THE LIES AND RACISM OF WOODROW WILSON The image of President Woodrow Wilson handed down to us through history is of a democratic idealist whose rhetoric outlined the rationale for American involvement in foreign wars in the 20th Century. From Wilson's presidency onward, the United States would enter world affairs with the intention of making the world "safe for democracy", ensuring freedom of the seas, lowering prohibitive tariff walls, and fostering the right of all peoples to self-determination. Wilson's rhetoric was later echoed by other presidents, most notably Franklin D. Roosevelt, who argued repeatedly that Americans needed to enter the Second World War to protect freedoms outlined by Wilson three decades earlier. Fast-forward a century and the rise of neo-conservatism to power in the United States at the dawn of the 21st Century was accompanied by similar rhetoric about the American obligation to spread democracy around the world and open the doors of global trade. The similarities between Wilsonian and neo-conservative foreign policy are fundamental, not coincidental. Indeed, Wilsonian values have been cited repeatedly as the reasons why the U.S. launched its invasion of Iraq in 2003.[*] Few in the Western world would dispute either that democracy is a desirable form of government or that self-determination is a good thing. However, it is worth comparing the rhetoric to the reality of Woodrow Wilson. After all, if the man's words are going to be used to justify the massive projection of American force overseas it is worth knowing more about what he actually did while in office and if these actions justify the idealization of him by contemporary American policy-makers. NOTE: A BRIEF STATEMENT OF PUBLICATIONS PRINCIPLES The World Future Fund serves as a source of documentary material, reading lists, and internet links from different points of view that we believe have historical significance. The publication of this material is in no way whatsoever an endorsement of these viewpoints by the World Future Fund, unless explicitly stated by us. As our web site makes very clear, we are totally opposed to ideas such as racism, religious intolerance, and communism. However, in order to combat such evils, it is necessary to understand them by means of the study of key documentary material. For a more detailed statement of our publications standards click here. WILSON JUSTIFIES AMERICAN INVOLVEMENT IN WW I • THE FOURTEEN POINTS THE GERMAN ARMISTICE REQUEST • WILSON'S BETRAYAL AT VERSAILLES WILSON'S RACISM • WILSON SNUBS HO CHI MINH • NOTES WILSON JUSTIFIES AMERICAN INVOLVEMENT IN WW I After much deliberation by President Wilson, the United States Congress declared war on the Central Powers, (Imperial Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey) on April 6, 1917. Wilson had been reluctant to go to war in Europe, but found that the U.S. could not remain neutral in view of the fact that a) German submarines that were regularly sinking American ships and b) Germany was attempting to incite Mexico to go to war with the U.S. (See The Zimmermann Telegram). But while Wilson claimed that Germany had forced the U.S. to enter the conflict: "The military masters of Germany denied us the right to be neutral," he quickly began to argue after the war declaration that the United States had more at stake than simply responding to German aggression.[1] Instead, Wilson claimed that the U.S. was entering the war to fight German militarism and to spread freedom and justice in the world. The following are quotes from speeches President Wilson and his Secretary of State Robert Lansing made in the months following the U.S. declaration of war. These statements depicted American involvement in the World War I as a moral crusade. "We believe these fundamental things: First, that every people has a right to choose the sovereignty under which they shall live. Like other nations, we have ourselves no doubt once and again offended against that principle when for a little while controlled by selfish passion, as our franker historians have been honorable enough to admit; but it has become more and more our rule of life and action. Second, that the small states of the world have a right to enjoy the same respect for their sovereignty and for their territorial integrity that great and powerful nations expect and insist upon. And, third, that the world has a right to be free from every disturbance of its peace that has its origin in aggression and disregard of the rights of peoples and nations."[2] "The facts are patent to all the world, and nowhere are they more plainly seen than in the United States, where we are accustomed to deal with facts and not with sophistries; and the great fact that stands out above all the rest is that this is a People's War, a war for freedom and justice and self-government amongst all the nations of the world, a war to make the world safe for the peoples who live upon it and have made it their own, the German people themselves included; and that with us rests the choice to break through all these hypocrisies and patent cheats and masks of brute force and help set the world free, or else stand aside and let it be dominated a long age through by sheer weight of arms and the arbitrary choices of self-constituted masters, by the nation which can maintain the biggest armies and the most irresistible armaments, a power to which the world has afforded no parallel and in the face of which political freedom must wither and perish."[3] "The object of this war is to deliver the free peoples of the world from the menace and the actual power of a vast military establishment controlled by an irresponsible government which, having secretly planned to dominate the world, proceeded to carry the plan out without regard either to the sacred obligations of treaty or the long-established practices and long-cherished principles of international action and honor; which chose its own time for the war; delivered its blow fiercely and suddenly; stopped at no barrier either of law or of mercy; swept a whole continent within the tide of blood--not the blood of soldiers only, but the blood of innocent women and children also, and of the helpless poor; and now stands balked, but not defeated, the enemy of four-fifths of the world. This power is not the German people. It is the ruthless master of the German people. It is no business of ours how that great people came under its control or submitted with temporary zest to the domination of its purpose; but it is our business to see to it that the history of the rest of the world is no longer left to its handling. Responsible statesmen must now everywhere see, if they never saw before, that no peace can rest securely upon political or economic restrictions meant to benefit some nations and cripple or embarrass others, upon vindictive action of any sort or any kind of revenge or deliberate injury. The test, therefore, of every plan of peace is this: Is it based upon the faith of all the peoples involved, or merely upon the word of an ambitious and intriguing government, on the one hand, and of a group of free peoples, on the other? This is a test which goes to the root of the matter; and it is the test which must be applied. ... An enduring peace ... must be based upon justice and fairness and the common rights of mankind."