Transcripts For CSPAN3 U.S. Domestic Politics Treaty Of Versailles 20240712

Woodrow wilson had spent seven Months Overseas negotiating. Professor armstrong wished that the treaty would vault the u. S. Into a leading position in the global order but u. S. Domestic political divisions, combined with turmoil created by a flu pandemic, red scare, racial unrest and wilson suffering a stroke all contributed to his failure to receive ratification. Kansas city hosted this event and provided the video. Our guest speaker, dr. Gary t. Armstrong, teaches American Foreign policy for u. S. Programs in washington, d. C. He is a professor of Political Science at William Jewel college in missouri. He graduated with a bachelors degree from the university of oklahoma and a phd from georgetown university. Gary served as Research Assistant to a political scientist, political economist, and author, and teaching assistant to former u. S. Secretary of state madeleine albright, who is here for a private dinner earlier this year, just to drop a name or two to impress you. Gary joined the William Jewel College Faculty in 1992 and now serves as chairman of the department of Political Science and director of the International Relations major. The William Jewel student body has voted him professor of the year an amazing four times. Gary is also a longtime supporter of the National World war 1 museum and memorial, and for that we are very appreciate. Please give a warm become to dr. Gary armstrong. [ applause ] good evening, and thank you for coming tonight. There should be lots of interesting questions on the 100th anniversary of the senates first rejection of the versailles peace treaty. What a great moment to talk about americas place in the world. It was a time of growing polarization and radicalization. There had been a series of race riots and the current estimate is that between probably the summer of 19 and the summer of 21, about 1,000 americans were killed. They would get the worst in tulsas race riots, which led i think to the first bombing of an American City by our own air force. At the same time, there were just two weeks before the senate would take its vote, a series of bombings that led to something called the red scare. Its entirely wrongly named. The people who did the bombings were anarchists, but attorney general palmer, whose own house was bombed in one of those raids, launched a series of very vigorous raids to detain about 10,000 and to arrest about 3,000 anarchists, about 550 were deported. Its a time when we have race riots, we have radicals, we have the government using force. Its also a time, lest we forget, when americans were intensely polarized at the political level as well. On the day that Woodrow Wilson appeared to ask the u. S. Congress for a declaration of war in april 1917, his famous speech had to be postponed. A very important matter had to be settled first, which was who was going to have the speakership of the u. S. House of representatives. In the 1916 elections, which Woodrow Wilson had barely won at the president ial level, they are some of the most closely fought in all of American History. Look what had happened in the United States house of representatives. You had a virtual tie. And there were hours of political finagling over who was going to get the majority. This is the only time that the Largest Party did not get the speakership. The republicans had more seats than the democrats, but they did not get the speakership. This was the last time in American History where the speakership was given because the democrats formed a small alliance with small parties, and whats really interesting is that then the house turned to the question of the president s speech and the declaration of war, and a lot of very interesting members of congress voted no on the declaration of war, including the first woman to sit in the u. S. House of representatives, rankin, who would also vote against the war and attack on pearl harbor. She could not accept the violation of her principle, even if the United States had been attacked in 1941. But also interestingly, the man who had just got the speakership of the house of representatives broke with the president , the director of his party, and refused to vote for the declaration of war. This is a time when Great Questions are at stake, people are intensely divided, and politics is going to start impacting Foreign Policy. By the way, its also a great time, just as were getting ready to start debating how to end world war i, a great pandemic breaks out. Today the cdc estimates that about 675,000 americans lost their lives in the great influenza of 19181919. Notice that kansas city had about 2,300 dead. By the way, thats significantly larger than st. Louis, who was better organized and more ruthless in dealing with influenza than kansas was. In the month of october alone, 195,000 americans died of flu. Remember, 50,000 americans died of wounds during world war i. And at about the time that the senate is going to move into the most intense question about what should we do regarding the league of nations, we have the most serious medical crisis in the history of the american presidency. Woodrow wilson has a massive ischemic stroke on october 2nd. He has been on a gigantic nationwide tour. Towards the end of that toward, they realized there was something seriously wrong with the president. They cleared the Railroad Line and got him back as fast as they possibly could to washington, d. C. He had been in washington, d. C. Just briefly when he had the massive stroke. For six weeks, his wife maintained a charade that there was nothing wrong with the president. No one was permitted to see the president for six weeks, except the first lady, his physician, a handful of trusted aides. His own press secretary, was not allowed to see the president. And whats really interesting is that a lot of specialists now believe that mrs. Wilson made a terrible mistake. She isolated the president , when what he probably needed the most for his longterm recovery was consistent interaction with people. Now, that has led to a big argument that were going to see later, that the president s catastrophic stroke led to an increasing rigidity in his personality that would lead him to make fundamental errors during the debate over the versailles peace treaty. Are we talking plague, war, stroke . I mean, god bless us, we are this close to the four horsemen of the apocalypse while we are trying to figure out what is americas role in the world. So the debate, its a series of first. It is the first time that a president of the United States proposed sweeping reforms to the fundamental basis of International Relations. Its the first time that an american president goes abroad for diplomatic negotiations. President wilson will be abroad for basically seven months. There are people who challenge this. They dont even believe that he has the constitutional right to leave the territory of the United States. This is going to be the moment where we have the first proposal for a permanent World Organization with something called collective Security Authority in war and peace, and that for tonight is going to be the heart of the fight that were going to be exploring in just a minute. This is going to