Erik Sass, mentalfloss.com
See also John Brown, "Creel, Lippmann, and the Origins of American Public Diplomacy": A Select Annotated Bibliography," johnbrownnotesandessays.blogspot.com; article based on this bibliography mentioned at.
Excerpt:
Wilson hastened to emphasize that America’s fight was with the German government, not the German people, reflecting the widespread belief that the militarist, undemocratic regime of Kaiser Wilhelm II had plunged the nation into war without consulting its subjects: “We have no quarrel with the German people. We have no feeling towards them but one of sympathy and friendship. It was not upon their impulse that their Government acted in entering this war. It was not with their previous knowledge or approval.”
This assertion wasn’t just sugarcoating or empty public diplomacy, [JB emphasis] but a central tenet of the worldview which led Wilson to seek a declaration of war in the first place. Pointing to the apparent success of the recent Russian Revolution in establishing popular rule, Wilson sought to portray the war as a struggle between democracy and authoritarianism, civilization and barbarism.
This rhetoric reflected his own ideals, but also just happened to foreshadow one of the most powerful propaganda strategies employed by the government, and its allies in the press and civil society, to motivate the American people during the war:
The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind.
Wilson ended his historic address, asking Congress to declare war for the fourth time in its history, on a charismatic note, at once humble and messianic, frightening and portentous:
It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts -- for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free. To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no other.
With these stirring words ringing in their ears, two days later, on April 4, 1917, the United States Senate voted overwhelmingly in favor of war against Germany, by a margin of 82 to six (the six holdouts were an eclectic bunch, and included Senator James Vardaman of Mississippi, an isolationist and notorious racist; George Norris of Nebraska, a left-leaning Progressive Republican who blamed Wall Street for bringing on the war; and Robert LaFollette, the pacifist Republican from Wisconsin, who had opposed even arming merchant ships as a belligerent act, and also had a large number of German-American constituents).
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