6:13

alcoholism

8:00

and severe depression and I feel

8:02

like my brain has been slowly, painfully

8:06

slowly, but steadily continuing

8:09

to regain its capabilities. I'm

8:11

still nowhere near to where I was say

8:14

in 2019 in terms of my

8:17

ability to focus, my attention

8:19

span, my memory,

8:22

my mental energy, you know how long

8:24

I can do high mental exertion

8:27

work until my brain just taps out.

8:31

And while dealing with that, as you may recall me mentioning,

8:33

I think in the last episode I put out my

8:35

wife who has several

8:38

different chronic health issues. She's

8:40

had her health flaring up pretty badly

8:43

in the last couple of months so we've

8:45

been dealing with that and had some

8:47

concern about whether or

8:50

not she'd be able to keep doing the job she's

8:52

doing and if she had to step

8:54

over to a less demanding job

8:56

it would of course include probably

8:59

a significant pay cut and given

9:01

the financial situation my family's in at the

9:03

moment that would be I don't even know what we would do.

9:06

Thankfully for the moment those problems seem to be abating

9:09

a little bit and it seems like at least for

9:11

the time being she'll be able to stay in the job

9:13

that she's currently in. So

9:16

that's a little bit of relief however on the other hand I

9:18

had a bit of an issue myself over the past

9:20

couple of weeks. I got sick and

9:23

it ended up snowballing and clusterfucking

9:25

until I was about as sick

9:28

as I've been in at least a year if not

9:30

longer. So

9:32

it was some sort of respiratory infection

9:35

honestly felt like a fairly mild cold in

9:38

the initial stages I have no

9:40

idea if it was a COVID variant or not I don't

9:42

even care or test for it at this point. My

9:45

feeling is if what I'm dealing with feels like a cold whether

9:47

it's a typical cold or whether it's the dreaded COVID

9:50

I don't really care. But

9:53

this time even though I take all kinds

9:55

of different you know vitamins and supplements to help

9:57

my immune system this time probably

10:00

because all of the extreme stress I've been

10:02

under in recent months and how

10:04

kind of ragged and Tired

10:07

and constantly sleep deprived and everything I've

10:09

been over the past few months Even

10:11

though for the first week or so I had it this

10:13

felt like a fairly mild cold It

10:16

eventually snowballed into some combination

10:18

of sinus and broccule infection and

10:21

even pink eye caused by the extreme congestion

10:23

I ended up having I ended up

10:25

losing my voice for multiple days and

10:28

I ended up developing a bad cough and

10:31

I ended up having to go on nuclear

10:34

antibiotics in addition to pink eyed wraps and

10:36

Thankfully, I'm on the mend now, but I'm still not

10:38

all the way better. At least I have a voice

10:41

mostly I mean, I don't know if you can still

10:43

hear the sickness in my voice at this point or

10:45

not But

10:47

at least I mostly have a voice in Addition

10:50

at least now I can talk for usually a couple minutes

10:52

before I start coughing like crazy a

10:54

week ago I would start coughing like crazy

10:57

usually if I talked for like a sentence or two So

11:01

yeah You will never know because I'll try to hit the

11:03

mute or pause button in real time

11:05

as much as I can and of course

11:07

I'll edit things out after the fact in post

11:10

but you will never know how many times during the recording

11:12

of this episode. I had a coughing

11:14

fit So yeah, that's made the

11:16

last couple of weeks extra difficult for me and

11:18

basically impossible until today to even

11:21

think about recording anything for the

11:23

podcast But

11:26

on the plus side, like I said, I seem to be finally

11:28

on the upswing shaking this illness thanks

11:31

to massive doses of antibiotics and

11:34

Also as of this recording, I am 250 days

11:39

without booze So

11:42

despite all the extreme stresses and

11:44

things I've been dealing with in recent months at

11:46

the very least I've managed to stay on the wagon

11:48

as far as that goes So

11:51

Anyway, that's what's going on here.

11:53

And as of this recording next week. I

11:56

will be heading out to Texas to attend

12:00

Jack Spierko's TSP 23 event

12:02

at which I will be a speaker. So I'm very much

12:04

looking forward to that. And I'm kind of

12:06

running myself ragged between now and then

12:08

to number one, get this episode

12:11

done and published if possible before I leave.

12:13

And number two, kind of prepare

12:16

my remarks, what I'm going to say when I speak

12:18

at the event. And of course, to, you know, pack up for

12:20

the trip and take care of all that nuts and bolts stuff

12:22

logistics. And

12:25

I'm sure some of you longer time listeners of the podcast

12:28

have realized that yes, unfortunately

12:30

this year I won't be doing any DHP

12:32

Halloween special episodes. I just did

12:35

not have the time and did not have the capability.

12:37

Like I said, I was without a voice for

12:39

like almost two weeks, basically

12:42

much of the second half of October. I had no voice

12:45

and I was coughing like crazy when I did try and, you know,

12:47

scratchily say something. So

12:50

yeah, no Halloween episodes for 2023, but

12:54

I'm going to try to get this Woodrow Wilson episode out before

12:56

Halloween or by Halloween. And I've

12:58

got several things in the works, cool

13:01

the HP stuff to accomplish in

13:03

November after I get back from Texas. So

13:07

without further ado, let's jump back into

13:09

the story of Woodrow Wilson this time with

13:11

a focus on the period of

13:13

alleged American neutrality, particularly the

13:15

first say six months, or

13:17

maybe a little bit more of that, say

13:21

the first six months or so of World

13:24

War One raging in Europe and the U.S. and

13:26

not officially a belligerent in

13:28

the war allegedly being neutral,

13:30

but in many ways already starting to take

13:32

sides, at least as far as the American

13:35

political and economic elites were concerned.

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14:39

So for the sake of time,

14:41

I won't rehash the origins

14:43

and kind of the outbreak of World

14:46

War I in Europe

14:47

in this episode.

14:49

I've covered this elsewhere to varying

14:51

degrees, probably most recently,

14:54

I think a little over a year ago in DHP

14:57

episode 236, which

14:59

I'll definitely link to in the show notes for

15:01

this episode if you've never listened

15:03

to that one or if you have, but it's been a while.

15:07

And in general, I would say that that episode,

15:09

DHP episode 236, is

15:12

a very good companion or complement

15:14

to this one you're listening to right now. So

15:16

again, I would highly recommend if

15:19

you've never listened to that one, maybe you should, perhaps

15:21

even before this episode or after it. And

15:24

if it's been a while since you've listened to episode 236,

15:27

then you may want to go revisit

15:29

it because I think it dovetails really

15:31

well with this episode. But

15:33

just as a reminder, the two main alliances going

15:36

into World War I were the Triple Entente,

15:39

which eventually is going to get known as the

15:41

Allies, the big players of which

15:43

were Russia, France, and Britain.

15:48

And then as the war began to unfold,

15:50

various other powers in countries,

15:53

small, medium, and large in size, are going

15:56

to join up with that side. And

15:58

then the other side would... the central

16:00

powers, the core of which at the

16:05

time of the Austrian

16:08

Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and

16:12

as the war unfolds, they are going to

16:15

accumulate various allies, the

16:18

most significant of

16:20

which was probably the Ottoman Empire. But

16:24

without delving too much into the

16:25

nitty-gritty details of how the war

16:28

sparked off and began to unfold,

16:30

for now let's just say that

16:33

I absolutely do not believe

16:37

that the real truth, the

16:39

genuine historical facts, the context

16:41

leading up to World War I, and the outbreak

16:44

and early stages of the war itself, that the

16:46

facts just do not fit the

16:49

British and Allied propaganda narrative, i.e.

16:52

that Germany bore sole

16:55

responsibility for the war happening, and

16:57

that the Allied side or the Entente side initially

17:00

was just completely innocent

17:02

of any blame for the war occurring completely

17:05

innocent at all. That

17:07

notion is just bullshit and is

17:09

not supported by the historical facts of

17:11

what actually happened. The

17:14

notion that Germany just sort

17:16

of randomly decided one day to go

17:19

to war with France,

17:21

Russia, and Britain for no particular

17:24

reason other than that the Kaiser was

17:26

a mean asshole and just felt like

17:28

doing some conquering and the German people

17:30

were just a bunch of bloodthirsty monsters

17:33

that needed no encouragement or

17:35

excuses to go slaughter people

17:37

for fun, this is

17:39

about as ridiculous, non-factual,

17:42

and ahistorical as the notion

17:45

that Russia just sort of randomly decided

17:47

to invade Ukraine in February

17:50

of 2022 for absolutely no particular reason

17:52

other than Vladimir Putin is

17:54

a mean asshole and Russians

17:57

are bloodthirsty barbarians

17:59

that like to call it a war. conquer people for fun.

18:02

The reality is that in virtually every

18:04

war throughout human history, including World War

18:06

I and

18:07

the Russo-Ukraine War, there

18:09

is a huge amount of

18:12

backstory and context leading up

18:14

to the actual conflict breaking out that

18:16

is quite complex and in which

18:19

there's a lot of blame to go around in a lot

18:21

of directions.

18:23

Of course, as many of you may know, since

18:26

if you're listening to this podcast, especially if you're

18:29

a regular or long time listener, you

18:31

probably are a lot more informed

18:33

about history than the average zombie walking

18:36

around out there on the street. So

18:38

you're probably more likely to know, but maybe you just

18:40

need a reminder, that the first World War

18:42

broke out in Europe officially on

18:45

July 28, 1914. Now

18:49

like I said, I'm not going to go through all the

18:51

details of how the war broke out here.

18:53

That could be a whole episode or multi-episode

18:56

miniseries in its own right. And

18:59

there have been entire books written just

19:01

about the outbreak of the war,

19:03

the immediate leading up to it and

19:05

then the early phases of the war itself. But

19:07

basically, the

19:10

assassination of Austrian prince

19:13

Franz Ferdinand by Serbian

19:15

terrorists in June of 1914

19:18

led to a cascade of events

19:21

that resulted in the two big alliances

19:23

of European so-called great powers

19:26

at the time, what I just mentioned a minute ago,

19:28

the Triple Entente on the one hand

19:31

and the Central Powers on the other, to

19:33

start to mobilize and go to war against each other.

19:37

This would be the first

19:39

all-out, all-great power

19:41

war that Europe had seen

19:44

since the final defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte 99

19:46

years earlier. And

19:50

while Britain did not jump into the fight immediately,

19:52

they took a few days until the

19:55

leadership of the British government that wanted

19:57

to go to war with Germany for kind of any reason seized

19:59

upon the war. the excuse of the German invasion of Belgium,

20:02

you know, as their justification for going to war against

20:04

Germany. Not the real reason, but the justification. So

20:07

the British didn't jump in right away. I'm trying to remember,

20:10

I think it was maybe August 4th, something like that,

20:12

that the British declared war. And so

20:15

that signaled, you know, the last of the five great

20:17

powers were in the fight. So in other

20:19

words,

20:20

by the end of

20:22

the first week of August 1914, the Great War was a hundred

20:25

percent on in Europe. By

20:28

then, all five of the so-called

20:30

great powers of the time were in the

20:32

fight, along with a variety

20:34

of other smaller countries and more

20:37

countries, again small, medium, and

20:39

large in size and power, would continue

20:41

to jump into the fight over the next few years.

20:44

Including

20:46

the United States in the spring of 1917. Historian

20:50

H. W. Brands says of

20:53

Wilson's knowledge and experience of foreign

20:55

policy around the time that he was elected

20:57

to the presidency in 1912, that

20:59

Wilson was quote, about

21:02

as innocent on the subject as

21:04

a man could be and still consider

21:06

himself educated. The simple

21:09

fact of the matter was that Wilson had

21:11

almost no interest in

21:13

foreign countries and the people who lived there, end

21:16

quote. Now

21:18

you may recall me mentioning earlier in the Wilson

21:21

series a pretty famous

21:23

Wilson quote, one which

21:26

I believe has shown up in every single

21:28

biography of Wilson that I've ever read. And

21:32

the quote is when he said to a friend

21:34

right around the time of his election to the presidency

21:36

in 1912, quote, it

21:39

would be the irony of fate if

21:41

my administration had to deal chiefly

21:44

with foreign affairs. For

21:46

all my preparation has been

21:48

in domestic matters, end quote.