be the first time that the United States will consider a treaty that technically, formally requires it to end its historical isolation. By isolation, im using the definition that we use in Political Science, a reluctance or avoidance of military commitments to europe. So you can be in favor, for example, of sending missionaries to china. That doesnt make you an isolationist. In 1900 you could have been in favor of annexing the philippines. That would make you an imperialist. But opposed to making any security commitments to europe, which could make you simultaneously an imperialist and an isolationist. This will be the first time that the senate will invoke to stop the filibuster so they can get the voting Business Done and this will be the first time that the United States, the senate will reject a peace treaty. And this is how it starts. President wilson landed back in the United States on about july 8th, 1919, from his long time in europe. He goes to new york and then he goes to washington, d. C. He carries the bound, enormous copy of the treaty into the senate. In fact, hes met by, and who asks if he would like help carrying the treaty and wilson laughs and says, not on your life. Then wilson gives this speech, the stage is set, the destiny is disclosed, it has come about by no plan of our conceiving, but by the hand of god, who has led us into this way. We cannot turn back, we can only go forward with lifted eyes and freshened spirit to follow the vision. It is this that we dreamed at our birth. America shall show the way. The light streams upon the path ahead and nowhere else dare we reject it and break the heart of the world. This, from the most accomplished rhet orician ever to become president of the United States. E president of the United States. And the speech was a dud. It was too high, it was too flowery. But whats really interesting is youre going to see more in the New York Times firstpage coverage of the president s speech. They give the basics of the speech, but you start to see down here some really interesting salvos that are already being waged. The new majority leader of the senate, henry cabbott lodge, is saying, dont forget, we have the right to amend this treaty. And we may have to amend it by twothirds, but dont forget, we republicans are now the majority because of the elections of 1918. Youll also see that the president greets callers in the special room set aside for the president of the United States at the u. S. Capitol, 30 democrats went to see the president , one republican. It was the first sign that very serious trouble was brewing on the fate of the treaty. Now to skip ahead, here are the votes. So 100 years ago tonight, and they closed at about 11 00 p. M. Washington, d. C. Time. So i think we should all stay so we go for the full hundredth hour. The vote for a set of reservations by henry lodge was 41 yes, 51 no. The twothirds requirement was 61. Then the vote for the treaty with no reservations as president wilson himself had proposed it was 38 yes, 55 no. It was not even close. Then in march of 20, after four months, they have another debate and another vote, and this time the votes go up in part because 12 senators are absent. So this time the votes are 49 yes, 35 no. The requirement to pass a treaty is 56, so it is failed by 7 votes. Then those who were absent, although they couldnt vote, they could announce what their position would have been, and thats how you wind up with this. 57 announced that had they been there, they would have voted yes or they did vote yes. 39 said that they were there and voted no or they would have voted no. Thats the highest that the senate ever came, the closest the senate ever came to passing the versailles peace treaty. Now, a lot of people say, well, this is a problem, there were a group inside the senate called the irreconcilables. They said, you couldnt drag us with all the horses of the calvary to vote for this. They said we will not do this. Theres a lot of discussion about how many were there. Im going to be using an estimate that you can see in a couple of different books, because normally youre going to get between 15 and 18, so im going to list the 18 and they include all kinds of fascinating senators. Theres bob lafollette, theres president Theodore Roosevelts attorney general in William Howard tafts secretary of state, who was irreconcilable. There was no way he was going to vote for the treaty. Theres a new senator from illinois, mccormick. A lot of people say, well, thats what happened. These people somehow managed to defeat the treaty. Thats the story. And thats not the story at all. One of those irreconcilables is our very own james reed from kansas city. He would be in the senate for 18 years. He had been the mayor of kansas city from 1900 to 1904 when our Convention City burned, and they rebuilt it through fast donations and fast work. He made very clear he was an irreconcilable, i will not vote for this treaty, because he was an isolationist. But theres Something Else. He was a racist. And he was very direct that he was afraid that the league of nations, with its darkskinned people, would eventually be able to outvote the whiteskinned people and impose a new order of racial equality at the international level. Im not using some of his more incendiary quotes because they are public quotes laced with the n word. For some people the story of james reed becomes a story of who opposed the treaty. Its provincialist bigotry that sank this treaty. Thats not a good understanding of what happened here either. For example, in one of the best books about this fight, john milton coopers breaking the heart of the world says lets take a look at this for just a minute. A lot of people think that cosmopolitans, people who have strong experience abroad, those would be the people most likely to be in favor of the treaty. He says actually when you study the biographyies, the people wh were the most cosmopolitan members of the senate tended to be the most opposed to the treaty. So, for example, the new senator mccormick was raised by a diplomatic. He used to boast and drag that he learned to speak french before he learned to speak english. He was very involved with global affairs, but he was opposed to the treaty. This is senator knox, the republican who had been tafts secretary of state, he was an irreconcilable, but during the Senate Debate he announced a resolution that we now call the knox doctrine that announced if there were in the future any threat to the peace of europe, then the United States would regard it a grave matter, consult with friendly governments and consider the possibility of taking military action to deal with it. In other words, he was an irreconcilable, but not an isolationist. Some people say if its not the story of those irreconcilables, who were probably provincial bigots, then surely the story is that the American Public opinion wasnt ready for this gigantic step, a huge stride into a formal commitment to join the Security Architecture of world politics. So the professor in his book power without victory says its time we kill that myth. We dont have what we would now call modern Public Opinion polling for another 15 years after the defeat of the versailles peace treaty. What we normally use to gauge where Public Opinion was in those days is to look at where newspapers were, and the evidence, he says, is overwhelming. There was very strong American Public opinion support for the treaty and for joining the league of nations. Look at the list of newspapers, except for the kansas city star, many of them, including the st. Louis dispatch, favored the treaty. He takes a look at religious organizations, which were incredibly important 100 years ago, and its overwhelming support from protestants, including baptists, to catholics, jews. Labor was very in favor of the treaty, although they had strong reservations about one component of the treaty. Senate groups like the new American Legion came out in favor of the treaty and joining the league of nations. 