The presidential campaign of 1916, taken in conjunction with the increasing tension of European relations, forced Wilson to a further development of his international ideals and a more definite formulation of the means by which to attain them. As we have observed, the spring of that year saw him reject the doctrine of isolation. "We are participants," he said on the 27th of May, "whether we would or not, in the life of the world. The interests of all nations are our own also. We are partners with the rest. What affects mankind is inevitably our affair as well as the affair of the nations of Europe and of Asia." This recognition of our interest in world affairs immediately took him considerably beyond the position he had assumed during the earlier stages of the submarine controversy. Until the spring of 1916 he had restricted his aims to the championship of neutral and human rights in time of war. But now he began to demand something more far-reaching, namely a system that would prevent unjust war altogether and would protect the rights of all peoples in time of peace. He insisted, in this same speech of the 27th of May, before the League to Enforce Peace at Washington, "First that every people has a right to choose the sovereignty under which they shall live.... Second, that the small states of the world have a right to enjoy the same respect for their sovereignty and for their territorial integrity that great and powerful nations expect and insist upon. And, third, that the world has a right to be free from every disturbance of its peace that has its origin in aggression and disregard of the rights of peoples and nations." These words sum up the gist of his international aims during the three following years. His later speeches are merely refinement of details.

In order that these ends might be secured it was necessary that some international system be inaugurated other than that which had permitted the selfishness of the great powers to produce war in the past. In his search for a concrete mechanism to realize his ideals and secure them from violation, Wilson seized upon the essential principles of the League to Enforce Peace, of which William Howard Taft was president. The basis of permanent peace, Wilson insisted, could be found only by substituting international coÖperation in place of conflict, through a mobilization of the public opinion of the world against international lawbreakers: "an universal association of the nations to maintain the inviolate security of the highway of the seas for the common and unhindered use of all the nations of the world, and to prevent any war begun either contrary to treaty covenants or without warning and full submission of the causes to the opinion of the world—a virtual guarantee of territorial integrity and political independence." These were the principles and methods which formed the keynote of his foreign policy until the end of the Peace Conference. The first part of the programme, that which concerned the security of the seas and which originated in the particular circumstances of 1915, faded from his sight to a large extent; the second portion, more general in its nature, became of increasing importance until, as Article X of the League Covenant, it seemed to him the heart of the entire settlement.The unselfish nature of his idealism, as well as his continued detachment from both camps of the belligerents, was obvious. "We have nothing material of any kind to ask for ourselves," he said, "and are quite aware that we are in no sense or degree parties to the present quarrel. Our interest is only in peace and in its future guarantees." But noblesse oblige, and we must serve those who have not had our good fortune. "The commands of democracy are as imperative as its privileges are wide and generous. Its compulsion is upon us.... We are not worthy to stand here unless we ourselves be in deed and truth real democrats and servants of mankind."

That the United States might be drawn into the conflict evidently seemed possible to the President, despite pacific whispers that came from Germany in the spring and summer of 1916. There was a note of apprehension in his speeches. No one could tell when the extremist faction in Berlin might gain control and withdraw the Sussex pledge. The temper of Americans was being tried by continued sinkings, although the exact circumstances of each case were difficult to determine. The attacks made by the German U-53 immediately off the American coast and the deportation of Belgian civilians into Germany made more difficult the preservation of amicable relations. In view of the possibility of war Wilson wanted to define the issue exactly. "We have never yet," he said at Omaha, a peace center, on the 5th of October, "sufficiently formulated our programme for America with regard to the part she is going to play in the world, and it is imperative that she should formulate it at once.... It is very important that the statesmen of other parts of the world should understand America.... We are holding off, not because we do not feel concerned, but because when we exert the force of this nation we want to know what we are exerting it for." Ten days later at Shadowlawn he said: "Define the elements, let us know that we are not fighting for the prevalence of this nation over that, for the ambitions of this group of nations as compared with the ambitions of that group of nations; let us once be convinced that we are called in to a great combination to fight for the rights of mankind and America will unite her force and spill her blood for the great things which she has always believed in and followed." He thus gave warning that the United States might have to fight. He wanted to be certain, however, that it did not fight as so many other nations have fought, greedily or vindictively, but rather as in a crusade and for clearly defined ideals.His reËlection gave to the President an opportunity for bringing before the world his international aims. He purposed not merely to end the existing conflict but also to provide a basis for permanent peace and the security of democracy. During the early summer of 1916 he had received from Berlin hints that his mediation would not be unacceptable and it is possible that he planned at that time new efforts to bring the war to a close. But such a step was bound to be regarded as pro-German and in the state of opinion immediately after the Sussex crisis would have produced a storm of American protests. Then the entrance of Rumania into the war so encouraged the Entente powers that there seemed little chance of winning French and British acceptance of mediation. The presidential election further delayed any overt step towards peace negotiations. Finally the wave of anti-German feeling that swept the United States in November, on account of Belgian deportations, induced Wilson to hold back the note which he had already drafted. But it was important not to delay his pacific efforts over-long, since news came to Washington that unless Germany could obtain a speedy peace the extremist group in Berlin would insist upon a resumption of "ruthless" submarine warfare. In these circumstances, early in December, the President prepared to issue his note.

