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The Problem of American Intervention, 1917: An Historical Retrospect*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Richard W. Leopold
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Review Article
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World Politics , Volume 2 , Issue 3 , April 1950 , pp. 405 - 425
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Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1950

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References

1 Earlier historiographical accounts include Bernadette Schmitt, E., “American Neutrality, 1914–1917,” Journal of Modern History, VIII (June 1936), 200–211CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fay, Sidney B., “Recipes for Neutrality,” Saturday Review of Literature, Nov. 4, 1939Google Scholar; Fleming, D. F., “Our Entry into the World War in 1917: The Revised Version,” Journal of Politics, II (February 1940), 75–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 McMaster, John B., The United States in the World War, 2 vols., New York, Appleton, 1918–1920Google Scholar; Bassett, John S., Our War with Germany, New York, Knopf, 1919.Google Scholar Less objective is Gauss, Christian B., Why We Went to War, New York, Scribner, 1918.Google Scholar Typical short accounts are Usher, Roland G., The Story of the Great War, New York, Macmillan, 1919Google Scholar, and Hayes, Carleton J. H., A Brief History of the Great War, New York, Macmillan, 1920.Google Scholar

3 Bourne, Randolph S., Untimely Paters, ed. by Oppenheim, James, New York, Huebsch, 1919Google Scholar; Nearing, Scott, The Great Madness: A Victory for the American Plutocracy, New York, Rand School of Social Science, 1917Google Scholar; Congressional Record, 65th Cong., 1st sess., April 4, 1917, pp. 212–14, 223–34. It is not the purpose of this paper to weigh the influence of this disillusionment upon American diplomacy in the interwar years.

4 Department of State, Foreign Relations: Supplement, the World War, 1914–1917, 4 vols., Washington, 1928–31; Foreign Relations: The Lansing Papers, 1914–1920, 2 vols., Washington, 1939–40; Savage, Carlton, ed., Policy of the United States toward Maritime Commerce in War, 2 vols., Washington, 1934–1936.Google Scholar Some German diplomatic correspondence is in Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Division of International Law, Official German Documents Relating to the World War, 2 vols., New York, 1923.

5 Hendrick, Burton J., Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, 3 vols., Garden City, Double-day, Page, 1922–1928Google Scholar; Seymour, Charles, ed., The Intimate Papers of Colonel House, 4 vols., Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1926–1928.Google Scholar

6 Tansill, Charles C., America Goes to War, Boston, Little, Brown, 1938Google Scholar; Curti, Merle, “Bryan and World Peace,” Smith College Studies in History, XVI (April-July 1931), 111–262.Google Scholar

7 Baker, Ray S., Woodrow Wilson: Life and Letters, Garden City, Doubleday, Doran, 1935, 1937, Vols. V and VI.Google Scholar

8 Senate, U. S., Special Committee on Investigation of the Munitions Industry, Hearings Pursuant to S. Res. 206, 73d Congress, 40 parts, Washington, 1934–1943Google Scholar, and Reports Pursuant to S. Res. 206, 73d Congress, 7 parts, Washington, 1935–36.

9 Selig Adler, “War Guilt and American Disillusionment, 1918–1928,” an unpublished paper read on Dec. 28, 1949 at the Boston meeting of the American Historical Association.

10 Bailey, Thomas A., “World War Analogues of the Trent Affair,” American Historical Review, XXXVIII (January 1933), 286–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Alstyne, Richard W. Van, “Private American Loans to the Allies, 1914–1916,” Pacific Historical Review, II (June 1933), 180–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Parts of the Foreign Relations Supplements were first used by J. V. Fuller and Julius W. Pratt in their excellent sketches of Bryan and Lansing in Bemis, S. F., ed., The American Secretaries of State and Their Diplomacy, New York, Knopf, 1929, Vol. X.Google Scholar

11 B. W. Huebsch to the author, Dec. 2, 1949; Mrs. Adrienne Turner to the author, Sept. 23, 1949. Turner's articles in the American Magazine in 1909 formed a part of his Barbarous Mexico, Chicago, Kerr, 1911. On his gunrunning activity in 1911, see Revolutions in Mexico: Hearings before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Foreign Relations, Senate, 62nd Cong., 2nd sess., pp. 193, 202. Opposition to the Versailles Treaty is expressed in articles in the Nation, July S and Aug. 2, 1919; Oct. 6, 1920.

12 Some of Barnes's more extreme statements were softened in the third edition of 1929. The main arguments were repeated, however, in World Politics in Modern Civilization, New York, Knopf, 1930, pp. 352–63, and, buttressed by selections from later material, in “The World War of 1914–1918,” War in the Twentieth Century, ed. by Willard Waller, New York, Random House, 1940, pp. 39–99.

