Woodrow Wilson:
A Lost Soul In Paris

"IT was determined that since Germany could not be beaten in fair competition industrially, it must be beaten unfairly by organising a military and naval conspiracy against her. British methods and British capitalism might be inferior to German methods and German capitalism; German scientists aided by German workers might be superior to British workers and tardy British science, but the British fleet was still superior to the German in point of numbers and weight of artillery.
"Hence it was felt that if the German nation could be ringed round with armed foes upon its every frontier until the British fleet could strike at its ocean-going commerce, then German competition would be crushed and the supremacy of England in commerce ensured for another generation." (James Connolly, Irish Worker, 29th August 1914).

Australia:
The Conscription Referendums
1916 and 1917

If Connolly's voice went unheeded in 1914, in a little more than two years his objective analysis became the focus of a major political battle in Australia at a time when the Entente (Britain, France and Russia), least anticipated or required it! It was led by Archbishop Daniel Mannix of Melbourne and late son of Rath Luirc (Charleville), North County Cork.

"They had heard much about the causes of the war, and about the fight for the small nations. It was fortunate for them that they were fighting on the side of small nations. But, when all was said, and all concessions made, this was like most wars—just an ordinary trade war. As long as they could remember, Germany was capturing more of the world's trade than other nations thought to be her due. The other nations, or some of them, had equal opportunities, but they could not or they did not, achieve the same success.

"Even now, people were arranging how the vanquished nations—when they were vanquished—were to be crippled in their future trade. They told us that the victory would be a barren victory, and all the bloodshed vain, if the enemy were to retain after the war a chance of again beating in trade the rivals whom they failed to beat in war." (Archbishop Daniel Mannix, Melbourne, 1917).

Mannix created consternation amongst the Empire press in Australia, The Argus, a Melbourne daily, in a leader stated: "It would be vain to attempt to argue with one who outrages decency by his monstrous perversions as Dr. Mannix does, with apparent enjoyment of the pain he inflicts" (31.1.1917).

Yet, only months before, the Australian Prime Minister, Billy Hughes was lauded in the same press for stating:

"The British people recognise amongst the chief causes of this war the desire of Germany to wrest from Britain her industrial and commercial supremacy. We must kill the hope that still buoys Germany up" (21.3.1916).

"At the back of the war was the struggle for the economic domination of the world." (31.5.1916).

Months later, when Archbishop Mannix ventured to say the same thing, it was a "most wicked and mischievous statement", a "monstrous perversion", which "outraged decency" and "pained the loyalists".

However, the Melbourne daily, The Age, goes to the heart of the truth about World War I:

"A Fact that stands out in flaming prominence before all eyes is that the present unprecedented military horrors are not . . . .for the vindication of any great human rights, but for class maintenance and the lust of human conquest" (The Age leader, 4.3.1916).

The Age itself supported these aims.

Archbishop Mannix could never be forgiven for his role in the defeat of two Australian Conscription Referendums, October, 1916; December, 1917. Despite non-conscription, 330,000 troops were sent from Australia during World War I out of a population of under Five Million.

Mannix in
San Francisco, 1920

"The people of the United States, he said, did not go into war for trade; they did not go into the war for territory; they did not go into the war for annexations. They went into the war because they were convinced, or allowed themselves to be convinced, that war was to be the end of all wars; that the world was to be made free for democracy, that every little nation and great nation was to be set upon its feet, free to work out its own destiny and to walk its own way without the menace of aggression from more powerful neighbours.

"Their purpose in going into the war was well expressed by one to whom at the time the whole world listened, but whose name did not seem to be in the same honour in that assemblage that night. He referred to President Wilson. They remembered how gladly the fourteen points were accepted at that critical time by those with whom he led the nation into alliance. They accepted his fourteen points; they would have accepted 144 at the time. But his allies, if they were his allies, wrote the points down on a page of the world's history—and there they stood from one to fourteen—but when it came to the Peace Conference they moved the decimal point to the left, and his fourteen point were not worth the paper on which they were written. Ireland was one of the small nations; she asked nothing that was outside the fourteen points. Whoever else had forgotten the fourteen points, Ireland had not" (Archbishop Mannix, The Advocate Melbourne, 29.7.1920).

Did Capitalist
America have a choice?

