Throughout U.S. involvement in WWI, President Woodrow Wilson worked to guarantee that the war would be fought for some purpose other than territorial gain. In January 1917 he gave a speech titled “Peace Without Victory” that outlined peace terms, proposing the two sides negotiate as equals rather than as victor and vanquished. In January 1918 Wilson delivered another speech articulating his “Fourteen Points,” which set conditions for a just and lasting peace. Among his proposals was the League of Nations, an idea originally proposed by the British but most vocally and forcefully advocated by Wilson. After the war ended on November 11, 1918, Wilson represented the United States in the Paris peace talks and convinced the other major powers to approve the League of Nations. When Republicans won control of both houses of Congress in the 1918 midterm elections, Senate leaders refused to ratify the treaty. Opponents proposed various amendments to the agreement, but Wilson stubbornly refused to compromise. Without Senate approval, Versailles had no legal standing in the United States, making it impossible for the country to join the new League of Nations, a fact that significantly weakened the organization. Still, Wilson was awarded the 1919 Nobel Peace Prize for his work on behalf of the league.
Further Reading:
- Brands, H. W. Woodrow Wilson. New York: Times Books, 2003.
- Cooper, John Milton. Breaking the Heart of the World. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. The Warrior and the Priest: Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt. Cambridge, Mass. Belknap Press, 1983.
- Knock, Thomas J. To End All Wars: Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a New World Order. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995.
This Vignette Provided By
This Vignette is drawn from an Encyclopedia Virginia entry by Mark E. Benbow, an instructor at Marymount University in Arlington, Virginia
