Penguin History of the United States of America (88 page)

Thus the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 took most Americans completely by surprise. In a wiser world it would not have done so. The increase of international tension during the previous twenty years had been palpable to anyone with eyes to see. But most citizens of the United States had been cheerfully unaware of danger, and it exploded upon them like a thunderclap. With horror and fascination they read newspapers telling of the rape of Belgium, the invasion of France, the battle of the Marne and the consolidation of the Western Front in the long, parallel systems of trenches. They felt pity for the combatants and their victims, especially the women and children of Belgium; most of all they felt relief that they themselves were not involved and, they thought, never would be. ‘Peace-loving citizens of this country will now rise up,’ said the
Chicago Herald
, ‘and tender a hearty vote of thanks to Columbus for having discovered America.’ The
Wabash Plain Dealer
‘never appreciated so keenly as now the foresight exercised by our forefathers in emigrating from Europe’. The
President issued a Proclamation of Neutrality on 4 August that was widely welcomed; and then they all settled down to wait out the conflict.

Yet the United States would be lucky indeed to remain at peace. Once more a naval war was being waged in the Atlantic and in all the coastal waters of Europe. Such conditions had shaped American history dramatically in the past: in 1781, in 1798 and in 1812. The USA had nearly come to blows with Britain and France during the Civil War, on account of the blockade. Now that Britain and Germany were in a death-grapple on the high seas there was all too much reason to fear that the United States would be dragged in. This is so clear in retrospect that it suggests a further reflection: that in its own interests the United States ought long before to have tipped its weight into the balance of power. Had Germany confronted an alliance between Britain, France and America, she might have been deterred from going to war.

Unfortunately there was never the slightest possibility that such an alliance, or any informal substitute, could be arranged. A century of peace with Europe (nobody counted the Spanish-American War) had given the United States a false sense of security; and the popular view of international relations had been shaped chiefly by the stern warnings of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. ‘No entangling alliances’ was a watchword all too easily learned. Theodore Roosevelt, driven, perhaps, more by his native restlessness than by any deep insight, had made a few gestures against this tradition, for example by sending representatives to the Algeciras Conference on the future of Morocco in 1906; and he had won the Nobel Peace Prize. The citizens were proud of him, but their attitudes were otherwise unaffected: basically they believed that the United States did not need a foreign policy. Anyway, they were at this period more interested in Asia and Latin America than in the place where the real trouble was building up, Europe. President Taft tried (rather unsuccessfully) to extend American influence in China, where traders and missionaries alike saw a fair field for their labours, especially after the Chinese Revolution of 1911; President Wilson was for long deeply concerned with the Mexican Revolution, which also broke out in 1911. It lured him into a thoroughly misguided intervention, from which Mexican-American relations were not to recover for years. In pursuit of what was largely a personal vendetta against the transient dictator of Mexico, General Huerta (Wilson said ‘I am going to teach the South American republics to elect good men’), he sent a detachment of US Marines to occupy the port of Veracruz. In 1916 he sent General John J. Pershing across the frontier at the head of a punitive expedition after the Mexican revolutionary leader, Pancho Villa, sacked the town of Columbus, New Mexico. No one has dared invade the United States since; but the Mexicans, however bitterly divided on other issues, were at one in resenting Wilson’s high-handedness. The citizens of the United States were largely oblivious of all this. The Open Door and the Monroe Doctrine: sheltered by these slogans, Americans who thought about foreign affairs at all hoped
to be left alone to develop their own spheres of influence, in China and south of the Rio Grande, while the other powers developed theirs elsewhere.

In 1914 Woodrow Wilson was nearly as much a victim of these fallacies and this wishful thinking as the most near-sighted of his fellow-citizens. His own background (unlike that of many American academics) was profoundly Anglophile. England was the only foreign country he knew at all well (in his pre-Presidential days he liked to go for bicycling holidays in the Lake District) and was the source of many of his favourite political doctrines. He modelled himself on Air Gladstone, his greatest hero. He believed all the stories
¹
(some of them true) which were being circulated about German atrocities in Belgium, and was naturally sorry for France. He allowed his administration to co-operate closely with Britain in solving the cotton problem, which was causing bitter anti-British feeling in the South: for the British blockade cut off Southern trade with customers in Central Europe, just when there was a bumper crop to be shifted. Cotton prices collapsed, falling by as much as 50 per cent.
²
Once they were aware of the problem the British, who were desperately anxious not to alienate America (they had reason), guaranteed that cotton would not fall in price below eight cents a pound. But Wilson’s conviction was that America could, and therefore should, remain neutral; and to facilitate this policy he tried to suppress all unneutral impulses in himself and everybody else. He stopped listening to atrocity stories and advised his countrymen to be neutral in thought as well as in action. This was rather more than most Americans could manage, but they liked his attitude.

Wilson soon found that it was little help in the problems he actually faced. For example, Britain had had the sense to reform her army in the years before 1914, but had given insufficient attention to the means of arming it adequately. She had no chemical industry to speak of (she imported her dyes and drugs largely from Germany) and therefore could not manufacture explosives in the vast quantities now necessary. Frantic efforts were made to correct this state of affairs, but meantime Britain had to turn to the only other source of supply, the United States. Orders started pouring in, to the joy of American manufacturers, who would otherwise have been struggling with an economic recession, the more so as the Royal Navy imposed a tight blockade on European waters, and all American exports to Germany began
to fall off rapidly. Voices were raised to say that this wartime munitions trade (America also manufactured small arms for the Allies) was un-neutral because it helped one side rather than both. The voices grew louder and more anxious when the British, having rapidly exhausted their supplies of cash, sought to borrow money on Wall Street. The bankers asked the President if they might lend, and he reluctantly gave his permission. He was impressed by the argument of Secretary of State Bryan, that ‘money is the worst of all contrabands because it commands everything else’. But if it was un-neutral to give Britain the means to carry on the war, it was un-neutral to refuse to do so.

