Wednesday, 24 April 2013

How were Woodrow Wilson’s anti-isolationist efforts perceived?


Document 1: extract of an address to Congress given by President Woodrow Wilson on January 8th 1918

XIV. A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.

(Conclusion) In regard to these essential rectifications of wrong and assertions of right we feel ourselves to be intimate partners of all the governments and peoples associated together against the Imperialists. We cannot be separated in interest or divided in purpose. We stand together until the end.

For such arrangements and covenants we are willing to fight and to continue to fight until they are achieved; but only because we wish the right to prevail and desire a just and stable peace such as can be secured only by removing the chief provocations to war, which this programme does remove. We have no jealousy of German greatness, and there is nothing in this programme that impairs it … We wish her only to accept a place of equality among the peoples of the world, the new world in which we now live, instead of a place of mastery.

Document 2: cartoon (1919) from the National Archives


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