[4] On January 8, 1918, well after the United States had declared war on Germany, President Wilson presented to the Congress his program for establishing peace in Europe. This program consisted of fourteen sections and it has become known as Wilson's Fourteen Points. Wilson began his comments by stating
The specific points were as follows: I. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind, but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view. II. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in war, except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part by international action for the enforcement of international covenants. III. The removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace and associating themselves for its maintenance. IV. Adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will be reduced to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety. V. A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the Government whose title is to be determined. VI. The evacuation of all Russian territory and such a settlement of all questions affecting Russia as will secure the best and freest co-operation of the other nations of the world in obtaining for her an unhampered and unembarrassed opportunity for the independent determination of her own political development and national policy, and assure her of a sincere welcome into the society of free nations under institutions of her own choosing; and, more than a welcome, assistance also of every kind that she may need and may herself desire. VII. Belgium, the whole world will agree, must be evacuated and restored, without any attempt to limit the sovereignty which she enjoys in common with all other free nations. VIII. All French territory should be freed and the invaded portions restored, and the wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which has unsettled the peace of the world for nearly fifty years, should be righted, in order that peace may once more be made secure in the interest of all. IX. A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearly recognizable lines of nationality. X. The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to see safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the freest opportunity of autonomous development. XI. Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro should be evacuated; occupied territories restored; Serbia accorded free and secure access to the sea; and the relations of the several Balkan States to one another determined by friendly counsel along historically established lines of allegiance and nationality; and international guarantees of the political and economic independence and territorial integrity of the several Balkan States should be entered into. XII. The Turkish portions of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development, and the Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a free passage to the ships and commerce of all nations under international guarantees. XIII. An independent Polish State should be erected which would include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which would be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenant. 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. Source: Wilson and the League of Nations Roughly nine months after Wilson had announced his peace program, the war-weary German government cabled Washington to ask if Wilson would broker an armistice in Europe. Germany specifically requested that the armistice be concluded on the understanding that an eventual peace settlement be based on the Fourteen Points. When the armistice was finally concluded on November 11, 1918, the German government signed the agreement with the expectation that the Fourteen Points were the basis for it. First German armistice request was sent on October 6, 1918:
WILSON'S BETRAYAL AT VERSAILLES Rhetoric vs. Reality When comparing the Versailles Treaty to Wilson's Fourteen Points, the points upon which the German government had signed its armistice and which the German people had placed their hopes for an equitable peace, it quickly becomes apparent that the two are unrecognizable. In the final analysis Wilson ended up signing a treaty (later he stumped heavily for it to be ratified by the U.S.) that not only heavily punished Germany, it betrayed the promises that Wilson had made the Germans. On his way to Paris and the Versailles Peace Conference, Wilson visited some of the capitol cities of the major belligerent nations. During these stops Wilson made public speeches in which he continued to call for a just and moral peace. His speech in Rome, Italy on January 3, 1919 exemplifies the kinds of statements Wilson made at the time: "Our task at Paris is to organize the friendship of the world, to see to it that all the moral forces that make for right and justice and liberty are united and are given a vital organization to which the peoples of the world will readily and gladly respond."[7] Public statements like these continued to raise hopes in Europe, and
especially in Germany, about the establishment of a just peace after such a
horrendous war. The reality, however, would be something entirely
different. The peace settlement reached at Versailles would be neither
just nor moral. Rather, it would be punitive and harsh. In Germany
in particular the Versailles Peace Treaty would be derisively referred to as
"The Dictate"; a list of demands and orders from the Allies that were neither
fair nor just. Germans on all sides of the political spectrum would feel
deeply betrayed at Versailles and this would fuel resentment against the Western
Powers that radicals like Adolf Hitler would tap into. It is not a stretch
to argue that Hitler and the Nazi Movement were created at Versailles. For
if Germany had not been handled so harshly at the peace conference a
considerable amount of popular resentment in Germany would not have been common.
