This massive collection includes all important letters, speeches, interviews, press conferences, and public papers on Woodrow Wilson. The volumes make available as never before the materials essential to understanding Wilson's personality, his intellectual, religious, and political development, and his careers as educator, writer, orator, and statesman. The Papers not only reveal the private and public man, but also the era in which he lived, making the series additionally valuable to scholars in various fields of history between the 1870's and the 1920's.

This massive collection includes all important letters, speeches, interviews, press conferences, and public papers on Woodrow Wilson. The volumes make available as never before the materials essential to understanding Wilson's personality, his intellectual, religious, and political development, and his careers as educator, writer, orator, and statesman. The Papers not only reveal the private and public man, but also the era in which he lived, making the series additionally valuable to scholars in various fields of history between the 1870's and the 1920's.

This volume begins at November 20, 1916, during the aftermath of President Wilson's reelection and the background of his attempts at independent mediation of the European war. It contains all the important documents relating to that effort, including all the drafts of Wilson's peace appeal to the belligerents of December 18, 1916. The torpedoing of Wilson's demarche by his confidant, Edward M. House, and by Secretary of State Robert Lansing is fully documented, as are the replies of the Central Powers and the Entente Allies.

Congress is back in session in December, and the...

At the beginning of this volume, Wilson has broken diplomatic relations with Germany and is seeking various alternatives to full-scale belligerency, among them being armed neutrality and common action by the neutrals to protect their rights at sea. Once it becomes evident that American merchant ships will not venture into the war zone without protection, Wilson adopts the policy of armed neutrality on March 9, 1917. He struggles all through the first weeks of March to avoid war, but gradually becomes convinced that armed neutrality is not a sufficient response to the all-out German...

As this volume begins, the United States has just entered the World War and Wilson and his administration face the awesome task of mobilization. Making the undertaking more difficult is the German submarine campaign, which during these months succeeds even beyond the earlier optimistic predictions of the German Admiralty and threatens to bring Great Britain to her knees. The documents here vividly illustrate the Wilson administration's early plans for nationwide mobilization and its actions to bring it about. More important, they reveal clearly that Wilson was the commander in chief as...

This massive collection includes all important letters, speeches, interviews, press conferences, and public papers on Woodrow Wilson. The volumes make available as never before the materials essential to understanding Wilson's personality, his intellectual, religious, and political development, and his careers as educator, writer, orator, and statesman. The Papers not only reveal the private and public man, but also the era in which he lived, making the series additionally valuable to scholars in various fields of history between the 1870's and the 1920's.

Wilson and his administration find themselves in a "winter crisis," set off by the Fuel Administrator's limitations on use of coal by manufacturing and business concerns. Soon afterward, the administration's critics, led by Senator George E. Chamberlain, demand the creation of a super war cabinet to take control of the war effort from Wilson. Wilson defends his Secretary of War; oversees the drafting of the Overman bill; appoints Bernard M. Baruch head of the War Industries Board; and rallies Senate forces to defeat the Chamberlain bill.

Meanwhile, the Austro-Hungarian Foreign...

The nine weeks covered here are a transitional period in Wilson's conduct of the war and see the emergence of the War Industries Board, the so-called War Cabinet, and the National War Labor Board. Administration forces rally behind the Overman bill. Wilson quiets an outcry against the Aircraft Production Board and deals with problems such as the fixing of prices of basic commodities; requests for federal assistance from farmers and livestock growers; the transportation system, leasing of public lands to oil companies; and alleviation of the housing shortage in Washington. He also blocks a...

Although previous Presidents had maintained contact with reporters, Woodrow Wilson was the first to conduct regular press conferences. This volume contains the transcripts of all of these sessions, which reveal the range of Wilson's day-to-day concerns and his stance in what might be termed intellectual combat. The bulk of the material comes from approximately the first two and a half years of his presidency. We see Wilson jousting and sparring with reporters, scolding them, joking with them, "grazing the truth" in order not to disclose secrets of state, and, more often, engaging in frank...

This volume begins on November 9, 1918, the eve of the Armistice between the Allied and Associated Powers and the principal Central Powers, Germany and Austria-Hungary. It ends on January 11, 1919, just before the first plenary session of the Paris Peace Conference. The interval finds Wilson preoccupied with preparations for the conference. Accompanied by a large entourage of State Department officials and "experts" from the Inquiry grup, Wilson sails for France on December 4, convinced that he alone will represent the liberal, forward-looking peoples of the world. After initial meetings...