13 For Bailsman, see his obituary in the New York Times, June 20, 1931, and his Let France Explain, London, 1922. An earlier scholarly account of neutral rights is contained in Graham, Malbone W., The Controversy between the United States and the Allied Governments Respecting Neutral Rights and Commerce during the Period of American Neutrality, 1914–1917, University of Texas Bulletin, No. 2344, 1923.Google Scholar

14 See review of Facing Europe by Darling, A. B. in Political Science Quarterly, XLII (September 1927), 436–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 Beard, Charles A., “Heroes and Villains of the World War,” Current History, XXIV (August 1926), 730–35Google Scholar; A., C. and Beard, M. R., The Rise of American Civilization, New York, Macmillan1, 1927, II, 609–35.Google Scholar

16 Grattan, C. H., Why We Fought, New York, Vanguard Press, 1929, p. vii.Google Scholar See his earlier “The Walter Hines Page Legend,” American Mercury, VI (September 1925), 39–51; “Walter Hines Page-Patriot or Traitor,” Nation, Nov. 4, 1925; and “The Historians Cut Loose,” American Mercury, XI (August 1927), 414–30. This last debunking essay has been corrected by Hutchinson, William T., “The American Historian in Wartime,” Missis sippi Valley Historical Review, XXIX (September 1942), 163–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar In 1929 Grattan also published Bitter Bierce: A Mystery of American Letters, Garden City, Doubleday, Doran, and The Peerless Leader: William Jennings Bryan, New York, Farrar and Rinehart. The last had been completed to 1904 by Paxton Hibben.

17 Grattan to the author, Sept. 6, 1949; Vanguard Press to the author, Aug. 29, 1949. Schmitt, B. E. in the Journal of Modern History, VIII (June 1936), p. 200CrossRefGoogle Scholar, n. 4, stated that no review copy had been received by his journal.

18 Lasswell in the New Republic, Mar. 12, 1930; Fay in New York Herald Tribune Books, Jan. 12, 1930; Scott, in Current History, XXXI (March 1930), 1056–57Google Scholar; Binkley, in Saturday Review of Literature, Sept. 20, 1930.Google Scholar

19 “Wilson Was for War in March, 1916,” Nation, July 27, 1932; “Colonel House's Self-Defense,” Nation, Dec. 14, 1932; Preface to Chaos: War in the Making, New York, Dodge, 1936; The Deadly Parallel, New York, Stackpole Sons, 1939. See particularly the reviews of Baker, Woodrow Wilson, Vol. V, in New Republic, Jan. 22, 1936, and of Seymour, American Neutrality in New Republic, Mar. 11, 1936.

20 Seymour, , American Diplomacy during the World War, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Press, 1934, pp. 24, 209–10.Google Scholar

21 See, for example, Bemis, in Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, CLXXIV (July 1934), 201–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Binkley, in Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XXI (December 1934), 441–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Baxter, in Yale Review, XXV (Winter 1936), 393–96Google Scholar; and Fay in New Republic, Aug. 15, 1934. The last-named periodical dissented editorially from Fay's review. Approval mixed with disagreement was voiced by Schmitt, in American Historical Review, XL (April 1935), 537–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and by Alstyne, Van in Journal of Modern History, VII (March 1935), 89–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar More severe criticism was expressed by Buell, in American Political Science Review, XXIX (April 1935), 310–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and by Commager, in New York Herald Tribune, Book Review section, Oct. 14, 1934.Google Scholar

22 In a second printing in 1942 Seymour left the text unchanged, brought the bibliography up to date, and appended a preface that in no way modified his earlier views. See also American Neutrality, 1914–1917, New Haven, Yale Univ. Press, 1935, and various articles and reviews.

23 Houghton Mifflin Company to the author, Sept. 13, 1949. Reader's Digest, XXVII (September 1935), 128, gives a short sketch of the author and the preparation of the book.

24 Millis, , Road to War: America, 1914–1917, Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1935, pp. 405, 431, 460.Google Scholar

25 “How We Entered the Last One,” New Republic, July 31, 1935. See also, “The Last War and the Next: Morgan, Money, and War; What Does Neutrality Mean?” Nation, Jan. 22 and 29, 1936; and “1939 Is Not 1914,” Life, Nov. 6, 1939.

26 Seymour, in Yale Review, XXIV (Summer 1935), 833–36.Google ScholarSontag, Both in American Historical Review, XLI (January 1936), 361–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Alstyne, Van in Journal of Modern History, VIII (March 1936), 118–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar, while critical, did note several valuable features.

