America and the Great War - Document Overview
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Woodrow Wilson and Secretary of State William J. Bryan were diplomatic idealists who hoped that international tensions could always be settled peaceably. To this end they negotiated "cooling off" treaties with thirty nations, whereby disputes between two countries would be handed over to an international arbitration commission. However logical such agreements might have seemed in theory, they ignored the fact that international disputes often involved emotional issues and self interests that were non-negotiable.
Nowhere was this truer than in Europe. There the great powers had divided themselves into two large interlocking military alliances. Germany and Austria-Hungary formed the Triple Alliance, and Britain, France, and Russia formed the Triple Entente. Intended to maintain a rough balance of power, these alliances also ensured that when conflict erupted it would rapidly escalate into a major war. In 1914 the unthinkable occurred when a Serbian nationalist assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian empire. The archduke and his wife were gunned down in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia in the Balkans. The Austrians resolved to punish the Serbs, triggering Russia to mobilize its army in defense of Serbia's large population of Slavs. Germany rushed to support Austria-Hungary, preemptively declaring war on Russia and France. When Germany invaded Belgium (thereby violating its neutrality) in order to attack France, the British declared war on Germany. The First World War had began.
Americans were stunned by the sudden outbreak of European war, but were quickly reassured by the beliefs—mistaken as it turned out—that United States had no vital interests at stake in the conflict and that the Atlantic Ocean would insulate them from the conflagration. But it soon became obvious that Americans could not long remain neutral or uninvolved in an expanding world war. By virtue of their own ethnic background, political ideals, and economic interests, most Americans supported the Allies (as Britain, France, and Russia became known). Wilson, as it turns out, also sought to support the Allies behind the scenes while calling publicly for neutrality. By insisting on the American right to maintain trade with the belligerent nations, he was in effect aiding the Allies, for they received the vast majority of supplies.
Germany sought to cut off the pipeline of American shipments to Great Britain. In 1915 the German navy unleashed its submarines against transatlantic shipping and announced a blockade of the British Isles. Wilson warned the German government that he would hold them to "strict accountability" if any American lives were lost. The sinking of the huge British passenger liner Lusitania in May 1915 killed nearly 1,200 people, including over one hundred Americans. The news horrified Americans. Some commentators called for a declaration of war. Wilson instead sent strident protests to the German government, demanding payment for the lost lives and a pledge not to sink passenger vessels. The Germans agreed and tensions eased. But Wilson predicted that the fragile peace would not last. As he confided to an aide in 1916, "I can't keep the country out of war. . . . Any little German lieutenant can put us into war at any time by some calculated outrage."
On January 31, 1917, the Germans announced the renewal of unrestricted submarine attacks on Atlantic shipping. A few days later the United States broke off diplomatic relations with Germany. Soon thereafter, on March 1, an intercepted telegram from the German foreign secretary, Arthur Zimmermann, to the German ambassador in Mexico, inflamed public opinion in the United States. The Zimmermann telegram promised Mexico the restoration of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona if Mexico supported Germany in a war against the United States.
More immediately, however, American officials in early 1917 were preoccupied with the escalating number of ships sunk by German submarines. Between March 12 and 21, five American ships were lost. This was the last straw. On April 2, Wilson asked Congress to declare war. The war resolution swept through the Senate by a vote of 82 to 6 and the House by 373 to 50.
No sooner had the United State officially entered the war than Wilson began to turn the conflict into a crusade—not only to transform the nature of international relations but also to create a permanent peace. On January 8, 1918, in part to counter the Bolshevik claim that the Allies were fighting for imperialist aims, Wilson announced his Fourteen Point peace plan outlining allied intentions.
By the end of 1918 the war was winding down. American intervention proved decisive in turning the tide against the Germans and their allies. In December Wilson made the controversial decision for the American delegation to join the peace conference convening in Paris. This proved to be a political disaster because the Republican-controlled Senate felt that Wilson was purposely ignoring its historic role in shaping foreign policy. When Wilson presented the peace plan—with its controversial provision for a League of Nations to police world affairs—to the American public, it aroused intense debate. Critics led by powerful Republican senator Henry Cabot Lodge balked at American participation in the League, arguing that it would transfer war-making authority to an outside body.
Worn down by a public speaking tour intended to arouse public support for the Versailles treaty, Wilson suffered a stroke in the summer of 1919 that left him bedridden for months. Wilson's absence from the ongoing public debate proved fatal to his objectives. After much maneuvering and many votes, the Senate refused to ratify the Versailles treaty in March 1920.
