Flight of the Eagle: The Grand Strategies That Brought America from Colonial Dependence to World Leadership

by Conrad Black

  The issue came quickly to a head with the German sinking, by submarine-launched torpedoes, off the coast of Ireland on May 7, 1915, of the great British liner Lusitania, former holder of the Blue Riband as the fastest trans-Atlantic ship, and one of the world’s six or seven greatest ships, with the loss of 1,198 lives, including 124 Americans. American opinion was outraged. And so was the president. He drafted a diplomatic note that Bryan signed with reluctance, on May 13, demanding that Germany cease unrestricted submarine warfare, express regret at the sinking of the Lusitania, and offer reparations for the loss of American lives.

  The German reply, on May 28, justified the incident on the grounds that the ship was armed and that it was carrying contraband. (It was unarmed, but carried a shipment of rifles and munitions, though not in significant quantities for a ship of 35,000 tons.) Wilson was dissatisfied with this and drafted a supplementary note, which rejected the German rationalization and demanded specific pledges against repetitions. Bryan resigned rather than sign the note, as he feared that it could involve America in the war. His resignation was tendered and accepted on June 7, 1915, and he was replaced at once by the counselor of the State Department, Robert Lansing (son-in-law of Benjamin Harrison’s second secretary of state, John W. Foster). Wilson and Lansing followed with a third note on July 21 telling the German government that any future sinking of passenger vessels would be regarded as “deliberately unfriendly,” an outright threat of war.

  U.S.-German relations were further shaken by American discovery of a list of check stubs for payments to 126 identified German agents (who were then rounded up) in the United States, in the luggage of German attaché and future chancellor Franz von Papen, who was accused of fomenting sabotage, and eventually of trying to blow up the Welland Canal (in Canada). Germany was deemed responsible for several acts of sabotage in the United States while the U.S. was a neutral country, an utterly insane activity. Papen and others were deported from the United States in December 1915. Chastened by Wilson’s sacking of Bryan and threatening war on Germany if it did not curtail its submarine activities, Germany ordered its submarine forces to leave all liners alone and focus on enemy warships, freighters, and tankers. Germany apologized to the United States in October 1915 for the sinking of the British liner Arabic, in which two Americans died.

  2. DIPLOMATIC INITIATIVES

  In Latin America apart from Mexico, there were the usual financial collapses and outbreaks of chaos to address. Haiti’s president was assassinated in July 1915, and the country was mired in debt. Wilson dispatched the Marines, under the command of the racist war-lover General Smedley Butler, who treated all Haitians as virtual chimpanzees. Haiti became a protectorate of the United States, unable to adjust its tariffs or subscribe loans without American approval, while the United States collected and assessed tariffs and excise duties. An agreement with Nicaragua was finally agreed, in February 1916, granting the U.S. exclusive rights over an isthmian canal, though the canal in Panama was functioning well. When financial mismanagement and civil disorder again gripped the Dominican Republic in 1916, Wilson occupied the country and it was administered by U.S. naval officers until 1924. On January 17, 1917, the United States would buy the Danish Virgin Islands for $25 million.

  Wilson had sent Colonel House to London, Paris, and Berlin in February 1915, and he held inconclusive talks with the leaders of those countries; he returned to see them a year later, to explore the possibilities of peace again. If neither side scored a decisive breakthrough, they would either stalemate and keep fighting until they had no more soldiers to kill, or the balance would have to be tipped by a current non-combatant, and only the United States had the power to do that. (Japan was a powerful enough country to make a difference, but it had no way of influencing events in Europe.) Wilson showed considerable foresight and imagination in suggesting peace terms, as his formidable mind focused on the challenge of ending this terrible war without the United States being drawn into it. In consequence of House’s 1916 visit, a peace plan emerged consisting of enhanced German colonial rights and reduction of naval construction, restoration of occupied areas, including Alsace-Lorraine, and the complete expulsion of Turkey from Europe, including the handing over of Constantinople to Russia. Wilson communicated to Britain’s Foreign Secretary Grey that if Britain, France, and Russia accepted such terms and the Central Powers declined them, the “United States would probably enter the war against Germany.” Neither the Allies nor the Central Powers bit at this prospect, though it would have been much better for all of them if they had. Both sides still thought they could win the war, and the carnage continued. The 10-month Battle of Verdun, the greatest in the history of the world up to that time, was already well underway; it would inflict over a million casualties, about 700,000 dead, more French than German, but the French army held the city and forts of Verdun and forced the Germans back.