17 state legislatures passed resolutions, including massachusetts, which happened to be the most important to the treaty. And the most important brand new single Issue Advocacy organization in the United States was something called the league to enforce peace. It had thousands of members all over the country and they had 100,000 to try to advocate for the treaty. It was led by the former president William Howard taft. The evidence is this treaty had the Popular Support to be approved. By the way, there were some really interesting intellectuals who were trying to make fundamental decisions about this. Theres the great feminist social worker jane adams and theres w. B. Dubois, both of them disappointed for their previous support of Woodrow Wilson. Adams, because the president had not been a vigorous supporter of the constitutional amendment to give women the vote. He had not supported doing it through a constitutional amendment. And then w. B. Dubois who was furious at the president s inability to articulate publicly a strong opposition to lynching or to articulate why we need to do stop the race riots. Whats interesting is both of them thought things over and decided they, nevertheless, would support Woodrow Wilson in the league. This is Walter Littman. By the 1960s and 70s, i am told, i have read that there was hardly any serious question of the day that serious americans didnt wait until they read Walter Littman and see what they were going to think about it. He was a young adviser with Woodrow Wilson and then he broke with him at the new public. They published a major attack on the versailles peace treaty and league of nations, thousands of subscribers to the new republicansled canceled the canr subscriptions, angered at the attack. And Walter Littman would say 15 years later, this was one of the biggest mistakes of my life. If i could do things over again, i would have continued to support Woodrow Wilson and the league. So theres really interesting stuff going on among key american intellectuals who are aggravated with the president , but deciding that overall the possibility of progressive reform and International Governance is still worth it to try to get to the league. But heres what i think you need to know before we start into a couple of important points. I think using a stoplight approach that we can get a glimpse of what the balance in the senate was about this treaty, and youre going to start to suspect something pretty quickly. This is a tragedy. If we take the green and the yellow, then we can see that threequarters of the senate was willing to join the league and pass the treaty. The opponents were small, they were vigorous, they were energetic, they were visciferou, but they didnt have the votes to stop this treaty. The whole question of whether this treaty would go was could the green and the yellow get together. Now, what i want to do for the next little bit is explain why they didnt. Our antagonists, these are impressive leaders. Woodrow wilson, the only phd in Political Science ever to become president of the United States. He may have done so badly, he will probably be the only president who has a phd in Political Science. Notice that he had quite a reputation. He had been a very important reformer at princeton university, where, for example, although he was a convinced christian presbyterian, he had led the secularization of princeton. He had ended the system of undergraduate general education and said if were going to have a democracy, we need people who know some stuff together and he abolished what they called the eating clubs, which we now call fraternities, is incompatible with the new equality of american democracy. So hes doing a lot. But i think the most important thing to know about Woodrow Wilson is the date of his birth and the place of his birth. He had been born in virginia and he was raised by a presbyterian pastor father in south carolina. He says his earliest memory was men running down the street shouting lincoln had been elected and there would be war. His fathers hospital was used as an infirmary, a p. O. W. Station and eventually as one of the headquarters for the regional federal army of occupation in the south. Woodrow wilson is the only president in the history of the United States to know personally what total defeat looks like, the humiliation, the bitterness, the sting of it. How it can corrupt a society out of its anger and humiliation, and its going to have a big impact on how he thinks about how to end world war i. This is Theodore Roosevelt. If i ask my students, what do you remember about Theodore Roosevelt, they all Say Something about big stick. The other thing that we should remember about Theodore Roosevelt is, of course, he had been the weakly, scrawny boy whose father did not know if he was going to survive asthma, and he told his son eventually you must remake your body or it will kill you. And he became effectively a body builder. I think he eventually had a chest of like 52 inches. Whats really interesting is that, of course, he did that, the great crews of the great white fleet. The symbolic declaration that the United States was going to become a world power. Thats under this guy. Because both of these guys, wilson and roosevelt, are trying to figure out what probably the leaders of china are trying to figure out, given that we are now the most important economic power on the planet, should our Foreign Policy change to match our new economic heft, and theyre going to be debating how to deal with it. Because of his role in ending the japanese war, he is the first of four american president s to win the nobel peace prize. The second would be Woodrow Wilson. And this is Henry Cabot Lodge. Okay, so Woodrow Wilson got one of the first new fangled imported degrees called the phd. We were importing them when academics were in love with all things german at the turn of the century. But Henry Cabot Lodge won one of, if not the first, phd in history from harvard university. His phd was on tectonic land holding history, which meant that like wilson and like roosevelt, he could read german. Can you imagine, president s who can actually read Foreign Languages . Now, he has a long, increasingly articulated view of americas place in the world, but whats also very interesting is that he hates Woodrow Wilson. Its going to get personal, and i love this. That might play at princeton but that would never fly at harvard. And its going to come right back to the president of the United States. Okay. So