27 It is not the purpose of this paper to evaluate the literature produced by the debate over the Neutrality Laws, although much of it deals incidentally with the problem of intervention. Nor will attention be paid to writings concerned primarily with drawing lessons from the experience of 1914–17, such as Moore, John B., “Appeal to Reason,” Foreign Affairs, XI (July 1933), 547–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Warren, Charles, “Troubles of a Neutral,” Foreign Affairs, XII (April 1934), 377–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar; or Dulles, Allen W. and Armstrong, Hamilton F., Can We Be Neutral?, New York, Harper, 1936.Google Scholar

28 Bemis, in Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, CLXXXIII (January 1936), 294–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and in American Historical Review, XLVI (January 1941), 438–41; Seymour, in American Historical Review, XLI (April 1936), 561–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Woolsey, in American Journal of International Law, XXX (January 1936), 167–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Alstyne, Richard W. Van, American Diplomacy in Action, rev. ed., Stanford, Stanford Univ. Press, 1947, p. 266Google Scholar, n. 5, and Bailey, Thomas A., A Diplomatic History of the American People, 3d ed., New York, Crofts, 1946, p. 647.Google Scholar No historian has yet collated the text of the War Memoirs with Lansing's “The Difficulties of Neutrality,” Saturday Evening Post, Apr. 18, 1931. There are some interesting differences. The author has been informed that Allen W. and Foster R. Dulles probably edited the War Memoirs.

29 Tansill, in Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XXIII (June 1936), 119–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30 Grattan, in New Republic, Mar. 11, 1936Google Scholar; Preface to Chaos, p. 66.

31 Cf. above, note 10. Bailey, , “The United States and the Blacklist during the Great War,” Journal of Modern History, VI (March 1934), 14–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “The Sinking of the Lusitania,” American Historical Review, XLI (October 1935), 54–73; Alstyne, Van, “The Policy of the United States Regarding the Declaration of London at the Outbreak of the Great War,” Journal of Modern History, VII (December 1935), 434–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32 Lutz, Ralph H., “Studies of World War Propaganda, 1914–1933,” Journal of Modern History, V (December 1933), 496–516CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Schuyler Foster, H. Jr, “How America Became a Belligerent: A Quantitative Study of War News, 1914–1917,” American Journal of Sociology, XL (January 1935), 464–75.CrossRefGoogle ScholarFuller, Joseph V., “The Genesis of the Munitions Traffic,” Journal of Modem History, VI (September 1934), 280–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Child, Clifton J., “German-American Attempts to Prevent the Exportation of Munitions of War, 1914–1915,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XXV (December 1938), 351–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

33 Birdsall, Paul, “Neutrality and Economic Pressures, 1914–1917,” Science and Society, III (Spring 1939), 217–28.Google Scholar

34 Beard, , The Devil Theory of War, New York, Vanguard Press, 1936, pp. 41–44.Google Scholar

35 Beard, , “New Light on Bryan and War Policies,” New Republic, June 17, 1936.Google Scholar

36 See his review of Garner, James W., International Law and the World War, 2 vols., New York, Longmans, Green, 1920Google Scholar, in Nation, July 20, 1921.

37 See Paxson, in Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XXIV (September 1937), 277–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and anonymous reviewer in Journal of Modern History, IX (December 1937), 567. See also, comment of Birdsall in “Neutrality and Economic Pressures, 1914–1917,” loc. cit., p. 226Google Scholar, and of Earle, Edward M., “A Half-Century of American Foreign Policy: Our Stake in Europe, 1898–1948,” Political Science Quarterly, LXIV (June 1949), 182.Google Scholar

38 Charles C. Tansill to the author, Nov. 20, 1949. In 1925 Tansill collated evidence oa the war guilt question for the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in a manuscript that has never been published. His Purchase of the Danish West Indies, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Press, 1932, had scattered references to the neutrality years, but Tansill printed little before 1938 on the problem of intervention except reviews.

39 Tansill to the author, Nov. 20, 1949. Nevins, in Atlantic Monthly, CLXII (August 1938)Google Scholar; Commager, in Yale Review, XXVII (Summer 1938), 857.Google Scholar See also, Borchard, in American Journal of International Law, XXXIII (January 1939), 229–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Chamberlain, John in New York Herald Tribune Books, Apr. 10, 1938.Google Scholar

40 See critical comments of Baxter, in American Historical Review, XLV (October 1939), 183–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Schmitt, in Journal of Modern History, X (December 1938), 569–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Sontag, in Saturday Review of Literature, Apr. 16, 1938.Google Scholar

