Wilsonian Diplomacy: Allied American Rivalries in War and Peace by Edward B. ParsonsReview by: Edward M. CoffmanThe American Historical Review, Vol. 84, No. 2 (Apr., 1979), pp. 574-575Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1855358 .

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574 Reviews of Books

international corporations. In time the multi- nationals demonstrated the inability of American corporations to compete abroad. The mounting trade deficits of the 1970S levied exorbitant costs on American trade and defense policies. The Vietnam war broke the ascendancy of those who had maxi- mized the nation's power and influence in world affairs-the imperial presidents, the unified mili- tary and bureaucratic leadership that organized and managed the imperial structure, and the polit- ical, scientific, and economic elite whose expertise had been essential for the imperial effort. As with Rome and Britain, a small war with its heavy costs sent imperial American power and influence into decline. Liska's syntax, if complex, does not im- pede the discovery of his laudable insights, but the book's detail, repetition, and digressions have lengthened it without elucidating its many impor- tant and exciting themes.

NORMAN A. GRAEBNER

University of Virginia

FREDERICK S. HARROD. Manning the New Navy: The Development of a Modern Naval Enlisted Force, i899- 1940. (Contributions in American History, number 68.) Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. 1978. Pp. xi, 276. $18.95.

The most neglected of all American minorities, the Navy enlisted man, is beginning to get some be- lated historiographical attention. Frederick S. Harrod traces changes in policies relating to the Navy enlisted man during the first forty years of this century.

Spurred by the need for large numbers of "sailor-technicians" to man the modern fleet, the Navy began using public relations techniques to draw fresh manpower from the interior of the country instead of from the seacoast. This brought in a better class of men and made the service more truly representative of the nation as a whole. To prepare these men for their duties, special schools and correspondence courses were established, making the Navy "a major educational estab- lishment" (p. 167). With bigger ships and more space the Navy was able to introduce such com- forts as bunks, lockers, laundries, dishwashers, as well as improved lighting, ventilation, and messing arrangements. Sports were emphasized as a healthy and appropriate form of recreation. Mod- est pay increases, bonuses, new ratings, and a clothing allowance made Navy life more attractive. The military justice system was modernized, and there was a tendency toward clemency for first offenders. As a result of these changes, writes Har- rod, by the 1920s and 1930S the Navy "had devel- oped a career enlisted force for the first time in its

history: reenlistment rates were high, desertion rates were low, and the service enjoyed a sizeable core of skilled manpower" (p. i68). Moreover, the men identified themselves with the Navy and not with seamen. As a part of the effort to make the fleet more homogenous, aliens were barred after 1907. Blacks saw their opportunities steadily di- minish, and they were not enlisted at all between 19i9 and 1932. After 1932 they were limited to servant billets.

Harrod has done impressive research in official and private records, both manuscript and printed, including service magazines and some newspa- pers, in addition to dissertations, books, and arti- cles. The lack of access to personnel files, and the relatively small number of reminiscences by en- listed men of necessity makes this mainly a study of administrative changes as seen from the top. It is nonetheless an important and well-written book.

Harrod tends to discount the importance of nineteenth-century precedents in paving the way for the changes he discusses. Inland recruiting, specialized training, recognition of individual worth, and the tempering of justice with mercy were all the subject of proposals or experiments in the previous century. The concept of continuous service dates from 1855. Because of it, there were old seamen in the late nineteenth-century who proudly identified themselves with the Navy. The Navy rarely rushed into any experiment.

It would have been interesting if the author had gone a bit further on some points. In The Search for Order (1967), Robert H. Wiebe saw the estab- lishment of the Great Lakes Training Station as an effort by wealthy Chicagoans, scared by the Hay- market riot, to bring federal power to that city. Harrod does not mention this argument, but his treatment of the topic does not tend to support Wiebe. Likewise it would be useful if more had been said about the role of religion. Almost cer- tainly the increase in Catholic chaplains was both a belated recognition of need as well as a result of the gradual awareness by Navy leaders of the Church's role as a conservative, stabilizing influ- ence in society. Yet these criticisms do not detract from the fact that this book is a welcome addition to naval history and to aspects of a broadly con- ceived social history of the United States.

HAROLD D. LANGLEY

Smithsonian Institution

EDWARD B. PARSONS. Wilsonian Diplomacy: Allied- American Rivalries in War and Peace. St. Louis: Fo- rum Press. 1978. Pp. ix, 213. $9.95.

