- So today we turn our attention to the United States and its part in what was called the Great War.  We know it as World War I, but I chose to use the name commonly said during this era,  for a couple reasons.  One, it reminds us that the people of the world in the 1910s did not know this conflict, which engulfed most of the world, would only be the first of two such wars, in just the first half of the 20th Century.  But the scope of the war helps us understand why it was called the Great War, which is a bit misleading.  It wasn't called "Great" because it was good.  It was called the Great War because of the scope of the war.  It was the most destructive war in human history,  until World War II.  We also need to know another name that Americans gave to it, after the United States' belated entry into this conflict.  Americans, for a brief time, called this "the war to end all wars".  Think about that phrase for a moment, the war to end all wars. 

  It is almost boundless in its ambition, and given what we know about the rest of the 20th Century, it no doubt strikes us as a naive title: the war to end all wars.  But as students of history, we know we need to assess people of a certain era and place on their own terms, so one of our tasks today is to understand why Americans, with so much optimism and confidence for the future, believed this bloody war, that they were making a late entry into, could be the last war,  not just for the United States, but for the world.   The war broke out in Europe in August of 2014.   The causes of this war were numerous and complex.  For our purposes, we need know only this:  that the Great War began when a complex system of alliances  and ways to negotiate international conflict broke down in Europe.   For much of the 19th century, this complex system had kept the peace, and wars were mostly localized and brief.  But by the end of the 19th century, and by the beginning of the early 20th century, many great powers of Europe, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, Great Britain, and France, just to name five, believed that war was a means to serve their individual interests as well as the interests of certain partnerships they had formed.  By 1914, this push for war had reached a point of no return.   The main sides were the Central versus Allied powers, and on the map, you see first the Central powers in pink.   The most important ones for us to know as students of U.S. history: Germany and Austria-Hungary. 

 You can see from their geographical location why this side was called the Central powers.   Note as well that Bulgaria and Turkey were part of this alliance.  Surrounding the Central powers, the Allies.  Among them, Russia, Italy, France, and Great Britain.   The war in Europe would be fought on two main fronts: a western front that developed in northern France, and part of Belgium, and an eastern front on the other side of Germany.  We'll learn more about the fronts when we address the United States' entry into the conflict.  What we want to do here is turn to the United States' response to the outbreak of war, and it's important  for us to know that most Americans were happy  the United States was not going to take a side in the war, and certainly wasn't going to enter the war after it began in August of 1914.   Democratic President Woodrow Wilson made it clear to the American people that this was the position of the U.S. government as well.  He issued a short statement of neutrality, making neutrality the official position for the United States, and he asked the American people to be careful not to pick sides, even if they were doing so idly, because it could pit neighbor against neighbor.  It's important for us to remain neutral. 

 But it was very difficult for the United States to remain neutral.  Let me give one brief example.  As a neutral nation, the United States was entitled to trade with the warring nations.   But even before the war began, the United States had a much closer trade relationship with the Allied side than it did with the Central powers.  Just to continue the pre-war level of trade, meant the United States would be providing far more useful war materials to one side versus the other.   That neutrality, unbalanced, favored Great Britain.  Another factor made neutrality very difficult for the United States.  Trade, at this time, had to take place through trans-Atlantic shipping, if the United States is going to have commercial transactions with any of the nations engulfed in war.   Great Britain had the strongest navy of all the powers fighting, and it used its navy to blockade Germany.  You can see on this map, that the geographic advantage  lay in Britain's hands. 

