Wilson's White House

[Angwen]

I know it isn't Europe but the U.S played an important role in this centuary.

And then there is the fact that I love politics.

So do you think that Wilson was a good president?

Do you think his wife controlled the government when he was sick?

I remember this quote."I am praying for you,Mr.President." He sneered."Which way?"

Mostly what I think is that he had some great idea but A.US entered war to late.
B.Republicans.Isolationists.Big Business profitting because of the damage done to the European market.
C.He was dying.

[David_Pritchard]

Unless this discussion is tied in with Russia, I suppose it would be off topic. Let us see what we can do about that.

I have always felt very strongly that President Wilson meant to do what he felt was in the best interests of the United States. That written, he was a dreamer and an idealist who unfortunately presided over the United States during a very dangerous time in history. Our late involvement in the Great War was contrived at best, the construction of the Lusitania was partialy financed by the British government under the written agreement that in time of war, the Lusitania (and her sister ship the Mauratania) would serve the purposes of the Royal Navy. We should have been angry at the British for loading the ship with American civillians and munitions rather than declaring war on Germany for sinking a British naval vessel disguised as an ocean liner.

I would have prefered either William Howard Taft or Theodore Roosevelt in the office of president during and after the Great War period. Interestingly, a President Roosevelt in office at the time of the Bolshevik revolution might have done more to combat this menace than President Wilson, keeping in mind the fact that President Roosevelt had negotiated the end of the Russo-Japanese war in 1905, and his greater familiarity with the Russians might have caused him to commit more US troops and resources against the Bolsheviks than President Wilson did.

As for Mrs. Wilson secretly running the US government while her husband was dying, simply outrageous! Others must have felt even morestrongly than I because the US Constitution was changed because of her deception.

David

[gleb]

I know it isn't Europe but the U.S played an important role in this centuary.

And then there is the fact that I love politics.

So do you think that Wilson was a good president?

Do you think his wife controlled the government when he was sick?

I remember this quote."I am praying for you,Mr.President." He sneered."Which way?"

Mostly what I think is that he had some great idea but A.US entered war to late.
B.Republicans.Isolationists.Big Business profitting because of the damage done to the European market.
C.He was dying.

Please,
I respect your interests, but this is not absolutely the right place to talk about these things!

There are no relations either to Imperial Russia or to this Thread in particular.

This is my opinion

[Martyn]

Please,
 I respect your interests, but this is not absolutely the right place to talk about these things!

There are no relations either to Imperial Russia or to this Thread in particular.

This is my opinion

If you don't mind, the FA and I will be the judge of that.

In his previous post, David made the effort to link this subject in with Russia at the time of the Revolution, which gives the topic some validity as long as the discussion proceeds along these lines.

Please attempt to keep this discussion linked to Russia and the Romanovs, otherwise its existence will be difficult to justify.

[gleb]

If you don't mind, the FA and I will be the judge of that.

In his previous post, David made the effort to link this subject in with Russia at the time of the Revolution, which gives the topic some validity as long as the discussion proceeds along these lines.

Of course you are the one who decides, but I did not gave an order, I just said my opinion, Angwen does what she likes.

To me starting a new thread about wilson, his wife... is off topic.

Again this is what I think.

Gleb

[David_Pritchard]

Now that I have thought more about this subject, It is quite possible that a President Taft in office during the Revolution might have acted more sympathetically to the cause of the Whites as his father Alphonso Taft had been the United States Minister to Russia in the years 1885-1886.

Interestingly, both of the challengers to President Wilson had ties to Imperial Russia. I wonder how a Republican victory might have effected the way that US troops were deployed and utilised in Archangel and Vladivostock?

David

[Finelly]

Like David Pritchard, I have always viewed Wilson as an idealist, and pretty detached from the reality of international politics.  Sort of the Jimmy Carter of his time, but less so.

It occurs to me that Wilson's true belief that all could be worked out through negotiations and collegiality may have prevented him from understanding the true danger that the Romanovs faced.  For Wilson, educated as he was, little could not be solved simply by coming together and talking things through, that talk being based on a shared philosophy and ideology that he believed that all politicians, deep down, shared, if only they had the opportunity to meet one another.

He did make attempts, or his government did, to intervene in Russia, but there does not appear to have been a full-fledged policy that had any chance of success.   He simply did not understand Communism, or any concept of revolution other than the American revolution, which was relatively bloodless compared to the situation in Russia.  

[Angwen]

Sorry if I offended anyone,but I when I join forums I try to post topics on things I know about.

What I do know is that my education on WWI focused mostly on Wilson and his rivraly with the Republicans.I'm a high schooler this fall.

I know that he was President during the time of the Romanovs.
Most versions of Wilson that I heard was that he had great ideas and that if they had been used,especially the U.S being in the League of Nations WWII may have been avoided.

As for Republicans...Do you realize that they were Isolationists?Do you know that they voted against joining the League of Nations?

If this is the wrong place to talk about this sort of thing,then point to a place that those because I haven't found one yet.(I'm not saying this to be mean...but I haven't found any 'President Forums'.)