American involvement in the so-called Great War signaled the arrival of the United States on center stage of world affairs. Yet in the immediate aftermath of the war, most Americans returned to their earlier stance of isolation from the turmoil of international events. Little did they know that the United States was more intertwined than ever in the fate of other nations.
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President Wilson Asks For War With Congress, April 20, 1914
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Gentlemen of the Congress: It is my duty to call your attention to a situation which has arisen in our dealings with General Victoriano Huerta at Mexico City which calls for action, and to ask your advice and cooperation in acting upon it. On the 9th of April a paymaster of the U.S.S. Dolphin landed at the Iturbide Bridge landing at Tampico with a whaleboat and boat's crew to take off certain supplies needed by his ship, and while engaged in loading the boat was arrested by an officer and squad of men of the army of General Huerta. . . . Admiral Mayo regarded the arrest as so serious an affront that he was not satisfied with the apologies offered, but demanded that the flag of the United States be saluted with special ceremony by the military commander of the port.
The incident cannot be regarded as a trivial one, especially as two of the men arrested were taken from the boat itself—that is to say, from the territory of the United States—but had it stood by itself it might have been attributed to the ignorance or arrogance of a single officer. Unfortunately, it was not an isolated case. A series of incidents have recently occurred which cannot but create the impression that the representatives of General Huerta were willing to go out of their way to show disregard for the dignity and rights of this Government and felt perfectly safe in doing what they pleased, making free to show in many ways their irritation and contempt.
The manifest danger of such a situation was that such offenses might grow from bad to worse until something happened of so gross and intolerable a sort as to lead directly and inevitably to armed conflict. It was necessary that the apologies of General Huerta and his representatives should go much further, that they should be such as to attract the attention of the whole population to their significance, and such as to impress upon General Huerta himself the necessity of seeing to it that no further occasion for explanations and professed regrets should arise. I, therefore, felt it my duty to sustain Admiral Mayo in the whole of his demand and to insist that the flag of the United States should be saluted in such a way as to indicate a new spirit and attitude on the part of the Huertistas.
Such a salute, General Huerta has refused, and I have come to ask your approval and support in the course I now propose to pursue.
This Government can, I earnestly hope, in no circumstances be forced into war with the people of Mexico. Mexico is torn by civil strife. If we are to accept the tests of its own constitution, it has no government. General Huerta has set his power up in the City of Mexico, such as it is, without right and by methods for which there can be no justification. Only part of the country is under his control. If armed conflict should unhappily come as a result of his attitude of personal resentment toward this Government, we should be fighting only General Huerta and those who adhere to him and give him their support, and our object would be only to restore to the people of the distracted Republic the opportunity to set up again their own laws and their own government.
But I earnestly hope that war is not now in question. I believe I speak for the American people when I say that we do not desire to control in any degree the affairs of our sister Republic. Our feeling for the people of Mexico is one of deep and genuine friendship, and everything that we have so far done or refrained from doing has proceeded from our desire to help them, not to hinder or embarrass them. We would not wish even to exercise the good offices of friendship without their welcome and consent. The people of Mexico are entitled to settle their own domestic affairs in their own way, and we sincerely desire to respect their right. The present situation need have none of the grave implications of interference if we deal with it promptly, firmly, and wisely.
No doubt I could do what is necessary in the circumstances to enforce respect for our Government without recourse to the Congress, and yet not exceed my constitutional powers as President; but I do not wish to act in a manner possibly of so grave consequence except in close conference and cooperation with both the Senate and House. I, therefore, come to ask your approval that I should use the armed forces of the United States in such ways and to such an extent as may be necessary to obtain from General Huerta and his adherents the fullest recognition of the rights and dignity of the United States, even amidst the distressing conditions now unhappily obtaining in Mexico.
There can in what we do be no thought of aggression or of selfish aggrandizement. We seek to maintain the dignity and authority of the United States only because we wish always to keep our great influence unimpaired for the uses of liberty, both in the United States and wherever else it may be employed for the benefit of mankind.
[From
Congressional Record, 63rd Cong., 2d sess., April 20, 1914, vol. 51, pt. 4, p. 6925.]