 Not hard to blockade the North Sea to prevent any ships,  including neutral ships, from reaching German ports.  In order to break  Great Britain's blockade, and to advance its side in the war,  Germany undertook several actions that, from the American point of view, looked like provocations, aggressions directed at the United States.   The one advantage Germany had navally,  was its U-Boat fleet, or submarines,  and Germany used its submarines to try and sink as many British ships as possible.  This mission sometimes led to the accidental targeting of neutral ships, including ones carrying Americans,  or even flying the American flag.  After some of these sinkings, and after the sinking of some civilian ships, including a French passenger ship in the English Channel, President Wilson, though he still was maintaining a position of neutrality, demanded that Germany promise not to target neutral ships.   Germany issued a half-hearted pledge not to target neutral ships, but it also stated in its promise that it expected the United States to influence Great Britain to lift the blockade to allow shipments of food and other civilian, necessary supplies to reach Germany.  What this tells us, is that the United States, though it was trying to stay neutral, was being drawn into the war, and it was being drawn  toward one side, the Allied side.  By early 1917, Germany's military position was very precarious.   If Germany wanted to win the war, it had to strike at Great Britain as quickly and as hard as possible.   So it broke its promise, and on January 30th, 1917,  the German government announced that all ships in a large ocean zone in the Atlantic near Germany  were fair game, neutral or not. 

  By March of 1917, several U.S. ships  had been sunk by German U-Boats.   That same month, another provocation.  The so-called Zimmerman telegram, which was a message from the German Foreign Secretary in Berlin to the German Ambassador in Mexico.  Its proposal was brief,  alarming, even bizarre.   Germany proposed to Mexico the following: if the United States declares war against Germany, the proposal read, Mexico should join Germany, become one of the Central powers, and attack the United States on its southern border.  Do this, Germany proposed, and after we win the war, because the proposal assumed there would be a victory for the Central side, we will force the United States to return to you, Mexico, territory lost in the Mexican-American War.  Now the proposal was not as bizarre as it sounds, said this way.   The United States and Mexico were actually in a low-level border warfare at the time.  But the telegram was intercepted before it could be delivered to representatives of the Mexico government, and it was given to President Wilson, who was indignant, angry, and released it publicly.  The slide toward war continued. 

  But President Wilson found himself in a dilemma, even though he had come to a decision that such provocations by Germany could no longer be tolerated.  In 1916, Wilson had run for re-election.   Running largely on his progressive reform accomplishments, the President also reminded voters that he had, up to that point, kept the nation out of war,  and that was a position embraced in a popular slogan by Democratic voters and supporters of Wilson, who chanted at rallies, "He kept us out of war, "He kept us out of war."  But if the President tried to continue to keep the United States out of war, wouldn't Americans begin to wonder, how many more U.S. ships could be sunk? How many more provocations stirring up America's neighbors would be tolerated by this president?  So Wilson negotiated his dilemma in the following way.  When he went to Congress on April 2nd, 1917, to ask for a declaration of war, he centered his request around the following proclamation:  "The world must be made safe for democracy".   The world must be made safe for democracy.   In the address, Wilson says little  about the previous provocations explained.  Instead, he explains what he means  by making the world safe for democracy.  Within the statement are several key concepts we must know.  One, liberal internationalism, which means here, this.   One, that the United States should try to spread  the democratic form of government beyond its borders, spread democracy to other nations. 

 Liberal here means having a free government, and so the foreign policy of the United States should promote that.  Second, international collective security.   President Wilson believed that democracies are inherently peaceful nations, meaning they do not have a tendency to go to war.  It was Wilson's belief that the Great War was the cause of undemocratic regimes,  nations seeking to add to their territory, become greater powers, and to do so through aggression.  If the democracies of the world bind together, Wilson believed, not only can they spread democracy, but they can keep each other safe.  If the democracies of the world are all members of an international organization, agree to defend one another if attacked, then ideally there will be less war.   So here we begin to see why the Great War became known by some Americans as the war to end all wars.  It's in the request for war itself.   Both of these goals, both of these concepts, required an active leadership role for the United States,  and Wilson made it clear that by going to war, the United States wouldn't simply just help the Allies win,  they would use a victory to achieve the goal of making the world safe for democracy on terms the President would take the lead in setting.   Congress granted a declaration of war,  and now the United States found itself with a great challenge: mobilization to enter  what was already the bloodiest war in human history. 

