Abstract
In the early months of the Great War the purview and direction of Anglo-American diplomacy was cloudy because the United States and Great Britain confronted a multitude of complex issues that muddled their relationship. Each state had to orchestrate strategies for protecting its own economic and political well-being. For the Wilson administration, safeguarding American interests meant declaring neutrality, calling for mediation among the belligerents, and trying to convince Great Britain to accept existing international accords that secured neutral commerce. Protecting US trade, however, was not simple because Britain’s plan for conducting its war effort was not compatible with America’s interests. Britain could not avoid interference with US exports because it was committed to preventing Germany from purchasing goods that would help its military campaign. The Royal Navy’s decision to cut off German trade would become a serious issue of contention for Washington and the American people. Additionally, as Wilson soon discovered, his country’s economic and ancestral associations with Europe prevented his office from steering clear of the conflict. Instead the president and his advisors found themselves deeply immersed in global affairs. The ties between the Old and New World led to confusion over how to pursue relations that achieved political and fiscal objectives while minimizing the risk of diplomatic confrontation.
They don’t want peace on the continent—the ruling classes do not. But they will want it presently and then our opportunity will come—your opportunity to play an important and historic part.
—US Ambassador Walter Hines Page to President Wilson, August 2, 19141
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Notes
Page to Wilson, August 2, 1914, Arthur S. Link, ed., The Papers of Woodrow Wilson (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979), 30: 329–30.
Thomas J. Knock, To End All Wars: Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a New World Order (Princeton University Press, 1992), 23;
Alexander L. George and Juliette L. George, Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House: A Personality Study (New York: Dover, 1964), 93–94.
Ross Gregory, Walter Hines Page: Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1970), 56.
Page to Wilson, July 29, 1914, Link, The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 30: 314–15. For more on the intricacies of the July Crisis and the interworking of the Triple Alliance, which included Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy (Italy remained neutral when the war broke out), and on the Triple Entente, see Ian F. W. Beckett, The Great War, 1914–1918 (London: Pearson, 2001), 19–21, 27–32;
Joachim Remak, 1914-The Third Balkan War: Origins Reconsidered, in H. W. Koch, ed., The Origins of the First World War: Great Power Rivalries and German War Aims (Macmillan, 1984), 86–100;
Zara Steiner, Britain and the Origins of the First World War (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1977), 99–100; Hew Strachan, The Outbreak of the First World War, 81–127.
Trevor Wilson, The Myriad Faces of War: Britain and the Great War, 1914–1918 (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1986), 30.
John H. Maurer, The Outbreak of the First World War: Strategic Planning, Crisis Decision Making, and Deterrence Failure (London: Prager, 1995), 105;
David French, British Strategy and War Aims 1914–1916 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1986), 6–8, 21.
Niels Aage Thorsen, The Political Thought of Woodrow Wilson 1875–1910 (Princeton University Press, 1988), 5–6.
John Morton Blum, Woodrow Wilson and the Politics of Morality (Little, Brown, 1956), 6, 11.
Arthur S. Link, The Higher Realism of Woodrow Wilson (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt, University Press, 1971), 6–10;
Ernest May, The World War and American Isolation, 1914–1917 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966), 41; “The Schoolmaster in Politics as the Wits See Him,” New York Times, February 4, 1912, SM14.
Blum, Woodrow Wilson and the Politics of Morality, 15; Patrick Devlin, Too Proud to Fight: Woodrow Wilson’s Neutrality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975, c1974), 225–27; Wilson to House, August 17, 1914, Link, 30: 390; Wilson to House, August 18, 1914, The Woodrow Wilson Papers, 30: 395;
George C. Osborn, Woodrow Wilson: The Early Years (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1968), 103. For more on Wilson’s emotional stress related to Ellen Wilson’s failing health and death, see
Edwin A. Weinstein, Woodrow Wilson: A Medical and Psychological Biography (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981), 254–62;
Cary T. Grayson, Woodrow Wilson: In Intimate Memoir (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1960), 32–36.
John Milton Cooper Jr., The Vanity of Power: American Isolationism and the First World War, 1914–1917 (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1969), 2.
Robert W. Tucker, Woodrow Wilson and the Great War: Reconsidering America’s Neutrality 1914–1917 (University of Virginia Press, 2007), 30;
Kendrick A. Clements, William Jennings Bryan: Missionary Isolationist (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1982), 66;
IxRoy Ashby, William Jennings Bryan: Champion of Democracy (Boston: Twayne, 1987), 153–55.
