American Experiment

by James Macgregor Burns

  404 [ Wilson on “a government of butchers”]: quoted in Gilderhus, p. 5.

  [“Morality and not expediency”]: quoted in Bailey, p. 556.

  [Policy of “watchful waiting”]: quoted in Josephus Daniels, The Life of Woodrow Wilson, 1856–1924 (Will H. Johnston, 1924), p. 179.

  [Wilson’s Latin American declaration]: quoted in Bemis, p. 120.

  [Opposition to Wilson’s Mexican policy]: Bailey, p. 557.

  [Wilson’s call for Huerta’s surrender]: quoted in Daniels, p. 179.

  [Wilson on the “vested interests”]: quoted in Bailey, p. 557.

  [Wilson on self-restraint]: quoted in Haley, p. 100.

  [Huerta’s “saturnalia”]: John Lind, quoted in ibid., p. 129.

  405 [“Outraged the sovereignty of unwilling nations”]: Lens, p. 196; see also Scott Nearing and Joseph Freeman, Dollar Diplomacy (B. W. Huebsch and the Viking Press, 1926).

  [Wilson on teaching democracy to South America]: Wilson to Sir William Tyrrell, November 13, 1913, quoted in Bailey, p. 555.

  [Wilson and Villa]: Clarence C. Clendenen, The United States and Pancho Villa (Cornell University Press, 1961); Martin Luis Guzman, The Eagle and the Serpent, Harriet de Onis, tr. (Doubleday, 1965); Martin Blumenson, ed., The Patton Papers, 1885–1940 (Houghton Mifflin, 1972), vol. 1, part 5.

  12. OVER THERE

  407 [August 1914 ]: William Manchester, The Arms of Krupp (Little, Brown, 1964), pp. 280–89; George M. Thomson, The Twelve Days: 24 July to 4 August 1914 (Hutchinson, 1964); Barbara Tuchman, The Guns of August (Macmillan, 1962).

  407 [“Iron dice” of war]: quoted in Tuchman, p. 74.

  408 [Russian war minister on modern weapons]: General Vladimir Sukhomlinov, quoted in ibid., p. 61.

  409 [Lenin in Zurich]: Nadezhda K. Krupskaya, Memories of Lenin (International Publishers, 1932), vol. 2, pp. 175–97; Adam B. Ulam, The Bolsheviks (Collier Books, 1965), pp. 305–313.

  [Lenin on World War I]: Vladimir I. Lenin, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (International Publishers, 1939), p. 9.

  [Industrial concentration in America]: ibid., pp. 16–17.

  410 [Corporate domination abroad]: ibid., pp. 70–73.

  [Lenin on monopoly]: ibid., p. 20.

  [Lenin on railroads]: ibid., p. 10.

  Wilson and the Road to War

  [Congressman on the outbreak of war]: R. N. Page, quoted in Arthur S. Link, Wilson: The Struggle for Neutrality, 1914–1915 (Princeton University Press, 1960), p. 7.

  [House’s warning from Europe]: letter of May 29, 1914, quoted in ibid., p. 2; see also Kenneth S. Davis, FDR: The Beckoning of Destiny, 1882–1928 (Putnam’s, 1971), p. 367.

  411 [“Architectural infant asylum”]: quoted in Constance M. Green, Washington: Capital City, 1879–1950 (Princeton University Press, 1963), p. 140; see also Frank G. Carpenter, Carp’s Washington (McGraw-Hill, 1960), p. 125.

  [FDR on apathy toward war]: FDR to Eleanor Roosevelt, August 2, 1914, quoted in Davis, p. 369.

  [FDR on Bryan]: ibid., p. 385.

  [Wilson on keeping out of Europe’s quarrels]: quoted in Link, p. 3.

  [Bryan’s peace efforts]: Paolo E. Coletta, William Jennings Bryan (University of Nebraska Press, 1964–69), vol. 2, pp. 249–52.

  [Neutrality proclamation]: quoted in Tuchman, op. cit., p. 337.

  [Wilson’s condemnation of the war]: Wilson to C. R. Crane, August 4, 1914, quoted in Link, p. 50.

  411 [“Only America at peace!”]: New York Times, January 9, 1915, quoted in ibid., p. 55.