  To understand how this mobilization proceeded, I'd like to outline for you,  three tensions that typically  accompany a democratic government going to war.  So these tensions apply specifically to U.S. mobilization for World War I, but they have larger applications as well.  The first tension between free enterprise,  capitalist enterprise, and the needs of the military.   The second tension between civil liberties and rights  guaranteed under the Constitution, the tensions between them and the need for civilian unity and support.   The third tension, that between established roles  and wartime changes.   Please keep these tensions in mind as we learn more about mobilization.  Let's begin with the putting together of an army.   On the eve of the U.S. entry into World War I, the U.S. armed forces were tiny, woefully unprepared  for the scale of war being waged in Europe.   So perhaps the greatest challenge for the United States was to put together an adequate fighting force.   That required passage of the first comprehensive draft in U.S. history, the Selective Service Act of May 1917. 

  It set up more than 4,500 draft boards, staffed by volunteers, the majority of them civic leaders, prominent individuals in their community, generally older men, and the draft boards were overwhelmingly male, who believed that this was a great way to serve their country, to help oversee the induction of young men into uniform to go to war.   We can see the effectiveness of the draft boards in those statistics.  24 million men between the ages of 21 to 30 registered  for the draft, and some 3 million  were conscripted, that is drafted, almost all of them into the Army.   Another 2 million Americans volunteered.  This was the biggest Army, Marine force, and Navy  in U.S. history.   We'll learn more about what these combatants, those in uniform for the U.S., did in the war in a little while.  Let's stay with mobilization here, and now focus on mobilization of the economy.   As that statistic shows, this was a very expensive war,  more than $30 billion.   Of this figure, $7 billion was loaned by the United States to its allies, and the rest paid for U.S. mobilization.   Where did it come from? Two-thirds of that sum, $33 billion, was so to speak,  "borrowed", borrowed from the American people themselves,  through what were called Liberty Loans. 

 These were bonds issued in set denominations,  sometimes at very low sums, so that even people of modest means, even the working poor could buy them.  They were issued by the United States government, backed by its bond and credit.  They had a set term, a maturation date, at which time, the full sum of the bond was paid, plus a guaranteed interest.  So it was an investment for the individual, but it was also a boost to the United States.  The infusion of so much cash into the Treasury paid for the production of tanks, ships, weapons, uniforms, food, fuel, everything needed to fight a war across the Atlantic Ocean.   The U.S. government could plan on paying back the loans in the years to come, because the loans were issued with staggered maturity dates, so that the collection of taxes, the collection of revenue in years to come would meet the bond's obligation.   These loans were sold to the American people using themes of patriotism, as we'll see in an upcoming photograph.  The remainder of the sum came from taxes.   Here, the recently introduced federal income tax, which was enacted in 1913, was helpful.  Taxes were also raised on corporations. 

  Very beneficial in paying for the war was an excess profits tax.  Those companies that made a lot of money through defense contracts had to pay higher taxes than everyone else.   But raising money wasn't just enough for economic mobilization.  The economy itself had to be molded, shaped, to meet war needs, and here's where we see that tension between free enterprise and war mobilization.  Should a company with the means to buy steel to make its products be allowed to have as much steel as it can buy in the open market, when those products, say bicycles, aren't as important  as other products that require steel, such as ships.  If one follows the pure principle of free enterprise, then the answer is yes, whatever the market allows, goes.   But if that's allowed, can a nation effectively mobilize  to make a difference in such a great war?  This helps us understand why, during World War I, the United States government took unprecedented control of the nation's capitalist economy,  and I'll offer two examples.  The War Industries Board, set up in the summer of 1917,  was given far-ranging powers to allocate vital resources,  to dictate to companies and factories changes to production,  in order to save the necessary materials.   The WIB also had the power to set prices.   As the name indicates, this was done in the name of mobilization to ensure that the war industries  provided everything the armed forces needed. 