[TampaBay]

Angwen,

You talk about anything you want!  If the Forum Moderators think we are getting off topic they will let us know.  (This is the Moderators job and no one else's)  Until that moment we can talk about what we want to talk about pertaining to topic.

Like you, I am very interested in the interaction of USA, Russain Revolution and the UK during WWI.

I do not understand why our country (USA) did not do more to help the whites and the Tsar.  If you have more info please posts.

President and First Lady Wilson had some very interesting dealings with Queen Marie of Romania at the Paris Peace Conference.  Marie was a Granddaughter of a Tsar Alexander II (I apopolgize if you already kenw this).  It is very good reading.

We need more young people like you posting and sharing information from your classes at school.

TampaBay

[Angwen]

Information on Mr.Wilson, curtesy of Who's Buried in Grant's Tomb?by Brian Lamb.

He's the only President with a Ph.D(politcal science)
Woodrow Wilson earned the Noble Peace Prize for his role in ending WWII and creating the League of Nations.
Three Amendments were passed in his tenure.
17.Direct elect of Senators(more votes)
18.Alchohal Prohibition(well...at least they weren't drunk when they vote )
19.Women's Vote(more votes)

He was a proffesor at Princeton.He was Governor of New Jersey for 2 years before being chosen as the Democratic candidate for president.Although he was a great oratator,I think he won because the ballot was split.

His wife died in 1914. He was depressed until he married Edith the next year.

I don't know why he didn't help with the war in Russia.I know that the main reason his health declined was overwork.
Personally, I think it was the Republicans fault.They let there politics get in the way of interefering when needed.

[Alixz]

I believe that anything which occured during the great war and while the Romanovs were on the throne is directly connected to the topics at hand.

Wilson was an idealist, but too much of an isolationist.

I would have liked to see TR (I almost said on the throne in Washington) in the White House during 1914.
Although his committment to war and the glory of it was cut abruplty short when his favorite son Quention died in a plane cash during the war.

I don't think he would have tolerated K Wilhelm's swaggering or the Austrian stupidity of declaing war instead of dealing this the assasination of Franz Ferdinand in a calmer more intelligent way.

Yes, the heir was dead, but the Black Hand was too blame, not the entire country of Serbia.

[Angwen]

Wilson is sort of my favorite president of all time.

By the way, Taft placed third in the elections.
Roosevelt was great, but he split his own party!!!

Of course part of it was Wilsons own fault for not allowing Republicans to go with him to the Versailles Conferances.

Ah politics of republicanism!One of the downsides to autocracy is that then we don't get witty speeeches and fun debates.

[Alixz]

I always thought that Wilson was the most intellectual of the presidents up until his time.

I still think that TR would have been a better president during a World War.  He was a "hawK", but he did win the Nobel Peace Prize for setteling the Russo/Japanese
war of 1905.

The world was so much bigger then and the US could stay in splendid isolation for longer than it ever could now.

I loved Wilson's 14 points.  He was way ahead of his time with the League of Nations.  But the division of the war weary Europe and Middle East was the worst thing that the "victors" of the Great War ever did.

As I have said many times, no one person is responsible for the way things turned out.  It is a confluence of all things that were happening at the same time in the different countries.

Wilson played his part as did everyone else.

[Nadezhda_Edvardova]

One thing we can say about Wilson and the Romanovs is that it was a whole lot easier for Wilson to justify the entry of the United States into World War I *after* Tsar Nicholas II abdicated.

Many nations criticized the US's failure to join the fight, but failed to understand that the diversity of the US's population made consensus almost impossible in the early years of the war.  The warring parties all had contributed immigrants to the United States, and these immigrants retained many loyalties despite their new home in America.  As the US is (re-) learning now, it is very difficult to wage a winning fight without overwhelming support at home.

Also, as you may recall, World War I was the last great fight of Europe's great monarchies.  As a constitutional democratic republic founded expressly rejecting  monarchy, it was exceptionally difficult for Americans to support either side, as both were led by monarchies.

The US, in my opinion, found it much easier to join the war once several events had take place:

1. the revelation of the Zimmerman note in which the Kaiser offered Mexico the return of its provinces lost in the Mexican War (Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, and parts of Nevada, Colorado, and Utah.)

2. the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare in violation of the Kaiser's express promise in the Essex Pledge

3. the abdication of the Tsar, which meant to the US that she would no longer fight on the side of an absolute monarch.  (Remember, the US entered after the abdication but BEFORE the Bolshevik revolution. From the US perspective, it may have appeared briefly that Russia might become a species of democracy.)

Peace

Nadezhda

[Tsarina_Liz]

There's another aspect of Wilson that drove his involvement in Russia: he was violently anti-semic.  Aw, heck, he was a bigot!  His Big Three (women's rights, etc.) do not make up for the damage he did to civil rights in this country.  He also thought "Birth of the Nation" was the best movie that could possible exist and praised the director on finally showing the truth about African Americans.  As for Mrs. Wilson, she liked to entertain the Presidents Cabinet members and guests with tales about "darkies."  

But that's off topic.  On the topic: Wilson and his ilke viewed the Bolsheviks and the developing Soviet Union as a Jewish run conspiracy to destroy the Western world.  He was willing to do anything to stop them.