21:52

And that was very much true. Wilson,

21:54

I think, was being quite honest with that

21:56

statement. Even

21:58

setting aside his formal

22:00

studies, and just looking

22:03

at his personal experience, Wilson

22:05

had not traveled extensively

22:08

before becoming president,

22:10

and almost all of the international

22:12

travels that he had done had been

22:14

to the British Isles.

22:17

He'd visited the UK

22:18

a bunch of times over the course

22:20

of his academic career, but he had

22:22

only gone to continental Europe one

22:25

time. And he

22:27

had never visited any continents

22:29

other than North America and Europe. And

22:33

I can tell you from reading

22:35

a lot of his academic work that

22:37

he was mostly ignorant of

22:39

the history of the world other than that

22:41

of America, the British Isles, and

22:44

to a lesser extent other

22:46

parts of northern and western Europe. He

22:49

knew almost nothing even of

22:51

Eastern European history, let alone

22:54

the history of Asia or Africa

22:56

or anywhere else. And

22:59

yet this guy would

23:01

have the hubris to think

23:03

that he and his minions

23:06

of progressive lackeys could

23:10

use the opportunity

23:11

of this great war

23:14

to play God with the world,

23:16

to remove and replace governments

23:19

and redraw the borders of nations in

23:22

Europe, Africa, the Middle

23:24

East, and even parts of Asia.

23:27

Now gee whiz, what could possibly

23:30

go wrong with arrogant,

23:33

ignorant people playing

23:36

God with other people in other parts

23:39

of the world far flung away from them,

23:41

whose history and culture and religion

23:44

and rivalries and hatreds

23:46

and so forth, they don't even remotely

23:48

begin to understand. What could possibly

23:51

go wrong? Well

23:53

I mean the answer is almost endless.

23:55

It's World War II, the

23:58

rise of fascism, the rise of communism,

24:02

the Cold War, a

24:04

lot of the problems in the Middle East, so

24:06

many of these things can be traced

24:09

back to Woodrow Wilson's decision to

24:11

get the US into World War One and then

24:14

how he in conjunction with

24:16

the other victorious allies handled

24:18

the end of that war. That's

24:21

what could go wrong. Now

24:24

by the time World War One broke out

24:26

in Europe, Wilson was

24:29

already starting to intervene a fair

24:31

amount in Latin America. But

24:33

again I am still planning on and working

24:35

on covering all of that stuff in

24:38

a standalone episode

24:41

on Wilson's Banana Wars for DHP

24:44

supporters on places like Patreon and Subscribestar.

24:47

And actually to be honest at this point I'm

24:49

thinking that I'm probably going to break that bonus

24:52

coverage of Wilson's Banana Wars in Latin America

24:54

and the Caribbean into two parts. Because

24:57

like with this episode here, you know what

24:59

I initially intended to be one big episode is just getting

25:01

so long and complex and unwieldy

25:04

that I'm gonna have to break it up in order

25:06

to make it manageable

25:07

for me

25:08

to actually make and in order

25:10

to make it hopefully a little bit more digestible for

25:13

you all to consume.

25:15

But the point is Wilson was already

25:18

on the path increasingly of liberal

25:21

interventionism or neoliberal

25:23

war hawkishness even before

25:26

World War One. He

25:28

was already starting to show himself quite willing

25:30

and eager to engage in

25:32

military interventions abroad as

25:35

long as there was some

25:37

sort of humanitarian

25:40

liberal sounding justification for it. Wilson,

25:45

like

25:46

many people around the world, seems

25:48

to have been surprised by the Great War

25:50

breaking out and it's beginning

25:53

to play out the way it did in the early

25:55

phases. You know it was a war that

25:57

very few people predicted what it would be like.

26:00

like how long it would last etc.

26:03

And because of him being

26:05

a little bit taken off guard by the whole

26:07

thing and because of his general ignorance

26:09

and inexperience in regard to foreign affairs that

26:11

I already mentioned a few minutes ago, he

26:15

seems to have initially been very

26:17

unsure as to exactly

26:19

how the US should react to it

26:22

and you know very much had no

26:24

idea how long the war would last and

26:26

what it would really be like. Again

26:30

this was the first full-on

26:34

war between alliances that

26:36

included all of the great powers of Europe in 99

26:39

years since the final defeat of

26:41

Napoleon in 1815. And

26:44

you don't need a history degree to know that

26:47

to

26:47

say that a lot had changed in

26:49

those 99 years is a massive

26:52

understatement. A

26:54

lot had changed. It was a totally different

26:57

world in Europe in 1914 as opposed

26:59

to 1815. First off in 1815 most countries in Europe hadn't really

27:05

industrialized yet. By 1914

27:08

a lot more nations in

27:11

Europe had gone through an Industrial Revolution

27:13

of some sort. But

27:16

other things had changed besides just technology.

27:18

I mean that was important but in addition

27:21

you had a huge amount of progress

27:23

in those 99 years in the development

27:26

of modern centralized Leviathan

27:28

nation states with highly

27:30

effective modern propaganda techniques

27:32

and organizations and

27:35

just the overall kind of organizational

27:38

software for doing things

27:40

like mobilizing people and resources

27:42

for war. Those things were far more

27:44

developed and effective in 1914 than they

27:47

had been in the early 1800s.

27:51

And then on top of that you

27:53

had all the massive improvements

27:56

in the effectiveness of things

27:58

like weapons and transportation technology. for

28:01

war than had existed in the days

28:03

of Napoleon. I mean, you're

28:05

going from wars being primarily fought

28:07

by infantrymen with smoothbore muskets

28:10

and by what we would consider rather

28:12

primitive and ineffective artillery in

28:15

Napoleon's day to wars being

28:17

fought with modern repeating

28:20

rifles and machine guns

28:22

and landmines and barbed wire

28:25

and poison gas and eventually even

28:27

things like planes and tanks and of course

28:30

at sea things like underwater mines

28:32

and submarines.

28:34

So it was just

28:37

an unprecedented new

28:39

type of war. And yeah, you

28:41

can go and see little previews,

28:44

little portents of this in

28:46

some of the latter stages of the US Civil War. You

28:49

can see some aspects of this happening

28:52

in the Franco-Prussian War. You

28:54

can see some aspects of this being revealed

28:57

in the Boer War in South Africa. And

28:59

you can see even more aspects of what would happen in World

29:01

War I being revealed in the Russo-Japanese

29:03

War of 1904 to 1905.

29:07

But none of those really put

29:10

it all together and had entire

29:12

alliances of great powers fighting

29:14

each other directly, not in a proxy sort

29:16

of way. Initially,

29:19

most Americans, regardless of their politics

29:22

or station in life, seem to have

29:24

reacted with thankful relief

29:28

that their country was on the other side of the

29:30

planet from this giant war that was

29:32

breaking out and they were equally grateful

29:35

that the US was not allied to either side.

29:39

Even the US Ambassador to the UK,

29:41

Walter Heinz Page, who was a

29:44

huge lover of Britain and a heater of

29:46

Germany since before this war even

29:48

happened, even he initially

29:51

reacted to the outbreak of the

29:53

war by writing, Again

29:56

and ever, I thank Heaven for

29:58

the Atlantic Ocean. how wise

30:00

our no-alliance policy

30:03

is."

30:04

Now he wouldn't stick with these sentiments for

30:07

very long, in fact within just a matter of weeks

30:09

at most if not days, he was

30:11

totally focused on loving

30:14

Britain, hating Germany, and wanting the

30:16

US to get into the war to help the Brits

30:18

win over Germany.

30:21

I mean for much of the period of American quote-unquote

30:23

neutrality, Ambassador Page

30:26

was

30:27

seemingly more pro-British than

30:30

somebody like Bill Crystal is pro-Israel

30:32

in our time.

30:34

In fact, like half the time if not more,

30:37

it seems like he was doing

30:39

more to try and work for the British government

30:42

from 1914 to 1917 than he was for the American government.

30:47

And you see a lot of this

30:48

where people who would become very

30:50

quickly extremely loud

30:53

bloodthirsty voices of pro-British,

30:55

anti-German, pro-US intervention

30:58

sentiments. Many

31:00

of them, in the initial days and sometimes

31:02

even weeks after the war broke out, expressed

31:05

what I would consider quite reasonable sentiments,

31:08

which is, it's a tragedy that this

31:10

giant great power war is happening in Europe, thankfully

31:14

America's not involved, and

31:17

the best thing we can do, both

31:19

for ourselves and for the rest of the world as Americans,

31:22

is to try to stay the hell out of it. Arch

31:25

Warhawk, Anglophile, and

31:27

Teutana-phobe Senator Henry Cabot

31:29

Lodge, great warmonger

31:32

buddy of Teddy Roosevelt, he

31:35

also expressed a desire in

31:37

the early days of the war for the

31:39

US to remain neutral and to remain

31:42

impartial and stay the hell out. And

31:45

while Page, Lodge, and men like

31:47

them may have abandoned these sentiments

31:49

very quickly if they ever sincerely held

31:51

them in the first place, many

31:53

Americans would hang on to these

31:56

sentiments of, thank God

31:58

for the Atlantic Ocean, thank God were neutral

32:00

and not allied with

32:01

anybody at war.

32:03

They would hang on to the sentiments for the next

32:05

year or two, if not longer.

32:48

So it took Wilson a couple of weeks

32:50

to kind of craft his

32:52

exact response

32:54

to the European War.

32:56

Partly, as

32:58

I've already mentioned, because

33:00

he was caught by surprise by the outbreak

33:02

of the war and overall he was

33:05

just not prepared

33:07

to make European diplomacy a high

33:09

priority. But also

33:12

partly because his first wife had

33:14

died just a few days before

33:16

the war broke out and this threw

33:18

Wilson into a very

33:21

severe grief-fueled depression for

33:23

months.

33:25

But within a few weeks of the outbreak

33:27

of the war, Wilson would officially

33:29

declare

33:30

that the US would follow a policy

33:33

of neutrality,

33:34

which was a popular move with

33:37

the overwhelming majority of Americans

33:39

at the time.

33:41

He also seems to have initially

33:44

believed for the most part

33:46

that neutrality policy

33:48

would be best not just because it was

33:50

the politically popular move at the time, but

33:53

also

33:54

because he thought that neutrality

33:57

would give the US a

33:59

legitimate

33:59

see in the eyes of all the belligerents

34:02

and therefore would give the US

34:05

and him as president of it, of course, the

34:07

dominant influence over any

34:10

peace negotiations that would end this

34:12

war. And Wilson

34:14

very much

34:16

wanted

34:17

to be the dominant individual

34:19

in remaking the world in

34:21

his preferred image once the war

34:23

was over. Now later, of course,

34:26

as we'll see, he's going to change his mind

34:29

and he's going to kind of flip it around and decide

34:31

that only by picking sides

34:33

with the allies, of course,

34:35

for whom he was always biased, especially towards

34:37

the British, that only by picking sides

34:40

and helping that side win the war

34:42

in a dominant fashion

34:44

would the US and himself be

34:46

able to be the dominant force in

34:49

shaping the post-war world

34:51

order.

34:52

Now we'll get to Wilson's first big

34:54

kind of elaborated statement

34:57

on neutrality, which

34:58

came a few weeks into

35:00

the war. But first I'll just mention

35:02

he did make a proclamation of neutrality on

35:04

August 4th,

35:06

when the war had only been rolling for about one week.

35:09

And so I'm going to share with you some excerpts

35:12

from that proclamation.

35:14

Quote, whereas

35:16

a state of war unhappily exists

35:19

between Austria-Hungary and Serbia and

35:21

between Germany and France and between

35:23

Germany and Russia, and whereas

35:26

the United States is on terms of friendship

35:28

and enmity

35:29

with the contending powers and

35:31

with the persons inhabiting their several

35:34

dominions,

35:35

and whereas the laws and treaties

35:37

of the United States, without

35:39

interfering with the free expression of opinion

35:42

and sympathy,

35:43

or with the commercial

35:46

manufacture or sale of arms or munitions

35:48

of war, nevertheless impose

35:51

upon all persons who may

35:53

be within their territory and jurisdiction the

35:56

duty

35:56

of an impartial neutrality

35:58

during the existence And

36:02

whereas it is the duty of a neutral

36:04

government not to permit or suffer

36:06

the making of its waters subservient

36:10

to the purposes of war.