  The Railroad's War Board took over operation of the United States' primary national means of transportation.  The U.S. government rented privately owned railroads,  or publicly traded railroads, corporations,  and oversaw their operations, setting schedules, routes.   This was done in order to ensure that the national network of railroads, so vital to the economy, was set up in a way that would deliver conscripts to training camps,  soldiers and sailors from training camps to ports to go overseas, coal one way, steel another.   Central national coordination bringing government control.   Here's the photograph I mentioned earlier.  Actor Charlie Chaplin was the most well-known, the most famous movie star of his day, and he volunteered his time and talents to promote the Liberty Loans we just learned about.  Here we see him in April of 1918 delivering a short speech to a gathered crowd.  Chaplin was funny, engaging; he was a great salesman.  He wasn't the only celebrity to undertake this task.  All across the country, other well-known movie stars did the same. 

 But it wasn't just celebrities.  Americans could volunteer to be four-minute men.  They're trained to give a four minute rapid-fire speech on the need to buy Liberty Loans.  They went to defense factories and sold bonds, made their pitch to workers on breaks.  They made their pitches in public, this occurring from May of 1917 till the end of the war in November of 1918, raised those billions of dollars.   The next example, the Espionage Act, shows us the tension between liberty and rights, and unity for mobilization.   The Espionage Act was passed in June of 1917,  and amended in May of 1918.   Before I show you key text of the act,  I want you to think about the following question.  You don't need to raise your hands, I just want you to think about the answer to yourself.  How many of you in the last two weeks have heard something negative said whether on television or in a private conversation, online, in your social media stream, in any form, have you heard negative speech about the current president, the Congress, or anyone currently running for president in the election being scheduled later this year?  I know the answer to my own question is, oh yes, I've heard that. 

 If this law were still on the books, those saying negative things would liable  for criminal prosecution.  The Amended Espionage Act essentially banned negative speech.   When the United States is at war, no one shall willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language  about the form of government.   The poster on the slide shows us one of the reasons  for such sweeping legislation  governing and restricting speech.  The poster shows us the face of the Emperor of Germany, known as the Kaiser, Kaiser Wilhelm.  He's shown as a spider, spinning his web invisibly.   We must keep this spider, the Enemy, Germany, out.   How? Stop, think, ask yourself if what you are about to say, might help the enemy.   Spies are listening.   But is such an act, even if done in the name of war mobilization, is it constitutional?  Comparison of this passage from the Espionage Act to the First Amendment suggests a strong no answer. 

 The First Amendment is pretty clear.  "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press".   When a German American by the name of Charles Schenck was prosecuted under the Espionage Act for distributing pamphlets urging young men not to give in to the draft, attorneys recognized an opportunity to test the constitutionality of the Espionage Act.  Schenck was convicted, he appealed his conviction, and it reached the Supreme Court of the United States, though not until after the war was over.   But even with the war over by 1919, the outcome of the case was of great significance.  In an unanimous decision, with Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes writing the decision,  the court ruled that the Espionage Act was, yes, constitutional.   Holmes established what's known as the clear and present danger test.  He used the following metaphor to explain it.  We can adapt it for our purposes here.  Imagine one of you shouting, "Fire!"  and turning off the lights. 

