When the Great War ended in 1918, US President Wilson was a hero to the Allies.
WW: Writer of Rules and Righter of Wrongs
Many historians over the past century have alluded to Woodrow Wilson’s messianic streak. He was a devout Presbyterian from a family of Presbyterian preachers, infused with a personal sense of right, wrong and destiny – particularly his.
Even as a young student, whenever he joined a group, be it the glee club or the baseball team, he gravitated toward the mechanics of “club,” drafting its constitution and rules. As a professor of governmental studies, what today is called political science, it was the mechanics of governments that intrigued him the most.
By the time Wilson was elected President of the United States in 1912, he already had more than 30 years of political/governmental “cogitation” under his belt. He took office knowing exactly how he believed the country should be run. We had also been at peace for more than a half century. That helped.
Within a year and a half, he was faced by Europe in a race to see which of its countries could turn to shambles first.
The Example of George Washington
Professors traditionally do not earn huge salaries, and that included the popular young Prof. Wilson, who supplemented his meager income by writing and publishing. His biography George Washington first appeared in 1896, shortly before WW’s 40th birthday. Like all his writings, it was well received.
Our first President is famous for many things, but one of his great pieces of “advice” cautioned his “fledgling” country to avoid involvement in European conflicts. We were happily protected by two great oceans. We could afford to mind our own business.
We did exactly that for more than a century.
In August 1914, as the guns opened on each other throughout the European continent (and even farther), Wilson’s advice was the same as GW’s: stay out of it. The country as a whole, was happy to oblige. For three years, we were “too proud to fight,” and Wilson won a second term largely because he “kept us out of war.”
Meanwhile…
The Great War (so named for its extent, scope, brutality, devastation, hemorrhage of resources, and above all casualties) had enveloped not only Europe, but great chunks of Asia, Asia Minor, and even parts of Africa, and by 1917, it was mired in stalemate. Nobody was winning – and everybody was losing.
But while POTUS WW steadfastly refused to commit US troops, he not-so-quietly supported the Allied war efforts in trade and humanitarian supplies. What he wanted most of all, was to be involved in the eventual peace process for determining the New World Order. He kept in close contact with most of the belligerents – at least to the extent of trying to fathom their needs and expectations.
He devised his famous “Fourteen Points,” a series of conditions he believed European countries needed to address as a positive step to the New World Order that would be created.
In It To Win It
Only weeks after WW took his oath of office for the second time, the conditions seriously confronting/affecting our country had become intolerable, and with a heavy heart (truly) Wilson asked Congress to enter The Great War on the side of the Allies.
Once the USA was committed, armed, supplied, trained and deployed overseas, the Great Stalemate came to a fairly rapid end. On November 11, 1918, the Armistice had been signed, and Peace Talks were scheduled to begin.
Against all US tradition, and against all political advice and opposition, Woodrow Wilson insisted on leading the US delegation. In person.
Weel-son, Weel-son!!!
The clamor of the European victors when Woodrow Wilson arrived in France was deafening. He was far more popular in Paris than in Washington. Or anywhere else in the USA. Parades were held in his honor. Dinners, banquets, dozens of daily bouquets. Medals were struck with his image. Peasants knelt as his procession passed. Every European notable vied for a few minutes of his time, gifts in hand.
Then “The Big Four” as they were called, (the USA, Great Britain, France and Italy) got down to business…
Flies in Ointments
While the exhausted soldiers and citizens hailed “Weel-son” as a savior, the hard-nosed European politicians were making mincemeat of his Fourteen Points. “God only needed ten,” snarled George Clemenceau, France’s bulldog statesman. Many Wilson contemporaries and later historians believed WW to be no match for the wily Europeans, who knew their countries’ historical needs and recent sacrifices viscerally.
While Wilson debated like the professor he was, British PM David Lloyd George “argued like a sharpshooter,” with brilliant imagination and historical insight, and Clemenceau was his insistent self.
All acknowledged Wilson’s sincere intentions and idealism, but the European leaders were more interested in reparations – and a declawing-defanging punishment to Germany for starting the huge mess. Its army, navy and merchant ships were drastically reduced; its colonies were confiscated and redistributed; its economy was sorely thwarted, and the country would be surrounded by small “paper states” (Poland, Yugoslavia, etc.) that they believed would be a buffer. It practically assured Germany’s inability to revive. Lloyd George warned that he could not “conceive any greater cause of future war.”
Every one of Wilson’s Fourteen Points was abandoned or reduced to a shell. The only thing remaining was the creation of a League of Nations, to prevent a recurrence of The War to End All Wars. It was WW’s lifelong dream, and he was insistent on salvaging the League as a savior to mankind. In the end, it killed him.
Most modern historians tend to concur that World War I and World War II were merely the same war – separated by 20 years of a lukewarm truce.
Sources:
Brendon, Piers – The Dark Valley: A Panorama of the 1930s – Alfred A. Knopf, 2000
Heckscher, Augustus – Woodrow Wilson: A Biography – Scribner’s – 1991
Smith, Gene – When The Cheering Stopped – Wm. Morrow & Co. – 1961
https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/woodrow-wilson/
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