how do they start fighting . I want to tell one story about the debate in the United States that nobody remembers, how to end world war i with imperial germany. This is going to be the most energetic, ferocious assault on the prerogatives of a president to lead an American Foreign policy in the history of our republic. Were going to have a president who says at the end of world war 1 i am in favor of ending this war by armaci istice and were going to have two Republican Leaders who go to the American People and say, the president is wrong and we have elections in four weeks. If you will go vote republican, we will force the president of the United States to adopt Unconditional Surrender as the policy to end world war 1. What in the world . Well, of course the story begins, in part, with the president s famous speech called the 14 point speech. Now, theres a lot of background to this, in part because theres a gigantic crisis among the allies because the bolsheviks have opened the archive and found the secret treaties that promise this or that or the other thing. And they published the treaties and it convinces people all over the world we are fighting simply for imperialism and colonialism. In that crisis, Woodrow Wilson gives this speech, which is an electrifying jolt of idealistic energy, to remind people that the war does not have to be for the old agenda. Now, the two or three things that are probably important for us, i want you to notice the first point, open covenants. Now you know why hes saying that. But notice the second point, freedom of the seas. I want you to imagine that youre in the British Foreign ministry. Brittain lives or dies by sea power and the capacity to impose blockade. They wanted to know what exactly was the president meaning in point two. Then take a look at, for example point five, adjustments of Colonial Claims with references to the wishes of the governed. You can notice the offices of france and brittain were staying up late at night and saying, what in the world is the president of the United States talking about. And then you go through a whole bunch of interesting points and you get to point 14. The british and the french figured out very quickly what was going on here. The president was making his play to displace the european system of International Relations. To say to brittain and france and the old way of european imperialism, including colonialism, that the day has come and it has passed. A new american supported world order will be profoundly different than the one that you have stood for. That is why, by the way, technically the United States in world war i was never an allied power. Woodrow wilson always insisted that we formally be called associated power, because he did not want to endorse the oldfashioned diplomacy of the imperialists and colonizers. Well, okay. So whats the situation . On october 5, 1918, realizing it was losing the war, imperial germany appealed to Woodrow Wilson and Woodrow Wilson only to end the war. Brittain and france were thoroughly aggrieved. Germany also said, by the way, were appealing to you because weve read your 14 point speech, which they had not. They thought it sounded like a soft way to end the war, better than whatever this were going to get from the british and the french. So were going to appeal to you and you only on the basis of your 14point speech to end this war. And i want you to see by the way, the key point about this, if youre thinking in world war ii terms, i need you to see this map. This is how the territorial situation looked when the war actually ended. There are no allied soldiers on german territory. This is not like world war ii at all. And the germans have control of enormous swaths of part of the old russian empire. In fact, the germans are telling themselves, we may be losing here, but we won there. Okay, when they appeal, whats really interesting is everybody in the United States and in brittain and france expect the president to reject their appeal, and he stuns everyone. Instead of rejecting their appeal, he asks them a question. What he asks is really important. He says, i need to know if you really accepted the 14 points, do you understand that if we end this war, were going to end it in a way that it cannot be resumed . And, number three, i want to ask you a question. Who does your German Government speak for . Does it speak for the old classes, the Imperial Party who have led this war, or do you speak for the people . What happened was three weeks of note exchanging and, by the way, if you didnt know this, its all public. All of these are sent on the radios. Papers all over the world are getting these on their front page. You can look at your hometown newspaper. Its on the front page of the kansas city star. Im just using the New York Times because it was easier to get. All of these notes are here. Then notice that on october the 12th the germans reply. They say, okay, we want you to know were accepting the 14 points and we want you to know that we agree that we will evacuate french and belgian territory, and we want you to know that our new government speaks for the german people. At that point everybody says, okay, wilson is going to call it off now. And he stuns everybody by replying again. He says, okay, i want you to know that well make peace only with our supremacy, and by the way, you need to stop these wars, because there were two ships that were sunk with 800 people dead. And he said if youre serious about peace, youre going to knock this stuff off. And he said, by the way, have you read a speech that i gave at mount vernon this year about how this war will not end until it overthrows every arbitrary power . Germany says, a couple of days later, okay, weve stopped the uboats. And we want you to know, weve changed our constitution. Before now, the chancellor was hired and fired only by the emperor. We have now made the chancellor responsible to the parliament. Do you see what the germans are doing . Theyre doing one of the most complicated strategies to end the war i have ever heard of. First, reach out to what you think is your softest opponent. Second, start a democratizing revolution that you hope wont get out of control in order to win favor with the liberal leader of that softer power. Then october 23, wilson replies and he says, okay, ill now talk to the allies about giving you an armist. Ce, but i want to make it really clear about a key point. If we will have to deal with the military autocrats of germany who started and continued this war, now or in the future, then we cannot discuss negotiations. I want your surrender. What in the world . All through this, there are two people who are volcanic in their anger at the president. They are theory dor roosevelt, who won the nobel peace prize, and senator Henry Cabot Lodge. What are they angry about . Lodge says to the senate in the opening debate about the president s note diplomacy, if we stop the war now, weve lost it. Lodge says, if we do not defeat the german army on german soil in front of the german people, they will never admit it and we will have to fight a war like this again in 20 years. Theodore roosevelt says a premature peace before the issues are readily settled means another war in 12 years. Theodore