 A panic ensues, we all run out, people are trampled, people are hurt, we find out there was no fire, there was no danger, it was a prank.   So the individual who shouted fire as a joke, is arrested for causing injuries to others.   Was that individual exercising his or her right of free speech? According to the Supreme Court, no.   The First Amendment does not protect speech which poses a clear and present danger to others,  and Congress, the court ruled, the legislative branch, has the right and power to set those restrictions.   It would not be until 50 years later that the Supreme Court would revisit the clear and present danger, and substantially narrow what constitutes  clear and present danger.  50 years later, the Supreme Court would decide, only speech which calls for immediate harmful action  can be prohibited.  In that 1969 decision, Brandenburg v. Ohio, the court overturned the Schenck ruling in the sense that, such speech, in which someone says something negative about the president, was no longer illegal.  But that was not for another half-century, and we see here the tensions  of protecting rights while mobilizing for war, and getting the unity needed to win the war.  What if millions of Americans listened to the Schencks of the country, who asked themselves what is this war really about?  They're right, right, but if they stop buying bonds, if they convince their neighbors not to buy bonds, will the war be won?  Let us now turn to the military side of the war,  with attention to U.S. forces entering combat  on the Western Front.   The Western Front, by the time the U.S. entered the war, had bogged down into stalemate, trench warfare, as you see in the photograph. 

 With both sides, forces for the Allies and forces for the Central powers, facing each other in these trenches which were originally meant to be temporary but which had become almost permanent.  Sometimes these trenches separated, not by miles or even half-miles, but measurable in yards.   By 1917, the strategic goal of both sides in ground combat  on the Western Front, was to take territory from their enemy, oust enemy soldiers from the trenches, push them back.   With the modern weapons of war, this brought unimaginable casualties.   Let's use the Battle of the Somme,  named after the French river where it occurred, as an example.  The Battle of the Somme began in early July 1916, and lasted five months until November.   Of the 100,000 British troops leading the offensive  on the first day, out of those trenches, charging German entrenchments, out of 100,000, there were 57,000 casualties, 57,000 dead or wounded  British soldiers on the first day.   Of that 57,000, 20,000 were killed.   This was a battle that lasted five months.   By the time it ended, there were 420,000 British casualties,  almost 200,000 French casualties,  and 450,000 German casualties, and this for a small chunk of territory. 

  This was the war U.S. forces were entering.   Modern artillery wasn't just devastating combat forces.   It was exacting great collateral damage as well, leveling whole villages, as you see here,  the ruins of Cantigny.   Although the United States declared war in April of 1917, and undertook as rapid a mobilization as possible, U.S. forces did not enter the Western Front in large numbers until early 1918.   They had their greatest impact in the second half of 1918, from the spring until the war's end in November.   I'll highlight for you, two key battles involving U.S. forces,  and then in a little bit we'll take a look at these sites on a map.   At Chateau Thierry, in May of 1918, U.S. forces  fighting with French and British forces, stopped the Germans' last offensive, the drive toward Paris.   German forces were unable to advance further after being stopped in the spring of 1918.   In the fall of that year, at the Meuse-Argonne,  among other battles, U.S. forces again played a crucial role  in pushing German forces back.   An armistice would come on November 11th, 1918,  at 11:00, so fittingly, 11:11:11,  and the significance of that day is still memorialized here in the United States by what we call Veteran's Day, November 11th. 

  Now as we'll soon learn, the war's end did not mean the immediate arrival of peace.  Great challenges lay ahead.  Before turning our attention to that topic,  let's take a closer look at this photograph, because the one that follows shows something extraordinary.   You see U.S forces from the 1st Division in a French village on September 30th, 1918.  The photograph doesn't convey the heavy casualties this unit suffered: 8,500 advancing seven or so kilometers.   The photograph snapped just moments after this photograph, shows us why the casualty count was high.   Remarkedly, a photograph snapped as an artillery shell fired by the Germans shrieks, and U.S. soldiers run for cover.   Let's take a moment to study the map.  You can see the site of Chateau-Thierry just above the part of the map labeled France.  May 1918, that red star shows the Allied offensive halting the German advance. 

