Woodrow Wilson saw the Great War as a threat to everything in which he believed. For three years, while European blood was being shed at the appalling rate of over 5,000 casualties per day, he struggled to keep Americans out of the war and was reelected in 1916 on that claim, a claim which he himself knew to be tenuous at best. When he came to believe that American interests demanded at response to the threat of the Kaiser's Germany, he went before Congress and asked for a declaration of war, which he called a distressing and oppressive duty.”
Wilson Continued:
It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance. 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.” With those words President Wilson had his war, and the Marines and GIs who went to France—2 million in all—turned the tide and brought the Allies victory.
Summaries