roosevelt also says i dont agree with this democracy talk. I have admired german progressivism, but its time for us to say, honestly, that the german people have been debotched and corrupted by imperialism. They have supported the German Government all the way through this war. Therefore, it doesnt make sense to hope that if the german people take over germany were going to get a peaceful germany. I favor putting this war all the way through to its brutal end, just like lincoln decided in 1865. And then both Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge Say Something that turns out to be absolutely crucial, the future peace will depend on whether or not the United States has a Strong Alliance with france and brittain. Not international law, not democracy, whether or not there will be peace depends on the balance of power and americas commitment to it. Now, theres what Woodrow Wilson is thinking. He had given a famous speech a year and a half before, a couple of months before the United States entered the war, where that kid who had gone through the defeated south was remembering something. The only way to get to peace is to have a peace without victory. If we have full, complete military victory, it will mean a peace forced upon the loser, a victors terms imposed upon the vanquished. It would be accepted humiliation under duress. You see where this is coming from. A few weeks later he asks the American Congress to declare war to make the world safe for democracy, and Theodore Roosevelt says, i told you, this man does not know what hes talking about. How in the world can he give a speech like that where he doesnt see any moral issue involved in trying to stop germany and its outrages, and then a few weeks later give a speech calling for a war for democracy all over the planet. This tells us one thing. Woodrow wilson has the phenomenal capacity to rationalize any policy preference he wants. He is not a serious person. He is, in fact, a direct danger to the stability of American Foreign policy. What was wilson doing . Okay, this is a complicated topic. But i think Woodrow Wilson had an idea that you cant find in his speeches. I think you can find it when you look consistently at his actions. Woodrow wilson believed that there were two germanys, one led by the kaiser and one led by the urban educated socialist leaning german people. We could live with one, we could not accept the other. Therefore, what he wanted to do was to defeat but not crush germany, because he wanted the educated prosocialist germany eventually to rise. Without going bolshevic. He wanted to precipitate internal reform, but he did not want revolution inside germany. In fact, he has a series of confrontations with senators who are saying youve got to go all the way, and he looks at them and says, senator, would you rather have the kaiser or the bolsheviks. Thats a revealing comment. I think theres something going on here. He wants to make the British Empire and france dependent upon the United States so that he can then compel them to accept americas view of what the peace should be like. Heres the key point. I think there is a connection between point two and point four. Woodrow wilson regularly condemned doesnt know anything about the balance of power. Heres what i think hes thinking. If germany is crushed, brittain and france will realize they dont need me. I, therefore, need a germany that is not crushed, that still has sufficient latent and longterm power that brittain and france realize they must depend on the United States. And if they do that, then ive got them and i can force them into a more liberal, more progressive, more globalist version of International Relations. This guy can be subtle. Lodge frequently was not. Hes a really complicated guy, but he said every so often, politics comes down to simple things, and were more likely to have a real peace if we insist on a real victory, like defeating napoleon, like defeating the confederacy, or skip ahead, like 1945 in germany and japan, where complete military defeat made complete reorientation and longterm peace possible. Okay, what happens . Woodrow wilson loses the election. Woodrow wilsons party, the democrats, lose the senate and the house, and therefore Woodrow Wilson in 1918, and the most important elections that nobody in america remembers became the only commander in chief in war time to lose control of the congress, oh, until george bush in 2006. And the new republican majority leader who is also going to, therefore, take the chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is oh, my god. There were a couple of really interesting defeats. This is senator lewis. Senator lewis is the first majority whip in the history of the u. S. Senate. He had survived in september 1918, while on the Diplomatic Commission to europe the torpedoing of the ship he was on. At the beginning of the debate in the senate, he had introduced resolution to call for support of Woodrow Wilson and the way he wanted to end the war and he was defeated. Here is another guy who got defeated. This is shackleford, a really important guy from a really important college. Hes the second longest serving member of congress who is an alum of my college. Hes very important, although we dont really remember this, because he was the guy who got the bill to start federal aid for highway construction in the United States, which will eventually lead to our federal highway system. And he had served in congress for nine terms, but he got buried in the election of 1918. In fact, the Democratic Party in boone county here in the state of missouri refused to renominate him. Why was he defeated . He had opposed for preparedness. He said we dont need to build an army. There is no way the germans can get across the ocean. We dont need all of this stuff. He had voted for the gore mclemore resolution, that urged americans not to get on ships that could be going into torpedo zones and he had voted against the declaration of war. And in the summer of 1918, the voters in his district in missouri had had enough and they threw him out. Now, why is that important . Because theres a really interesting little side note. Ive always kind of wondered, have you heard the phrase fighting to make the world safe for democracy . Ive always kind of wondered, is that something that intellectuals talked about after president wilsons speech . Here is the best evidence that it was more serious than that. A few years ago workmen removed a brass plaque on the west face of the Historic Building of my campus jewel hall. They called me and said youre not going to believe this. Youre not going to believe what was behind the brass plaque. When they got it off, there was marble that said dedicated to the members of this class who are fighting to make the world safe for democracy. Fighting to make the world safe for democracy. The williamsville class of 1918. That is evidence the president s idea caught fire, even in my little college, even in our little part of missouri. There were big ideas at stake, and the ideas of isolationists were now in trouble. Now, why is this important . Because theres an argument that everything i just said is wrong. Probably the most famous argument for what led to the wilson defeat in the elections of 