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Entry: Puritans or Habsburgs Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/puritans_or_habsburgs#1238 Post contents: "...historians who demonstrate how the government of Woodrow Wilson maneuvered the US into the European conflagration. This involved dishonestly manipulating the alleged US peace initiatives in Christmas 1916 in such a way that the English side would not accept the terms offered..." And THERE (to use a newly-coined bit of sterling American slang) is the "money quote." Well done, Mr Gottfried! Here's the problem which we Americans ought to contemplate more, whenever we reconsider America's involvement in the two World Wars: Ever since the Great War, all too many Anglophobe American-Nationalists (many of whom have been of Irish or Central European descent - Joe McCarthy was one of their shabbiest exemplars) have tended to blur the boundaries between a justified criticism of Wilson (and a somewhat less justified criticism - and totally unjustified hatred - of FDR) versus apologetics for German aggression, largely inspired by a blend of vuglarised Anglophobia and resentment of the older American stock of British descent. The Great War was absolutely avoidable EVEN UNTIL the moment when the German Ambassador delivered the declaration of war in St Petersburg - and I tend to think its outbreak was an effect of deterministic, mechanical thinking - however, after it began, Britain and France were totally within their legal and moral rights to fight, and overall they had the better part of the stupid argument. And so, personally I tend to think a German victory in the Great War really would have been a disaster for Europe, although far less of a disaster than Hitler's later victory would have been. America was right to sympathise with the Allies rather than the Central Powers. But was America right to enter the war in the way it did? No - and the above history of Wilson's dishonest interference in a possible peace process, is a big part of what taints the history of America's role in that war. We need to draw careful distinctions between the reality of German aggression versus the nefarious and dishonest reasons for America's involvement in the Great War. I recall an anecdote about the razor-witted (and in her youth, very beautiful) Philadelphian essayist, Agnes Repplier (c 1858 to c 1950, off the top of my head.) She was deeply Francophile, so much so that she considered herself to be of French ancestry although her family were ethnic Germans from Alsace. Yet, in 1917, during one dinner at her house on Pine Street in Center City Philadelphia, when one of her guests (a proto-neocon) said "we need to fight the Germans over there, or else they'll come marching down our streets here!", she cooly replied: "Oh, please DO ask the Germans to march down Pine Street! Nothing interesting ever happens on Pine Street..." Sent at: 2008 05 16