Many Americans once believed that Woodrow Wilson was an idealistic innocent, a Christian

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United States 575

thrown into the lions' den of international affairs to suffer inevitable defeat at the hands of wily foreign leaders at Versailles. As scholars dug into the sources, it became apparent that the American president was not so naive and indeed made con- scious efforts on behalf of American interests. This should not be surprising, given Wilson's in- telligence and position; however, some may find Edward B. Parsons's concept of Wilson shocking. In Wilsonian Diplomacy Parsons depicts a man who, driven by economic determinism and suspicion of the British, attempted suppression of American aid to the Allies during World War I in order to ensure a postwar pre-eminence for his nation.

The author fills his monograph with figures and quotations drawn from extensive research in American and British diplomatic and naval sources. Others who have used some of the same sources might take issue with Parsons's selection of quotations and his interpretation. There is no question, nevertheless, that American leaders con- sidered economic matters and that some harbored a good deal of anti-British sentiment.

While Parsons deals with a wide variety of diplo- matic and naval issues through the war and the peace conference, the heart of his thesis is his charge that Wilson deliberately throttled the American war effort. In this critical area the au- thor's failure to use American military records and scholarly monographs-he seems to have relied largely on a I931 journalistic biography of the Sec- retary of War for military matters-severely hurts, if not destroys, his case. In the first place, whether Americans would fight as replacements in Allied ranks or as an independent army was a much more complex issue than Parsons suggests. Then, most significantly, the logistical difficulties of American military aid simply do not sustain the thesis that trained men and materiel were available in quan- tity before the spring of 1918. It takes months to turn industry to the production of war materiel as well as to raise, train, and equip a large army. Finally, there is the point that serious British requests for American troops came only late in 1917, after the failure of their own offensives, the Italian defeat, and the Russian collapse.

When one takes these factors into consideration, the reasons for American military aid arriving so late (albeit still in time to tip the balance) would seem to be other than the manipulations of a ma- chiavellian Woodrow Wilson.

EDWARD M. COFFMAN

University of Wisconsin, Madison

JOHN M. MULDER. Woodrow Wilson: The rears of Prep- aration. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1978. Pp. xv, 304. $16.50.

John M. Mulder's is the most thorough and per- ceptive account yet written of Woodrow Wilson's career prior to his active entry into politics. Except for his treatment of Wilson's father, the signifi- cance of his study lies not so much in his having uncovered new data as in his skillful use of the materials in the marvelously comprehensive Papers of Woodrow Wilson, edited by Arthur S. Link and his associates at Princeton, to trace Wilson's in- tellectual development during those crucial forma- tive years.

The central theme of this work is the all-per- vasive influence of Wilson's religious faith upon his thinking and behavior. The point is not new. Ray Stannard Baker stressed the importance of Wil- son's religion. More recently, Link has, in a series of articles, explored the influence of Wilson's Cal- vinist heritage. Mulder's contribution is in pin- pointing more specifically that heritage as "the Presbyterian covenant religious tradition" (p. xiii). That tradition did not supply Wilson with a ready-made set of theological ideas-for he was remarkably uninterested in metaphysical prob- lems-but rather with "a series of values, assump- tions, and attitudes, a way of perceiving the world and understanding his place within it" (p. xiii).

Mulder traces how Wilson derived from cove- nant theology persisting themes in his own think- ing: his passion for order, structure, and organic wholeness; his emphasis on the freedom and re- sponsibility of the individual; his belief that man's duty was to battle in this world for God's cause against the forces of evil; his ambition to integrate morality into the affairs of government; his con- ception of the role of the charismatic leader in changing the course of history; and what Mulder aptly calls "a profound conservatism that tested ideas and institutions of the past against the needs and demands of the present" (p. 49).

At the same time, he shows how the covenant heritage was sufficiently ambiguous, vague, and flexible to accommodate differing emphases in re- sponse to differing circumstances. Mulder points out that in the covenant tradition and within Wil- son "there was a tension between power and order on the one hand and freedom and shared authority on the other.... When disorder threatened him personally or the organic nature of society, he responded by stressing the need for integration and power. When disorder subsided and power appeared to become coercive, he emphasized free- dom and individualism" (p. 170).

Mulder does a brilliant job of delineating how Wilson's religious heritage interacted with his life experiences-his successes and disappointments, his physical ailments, and the impact upon him of such external influences as the tumultuous events of the 189os-to shape his thinking over time. Per-

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