"On 28 November, 1916, the Federal Reserve Board, the nearest agency the United States had to a central bank, had published a warning to its member banks, advising against the purchase of foreign treasury bills. By this stage of the war Britain was spending about $250 million per month in the United States, both on its own behalf and on that of its allies. Much of it was devoted to supporting the sterling-dollar exchange rate, in order to control the price of American goods. It reflected a dependence on American industry and on the American stock market which in German minds both justified the submarine campaign and undermined the United State's claim to be neutral. Britain and France had calculated on spending $1,500 million in the United States in the six-month period between October 1916 and April 1917, and they anticipated funding five-sixths of it by borrowing in New York—in other words by selling treasury bills. On 28 November the Federal Reserve Board had been swayed by the views of one of its members in particular, Paul Warburg, a German by birth, who argued that the average American investor was too deeply dependent on an Entente [Britain, France and Russia] victory. Warburg believed that this over-exposure should be wound down. What followed was better described as a crash: $1,000 million was wiped off the stock market in a week. By 1 April, 1917, Britain had an overdraft in the United States of $358 million and was spending $75 million a week. The American entry to the war save the Entente—and possibly some American speculators—from bankruptcy" (The First World War—A New History, Hew Strachan, Simon & Schuster, 2004).

Hew Strachan boasts of "Turning received wisdom about the war completely on its head, he pays tribute to the men who planned and executed the war, seeing it not as a shocking waste of human life, but as a necessary conflict that utterly transformed the twentieth century."

Eight and a half million humans were killed in World War I, the greatest holocaust in human history—21 million were wounded, it is estimated that 7.5 million Prisoners of War disappeared and the total casualties came to 37 million and this Oxford boffin reckons it was not a shocking waste of human life and this view is endorsed by Max Hastings, John Keegan and Paul Johnson.

And you can bet there is no fear of any of these gentlemen being barred from addressing the students of University College, Cork!

Wilson in Paris:
The observations of
Frederic C. Howe

"Early in the war I wrote to the President about the Near East. I was intensely interested in that part of the world which began with Constantinople and ended with Persia, including Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia, and the control of the Mediterranean. I felt that here was the origin of the war, here was danger to the British Empire, to France, and to the allied cause. If Germany could split the Allies as she planned to do in the Near East, the British Empire would be destroyed. My Anglo-Saxon instincts were strong enough to revolt at this. I did not believe the war propaganda, did not accept the singleness of German guilt. Still something within me was aroused at the thought of German ascendancy in the world" (The Confessions of a Reformer, Frederic C. Howe, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1925, p284).

"In Paris, negotiating with French munition interests, I heard similar discussions. The Baghdad Railway was in the diplomatic mind of Europe. France and England were endeavouring to control it, or frustrate its completion. It was an acute international problem for twenty years prior to the war.

"In correspondence with the President I urged on him my conviction of the economic causes of the war; that it was not the Kaiser, nor the Czar, but imperialistic adventurers who had driven their countries into conflict. Secret diplomacy, the conflict of bankers, cessionaires in the Mediterranean, in Morocco, in south and central Africa, had brought on the cataclysm; glacial-like aggregations of capital and credit were responsible for the war. His vision [President Wilson] of peace was only possible with imperialism ended and the world freed from the struggle over the control of backward countries, embroiling now one country, now another. Permanent peace meant that Gibraltar, the Suez Canal, and the Dardanelles should be internationalized; the Baghdad Railway completed by an international consortium, so that Asiatic Turkey might again become as in ancient days a great granary and storehouse of wheat and cotton. I pictured the territory of the old Roman Empire freed from imperialism and developed by international arrangement, with Constantinople a free port and great cosmopolis, serving as the distributing centre of three continents.

"When the armistice was signed I felt that the international millennium was at hand. The President's idealism had carried the world; his Fourteen Points had been accepted; armies were to be disbanded, armaments scrapped, imperialism ended. Self-determination was to be extended to all peoples, hates were to be assuaged, and peace to reign.

"I was ready to embrace a league of nations, even a league to enforce peace. Any international arrangement that would prevent war was worth while. I believed that the negotiators at Paris wanted peace and were willing to make any sacrifices for it; that war was going to be forever ended on earth.

"Such facts as did not fit in with my enthusiastic visitation, I suppressed. I found an explanation for wrongs that had been done at home in the end to be attained. America had almost lost her own liberties—that was part of our sacrifice. Surely the President covenanted for his ideals in exchange for what we had lost. His suppression of liberalism still raised unsatisfied questioning, but of a new dispensation for the world I did not permit myself to doubt. The men in Europe would be of one mind with him; war had all but destroyed civilization, war should not happen again. I was captivated by the President's eloquence and thoroughly believed in his programme. I wanted to have a part in it; a share in the settlement of the Near Eastern problems. I wanted to be around when the hand of the Western world should be lifted from the peoples of the Near East, the glories of whose ancient civilization I dreamed of seeing restored." (p288).