H. C. Peterson, Propaganda for War: The Campaign against American Neutrality, 1914–1917 (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat, 1939), 13.
George Robb, British Culture and the First World War (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 97–98; Peterson, Propaganda for War, 32;
See also: M. L. Sanders, “Wellington House and British Propaganda during the First World War,” The Historical Journal, Vol 18, No. 1 (March 1975), 119–46.
Carl P. Parrini, Heir to Empire: United States Economic Diplomacy, 1916–1923 (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1969), 19;
Department of Commerce, Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1914 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1915), 37: 320, 326.
Kathleen Burk, Britain, America, and the Sinews of War 1914–1918 (Boston: George Allen and Unwin, 1985), 55;
David M. Kennedy, Over Here: The First World War and American Society (Oxford University Press, 1980), 301.
Arthur Jacob Marder, The Anatomy of British Sea Power: A History of British Naval Policy in the Pre-Dreadnought Era, 1880–1905 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1940), 84, 204, 358.
The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in Great Britain (Page), August 6, 1914, FRUS: 1914. Supplement, The World War, 216; The Ambassador in Great Britain (Page) to the Secretary of State, August 19, 1914 (received August 20), FRUS, 217; Marion C. Siney, The Allied Blockade of Germany 1914–1916 (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 1957), 21;
Avner Offer, The First World War: An Agrarian Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 276–81. There are two forms of contraband: absolute and conditional. Absolute contraband includes materials that are solely used by military forces. They include munitions, arms, and any other equipment deemed military in nature. Conditional contraband includes goods that could be used by both civilians and the military such as foodstuffs that could be confiscated only if they were destined for an enemy government to further its war effort.
C. Paul Vincent, Politics of Hunger: The Allied Blockade of Germany, 1915–1919 (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1985), 30–33. What was labeled as absolute or conditional contraband was subject to the needs and whims of the labeler; Tansill, America Goes to War, 135–36.
Ernest R. May, The World War and American Isolation, 1914–1917 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966), 8–12.
John W. Coogan, The End of Neutrality: The United States, Britain, and Maritime Rights, 1899–1915 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981), 156–60, 186. Devlin points out that McKenna’s evidence is suspect. It was never produced for review during or after the war. Devlin, Too Proud to Fight, 193; Reginald McKenna to Grey, August 19, 1914, FO 372 / 584, National Archives, Kew, UK. The doctrine of continuous voyage defines a cargo based on its final destination, not the intermediate ports along its overseas route. In the War of 1812, the US merchants used the tactic known as the broken voyage. According to the British Rule of 1756, ports closed in peacetime to foreign vessels due to protectionist policies were also closed in time of war. To circumvent this issue, shippers would load French goods into their vessels and travel to a US port to change the cargo’s status to neutral before sailing to their final destination.
David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler, The War of 1812 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002), 19–20.
“Put World Trade under Flag of US, President’s Plan,” New York World, July 31, 1914, Link, The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 324–25; Jeffrey J. Safford, Wilsonian Maritime Diplomacy, 1913–1921 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1978), 35.
Historian Ross Kennedy provides a different perspective on Wilson’s decision to comply with Britain’s position. He asserts that in accepting Britain’s stipulation, Wilson proved his “willingness to defer to the British” and that the decision was an example of his “limited informal cooperation with the Allied effort.” Ross A. Kennedy, The Will to Believe: Woodrow Wilson, World War I, and America’s Strategy for Peace and Security (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2009), 66.
Spencer C. Tucker, The Great War 1914–1918 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 26;
Hew Strachan, The First World War (London: Viking Penguin, 2004), 48–51.
President Wilson to the Secretary of State, September 4, 1914, FRUS: 1915. Supplement, The World War, 33; See also Laurence W. Martin, Peace without Victory: Woodrow Wilson and British Liberals (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat, 1973 reprint), 89.
For an argument discussing Wilson’s national security concerns, see Ross A. Kennedy, The Will to Believe: Woodrow Wilson, World War I, and America’s Strategy for Peace and Security (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2009).
Page to House, September 15, 1915, Charles Seymour, ed., The Intimate Papers of Colonel House: Behind the Political Curtain, 1912–1915 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1926), 1: 333.
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© 2013 M. Ryan Floyd
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Floyd, M.R. (2013). “An Awful Cataclysm”. In: Abandoning American Neutrality. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137334121_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137334121_2
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