But Germany acted more rapidly. Warned of Wilson's purpose the Berlin Government, on December 12, 1916, proposed negotiations. The occasion seemed to them propitious. Rumania had gone down to disastrous defeat. Russia was torn by corruption and popular discontent. On the western front, if the Germans had failed at Verdun, they were aware of the deep disappointment of the Allies at the paltry results of the great Somme drive. German morale at home was weakening; but if the Allies could be pictured as refusing all terms and determined upon the destruction of Germany, the people would doubtless agree to the unrestricted use of the submarine as purely defensive in character, even if it brought to the Allies the questionable assistance of America. The German note itself contained no definite terms. But its boastful tone permitted the interpretation that Germany would consider no peace which did not leave Central and Southeastern Europe under Teuton domination; the specific terms later communicated to the American Government in secret, verified this suspicion. A thinly veiled threat to neutral nations was to be read between the lines of the German suggestion of negotiations.

Although it was obvious that he would be accused of acting in collusion with Germany, President Wilson decided not to postpone the peace note already planned. He looked upon the crisis as serious, for if peace were not secured at this time the chances of the United States remaining out of the war were constantly growing less. If he could compel a clear definition of war aims on both sides, the mutual suspicion of the warring peoples might be removed; the German people might perceive that the war was not in reality for them one of defense; or finally the Allies, toward whom Wilson was being driven by the threats of German extremists, might define their position in such terms as would justify him before the world in joining with them in a conflict not waged for selfish national purposes but for the welfare of humanity. Issued on December 18, 1916, his note summed up the chief points of his recently developed policy. It emphasized the interest of the United States in the future peace of the world, the irreparable injury to civilization that might result from a further continuance of the existing struggle, the advantages that would follow an explicit exposure of belligerent purposes, and the possibility of making "the permanent concord of the nations a hope of the immediate future, a concert of nations immediately practicable."

As a step towards peace the note was unsuccessful. Germany was evasive. There was nothing her Government wanted less than the definite exposure of her purposes that Wilson asked. Her leaders were anxious to begin negotiations while German armies still held conquered territories as pawns to be used at the peace table. They would not discuss a League of Nations until Germany's continental position was secured. The Allies on the other hand would not make peace with an unbeaten Germany, which evidently persisted in the hope of dominating weaker nationalities and said no word of reparations for the acknowledged wrongs committed. Feeling ran high in England and France because Wilson's note had seemed to place the belligerents on the same moral plane, in its statement that the objects on both sides "are virtually the same, as stated in general terms to their own people and to the world." The statement was verbally accurate and rang with a certain grim irony which may have touched Wilson's sense of humor. But the Allies were not in a state of mind to appreciate such humor. Their official answer, however, was frank, and in substance accepted the principles of permanent peace propounded by Wilson. It was evident to most Americans that the main purpose of Germany was to establish herself as the dominating power of the continent and possibly of the world; the aim of the Allies, on the other hand, seemed to be the peace of the world based upon democracy and justice rather than material force.