36:12

Now therefore I, Woodrow

36:14

Wilson, President of the United States of

36:16

America,

36:18

in order to preserve the neutrality

36:20

of the United States and of its citizens and of persons

36:23

within its territory and jurisdiction,

36:25

and to enforce its laws and treaties, and

36:27

in order that all persons being warned

36:30

of the general tenor of the laws and treaties

36:32

of the United States in this behalf and

36:34

of the law of nations,

36:36

may thus be prevented from any

36:39

violation of the same, do hereby

36:41

declare and proclaim that by

36:43

certain provisions of the act approved on

36:46

the fourth day of March 80, 1909, commonly known

36:50

as the Penal Code of the United States, the

36:53

following acts are forbidden to

36:55

be done under severe penalties

36:58

within the territory and jurisdictions of

37:00

the United States to wit,

37:03

end quote. And the proclamation then goes

37:05

on to list in a very dry

37:08

and legalistic fashion various

37:10

non-neutral actions

37:12

that Americans, more by law, not

37:15

be allowed to engage in.

37:17

And after this list, the proclamation

37:19

then continues, quote,

37:22

and I do further declare and proclaim

37:25

that the statutes and the treaties of the United

37:27

States and the law of nations

37:28

alike require that no person

37:30

within the territory and jurisdiction of the United States

37:33

shall take part directly

37:35

or indirectly in the said laws

37:37

that shall remain at peace with all

37:40

of the said belligerents and shall maintain

37:42

a strict and impartial neutrality.

37:45

And I do hereby enjoin all citizens

37:48

of the United States and all persons residing

37:50

or being within the territory or jurisdiction of

37:52

the United States to observe

37:55

the laws thereof and to commit

37:57

no act contrary to the provisions of

37:59

the said law.

37:59

statutes or treaties or in violation

38:02

of the law of nations in that behalf.

38:05

And I do hereby warn all citizens

38:08

of the United States and all persons residing

38:10

or being within the territory or jurisdiction

38:13

that

38:14

while the free and full expression of sympathies

38:17

in public and private is

38:19

not restricted by the laws of the United

38:21

States, military

38:24

forces in aid of a belligerent

38:26

cannot lawfully be originated or

38:28

organized within its jurisdiction. And

38:32

that while all persons may lawfully

38:35

and without restriction by reason of

38:37

the aforesaid state of war, manufacture

38:40

and sell within the United States

38:42

arms and munitions of war and other

38:44

articles ordinarily known as contraband

38:47

of war. Yet they cannot

38:49

carry such articles upon the

38:51

high seats for the use or

38:54

service of a belligerent nor

38:56

can they transport soldiers and officers

38:59

of a belligerent or attempt to

39:01

break any blockade which may

39:03

be lawfully established and maintained during

39:06

the set wars without incurring

39:08

the risk of hostile capture and

39:10

the penalties denounced by the law of

39:12

nations in that behalf."

39:16

So quite reasonable at this point in time

39:18

anyway, he's trying to prevent

39:22

Americans from getting involved

39:24

in the conflict even indirectly in

39:26

any way that might raise

39:28

the danger of the nation as a whole

39:30

getting sucked into the war.

39:33

Back to the proclamation quote,

39:36

and I do hereby give notice that

39:38

all citizens of the United States and others

39:40

who may claim

39:42

the protection of this government

39:44

who may misconduct themselves

39:46

in the premises will do so at

39:48

their peril and that

39:51

they can in no wise obtain any

39:53

protection from the government of the United States

39:56

against the consequences of their misconduct

39:58

end quote. So

40:00

that not only are Americans liable to

40:03

potentially getting punished by American law

40:06

and international law

40:08

should they

40:09

try to get involved in the war in some

40:11

fashion.

40:12

But also that if Americans want

40:15

to poke their nose into someone else's wars

40:18

and they get in trouble, let's say, with the authorities

40:20

of one of the belligerent nations, that

40:24

the U.S. government is not going

40:26

to do anything to try and protect them

40:29

from those consequences of their actions. Now

40:33

if Wilson had actually stuck by

40:35

those sentiments and the sentiments

40:37

he expressed publicly in

40:40

most instances for the next several months, the

40:43

U.S. would have stayed genuinely

40:45

neutral and therefore would have

40:47

stayed out of the war. However,

40:50

it's not going to be long until Wilson starts

40:53

to backtrack on much of what

40:55

he said in that proclamation of neutrality. And

40:58

it's ultimately going to get to the point where

41:01

Wilson is going to argue that

41:03

American citizens

41:06

who choose to travel

41:08

on ships of a belligerent nation

41:10

in the war

41:12

and who travel on those ships into active

41:14

war zones

41:16

and on ships that are actually

41:19

armed in some fashion, that

41:21

those Americans still should

41:23

be protected by the U.S. government

41:26

and that should an

41:28

American, let's say for example there's an American

41:31

citizen on a British

41:33

merchant ship or passenger

41:36

linership.

41:38

And let's say that British

41:40

ship is even carrying war

41:42

contraband materials, is carrying ammunition

41:45

from the U.S. bound for Europe.

41:47

And let's say even that that British

41:49

ship is armed

41:52

and is under orders

41:54

to try to destroy any

41:56

U-boats it encounters.

42:00

is ultimately going to take the stance that

42:03

Germany has no right, German submarines

42:05

have no right

42:07

to

42:08

try to take out

42:09

that British ship under these circumstances,

42:12

and that in fact Americans have the right to

42:15

travel on foreign belligerent ships

42:17

that are armed and carrying contraband, and

42:20

that are going into declared active war

42:22

zones, like for example the North Sea.

42:25

That they have the right to be free from any risk

42:28

of death or injury by German

42:30

naval actions, and that should

42:32

any Americans die under

42:35

those circumstances, that it is a crime

42:38

attributable

42:39

to the German government and shows

42:41

how evil and barbaric they are.

42:44

Wilson is also going to before long start

42:47

to make various policy changes

42:50

that would actively encourage,

42:52

enable, and facilitate

42:54

financial and material support

42:57

from the US private sector for

42:59

the benefit

43:01

of the Allied governments that were

43:03

engaged in the war.

43:05

So in other words, the US government is going to go

43:07

beyond even just like

43:10

taking a hands-off approach to

43:12

say American banks lending

43:14

money to the governments of Britain and

43:16

France and Russia, or American manufacturers

43:20

selling weapons and ammunition to

43:22

the governments of Britain, France, and Russia. Not

43:25

only is the US going to be hands-off with that before

43:27

long,

43:28

but they're going to be in various ways actively

43:31

encouraging and facilitating

43:33

that business.

43:36

And I'll bring this up again I'm sure, but

43:39

you know how

43:39

does that look

43:41

from the perspective of the German government and even

43:43

the German people?

43:45

That the US government is you know won't

43:48

shut up about how neutral they are and how therefore

43:50

in any boo-boo Germany you can't mess with us,

43:52

and yet at the same time the US

43:54

government is actively facilitating

43:57

and encouraging

43:58

US businesses.

43:59

to finance and supply all

44:02

of Germany's enemies in the war. How

44:04

neutral is that?

44:06

A few weeks later,

44:08

on August 19,

44:11

1914, Wilson spoke to the Congress

44:13

for the first time on the subject of the war

44:16

in Europe and what he thought

44:18

the role and relation of

44:20

the United States to the conflict should be,

44:23

saying, quote,

44:25

My fellow countrymen, I suppose

44:27

that every thoughtful man in America

44:30

has asked himself during these last

44:32

troubled weeks

44:33

what influence the European war

44:36

may exert upon the United States,

44:38

and I take the liberty of addressing

44:40

a few words to you in order to point

44:42

out that it is entirely within

44:45

our own choice what its effects upon

44:47

us will be and to urge very

44:49

earnestly

44:50

upon you

44:51

the sort of speech and conduct

44:54

which will best safeguard the nation

44:56

against distress

44:58

and disaster.

45:00

The effect of the war upon

45:02

the United States will depend upon

45:05

what American

45:05

citizens say and do.

45:09

Every man who really loves America

45:12

will act and speak in

45:14

the true spirit of neutrality, which

45:16

is the spirit of impartiality

45:19

and fairness and friendliness to

45:22

all concerned,

45:23

end quote.

45:24

Now, that line is key

45:26

in so many ways, in my opinion.

45:29

It harkens back to the

45:32

content and spirit

45:34

of key passages in George

45:36

Washington's farewell address,

45:39

and it also harkens back to statements

45:41

by Thomas Jefferson and several

45:44

other key founding fathers advocating

45:46

for the United States to stay

45:49

the hell out of Europe's wars and problems. And

45:52

again, had Wilson

45:54

truly meant this when he said it and continued

45:57

to mean it for the next several years,

46:00

The US would have stayed the hell out of World War

46:02

I, and both the US and the planet

46:05

would have been better off for it.

46:08

Instead, in very little time, Wilson is

46:10

going to completely go back on

46:13

these sorts of statements. And in fact,

46:15

by the time the US gets into the war officially,

46:18

it's going to be at the point where, you know,

46:21

the government, Woodrow Wilson in 1914 is

46:23

saying it's the duty of Americans,

46:26

if they love their country, to stay neutral, not

46:28

just indeed, but even thought.

46:32

But after the US gets into the war

46:34

in 1917, and censorship

46:37

and propaganda are in full effect, the

46:39

message is going to go from it's every

46:42

patriotic American's duty to be basically

46:44

an America first-er, and to not

46:46

pick sides in the European war. It's going to flip

46:48

to, if you're not actively

46:51

hardcore pro-Britain and pro-France,

46:54

you must be an evil traitor who

46:56

loves the Kaiser. And

46:59

you certainly cannot be a

47:01

patriotic American if you don't also

47:03

love

47:04

Britain and France.

47:07

And in fact, just to give you one example of

47:09

this, once the US is in the war,

47:12

there was a movie made by Hollywood

47:15

during World War I called The Spirit

47:17

of 76.

47:19

And it was a movie about the American Revolution.

47:23

And the US government censored

47:26

it.

47:27

They shit-canned the movie. Didn't allow it to

47:29

be

47:30

fully released, even though it was made.

47:33

Now think about that. In the name of patriotism,

47:37

the US government is banning a movie

47:40

about the American Revolution.

47:43

I mean, that's just Orwellian as all get-out.

47:46

But aside from that,

47:47

it shows you what's going on. Because

47:50

why on earth would the government be interested in censoring

47:52

a movie about the American Revolution during

47:54

World War I? Well,

47:58

from the American perspective,

48:01

Who are the quote-unquote bad guys

48:03

during the American Revolution?

48:06

The British. The

48:08

very same government that

48:10

in 1917 Americans

48:11

were told is like, you know, right

48:14

up there

48:14

with the US government in terms of its excellence

48:17

and nobility and superiority and

48:19

that it's fighting on the side of democracy

48:21

and human rights and civilization and

48:23

all that's good.

48:25

So it certainly wouldn't do for people to be

48:27

reminded that, hey, you know, back in the 1770s

48:30

and 80s we were actually fighting

48:32

the Brits.

48:34

So yeah, those from if you pick sides

48:36

in World War I, you can't be a patriotic American

48:39

too. You have to pick sides and you have

48:41

to pick this side in World War I

48:42

or you're not a patriotic American.

48:45

So back to Wilson's speech.

48:47

Quote,

48:49

the spirit of the nation in this critical matter

48:51

will be determined

48:52

largely by what individuals

48:54

and society and those gathered in public

48:56

meetings do and say upon

48:59

what newspapers and magazines contain,

49:01

upon what ministers utter in their pulpits

49:04

and men proclaim as their opinions

49:06

on the street.

49:08

The people of the United States are drawn from

49:11

many nations and chiefly from

49:13

the nations now at war.

49:15

It is natural and inevitable that

49:18

there should be the utmost variety of sympathy

49:20

and desire among them with regard

49:22

to the issues and circumstances of the

49:24

conflict. Some

49:26

wish one nation, others another to

49:29

succeed in the moment of strangle. It

49:32

will be easy to excite passion and difficult

49:34

to allay it. Those

49:36

responsible for exciting it will assume

49:39

a heavy responsibility,

49:41

responsibility for no less a

49:43

thing

49:44

than that the people of the United States,

49:45

whose love of their country and

49:47

whose loyalty to its government should

49:50

unite them as Americans all. Bound

49:52

in honor and affection to think first

49:55

of her and her interests may

49:57

be divided in camps of hostile opinion.

