Abstract
In the first 11 months of the war, Wilson repeatedly placed US neutrality in question. Yet during that period his actions did not violate the letter of the law. By the summer of 1915, the Wilson administration began an important and intentional shift in its approach to the belligerents. After Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan’s resignation, hawkish policy makers dominated the administration, and Wilson permitted his pro-British leanings to influence his policies. He concluded that American economic and political development depended on a healthy Anglo-American friendship. Britain also understood the significant contribution the United States would make to an Allied victory. By late 1915, Britain had almost depleted its cash reserves and could not raise further capital from domestic sources. The quandary forced Britain to seek loans in the United States in order to continue purchasing vital war materiel. At the same time, the ongoing submarine crisis convinced the president and his advisors that Germany was unwilling to negotiate a resolution. In this volatile environment, the British and US governments came together in the hope of protecting their financial and ideological interests.
Shall we ever get out of the labyrinth made for us all by this German ‘frightfulness’?
—Wilson to Edith Galt, September 6, 19151
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Charles Seymour, ed., The Intimate Papers of Colonel House: From Neutrality to War 1915–1917 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1926), 2: 12.
House to Wilson, June 16, 1915, Link, The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 33: 409; Patrick Devlin, Too Proud to Fight: Woodrow Wilsons Neutrality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975, c1974), 303;
Arthur Link, Wilson: The Struggle for Neutrality, 1914–1915 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1960), 427.
Gerard to Lansing, July 13, 1915, FRUS: 1915. Supplement, The World War, 43–44. The Mauretania was the sister ship of the Lusitania. Both had four funnels and were listed as British auxiliary cruisers. Paul G. Halpern, A Naval History of the First World War (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1995), 298.
Wilson to Josephus Daniels, July 21, 1915, Arthur S. Link, ed., The Papers of Woodrow Wilson (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980), 34: 4–5. The general staff responded to Garrison’s call for an estimate on the necessary size of the military through the Statement of a Proper Military Policy for the United States. The general staff asserted that the United States needed at minimum a 218,000 man regular army and a 500,000 man reserve force under federal control. Garrison revised the report before sending it on to the president but still called for a significant increase in the size of the army and reserves.
Nancy Gentile Ford, Civil-Military Relations during World War I (Westport, CT: Prager Security International, 2008), 20.
David French, British Strategy and War Aims 1914–1916 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1986), 1; Eric Drummond to Crewe, June 11, 1915, FO 800 / 95. Lord Crewe temporarily replaced Grey because he was having trouble with his eyesight.
George Macaulay Trevelyan, The Life and Letters of Sir Edward Grey (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1937), 362–64.
Winston Churchill, The World in Crisis, 1915 (New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1929), 292.
Grey to Cabinet, July 22, 1915, CAB 37 / 131, National Archives, Kew, UK. The Neches was a merchant vessel detained by the Royal Navy on suspicion that at least some of its cargo had originated in occupied Belgium. Simon D. Fess, The Problems of Neutrality When the World Is at War: A History of Our Relations with Germany and Great Britain as Detailed in Documents That Passed between the United States and the Two Great Powers, Part One the Submarine Controversy (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1917), 314.
March 10, 1915, FO 368; between 1914 and 1917, 70 percent of all Entente loans went to aid Russia. Hew Strachan, Financing the First World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 181.
Burk, Britain, America, and the Sinews of War 1914–1918, 63, 66; Burk, “The Diplomacy of Finance: British Financial Missions to the United States, 1914–1918,” The Historical Journal, Vol. 22, No. 2 (June 1979), 353; Link, Wilson: The Struggle for Neutrality, 616. Britain attempted to meet its financial obligations through domestic borrowing but discovered that it could not raise enough money at home. French, British Strategy and War Aims 1914–1916, 121.
R. J. Q. Adams, Arms and the Wizard: Lloyd George and the Ministry of Munitions, 1915–1916 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1978), 167–68.
For a different view on the impact of the loan, see Kendrick A. Clements, The Presidency of Woodrow Wilson (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1992), 129.
Copyright information
© 2013 M. Ryan Floyd
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Floyd, M.R. (2013). “The Shadow of War”. In: Abandoning American Neutrality. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137334121_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137334121_8
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-46259-9
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-33412-1
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)