1. Because the U.S. was under attack despite its neutrality?
The present German submarine warfare against commerce is a warfare
against all mankind....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....Armed
neutrality, it now appears, is impracticable.
-- President Woodrow Wilson's War Message (April 1917)
It would be the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare that would
ultimately bring the United States into the war.
-- The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
2. To make the world “safe for democracy”?
Our object...is to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the
life of the world as against selfish and autocratic power.... We are glad...to
fight...for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its
peoples, the German peoples included: for the right 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....
-- President Woodrow Wilson's War Message (April 1917)
3. Because we would have faced economic collapse if the Allies could not
pay back all the loans made to them by American bankers?
...We have loaned many hundreds of millions of dollars to the Allies in
this controversy. While such action was legal and countenanced by international
law, there is no doubt in my mind but the enormous amount of money loaned to
the Allies in this country has been instrumental in bringing about a public
sentiment in favor of our country taking a course that would make every bond
worth a hundred cents on the dollar and making the payment of every debt
certain and sure.
-- Senator George W. Norris in Opposition to President Woodrow Wilson’s
War Message (April 4, 1917)
We didn't win a thing we set out for in the last war. We merely
succeeded, with tremendous loss of life, to make secure the loans of private
bankers to the Allies.
-- Senator Gerald Nye of North Dakota, Chairman of the Senate Munitions
Committee (circa 1936)
Beginning in 1916, the Morgan negotiated a series of extremely large
loans to France and to England, becoming their exclusive purchasing agent and
financier in the United States.
-- Notable American Volunteers of the Great War, Great War Primary
Documents Archive
By 1917, American loans to the Allies had soared to $2.25 billion; loans
to Germany stood at a paltry $27 million.
-- The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
4. Because it was good for business?
...through the instrumentality of others who have not only made millions
out of the war in the manufacture of munitions, etc., and who would expect to
make millions more if our country can be drawn into the catastrophe...
-- Senator George W. Norris in Opposition to President Woodrow Wilson’s
War Message (April 4, 1917)
To what extent was America's war a war for business? Did Woodrow Wilson
lead America into war in order to serve the selfish interests of the few? The
answer is determined by looking into the essential facts. In the first place,
Wall Street wanted war.
American participation in the war against Germany would constitute the
most tremendous and profitable coup in the history of American finance... The
war created 21,000 new American millionaires and during the war period, 69,000
men made more than three billion dollars over and above their normal income...
It would have been quite impossible for President Wilson to have begun a war
really intended to ‘make the world safe for democracy’ without facing the
united opposition of Wall Street.
-- John Kenneth Turner, Shall It Be Again? 1922 5. Because of cultural,
historical, and economic ties to Great Britain?
The failure to treat the belligerent nations of Europe alike, the failure
to reject the unlawful "war zones" of both Germany and Great Britain
is wholly accountable for our present dilemma.
-- Senator Robert M. LaFollette in Opposition to President Woodrow
Wilson’s War Message (April 4, 1917)
6. Because of anti-German sentiment influenced by historic ties to
England, German policies, and American and British propaganda?
...a large number of the great newspapers and news agencies of the
country have been controlled and enlisted in the greatest propaganda that the
world has ever known to manufacture sentiment in favor of war.
-- Senator George W. Norris in Opposition to President Woodrow Wilson’s
War Message (April 4, 1917)
7. The result of the expansion of the U.S.’s armed forces and weaponry?
That which has driven the masses of Europe into the trenches and to the
battlefields is not their inner longing for war; it must be traced to the
cutthroat competition for military equipment, for more efficient armies, for
larger warships, for more powerful cannon. You cannot build up a standing army
and then throw it back into a box like tin soldiers.
-- Emma Goldman, from "Preparedness: The Road to Universal
Slaughter"
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