50:01

Hot against each other, involved

50:03

in the war itself in impulse and

50:05

opinion, if not in action.

50:09

Such divisions among us would be fatal to our

50:11

peace of mind and might seriously

50:14

stand in the way of the proper performance

50:16

of our duty as the

50:18

one great nation at peace, the

50:21

one people holding itself ready to

50:24

play a part of impartial mediation and

50:26

speak the counsels of peace and

50:28

accommodation, not as a partisan,

50:31

but as a friend."

50:34

And again, if Wilson had stuck by these

50:36

sorts of sentiments, I would have a

50:38

much higher opinion of him for whatever that's worth.

50:42

And the US and the world would have

50:44

been better off. I

50:46

think he was right, and William Jennings

50:49

Bryan, who also thought this was right, whether Wilson

50:51

stopped listening to him soon,

50:53

if he ever did, that

50:56

the most helpful thing the US could have done

50:58

in regards to World War I is to stay out of it, and

51:00

if to be involved in it in any way

51:03

it would be to

51:04

try to act as a genuinely

51:07

neutral arbiter,

51:09

to try and broker a

51:10

peace. But the thing is, you can't

51:12

do that effectively

51:14

after you've picked sides.

51:17

Back to Wilson. Quote, I

51:20

venture therefore my fellow countrymen to

51:22

speak a solemn word of warning

51:25

to you against that deepest,

51:27

most subtle, most essential

51:29

breach of neutrality which may spring

51:31

out of partisanship, out of passionately

51:34

taking sides.

51:36

The United States must be neutral

51:39

in fact as well as in name during these days

51:41

that are to try men's souls. We

51:44

must be impartial in thought as

51:46

well as in action. Must put a curb

51:49

upon our sentiments as well as upon

51:51

every transaction that might be construed

51:54

as a preference of one party

51:56

to the struggle before another.

51:59

What is of America?

52:03

I am speaking, I feel sure, the

52:05

earnest wish and purpose of every

52:08

thoughtful American,

52:09

that this great country of ours, which

52:11

is, of course, the first in

52:13

our thoughts and in our hearts,

52:16

should show herself

52:17

in this time of peculiar

52:20

trial, a nation fit beyond

52:22

others to exhibit the

52:25

fine poise of undisturbed

52:28

judgment. The dignity of self-control,

52:31

the efficiency of dispassionate action,

52:35

a nation that neither sits in judgment

52:38

upon others nor is disturbed

52:40

in her own counsels

52:41

and which keeps herself fit

52:44

and free

52:45

to do what is honest

52:47

and disinterested and truly serviceable

52:50

for the peace of the world.

52:53

While we not resolve to put upon

52:55

ourselves the restraints

52:58

which will bring to our people

53:00

the happiness and the great and lasting

53:02

influence for peace we covet

53:04

for them.

53:08

This speech is easily one

53:10

of the best, possibly the best speeches

53:12

in my opinion, of Wilson's entire

53:14

career. If,

53:17

of course, you just take the words at face

53:19

value while ignoring all

53:21

of his subsequent actions that give lie

53:23

to him. Now most

53:26

of you probably already know, and

53:28

I certainly do,

53:29

that Wilson would ultimately choose

53:31

sides and play favorites

53:33

before long, in fact pretty quickly,

53:35

long before the US officially

53:38

would enter the war in April of 1917. But

53:42

that said, I'll give the devil his due

53:44

here.

53:46

I've come to the conclusion, given

53:49

my countless hours of reading about

53:51

Wilson and reading Wilson's words

53:53

at this point, that he actually at least mostly

53:55

meant

53:56

to be a part of the at

54:01

the time that he gave the speech that

54:03

I just showed.

54:05

Now he was clearly conflicted,

54:08

contradictory, ambivalent on the issue

54:10

as some of his off-the-record statements,

54:13

even during the first year of the war, seemed to indicate.

54:16

So I'm not saying that there was no part

54:19

of his brain

54:20

that was sympathetic

54:22

to the Allies, especially the British, from day

54:24

one

54:25

and against the Germans.

54:27

But I

54:28

think the majority

54:30

of his mind did at least initially

54:34

believe in the sentiments

54:36

that he expressed in that speech.

54:39

And in comparing Wilson to FDR,

54:41

who will be of course the next

54:44

president that would be confronted

54:46

with a world war, who will initially

54:49

publicly advocate neutrality,

54:51

but who will quickly and unofficially

54:54

pick sides and who ultimately will maneuver

54:56

the country into the war. I

54:58

think that despite his ambivalence,

55:01

Wilson still mostly

55:03

genuinely meant it, at least initially and

55:05

for a little while, when he said that

55:08

he wanted the US to be truly neutral

55:10

and to stay out of the war. I

55:13

do think he certainly abandoned those beliefs

55:16

and those intentions well before

55:18

April of 1917, which is when

55:20

he's finally going to ask the Congress for a declaration

55:23

of war. When

55:25

exactly he stopped really

55:26

meaning it at all

55:28

when speaking about neutrality,

55:29

I'm really not certain.

55:31

It may be impossible to know

55:34

with any precision,

55:35

without some kind of like magical or sci-fi

55:37

way of retroactively

55:40

reading the mind of a man who's been dead for

55:42

nearly a century.

55:45

But I do think that Wilson had fully

55:47

abandoned any genuine desire

55:49

or intention for neutrality well before

55:51

the spring of 1917. And

55:54

I also firmly believe that Wilson had abandoned

55:56

any belief in and desire for neutrality

55:58

from the US, when well before the

56:01

presidential campaign of 1916 kicked off. By

56:04

the way, that's the campaign where Wilson

56:07

got reelected and his main

56:09

campaign slogan was,

56:11

he kept us out of war.

56:14

I don't think Wilson intended to keep the US out

56:16

of war as of that time either.

56:19

So I think Wilson probably meant it when

56:21

he said he wanted to be neutral and stay out of the

56:23

war in August of 1914.

56:25

I think he had probably abandoned that though within

56:28

about a year. Meaning

56:31

the summer of 1915 after

56:33

the sinking of Louis de Tainy. But

56:36

where exactly during that first year of the war

56:39

did he abandon his desire

56:41

of neutrality as of this recording anyway, I

56:43

can't pinpoint it. But definitely

56:45

I would argue sometime

56:48

between the summer of 1914 and the summer of 1950.

56:54

I think Wilson had,

56:55

regardless of his public

56:58

statements of the contrary, I think Wilson

57:00

had pretty much decided that he

57:02

would ultimately get the US into

57:04

the war on the side of the British and French.

57:07

But that for political reasons,

57:10

he would keep his public statements

57:13

mostly sounding like his August 1914

57:15

statements

57:17

until after he had been reelected

57:19

in the 1916 campaign.

57:22

Now, if I'm right, all of this means

57:25

that Wilson was continuously

57:28

and blatantly

57:30

lying

57:31

to the American people about his stance

57:33

on the war and his intentions with the war for

57:36

at least a year,

57:38

if not closer to two.

57:41

And by the way, there is absolutely no doubt that Wilson

57:44

was perfectly capable of and fine

57:46

with

57:47

lying

57:48

to the American people

57:49

on matters of foreign policy.

57:52

How can I say that we know this without a doubt? Well,

57:54

because in November of 1914,

57:56

November of 1914, right, the war had only been

57:59

going on for...

57:59

what, three, four months.

58:02

Colonel House, Wilson's closest

58:04

friend and advisor at the time, wrote

58:07

in his diary that Wilson

58:09

had confided to him that he, in

58:12

Wilson, had no

58:14

issues or qualms with lying

58:16

to the press and, by extension, with lying

58:18

to the American people

58:20

about matters of foreign policy.

58:23

I mean, he flat out said so to House in

58:25

private. There's also every reason

58:27

to believe that even if he kind of meant

58:29

it about neutrality, that Wilson

58:31

nonetheless was strongly inclined to the

58:33

British side of the war from the very beginning.

58:36

And if so,

58:37

that means that even if he kind of mostly meant

58:40

it when he said he wanted neutrality early on,

58:42

there was still some genuine conflict

58:44

within him.

58:46

So for example, on August 19, 1914, the

58:48

exact same day as

58:51

his first big speech on neutrality that

58:53

I shared pieces of just a few minutes ago, Wilson

58:56

wrote to Lord Gray, the

58:59

British foreign secretary, that the US

59:02

and the UK were, quote,

59:04

bound together

59:05

by common principle and purpose, end

59:08

quote. And also, this

59:10

early on, Wilson revealed

59:13

a belief in some sort

59:15

of a domino theory

59:16

regarding a potential German

59:19

victory in this war,

59:21

by which I mean the belief that

59:23

if the central power is won, eventually

59:26

and inevitably, the US would have

59:28

to take on Germany. And Wilson

59:31

expressed some concern that

59:33

this would lead to increased

59:36

authoritarianism in the US. Now

59:39

ironically, him getting the US into

59:41

the war to ensure the Allies win

59:43

would actually result

59:45

in the largest spike in authoritarianism

59:48

in American history up until that point. But

59:52

for sure, like Teddy Roosevelt,

59:54

like Henry Cabot Lodge, like Alfred

59:57

Thayer Mahan, like Colonel House.

1:00:00

Wilson definitely believed in

1:00:02

this Anglo-Saxonist idea, this

1:00:05

idea of the natural affinity

1:00:07

of the English-speaking peoples of the world,

1:00:10

and believed in the superiority of the

1:00:12

Anglo-Saxons over all

1:00:14

other quote-unquote races,

1:00:17

including the German quote-unquote

1:00:19

race from which

1:00:21

actually the Anglo-Saxons largely derived.

1:00:24

But the main difference was that Wilson

1:00:27

was a little bit more subtle usually

1:00:29

in expressing these Anglo-Saxonist tendencies

1:00:32

than somebody like Katie

1:00:34

Roosevelt would be, or somebody like Henry

1:00:36

Cabot Lodge would be.

1:00:38

So the point is that while

1:00:40

Wilson in the very early weeks and months

1:00:43

of the war might have largely been

1:00:45

jingling

1:00:46

when he said he wanted to keep the US out of the war,

1:00:49

he still nonetheless had a real

1:00:52

emotional attachment to

1:00:54

one side, and in particular one country,

1:00:57

Great Britain. And

1:01:00

so that alone made it very likely that if

1:01:02

it looked like that side, that country couldn't

1:01:04

win the war without US help,

1:01:06

Wilson would be very inclined

1:01:09

to get the US into the war

1:01:11

to make sure they won.

1:01:14

Of course a

1:01:15

big part of influencing both Wilson's

1:01:17

thinking

1:01:18

as well as large portions

1:01:20

of the American people

1:01:22

would be British propaganda in

1:01:24

the US, which I covered a while

1:01:26

back in that DHP episode

1:01:29

I already referred to earlier, which was

1:01:31

episode 236. And again,

1:01:33

I'll throw a link to that episode in the show

1:01:35

for this episode in case you've never listened

1:01:37

to it or it's been a while, because again,

1:01:40

it's a great companion to this episode.

1:01:44

It covers a bit more detail on the outbreak

1:01:46

of the war, and it covers in much more

1:01:48

detail, the British propaganda

1:01:50

operations in the US from 1914 to 1917. And

1:01:54

it also hits upon a bit the real story

1:01:57

of the truth about the sinking

1:01:59

of Lusitania. and the context

1:02:01

in which it happened, what was going on on the

1:02:03

high seas, and the ways in which not only the Germans,

1:02:05

but also the British, and the British started it, were

1:02:08

breaking existing international law precedents

1:02:11

by their actions on the high seas. And

1:02:14

on the topic of the effect of British propaganda

1:02:18

in the US, even

1:02:20

as kind of mainstream and establishment

1:02:23

of an historian as H. W. Brans

1:02:26

is still competent and

1:02:29

intellectually honest enough to admit that quote, the

1:02:32

Germans propaganda agencies amplified

1:02:34

this perception by which he means that

1:02:38

the Germans were the big bad guys of the war.

1:02:41

By disseminating tales of

1:02:43

German atrocities,

1:02:46

the spurious nature

1:02:47

of some of the stories eventually came

1:02:50

out, but not before they accomplished

1:02:52

their purpose, end quote.