"George Creel urged on the President an unofficial appointment that would enable me to go to the Peace Conference. One day he said to me: 'The President wants you to go to Paris.' There was something more about passport, funds, an assignment to be made when I should arrive. It was not very clear, but it meant definitely to me an opportunity to press my ideas about the Mediterranean. That was what I wanted." (p290).

Syria

President Wilson appointed Howe on a Syrian mission—

"…to ascertain the wishes of the Syrians themselves in regard to a mandatory" (p291).

"The secret treaties were placed at my disposal by Colonel House and the English authorities, who seemingly approved of the mission. There was no help to be had from the French, who did not want the inquiry made. These secret treaties, like others, had been kept from President Wilson: it was claimed he knew nothing about them until his arrival. They furnished astounding revelations. Our allies, like Germany, scrapped treaties—not with traditional enemies, but solemn agreements with friends and with each other. The documents show that England and France had pleaded with the King of the Hedjas to throw the Arab forces in with the allied cause, and drive the Turks from Arabia.

"The Arabs were promised their freedom in exchange; England would get out of Mesopotamia, France would get out of Syria; the whole of Arabia was to be divided into three parts, to be ruled by the three sons of the King of the Hedjas—one of whom, Emir Feisal, was in Paris. Dignified, meditative, richly turbaned, he was there to see that the compact was lived up to. But France and England were unwilling to give up this rich territory. Scarcely was the ink dry on their compact with the Arabs when they negotiated with each other the secret Sykes-Picot Treaty, under whose terms England was to retain Mesopotamia, France was to keep Syria, and Russia take Armenia. Then the Jews asked for Palestine, and Balfour, the gentleman-statesman, agreed on behalf of England that they should have it, although Palestine had already been promised to the Arabs and given to the French. And England, I soon found, was reluctant to hand over Syria to France" (p292).

Lawrence of Arabia

"The two most picturesque personages in Paris were Prince Emir Feisal and Colonel Thomas Lawrence. Feisal was one of three sons of the King of Hedjas.

"Feisal was accompanied by Colonel Thomas Lawrence. He too provided copy for the press, such copy as it was possible to extract from this reticent friend and protector of the Sherif of Mecca. Colonial Lawrence seemed but a handsome boy. He inspired spontaneous affection from every one who came in contact with him. I have seen Mr. Arthur Balfour approach him at the Hotel Majestic as a father might approach a son" (p293).

"Lawrence was an Oxford man. After graduation he disappeared in the Arabian desert, where he lived with the Bedouin tribes, learned their language, acquired their culture and understood their wants. He was termed ‘The Uncrowned King of the Arabs”."

A little like Iveagh House and the MI6 contemporary, Michael Semple "The Uncrowned King of the Afghans", well almost!

"When things were going badly with the British in Arabia, Lawrence was sought for by General Allenby, and found in the library in Alexandria. He was made a colonel in the British army, he aided in organizing the Arabian forces, and commanded a machine-gun battalion against the Turks in the desert fighting from Egypt up along the Palestine coast" (p293).

"It helped one to understand British imperialism to talk with Colonel Lawrence… was Lawrence guarding Arabia for the British? Was he one of the thousands of young men in the British foreign office who forget themselves to forward Britain's empire and protect her outposts from German or Russian penetration? Lawrence gave no hint. Neglectful of honors, indifferent to everything suggestive of personal aggrandizement, he seemed as detached from the Occidental world as Feisal himself. He spoke frankly about Britain as he did about the French. The Arabs had a culture of their own. They intended to keep it. He knew the Occident, knew its unworthiness, knew that he would have to fight for the things that had been promised his Arab friends by the Allies to bring them into the war. He and Feisal gave one a sense of the Near East, of its age, its sense of security, its apartness.

"Arabia had been Arabia for thousands of year. Empires had come and gone, conquerors had fought in turn for its possession. It had been the battle ground of millions; it had known almost every ambitious conqueror from Darius to the Kaiser. Yet Arabia remained Arabia; her customs, her culture, her habits were as they had been thousands of years ago" (p294).

"To Feisal, and in a sense to Lawrence as well, the Paris Peace Conference was but a moment in a history that went back to the very origin of man.

"Colonel Lawrence seemed to share my opinion of allied treachery. He even admitted my suggestion that England coveted Syria or wanted America to take it as a mandate. French occupation of Syria meant control of the entrance to Mesopotamia. Syria menaced the Island of Cyprus and British control of the Suez Canal. England did not want France in Syria. She wanted it herself" (p294).

