Abstract
Between February and April 1915 the contradiction between Wilson’s goal of mediating an end to the war and his desire to protect the US economy was becoming quite clear. In February 1915 Germany announced a new naval strategy that called for submarine attacks on Allied merchant vessels entering waters around Great Britain and Ireland. Germany’s response to the growing United States-British trade relationship created a quandary for the Wilson administration because the destruction of US property and the death of Americans at sea might bring the United States into the war. For Britain, Germany’s announcement provided a real opportunity to draw the United States closer. Additionally, Colonel Edward House’s European mission would not provide the results that he and the president had hoped for. Neither Britain nor Germany agreed to peace talks and blamed each other for the war’s duration. In conjunction with the growing economic ties to London and Germany’s declaration of submarine warfare, the progress and the outcome of House’s efforts ultimately played an important part in altering the Wilson administration’s perception of the war and America’s role in it.
Peace-talk [sic], therefore, is yet mere moonshine—House has been to Berlin, from London, thence to Paris, thence back to London again—from Nowhere to Nowhere (Utopia to Utopia concerning the possibility of peace).
—US Ambassador Walter Hines Page1
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Notes
Excerpt from Page’s diary as cited in Jan Willem Schulte Nordholt, Woodrow Wilson: A Life for World Peace (Berkley: University of California Press, 1991), 169.
Charles Seymour, ed., The Intimate Papers of Colonel House: Behind the Political Curtain, 1912–1915 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1926), February 6, 1915, 1: 361–62.
Lansing to Wilson, February 5, 1915, Arthur S. Link, ed., The Papers of Woodrow Wilson (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979), 32: 193.
Lansing to Wilson, February 7, 1915, Link, The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 32: 195–96; Paul G. Halpern, A Naval History of the First World War (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1995), 295.
Paul G. Halpern, A Naval History of the First World War (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1995), 23, 293–94;
Naval War College, International Law Documents: Neutrality: Breaking of Diplomatic Relations: War (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1918), 126–27;
Lance E. Davis and Stanley L. Engerman, Naval Blockades in War and Peace: An Economic History since 1750 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 165;
Philip K. Lundeberg, The German Naval Critique of the U-Boat Campaign, 1915–1918, Military Ajffairs, Vol. 27, No. 3 (Autumn 1963), 105–18;
Holger H. Herwig, Politics of Frustration: The United States in German Naval Planning, 1889–1941 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1976), 116–18.
Ibid.; See also Kendrick A. Clements and Eric A. Cheezum, Woodrow Wilson (Washington, DC: CQ Press), 2003, 172;
John Milton Cooper Jr., Woodrow Wilson (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009), 275.
Account of conversation between House and Grey, February 20, 1915, ibid. David French, British Strategy and War Aims 1914–1916 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1986), 79;
Jeffry D. Wallin, By Ships Alone: Churchill and the Dardanelles, (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1981), 52–53, 137.
Diary of Colonel House, Link, The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 31: 517–20; Lloyd E. Ambrosius, Wilsonian Statecraft: Theory and Practice of Liberal Internationalism during World War I (New York: Scholarly Resources, 1991), 36–37.
In mid-1916, Wilson began promoting the idea that the United States should join an “association of nations” that could ensure the maintenance of peace. Thomas J. Knock, To End All Wars: Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a New World Order (Princeton University Press, 1992), 75–77.
“Observations Upon the United States Note of the 22nd February, 1915,” February 28, 1915, British Cabinet Papers, CAB 37 / 124, National Archives, Kew, UK; Avner Offer, The First World War: An Agrarian Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 271. In the first quarter of 1915, the calorie intake of the German civilian population had not dropped significantly since the beginning of the war. Britain had only just completed its agreements with continental neutrals to prevent the re-export of goods. Therefore, the full effect of the blockade had not yet been realized in Germany and the admiralty certainly did not want to see its efforts go to naught. Offer, The First World War, 45, 230; David and Engerman, Naval Blockades in Peace and War, 162;
C. Paul Vincent, Politics of Hunger: The Allied Blockade of Germany, 1915–1919 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1985), 36–43.
“Declaration made by His Majesty’s Government and communicated to Neutral Governments,” March 1, 1915, Stevenson, ed., British Documents on Foreign Affairs: Reports and Papers from the Foreign Office Confidential Print. Part 2, From the First to the Second World War. Series H. The First World War, 1914–1918, Volume 5, Blockade and Economic Warfare, 1: August 1914–July 1915, 34; Marion C. Siney, The Allied Blockade of Germany 1914–1916 (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 1957), 66–67.
Gerard to Bryan, March 4, 1915, ibid., 132; For more on the struggle to gain control of German policy see Martin Kitchen, “Civil-Military Relations in Germany,” in R. J. Q. Adams, ed., The Great War, 1914–1918: Essays on the Military, Political and Social History of the First World War (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1990), 39–41.
Ibid.; Adrian Cook, The Alabama Claims: American Politics and Anglo-American Relations, 1865–1872 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1975), 26;
Howard Jones, Blue and Gray Diplomacy: A History of Union and Confederate Foreign Relations (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 290; Naval Historical Center, “USS Vanderbilt (1862–1873),” Department of the Navy, accessed June 2008, http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/sh -usn/usnsh-v/vanderbt.htm.
See Sidney Bell, Righteous Conquest: Woodrow Wilson and the Evolution of New Diplomacy (New York: Kennikat, 1972), 154–55;
Daniel M. Smith, The Great Departure: The United States and World War I, 1914–1920 (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1965), 52.
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© 2013 M. Ryan Floyd
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Floyd, M.R. (2013). “Twittering of a Sparrow”. In: Abandoning American Neutrality. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137334121_6
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