1:02:55

And keep in mind that almost

1:02:58

everybody in Wilson's cabinet

1:03:01

and his informal circle of advisors were

1:03:04

to one degree or another

1:03:06

Anglophiles

1:03:07

and or Teutonic folks,

1:03:10

which Wilson himself of course was as well.

1:03:14

In fact, in his cabinet, only the

1:03:16

Secretary of State,

1:03:17

William Jennings Brine

1:03:19

seems not to have been heavily

1:03:21

biased in favor of the Brits. And

1:03:24

he was also the only one

1:03:26

who really, really meant

1:03:28

it 100% and not just

1:03:31

for a little while,

1:03:32

when he would say things to the effect

1:03:35

that the US should not take

1:03:37

sides in this conflict.

1:03:39

And of course, it's for that very reason

1:03:42

that Brian is only going to be Secretary

1:03:44

of State until June of 1915.

1:03:48

And I'll mention a few other

1:03:49

key Wilson advisors and

1:03:51

their biases regarding the war.

1:03:55

But I also want to mention that, you know, aside from

1:03:57

Wilson's own General Anglophilia, and

1:04:00

the fact that most of his top advisors

1:04:03

and cabinet secretaries were

1:04:05

anglophiles as well, and aside from

1:04:07

the effects of British propaganda over the

1:04:09

course of the war, I think that

1:04:12

another big factor

1:04:14

that nudged Wilson in the direction

1:04:17

of eventually getting into the war on the side

1:04:19

of the Allies

1:04:20

first was his overall

1:04:22

tendency throughout his life

1:04:25

towards kind of a totalist, mannequin,

1:04:28

pure black and white moral worldview.

1:04:31

And of course, under this worldview, he's always

1:04:33

on the side of God, righteousness,

1:04:36

progress, etc.

1:04:39

And this is, I think, largely because

1:04:41

of the influence of his father, whom

1:04:43

you may remember was a leading

1:04:46

Presbyterian pastor and theologian in

1:04:48

the American South, in the 19th century.

1:04:52

And Woodrow Wilson himself had displayed

1:04:54

this tendency towards mannequinism throughout

1:04:57

his life. You may

1:04:59

recall me in a previous

1:05:01

episode a while back in this series

1:05:04

mentioning Wilson's essay entitled

1:05:07

Christ's Army, which he

1:05:09

wrote when he was only 19 years old and

1:05:12

which was published in a journal called

1:05:14

The Presbyterian, which was a publication

1:05:17

that his father was the editor of at

1:05:19

the time.

1:05:21

And in this essay,

1:05:23

Young Tommy, as Woodrow was then called,

1:05:26

you know, Thomas being his legal first name,

1:05:28

Young Tommy would say things like this,

1:05:31

quote,

1:05:33

mankind is as divided

1:05:35

into two great armies.

1:05:37

The field of battle is the world,

1:05:40

from the abodes of righteousness, advance

1:05:42

the host of God's people under

1:05:44

the leadership of Christ.

1:05:47

From the opposite side of the field, advancing

1:05:49

from the tents of wickedness, come

1:05:52

the hosts of sin led by

1:05:54

the Prince of Lies himself riding

1:05:56

upon death's horse.

1:05:59

Behind him,

1:05:59

a mighty army, marshaled

1:06:02

by fiends under the dark

1:06:04

banners of iniquity.

1:06:07

The object of the warfare on the part of the First

1:06:10

is to gain glory for their great leader as

1:06:12

well as the best good of the conquered by

1:06:15

persuading them to leave the ranks of

1:06:17

the Evil One and enlist under the

1:06:19

Great Redeemer, that of the Other to

1:06:21

entice as many as will listen to

1:06:24

them to go with them by the alluring

1:06:26

paths of worldliness to everlasting

1:06:28

destruction. The

1:06:31

foes meet upon the great

1:06:33

battlefield of everyday life. Surely

1:06:36

in this great contest there is a part

1:06:39

for every one

1:06:40

and each one

1:06:42

will be made to render a strict account

1:06:44

of his conduct on the day of battle. Will

1:06:48

anyone hesitate as to the part he shall

1:06:50

take in this conflict?

1:06:52

Will anyone dare to enlist

1:06:54

under the banner of the Prince of Lies, under

1:06:57

whose dark folds he only marches

1:07:00

to the darkness of Hell?

1:07:02

For there is no middle course,

1:07:05

no neutrality."

1:07:08

No middle course,

1:07:10

no neutrality.

1:07:11

This is Wilson at nineteen years old.

1:07:15

You have to pick a sign.

1:07:16

There's pure good, pure evil.

1:07:18

There's no staying out of it. There's no neutral.

1:07:22

If you try to stay out of it by de facto,

1:07:24

you're serving the forces of darkness. This

1:07:28

is the mindset that

1:07:30

he is going to manifest

1:07:33

and that he is going to implement

1:07:37

once the U.S. is in the war.

1:07:39

This totalist,

1:07:41

Manichean

1:07:42

mindset

1:07:43

with no room for

1:07:45

complexity,

1:07:47

ambiguity, moral

1:07:49

gray areas,

1:07:51

no capacity to say, well,

1:07:53

both sides are to blame to some extent. Both

1:07:55

sides have done things they shouldn't have.

1:07:57

No. It's one side.

1:07:59

to be pure good, one side has

1:08:02

to be pure evil, and

1:08:05

once you identify the side of good, anyone

1:08:07

who's not actively helping you in

1:08:10

that endeavor is by definition

1:08:12

aiding the dark side.

1:08:15

Back to 19-year-old Tommy Wilson,

1:08:17

quote,

1:08:19

each and every one

1:08:20

must enlist either with the

1:08:22

followers of Christ or those

1:08:24

of Satan. You

1:08:27

know your enemies, they are evil thoughts,

1:08:30

evil desires, evil associations.

1:08:33

Avoid evil associations, evil

1:08:35

companions. No one can make

1:08:37

a good soldier who keeps company

1:08:39

with the emissaries and friends of

1:08:42

the enemy. In every

1:08:44

minor thing, watch yourself

1:08:47

and let no fiery dart into

1:08:49

your soul. One who

1:08:51

thus faithfully does his duty and

1:08:53

purifies himself in the smallest

1:08:56

things has little to fear from the

1:08:58

foe, and if he with all

1:09:00

leads others by his example and

1:09:02

precept to do likewise, and

1:09:05

fears not to warn the

1:09:07

enemies of the cross to turn from the

1:09:09

error of their ways. He may

1:09:12

rest assured that his name is enrolled

1:09:15

among the soldiers of the cross, end

1:09:18

quote. So

1:09:20

this Manichean tendency

1:09:23

of mind on the part of Wilson,

1:09:25

once

1:09:26

enough British

1:09:28

and also Anglo-Phyllic American propaganda

1:09:32

convinced Wilson that the central

1:09:34

powers side of the war, and especially

1:09:37

Germany, was evil,

1:09:41

and that the allied side were the

1:09:43

good guys and were on the right

1:09:45

side of history, so to speak.

1:09:48

That meant that neutrality

1:09:51

was no longer even an option,

1:09:54

that to try to stay neutral was essentially

1:09:56

to by default aid the forces

1:09:58

of darkness.

1:10:00

And then related to this, another big

1:10:03

thing kind of psychologically

1:10:05

that I think would help nudge

1:10:07

Wilson towards his ultimate

1:10:09

intervention in World

1:10:11

War I was his hubristic messiah

1:10:14

complex. He

1:10:16

seems to have genuinely fervently

1:10:19

believed that the US

1:10:21

had the divinely appointed mission

1:10:24

to remake the entire world

1:10:27

by spreading what he called modern democracy

1:10:30

and ultimately by creating something

1:10:33

like a world government

1:10:34

or as he would come to call it eventually

1:10:37

the League of Nations.

1:10:39

And he genuinely believed that

1:10:42

he was the divinely appointed

1:10:44

politician who needed to carry this out.

1:10:47

Now like I said earlier, for

1:10:49

a while at least, he seems to have believed

1:10:52

that by keeping the US out of the war and

1:10:54

keeping the US neutral, he was doing the

1:10:56

best thing that he could to enable

1:10:58

the US under his divinely ordained

1:11:00

leadership of course, to be

1:11:02

the primary shaper

1:11:04

of the peace tree that would end the war

1:11:07

and set up the post-war world order.

1:11:11

But again, sometime between the summer of 1914 and

1:11:13

the spring of 1917, I think it was closer

1:11:16

to the former than to the latter in time,

1:11:19

he changed his mind about that and

1:11:21

decided that in fact the only way that

1:11:23

he

1:11:24

as the messianic leader of the messianic

1:11:26

nation could be the dominant influence

1:11:29

on how the war

1:11:29

ended and how the world would be

1:11:31

set up from then

1:11:33

on, would be to get the US into

1:11:36

the war on the winning side, which would

1:11:38

then give him the leverage to

1:11:40

shape the end of the war and what would come

1:11:43

after it. Thank

1:11:52

you.

1:12:16

So, like I said before, Wilson's

1:12:19

cabinet at the start of World War I was

1:12:22

almost unanimously pro-Antonte,

1:12:26

pro-Allied, and especially

1:12:28

pro-British.

1:12:30

Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan

1:12:32

was really the only exception. If

1:12:36

Wilson had genuinely,

1:12:39

wholeheartedly agreed with Bryan,

1:12:41

he would have treated both sides

1:12:44

in the war equally, and

1:12:47

he would have condemned and

1:12:49

opposed British violations

1:12:52

of international law and

1:12:54

interventions into American

1:12:56

politics and so forth, at least

1:12:58

as strongly as he did those

1:13:00

of the Germans. And he would have stayed

1:13:03

out of the conflict other than maybe to offer,

1:13:05

like I said before, to mediate it as

1:13:07

a neutral broker. Quite

1:13:10

simply, the US and

1:13:12

the world would have been better

1:13:14

off if Wilson had actually listened to his

1:13:17

Secretary of State about foreign policy.

1:13:21

But in reality, during the first year of

1:13:23

World War I, he listened to his

1:13:25

own Secretary of State less than

1:13:27

almost anyone else in the administration

1:13:29

on foreign policy. Instead,

1:13:32

his two main advisors on foreign

1:13:34

policy were first and

1:13:36

foremost Colonel, in quote marks,

1:13:39

Edward House, whom you may remember

1:13:41

had no official title or office in

1:13:43

the administration. And

1:13:47

House really functionally

1:13:50

was Wilson's Secretary of State. And

1:13:53

House, as the son of an English

1:13:55

immigrant to the US, and as a guy

1:13:57

who maintained throughout his life, tons

1:14:00

of close ties to British

1:14:03

political and financial elites and

1:14:05

who spent a lot of his life

1:14:07

abroad in the UK.

1:14:10

House if anything was even more instinctively

1:14:14

pro-British in his prejudices than

1:14:16

Wilson was and the evidence indicates

1:14:19

that House came around to favoring

1:14:21

outright US intervention into the war well

1:14:24

before even Wilson came around to that point

1:14:26

of view. I won't

1:14:28

delve super deeply into House's

1:14:30

background here mainly because I've done it

1:14:32

already in earlier episodes

1:14:34

in the Woodrow Wilson series but I

1:14:36

will just point out that it was House

1:14:40

and not either Secretary of State

1:14:42

Brian nor his successor in that

1:14:44

role, Robert Lansing, whom

1:14:47

Wilson would send repeatedly

1:14:49

to Europe between 1914 and 1917. And

1:14:53

it was House that he repeatedly sent

1:14:55

to Europe during the period of American

1:14:57

alleged neutrality. In

1:15:01

fact not only did House make multiple trips to

1:15:03

Europe during the first three years of the war

1:15:06

but he even made a trip to Europe shortly

1:15:08

before the war started in May of 1914 during

1:15:12

which he was reporting back to Wilson that

1:15:14

the situation in Europe was very tense and

1:15:17

there was a strong possibility

1:15:20

of a great power war. Now

1:15:22

during this 1914 trip before

1:15:25

the war broke out House met with

1:15:27

leaders primarily in London. He

1:15:29

spent a very short amount of time in Paris.