"Lord Milner's men"

"One evening a number of young Englishmen visited me at the Hotel Chatham [in Paris]. They were Oxford and Cambridge men, brilliant, friendly, amiable. A few days later I was invited to breakfast with them. Arriving, I found that I was at the house of Lloyd George; that Philip Kerr, my host, was Lloyd George's secretary. He and his associates, Lionel Curtis, Arnold Toynbee, and others, were known as “Lord Milner's men”.

"They were editors of the periodical known as “The Round Table”, and had organized an imperial conference in each of the British colonies. We talked about the Near East. They, too, were interested in the subject. I took it for granted that they were interested in self-determination for peoples; that they understood, as a matter of course, the crimes committed by imperialistic adventurers in Egypt, Persia, Africa. I talked about my discoveries of conflicting treaties, about the activities of British oil interests in Mesopotamia and Persia. I warmed to the theme of financial imperialism and the necessity of being rid of imperialistic exploiters in order to have permanent peace. I felt that they would help in solving the Near Eastern problem" (p295).

"White Man's Burden"

"It astounded me to find that they scarcely knew the meaning of the words “economic imperialism”. Imperialism was not economic, it was a white man's burden. A sacred trust, undertaken for the well-being of peoples unfitted for self-government. The war was in no way related to the conflict of financial interests. Unfortunate things were done sometimes by business bounders—true—but they did not influence the Foreign Office. They flag followed the investor, perhaps, but only because the investor was a British citizen who was sacred wherever he ventured. This imperialism, which was not imperialism, must be carried to the end. It must be carried by Anglo-Saxons, and England was no longer able to carry it alone. She had lost much of her best blood in the trenches; Oxford and Cambridge, which recruited the Foreign Office, had been depleted of a generation of talent. The only country which could be trusted to share the white man's burden was America; America must help. She must carry it in Armenia. There was the crux of that sociable morning talk, as of others. America should take the mandate over Armenia. Propaganda to that end should take root in my mind and be carried back to the President" (p296).

"“But”, I parried, “Armenia is a danger-spot. It is a buffer between Europe and Asia. The power that holds Armenia may have to defend the British Empire in Mesopotamia, Persia, and India—defend it against Turkey, central Europe, certainly against revolutionary Russia. If we should take Armenia we would need a huge military and naval force; we might be embroiled with every power in Europe; certainly we would be embroiled with the Turks and Arabs”.

"“It looks to me”, I ended, “as if America is to be asked to carry the bag; to police Europe and remove from England and France the burden of protecting imperialistic ventures. You are asking us to assume the biggest, most dangerous, and costliest job of all”" (p296).

"The young men admitted the danger. They felt, as all Englishmen whom I met seemed to feel, that America owed a debt to England, much as did Canada, Australia, and other colonies. We ought to be proud to pay our debt to the empire. That America was a colonial dependence, not yet a sovereign nation, seemed to be their fixed idea" (p296).

"Before the war these men, especially the Lord Milner group, had gone to Canada, Australia, and South Africa. They gave up home, companionship, and everything to which they had been accustomed; they often lived isolated lives in distant places of the world. They mobilized opinion for imperialistic ends. Conservatives or Liberals, the empire was their passion. It was to be served, strengthened, carried on. Where the empire was in question they were impervious to facts, blind to obvious evils, untouched by argument. As administrators they were intelligent and kindly—conceded nothing to self-government, nothing to the aspiration of other people for liberty. England and the empire were one; British citizenship a distinction, like the Roman citizenship; to question the empire was to question centuries of sacrifice, the renown of England's most distinguished men. This extraordinarily efficient organisation knew everything except the suppressed wants of subject peoples; granted everything to subject peoples except political liberty. It was not willing to dignify by discussion the questionings of others as to the sanctity of England's imperial trust" (p297).

"As I talked with these young men, I reflected on the nature of English gentlemen and Oxford scholars—their unwillingness, perfected by long practice into inability, to recognise issues that touched their economic interests. India, Egypt, Africa, Mesopotamia provided careers for the younger sons of the aristocracy; England was crowded, trade undesirable, the service of the state was their opportunity. To end imperialism was to end jobs, opportunities for preferment. It was like suggesting abolishing the church to the clergy, the army to the military caste, the navy to marines. Men receive unwillingly ideas that destroy a livelihood; and vocal England is a unit in the protection of its privileged sons—they would be left to starve if the colonial service were ended, they would have to compromise their dignity in trade or emigrate as workers" (p298).

The Labour Party

"Even the Labour Party had a confused veneration for the empire, a veneration springing from tradition. Oxford young men wanted our dough-boys to do their policing, to help protect economic interests that they dignified as sacred. That was the objective of the Armenian drive; America's duty was always being held before my eyes" (p298).

