World War I and American Neutrality | The Great War
Wilson's Declaration of Neutrality 

A. Scott Berg, Writer: Woodrow Wilson is the only United States President who was born in a country that had lost a war, the Confederate States of America. He remembered the...the devastation, the deprivation, the degradation that comes from losing a war. He carried that with him. 

Narrator: On August 4th, he wrote to the leaders of the newly warring nations that he would “welcome an opportunity to act in the interest of European peace.” 

A. Scott Berg, Writer: Almost from the outset of the war, Woodrow Wilson was trying to find diplomatic solutions. He believed if all the heads of state could sit at a table and confer, they could probably have ended this war. There didn’t have to be a war here. 

Margaret MacMillan, Historian: Woodrow Wilson doesn’t like war. He believes in democratic values, liberal values, he believes in peace. He doesn’t want to take the United States into war. 

Narrator: “The United States must be neutral in fact, as well as in name,” he declared. “We must be impartial in thought, as well as action.” But in the same breath, the president  acknowledged that the unity he was asking of his fellow citizens was a challenge given America’s diverse population. “The people of the United States are drawn from many nations, and chiefly the nations now at war,” he affirmed “some will wish one nation, others another, to succeed in the momentous struggle.” 

Richard Rubin, Writer: America is not a monolith. America is composed of a great many different communities. Take New York City. You had Irish who had no desire to go over and fight for the British king. You had Russian Jews who had no desire to go over and fight for the Tsar. You had German-American immigrants and Austrian-American immigrants who had no desire to go over and fight against their country.