  By now, a considerable agitation for war had arisen in the United States. A Preparedness Movement arose, in various almost paramilitary organizations, operating boot camps for volunteers, especially at Plattsburgh, New York. Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, and previous and future cabinet secretary Colonel Henry L. Stimson were among the leaders of the movement. They ranged from advocates of vigilance and readiness to deal with war should it be unloosed on the country to outright interventionists invoking the solidarity of the English-speaking peoples and of the great American and French republics. Senior British and French officials, including former prime minister Arthur James Balfour (now foreign secretary) and former French army commander Marshal Joseph Joffre, received very enthusiastic welcomes when they visited the United States. In February 1916, Secretary of War Lindley Garrison and Deputy Secretary Henry Breckinridge abruptly resigned from the administration in protest against Wilson’s refusal to institute peacetime conscription, the exact opposite to Bryan’s concern of a rush toward war when he resigned a year before, which indicated that Wilson was holding the solid center of public opinion. The new secretary of war would be the mayor of Cleveland, Newton D. Baker.

  On the other side, there were hyperactive peace groups, including, starting another tradition of prominent American businessmen who fancied themselves endowed with talents for international mediation, Henry Ford, who sent a “peace ship” to Europe, which accomplished nothing worthwhile. He proved the forerunner of such self-nominated corporate ambassadors as Cyrus Eaton in the fifties and Armand Hammer in the eighties. In Congress, there were moves to prevent Americans from traveling on armed vessels, as the Germans announced they had the right to sink merchant vessels that were armed.

  Wilson faced these measures down, and defended the prerogatives of his office, and after the Lusitania showdown, he urged preparedness. He told an audience in Philadelphia just three days after the Lusitania was sunk that “There is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight; there is such a thing as a nation being so right that it does not need to convince others by force that it is right.” Roosevelt in particular raved and fumed in stentorian tones that this was pusillanimous claptrap, and it was a pious sentiment that didn’t have unlimited appeal. Americans generally wanted to avoid war if they were not provoked intolerably. It was a terrible war and the United States was economically flourishing as a neutral supplier to the Allies. But these were questions of practicality and self-interest, not pride and virtue. Wilson did conclude after the Lusitania incident that the country had to be ready for anything, and presented the Congress a comprehensive plan of enhanced war-making power, on December 7, 1915.

  In March 1916, the German Navy torpedoed a French ferry boat in the English Channel, the Sussex, injuring several Americans. Wilson and Lansing considered this a violation of the pledge given after the sinking of the Arabic, and Lansing recommended breaking off diplomatic relations with Germany. Wilson declined to do that, but had Lansing inform the talented German ambassador in Washington, Count Bernstorff, that relations would be severed if Germany did not avoid such provocations. The
German reply promised change if its opponents respected international law.

  The National Defense Act of June 1916 raised the regular army from 175,000 to 223,000, called for a fully trained militia of 450,000, and raised defense production orders and capability. Britain purported to blacklist American companies that traded with its enemies, in July 1916, and Wilson replied with legislation authorizing refusal of entry to, or exit from, any U.S. ports of any ship that discriminated against any American company. He also sent the Congress, which approved it, the highest naval construction and maintenance budget in the country’s history. (In a moment of exasperation, on September 24, 1916, Wilson said to House: “Let us build a navy bigger than Britain’s and do what we please.”)97 Britain rapidly desisted from any such provocation as had been threatened. It was an infinitely stronger America than Jefferson and Madison had led a century before, but Wilson also dealt with all aspects of the international crisis a great deal more capably than they had. This was where the country stood opposite the warring powers as it entered another presidential election campaign.

