left; that is how he showed himself in his struggle at the University, that is how he showed himself in practical politics as Governor of New Jersey and finally in his Presidential election campaign and in his first two pre-War years as President. As Governor and as President up to 1914 be proved to be a firm, resolute and consistent statesman, an idealist waging war for his new ideas and yet possessing a great sense of the practical needs of daily politics. He was a strong Governor and a strong President.
That is roughly how he would have passed into history if there had been no war.
With the War the figure of President Wilson acquired the shape which the world knows today.
When the War broke out, he announced to all the belligerents that America would remain neutral. When King Albert asked him to protest against the violation of Belgian neutrality, when Poincaré requested him to condemn the German barbaric methods of waging war and when Wilhelm of Hohenzollern complained to him that the French used illegal acts of war, Wilson refused to accede to their requests on the ground that by so doing he would be intervening in the War and that after the conclusion of the War he would ascertain who were the guilty parties by undertaking a strict documentary investigation. When in America movements started for and against the War he remained true to his neutral policy right up to the Presidential elections of 1916; he obviously did not desire war and everything which he did up to that time was a testimony to this. But it seems that he soon calculated on the possibility at least of America’s entering the War.
When in February 1917 Germany declared her submarine war, America was for the first time really ruffled: the freedom of the sea was challenged, American lives and property were systematically destroyed. President Wilson began to write his Notes which became the terrible moral weapon of the whole world against the Central Powers. It was evident that he tried to be neutral and did not desire to enter the War. Apparently he had no prejudices against either side, he made no judgments as to who was guilty and responsible for the War. In case he were obliged to take up a definite standpoint and decide sfor one of the two sides, he desired the whole world to understand clearly, as regards the moral aspect of the matter, why and how he formed his decision. His desire was to wage a justifiable war.
Thus events themselves gradually drove Wilson into the War. The sinking of the Lusitania, the destruction of the Sussex and numerous other ships called forth at first diplomatic Notes, in which the tone of warning proved that the situation was daily becoming more dangerous. America finally reached the tone which was equivalent to an ultimatum. But Germany in her blindness went further by commencing acts of terrorism on American soil
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