Wilson's peace note

On 18 December 1916 at 9.30 p.m. the Secretary of State, Robert Lansing, sent from Washington to the American ambassadors and ministers in all the belligerent countries a circular telegram containing a note from President Woodrow Wilson. In it the President suggested that each of the warring states should state clearly on what terms it could end the war and what guarantees it would consider sufficient to prevent a similar conflict from recurring. The diplomats were to read the note to the foreign ministers “with the utmost earnestness” and to make it understood that the government of the United States “would find it very hard to understand a negative reply”. The document went down in history as Wilson’s peace note, although the President himself stressed in it that he was not proposing peace.

A long-prepared step

Wilson had been thinking of such a move for weeks. Immediately after winning the election, on 14 November, he summoned his closest adviser, Colonel Edward House, to the White House. According to House’s diary, the President wanted to send the belligerents a note demanding that the war be stopped. He believed that if he did not, the United States would sooner or later be drawn into war with Germany over submarines. He thought that Germany had already broken the promise given after the note on the Sussex, and before breaking off relations with it he wanted to try mediation. House objected. He warned that the Allies, who after two years of war were beginning to have successes, would regard such a step as unfriendly and see in it a reward for Germany for breaking its commitments.

At the end of November Wilson read House a first draft. The adviser protested against a sentence saying that the causes and aims of the war were obscure. He explained that for the Allies nothing was clearer: Germany had unleashed the war for conquest, and they were fighting to break Prussian militarism. At his request the President also added a reservation that he was not trying to mediate or to demand peace. On 30 November House wrote to him that he did not see “one chance in ten” of success if the note were sent now. Wilson hesitated, and in London there was a government crisis, after which David Lloyd George became Prime Minister, an advocate of fighting on to victory. On 12 December the Germans forestalled the President by announcing their own peace offer. When forwarding it to the Entente on 16 December, Lansing instructed the ambassadors to point out that the United States would soon come forward with its own “very serious” observations and that it had intended to do so on its own initiative. Wilson feared that any day the Allies would finally slam the door on negotiations. So he drafted the final text within a few hours, this time without consulting House.

“The President is not proposing peace”

Wilson began with the reservation that he was “somewhat embarrassed”, because his proposal might look like a response to the recent move by the Central Powers. In reality it had nothing to do with it and should be considered as though it had been made in other circumstances. The President proposed that all the belligerents should announce their terms for ending the war, so that they could be compared. He did not care how this was done. He would gladly help with it himself, but did not wish to impose a method.

One paragraph caused him the most trouble. Wilson observed that the objects which the statesmen of both sides had set out in general terms to their peoples and to the world were “virtually the same”. Each side wanted to secure the rights of weak peoples and small states, each wanted the world to be safe against a recurrence of such wars, and each was ready to consider the formation of a league of nations to ensure peace and justice. The United States was as vitally interested in the future peace as the belligerents and was ready to cooperate in securing it, but the war must first be ended. The President warned that if it went on “towards undefined ends”, by slow attrition, until one side or the other ran out of men to sacrifice, hopes of peace would lose their meaning, and the position of the neutrals, already very hard, would become “altogether intolerable”. The concrete aims of the war had never been stated. It might turn out that peace was nearer than we thought. “The President is not proposing peace; he is not even offering mediation. He is merely proposing that soundings be taken,” the note read.

Delivery

The ambassador in London handed the note to Lord Robert Cecil, who was standing in for the Foreign Secretary, on 20 December. That same evening the ambassador in Paris delivered it to the French Prime Minister, Aristide Briand. A day later it was received by the Italian Foreign Minister, Sidney Sonnino, and the State Secretary of the Reich, Arthur Zimmermann, on 22 December by the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister, István Burián (it was his last day in that post), and on 23 December by the Turkish government. The note reached Sofia, which the American chargé d’affaires had left, only on 28 December. On 20 December copies were also received by the governments of the neutral states. The British chronology of the war records the note under the date it bears, 18 December. Some studies, especially German ones, speak of the note of 21 December, the day it reached Berlin.

“On the verge of war”

On the morning of 21 December Lansing, explaining the note to journalists, said that the United States was not concerned with material interests. American rights, however, were being violated more and more often by both sides, so the situation was becoming critical. “I mean by that that we are drawing nearer the verge of war ourselves, and therefore we are entitled to know exactly what each belligerent seeks,” he said. He added that neither the President nor he regarded the document as a peace note. The statement, read as an announcement that neutrality would be abandoned, caused a stir in America and in the capitals of Europe. That same afternoon Lansing issued a correction. He gave assurances that he had only wanted to emphasise the keen interest of the neutral states in the terms of peace, not to suggest a change in the policy of neutrality, and regretted that his words could have been understood otherwise.

The Allies offended

In Britain the note caused, as the American ambassador reported, “surprise and painful consternation”. Comment was restrained, because the British Foreign Office had asked the press not to question the President’s sincerity, but underneath lay deep disappointment and often anger. The British read the words about “the same” objects as putting the Allies and the Central Powers on the same moral level. Lord Northcliffe, the proprietor of The Times and the Daily Mail, told the ambassador that people were “mad as hell”. The former Prime Minister Asquith is said to have remarked: “Don’t speak to me about it, it is very depressing.” The Liberal Daily Chronicle, always friendly to America, wrote that no American state paper in the lifetime of this generation had caused so much pain, and that the President had certainly not meant to offend anyone, but his words were “profoundly offensive”. Lord Cecil confessed to the ambassador that he felt hurt, and that the sentence about the position of the neutrals might be a veiled threat. Briand said that he appreciated the President’s intentions, but the note had come at an unfortunate moment, almost at the same time as the German offer. Sonnino believed that despite the President’s reservations it would be hard to distinguish from an offer of mediation, and according to the American ambassador he feared that the note would weaken Allied unity. The Italian press was hostile to it.

The Central Powers received the note politely. Zimmermann told the American chargé d’affaires that it was a “wise and noble” step, but that Germany could not be the first to reveal its terms. In the German press the liberal dailies praised the note, while the Pan-German ones saw it as a ruse intended to save England. The neutral states backed the President. On 23 December the Swiss Federal Council sent the belligerents a note supporting Wilson’s initiative, at the end of December Norway, Sweden and Denmark sent similar notes, and Pope Benedict XV sent the President his congratulations. Spain, however, refused to join the appeal. On 24 December Lansing further proposed that the replies be confidential, so that the United States could pass them secretly to the other side and see whether there was any basis at all for negotiations.

No result

The Central Powers replied on 26 December with a proposal for a direct conference, without stating any terms. The Entente, which had rejected the German offer on 30 December, replied to Wilson on 10 January 1917. It then announced its peace terms, so far from the German ones that hopes of negotiations collapsed. On 22 January 1917 Wilson delivered a speech in the Senate calling for “peace without victory”. Nine days later Germany announced unrestricted submarine warfare from 1 February, and in April 1917 the President asked Congress to declare war on Germany.