government notified Washington of its intentions to resume unrestricted submarine warfare, and it offered American ships passage to one British port a week, at Falmouth - a ship that, to avoid being torpedoed, had to be marked by flags, painted with certain signs, and had to follow a described sea lane across the Atlantic. The Wilson administration rejected all this, and on January 31, 1917, the Germans began their new program of submarine warfare.

Wilson, always under attack in the United States for being too soft, responded with a call for "armed neutrality," which meant the arming of U.S. merchant ships to defend themselves against submarines. The British moved to influence opinion in the United States, and on February 28 it made public a telegram that Germany's new Secretary of State, Arthur Zimmermann, had sent in mid-January to the German minister in Mexico. The telegram advised the minister in Mexico that war between the United States and Germany might come with Germany's new submarine offensive and that the minister was to offer Mexico an alliance with Germany and promise Mexico the return of Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. In learning of the telegram, the U.S. public was aroused. It was the wave of indignation that Wilson had feared.

A filibuster in the U.S. Senate killed the bill for arming merchant ships. And during the month of March, Americans debated whether to go to war. Pacifists in the United States had some stature, with roots going back into the 19th century in the abolitionist, woman's suffrage and labor movements. The socialist leader, Eugene Debs, came out of retirement and described the war as a squabble over profits for businessmen and munitions makers. Socialists accused big business of fomenting war in order to profit from arms sales, and they complained that the United States was going to war for the capitalist class at the expense of the working class. Anarchists, leftist labor leaders, pacifist Christian ministers, various editors and a few politicians held firm against the war. In the U.S., millions were against going to war in Europe, but millions favored war, believing that Americans should stand up and fight for America's rights. Theodore Roosevelt was with those favoring war. Roosevelt still believed that fighting wars was spiritually uplifting. And now that Russia had overthrown its monarchy and transformed itself into a democracy, it was argued that the United States would be fighting a war against autocracy.

A majority in Congress favored war, and Wilson found his advisors unanimously in favor of war. Wilson feared that war might bring a spirit of brutality to the U.S. and jeopardize reforms. He agonized. No evidence exists that he was influenced by a desire to serve armament manufacturers or to save the investments of those who had been lending money to the Entente powers - largely men who had opposed him in his run for office in 1916 and whom Wilson owed nothing.

Wilson came down on the side of his advisors, and he created a rationale for his decision. He went before a joint session of Congress and announced that the United States would not choose "the path of submission." The world, he told Congress and the nation, must be "made safe for democracy." He called for a new balance of power. And at the end of his speech, when he asked for a declaration of war, the Congress exploded in applause.

On April 6 the House of Representatives voted 373 to 50 in favor of declaring war, and the Senate voted in favor by 82 to 6. Rather than having been made somber by the weight of their decision, congressmen greeted the results of their votes by standing on their chairs and taking the American flag lapel pins from their lapels, waving the pins and cheering.

Billy Sunday was cheered by the decision, and his view was echoed by the Los Angeles Times, which joined Billy Sunday in claiming that the United States was on its way to fighting "Christ's war." Some pacifistic ministers protested that the war was a violation of Christianity. A few Americans were embittered, and some saw Wilson as acting on behalf of big business. But many who had opposed going to war or had had doubts about it now believed that it was their duty to support the war effort. War meant that young American men would die, and the patriotic thing to do was to lend a hand in the coming struggle.

The United States Prepares for War

When the bill for conscription came before Congress in mid-April, most Americans supported it. Many in the United States, as in England, had thought of conscription as regimentation unworthy of free people. Conscription  had been tried during the Civil War and had provoked bloody riots in New York City and elsewhere. And a few in Congress remained opposed to conscription – otherwise known as the draft. The House Majority Leader, Claude Kitchin, of North Carolina declared that there was little difference between a conscript and a convict. The Democrat chairman of the House Military Affairs Committee refused to sponsor the bill. But the bill flew through both houses of Congress. President Wilson signed the bill into law, and with this the United States began mobilizing and training men for a planned move to Europe in 1918. Only about one in a hundred young men eligible for the draft resisted. Blacks were drafted in equal proportion to whites, and they were put into all black units officered by whites.

Opponents of militarism were vocal enough that those supporting the war believed something had to be done to suppress their dissent. Many favoring support of the war effort believed in freedom of speech and assembly but not in the special case of doing damage to the nation in time of war. They saw agreement with the enemy as treason. Already, Senator La Follette of Wisconsin - one of the six in the Senate who voted against the war - had been shown in a cartoon with Emperor William giving him the Iron Cross as a reward "for services rendered."

President Wilson created a Committee on Public Information to combat opinion opposed to the war, which became known as the Creel Committee after General George Creel, who was put in charge of it. At the same time, Congress was working on a bill that was passed into law on June 15 and called the Espionage Act. This act outlawed "false reports or false statements" made with the intent "to interfere with the operation or success of the military or naval forces." It outlawed attempts to cause "insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty in the military or naval forces of the United States." The bill made it illegal "to willfully obstruct military recruiting or enlistment," or to "urge, incite or advocate any curtailment of production in this country of any thing or things, product or products, necessary or essential to the prosecution of the war." Those convicted of violating the Espionage Act were to receive $10,000 fine and twenty years in jail.

