A Wilson advisor Colonel House (He had no military experience) was assigned by Wilson to find out what was going in in Europe. Without the proper background in world affairs he spent much of 1915 and 1916 in Europe, trying to negotiate peace through diplomacy. Unfortunately, he only talked to the British and not the Germans so his views were one sided. He was enthusiastic but lacked deep insight into European affairs and relied on the information received from British diplomats, such as Edward Grey, to make decisions and that led us to not understand the German position and some would say we entered WW I on the wrong side. From the book “Road to War” by Walter Millis published in 1935. Knowledge and advisors are Key to international affairs.
Although history does not exactly repeat itself, it does provide parallels and sometimes quite ominous ones. Such is the case with the current U.S. Presidential election and the one which occurred one hundred years earlier.
The dominating question which hung over the 1916 campaign was whether the country would remain neutral in regard to the horrific slaughter which was taking place on the European battlefields in probably the greatest act of mass insanity ever recorded, World War I.
President Wilson had maintained that the U.S. would continue a policy of strict neutrality. By all indications, the nation wanted no part of the war, with the President’s own party at his nomination delivering an emphatic “No” to any foreign intervention.
Although Wilson maintained a neutral policy through the election and briefly afterwards, his advisors and Cabinet had been lobbying for war and continued to do so even more vehemently after the…
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