This was, perhaps, the crucial moment when the truth made itself felt that real neutrality was impossible for a country so powerful as America had now become: she was bound to take sides, because whatever she did would affect the course of the war. To deny Britain and France their loans would be to deny them the means, not just of victory, but of survival. To help them was to injure Germany and Austria-Hungary (empires from which millions of Americans, or their families, had emigrated, and with which they preserved close ties). The United States had to choose. This was too horrible a fact to face, for it implied a certain responsibility for the fate of Europe and a remote but real risk of war. So Wilson did not face it. He took refuge in legalisms: the Allied request was legitimate under international law, and the Central Powers too were welcome to shop in the United States if they could get past the blockade. America was not responsible for the doings of the British. All very true, and beside the point. The United States had given decisive help to the Allies, and in due course would have to pay for it. The choice had been made, the decision taken. It was probably the inevitable one. In the first place, the public conscience of the American people, as expressed in the press and politicians’ speeches, could not decently have stood by without protest if Wilson handed over Britain, France and Russia to the dictates of Belgium’s ravisher. The Germans did not seem so beastly under the Kaiser as they later did under Hitler, but their genius for making themselves unpopular was already very effective. Second, the bonds linking Britain and America were now stronger than they had been since the Revolution. This was partly the result of patient work by British diplomatists, who had long ago seen that American friendship was indispensable if British power was to be preserved. Chiefly it arose from the basic dispositions of history, as laid down long ago by the founders of the old British Empire. The thirteen colonies might have thrown off British sovereignty (with French help), and the American republic might, ever since, have been slowly emancipating itself from economic, social and cultural tutelage; but the language remained, the religion, the political values, the commercial and financial ties. Nor were these static links: they were dynamic forces, driving the two societies to evolve in the same direction. They had been doing so for more than a century. By 1914 Britain and America were more alike than they had ever been before, both in organization,
outlook and experience.
³
The fact that the leaders of progressive America, educated, middle-class ladies and gentlemen, had been in the habit of exchanging ideas and information with their British counterparts for years was also not without importance. In the last analysis it has to be recognized that it would have taken a mighty effort of will, a herculean application of cold intelligence, a deliberate jettisoning of tradition, decency and friendship, and a readiness to face an almighty storm of protest from the Anglophiles, to bring Woodrow Wilson to the point of abandoning Britain in order to make sure of peace. Since he preferred to evade the issue, heroism was out of the question, and the pro-Allied choice was made fairly easily. To the extent that he recognized what he was doing, he could comfort himself with the thought that nothing was certain. He saved Britain; he might yet induce the belligerents to negotiate; surely America would not need to fight. For Germany could not possibly want to make such a formidable addition to the roll of her enemies: she already had work enough.

Unfortunately for herself and for America, Germany did not see matters in this light. She could not be expected to sympathize very keenly with the American dilemma. After all, the British were threatening her with starvation. It was the Germans’ business to break the blockade if they could and do everything in their power to impede Anglo-American trade. Their best, indeed their only weapons were submarines. Of these they had few to start with (Admiral Tirpitz had not favoured them before the war), but those few achieved such spectacular results in terms of ships sunk and cargoes lost that they became immensely popular with both the German public and the high command. Nor was the German navy very concerned about its choice of targets. Any ship which carried assistance to the Allies seemed to be fair game. On 7 May 1915 a submarine off the west coast of Ireland saw a great vessel looming towards her through the morning mists. The commander launched his torpedo, and the Cunard liner
Lusitania
went to the bottom, carrying with her her cargo, including a quantity of munitions, and 1,198 souls, including 128 Americans.

American opinion was appalled. It was true that the Germans had warned travellers against sailing in
Lusitania
, but no one had taken them seriously: to sink an unarmed passenger vessel of such marginal military importance had seemed to be a barbarism to which no civilized nation would descend. The Americans knew better now, and in the outrage voices began to be heard (among them that of Theodore Roosevelt) demanding war.

There was no chance of Wilson listening, but even so his new dilemma was exceedingly painful. He was still convinced, as a good nineteenth-century liberal, that international law forbade a belligerent to wage war at the expense of civilians and neutrals, or to interfere in any way with a neutral’s legitimate commerce (the question of whether
Lusitania
’s cargo of arms and munitions
was legitimate commerce was brushed aside as unimportant). To acquiesce in German practices was to make a cowardly retreat in the face of a criminal bully. Yet to make effective protests risked war, a war for which America was in every sense unprepared.

Wilson decided to take the risk. He tried to damp down the bellicosity of his countrymen, such as it was, by a speech in which he said that ‘there is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight’; but he sent vigorous notes of protest to Berlin – so vigorous that Bryan, fearing they might touch off war, resigned, to become leader of the peace movement. And indeed Wilson’s line was difficult to defend. He would hold the Germans strictly accountable, he said, for any further loss of American passengers, even on armed British vessels. In the language of diplomacy this was to threaten Germany with a breach of diplomatic relations and possible war, an outcome which might well seem disproportionate to the interests at stake.

Had the breach occurred in I9i5or 1916 Wilson could not have hoped to carry a united country to war with him – if indeed he could have got a declaration of war out of Congress. Yet to have climbed down after such pronouncements would have destroyed him politically. Luckily for him the Germans saved him from his own bad logic. They saw no point in alienating the Americans while the submarines were not yet in a position to deliver a knockout blow to the British; and accordingly they agreed to abide by Wilson’s demands. After the spring of 1916 the submarine campaign was suspended.