The President's attempt thus cleared the air. It made plain to the majority of Americans that in sympathy, at least, the United States must be definitely aligned with Great Britain and France. Furthermore the replies of the belligerents gave to Wilson an opportunity to inform the world more definitely of the aims of the United States, in case it should be drawn into the war. This he did in a speech delivered to the Senate on January 22, 1917. America would play her part in world affairs, he said, but the other nations must clearly understand the conditions of our participation. The basis of peace must be the right of each individual nation to decide its destiny for itself without interference from a stronger alien power. "I am proposing as it were, that the nations should with one accord adopt the doctrine of President Monroe as the doctrine of the world: that no nation should seek to extend its polity over any other nation or people, but that every people should be left free to determine its own polity, its own way of development, unhindered, unthreatened, unafraid, the little along with the great and powerful." Instead of the old system of alliances there should be a general concert of powers: "There is no entangling alliance in a concert of powers. When all unite to act in the same sense and with the same purpose, all act in the common interest and are free to live their own lives under a common protection." As the result of such a concert no one power would dominate the sea or the land; armaments might safely be limited; peace would be organized by the major force of mankind. As a guarantee of future justice and tranquillity the terms that settled the present war must be based upon justice and not be of the sort ordinarily dictated by the victor to the vanquished. It must be a "peace without victory." Thus while Wilson warned Germany that her ambitions for continental domination would not be tolerated, he also warned the Allies that they could not count upon the United States to help them to crush Germany for their selfish individual purposes.This speech, despite the unfortunate phrase, "peace without victory," was hailed in all liberal circles, amongst the Allies and in the United States, as a noble charter of the new international order. Wilson had expressed the hope that he was "speaking for the silent mass of mankind everywhere who have as yet had no place or opportunity to speak their real hearts out concerning the death and ruin they see to have come already upon the persons and the homes they hold most dear." This hope was doubtless realized. The first reaction in France and England was one of rather puzzled contempt, if we may judge by the press. But the newspaper writers soon found that what Wilson said many people had been thinking, and waiting for some one to say. Hall Caine wrote to the Public Ledger, "Let President Wilson take heart from the first reception of his remarkable speech. The best opinion here is one of deep feeling and profound admiration." From that moment Wilson began to approach the position he was shortly to hold—that of moral leader of the world.

The President had been anxious to make plain his principles, before the United States became involved in the conflict through the withdrawal of German submarine pledges, as well as to convince the world that every honest effort possible had been made to preserve the peace. He was only just in time. Already the advocates of ruthlessness in Berlin had persuaded the Kaiser and Bethmann-Hollweg. They recognized that the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare meant, in all probability, the intervention of the United States, but they recked little of the consequences. On January 16, 1917, the Kaiser telegraphed: "If a break with America is unavoidable, it cannot be helped; we proceed." The same day the Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Zimmermann, telegraphed to the German Minister in Mexico, instructing him to form an alliance with Mexico in the event of war between Germany and the United States, and to offer as bribe the States of New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas; he also suggested the possibility of winning Japan from her allegiance to the Entente and persuading her to enter this prospective alliance.

On the 31st of January, von Bernstorff threw off the mask. The German Ambassador informed our Government of the withdrawal of the Sussex pledge. On and after the 1st of February, German submarines would sink on sight all ships met within a delimited zone around the British Isles and in the Mediterranean. They would permit the sailing of a few American steamships, however, provided they followed a certain defined route to Falmouth and nowhere else, and provided there were marked "on ship's hull and superstructure three vertical stripes one meter wide, to be painted alternately white and red. Each mast should show a large flag checkered white and red, and the stern the American national flag. Care should be taken that during dark, national flag and painted marks are easily recognizable from a distance, and that the boats are well lighted throughout." Other conditions followed. There might sail one steamship a week "in each direction, with arrival at Falmouth on Sunday and departure from Falmouth on Wednesday." Furthermore the United States Government must guarantee "that no contraband (according to the German contraband list) is carried by those steamships." Such were the orders issued to the United States. No native American could escape the humor of the stipulations, which for a moment prevented the national irritation from swelling into an outburst of deep-seated wrath.

There seems to have been little hesitation on the part of the President. On April 19, 1916, he had warned Germany that unrestricted submarine warfare meant a severance of diplomatic relations. Now, on February 3, 1917, addressing both houses of Congress, he announced that those relations had been broken. Von Bernstorff was given his papers and the American Ambassador, James W. Gerard, was recalled from Berlin. No other course of action could have been contemplated in view of the formality of the President's warning and the definiteness of Germany's defiance. Despite the protests of scattered pacifists, the country was as nearly a unit in its approval of Wilson's action as its heterogeneous national character permitted. All the pent-up emotions of the past two years found expression in quiet but unmistakable applause at the departure of the German Ambassador.

The promptitude of the President's dismissal of von Bernstorff did not conceal the disappointment which he experienced from Germany's revelation of her true purposes. He seems to have hoped to the end that the German liberals would succeed in bringing their Government to accept moderate terms of peace. Even now he expressed the hope that Germany's actions would not be such as to force the United States into the War: "I refuse to believe that it is the intention of the German authorities to do in fact what they have warned us they will feel at liberty to do.... Only actual overt acts on their part can make me believe it even now." But "if American ships and American lives should in fact be sacrificed by their naval commanders in heedless contravention of the just and reasonable understandings of international law and the obvious dictates of humanity, I shall take the liberty of coming again before the Congress to ask that authority be given me to use any means that may be necessary for the protection of our seamen and our people in the prosecution of their peaceful and legitimate errands on the high seas. I can do nothing less. I take it for granted that all neutral governments will take the same course." He was careful, moreover, to underline the fact that his action was dictated always by a consistent desire for peace: "We wish to serve no selfish ends. We seek merely to stand true alike in thought and in action to the immemorial principles of our people.... These are the bases of peace, not war. God grant we may not be challenged to defend them by acts of willful injustice on the part of the Government of Germany!"