1:15:32

I think he only met with the US ambassador, didn't

1:15:34

even meet with any French government officials when

1:15:36

he was in Paris. And he did go to

1:15:39

Berlin for a little while including a

1:15:41

meeting with the Kaiser. Though strangely

1:15:44

and interestingly House

1:15:46

did not go to Austria

1:15:49

and perhaps even more interestingly

1:15:51

and even more importantly he didn't go

1:15:53

to St. Petersburg to meet with

1:15:55

the Tsar or any other Russian

1:15:57

government officials even though arguably

1:16:00

Only Russia was the most

1:16:02

territorial aggressive of all

1:16:04

the great powers at the time. On

1:16:10

this trip, House first visited

1:16:12

Germany, where the Kaiser seems

1:16:14

to have actually charmed House quite a bit, at

1:16:17

least temporarily. The Kaiser

1:16:19

tried to convince House that the

1:16:21

main reason for Germany's military

1:16:23

build-up in recent years was simply that

1:16:25

it was surrounded by hostile powers, which

1:16:28

in fact it was.

1:16:31

After Germany, like I said, House

1:16:33

very briefly stopped off in France, where

1:16:36

the only high-level meeting he had was with the

1:16:38

U.S. ambassador there, and then he went on

1:16:40

to London, where he spent a lot more time. And

1:16:43

there, his anglophilic

1:16:45

prejudices were strongly

1:16:47

reinforced, because there,

1:16:49

in the words of historian Stuart

1:16:51

Halsey Ross, quote, "...far-sighted

1:16:55

English knights and lords exquisitely

1:16:57

dined and thoroughly brainwashed their

1:16:59

receptive guest."

1:17:03

In other words, after visiting London, House's

1:17:06

pro-British prejudices would

1:17:09

be fully reinforced,

1:17:12

and any tendency in his mind to

1:17:15

want to take Germany's point of view, even

1:17:17

just, you know, to take it seriously, not even

1:17:19

to agree with it, but just to take it seriously and

1:17:22

take it into account, or to

1:17:24

even want to act as

1:17:26

a true neutral objective

1:17:29

mediator, would seemingly

1:17:31

go out the window. After

1:17:34

meeting with House, the British Secretary

1:17:36

of State for Foreign Affairs, Lord Gray, would

1:17:38

write, quote, "...House

1:17:41

left me in no doubt from the

1:17:43

first that he held

1:17:46

German militarism responsible for

1:17:48

the war, and that he regarded the struggle

1:17:50

as one between democracy and

1:17:53

something that was undemocratic

1:17:56

and antipathetic to American

1:17:58

ideals." I felt

1:18:00

sure he did not differ much from

1:18:03

Ambassador Page in his view

1:18:05

of the merits of the war." And

1:18:08

again, Ambassador Page, Walter

1:18:11

Hines Page, the U.S. Ambassador

1:18:13

to the UK at the time, was one

1:18:16

of the most vehement Americans

1:18:19

in terms of supporting Britain and

1:18:22

opposing Germany. By

1:18:24

the way, I'll briefly mention the other key

1:18:27

ambassador at the time for the U.S. government

1:18:30

was of course the Ambassador to Germany, which

1:18:33

was James Watson Girard, whom

1:18:35

I believe I've mentioned before in

1:18:37

the Wilson series. And

1:18:40

he was a terrible choice to be

1:18:42

the American Ambassador to

1:18:45

Germany, even under the best of

1:18:47

circumstances, let alone in

1:18:49

the midst of a giant war involving

1:18:51

Germany. Even

1:18:54

the mostly pro-Wilson historian,

1:18:56

Arthur Link, called the choice of Girard

1:18:59

for the U.S. ambassadorship to Germany,

1:19:01

quote, unauthentic international

1:19:05

catastrophe, end quote. Girard

1:19:09

was an attorney, a judge,

1:19:12

and a high-level Democratic Party operative

1:19:14

from New York with ties to the

1:19:16

Tammany Hall political machine. Not

1:19:20

only was he almost entirely

1:19:22

inexperienced and ignorant in matters

1:19:25

of international diplomacy, but

1:19:27

he was bitterly and openly

1:19:29

hostile from the get-go towards

1:19:32

Germany and the German government, with

1:19:34

whom he was now supposed to conduct diplomacy.

1:19:38

And no one in the Wilson administration seems to

1:19:40

have thought that these

1:19:43

two ambassadors, the U.S. Ambassador to the

1:19:45

UK and the U.S. Ambassador to

1:19:47

Germany might be a problem now

1:19:50

that there was a war going on between

1:19:52

Britain and Germany that ostensibly the U.S.

1:19:54

was trying to keep out of.

1:19:57

They didn't think it was an issue.

1:19:59

You know, the US, a government

1:20:02

supposedly trying to be neutral in this

1:20:04

conflict. That it had men

1:20:07

like this as its two

1:20:09

most important ambassadors at the time. That

1:20:11

they had an ambassador to the UK, who

1:20:14

was extremely biased in favor of the UK and

1:20:16

against Germany,

1:20:16

and then they also had an ambassador to Germany,

1:20:18

who was also extremely favorable

1:20:21

to the British and extremely Teutonicphobic.

1:20:25

No one thought that that might contribute

1:20:26

to, I don't know, sabotaging

1:20:29

any possibility of the US

1:20:32

government being genuinely neutral

1:20:34

towards the conflict.

1:20:37

No one seems to have thought that it

1:20:39

might contribute to something like double

1:20:41

standards. That when the

1:20:43

British broke the rules or violated American

1:20:46

rights, they would be treated much

1:20:48

more softly than when the Germans

1:20:50

did the same sorts of things.

1:20:53

And I'm not trying to say

1:20:54

that the choice of ambassadors to the UK

1:20:56

and Germany are the only reason. Obviously

1:20:58

House played into it, obviously Wilson's own,

1:21:01

you know, prejudices since he was a very young

1:21:03

man played into it. But still, this

1:21:05

is just, you know, Wilson's speeches

1:21:07

about neutrality sound great to my

1:21:10

ears.

1:21:12

But

1:21:13

if you look at a lot of

1:21:15

the actions of his administration, even in those early

1:21:18

days, including his choice of personnel,

1:21:20

it is not what you would do. If

1:21:23

you were genuinely trying your

1:21:25

utmost to be neutral and

1:21:27

stay out of the conflict. Well,

1:21:30

anyway, House was still in London

1:21:32

at the end of that visit that he made before

1:21:34

the war, when Archduke Ferdinand was

1:21:36

assassinated.

1:21:38

House's supposed goal

1:21:41

in making the trip was to try to act

1:21:43

as a mediator to prevent an

1:21:46

outbreak of war among the rape powers. Obviously,

1:21:49

he failed in that regard, but

1:21:52

he would return to Europe multiple

1:21:54

times between 1914 and 1917.

1:21:59

Early as his second trip to Europe

1:22:02

during the war, which took place in early 1915, House

1:22:06

seems to have already just completely

1:22:08

given up on the notion

1:22:10

of American neutrality, and seems to have largely,

1:22:13

in terms of his own mental state and intentions,

1:22:16

have fully lined up with the British

1:22:18

side of the war.

1:22:20

Now like I mentioned a few minutes ago, Wilson's

1:22:23

other top advisor on foreign policy would

1:22:25

be Robert Lansing. And

1:22:28

I honestly don't recall if I've mentioned him

1:22:30

yet in the Woodrow Wilson series or not, I might have

1:22:32

mentioned him briefly in passing. But

1:22:35

I'll take a moment here to dig into him a bit,

1:22:37

just because he's definitely going to be pretty prominent

1:22:41

in this episode and probably in at least a few

1:22:43

more upcoming episodes in the Wilson

1:22:45

series. Now

1:22:47

Lansing was to some degree for sure

1:22:50

an anglophile, definitely instinctively

1:22:53

pro-British and pro-allied

1:22:55

and anti-German, but he

1:22:58

wasn't quite as much of an anglophile as say

1:23:00

somebody like Colonel House. With

1:23:03

House, one gets the impression

1:23:06

that, at least most of the time,

1:23:08

he was a UK firster

1:23:11

in the same way that modern day neocons

1:23:13

are typically Israel firsters. Lansing

1:23:17

strikes me as sort of like a John

1:23:20

Bolton of his time. He's

1:23:22

not exactly a neocon,

1:23:25

though he lines up with them on things more

1:23:27

often than not on specific issues. But

1:23:30

just as I don't believe

1:23:32

that Bolton is really an Israel first

1:23:34

guy, and I think

1:23:36

that Bolton in his own mind is

1:23:39

an America firster, as he would

1:23:41

define it, nonetheless, in

1:23:43

practice, he often lines up

1:23:45

with the neocons. Well same thing with Lansing

1:23:49

in regard to the really hardcore anglophiles.

1:23:53

And just as no doubt John

1:23:55

Bolton would argue and probably would genuinely believe

1:23:58

that

1:23:59

being in favor of interventionism is putting

1:24:01

America first.

1:24:03

Though obviously I would not agree with that, but

1:24:06

I believe that Lansing also, in his own mind,

1:24:09

was putting America first. It's

1:24:11

just that his notion of putting America

1:24:13

first was an aggressive militaristic

1:24:16

interventionist foreign policy with

1:24:18

a strong dose of pro big business corporatism

1:24:21

kind of lurking behind it all. In

1:24:24

other words, like John Bolton, Robert

1:24:27

Lansing was an ultra nationalistic

1:24:30

jingo above all else. And he

1:24:33

wouldn't necessarily believe in all of the just

1:24:35

blank check pro-British sympathies

1:24:39

of somebody like House or somebody like

1:24:41

Page. And

1:24:43

he also didn't share

1:24:45

the multilateralist internationalist

1:24:48

instincts of House, or of

1:24:50

Wilson himself for that matter. In

1:24:53

terms of contemporaries, on foreign

1:24:55

policy he was probably actually closer

1:24:57

to TR than he was to Wilson.

1:25:00

On foreign policy, even though on

1:25:02

domestic policy, I think Lansing

1:25:05

from what I can tell was far more conservative

1:25:07

than the corporatist progressivism of

1:25:10

either Teddy Roosevelt or Woodrow Wilson. Maybe

1:25:13

an even more kind of similar guy to Lansing

1:25:16

other than TR, maybe even

1:25:18

more so than TR, would be Henry

1:25:20

Cabot Lodge. Because

1:25:23

both Lansing and Lodge were

1:25:26

aggressive hawks and ultra

1:25:28

nationalists in foreign policy. Both

1:25:30

of them had blue-blooded lineages

1:25:33

that went all the way back to early colonial New England,

1:25:36

and both of them, while being

1:25:38

more conservative on domestic issues,

1:25:41

lined up on foreign policy

1:25:43

with the more war hawk side of progressivism

1:25:47

at the time. And

1:25:49

Lansing is pretty important to this story because

1:25:52

from 1914 to 1915, like

1:25:54

I said, he was probably second only to House

1:25:56

in influencing Wilson's

1:25:59

thinking about foreign policy. And

1:26:01

he's also, of course, very important because

1:26:04

after Bryan will resign in 1915 in the aftermath

1:26:07

of Lusitania, Lansing

1:26:09

is going to get a promotion and is going to become Bryan's

1:26:11

replacement as Secretary of State. And

1:26:14

he will hold that position

1:26:16

all the way right up into 1920. So

1:26:19

for most of Wilson's presidency,

1:26:23

Lansing was his Secretary of State. So

1:26:25

who was he? He was born in upstate

1:26:27

New York during the Civil War, so

1:26:30

he was just a handful of years younger than Wilson.

1:26:33

He was from a fairly wealthy

1:26:36

and powerful aristocratic family with

1:26:38

some pretty deep roots going all the way back to the early colonial

1:26:41

period, as I said. And

1:26:44

among his ancestors were Ann

1:26:46

Hutchinson and Roger

1:26:48

Williams, as well as various other early

1:26:51

colonial leaders of Rhode Island, Connecticut,

1:26:54

New Hampshire, and Massachusetts. Lansing

1:26:58

attended Amherst College and became a lawyer

1:27:00

and started off working at his family's firm.