  [Tuchman on American neutrality]: The Guns of August, p. 337.

  [Devlin on Wilson and the war]: Patrick Devlin, Too Proud to Fight: Woodrow Wilson’s Neutrality (Oxford University Press, 1975), p. vii.

  [Wilson to Tarbell on historian’s view of the war]: quoted in Arthur S. Link, Woodrow Wilson: Revolution, War, and Peace (Harlan Davidson, 1979), p. 2.

  [Wilson’s early mediation attempts]: Link, Struggle for Neutrality, ch. 7.

  413 [Wilson’s despair of a negotiated peace]: Wilson to House, August 24, 1914, quoted in ibid., p. 50.

  [Bryan and World War I]: Paolo E. Coletta, “A Question of Alternatives: Wilson, Bryan, Lansing, and America’s Intervention in World War I,” Nebraska History, vol. 63, no. 1 (1982), pp. 33–57; see also Coletta, Bryan, vol. 2, chs. 9–12; Louis W. Koenig, Bryan: A Political Biography of William Jennings Bryan (Putnam’s, 1971), ch. 26.

  413–14 [Coletta on Bryan’s principles]: Coletta, “A Question of Alternatives,” p. 33.

  414 [Bryan’s “Real Neutrality”]: Coletta, Bryan, vol. 2, p. 313.

  415 [Lansing on the Falaba incident]: quoted in ibid., p. 303.

  [“Strict accountability”]: quoted in Link, Struggle for Neutrality, p. 323.

  [Wilson on Bryan’s Lusitania proposals]: Wilson to Bryan, May 14, 1915, in Department of State, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, The Lansing Papers, 1914–1920 (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1939), vol. 1, p. 406.

  415–16 [Bernstorff promise]: Link, Struggle for Neutrality, pp. 582–87.

  416 [House on the Lusitania]: quoted in ibid., p. 375.

  [Chicago Standard]: May 13, 1915, quoted in ibid.

  [“Too proud to fight”]: quoted in ibid., p. 382.

  [Roosevelt on Wilson’s diplomacy]: Joseph Gardner, Departing Glory: Theodore Roosevelt as ex-President (Scribner’s, 1973), p. 339; Roosevelt to A. H. Lee, June 17, 1915, in Elting E. Morison.ed.,The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt (Harvard University Press, 1951–54), vol. 8, p. 937; Link, Struggle for Neutrality, p. 383.

  416 [Wartime propaganda]: see Link, Struggle for Neutrality, pp. 35–43, and sources cited therein.

  417 [Bryan and the Gore-McLemore bills]: see Devlin, pp. 438, 445–46, Bryan quoted at p. 446.

  [The war in 1916]: Harvey A. DeWeerd, President Wilson Fights His War (Macmillan, 1968), ch. 6.

  418 [Wilson’s nomination of Brandeis]: Alpheus T. Mason, Brandeis: A Free Man’s Life (Viking Press, 1946), chs. 30–31; Philippa Strum, Louis D. Brandeis: Justice for the People (Harvard University Press, 1984), ch. 15.

  [Alice Brandeis on the expected fireworks]: letter to Alfred Brandeis, January 31, 1916, quoted in Mason, p. 466.

  419 [Brandeis’s early involvement in his own defense]: Brandeis to Norman Hapgood, February1, 1916, in Melvin I. Urofsky, ed., Letters of Louis D. Brandeis (State University of NewYork Press, 1971–78), vol. 4, pp. 27–29 and passim.

  [Lippmann’s and Frankfurter’s involvement]: Ronald Steel, Walter Lippmann and the American Century (Atlantic-Little, Brown, 1980), pp. 101–2.

  [Wilson’s further endorsement of Brandeis]: Wilson to Senator Charles Allen Culberson, May 5, 1916, in Arthur S. Link, ed., The Papers of Woodrow Wilson (Princeton University Press, 1966–83), vol. 36, pp. 609–11.

  [Wilson’s shift toward progressivism on domestic policy]: Arthur S. Link, Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era (Harper & Bros., 1954), pp. 224–30; Wilson to Newton D. Baker, September 16, 1916, in Link, Wilson Papers, vol. 38, p. 178; vol. 38, passim; vol. 37, pp. 427–28.

