Doug Mastriano (author and recently retired US Army colonel) lectured at Providence’s Christianity and National Security Conference on Nov. 3, 2018.

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Mark’s world is about to crumble into a heap of rumble. This is fantastic to be here with you guys. What do you do with Christian realism, sometimes I believe that with Christian idealism in a realist world, and that’s exactly what Woodrow Wilson faced 100 years ago. It’s a difficult situation.

President Wilson was elected in 1912 in one of the most contentious races in American history up until recently. Anyway, there was a three-party split. Teddy Roosevelt, the previous Republican president, ran for what some consider his third term that he came in as a result of an assassination and he said no, that didn’t count. So I’m gonna run for a second term. The Republican establishment really didn’t like him because he’s kind of a progressive. They said nope, that’s a third term and we’re gonna put up Taft as an opponent.

So Teddy Roosevelt’s like fine, I’ll create my own party, the Bull Moose Party. Great idea, split the vote. It was a close race. Even with a split vote, Woodrow Wilson won, otherwise he wouldn’t have been President had Teddy not split or the establishment not caused Teddy Roosevelt the split. So here we go, Woodrow Wilson’s excited. A strong, pressed Presbyterian man, probably one of the most devout presidents we have. He was very serious about his faith. He’s a bit of a complex man. I think most could say that about any of us though. I don’t know, how far do you take that? There’s seemingly a problem, Doug Madsen’s mine and maybe if you disagree, we could have a good, robust discussion there in Q&A.

In my studies of Woodrow Wilson, I’ve seen he had a problem applying what he knew from Scripture to his policies in life. There seemed to be a rift, a conflict there and that he had trouble reconciling. And I hope to hit some of those points here in the next 20 minutes or so. The interesting thing is, he’s elected in 1912 and he breathed before heading towards inauguration. He makes a comment to a friend. He says, as only he could say, it would be the irony of fate if my administration was marked chiefly by foreign affairs. Anything’s gonna happen to him. He has a great domestic plan. He’s the first president to throw out the baseball in a World Series. I mean, he’s got a very domestic approach to everything, much as many Democratic candidates do by the way. That’s not a critique, that’s an observation.

But then in 1914, he’s smack dab in the middle of his face with World War I. And World War I happens and most of us look, I just might, my next book here that came out a few months ago, it’s called “Thunder in the Argonne”. It deals with the American contribution in the last six weeks of the war but obviously, it’s a scene-seen center. I had to do a chapter on World War I. What was it, you know, trying to make logic out of that stew and mess of complex alliances and the Archduke of Austria-Hungary and then the Serbs and why the Russians want to protect the Serbs as Slavic brothers. And it’s not easy to understand now a hundred years later, it was really hard in 1914. Oh, whoa, why, why are these people fighting? I thought there was an assassination in the Balkans and now we have Germany invading Belgium and the Russians are mobilizing for war.

This is one reason why the United States was hesitant to enter World War I. There were several more reasons, of course. We had the legacy of George Washington’s farewell address, stay out of foreign entanglements, stay out of European ailments, that’s what he specifically said or meant. Okay, got it. So within a week of the Germans invading Belgium, big cataclysm breaking out in Belgium and France, Woodrow Wilson issued a public statement on America’s policy on this and he says, and I quote, “My policy is for the United States to remain neutral in word and deed and thought. Don’t even think about entering the war.” How exactly do you do this? You see where I’m going? In a liberal as’ idealist tradition, yeah, that would be nice. But what do you do when German u-boats start sinking ships or vessels with your people on board, with your citizens on board? That’s where the I dated. You can’t think or even think about war because you violate the terms of neutrality. It becomes a bit ridiculous there, okay?

But let me take this step by step. 1914 drones on everybody. Sure, it’s gonna be a quick war. The Germans, French, even the English who had a relatively small army, it’s gonna be a quick war because our economies are too interconnected. In Europe, we have a global system with the colonial empires. It’s just, if we cannot do it so long, but guess what? They were all wrong. The famous Paris Expo 1889, if a lot of people like us thinking about these things came out, sat near the war can only last a few months before all the economies in Europe will be brought to their knees. Well, no, they weren’t. All the governments managed to find workarounds. It wasn’t easy for Germany, in particular, with an embargo by the French and British fleets. It’s gonna call starvation, eventually of the population. So the workarounds weren’t always necessarily very good, but it kept the nations at war. Okay, 1914, we go from a maneuver warfare, ends up in trenches and then 1915 and Woodrow Wilson, okay, he’s been dealing with his domestic policy. He’s not really paying much attention until the Germans are starting to get desperate.

They’re facing the Russians on the Eastern Front. And this is depression because that, look, that Germans had two great victories at Tannenberg, destroyed two Russian armies, but then more Russians have more armies showing up. And the Germans like, what are we gonna do? And the British, the British Expeditionary Force, 280,000 men have showed up in Belgium and in August, 1914, that really mucked up the German plan and prevented the Schlieffen Plan from working. They were mostly destroyed, but the British had more soldiers. Guess who came? The Canadians showed up. The Indians came, soldiers from across the Empire are gonna hold the line until the British could recruit a new army and that’s gonna show up in 1916. The Germans like, we don’t have an, you know, seal-less access to our men and resources. We have to try to win this quickly because we’re surrounded. We have wars on all fronts.

Okay, well, the Kaiser comes up with the idea of unleashing unrestricted submarine warfare. The idea is that German U-boats could sink enough ships to knock Britain out of the war indirectly, as Little Hart would say. German U-boat commanders initially tried to abide by the laws of war as understood at the time. They would surface near a merchant vessel, signal their intent to sink it, and give the crew time to evacuate. After confirming everyone was off the ship, they would sink it. It seemed proper, but problems arose when merchant ships started arming themselves.

One notable incident involved the USS Collier, whose commander rammed a surfaced German submarine. This commander became a hero in London. In response, German orders shifted to sinking merchant ships on sight. In 1915, the British and French effectively controlled the narrative, using exaggerated propaganda against the Germans. This skewed international perception against Germany. American journalists wanted to verify these claims firsthand but were denied access by the Germans, further tilting public opinion.

The United States, despite being neutral, became a major economic powerhouse during World War I. Its neutrality meant it could legally sell goods to any belligerent. However, Britain and France’s blockade policies aimed to intercept American ships bound for Germany. French efforts to buy cargo destined for their enemies at full price aimed to win American favor. British policies, meanwhile, aimed at stopping American ships bound for Germany.

In 1915, President Wilson attempted early diplomatic efforts to maintain peace, boasting of his ability to talk nations out of war. However, these efforts faltered amid escalating tensions. By 1916, the Allies and Germans were desperate for a breakthrough on the Western Front. The Allies attempted a flanking strategy through Turkey, but this failed. As stalemate set in on the Western Front, Germany resumed unrestricted submarine warfare in 1916, despite fears of American entry into the war.

The sinking of the Lusitania in 1915 with American casualties caused public outrage in the United States. President Wilson initially responded with warnings but took no immediate military action. His stance of keeping the U.S. out of the war won him re-election in 1916. However, by early 1917, German actions and the interception of the Zimmermann Telegram pushed the U.S. closer to war. Wilson faced growing pressure domestically and internationally, challenging his stance on neutrality. ***