Woodrow Wilson and the World War

Wilson and the World War, by
Charles Seymour

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Title: Woodrow Wilson and the World War A Chronicle of Our Own
Times.
Author: Charles Seymour
Release Date: June 20, 2007 [EBook #21877]
Language: English
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TEXTBOOK EDITION
THE YALE CHRONICLES OF AMERICA SERIES

ALLEN JOHNSON EDITOR
GERHARD R. LOMER CHARLES W. JEFFERYS ASSISTANT
EDITORS

WOODROW WILSON AND THE WORLD WAR
A CHRONICLE OF OUR OWN TIMES BY CHARLES SEYMOUR
1921
[Illustration]
TORONTO: GLASGOW, BROOK & CO. NEW YORK: UNITED
STATES PUBLISHERS ASSOCIATION, INC.

Copyright, 1921, by Yale University Press
Printed in the United States of America
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|Transcribers note: In this plain text the breve has been rendered as [)c]|
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CONTENTS
I. WILSON THE EXECUTIVE Page 1
II. NEUTRALITY " 27
III. THE SUBMARINE " 47
IV. PLOTS AND PREPAREDNESS " 71
V. AMERICA DECIDES " 94
VI. THE NATION IN ARMS " 116

VII. THE HOME FRONT " 150
VIII. THE FIGHTING FRONT " 192
IX. THE PATH TO PEACE " 228
X. WAYS OF THE PEACE CONFERENCE " 254
XI. BALANCE OF POWER OR LEAGUE OF NATIONS? " 281
XII. THE SETTLEMENT " 310
XIII. THE SENATE AND THE TREATY " 330
XIV. CONCLUSION " 352
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE " 361
INDEX " 367

WOODROW WILSON AND THE WORLD WAR
CHAPTER I
WILSON THE EXECUTIVE
When, on March 4, 1913, Woodrow Wilson entered the White House,
the first Democratic president elected in twenty years, no one could
have guessed the importance of the rôle which he was destined to play.
While business men and industrial leaders bewailed the mischance that
had brought into power a man whose attitude towards vested interests
was reputed none too friendly, they looked upon him as a temporary
inconvenience. Nor did the increasingly large body of independent
voters, disgusted by the "stand-pattism" of the Republican machine,
regard Wilson much more seriously; rather did they place their
confidence in a reinvigoration of the Grand Old Party through the
progressive leadership of Roosevelt, whose enthusiasm and practical

vision had attracted the approval of more than four million voters in the
preceding election, despite his lack of an adequate political
organization. Even those who supported Wilson most whole-heartedly
believed that his work would lie entirely within the field of domestic
reform; little did they imagine that he would play a part in world affairs
larger than had fallen to any citizen of the United States since the birth
of the country.
The new President was fifty-six years old. His background was
primarily academic, a fact which, together with his Scotch-Irish
ancestry, the Presbyterian tradition of his family, and his early years
spent in the South, explains much in his character at the time when he
entered upon the general political stage. After graduating from
Princeton in 1879, where his career gave little indication of
extraordinary promise, he studied law, and for a time his shingle hung
out in Atlanta. He seemed unfitted by nature, however, for either
pleasure or success in the practice of the law. Reserved and cold,
except with his intimates, he was incapable of attracting clients in a
profession and locality where ability to "mix" was a prime qualification.
A certain lack of tolerance for the failings of his fellow mortals may
have combined with his Presbyterian conscience to disgust him with
the hard give-and-take of the struggling lawyer's life. He sought escape
in graduate work in history and politics at Johns Hopkins, where, in
1886, he received his Ph.D. for a thesis entitled Congressional
Government, a study remarkable for clear thinking and felicitous
expression. These qualities characterized his work as a professor at
Bryn Mawr and Wesleyan and paved his path to an appointment on the
Princeton faculty in 1890, as Professor of Jurisprudence and Politics.
Despite his early distaste to the career of practicing lawyer, Wilson was
by no means the man to bury himself in academic research. He lacked
the scrupulous patience and the willingness to submerge his own
personality which are characteristic of the scientific scholar. His gift
was for generalization, and his writings were marked by clarity of
thought and wealth of phrase, rather than by profundity. But such
qualities brought him remarkable success as a lecturer and essayist, and
constant practice gave him a fluency, a vocal control, and