An article from 1918 by Frederick James Gregg, Vanity Fair‘s go-to-guy for all matters diplomatic, listing all the various reasons as to why President Wilson was suited to command the Allied powers against Imperial Germany in W.W. I:
“There are various reasons for Woodrow Wilson’s present preëminence. For one thing he represented, for years, the rights, under International Law, of the nations which were not in the war, and whatever his private opinions may have been as to an attitude of strict legality…. Then, further, he is at the head of a nation which had no selfish motives in coming in. America wants for herself no new territory, no new spheres of influence. France wants Alsace and Lorraine. Italy wants ‘Italia Irridenta’. England, though she declared war to save France from being overrun through losing the channel ports, has gained incidentally all German Africa and the German islands of the South Seas…”
An article about Wilson’s reluctance to go to war can be read here…
