6 - President Wilson and the British Left

Summary

The advent of Wilsonian war aims

While Wedgwood was drawing up proposals for a British land grab in the Middle East other pre-war Radicals, those who were sympathetic to the UDC, were looking to America for help in establishing a moderate peace. Throughout 1915 and 1916 they kept up a dialogue with President Wilson via his foreign policy advisor ‘Colonel’ Edward House and other informal channels. The Radicals encouraged Wilson to intervene to re-establish the rule of international law, and they assured him that the pro-war attitude of the British public was much exaggerated in the press and that in reality there would be substantial support in Britain for moderate peace proposals emanating from America. In fact there was little evidence to support this assertion, and the British government made it clear that they were not prepared to accept compromise terms from Wilson unless he was prepared to join the Entente and force Germany to accept them as well. Wilson's response was to appeal directly to European public opinion with a speech in May 1916 in which he blamed the conflict on ‘secret counsels’ and called for a new code of international morality, to be policed by a League of Nations, with American participation. The UDC Radicals were delighted; the British government remained unmoved. Wilson tried again on 18 December, when he publicly asked the belligerents to state their peace terms. Germany did not reply, and the Allies said nothing until 10 January 1917. Before then, however, Wedgwood had made his own contribution to the cause of world peace.

The bloody battles of 1916 led him to believe that Britain could not win the war in the field before incompetent generals had allowed a generation to be butchered. Conscription, far from shortening the war, seemed only to be leading to higher casualties. At current rates of loss, Wedgwood told Lloyd George, the army would be annihilated by the spring of 1917. Such fears led him to the position held by many of his old Radical and Labour colleagues: outside help was needed to end the struggle favourably; in particular if President Wilson laid out peace terms drawn up on liberal lines, and promised to guarantee them, then sooner or later both sides would have to agree.