1918 has nothing to do with the war. Its all about the price of wheat. The administration had made a gigantic mistake. It controlled the price of cotton and then made sure that Cotton Growers in the south got very strong profits to grow more cotton during the war. But they had not controlled the price of wheat, and the price of wheat had gone back and forth, and government encouraged them to plant lots of wheat. There was oversupply. The price of wheat collapsed. And what have you got . This argument, the people didnt care about the war. What they were angry about was the price of wheat. And what you see is that in districts that have low wheat, medium wheat and high wheat oh. We see the more wheat thats grown in a district, the more likely it is, it went republican. In other words, this has nothing to do with the war. This has to do with domestic politics and economics. Im not sure thats true. There was Something Else going on in the summer of 1918. There was a new group called the National Security league who did something that nobody ever thought of before. They put out guides to how congressmen had voted. And what they did was look at eight votes, and then they ranked whether or not the congressmen had voted wrong or right. The National Security league was totally in favor of the war, and then they started publishing them in newspaper after newspaper after newspaper, and the white house started getti t telegrams and phone calls. Oh, my god, we are in trouble. Because what started to happen was once the elections came throu through, the higher people were on the National Security league for wrong votes, the more likely they were to be defeated. In other words, here is pretty interesting evidence but the war mattered in addition to wheat. So theyre fighting like crazy. Even before we get to the treaty. Now what happens at the treaty fig fight . The first ideas were going to call collective security. Thats a special word in Political Science. What it means is a commitment by every government in the world to resist aggression even when they have no vital interest at stake. So nambia attacks thailand invades burma, mexico declares war. Thats the idea of collective security. Its not the same thing as collective defense, which is what we have in nato. Nato is all about everybody responding to an attack. See, they dont use the word aggression. Okay . His second idea is what is now called national selfdetermination. Wilson never used that word. Bolsheviks used that word. The third idea was democracy. Hes starting an argument that now i think is empirically valid that no two liberal democracies have ever gone to war against each other. If you can think of an exception let me know. I always tell my students if you come up with a really good exception ill give you 400 and well write an article in Political Science trying to prove the iron law of the democratic piece is wrong. You can imagine what this means. You can get to world peace without world government, without world empire, without the second coming. If countries would become democracies. And lastly adopt the league. These are his big ideas. And what im going to concentrate on is this one. Theres lots of stuff to talk about here but it turns out that for the league fight its really that one thats the heart of it. By the way, you need to know something. There are about 125 articles in the verse isle peace treaty. The first 25 are the covenant for the league of nations. Woodrow wilson wanted the league of nations in the peace treaty to end the war with germany so that they couldnt be they couldnt be pulled apart. They wanted them intertwined at the beginning. This is article 10 and its saying something fundamental. Read it for me. Let me ask you a question. If ireland rose up against the British Empire and the United States had signed this, would the United States have any commitment . External aggression. Maybe not. Okay . But i want you to look at this. This is a extremely controversial part of the versailles peace treaty. Its the shantung. Controversy. Its spelled a couple different ways. Shantung had been an area of china which germany had taken over in 1898. And when took over it applied the doctrine of xernlt. If a german businessman raped and murder aid chinese woman the Chinese Police couldnt touch him. Only German Police operating there could touch him. Well, when world war i began japan was an ally of Great Britain. So japan declared war on germany, occupied a bunch of german possessions in the pacific and then took over the Shantung Peninsula and then at the versailles peace conference Woodrow Wilson realized for a couple reasons he needed japans support for the treaty sew said to the japanese whats it going to take . And the japanese had a great idea. They said we want one small little thing. We want racial equality clause in the versailles peace treaty. We want you to acknowledge that International Relations is no longer for white people exclusively. We want you to say from the beginning and by the way, we would appreciate it if you would make sure when we pass that clause that your legislature in the state of california knows it. Hmm. Wilson says, we can do this. He takes the treaty back and his advisers said, mr. President , you cannot agree to the racial equality clause because remember, hes a democrat. Wheres the heart of democratic support in the congress . Its in the segregationist south. So Woodrow Wilson goes back to the japanese and says you know, we need to talk again, im not sure i can do that. What else you got on your wish list . They said oh, we want that. Woodrow wilson hates what hes about to do. Because he is going to give an area of china inhabited by chinese to japan in order to keep japans support for the treaty. This violates the principle of selfdetermination that hes been talking about, but now oh, i need to tell you one other small part of the story. When this became public, Chinese University students poured out of the universities in protest in something called the may 4th, 1919 movement. They were profoundly angry that china was being ripped apart in the versailles peace treaty after Woodrow Wilson had talked about selfdetermination. And its one of the reasons that University Students in china today are still honored because at that crucial moment they were the light of the national consciousness. Okay. So imagine for just a moment that china goes to war to recover shantung. Who lives in shantung . Chinese. Whos running shantung . Japanese. If china went to war to recover that territory and the United States signed this, would we have any obligations now . The United States would be expected to go to war against china. Which has launched a justified war of liberation to recover its own territory and the opponents of league say weve got wilson. The great morallist has just discovered that attempting to apply universal moral principles to the incredibly complex historical reality of International Relations is asking for trouble. And they start going around the country saying hey, by the way, are you willing to die for Japanese Imperial control of shantung . And the president s moral prestige takes an enormous hit over the shantung controversy. Okay . This is fighting bob lafollet. He said its time to realize