Furthermore, in accepting the Versailles Treaty, the democratically elected
Weimar government would be accused of betraying Germany. This would in
turn lead to a deep distrust of democracy in Germany, including a subsequent
turn toward authoritarianism, and eventually the Nazi dictatorship. Most importantly, Wilson had promised the Germans an equitable peace based on his Fourteen Points. In the end, Germany was humiliated by having to sign a treaty that blamed Germany alone for causing the war and which imposed huge reparations costs on her. According to Article 231 of the treaty, "The Allied and Associated Governments affirm, and Germany accepts, the responsibility of Germany and her allies for causing all the loss and damage to which the Allied and Associated Governments and their nationals have been subjected as a consequence of the war imposed upon them by the aggression of Germany and her allies."[8] Furthermore, Germany was required to pay the Allies for the staggering cost of the war, a total that amounted to more than $32,000,000,000.[9] These penalties did not amount to Wilson's claim to want "Peace without victory". This is probably not surprising given that Wilson eventually became as adamant as the British and French that the German people too were responsible for the war:
Comparing the Fourteen Points and the Treaty of Versailles A comparison of the Fourteen Points with the clauses in the Treaty of Versailles quickly illustrates the depth of Wilson's betrayal of his own ideals. I. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind, but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.
II. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in war, except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part by international action for the enforcement of international covenants.
III. The removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace and associating themselves for its maintenance.
IV. Adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will be reduced to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety.
V. A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the Government whose title is to be determined.
VI. The evacuation of all Russian territory and such a settlement of all questions affecting Russia as will secure the best and freest co-operation of the other nations of the world in obtaining for her an unhampered and unembarrassed opportunity for the independent determination of her own political development and national policy, and assure her of a sincere welcome into the society of free nations under institutions of her own choosing; and, more than a welcome, assistance also of every kind that she may need and may herself desire.
VII. Belgium, the whole world will agree, must be evacuated and restored, without any attempt to limit the sovereignty which she enjoys in common with all other free nations.
VIII. All French territory should be freed and the invaded portions restored, and the wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which has unsettled the peace of the world for nearly fifty years, should be righted, in order that peace may once more be made secure in the interest of all.
IX. A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearly recognizable lines of nationality.
X. The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to see safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the freest opportunity of autonomous development.
XI. Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro should be evacuated; occupied territories restored; Serbia accorded free and secure access to the sea; and the relations of the several Balkan States to one another determined by friendly counsel along historically established lines of allegiance and nationality; and international guarantees of the political and economic independence and territorial integrity of the several Balkan States should be entered into.
XII. The Turkish portions of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development, and the Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a free passage to the ships and commerce of all nations under international guarantees.
XIII. An independent Polish State should be erected which would include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which would be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenant.
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.
Wilson and Segregation A southern-born president, Woodrow Wilson's legacy has been dogged by his outright racism. In his writings, Wilson eulogized the antebellum South and lamented the period of reconstruction that followed the Civil War. To quote Wilson himself on this subject, "self-preservation [forced whites] to rid themselves, by fair means or foul, of the intolerable burden of governments sustained by the votes of ignorant negroes."[17] Wilson excused the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in similar terms, calling it understandable in view of the "lawless" situation that victimized whites in the South after 1865.[18] Wilson carried his racism into the public arena, both as president of Princeton University and as Governor of New Jersey. While the former, Wilson discouraged black from applying to his university, and as governor, Wilson refused to confirm the hiring of blacks in his administration.[19] Being a consummate politician, Wilson was not above lying about race when he felt it was necessary. For example, during the presidential campaign of 1912, Wilson thought it necessary to make a statement on the so-called "negro question". In late October 1912, Wilson wrote Bishop Alexander Walters of the African Methodist Church to decline Walters' invitation to address a mass meeting of the Church at Carnegie Hall on October 26. In the letter, Wilson wrote, "I want to assure them (i.e. Black Americans) through you that should I become President of the United States they may count on me for absolute fair dealing and for everything by which I could assist in advancing the interests of their race."[20] Re-segregating the Federal Government Once in office, however, Wilson appointed a number of southern Democrats to his Cabinet. These men proceeded to push for the segregation of black and white employees in their departments. Wilson did not oppose this practice. To quote Judson MacLaury, an historian for the U.S. Department of Labor,
