4 - Wilsonian Concepts and International Realities at the End of the War

Summary

In coming to grips with the international realities at the end of World War I, a few preliminary observations about “Wilsonian concepts” are in order. That term can mean many things, of course; but at its core sits the League of Nations idea. If this is the shorthand sum and substance of Wilsonianism, it should be pointed out that the League idea had many authors and that the concept was in a constant state of metamorphosis. Wilson's most important contributions to it were grand synthesis and propagation.

At a fairly early stage in the war, a new internationalist movement had come into being in the United States. This movement consisted of two divergent aggregations of activists -“progressive internationalists” and “conservative internationalists” Wilson's relationship with each group was consequential, but fundamentally so with the progressive internationalists. Among other things, the genesis of that relationship has important implications not only for Wilsonian concepts and international realities at the end of the war, but also for the domestic political struggle of 1919-20. As Gilbert Hitchcock, the Democratic leader in the Senate, declared at the start of the great debate over the Treaty of Versailles, “Internationalism has come, and we must choose what form the internationalism is to take.” No one ever put the matter more succinctly.