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The Nation on Mexico (1914)
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The plain facts of the case are these: that the Administration has undertaken hostile operations against a man whom it has refused to recognize as de-facto President of Mexico, because he temporized about making reparation to this country for an insult to the flag in the precise form prescribed by international usage. It was not even that an apology had been refused, for it had not. Huerta had made an apology; more, he had undertaken to salute the flag in the manner demanded, the only stipulation being that the salute should be returned and that a protocol to this effect should be put into writing. That was the occasion for the undertaking of an enterprise the end of which no man can foresee, but which has already exacted its price in the lives of Americans and Mexicans. And the reason for the refusal of the protocol? Because it was not in accord with diplomatic usage? But what has diplomatic usage to do with a private individual whose official existence we do not recognize? Or because the mere signing of it might involve that recognition which we have so studiously avoided? So, we may talk to a man through our accredited diplomatic agent in Mexico, but rather than correspond with him we will go to war. It is straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel.
These are the official reasons advanced for our action in Mexico. Nobody pretends that they are the sole reasons. If they were, our justification for the extreme measures that have been taken would appear even more miserably inadequate than it does. Huerta has pursued a policy of pinpricks exceedingly trying to the patience of the Administration, galling to the pride of any but a nation that is truly great and secure in the consciousness of its national honor. The lives and property of American citizens have been in danger in Mexico, and to protect their lives is one of the first duties of a government; but in the part of Mexico controlled by Huerta Americans have enjoyed heretofore a greater security than in those districts which are in the hands of Villa and the rebels. Yet, be it remembered, it is against Huerta, and Huerta alone, not against Villa, not against the Mexican people, Federals or rebels, that all the armed resources of the United States have been arrayed.
These, we think, are the kind of reflections that have been in the minds of many thoughtful Americans during the past week. It is because the majority of the American people realize, perhaps vaguely, the inconsistency which has marked the policy of the Administration, the inadequacy of the grounds on which war has been threatened, that there has been a notable absence of the jingoistic spirit.
[From
The Nation, 98, no. 2548 (April 30, 1914): 487.]
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The Fourteen Points (1918)
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In early January 1918, while fighting was still raging in Europe, Wilson laid out his specific plans for the postwar order. He did so in order to reassure wary allies and opponents that the war would not simply result in a division of spoils by the victors.
Gentlemen of the Congress: . . . It will be our wish and purpose that the processes of peace, when they are begun, shall be absolutely open and that they shall involve and permit henceforth no secret understandings of any kind. The day of conquest and aggrandizement is gone by; so is also the day of secret covenants entered into in the interest of particular governments and likely at some unlooked-for moment to upset the peace of the world. It is this happy fact, now clear to the view of every public man whose thoughts do not still linger in an age that is dead and gone, which makes it possible for every nation whose purposes are consistent with justice and the peace of the world to avow now or at any other time the objects it has in view.
We entered this war because violations of right had occurred which touched us to the quick and made the life of our own people impossible unless they were corrected and the world secured once and for all against their recurrence. What we demand in this war, therefore, is nothing peculiar to ourselves. It is that the world be made fit and safe to live in; and particularly that it be made safe for every peace-loving nation which, like our own, wishes to live its own life, determine its own institutions, be assured of justice and fair dealing by the other peoples of the world as against force and selfish aggression. All the peoples of the world are in effect partners in this interest, and for our own part we see very clearly that unless justice be done to others it will not be done to us. The program of the world's peace, therefore, is our program; and that program, the only possible program, as we see it, is this:
I. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.
II. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in war, except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part by international action for the enforcement of international covenants.
III. The removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace and associating themselves for its maintenance.
IV. Adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will be reduced to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety.
V. A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined.
VI. The evacuation of all Russian territory and such a settlement of all questions affecting Russia as will secure the best and freest cooperation of the other nations of the world in obtaining for her an unhampered and unembarrassed opportunity for the independent determination of her own political development and national policy and assure her of a sincere welcome into the society of free nations under institutions of her own choosing; and, more than a welcome, assistance also of every kind that she may need and may herself desire. The treatment accorded Russia by her sister nations in the months to come will be the acid test of their good will, of their comprehension of her needs as distinguished from their own interests, and of their intelligent and unselfish sympathy.
VII. Belgium, the whole world will agree, must be evacuated and restored, without any attempt to limit the sovereignty which she enjoys in common with all other free nations. No other single act will serve as this will serve to restore confidence among the nations in the laws which they have themselves set and determined for the government of their relations with one another. Without this healing act the whole structure and validity of international law is forever impaired.
VIII. All French territory should be freed and the invaded portions restored, and the wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which has unsettled the peace of the world for nearly fifty years, should be righted, in order that peace may once more be made secure in the interest of all.
