A WILSONIAN PARADOX
by PHILLIP R. SHRIVER*
Historians are often prone to
conjecture, "What might have
happened if--?" Perhaps no other
event in the history of the
United States has been the subject of
as much hindsight speculation
as this nation's refusal to join the
League of Nations after the
conclusion of the first World War. Not
a few historians have
suggested that World War II was in
large degree made inevitable
when the United States declined to
assume the role of world
leadership proposed by President
Woodrow Wilson.
In attempting to explain the failure of
the Wilsonian program of
American internationalism through our
non-participation in the
league, many have concluded that the
president was in no small
measure personally responsible for that
failure due to certain errors
of judgment which went a long way in
alienating public and con-
gressional opinion from his program.
Among these errors, none was
to prove more costly than his decision
to attend the Paris peace
conference in person. This was a
decision without precedent in our
history, for which Wilson was to be
censured by friend and foe
alike who maintained that the primary
duty of the president was
to remain at home to solve the very
difficult problems incident to
the nation's post-war readjustment. To
a subordinate, they con-
tended, should have gone the task of
preparing the peace treaty
at Paris.1
Paradoxically enough, this presidential
decision which did so
* Phillip R. Shriver is an assistant
professor of history at Kent State University.
1 The best account of this opposition to
the president's going to Paris is given in
Thomas A. Bailey, Woodrow Wilson and
the Lost Peace (New York, 1944), 71-86.
See also Charles Seymour, The
Intimate Papers of Colonel House (4 vols., Boston,
1926-28), IV, 209-216; David F. Houston,
Eight Years with Wilson's Cabinet, 1913-
1920 (2 vols., Garden City, Long Island, 1926), I, 350;
Henry Cabot Lodge, The Senate
and the League of Nations (New York, 1925), 98-99; Denna F. Fleming, The
United
States and the League of Nations,
1918-1920 (New York, 1932), 55-57;
Robert
Lansing, The Big Four and Others of
the Peace Conference (Boston, 1921), 38-39;
Arthur D. Howden Smith, Mr. House of
Texas (New York, 1940), 285-288.
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