  [Republican and Progressive conventions]: Arthur S. Link and William M. Leary, Jr., “Election of 1916,” in Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., ed., History of American Presidential Elections (Chelsea House, 1971). vol. 3, pp. 2248–52; George E. Mowry, Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Movement (Hill and Wang, 1960), ch. 14.

  [Roosevelt’s views of the nomination]: Morison, Letters, vol. 8, pp. 1058–74 (esp. Roosevelt’s messages to Progressive party “conferees” and leadership, June 10–22, 1916).

  420 [Democraticparly convention]: Link and Leary in Schlesinger, vol. 3, pp. 2252–55.

  [Glynn’s keynote address]: Arthur S. Link, Wilson: Campaigns for Progressivism and Peace, 1916–1917 (Princeton University Press, 1965), pp. 43–45, quoted at p. 44.

  [Wilson’s campaign]: Link and Leary in Schlesinger, pp. 2258–68; Link, Wilson Papers, vol. 38, pp. 165–633. On 1916 campaign in general, see S. D. Lovell, Th
e Presidential Election of 1916 (Southern Illinois University Press, 1980).

  [Passing a strongly progressive platform]: Schlesinger, vol. 3, pp. 2271–81.

  421 [Hughes’s campaign ]: Betty Glad, Charles Evans Hughes and the Illusions of Innocence (University of Illinois Press, 1966), ch. 5; Dexter Perkins, Charles Evans Hughes and American Democratic Statesmanship (Little, Brown, 1956), ch. 3.

  [Election results, 1916]: Schlesinger, vol. 3, p. 2345.

  [Wilson on Page]: quoted in Devlin, p. 317.

  [Lansing’s attitude]: see Daniel M. Smith, Robert Lansing and American Neutrality, 1914–1917 (DaCapo Press, 1972).

  422 [American loans and trade during the war]: Richard B. Morris, ed., Encyclopedia of American History, rev. ed. (Harper & Bros., 1961), p. 303.

  [Bryan on Eastern financiers and the war]: William J. Bryan to Charles W. Bryan, March 26, 1917, quoted in Coletta, “A Question of Alternatives,” p. 51.

  [Norris on Wall Street gold]: John M. Cooper, Jr., “The Command of Gold Reversed: American Loans to Britain, 1915–1917,” Pacific Historical Review, vol. 45 (1976), pp. 209–30, quoted at p. 209.

  [Revisionists on economic origins of U.S. intervention]: Charles A. Beard, The Devil Theory of War (Vanguard Press, 1936); Walter Millis, Road to War: America, 1914–1917 (Houghton Mifflin, 1935).

  [Cooper on “command of gold”]: Cooper, p. 230.

  [Colonel House and the war]: Alexander L. George and Juliette L. George, Woodrow’Wilson and Colonel House: A Personality Study (Dover, 1964), chs. 9–10; Devlin, chs. 9, 12–14.

  422 [Wilson’s confidence in House]: quoted in Edwin A. Weinsiein, Woodrow Wilson: A Medical and Psychological Biography (Princelon University Press, 1981), p. 269.

  422–23 [Wilson on intervention as the worst thing]: ibid., p. 288.

  423 [Wilson’s qualification of House-Grey Memorandum]: Arthur S. Link, Wilson: Confusion and Crises, 1915–1916 (Princeton University Press, 1964), p. 138 and footnote 103.

  [Wilson’s protest to Britain]: quoted in Link, Progressivism and Peace, p. 196.

  [Lansing’s sabotage]: ibid., pp. 221–24, quoted at p. 222.

  424 [“Peace without victory”speech]: ibid., pp. 265–68.

  [Resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare]: ibid., p. 290.

  [“The world had suddenly reversed itself’]: House Diary, February 1, 1917, quoted in ibid., p. 294.

  425 [Contrast between British and German neutrality violations]: Coletta, “A Question of Alternatives,” p. 37.

  [Response to Zimmermann telegram]: Link, Progressivism and Peace, p. 357.

  [Wilson’s statement of war aims]: quoted in ibid., p. 425.

  [“Little group of willful men”]: ibid., p. 367.

  425–26 [Devlin on Wilson’s motives]: Devlin, p. 678.

