The Wilsonian Persuasion in American Foreign Policy By Matthew C ...

Those who opposed active intervention, explained Frank Simonds in a 1919 retrospective of the war, held that “in a world in which two sets of European nations were fighting for old European aims, American had alone remained faithful to the ideals of liberty and democracy, and that the true American point of view could not be sympathetic with either of the camps, but could only have unlimited condemnation for both.”¹⁴

Both sides waged a propaganda campaign to sway American public opinion. In this, the British had a clear advantage, deploying attractive cultural figures like H.G. Wells and Rudyard Kipling to make the case. Germany’s autocrats had no practice in speaking the language of democracy. Indeed, Germany’s stiff and authoritarian approach to the propaganda effort may have actually served to undermine its case. Senator Elihu Root wrote to a colleague, “The more fully German discussion of the subject reveals the true principles and purposes which control the ruling class in Germany, the worse it is for the German side of the controversy before an American jury.”¹⁵

Over time, the facts regarding German aggression became widely recognized, and public opinion increasingly came to regard France as a nation which had once given the United States indispensable aid as now being the one in need of assistance. Yet, although hundreds of young American men went to join the French and British in their fight, for most Americans the war remained a remote and foreign affair with seemingly little impact upon their lives; it was as if it were being waged in another world. In a way, it was. If not for a German blunder in estimating American will, it might have remained that way.

The German submarine fleet was being used, with growing effect, to disrupt Allied shipping, and Germany had begun violating a sacrosanct principle of international law, that non-military commercial ships could not be destroyed without first seeing to the safe removal of those aboard. For many Americans, the battles in Europe might have been the debris of ancient feuds, but German violation of this basic principle of the law of the seas represented an ominous new threat to international order.