whats going on here. Oh, hes angry. Hes going to strongly oppose the treaty. He will make speech after speech. He said this little group of men sat in conclaves for months, were not peacemakers. They were warmakers. They are sowing the seeds of conflict all over the world and what theyre doing is trying to cover it up by the collective security provisions of the league of nations because what theyre really going to do is try and set up a system where if you ever challenge what they want by force we all go to war to try to maintain their imperialist status quo, collective security is wrong and we should oppose the treaty. So Henry Cabot Lodge goes to work. He tries, initially, to get amendments to the treaty, but it doesnt work because they have to be accepted by every other member who signed the treaty. So they Start Talking about a concept called reservations which is where you sign a treaty but you make a declaration about how youre going to interpret parts of the treaty. And notice what his first reservation is. Hey, wilson screwed up. We are not obliged to anything in that mess, but then he says, by the way, lets keep going. Wilson wasnt clear in his treaty. I want to make it clearer that the United States can withdraw from the league of nations at a moments notice. Then he says oh, and by the way, the United States will have exclusive control over its territory. The league of nations cant be involved in internal domestic affairs. Then he says by the way, congress has to approve all funds, so you cant get any money for the league of nations unless we approve it. Then he says by the way, if the league of nations starts disarmament, if the United States is threatened we ought to reserve the right to increase our armaments. And then comes the big one thats going to start the whole fight. This is where almost all of the energy over the league of nations is going to be. What hes going to do is say the United States assumes no obligations under article 10. You can call article 10 a moral guideline. You can call it a general principle. But what you cannot call it is an enforceable treaty obligation. Okay . By the way, he says and by the way, this was a small constitutional issue. Only the congress has the right to declare war. You cant use an International Treaty to do an end run around congresss authority to declare war. Does this kind of sound like the Police Action in korea debate a few years later . Okay. So then they vote. Lodges reservations go down. He cant get enough votes for his reservations. Whats really going on here . What weve got is not a fight between isolationist and internationalist. What weve got going on here is a fight between two rival international ms. Wilson is consistently liberal. Lodges consistently conservative or realist. Wilson is in favor of his three great reforms. Lodge says if we want peace, we need barrier states with him and germany. Democracy . Oh, you know, okay, whatever. Wilson wants collective security. Lodge says no, alliances are the key to peace. Not legal commitments that have nothing to do with national interest. Strong International Organization . He said no, Strong Alliances. Then the heart of it. For wilson to stop lodge and the heart of it to lodge is stop wilson. So they get into a fight. Its one fight after another. The whole question becomes president wilson hasnt got the votes to get the treaty through unless he compromises with lodge. Lodge is willing to get the treaty through, but only if wilson compromises and knocks off article 10. So the question is, could you build a bridge between these two, at least initially, irreconcilable positions . So, some people say what you could do is declare article 10 a mere moral obligation. But that infuriates wilson. You could say we want to acknowledge in our resignation that congress has the final authority over war and peace, but wilson is concerned that will undermine the credibility of the commitment. Or what you could do is this. You could say that the United States understands in article 10 oh. Thats an interesting compromise. And heres the really interesting point. That was Woodrow Wilsons secret compromise. Woodrow wilson himself as he set out for his gigantic nationwide tour to talk the American People into the league realized that there may be a problem and talk to the democratic leader of the senator, a guy named senator hitchcock, he had written on his own type writer four reservations. Including this one. If you cant get the treaty through then i will accept this and you get the treaty through. So it so what happened . If Woodrow Wilson himself secretly had accepted a way to bridge this, to build this bridge, what happened . Okay. Woodrow wilson made a series of mistakes. One mistake was that when he went to negotiate the versailles peace treaty he took no republicans in this delegation. Well, he took one. But it was really unimportant. He took no major republican leader into his confidence about what he was trying to do. And the effect of it was that made it wilsons piece. Wilsons treaty. Not americas treaty. The second thing was that he went on this gigantic tour, wasted enormous amounts of energy, apparently changed no votes when what he really needed to be doing was sitting in washington with ironfisted negotiations with guys like lodge trying to find a compromise. Wilson almost certainly overestimated at this moment the power of Public Opinion to change votes in the senate. But a lot of his important defenders say this is the key point. The Woodrow Wilson who wrote this was still healthy. But in november 1919 and march 1920, wilson ordered democrats to vote no on the treaty rather than to accept lodges reservations. Wilson aborted his own offspring. And the argument is that his increasing psychological rigidity is what had caused this collapse and made it impossible for him to make the compromise. This would be therefore the consequences of a gigantic medical crisis. And wilson refused to compromise. What therefore is the story that were trying to see here . What were seeing is probably there was no way to get the versailles peace treaty through as wilson had written it. Was it possible to get a version of the versailles peace treaty through that would be a lot looser, a lot less firm than what Woodrow Wilson yes, there was a way. And who was the person who stopped it . It was Woodrow Wilson himself. And the result was that the key piece of european Security Architecture everybody had expected was missing. And if significant forces in europe rose to challenge the versailles peace treaty, the key thing that was needed for europes stabilization would be absent. And that is the story of why wilsons peace lost. Thank you. [ applause ] folks, we have time for two questions, so youre welcome to go down the either mike, raise your hand and dr. Armstrong will be available after our program for additional questions. Oh, i thought i was going to escape. All right. First of all, thank you so much. That was very interesting, very informative. Personally, i guess i would consider myself more in the lodge view of things in terms of a certain realism. Especially with respect to barrier states. Would you be able to comment on obviously through wilsons point 10 in his 14 points he was very much in