1:27:03

Isn't that convenient? A firm called Lansing

1:27:05

and Lansing. In 1890,

1:27:09

Lansing married the daughter of a man named John

1:27:11

W. Foster, who

1:27:13

had been the U.S. minister to Mexico,

1:27:16

to Russia, and to Spain,

1:27:19

and who just a few years after

1:27:21

Lansing married his daughter, would

1:27:23

become Secretary of State for

1:27:25

a couple of years in the 1890s under President

1:27:28

Benjamin Harrison. Now

1:27:30

as many of you may have already guessed when you heard the

1:27:33

last name Foster, by marrying

1:27:36

John Foster's daughter, Eleanor,

1:27:39

Robert Lansing was in fact marrying

1:27:42

into the family that contained

1:27:44

the Dulles brothers, who at

1:27:47

the time, Lansing married Eleanor Foster,

1:27:49

they were only young boys. But

1:27:52

just as a reminder, in case you may have forgotten,

1:27:55

or if you're new to dangerous history and don't

1:27:57

yet know, under Dwight Eisenhower

1:28:00

in the 1950s, John Foster

1:28:02

Dulles would serve as Secretary of

1:28:04

State and Alan Dulles

1:28:06

would serve as CIA Director. Alan

1:28:09

Dulles, by the way, would continue to hold

1:28:11

that position into the early months of

1:28:13

the JFK administration, though

1:28:15

JFK fired him after the disaster

1:28:18

of the Bay of Pigs. And

1:28:20

weirdly enough, after Kennedy's assassination,

1:28:23

Alan Dulles was appointed to be

1:28:25

one of the Warren Commissioners that were supposedly

1:28:27

investigating the assassination.

1:28:31

And if you think

1:28:32

that it's kind of weird and fishy for a guy

1:28:34

who had a lot of recent bad blood with JFK

1:28:37

and who JFK had fired just

1:28:40

a couple of years earlier, if you think

1:28:42

it's really weird that that guy was

1:28:44

made one of the top dudes investigating

1:28:46

JFK's death,

1:28:48

well,

1:28:49

I think you're right. And

1:28:51

stay tuned, I'm going to try, um, later

1:28:54

in November of this year to

1:28:56

get out at least the first installment in

1:28:59

my upcoming miniseries on the

1:29:01

JFK assassination. So

1:29:04

you may recall me in previous

1:29:07

discussions of the Dulles brothers on

1:29:09

this podcast mentioning that

1:29:11

they came from a very highly pedigreed

1:29:14

family that included both a grandfather

1:29:16

and an uncle who had been Secretaries of State.

1:29:19

Well, the grandfather in question was John W.

1:29:21

Foster and the uncle in question was our

1:29:24

man Robert Lansing. Like

1:29:27

the Dulles brothers later, Lansing's

1:29:29

background consisted of kind of going

1:29:31

back and forth through the

1:29:33

revolving door between working

1:29:36

as a lawyer for major corporations,

1:29:39

usually with a focus on international dealings, and

1:29:42

also sometimes working as a lawyer for the

1:29:44

U.S. government.

1:29:46

Lansing,

1:29:47

unlike his father-in-law John Foster,

1:29:50

or unlike his nephews, John

1:29:52

Foster and Alan Dulles, who

1:29:55

were all Republicans, Lansing was a Democrat.

1:29:58

And like I alluded to before, Therefore,

1:30:00

on domestic issues, he seems to have

1:30:02

been basically a conservative,

1:30:04

Grover-Cleveland-style Democrat on

1:30:06

most matters, meaning really

1:30:09

not much of a progressive at all. Though

1:30:12

I think he definitely seems to have had some

1:30:14

corporatist tendencies that may

1:30:17

have clashed with a

1:30:19

really consistent laissez-faire approach. But

1:30:23

on foreign policy, it seems that unfortunately,

1:30:26

Lansing was very much not a

1:30:29

Cleveland-style Democrat,

1:30:31

meaning not an anti-interventionist

1:30:34

on foreign policy. And

1:30:36

as Murray Rothbard observed very

1:30:38

trenchantly a long time ago, unfortunately,

1:30:42

people often tend to spend

1:30:44

the most time on or even to specialize

1:30:47

in the things that they are the worst on,

1:30:50

from a libertarian point of view.

1:30:53

So Lansing, who was probably at least

1:30:55

decent on most domestic issues,

1:30:57

judged from a libertarian perspective, came

1:30:59

to specialize in foreign policy on which he

1:31:02

was pretty bad. Maybe not quite

1:31:04

as bad as Wilson, the messianic

1:31:06

globalist progressive, but at least bad

1:31:08

enough that Lansing would serve Wilson

1:31:11

for much of his presidency. Though

1:31:14

the two never got along very well personally,

1:31:16

and they would eventually have a falling out

1:31:19

during the Versailles Peace Conference.

1:31:22

And that falling out seems to have been partly for personal

1:31:25

reasons. Lansing seems

1:31:27

to have believed that Wilson was stealing his thunder

1:31:30

and usurping his authority as Secretary of

1:31:32

State by choosing to attend the conference

1:31:35

himself rather than just letting Lansing

1:31:38

run the American delegation. And

1:31:41

partly also it seems to have been

1:31:44

that Lansing just didn't

1:31:46

have nearly as much faith or devotion

1:31:49

to the League of Nations idea as Wilson

1:31:51

did. But anyway,

1:31:53

that's a story for another time. And

1:31:56

for now I'll just say that in August 1914

1:31:59

right around the time period, the

1:32:02

beginning of the time period covered by this episode,

1:32:05

Wilson appointed Lansing to

1:32:08

the position of Counselor of

1:32:10

the United States Department of State, which

1:32:12

is a high rank roughly equivalent

1:32:14

to an undersecretary position,

1:32:16

but which, unlike an undersecretary position,

1:32:19

does not require a Senate confirmation.

1:32:23

And in that position as Counselor, Lansing

1:32:25

would be heavily involved in

1:32:28

World War I stuff,

1:32:31

including the various violations of international law

1:32:33

on the seas that were committed by

1:32:35

both the British and the Germans during the

1:32:38

period of American neutrality, as

1:32:40

well as dealing with other American claims

1:32:42

about neutral rights, and eventually

1:32:45

to include dealing with the fallout

1:32:47

of the Lusitania and things related to that.

1:32:51

So this is the guy who was another key

1:32:53

foreign policy advisor in the Wilson administration

1:32:56

and who would eventually become Secretary of State. So

1:33:00

for the remainder of 1914, Wilson

1:33:03

continued to publicly be

1:33:05

pretty consistent in

1:33:07

his insistence on

1:33:10

US neutrality, though,

1:33:12

as I've already mentioned a few times, privately

1:33:15

he did continue to periodically

1:33:17

express very different and

1:33:20

contradictory sentiments. To

1:33:23

take just one of multiple examples I could cite,

1:33:26

shortly before the congressional elections

1:33:28

in November of 1914, he told

1:33:31

his top aide and de facto chief

1:33:33

of staff, Joseph Tumulty, that

1:33:35

quote, England is fighting our

1:33:37

fight and you may well understand that

1:33:39

I shall not, in the present state of

1:33:41

world affairs, place obstacles in

1:33:44

her way. So

1:33:47

yeah, there was this public facade amongst

1:33:50

most members of the Wilson administration where

1:33:52

publicly if it came up, you know,

1:33:54

the issue of the war, they'd be like, oh

1:33:56

yeah, no question, we're totally about neutrality

1:33:59

and peace and stuff. staying out of the war and trying

1:34:01

to bring about a negotiated

1:34:03

end to it and so forth.

1:34:06

And then as soon as they were, you know,

1:34:08

not under a spotlight in

1:34:10

front of the public, almost

1:34:12

all of them it was like, wink, wink, nudge,

1:34:14

nudge, yeah, we all agree we're pro-British, right?

1:34:17

Ha ha. Wilson made multiple

1:34:20

public offers to try to help

1:34:22

mediate an end to the war in the early months

1:34:24

of it, but neither side was at all interested. Because

1:34:27

in the early months of the war, both sides

1:34:30

believed the war would be much shorter

1:34:32

and less costly than it ended up being. Both

1:34:35

sides of course also believed that their side

1:34:37

would ultimately win, and both sides

1:34:39

had extremely ambitious war

1:34:42

aims in terms of territory and things that

1:34:44

they were not interested in compromising

1:34:46

on at all. Still

1:34:49

overall, by the end of 1914, Wilson

1:34:52

more than not seemed to

1:34:55

want to try to keep the U.S. out of the war

1:34:57

and to try to use that neutral status

1:35:00

to be able to mediate an end to

1:35:02

it. So I'm

1:35:04

going to close out this episode with some excerpts

1:35:08

from Wilson's 1914 State of the

1:35:10

Union address, in which he still

1:35:12

sounds mostly pretty good to my ears.

1:35:16

And in the next episode in this series, we'll

1:35:18

pick up with the growing

1:35:20

controversies about the war at sea,

1:35:24

including the sinking of Lusitania

1:35:26

and its fallout, as well as some

1:35:28

of the ways that American financial

1:35:31

and industrial firms profited from

1:35:33

the war, and the way that those firms,

1:35:36

especially if they were at all connected to the House of Morgan,

1:35:39

were vehemently pro-British, and

1:35:41

also the ways in which those

1:35:45

economic interests may have been

1:35:47

key in nudging the American

1:35:49

political elite towards war. In

1:35:52

order to safeguard the profits they were

1:35:54

making from the Allies and ensure that the Allies

1:35:57

would be in a position to pay back their

1:35:59

massive loans. to US financial firms

1:36:01

in the aftermath of the war. Next

1:36:04

time we'll also talk a bit about how

1:36:07

various groups of Americans reacted to

1:36:09

the issues of the war during the period of American

1:36:12

quote-unquote neutrality, and

1:36:14

this will also include some coverage

1:36:17

of the so-called preparedness movement

1:36:19

that popped up in the US during the period of neutrality,

1:36:22

which were various groups that were

1:36:25

pro-intervention but who

1:36:27

kind of couched their pro-war

1:36:30

stance behind a smokescreen

1:36:32

of sort of just in case,

1:36:34

you know, oh we just want the US to be prepared

1:36:37

for war just in case despite

1:36:39

our best efforts to try and stay out of it somebody

1:36:41

attacks us. Of

1:36:44

course in reality these people

1:36:46

in these organizations were actively

1:36:49

trying to push the US towards war one

1:36:52

way or another, and by the way they were predominantly

1:36:54

created by and to a large extent even composed

1:36:57

of elites, of

1:36:59

the anglophilic elites of

1:37:01

the American corporate and

1:37:03

political worlds.

1:37:05

The preparedness movement quote-unquote was

1:37:07

very much not a bottom-up

1:37:10

grassroots thing

1:37:11

originating from middle and working

1:37:13

class you know average Americans.

1:37:17

But anyway before I close out this episode

1:37:19

with some excerpts from Wilson's 1914 State

1:37:22

of the Union address I just want to say thanks for

1:37:24

listening. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I

1:37:26

know it's been a long time since I did one of these

1:37:28

you know big deep research heavy

1:37:30

historical narrative episodes. I know these

1:37:32

types of episodes are always the most popular ones

1:37:35

that I do so I appreciate your

1:37:37

patience. Those of you who have continued

1:37:40

to financially contribute to my work

1:37:42

during the last few months when I've been not putting out

1:37:44

a lot, I really appreciate your

1:37:46

generosity and your patience. And

1:37:49

my intention is knock on wood as long

1:37:51

as no other major disasters fall on me

1:37:54

or no other major stresses get in my way

1:37:56

in the near future to start

1:37:59

ramping up my D.H.A. the next big historical episode as

1:38:01

it was since the last one. Okay,

1:38:05

so here we go. Woodrow Wilson's second

1:38:08

annual message to Congress, aka State

1:38:10

of the Union, December 8, 1914, and

1:38:14

I'm focusing on the war-related parts. The

1:38:17

bulk of it is actually domestic issues. Quote,

1:38:21

Our thoughts are now more of the future

1:38:23

than of the past. While we

1:38:25

have worked at our tasks of peace, the

1:38:28

circumstances of the whole age

1:38:30

have been altered by war. What chiefly strikes

1:38:33

us now, as we look about us during these closing days

1:38:35

of a year, which will be forever

1:38:38

memorable in the history of the world, is that

1:38:40

we face the challenges of the past. We

1:38:43

have been in the past for a long time, and

1:38:45

we have been in the past for a long time. What

1:38:48

we have been facing now, and we have been in the past for a long time, is

1:38:50

that we face new tasks. These

1:38:52

six months must face them in the months to come,

1:38:56

face them without partisan feeling, like

1:38:59

men who have forgotten everything but a common

1:39:01

duty, and the fact that we are representatives

1:39:03

of a great people, whose thought is not

1:39:05

of us, but

1:39:09

of what America owes to herself

1:39:11

and to all mankind in such

1:39:13

circumstances as these upon which

1:39:15

we looked, amazed, and anxious.