IX. A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearly recognizable lines of nationality.
X. The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to see safe-guarded and assured, should be accorded the freest opportunity of autonomous development.
XI. Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro should be evacuated; occupied territories restored; Serbia accorded free and secure access to the sea; and the relations of the several Balkan states to one another determined by friendly counsel along historically established lines of allegiance and nationality; and international guarantees of the political and economic independence and territorial integrity of the several Balkan states should be entered into.
XII. The Turkish portions of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development, and the Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a free passage to the ships and commerce of all nations under international guarantees.
XIII. An independent Polish state should be erected which should include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenant.
XIV. A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.
In regard to these essential rectifications of wrong and assertions of right we feel ourselves to be intimate partners of all the governments and peoples associated together against the Imperialists. We cannot be separated in interest or divided in purpose. We stand together until the end.
For such arrangements and covenants we are willing to fight and to continue to fight until they are achieved; but only because we wish the right to prevail and desire a just and stable peace such as can be secured only by removing the chief provocations to war, which this program does not remove. We have no jealousy of German greatness, and there is nothing in this program that impairs it. We grudge her no achievement or distinction of learning or of pacific enterprise such as have made her record very bright and very enviable. We do not wish to injure her or to block in any way her legitimate influence or power. We do not wish to fight her either with arms or with hostile arrangements of trade if she is willing to associate herself with us and the other peace-loving nations of the world in covenants of justice and law and fair dealing. We wish her only to accept a place of equality among the peoples of the world,—the new world in which we now live,—instead of a place of mastery.
Neither do we presume to suggest to her any alteration or modification of her institutions. But it is necessary, we must frankly say, and necessary as a preliminary to any intelligent dealings with her on our part, that we should know whom her spokesmen speak for when they speak to us, whether for the Reichstag majority or for the military party and the men whose creed is imperial domination.
We have spoken now, surely, in terms too concrete to admit of any further doubt or question. An evident principle runs through the whole program I have outlined. It is the principle of justice to all peoples and nationalities, and their right to live on equal terms of liberty and safety with one another, whether they be strong or weak. Unless this principle be made its foundation no part of the structure of international justice can stand. The people of the United States could act upon no other principle; and to the vindication of this principle they are ready to devote their lives, their honor, and everything that they possess. The moral climax of this the culminating and final war for human liberty has come, and they are ready to put their own strength, their own highest purpose, their own integrity and devotion to the test.
[From James D. Richardson, ed., "Address to Congress," 8 January 1918, in
A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents (New York: Bureau of National Literature, n.d.), 18:8421-26.]
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The League of Nations (1919)
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When the Paris Peace Conference convened in 1919, Woodrow Wilson lobbied strenuously for inclusion of a League of Nations covenant in the final peace settlement. He was convinced that such a multilateral organization was essential to the maintenance of peace. In June he returned to the United States, confident that the Senate would ratify the treaty and thereby commit the United States to membership in the League of Nations. He greatly underestimated the issues at stake, and the opposition they would arouse. Soon he found himself struggling to defend many of the treaty's provisions.
To the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations
MR. CHAIRMAN: I have taken the liberty of writing out a little statement in the hope that it might facilitate discussion by speaking directly on some points that I know have been points of controversy and upon which I thought an expression of opinion would not be unwelcome. . . .
Nothing, I am led to believe, stands in the way of ratification of the treaty except certain doubts with regard to the meaning and implication of certain articles of the Covenant of the League of Nations; and I must frankly say that I am unable to understand why such doubts should be entertained. . . . It was pointed out that . . . it was not expressly provided that the League should have no authority to act or to express a judgment of matters of domestic policy; that the right to withdraw from the League was not expressly recognized; and that the constitutional right of the Congress to determine all questions of peace and war was not sufficiently safeguarded.
On my return to Paris all these matters were taken up again by the Commission on the League of Nations and every suggestion of the United States was accepted.
The views of the United States with regard to the questions I have mentioned had, in fact, already been accepted by the commission and there was supposed to be nothing inconsistent with them in the draft of the Covenant first adopted—the draft which was the subject of our discussion in March—but no objection was made to saying explicitly in the text what all had supposed to be implicit in it. There was absolutely no doubt as to the meaning of any one of the resulting provisions of the Covenant in the minds of those who participated in drafting them, and I respectfully submit that there is nothing vague or doubtful in their wording.