Wilson joined the spirit of the crusade. He balanced his view of war as horrible with his hope that something good would come of it. He described America's entry into the war as serving "the advancement of mankind and international comity." He spoke of fighting in order to free humanity from "the scourges of war and political oppression." In his June 14th Flag Day speech he spoke of the immense strength of "the forces of justice and of liberalism" that were gathering. "This," he said, "is a people's war, a war for freedom and justice and self-government amongst all the nations of the world, a war to make the world safe for the people who live upon it and have made it their own."

Some of his subordinates went further. His Secretary of War, Newton Baker, spoke of America's "high and holy mission." His Secretary of the Interior, Franklin Lane, spoke of "the world of Christ" coming face to face with the world of force. The Creel Committee declared that the war was "a crusade not merely to re-win the tomb of Christ, but to bring back to earth the rule of right, the peace, goodwill to men and the gentleness He taught."

Irving Berlin's song "Over There," anticipated American soldiers crossing the Atlantic, and became the most popular song in the U.S. And Hollywood was getting into the act by making films such as "To Hell with the Kaiser," "The Beast of Berlin," and a film starring Mary Pickford entitled "One Hundred Percent American."

A film entitled "The Spirit of '76," which had been made before the U.S. entered the war, was released in the summer of 1917, and it was forcibly withdrawn and the filmmaker prosecuted under the Espionage Act and sentenced to ten years in the penitentiary. The film was critical of the British during the American Revolution, and the judge in the case accused the film of arousing people's passions and of questioning "the good faith of our ally, Great Britain." And no one, said the judge, should be permitted to detract from the war effort.

Wilson spoke of the enemy as "the masters of Germany" and Germany's "Junkers" (the landed aristocracy of Prussia) rather than the German people, but his Creel Committee was joining others in opposing all things German. Sauerkraught was dubbed liberty cabbage. Hamburger was called "liberty steak," and German Shepherds were renamed "police dogs." The works of German composers, including Mozart, Brahms and Beethoven, were avoided by symphony orchestras, while the "American Defense Society" was warning Americans that German music was the most dangerous form of German propaganda because it appealed to the emotions. The Austrian born violist Fritz Kreisler was suddenly out of work. A campaign of hate began against the Swiss conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Carl Muck, for his not wanting to play the Star Spangled Banner as an introduction to his concerts. His performances in Washington D.C., Baltimore and other cities were canceled.

In California, folk songs that were originally German were removed from children's songbooks. In schools across the nation, teaching the German language came to and end. Libraries across the nation removed from their shelves books by German authors. Under pressure from the public and a crusade led by Teddy Roosevelt, the editors of German language newspapers shut their papers down. A few Germans were forced to kiss the American flag. Some German-Americans were forced to parade before irate townspeople as objects of ridicule. A German-American was lynched in southern Illinois. Kids threw stones at Dachshunds. And teachers lost their jobs for expressing their opinions on the issue of war and peace.

A drive for the sale of liberty bonds were underway, and some who refused to buy the bonds were doused with yellow paint. Mennonites refused to buy bonds because of their religious hostility to war, and when they returned to a town one Saturday their cars were confiscated and sold at auction and the proceeds used to buy Liberty Bonds. In July, thousands of soldiers and sailors attacked a parade of socialists in Boston, and they sacked the local party headquarters while police stood by.

Citing the Espionage Act, the U.S. Post Office refused to mail any written materials that could be deemed critical of the U. S. war effort. Some sixty socialist newspapers were deprived of their second-class mailing rights. Clarence Darrow, the nation's most famous attorney, objected and wrote a letter of protest to the President. In reply, Wilson wrote that he would "try to work out with the Postmaster General some course with regard to the circulation of the Socialist papers that [would] be in conformity with law and good sense." The journalist John Reed also sent a letter to Wilson, appealing to what Reed believed was dear to Wilson: "the Anglo-Saxon tradition of intellectual freedom." Wilson promised to get "to the bottom of the matter." He wrote to Postmaster General Albert Burleson and described those who were complaining as "very sincere men," and, he said, "I should like to please them." Burleson continued with his ban on socialist publications. To the socialist publisher of "The Masses," Max Eastman, Wilson said that he had little confidence about how to proceed in the matter of censorship: Said Wilson: "I can only say that a line must be drawn and that we are trying..." In early September he wrote to Burleson: "You know that I am willing to trust your judgment after I have once called your attention to a suggestion."

Despite his timidity, Wilson remained confident of his ability to mold the outcome of the war. It was a bold assumption given how little the world had been developing according to the will of any individual, or any one nation. How well Wilson would succeed against opinions of others - namely the prejudices of his new wartime allies, the French, English and Italians - would be revealed after the war ended.

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