Despite its neutral status during the first two and a half years of the war,
the United States early on cast a substantial shadow over the conduct of the
conflict. Although President Woodrow Wilson in 1914 asked Americans to
maintain a genuine feeling of neutrality, to be "impartial in fact as well as
name," he himself, like most leaders of American opinion, was more
sympathetic to the cause of the Allies. Many Americans viewed Germany
as the homeland of a disreputable, even dangerous militarism. Its brutal
invasion of the neutral country of Belgium necessarily made American
leaders wonder how the United States, another neutral country, would fare
in a world dominated by German power. Wilson personally admired the
British system of government and thought that a victory by the Central
Powers in the war would set back democracy everywhere.
American commercial and cultural ties with Great Britain and France
were stronger than those to Germany, and the British had worked hard to
cultivate good Anglo-American relations since the late nineteenth century.
The British also had the advantage of controlling the flow of information
from Europe to America. On the day they entered the war, the British cut
the German undersea cables linking that country to the Atlantic, establishing
an Allied monopoly over news from Europe. American policy tilted toward
the Allies. Indeed, some of the president's key advisers, notably Colonel
Edward House, openly declared their support for the Allied cause early in
the conflict. Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan, the administration's
most vocal advocate of avoiding support for either side, resigned over that
issue in June 1915.
America's trade links to some of the countries of Europe swelled as a
result of the fighting. With Britain's blockade of Germany, only the Allied
powers could buy and deliver the products of the United States; thus,
American commerce with Britain and France grew vastly, more than tripling
in value by the close of 1916. Meanwhile, commerce with Germany
virtually disappeared. In October 1915, fear that a halt in Allied purchases
in the United States would trigger a recession pushed the administration to
end a ban on private loans to Britain and France.
World History