  3. THE 1916 ELECTION AND UNRESTRICTED SUBMARINE WARFARE

  The Republicans met at Chicago in June and nominated Supreme Court justice and former New York governor Charles Evans Hughes for president and former vice president (under Theodore Roosevelt) Charles W. Fairbanks of Indiana for vice president. Hughes had been on the high court for the last six years and had been a moderate and reform governor of New York, and so was acceptable to followers of both former Republican presidents, Taft and Roosevelt. The party platform played everything down the center and called for readiness but avoidance of adventurism. The Democrats met at St. Louis a week later, and renominated President Wilson and Vice President Marshall without opposition, lauding the president’s reform program, his defense of American honor, and his avoidance of the slaughter in Europe. The slogan “He kept us out of war” was the rallying cry and was endlessly bandied about. It resonated well with most people, though Irish and German Americans resented a policy perceived as too friendly to Britain. The Progressives nominated Roosevelt, but he declined and supported Hughes, as then did most of the Progressives. The Socialists nominated Allan Benson by postal ballot, as Eugene Debs sat this election out. The Democrats accused Hughes of excessive reliance on “hyphenated-Americans,” implying people of compromised loyalty to the country, especially German and Irish Americans, but it was a relatively civilized campaign between two very urbane men. Some western states had accorded women the vote, and Wilson’s implicit promise to stay out of the war was especially popular with them.

  On election day, Wilson won 9.13 million votes to 8.54 million for Hughes, 585,000 for Benson, and 221,000 for the Prohibitionists, and won 277 electoral votes to 254 for Hughes. It was 49 percent for Wilson to 46 percent for Hughes and 3 percent for Benson. Wilson’s popular-vote margin appeared sufficient, but the result came in very late, as it was decided by California. Hughes had failed to appear for an appointment with the governor of the state, former Progressive vice presidential candidate Hiram W, Johnson, who had been instrumental in carrying the state for Roosevelt in 1912. For this reason, Johnson withheld his endorsement from Hughes and Wilson took California and its 13 electoral votes by 3,773 popular votes, and was reelected—only the seventh man, of 27 who had served as president, to win two consecutive contested terms, and the first Democrat to do so since Jackson, 84 years before. Because of his reservations about aspects of the U.S. constitutional system, Wilson had planned, if Hughes had won, to appoint him secretary of state and resign with Marshall, to make Hughes president at once and not wait about, fussing impatiently, until March for his inauguration.

  In September, Ambassador Count Bernstorff had asked whether Wilson would use his good offices to try to reconcile the parties if Germany undertook to restore Belgium. Wilson deferred consideration of that until after the election (instead of using the opportunity for electoral purposes, as many subsequent presidents might not have been able to resist the temptation to do). Wilson prepared a peace plan in November, but before presenting it, his soundings found the Allies implacably hostile to any peace overtures. Germany publicly declared on December 12 the willingness of the Central Powers to enter into comprehensive peace talks. The Allies refused because of German refusal to state peace terms in advance, but in fact they thought they were winning and were not interested. On December 18, Wilson asked the belligerent powers to state their war aims. Germany refused to do so, but the Allies, in a joint statement, demanded German withdrawal from all occupied territories, with indemnities and reparations; the liberation of all Italians, Czechs, Slovaks, Slavs, and Romanians from government by Austro-Hungarians; the expulsion of Turkey from Europe; and a new security regime for Europe guaranteeing the borders of all countries. The statement was vague about a reconstruction of Poland, and required the restoration of Alsace-Lorraine to France. On January 22, 1917, Wilson told the Congress that there would need to be an international organization to assure the peace, and called for “peace without victory.” It was a perceptive concept that only a peace that did not harvest the seeds of revenge would be durable, and that such a peace would enable the world to use the terrible destruction of the current war as an effective deterrent to a return to general war.

