Customer Reviews

Road to War-America, 1914-1917

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Walter Millis worked mainly as a newspaperman for the New York Herald Tribune, and wrote books about current affairs, especially world conflicts. In this book he looks at the United States from the time war was declared in Europe in 1914 up until the time the US got involved in the fighting herself. He doesn't much like what he sees.

Although America declared neutrality at the beginning of hostilities in Europe, she was actually supporting the side of the Entente (England, France, Italy) from the start. Thus, while most of the country didn't want America in the war and President Wilson had promised to keep the country out of it, because the country had from the beginning "chosen one side over the other," she was inextricably drawn in. Subsequent events - submarine warfare, the sinking of the Lusitania, the Mexican fiasco, the principles of "watchful waiting" and "preparedness for peace" - only fanned the already well-burning fire. Millis is particularly opposed to the war-mongers such as Theodore Roosevelt, whom he characterizes as extremely irresponsible.

Anyone who wants to get a thorough account of what America was experiencing with regard to the Great War up to 1917 will do well with this book. Just be warned that Millis takes a very anti-war stand, and his astonishment at the hypocrisy of the country's actions as it was led into the horrendous conflict, is head-shakingly obvious.

When asked to list the influential books in American history, I don't know how many scholars would name this one. Written by a newspaper man, not a scholar, this was a popular history not a scholarly tome. I don't know how many of its points would be considered valid now, or how it holds up as a work of history. And surely, most people today haven't even heard of it. However in its day, the mid to late 30s, it had a huge impact on public sentiment in this country as Europe drifted to war.

It was a throughly revisionist history. It made no bones about its main thesis: that the participation of the U.S. in the First World War was a mistake; that we were dragged into the war through the foolish, wishy-washy policies of the Wilson administration, which spoke neutrality but which favored the British, and whose hypocrisies involved us in the war as a semi-belligerent in the days before April 1917, and led us into direct confrontation, then actual war with the German Empire.

(As an example of the cynical hypocrises of the supposedly idealistic Wilson & his gang, the U.S. was never called an "ally" of Britain or France. Knowing of the public's traditional suspicion of "entangling alliances", Wilson insisted that we were an "associated" power, not an "ally"--as if this made any difference.)

In the heady days following our victory in the war, we as a nation were proud of our part in the war, thinking we had helped usher in a new millenium of a world without war. Today, it is mistakenly thought that WWI was thought of and called "The War To End All Wars". Actually, in the day, it was called "The War To End War", which is quite a different thing all together. It was thought of as a great crusade to end the scourge of war forever. Such ideas did not last very long--not even long enough to get us in the League of Nations two years later.

As time passed, we began to see it as mere, though violent, power politics, a fight between the British and German Empires for hegemony over the continent of Europe, and thus overall world power. The U.S. rejected the league of nations (wisely, I believe) and drifted back into its traditional isolationism because we saw (correctly) that we had been sold a bill of goods in 1917, that we had been "taken" and misused by old, worn-out and cynical European powers, and that, indeed, 120,000 or so of our boys had, cruel as it may be to say it, died for nothing; or, rather died to enable Stalin to take over Russia and Hitler to take over Germany.

These became the prevailing opinions during the 20s and 30s. Even Roosevelt, whatever the real thoughts in his venal brain, was forced to mouth these opinions, in such important speeches as his Chatauqua address of 1936. Millis didn't create these feelings, but in this book, which became a huge bestseller, synthesized them in exciting and punchy newspaper prose, spiced with appropriate skepticism and sarcasm.

When one surveys the popular press of the late 30s and early 40s, one sees this book constantly referred to. Its arguments became the common language of such isolationists as Father Coughlin, Gerald Nye, Colonel Lindbergh and Burton Wheeler. They were held by the large majority of the American people right up to the day of Pearl Harbor.

Again, I don't know how this book holds up today as history. Maybe modern scholars would find fault with its researches and analyses. But its influence in its time makes it absolutely essential reading for anyone trying to understand American public opinion as we tried to keep out of another "European" war.

Walter Mills' Road To War is an excellent documentation of the America's slippery slide into WW1. What I knew from the history books about WW1 was that our involvement was precipitated by the German attack on the Lusitania and that we fought the war to make the world safe for democracy. Both can be argued as true facts but they misrepresent "the truth". It was two years after the Lusitania was torpedoed before the U.S. declared war so it is hard to imagine that it was the provocation that caused the U.S. entry into the global conflict. The term "safe for democracy" was coined to inflame the masses to support a war that the military industrial complex had become addicted to because of its exorbitant profits and America had to intervene to insure that the "right" side was victorious and able to pay their debts. For more background on events leading up WW1 I reccommend Why War by Frederic C Howe. There was no clear cut good or evil side in this war. Both sides were guilty of imperialism and greed. Perhaps the vilest and meanest lie is the deception that the U.S. is a democracy. Read, learn and be amazed!I wish that both of these books would be reprinted because they are very relevant to the imperialism of today.

The other reviews are excellent and summarize this book well. Reading it shows how deeply ingrained militarism is in our society. It probably began with the "splendid little war" with Spain but was reinforced by the weird "preparedness" movement before WW I. It has become all to familiar now, the hysterical invention of non-existent threats, the lockstep propagandizing of the press, the sheer incompetence of the national leadership of both parties in foreign affairs. If you respond well to black humor it is also very funny at times.
This book was very influential in stimulating the isolationist movement in the thirties before WW II. That may be an example of how not to learn from history. It's like the tendency of the military to prepare for the last war. I can't blame Millis for the misuse of his book in that regard.

Walter Millis was a journalist for the New York Herald Tribune who covered WW1 and wrote this book in 1935 exposing the intrigues and gross misinformation that led to America's involvement in the Armageddon like slaughter of "The Great War", a conflict with little justice on either side, whose only real objective was imperial gain on both sides, an 18th Century war fought with 20th century technology with catastrophic results. The idea that the Allies of Britain, France and Russia represented some kind of democratic bulwark against the tyrannical menace of the Central Powers of Germany, Austria and the Ottomons, that it was a war to "make the world safe for democracy" was a thoroughgoing fraud that was foisted upon the American public with the aid of the cutting of the transatlantic cables from Berlin and Vienna in August 1914 resulting in a virtual information monopoly from the Allies. A good contemporary account of this disaster that I stumbled onto at a library sale of used books a couple years ago.