1:39:19

War has interrupted the means

1:39:22

of trade not only, but also the

1:39:24

processes of production. In

1:39:26

Europe, it is destroying men and

1:39:29

resources wholesale, and upon a

1:39:31

scale unprecedented and appalling. There

1:39:35

is reason to fear that the time is near, if

1:39:38

it be not already at hand, when

1:39:40

several of the countries of Europe will find it

1:39:42

difficult to do for their people. What

1:39:45

they have hitherto been always easily able to do,

1:39:48

many essential and fundamental things.

1:39:51

At any rate, they will need our help

1:39:53

and our manifold services, as they

1:39:56

have never before needed them, and

1:39:58

we should be ready, more fully. fit and ready

1:40:00

than we have ever been. It

1:40:03

is of equal consequence that the nations whom

1:40:06

Europe has usually supplied

1:40:08

with innumerable articles of manufacture and commerce,

1:40:11

of which they are in constant need, and

1:40:13

without which their economic development halts

1:40:15

and stands still, can now get

1:40:18

only a small part of what they formerly

1:40:20

imported and eagerly look to us to

1:40:23

supply their all but empty markets. This

1:40:26

is particularly true of our own

1:40:28

neighbors, the states great and small, of

1:40:31

Central and South America. The

1:40:33

United States, this great people for

1:40:36

whom we speak and act, should be

1:40:38

ready, as never before, to serve

1:40:40

itself and to serve mankind, ready

1:40:43

with its resources, its energies, its forces

1:40:46

of production, and its means of distribution.

1:40:50

It is a very practical matter, a

1:40:52

matter of ways and means. We have

1:40:54

the resources, but are we fully ready to

1:40:56

use them? And

1:40:58

if we can make ready what we have, have

1:41:01

we the means at hand to distribute it? We

1:41:03

are not fully ready, neither have

1:41:06

we the means of distribution. We

1:41:08

are willing, but we are not fully able.

1:41:11

We have the wish to serve, and

1:41:13

to serve greatly, generously, but

1:41:16

we are not prepared as we should be. We

1:41:18

are not ready to mobilize our resources

1:41:21

at once. We are not

1:41:23

prepared to use them immediately and

1:41:25

at their best, without delay and without waste."

1:41:31

So, Wilson at this point

1:41:33

is mostly talking about the US

1:41:36

taking maximum advantage of

1:41:39

Europe's need to import a lot more

1:41:41

stuff than usual because of the war, and

1:41:43

also the opportunities in places like

1:41:45

Latin America to step in and, you

1:41:47

know, if the European countries are going to be unable

1:41:50

to export as much to Latin America

1:41:52

as they used to, well, Team America should step

1:41:54

in and take up the slack. Wilson

1:41:58

then goes on for several pages of the his address,

1:42:00

talking about various domestic issues, but

1:42:03

near the very end of the speech he comes back

1:42:05

to foreign policy and continues by saying,

1:42:08

quote, The other

1:42:10

topic I shall take leave to mention goes

1:42:13

deeper into the principles of our national life

1:42:15

and policy. It is the

1:42:17

subject of national defense. It

1:42:20

cannot be discussed without first answering

1:42:23

some very searching questions. It

1:42:25

is said in some quarters that

1:42:28

we are not prepared for war. What

1:42:31

is meant by being prepared? Is

1:42:33

it meant that we are not ready upon

1:42:36

brief notice to put a nation in the field,

1:42:39

a nation of men trained to arms? Of

1:42:42

course we are not ready to do that. And

1:42:45

we shall never be in time of peace so

1:42:48

long as we retain our present political

1:42:50

principles and institutions. And

1:42:53

what is it that it is suggested

1:42:55

we should be prepared to do? To

1:42:58

defend ourselves against attack? We

1:43:00

have always found means to do that and shall

1:43:02

find them whenever it is necessary, without

1:43:05

calling our people away from their necessary

1:43:07

tasks to render compulsory

1:43:09

military service in times of peace. Allow

1:43:12

me to speak with great plainness and directness

1:43:15

upon this great matter and

1:43:17

to avow my convictions with

1:43:20

deep earnestness. I

1:43:23

have tried to know what America is, what

1:43:25

her people think, what they are, what

1:43:28

they most cherish and hold dear. I

1:43:31

hope that some of their finer passions are

1:43:33

in my own heart. Some

1:43:35

of the great conceptions and desires which gave

1:43:37

birth to this government and which have made

1:43:39

the voice of this people a voice of peace

1:43:42

and hope and liberty among the peoples of the world

1:43:44

and that speaking my own thoughts I shall at least

1:43:47

in part speak theirs also, and

1:43:50

in the end, however faintly and inadequately upon this vital matter.

1:43:54

We are at peace with all the world. No

1:43:58

one who speaks counsel based on fact

1:44:00

or drawn from a just and candid interpretation

1:44:03

of realities, can say that there is

1:44:05

reason to fear that from any quarter

1:44:07

our independence or the integrity of our territory

1:44:10

is threatened. Dread

1:44:13

of the power of any other nation we

1:44:15

are incapable of. We are

1:44:17

not jealous of rivalry in the fields of commerce

1:44:20

or of any other peaceful achievement.

1:44:23

We mean to live our own

1:44:24

lives as we will, but we mean also

1:44:26

to let live. We are indeed

1:44:29

a true friend to all the nations of the

1:44:31

world, because we threaten none,

1:44:33

covet the possessions of none, desire

1:44:36

the overthrow of none. Our

1:44:39

friendship can be accepted and is accepted

1:44:41

without reservation, because it is offered

1:44:43

in a spirit and for a purpose which

1:44:46

no one need ever question or suspect.

1:44:49

Therein lies our greatness.

1:44:52

We are the champions of peace and of concord.

1:44:56

And we should be very jealous of this distinction

1:44:59

which we have sought to earn. Just

1:45:02

now we should be particularly jealous

1:45:05

of it, because

1:45:06

it is our dearest

1:45:07

present hope that this character and

1:45:09

reputation may presently, in God's

1:45:11

providence, bring us an

1:45:14

opportunity such as seldom been thou

1:45:16

safe any nation, the

1:45:18

opportunity to counsel and obtain

1:45:21

peace in the world and reconciliation

1:45:23

and a healing settlement of many

1:45:25

a matter that has cooled and interrupted the

1:45:28

friendship of nations. This

1:45:30

is the time above all others

1:45:33

when we should wish and resolve

1:45:36

to keep our strength by self-possession

1:45:39

or influence by preserving our

1:45:42

ancient principles of action. From

1:45:45

the first we have had a clear

1:45:48

and settled policy with regard

1:45:50

to military establishments.

1:45:53

We never have had, and while we

1:45:55

retain our present principles and ideals,

1:45:58

we never shall have.

1:45:59

a large standing army.

1:46:02

If asked, Are you ready to defend yourselves?

1:46:05

We reply most assuredly to

1:46:07

the utmost, and yet we

1:46:10

shall not turn America into a military

1:46:12

camp. We will not ask our

1:46:14

young men to spend the best years

1:46:17

of their lives making soldiers of themselves.

1:46:20

There is another sort of energy in us. It

1:46:23

will know how to declare itself

1:46:25

and make itself effective should occasion

1:46:28

arise. And especially

1:46:31

when half the world is on fire.

1:46:34

We shall be careful to make our moral insurance

1:46:37

against the spread of the conflagration

1:46:40

very definite and certain and adequate

1:46:42

indeed. Let

1:46:44

us remind ourselves, therefore, of the only

1:46:47

thing we can do or will do. We

1:46:49

must depend, in every time of national

1:46:52

peril, in the future as in the past,

1:46:54

not upon a standing army, nor

1:46:57

yet upon a reserve army, but

1:46:59

upon a citizenry trained

1:47:02

and accustomed to arms. It

1:47:05

will be right enough, right American policy,

1:47:07

based upon our accustomed principles

1:47:10

and practices to provide a system

1:47:12

by which every citizen who will volunteer

1:47:15

for the training may be made familiar with the use

1:47:17

of modern arms, the rudiments of drill

1:47:19

and maneuver, and the maintenance and sanitation

1:47:22

of camps. We should encourage

1:47:24

such training and make it a means of

1:47:26

discipline which our young men will learn to value.

1:47:30

It is right that we should provide

1:47:32

it not only, but

1:47:35

that we should make it as attractive as possible

1:47:37

and so induce our young men to

1:47:39

undergo it at such times as they can command

1:47:42

a little freedom and seek the

1:47:44

physical development they need, for mere

1:47:46

health's sake, if nothing more. Every

1:47:50

means by which such things can

1:47:52

be stimulated is legitimate, and

1:47:54

such a method smacks of true American

1:47:57

ideas. It

1:47:59

is right to... too, that the National Guard

1:48:01

of the States should be developed and strengthened

1:48:04

by every means which is not inconsistent

1:48:06

with our obligations to our own people, or

1:48:09

with the established policy of our governments. And

1:48:11

this also, not because the time or occasion

1:48:14

specially calls for such measures, but

1:48:16

because it should be our constant policy

1:48:19

to make these provisions for our national defense

1:48:21

and safety. More than

1:48:23

this carries with it a reversal

1:48:26

of the whole history and character of

1:48:28

our polity. More

1:48:30

than this, proposed at this time, permit

1:48:32

me to say, would mean merely that we

1:48:35

had lost our self-possession,

1:48:37

that we had been thrown off our balance by

1:48:39

a war with which we have nothing

1:48:41

to do, whose causes cannot

1:48:44

touch us, whose very existence affords

1:48:47

us opportunities of friendship

1:48:50

and disinterested service which should

1:48:52

make us ashamed of any

1:48:54

thought of hostility

1:48:55

or fearful preparation

1:48:57

for trouble.

1:48:59

This is assuredly the opportunity

1:49:03

for which a people and a government like ours were

1:49:05

raised up. The opportunity

1:49:07

not only to speak, but actually to embody

1:49:10

and exemplify the counsels

1:49:12

of peace and amity and the lasting

1:49:14

conquered which is based on justice

1:49:16

and fair and generous dealing.

1:49:19

A powerful navy we have always

1:49:21

regarded as our proper and natural means

1:49:24

of defense, and it has always

1:49:26

been of defense that we have thought, never

1:49:28

of aggression or conquest. But

1:49:32

who shall tell us now what

1:49:34

sort of navy to build? We

1:49:36

shall take leave to be strong upon

1:49:38

the seas, in the future as in the past,

1:49:41

and there will be no thought of offense

1:49:43

or of provocation in that. Our

1:49:46

ships are our natural bulwarks. When

1:49:50

will the experts tell us just what kind

1:49:53

we should construct, and when will

1:49:55

they be right for ten years together,

1:49:57

if the relative efficiency of

1:50:00

craft of different kinds and

1:50:02

uses continues to change as

1:50:04

we have seen it change under our very eyes

1:50:07

in these last few months. But

1:50:10

I turn away from the subject. It

1:50:13

is not new. There is no new

1:50:15

need to discuss it. We shall not

1:50:18

alter our attitude toward it because

1:50:20

some amongst us are nervous

1:50:22

and excited. We

1:50:25

shall easily and sensibly

1:50:27

agree on a policy of defense.

1:50:30

The question has not changed its aspects

1:50:33

because the times are not normal. Our

1:50:37

policy will not be for an occasion.

1:50:40

It will be conceived as a permanent and

1:50:43

settled thing which we will pursue

1:50:45

at all seasons without haste and

1:50:47

after a fashion perfectly consistent

1:50:50

with the peace of the world, the abiding

1:50:53

friendship of states and the unhampered

1:50:55

freedom of all with whom

1:50:57

we deal. Let

1:50:59

there be no misconception. The

1:51:02

country has been misinformed. We

1:51:05

have not been negligent of national

1:51:07

defense. We are not unmindful

1:51:10

of the great responsibility resting upon us. We

1:51:14

shall learn and profit by the lesson

1:51:16

of every experience and every new

1:51:19

circumstance. And

1:51:21

what is needed will be adequately

1:51:24

done."