  Mobilizing the Workshop

  426 [Fears of Churchill and Lloyd George in 1917]: William Manchester, The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill (Little, Brown, 1983), p. 616.

  [Allied offensives of 1917]: DeWeerd, op. cit., pp. 179–92.

  427 [Pétain on waiting for the Americans]: quoted in ibid., p. 184.

  [Washington at war]: Green, op. cit., pp. 236–40; Helen Nicolay, Our Capital on the Potomac (Century, 1924), quoted at pp. 512–13.

  [Mobilization of the Ordnance Department]: DeWeerd, pp. 220–23; Crozier is quoted on slowness at p. 221.

  [Overman bill]: Congressional Record, 65th Congress, 2nd Session (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1918), vol. 56, part 4, p. 3815 (March 21, 1918).

  [Republican charges of absolutism]: New York Times, February 18, 1918, quoted in George and George, op. cit., p. 180.

  [Wartime agencies]: Daniel R. Beaver, Newton D. Baker and the American War Effort, 1917–1919 (University of Nebraska Press, 1966); Benedict Crowell and Robert F. Wilson, The Giant Hand (Yale University Press, 1921); DeWeerd, ch. 10; Francis W. O’Brien, ed., The Hoover-Wilson Wartime Correspondence (Iowa State University Press, 1974); Jordan A. Schwarz, The Speculator: Bernard M. Baruch in Washington, 1917–1965 (University of North Carolina Press, 1981), ch. 2; Mark Sullivan, Our Times (Scribner’s, 1926–35), vol. 5, chs. 15–21; T. Harry Williams, The History of American Wars (Alfred A. Knopf, 1981), pp. 382–98.

  428 [Reed warns of draft riots]: quoted in Sullivan, vol. 5, p. 296.

  [Hoover’s publicity campaign]: DeWeerd, pp. 243–44.

  [Convoys as turning point of war]: ibid., p. 170.

  428–29 [“Restraint of trade for reasons of national security”]: Schwarz, pp. 51–52.

  429 [Manufacturer’s vow to “go out of business “]: quoted in Crowell and Wilson, p. 46.

  [American railroads in World War I]:Keith L. Bryant, Jr., History of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway (Macmillan, 1974), ch. 9; George H. Burgess and Miles C. Kennedy,Centennial History of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company (reprint; Arno Press, 1976), pp.560–72; Richard C. Overton, Burlington Route (Alfred A. Knopf, 1965), ch. 16. See also Oliver Jensen, Railroads in America (American Heritage, 1981), pp. 284 and 289 for price and profit figures.

  [Federal direction of railroads]: Aaron A. Godfrey, Government Operation of the Railroads, 1918–1920 (San Felipe Press, 1974); Walker D. Hines (Director-General of Railroads, 1919–20), War History of American Railroads (Yale University Press, 1928); I. Leo Sharfman, The American Railroad Problem (Century, 1921); John F. Stover, American Railroads (University of Chicago Press, 1961), ch. 7.

  [Federal wage recommendations]: Report of the Lane Commission, quoted in Godfrey, p. 110.

  430 [Production of explosives]: Benedict Crowell and Robert F. Wilson, The Armies of Industry (Yale University Press, 1921), ch. 8. See also Stover, pp. 160–61, for a map of the principal rail lines.

  430 [Women and war work]: Crowell and Wilson, Armies of Industry, pp. 168–70; Maurine W. Greenwald, Women, War, and Work (Greenwood Press, 1980), passim; Selig Perlman and Philip Taft, History of Labor in the United States, 1896–1932; Labor Movements (Macmillan, 1935), section 3.

  431 [Black labor and migration]: Sterling D. Spero and Abram L. Harris, The Black Worker (Atheneum, 1969), esp. part 4; Emmett J. Scott, Negro.Migration During the War (reprint; Arno Press, 1969), passim.

  [Living conditions of blacks in the North]: The Survey, February 17, 1917, quoted in Scott, p. 140.

  [American military experiences in 1917]:DeWeerd, pp. 184–85, 193; Robert Leckie, The Wars of America (Harper & Row, 1968), vol. 2, pp. 111–17; Laurence Stallings, The Doughboys (Harper & Row, 1963), ch. 2.