The Monroe Doctrine is expressly mentioned as an understanding which is in no way to be impaired or interfered with by anything contained in the Covenant and the expression "regional understandings like the Monroe Doctrine" was used, not because any one of the conferees thought there was any comparable agreement anywhere else in existence or in contemplation, but only because it was thought best to avoid the appearance of dealing in such a document with the policy of a single nation. Absolutely nothing is concealed in the phrase.
With regard to domestic questions, Article 16 of the Covenant expressly provides that, if in case of any dispute arising between members of the League, the matter involved is claimed by one of the parties "and is found by the council to arise out of a matter which by international law is solely within the domestic jurisdiction of that party, the council shall so report, and shall make no recommendation as to its settlement." The United States was by no means the only Government interested in the explicit adoption of this provision, and there is no doubt in the mind of any authoritative student of international law that such matters as immigration, tariffs, and naturalization are incontestably domestic questions with which no international body could deal without express authority to do so. No enumeration of domestic questions was undertaken because to undertake it, even by sample, would have involved the danger of seeming to exclude those not mentioned.
The right of any sovereign State to withdraw1 had been taken for granted, but no objection was made to making it explicit. Indeed, so soon as the views expressed at the White House conference were laid before the commission it was at once conceded that it was best not to leave the answer to so important a question to inference. No proposal was made to set up any tribunal to pass judgment upon the question whether a withdrawing nation had in fact fulfilled "all its international obligations and all its obligations under the covenant." It was recognized that that question must be left to be resolved by the conscience of the Nation proposing to withdraw; and I must say that it did not seem to me worthwhile to propose that the article be made more explicit, because I knew that the United States would never itself propose to withdraw from the League if its conscience was not entirely clear as to the fulfillment of all its international obligations. It has never failed to fulfill them and never will. . . .
The United States will, indeed, undertake under Article 10 to "respect and preserve as against external aggression the territorial integrity and existing political independence of all members of the League," and that engagement constitutes a very grave and solemn moral obligation. But it is a moral, not a legal, obligation, and leaves our Congress absolutely free to put its own interpretation upon it in all cases that call for action. It is binding in conscience only, not in law.
Article 10 seems to me to constitute the very backbone of the whole Covenant. Without it the League would be hardly more than an influential debating society. . . .
If the United States were to qualify the document in any way, moreover, I am confident from what I know of the many conferences and debates which accompanied the formulation of the treaty that our example would immediately be followed in many quarters, in some instances with very serious reservations, and that the meaning and operative force of the treaty would presently be clouded from one end of its clauses to the other.
Pardon me, Mr. Chairman, if I have been entirely unreserved and plainspoken in speaking of the great matters we all have so much at heart. If excuse is needed, I trust that the critical situation of affairs may serve as my justification. The issues that manifestly hang upon the conclusions of the Senate with regard to peace and upon the time of its action are so grave and so clearly insusceptible of being thrust on one side or postponed that I have felt it necessary in the public interest to make this urgent plea, and to make it as simply and as unreservedly as possible.
[From
Senate Documents, No. 76, 66th Cong., 1st sess., 1919, 13:6-19.]
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The League of Nations Must Be Revised (1919), Henry Cabot Lodge
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Republican senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts led the opposition to Wilson's League of Nations. As the powerful leader of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he emerged as the pivotal figure in the protracted debate over the League. Lodge offered to support it only if substantial revisions were made in its key provisions, especially Article X, which in his view transferred from the Senate to the League of Nations the authority to wage war. In an August 1919 speech Lodge summarized his objections.
For ourselves we asked absolutely nothing. We have not asked any government or governments to guarantee our boundaries or our political independence. We have no fear in regard to either. We have sought no territory, no privileges, no advantages, for ourselves. That is the fact. It is apparent on the face of the treaty. I do not mean to reflect upon a single one of the powers with which we have been associated in the war against Germany, but there is not one of them which has not sought individual advantages for their own national benefit. I do not criticize their desires at all. The services and sacrifices of England and France and Belgium and Italy are beyond estimate and beyond praise. I am glad they should have what they desire for their own welfare and safety. But they all receive under the peace territorial and commercial benefits. We are asked to give, and we in no way seek to take. Surely it is not too much to insist that when we are offered nothing but the opportunity to give and to aid others we should have the right to say what sacrifices we shall make and what the magnitude of our gifts shall be. In the prosecution of the war we have unstintedly given American lives and American treasure. When the war closed we had 3,000,000 men under arms. We were turning the country into a vast workshop for war. We advanced ten billions to our allies. We refused no assistance that we could possibly render. All the great energy and power of the Republic were put at the service of the good cause. We have not been ungenerous. We have been devoted to the cause of freedom, humanity, and civilization everywhere. Now we are asked, in the making of peace, to sacrifice our sovereignty in important respects, to involve ourselves almost without limit in the affairs of other nations and to yield up policies and rights which we have maintained throughout our history. We are asked to incur liabilities to an unlimited extent and furnish assets at the same time which no man can measure. I think it is not only our right but our duty to determine how far we shall go. Not only must we look carefully to see where we are being led into endless disputes and entanglements, but we must not forget that we have in this country millions of people of foreign birth and parentage.