Baghdad and Suez

"Allied opinion about the Baghdad Railway, which I had visualized as a great international highway to open up a rich storehouse of lands, was that it should be left to rust. It had done enough damage already; completed, it would disturb the balance of power. What would happen to British shipping interests if the freight of Europe travelled by rail? What would happen to the Suez Canal, the majority of whose shares were held by the British?" (p300).

"But America's gesture to the Syrians had no influence on the Peace Conference. As elsewhere, lands and peoples had been disposed of while the war was in progress. The Sykes-Picot Treaty had partitioned the Near East. In the partition the Arabs got nothing." (p302).

"France took Syria, England Mesopotamia. Palestine went to the Jews. The Arabs had driven back the Turks and had perhaps saved the British Empire. Their sacrifices were ignored; agreements were thrown to the winds and betraying friends took possession of their ancient towns and countryside. The Arabs rebelled; their rebellion was crushed by the same friends with aeroplanes and machine-guns."

Lenin and Wilson

"Lionel Steffens was interested in Russia; President Wilson had spoken generously of Russia's right to have revolutions if she saw fit. Lenin talked Wilson's language as to self-determination and ending imperialism. The Prinkipo Conference was organized as a friendly overture to Russia. It failed. One day Steffens and I were with William Bullitt, a liaison official, whose business it was to keep the American mission informed as to what was going on. Bullitt had an engaging personality. He knew Europe, had been connected with the State Department during the war. Steffens suggested a mission to Russia, a mission that understood the Bolshevik point of view, that could talk its language. Bullitt liked the idea and dictated a memorandum about it to Colonel House. Two days later Bullitt asked Steffens if he would go to Russia with him; if so, could he be ready immediately? The plan had been approved by Colonel House; it was only necessary to get the sanction of Lloyd George. The next day that had been secured" (p303).

"I saw Bullitt and Steffens off. They went to London; from London by British aid they reached Russia. They were sympathetically received by Lenin, and returned to Paris to make their report. The mission had been successful. The Russians had acceded to the allied memorandum; a rapprochement seemed established; Russia was to come back into the family of nations. Bullitt and Steffens were elated. A great advance had been made toward international amity. For some reason or another they could not see the President. Lloyd George received Bullitt and the report, but later denied that he knew of the mission or had given his consent to it. No explanation for his change of front was ever offered. That Lloyd George had approved of the mission was obvious to all. It could not have left France, could not have landed in England, could not have secured conveyance to Russia but for British aid and approval" (p303).

"But economic forces moved the conference, like players about a chess-board. Boundary-lines were shifted to include harbors, copper, oil, mineral resources. Races were split, natural demarcations ignored. The imperialist interests that had kept the world on edge for thirty years before the war were making a killing; they would end the old controversies; would sanction their loot by treaty agreements; perhaps rivet them by the League of Nations. The British Admiralty wanted oil; it had talked oil for years. British maritime prescience saw that oil was the fuel of to-morrow. The French steel trust wanted a grip on coal and iron ore, to gain command of the Continent and strip Germany of her war-making power. Munition-makers were busy. They were getting ready for the next war.

"One evening at dinner a friend of President Wilson's, a man thoroughly conversant with the conference, said despondently:

'It is impossible to tell yet whether the peace is being drafted by the international bankers or the munition-makers. It is not being drafted by America.'

"America had no business at Paris. That was the outstanding thing about which we almost all agreed. President Wilson should have stayed at home. We were amateurs, amateurs seeking to right the world by moralistic appeals; we had fought as religious crusaders, and, like Joshua, had expected the old world to fall at a trumpet-blast. Our emotions were honest, the sacrifice genuine, whole-hearted, but Europe only smiled at our naivete" (The Confessions of a Reformer, Frederic C. Howe, 1925, p305).

So what can we say about Woodrow Wilson: that on practically every question with which he was faced during his career, he adopted the right attitude and the wrong methods.

There is no doubt that his Fourteen Points were a definite influence in breaking down the resistance of the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire), who looked to Wilson, as it turned out, in vain, to enforce what he had propounded.

At Paris in March, 1919, he entirely betrayed the trust which the defeated nations had placed in him. Had he kept to himself, he might have used the weight of his authority on certain issues to ensure the adoption of broad principles of justice, instead he dived into a maelstrom of committees, and was lost. Even his own American colleagues openly ridiculed him, by almost all he was regarded as a bloody nuisance.

NOTE: All underlining by Editor, Labour Comment.