  432 [Soldier on unprepared American troops]: Private Leo Bailey, quoted in Stallings, p. 25.

  “Nous Voilà, Lafayette!”

  [Lenin’s call for peace]: quoted in Leckie, op. cit., p. 108.

  [German 1918 offensive]: DeWeerd, op. cit., part 4; Basil H. Liddell Hart, History of the First World War (Cassell, 1970), ch. 8; Leckie, pp. 120–27; Manchester, Last Lion, op. cit., pp. 628–42; Stallings, op. cit., chs. 3–7.

  433 [“Retreat, hell”]: quoted in Robert B. Asprey, At Belleau Wood (Putnam’s, 1965), pp.127–28.

  [Pershing’s infantry tactics]: see DeWeerd, pp. 215–16, and sources cited therein.

  [West Point discipline for AEF: quoted in ibid., p. 213.

  434 [“Pas finie”]: Manchester, Last Lion, p. 641.

  [“Nous voilà”]: quoted in Stallings, p. 15.

  [Debt to Lafayette]: ibid., p. 16.

  [The Inquiry]: Ray Stannard Baker, Woodrow Wilson: Life and Letters (Doubleday, Doran, 1927–39), vol. 7, pp. 254, 275, 352; Arthur Walworth, America’s Moment: 1918 (W. W. Norton, 1977), pp. 76–78. See also Lawrence E. Gelfand, The Inquiry (Yale University Press, 1963), passim.

  [ Wilson on selfish war aims]: telegram of December 1, 1917, quoted in Baker, vol. 7, p. 387.

  435 [“Fourteen Points” address]: “An Address to a Joint Session of Congress,” January 8,1918, in Link, Wilson Papers, op. cit., vol. 45, pp. 534–39, quoted at pp. 535, 538; see alsoWalworth, pp. 275–83 (Appendix A).

  [T
he “liberal”peace program]: Link, Revolution, War, and Peace, op. cit., ch. 4.

  [German reply to Wilson]: New York Times, January 11, 12, 1918, quoted in Baker, vol. 7, p. 456, footnote 2.

  [Treaty of Brest-Litovsk]: see Leckie, p. 120.

  [Wilson on arbitrary power]: quoted in Sullivan, op. cit., vol. 5, p. 449.

  [Baltimore address]: April 6, 1918, Baker, vol. 8, p. 76.

  [“Force to the utmost”]: ibid.

  [American tanks at St. Mihiel]: Martin Blumenson, ed., The Patton Papers, 1885–1940 (Houghton Mifflin, 1972), ch. 29, Patton quoted at p. 594.

  [Aircraft in World War I]:Liddell Hart, pp. 457–64; Stallings, ch. 14; Williams, op. cit., pp. 389–92.

  435–37 [The last months of the war]: DeWeerd, chs. 17–18; Baker, vol. 8, chs. 4–5.

  438 [Armistice celebration in New York]: Sullivan, vol. 5, pp. 521–27, newspaper (Brooklyn Eagle, November 12, 1918) quoted at p. 527.

  Over Here: Liberty and Democracy

  [Tocqueville on aristocracies and democracies facing war]: Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Philip Bradley, ed. (Vintage Books, 1954), vol. 1, pp. 235–38.

  [Senator on sending an army to France]: Thomas S. Martin, quoted in Ernest R. May, War, Boom and Bust (Time, Inc., 1964), p. 10.

  438 [The momentum of war]: ibid., pp. 10–14.

  [Creel’s propaganda organization]: George Creel, How We Advertised America (Harper & Bros., 1920); Harold D. Lasswell, Propaganda Techniques in the World War (Alfred A. Knopf, 1927); James R. Mock and Cedric Larson, Words That Won the War (reprint; Russell & Russell, 1968).

  [Chauvinism, war hysteria, war opposition]: William Preston, Jr., Aliens and Dissenters (Harvard University Press, 1963), quoted at pp. 85, 87; see also Sullivan, op. cit., vol. 5, pp. 467–77; H. C. Peterson and Gilbert C. Fite, Opponents of War, 1917–1918 (University of Wisconsin Press, 1957); Joan M.Jensen, The Price of Vigilance (Rand McNally, 1968).