Continued to watch PBS's The Great War. I don't think it
ever sufficiently credited the American Socialist Party, led by Eugene V. Debs,
and also the Wobblies for their principled opposition to American entrance into
the war. But the show, once again. offered compensations.
I already knew how rabidly racist Woodrow Wilson was, and
how he reversed whatever small progress blacks had made in entering civil
service but the show hammers that point home. Wilson, grand idealist and determined
self-determinist that he was, was also a rank, low grade racist.
A recent NY Time piece — Michael Kazin Should America Have Entered World War I? — argued
that it would have been better for all concerned if the United States had not
become involved because the exhausted European powers would then have been
forced to arrive at a lasting arrangement, giving Germany a say in the peace,
and steering it away from revanchism.
That's one possible counter-history. Certainly it's hard to
imagine worse outcomes than the factual history that ensued. But when Kazin
blames the creation of "a military-industrial establishment" in the
United States on American war he seems to be making things up: the United
States did not stay armed or ramp up as it did after WW II. The Japanese attack
on Pearl Harbor found us woefully unprepared.
A better argument might be that once the United States entered
the war, only the unconditional surrender of Germany should have been the goal.
That Germany did not surrender unconditionally made room for the fantasy that
it might have won the war, but for "the stab in the back" by
socialists and Jews.
Back to the PBS show: Woodrow Wilson committed the United States
to winning a war on the highest, most noble principles and, yet, due to his
personality, continued to undercut them.
Wilson wanted:
-- An end to war.
-- Self-determination, no imperial dominance, for all
nations concerned
-- A League Of Nations, to adjudicate conflicts and
eliminate the necessity of war.
But the particularities of Wilson's character blocked
implementation of such ideals.
Out of sheer hauteur, Wilson wouldn't reach across the aisle
to Republican Senator Henry Cabot Lodge to bring Lodge with him to Versailles.
Had he done so, there might been bipartisan support for Wilson at Versailles,
and beyond that, in Congress, for Wilson's commitment to a League of Nations.
Nor would Wilson accept the few, relatively trivial changes
to his League of Nations proposal, put forward in the Senate.
And so he lost Congress for the League of Nations.
There was someone else who played a huge role in this war
and its aftermath, someone else who was even more uncompromising in his belief
that it could end all wars.
Do you know who I mean?
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