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

The “doughboys” (the name was derived, depending on who you talk to, from characteristic infantry fare, buttons on Civil War uniforms, or, most likely, the appellation given by cavalry to U.S. infantry along the Rio Grande—“adobes”—for their perpetual covering of white dust), were eager to join the fight against the German aggressors, but were not exceedingly prepared for it. The commander of the first Company of troops to arrive in Paris worried about his men parading: “The officers were afraid of the showing we might make since we had so many recruits. These men couldn’t even slope arms. They were even more dangerous with a loaded rifle.”³⁰

For Americans, the war was about more than a territorial dispute. Statesmen and diplomats set about to enumerate the principles underlying U.S. involvement and its war aims, which were very different from those of the Europeans. Ambassador Page wrote to his friend Frank Doubleday, the publisher, that the United States must clearly express “the moral issue involved in the war. Every political and social ideal that we stand for is at stake. If we value democracy in the world, this is the chance to further it—or bring it into utter disrepute.”

In the early twentieth century, the international arena was anarchic, the only constraints were those of power. In some ways, little had changed since Thucydides described relations between nations 2,500 years earlier; “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” Wilson and the Americans aimed to change the entire course of history. President Woodrow Wilson spelled out his hopes for a post-war world of justice and peace in a speech delivered to a joint session of Congress on January 8, 1918. In that speech, Wilson enumerated his famous “Fourteen Points,” by which, he hoped, a more just and secure world might be realized. The Points were an effort to shape the terms of the debate on the nature of the post-war world, in the context of European states which would surely have indemnity and outright revenge in mind.