By Jason Sibert
World War I changed President Woodrow Wilson’s life, like many who lived through this disastrous part of history.
Wilson spent the latter part of his presidency pushing a solution to the problem of world peace – the League of Nations. In the 1910’s, the decade of World War I, the methods of killing had improved over previous decades; many who lived through this decade rightly feared another destructive war breaking out with even more deadly technology, as thirty years later the world experienced World War II.
To really understand Wilson’s stance on the League, one must understand his politics. Wilson represented a strain of Jeffersonian thought (President Thomas Jefferson) in his views of economics and foreign policy. Jefferson, like the rest of the founding fathers, believed in a small standing army, as the founding fathers didn’t want to create something like the militarized states that existed in Europe at the time. His opponent Alexander Hamilton believed in a bigger standing army, but his views of the appropriate size of a standing army aren’t that big by today’s standards.
Wilson thought the nation-states of the world should join the League of Nations and dramatically downsize their militaries, a version of Jeffersonian America on the world stage. The power politics that defined the world would be replaced by a world that cooperated in the League of Nations. After Germany surrendered in 1918, President Wilson and other leaders participated in the Paris Peace Conference where he advocated for the establishment of the League, his fourteenth point in his fourteen points for a lasting peace.
The Senate failed to ratify the Treaty of Versailles, and the U.S. failed to enter the League. Some think U.S. leadership in the League of Nations would have prevented World War II. However, the existing League of Nations didn’t stop World War II. Plus, Wilson failed to compromise with Massachusetts Republican Senator Henry Cabot Lodge’s demands for the Treaty of Versailles. Lodge held internationalist views himself, although of a different kind.
Wilson won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1919 for his efforts on behalf of the League. His internationalist vision still lives in certain circles today, but those circles are becoming less vocal with the emergence of right-wing populism around the globe. An academic by trade, Wilson taught history at Bryn Mawr College, a women’s college, from 1885 to 1888, and later taught at Wesleyan College and Princeton. In 1902, he became president of Princeton. Wilson served as governor of New Jersey (1910-1913) before his election as U.S. president in 1912.
President Wilson’s domestic agenda, the New Freedom, included the conservation of natural resources, banking reform, tariff reduction, and equal access to raw materials. His administration cut the tariff and established a progressive income tax, regulated banking (Federal Reserve Board), and it also established the Federal Trade Commission to investigate anti-trust violations. In addition, Wilson pushed through the Adamson Act which established an eight-hour day for railroad workers. He also supported the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote.
It must be remembered that President Wilson was an avowed white supremacist while Henry Cabot Lodge favored an early version of the 1960’s Voting Rights Act, the Federal Elections Bill. Wilson’s record looks strange to those who live in a post-civil rights movement America. President Wilson segregated the federal bureaucracy, increased segregation in the armed services, and his administration took no direct action in the East St. Louis race riots of 1917.
Although he’s one of the 21 Americans who have won the Nobel Peace Prize, and we can learn something from his internationalist vision, domestic reforms, and support of women’s suffrage, Wilson’s record looks far worse now than it did in his time, primarily because of his civil rights record and unwillingness to compromise with Lodge on the League of Nations.
Jason Sibert is Executive Director of the Peace Economy Project.