41 Birdsall, , “Neutrality and Economic Pressures, 1914–1917,” loc. cit., p. 227.Google Scholar

42 Tansill, , America Goes to War, pp. 629–30 and notes 164, 165.Google Scholar

43 Ibid., pp. 162, 426.

44 Ibid., pp. 74–75.

45 Ibid., pp. 426–27, 429, 460. For a different handling of the German note of Feb. 8, 1916, see Baker, , Woodrow Wilson, VI, 162Google Scholar; Seymour, , American Diplomacy during the World War, pp. 114–16.Google Scholar The political and Congressional pressures are summarized in Henry C. Lodge to George O. Trevelyan, Mar. 7, 1916, Lodge Papers. Reprints of the two speeches are in Lodge, , War Addresses, 1915–1917, Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1917, pp. 85–114Google Scholar; Root, Elihu, Addresses on International Subjects, Bacon, Robert and Scott, J. B., eds., Cambridge, Harvard Univ. Press, 1916, pp. 427–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

46 In a letter to the author, Nov. 20, 1949, Tansill stated that he had not changed any of the conclusions expressed in his book.

47 Costrell, Edwin, How Maine Viewed the War, 1914–1917 (“University of Maine Studies,” 2d Ser., No. 49), Orono, 1940Google Scholar; Cummins, Cedric C., Indiana Public Opinion and the World War, 1914–1917 (“Indiana Historical Collections,” Vol. XXVIII), Indianapolis, 1945Google Scholar; Crighton, John C., Missouri and the World War, 1914–1917 (“University of Missouri Studies,” Vol. XXI, No. 3), Columbia, 1947.Google ScholarClinard, Outten J., Japan's Influence on American Naval Power, 1897–1917 (“University of California Publications in History,” Vol. XXXVI), Berkeley, 1947.Google ScholarBuchanan, Russell, “American Editors Examine American War Aims and Plans in April, 1917,” Pacific Historical Review, IX (September 1940), 253–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar;Syrett, Harold C., “The Business Press and American Neutrality, 1914–1917,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XXXII (September 1945), 215–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

48 Alstyne, Van, American Diplomacy in Action, rev. ed., Stanford, Stanford Univ. Press, 1946, pp. 254–90, 753–67Google Scholar; Bailey, , Diplomatic History of the American People, 3d ed., New York, Crofts, 1946, pp. 610–47Google Scholar; Bemis, , Diplomatic History of the United States, rev. ed., New York, Holt, 1942, pp. 590–616.Google Scholar

49 Millis, Walter, “Propaganda for War,” Southern Review, V (Autumn 1939), 201–10.Google Scholar Cf. Bailey, , Diplomatic History, 2d ed., New York, Crofts, 1942, pp. 613–14Google Scholar, with the same pages of the first edition, published in January 1940.

50 Birdsall, , “Neutrality and Economic Pressures, 1914–1917,” loc. cit., pp. 223–26.Google Scholar

51 Lippmann, Walter, “The Atlantic and America,” Life, Apr. 7, 1941Google Scholar; Davis, Forrest, The Atlantic System: The Story of Anglo-American Control of the Seas, New York, Reynal and Hitchcock, 1941, pp. 201–46.Google Scholar Lippmann restated his views in U. S. Foreign Policy: Shield of the Republic, Boston, Little, Brown, 1943, pp. 33–39.

52 Alstyne, Van, American Diplomacy in Action, p. 289Google Scholar; Earle, , “A Half-Century of American Foreign Policy,” loc. cit., p. 179.Google Scholar A member of my graduate seminar at Harvard in 1947, Robert E. Osgood, was unable to discover in a semester's search any substantial amount of contemporary evidence to support the Lippmann thesis.

53 Bailey, Thomas A., Woodrow Wilson and the Lost Peace, New York, Macmillan, 1944, pp. 15–17, 330–31Google Scholar; Hicks, John D., The American Nation, 2d ed., Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1949, pp. 485–86Google Scholar; Perkins, Dexter, America and Two Wars, Boston, Little, Brown, 1944, pp. 46–51.Google Scholar Cf. Perkins, , The Evolution of American Foreign Policy, New York, Oxford Univ. Press, 1948, p. 101.Google Scholar

54 The opportunities along these lines, with reference to a single section, were discussed by the author at the Madison meeting of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association, Apr. 14, 1949, in a still unpublished paper entitled, “The Mississippi Valley in Recent American Diplomatic History: A Neglected Field of Study.”

55 John M. Blum, who is completing a biography of Tumulty, has informed the author that the Tumulty Papers do not cast much new light on the problem of intervention.

56 Alstyne, Van, American Diplomacy in Action, pp. 761–62;Google ScholarBailey, , Diplomatic History, 3d ed., p. 647Google Scholar; Foreign Relations: 1926, Washington, 1941, II, 214–308.

57 Alstyne, Van, American Diplomacy in Action, p. 268.Google Scholar