favor of selfdetermination in Eastern Europe. Were there any concerns about having any sort of check in the east to a defeated germany . Obviously, the soviet union at that point was in turmoil and only Great Britain and france lay to the west. Mmhmm. But the balkans sort of became even more of a mess after the war. So if youd be able to comment on that. Sure. Woodrow wilson thought that a league of nations could bring the european states and Central Europe and Eastern Europe together and there would be a strong british, french and American Security commitment so that if the germans or the soviets ever attempted to invade they would have confidence those three great powers would be involved. So his idea i think was that theres a part of the versailles peace treaty called the French Security guarantee and that was a commitment that wilson had made to france saying if you will agree to reduce your demands about germany about this, this, and this then the United States will commit he didnt quite put it this way. But the United States will commit if germany ever comes at you again we will be committed to your defense. And that part of the treaty didnt survive either. So wilson was clearly thinking, youre going the best thing would be for germany to change and to see that it can adopt peaceful democratic development, but if it doesnt the league of nations will represent this commitment to security. Does that help . Thank you very much for an enlightening and entertaining presentation. I was wondering, in your opinion when you look at the various points of view about victory versus defeat, complete defeat, and setting up barrier states and so on, lodge versus wilson, do you have a personal opinion as to which would have been the better way to go to avoid the Second World War and such . I personally believe collective security cannot work. And i think there are three problems with collective security. So the first problem is it presumes the governments will go to war for things that are not in their vital interest. And i think may occasionally take military action but they wont take Major Military risk for things that are not in their vital interest. Second, collective security freezes the territorial status quo all over the world because now people say hey, i dont have to make a compromise with you about giving you this province or splitting this province because if you come over that border that activates aggression and therefore i can expect the International Community to come in. What it does is it freezes borders all around the world which and adjustment of borders are a crucial ingredient over time to maintaining peace. Then the third thing. I dont believe that anybody agrees on how to define aggression. So if you were to watch a brilliant International Relations major at georgetown university, i think in 1968, he wrote to his draft board, i reject conscription in the vietnam war because while our government calls that an act of aggression by North Vietnam against South Vietnam its actually a civil war and lfr i have therefore i have no duty okay . That same guy, International Relations major to become president of the United States in the 1990s, bill clinton, said that what was going on in bosnia constituted aggression. There were lots of people who said its a civil war. My sense is that theres not agreement about what aggression is and what happens is governments decide what their position is and then hire lawyers to argue that its aggression or not aggression. So it turns out that collective security isnt actually controlling what wilson thought they would control. 25 years ago, there were a group of American Scholars in International Relations who were looking very carefully at American Security and wanted to resuscitate it as a possibility for creating International Peace after the cold war. They gave up in the disaster of the balkan wars, where they realized that even if aggression, rape camps, ethnic cleansing was going on, people would not take the serious military risk to try to stop it. So as far as i know, even today there are no major scholars working on collective security as a concept. It has died. Folks, were actually going to conclude our program, so a thank you for everyone joining us. Another thank you to dr. Gary armstrong. And you may ask your question after. Thank you. [ applause ] weeknights this month on American History tv, its the contenders. Our series that looks at 14 president ial candidates who lost the election but who had a lasting effect on u. S. Politics. Tonight we feature 1928 democratic president ial nominee alfred e. Smith jr. , nicknamed the happy warrior. Al smith never went to high school or college. Yet he was speaker of the new York State Assembly and fourterm governor. He was also the first catholic ever nominated by a major party. Watch tonight beginning at 8 00 eastern. And enjoy American History tv this week and every weekend on cspan 3. Every saturday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on American History tv on cspan 3 go inside a Different College classroom and hear about topics ranging from the american revolution, civil rights, and u. S. President s to 9 11. Thanks for your patience and for logging in to class. With most College Campuses closed due to the impact of the coronavirus watch professors transfer teaching to a virtual setting to engage with their students. Gorbachev did most of the work to change the soviet union. But reagan met him halfway. Reagan encouraged him. Reagan supported him. Freedom of the press, which well get to later, i should just mention, madison originally called it freedom of the use of the press. And it is indeed freedom to print things and publish things. It is not a freedom for what we now refer to institutionally as the press. Lectures in history on American History tv on cspan 3. Every saturday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern. Lectures in history is also available as a podcast. Find it where you listen to podcasts. The competition is on. Be a part of this years cspan student cam video competition. Middle and high school students, be the start of a National Conversation by make ugh a five to sixminute documentary exploring the issue you want the president and congress to address in 2021. Be bold with your documentary. Show supporting and opposing points of view. And include cspan video. Be a winner. Theres 100,000 in total cash prizes including a grand prize of 5,000. The deadline to submit videos is january 20th, 2021. Be informed. Youll find competition rules, tips, and more information on how to get started at our website. Studentcam. Org. Tonight on the communicators, charlie mitchell, author of a new book on cybersecurity, talks about the administrations approach to cybersecurity and how its efforts compare with previous administrations and those of other countries. The message that the u. S. Government has been really pressing on industry and business leaders, that the top person in an organization has to really personally take responsibility for cybersecurity and show that they are interested in it and that this is a cultural value within their organization. The government is telling that to companies. And i would think the same thing should apply to the government