  On February 1, 1917, Emperor Wilhelm II made one of the most catastrophic errors of modern times, and the German government announced a return to unrestricted submarine warfare, with no regard to the nature or nationality of ships. The General Staff was persuaded, and persuaded the emperor (but not the civilian government) that Britain would break under the pressure before the United States could make its presence in the war in Europe felt. Wilson severed relations with Germany two days later, recalled his ambassador from Berlin, and expelled Bernstorff. The Congress passed a resolution of support on February 7. Germany allowed one American ship a week to go to Britain under conditions to be outlined, but this was obviously completely unacceptable. The first American merchantman sunk under this regime was the USS Housatonic, on February 3.

  On March 1, a message was sent by the German foreign minister, Alfred Zimmerman, to the German minister in Mexico instructing him that if the U.S. looked likely to enter the war he should suggest to the Mexican government an alliance with Germany, for which Mexico would be rewarded with the restoration of territory lost in the Mexican War. The message was intercepted and decoded by British naval intelligence, and given to the U.S. ambassador in London, Walter Hines Page, who sent it to Lansing, who on Wilson’s order promptly released it to the press. American ships were being sunk regularly by German submarines on the high seas, and relations had clearly passed the point of no return. Having just been reelected on the slogan of keeping the country out of war, Wilson was waiting for his own reinauguration and a few more provocations to stir American opinion to prodigies of outrage, before leading America into the greatest war in history.

  All through the period since the sinking of the Lusitania, the assistant secretary of the navy, Franklin D. Roosevelt, had been playing a duplicitous double game with his cousin, Theodore Roosevelt, Senator Lodge, and Lodge’s son-in-law, Congressman Augustus Gardner, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, while professing complete loyalty to Wilson and to his direct chief, Navy Secretary Josephus Daniels, an outright pacifist. The younger Roosevelt was guilty of a campaign of leaks to the press through his Machiavellian and gnomish assistant, Louis McHenry Howe, that carried policy disagreements to the edge of outright treachery. He had no more use than his famous cousin did for Wilson’s pious humbug about being “too proud to fight.” Though he would not have agreed with TR’s description of Wilson as a “sophist ... a logothete ... a real doctrinaire,” and “not a real man,” he agreed that there was no doubt where America’s interest lay and that a German victory, which could occur if there were not American intervention, would be a disaster for civilization. (The younger Roosevelt knew Germany well, and spoke German fluently.)

  On March 11, 1
917, Franklin Roosevelt met in the afternoon with Wilson’s intimate adviser, Colonel House, who favored participation in the war, and in the evening with Republican participationists TR, General Leonard Wood (former proconsul in Cuba), Elihu Root, J.P. Morgan Jr., and the mayor of New York, John P. Mitchell. This was a tour de force in double-dealing. His experiences would be invaluable 25 years later, in even more desperate conditions for the world. 98

  In February and March 1917, Wilson armed American merchant vessels, following a 403–13 approval in the House of Representatives of Wilson’s request. And after a filibuster in the Senate by, as Wilson called them, “a little group of willful men,” led by Robert La Follette, Wilson and Lansing determined that he had the authority to do it without Senate approval. In Russia, a general revolt in the political classes and much of the officer corps led to the abdication of the Czar and the Romanov Dynasty, at first in favor of Prince Georgy Lvov’s provisional government, and then a moderate, democratic, republican government led by Alexander Kerensky, with the Bolsheviks led by V.I. Lenin in sinister opposition, fomenting the next phase of their pursuit of a totalitarian, Marxist revolution. Russia continued, unsteadily, in the war, and the Kerensky interlude, as it soon proved to be, at least spared the Western Allies the embarrassment of an undemocratic Russia as an ally. As German sinkings of American vessels continued, Wilson consulted his cabinet (in another gesture to British methods of governance) on March 20, and it was unanimously agreed that there was no choice but war. At last, America was moving to the center of the world stage.