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2 The Earliest Debates August 1914–March 1915 On the afternoon of August 6, 1914, a dying woman whispered into the ear of her physician: “Promise me that you will take good care of my husband .” As a downstairs clock chimed five times, her spouse asked the doctor, “Is it over?” Receiving a nod, he walked to a window and cried out: “Oh, my God, what am I to do?” Then, composing himself, he vowed: “I must not give way.” Nonetheless, the man remained sitting in his chair, maintaining an isolated vigil. President Woodrow Wilson had just lost his wife Ellen to Bright’s Disease, a fatal kidney ailment. He soon wrote an intimate friend: “Every night finds me exhausted,—dead in heart and body.” He blamed his own ambition for her death. His brother-in-law called him “the loneliest man in the world.”1 It took months for the excruciating grief to pass off. As late as November, the president told his most intimate friend, Colonel House, that he hoped someone would kill him. Wilson confessed that he “was not fit to be President because he did not think straight any longer, and had no heart in what he was doing.”2 The burden of work sustained him, for the chief executive found himself suddenly facing challenges that no world leader could envy. At the very time that Wilson’s inner world disintegrated, the outer one experienced calamity. Just five days before Ellen died, war in Europe erupted on an unprecedented scale. To most Americans, the outbreak of the conflict appeared as something far off, remote, even unreal. The flurry of diplomatic dispatches, the massing of huge armies, the orders of mobilization—all seemed a kind of gruesome illusion. After the assassination of the Hapsburg heir, the archduke Francis Ferdinand, and his wife Sophie in Sarajevo, Austria -Hungary threatened Serbia, a nation having the protection of Russia. 19 20 Nothing Less Than War Imperial Germany backed Imperial Austria, while republican France upheld the czar. After seeing Germany suddenly pounce upon Belgium, Britain came to France’s aid and on August 4, 1914, declared war on the Reich. The Great War had begun, and it soon engulfed almost all of Europe. When the Serbian crisis first broke out, most Americans saw it as another one of Europe’s chronic ailments. On July 27, the day before Austria declared war on Serbia, Wilson told the press: “The United States has never attempted to intervene in European affairs.”3 Agriculture Secretary David F. Houston queried in a memo: “What? Another little war in the Balkans? Serbia is in the Balkans, isn’t it? A lot of fuss over an archduke. Calls himself Francis Ferdinand. He probably didn’t amount to much; he couldn’t have with a name like that.”4 Nevertheless, Americans took events most seriously. The same David Houston remarked: “I had the feeling the end of things had come.” Franklin Delano Roosevelt, assistant secretary of the navy, foresaw “the greatest war in human history.” To former president William Howard Taft, the event was “a cataclysm.” Novelist Henry James feared that the world had plunged into “an abyss of blood and darkness.”5 More than one journal made reference to the biblical battle of Armageddon, the conflict marking the end of human history. More than ever, citizens expressed gratitude for their isolation. “Again and ever I thank Heaven for the Atlantic Ocean,” wrote Ambassador Walter Hines Page to the president, soon adding: “How wise our no-alliance policy is.”6 A Chicago journal blessed Columbus for having discovered America, while a Buffalo newspaper remarked: “This European war suggests that the white man’s burden is the white man himself.”7 Soon, however, the citizenry began to choose sides. Although scientific polling of the wider public did not take place for another two decades, the sentiments of opinion leaders became clear. In November the weekly Literary Digest, which frequently surveyed the nation’s press, canvassed over 350 newspapers. It noted that 49 percent of the editors expressed no sympathies for either side, while 46 percent favored the Allies. A regional breakdown indicated pro-Allied leanings in New England, the South, the West, and the Pacific coast. In the Midwest, which contained a large German American population, feelings were either neutralist or occasionally pro-German; often such views predominated where the Populist movement had drawn its strongest support. Furthermore, small towns tended to be more neutralist than [18.191.240.243...

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