 Also note the tan bulge on the map, that lies beneath the black line.  The black line shows trench warfare from 1915 to 1917.   So the Battle of the Somme, for example, was about moving that black line one way or the other.   Then you can see above Verdun, the Meuse-Argonne offensive  in September through November of 1918.   The blue arrows indicate the Allied drive across northern France into Belgium, pushing back German forces.  The red line indicates for us the Armistice line of November 11th, 1918.   At that day, at that point, Germany agreed  to have its forces lay down their arms, the Allied powers did the same.  The fighting was over, but was this now,  the last war, was this the war to end all wars? Wilson's challenge of making the world safe for democracy was not met just by the war ending with an Allied victory.   The peace had to be made.   Let's turn our attention now to Wilson's bid to make the world safe for democracy. 

  The peace proceedings were carried out near Paris,  at the ancestral home of French royalty, Versailles.  We'll call that the Paris peace proceedings.   Even before the war was over, Wilson had unveiled to the United States and to the world, his blueprint for permanent global peace.   He called this blueprint the 14 Points,  and had very ambitiously, presented it in January of 1918,  nearly a year before the war fighting actually ended.   Let's focus on just the most important of the 14 points.   The first,  the need for, the obligation to have,  "open covenants of peace".   This is the phrase Wilson himself used, he wrote it.  Clearly, he believed it was very important because he made it the first of 14 points.  What did he mean by open covenants of peace? Covenants, as you may know, are sacred agreements.  A covenant bounding  monotheistic faiths in the Western world. 

 Wilson was a devout Christian, a Presbyterian.  He took his religion very seriously, and he knew that by using this word, he was bringing to the diplomatic proceedings, religious overtones, and that was his intention.  He wanted all sides, winners and losers and observers from the outside, to understand that what was going to happen in Paris, was sacred, binding, something that couldn't be broken by one party disagreeing later.   To agree to the covenant, to this agreement, would be permanent, Wilson was suggesting.  He also used the word open, because he wanted the world to know that this proceedings would be transparent.  There would be no secret backroom agreements.   This was of a great priority to Wilson.  Back in 1915, Britain had spoken to France about possibly carving off the coal-rich area of Germany known as the Saar, and giving it to France.  Wilson didn't want that to happen.  What happens here must be open and sacred, binding and permanent. 

 The second point shows us concern for the circumstances that had helped lead the United States into the war in the first place.  Absolute freedom of the seas, and here we can see Wilson's tendency towards the extreme.  Not freedom of the seas, not, as much freedom as possible, but absolute freedom, so that the rights of neutral nations  like the United States could not in the future, be violated.  This was also a way to fulfill liberal internationalism, of spreading democracy by enabling free and open trade between nations, using the seas that were free.   That brings us to the third point, it's directly connected to the second.   Part of the 14 points.   Free and open trade between nations, Wilson and other liberal internationalists argued, not only good for those nations engaging in trade, helping to raise their standard of living, but also helps promote democracy.   Most of the remaining points related to the re-drawing of boundaries in Europe, a very sticky problem.   It was Wilson's hope that the re-drawing of these boundaries could be done in a fair and just way.   So that an independent Polish state could be created  out of Russia, which had collapsed during the war, and was then engulfed in its own civil war. 

 Fair boundaries for other nations as well.  But it was the 14th point that was most important to Wilson.   It was the one that called for what he called a general association of nations.  Here we see Wilson's faith in and commitment to international collective security, showing itself.   We see his bid to make the world safe for democracy come alive.   This general association of nations which came to be known as the League of Nations, was to be first, an organization of the industrialized democracies of the world, the United States, Great Britain, France, but it would not be limited to these nations.  They would welcome into the league all nations of the world,  and this general association of nations, even though they would have differences, would hopefully have these common needs and obligations.   To protect one another if attacked by an outside power, to come to the attacked member's aid.  An attack on one, an attack an all.  That was the central purpose of the general association of nations, and it's the heart of international collective security. 

