Arthur S. Link

The papers of Woodrow Wilson

The opening of this volume finds the Big Four in the midst of the gravest crisis of the peace conference set off by the British cabinets demand for drastic softening of the terms of the peace treaty to be concluded with Germany. In response to a wave of appeasement sweeping through the British Isles, Lloyd George says that he cannot and will not sign the peace treaty unless his colleagues agree to negotiate sympathetically with the Germans on their reparations obligations, their early admission to the League of Nations, and other matters. For the entire period covered by this volume, the atmosphere of the Council of Four is supercharged by bitter debates and recriminations. Wilson and Clemenceau try to hold to the terms of the preliminary treaty. As the bitterness of the debates in the Council of Four grows in intensity, Wilson, weakened by a small stroke just before the eruption of the crisis, gradually loses the will and strength to oppose Lloyd George. Throughout, Wilson tries to play the role of peacemaker between Lloyd George and Clemenceau but ends by capitulating to Lloyd Georges demands. The result is that the final peace treaty taking shape constitutes the first step in the appeasement of Germany.

Woodrow Wilson's Political Personality: A Reappraisal

Historians, biographers, and political scientists, as well as psychiatrists and psychologists, have long been intrigued by Woodrow Wilsons personality and its relationship to the events of his academic, political, and diplomatic careers. Although interpretations have varied, there is universal agreement that Wilsons personality was of major importance in both his successes and failures. Along with the conventional descriptions of Woodrow Wilsons character by his major biographers, Ray Stannard Baker and Arthur S. Link, there have been two book-length psychoanalytic studies. The first, Thomas Woodrow Wilson, by Sigmund Freud and William C. Bullitt, was written during the 1930s but not published until 1967.1 This study, a biased application of a simplistic and distorted version of psychoanalytic theory, is not regarded either by historians or psychoanalysts as a scholarly contribution. In one review,2 Link demonstrated that the evidence on which the psychological interpretations are based is

Woodrow Wilson : revolution, war, and peace

Preface vii 1 Wilson the Diplomatist 1 2 Wilson and the Problems of Neutrality, 1914-1917 21 3 Wilson and the Decisions for War 47 4 Wilson and the Liberal Peace Program 72 5 Wilson and the Fight for the League of Nations 104 Bibliographical Essay 129 Index 133