Upholding a policy of re-segregating the federal government, which had been gradually de-segregating since the end of the Civil War was entirely consistent with a president who claimed repeatedly that "Segregation is not humiliating but a benefit" and "distinctly to the advantage of the colored people themselves."[22] Self-Determination for Europeans Only In 1919, a young Vietnamese nationalist named Ho Chi Minh, appeared at Versailles hoping to present the assembly with an eight-point program that would result in his country's liberation from French colonial rule. These eight points included a general amnesty for Vietnamese political prisoners, equal rights for French and Vietnamese, the abolition of courts used to persecute Vietnamese patriots, freedom of the press and of thought, freedom of association and of assembly, freedom of movement and of travel abroad, freedom to go to school and to open technical and vocational schools for the Vietnamese, substitution of the system of law for that of decrees, and appointment of a Vietnamese representative in Paris to settle questions concerning Vietnamese people's interests. Minh went to France from the United States, where he had lived for two years, because he had been inspired by President Wilson's call for the self-determination of peoples. While in the U.S. Minh had come to admire the American notion of liberty as expressed by men like Thomas Jefferson. Once he had arrived at Versailles, however, Ho Chi Minh was turned away. The French of course would not speak to him because of their colonial interests. But neither would Woodrow Wilson grant Minh a private audience; this despite Point V of Wilson's peace program, in which he had argued that in adjudicating colonial claims "the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the Government whose title is to be determined." Soon after Wilson's snub, Minh turned to the Bolshevik Government in Russia for assistance. It would be the beginning of Minh's lifelong association with Communism. Wilson's rebuff of Minh had tremendous consequences for the United States in the future as it was Vietnamese forces under Ho Chi Minh that defeated the United States in the Vietnamese War fifty years later.[23] 1. Thomas A. Bailey, Wilson and the Peacemakers (NY: Macmillan, 1947), p. 10. 2. President Woodrow Wilson, Speech of May 27, 1917, quoted in Edgar E. Robinson and Victor J. West, The Foreign Policy of Woodrow Wilson, 1913-1917 (NY: Macmillan Company, 1917, p. 328. 3. President Woodrow Wilson, Flag Day Commemoration Speech, June 14, 1917, quoted in Edgar E. Robinson and Victor J. West, The Foreign Policy of Woodrow Wilson, 1913-1917 (NY: Macmillan Company, 1917, pp. 407-408. 4. Letter of Secretary of State Robert Lansing to Pope Benedict XV August 27, 1917, quoted in Edgar E. Robinson and Victor J. West, The Foreign Policy of Woodrow Wilson, 1913-1917 (NY: Macmillan Company, 1917, pp. 408-410. 6. United States Department of State, Papers relating to the foreign relations of the United States, 1918. Supplement 1, The World War, Volume I (1918), p. 331. 7. Woodrow Wilson and the League of Nations 8. Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles 10. Woodrow Wilson, Speech in Columbus, Ohio, September 4, 1919, quoted in Thomas Bailey, Wilson and the Peacemakers (NY: Macmillan, 1947), p. 37. 11. The Treaty of Versailles, Clauses 159-213 12. The Treaty of Versailles, Part V, Section 1, Article 159 13. Bailey, Peacemakers, p. 163. 14. The Treaty of Versailles, Part V, Section I, Article 119 15. For more on this see the Polar Bear Expedition. 16. Treaty of Versailles, Part III, Section XIV, Article 116 17. Woodrow Wilson in Ray Stannard Baker and William E. Dodd (eds.), The Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson ( New York: Harper & Brothers, 1925-27), Vol. II, p. 18. 18. Woodrow Wilson, A History of the American People, Volume V (1931), p. 59. 19. Arthur Link, The Road to the White House (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1947), p. 502. 20. Woodrow Wilson, Presidential Campaign Promise, 1912, in Judson MacLaury, "The Federal Government and Negro Workers Under President Woodrow Wilson" 21. Judson MacLaury, "The Federal Government and Negro Workers Under President Woodrow Wilson" 22. Josephus Daniels to Franklin D. Roosevelt, June 10, 1933, Official File 237, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library; New York Times, November 13, 1914 and Arthur Walworth, Woodrow Wilson: American Prophet, Vol. I (New York: Longmans, 1958), p. 325. 23. D. R. Sar Desai, Vietnam: The Struggle for National Identity (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992), p. 50. WILSON JUSTIFIES AMERICAN INVOLVEMENT IN WW I • THE FOURTEEN POINTS THE GERMAN ARMISTICE REQUEST • WILSON'S BETRAYAL AT VERSAILLES WILSON'S RACISM • WILSON SNUBS HO CHI MINH • NOTES |