 This was the blueprint, and the other Allied powers, as well as the United States' people themselves had lots of time to think about it and talk about it, discuss it, while the war waged on.   Would Wilson, after the war ended in November, convince the Allies to accept these points, create a league of nations, and hopefully a permanent peace.   He had a lot of work to do, here we see Wilson, he's the figure on the right.  A lighter moment with the other leaders of the Allied nations,  representing France, Italy, and Great Britain.   One of the greatest challenges Wilson faced with those leaders, was trying to diminish  their desire for revenge against Germany.   The treaty finally produced by the spring of 1919,  failed to achieve Wilson's purpose of preventing revenge  from being extracted from Germany.  Article 231 of the treaty, known as the War Guilt Clause, blamed Germany for the war and required the payment of expensive reparations, damages, to the other powers.  This was exactly what Wilson was trying to prevent, because as he argued, with much foresight, taking expensive revenge against an enemy,  even an vanquished one, seeds future wars.   But Wilson was willing to accept blaming Germany for the war if it could get him the League of Nations.  Little did he know that his greatest challenge in setting up the League of Nations, creating an organization that would hopefully deter war for all time to come,  little did he know his greatest opposition was at home. 

  Just to wrap up on how the League of Nations worked, so we're clear on that,  because it guaranteed international collective security  through Article 10 of its charter,  if all members met the commitment in Article 10 to agree to protect the territory of all other member states,  if a member state or a nation that was not a member of the League of Nations, attacked a member, it would face all of the members if everyone met their commitment to international collective security.  That's how it's supposed to work.  But as I'm sure you can guess, it's only going to work if the other member states keep their promises.   Wilson hoped as an advocate of international collective security, that it wouldn't come to that.   If the league was successful, if it had all the most powerful nations of the world in it,  and they were helping to spread democracy, which, remember, Wilson believed helped spread peace.  Then no nation, no dictator, no aggressor,  would dare attack a weak neighbor,  if that weaker state or nation was a member of the League of Nations.  Deterrents was the second part of how the League of Nations was supposed to work, deterrents as well as protection, equals peace.   Why then did Wilson face opposition at home,  when the Versailles Treaty was presented to the U.S. Congress?  Because of great concern in Congress over Article 10.   Remember, under the U.S. Constitution, this nation ratifies no treaty without the advice and consent of the U.S. Senate.   The practices of the Senate generally lead treaties  to be submitted to what's known as the Senate Foreign Relations committee, which is what SFRC stands for here. 

  This gives the chairperson of the committee considerable power over the fate of such treaties.   The chairman can, if he or she so desires, refuse to even let a treaty come out of committee and go to the full Senate for a vote.  At this time, the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was Henry Cabot Lodge, Republican of Massachusetts.   Lodge and other senators, which included Democrats,  were concerned that Article 10 of the League of Nations Charter would obligate the United States to declare war if any member of the League of Nations was attacked.   Lodge, among other senators, asked Wilson for clarification.   Is this an obligation to go to war, because if it is, they noted,  we have a constitutional problem.  Under the U.S. Constitution, Article One, only Congress can declare war.  This Wilson knew, because he had gone to Congress on April 2nd, 1917 to ask for exactly such a declaration of war.  But in this case so intent on getting the League of Nations set up, so intent on getting a quick and fast ratification of the Versailles Treaty, Wilson doubled down.  He dug in his heels and said, there's a moral obligation. 

 Lodge and others said, this is a constitutional issue.  Tempers flared, the rhetoric was heated, Wilson went on a whirlwind cross-country tour, trying to drum up support in the home states of opponents to the Versailles Treaty, opponents of U.S. membership in the League of Nations, in an effort to get the public to pressure their senators to vote yes on the Versailles Treaty and approve the League of Nations.  But he failed, and the United States never ratified the Versailles Treaty, and it never joined the League of Nations.   It broke Wilson as a president and as a person.   While he was on that whirlwind tour, he suffered a stroke from which he never fully recovered, even though he had more than two years left in his presidency,  or about two years left.   In the years to come, after World War I,  the U.S. would see that some of what Wilson had predicted came true.   That's it for today, I'll see you all back here on Thursday, or in discussion section. ECHO is on.