But Germany proceeded heedlessly. Warned that American intervention would result only from overt acts, the German Admiralty hastened to commit such acts. From the 3d of February to the 1st of April, eight American vessels were sunk by submarines and forty-eight American lives thus lost. Because of the practical blockade of American ports which followed the hesitation of American shipping interests to send boats unarmed into the dangers of the "war zone," President Wilson came again to Congress on the 26th of February to ask authority to arm merchant vessels for purposes of defense. Again he stressed his unwillingness to enter upon formal warfare and emphasized the idealistic aspect of the issue: "It is not of material interests merely that we are thinking. It is, rather, of fundamental human rights, chief of all the right of life itself. I am thinking not only of the rights of Americans to go and come about their proper business by way of the sea, but also of something much deeper, much more fundamental than that. I am thinking of those rights of humanity without which there is no civilization.... I cannot imagine any man with American principles at his heart hesitating to defend these things."

Blinded by prejudice and tradition, a handful of Senators, twelve "willful men," as Wilson described them, blocked, through a filibuster, the resolution granting the power requested by the President. But the storm of popular obloquy which covered them proved that the nation as a whole was determined to support him in the defense of American rights. The country was stirred to the depths. The publication of the plans of Germany for involving the United States in war with Mexico and Japan came merely as added stimulus. So also of the story of the cruelties heaped by the Germans on the American prisoners of the Yarrowdale. There was so much of justice in the cause that passion was notable by its absence. When finally on the 17th of March news came of the torpedoing of the Vigilancia without warning, America was prepared and calmly eager for the President's demand that Congress recognize the existence of a state of war.

The demand was made by Wilson in an extraordinary joint session of Congress, held on the 2d of April. In this, possibly his greatest speech, he was careful not to blur the idealistic principles which, since the spring of 1916, he had been formulating. War existed because Germany by its actions had thrust upon the United States the status of belligerent. But the American people must meet the challenge with their purpose clearly before them. "We must put excited feeling away. Our motive will not be revenge or the victorious assertion of the physical might of the nation, but only the vindication of right, of human right, of which we are only a single champion.... The wrongs against which we now array ourselves are no common wrongs; they cut to the very roots of human life." He went on to define the objects of the war more specifically, referring to his earlier addresses: "Our object now, as then, is to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the life of the world as against selfish and autocratic power and to set up amongst the really free and self-governed peoples of the world such a concert of purpose and action as will henceforth ensure the observance of those principles." Democracy must be the soul of the new international order: "A steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained except by a partnership of democratic nations. No autocratic government could be trusted to keep faith within it or observe its covenants.... Only free peoples can hold their purpose and their honor steady to a common end and prefer the interests of mankind to any narrow interest of their own." Because the existing German Government was clearly at odds with all such ideals, "We are glad, now that we see the facts with no veil of false pretense about them, to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its peoples, the German people included: for the rights of nations great and small and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and of obedience. The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty."

Wilson thus imagined the war as a crusade, the sort of crusade for American ideals which Clay and Webster once imagined. He was in truth originating nothing, but rather resuscitating the generous dreams which had once inspired those statesmen. In conclusion, he reiterated his love of peace. "But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts,—for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free." At the moment of the declaration of war Wilson was still the man of peace, and the war upon which the nation was embarking was, in his mind, a war to ensure peace. To such a task of peace and liberation, he concluded in a peroration reminiscent of Lincoln and Luther, "we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no other."

How many Americans caught the real significance of Wilson's thought with all its consequences is doubtful. The country certainly looked upon the war as a crusade. But there was in the national emotion much that did not accord with the ideals of Wilson. The people hated Germany for the sinking of the Lusitania and all the other submarine outrages, for her crimes in Belgium, for the plots and explosions in this country, for the Zimmermann note, and finally for her direct and insulting defiance of American rights. They recognized that the Allies were fighting for civilization; they sympathized with the democracies of Europe, of which, since the Russian revolution of March, the Allied camp was composed, and they wanted to help them. They feared for America's safety in the future, if Germany won the war. Most Americans entered the struggle, therefore, with a sober gladness, based partly on emotional, partly on quixotic, and partly on selfish grounds. But nearly all fought rather to beat Germany than to secure a new international order. Hence it was that after Germany was beaten, Wilson was destined to discover that his idealistic preaching had not fully penetrated, and that he had failed to educate his country, as completely as he believed, to the ideal of a partnership of democratic and peace-loving peoples as the essential condition of a new and safe world.