Our one great object is to make all these people Americans so that we may call on them to place America first and serve America as they have done in the war just closed. We can not Americanize them if we are continually thrusting them back into the quarrels and difficulties of the countries from which they came to us. We shall fill this land with political disputes about the troubles and quarrels of other countries. We shall have a large portion of our people voting not on American questions and not on what concerns the United States but dividing on issues which concern foreign countries alone. That is an unwholesome and perilous condition to force upon this country. We must avoid it. We ought to reduce to the lowest possible point the foreign questions in which we involve ourselves. Never forget that this league is primarily—I might say overwhelmingly—a political organization, and I object strongly to having the policies of the United States turn upon disputes where deep feeling is aroused but in which we have no direct interest. It will all tend to delay the Americanization of our great population, and it is more important not only to the United States but to the peace of the world to make all these people good Americans than it is to determine that some piece of territory should belong to one European country rather than to another. For this reason I wish to limit strictly our interference in the affairs of Europe and of Africa. We have interests of our own in Asia and in the Pacific which we must guard upon our own account, but the less we undertake to play the part of umpire and thrust ourselves into European conflicts the better for the United States and for the world.
It has been reiterated here on this floor, and reiterated to the point of weariness, that in every treaty there is some sacrifice of sovereignty we are justified in sacrificing. In what I have already said about other nations putting us into war I have covered one point of sovereignty which ought never to be yielded—the power to send American soldiers and sailors everywhere, which ought never to be taken from the American people or impaired in the slightest degree. Let us beware how we palter with our independence. We have not reached the great position from which we were able to come down into the field of battle and help to save the world from tyranny by being guided by others. Our vast power has all been built up and gathered together by ourselves alone. We forced our way upward from the days of the Revolution, through a world often hostile and always indifferent. We owe no debt to anyone except to France in that Revolution, and those policies and those rights on which our power has been founded should never be lessened or weakened. It will be no service to the world to do so and it will be of intolerable injury to the United States. We will do our share. We are ready and anxious to help in all ways to preserve the world's peace. But we can do it best by not crippling ourselves. . . .
. . . I am thinking of what is best for the world, for if the United States fails the best hopes of mankind fail with it. I have never had but one allegiance—I can not divide it now. I have loved but one flag and I can not share that devotion and give affection to the mongrel banner invented by a league. Internationalism, illustrated by the Bolshevik and by the man to whom all countries are alike provided they can make money out of them, is to me repulsive. National I must remain, and in that way I like all other Americans can render the amplest service to the world. The United States is the world's best hope, but if you fetter her in the interests and quarrels of other nations, if you tangle her in the intrigues of Europe, you will destroy her power for good and endanger her very existence. . . .
We are told that we shall "break the heart of the world" if we do not take this league just as it stands. I fear that the hearts of the vast majority of mankind would beat on strongly and steadily and without any quickening if the league were to perish altogether. . . .
No doubt many excellent and patriotic people see a coming fulfillment of noble ideals in the word "League for Peace." We all respect and share these aspirations and desires, but some of us see no hope, but rather defeat, for them in this murky covenant. For we, too, have our ideals, even if we differ from those who have tried to establish a monopoly of idealism. Out first ideal is our country, and we see her in the future, as in the past, giving service to all her people and to the world. Our ideal of the future is that she should continue to render that service of her own free will. She has great problems of her own to solve, very grim and perilous problems, and a right solution, if we can attain to it, would largely benefit mankind. We would have our country strong to resist a peril from the West, as she has flung back the German menace from the East. We would not have our politics distracted and embittered by the dissensions of other lands. We would not have our country's vigor exhausted, or her moral force abated, by everlasting meddling and muddling in every quarrel, great and small, which afflicts the world. Our ideal is to make her ever stronger and better and finer because in that way alone, as we believe, can she be of the greatest service to the world's peace and to the welfare of mankind.
[From
Congressional Record, 66th Cong., 1st sess., 1919, 3779-84.]
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