Woodrow Wilson and the Lost Peace by Thomas A. BaileyReview by: J. G. RandallThe Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. 31, No. 3 (Dec., 1944), pp. 453-454Published by: Organization of American HistoriansStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1897125 .

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BOOK REVIEWS 453

The present reviewer takes but onie exception. The point of the Yorke- Camden opinion was not that some unknown pettifogger left the words "the Grand Mogul or" out of the Attorney and Solicitor General's Opinion of 1757. Rather, it was that the Proclamation of 1763 could not alter custom if that custom had hardened into common law; and lawyers of eminence believed that the validity of American Indian gifts or sales of land to English subjects was too deeply fixed in custom to be altered by a royal proclamation.

In the earlier part of the book, which deals with Indian affairs of the southern frontier from the 1740's to 1763, Mr. Alden is less convincing. To begin with, in factual detail, the necessary endless procession of Indian chiefs, traders, treaties, killings, and wars is one of which the reader soon wearies. Perhaps the only way to treat that late Indian summer of British imperial rule and the fourth- and fifth-rate persons whom Britain sent to rule and ruin her empire is in a spirit of cosmic laughter. Mr. Alden partly perceives how funny a figure Glenn was, but his equally funny associates, Dinwiddie, Dobbs, the President and Council of Georgia, and the incredible Bosomworths are not given the comic roles suitable to their abilities. Mr. Alden, too, does not fully comprehend how intricately all questions of the southern Indians were interwoven with the northern ones. There were a dozen things that would have saved Braddock's expedition (p. 46), but a contingent of Cherokee warriors was not one of them. As Glenn saw and Dinwiddie did not, the appearance of the expedition on the Monongahela would have turned the Miami, Delaware, and Shawnee completely to the side of the French. Indeed, the French told the Ohio Indians that Braddock's road was intended as a warpath for the Cherokees to strike them. By and large, though, Mr. Alden has done a piece of work which henceforth will be required reading for students of western history.

University of Illinois THEODORE C. PEASE

Woodrow Wilson and the Lost Peace. By Thomas A. Bailey. (New York: Macmillan Co., 1944. xii + 325 pp. Illustrations, maps, bibliograph- ical notes, and index. $3.00.)

In this solid book on peacemaking the author is neither a Wilsonian nor a Wilson hater. Though often critical of Wilson, he approves his aims, sees the complexities of his problem, deplores the losing of the peace, and hopes some day for a co-operating Senate. Wilson's "mis- takes" here treated are the familiar ones: he took over no big men (worse, no outstanding Republicans), appealed in 1918 for a Democratic Congress, went to Paris instead of remaining at Washington, did not

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.454 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY HISTORICAL REVIEW

bargain with the Allies as to the price of American effort, uttered vul- nerable slogans, slighted the Senate, and was at fault in many other matters. Some of the misconceptions are corrected: Wilson did not orig- inate the Fourteen Points (Lloyd George "out-Wilsoned" him); the submarine was a valid factor in 1917; Nye's theory of munitionmakers doing the trick was unverified; Wilson's objectives were not clearly re- pudiated in 1918; there were arguments for not using Taft, Hughes, Root, or especially Lodge, as negotiators; Wilson's "bungling" at Paris has been overstated; there were convincing reasons for incorporating the covenant into the treaty.

Though sometimes between the lines, the inconsistencies of Wilson's foes are shown. Wilson was blamed for a severe peace (Maurice Leon, in How Many World WVars?, thinks it was not nearly severe enough), but his opponents loudly demanded that Germany must pay. He was de- nounced for not scotching the secret treaties, which were no harder on the enemy than the purposes of many anti-Wilsonians. He blundered, it is said, by ignoring the Senate; yet when he consulted that body in late February, 1919, the sequel was a stinging Round Robin - a declara- tion of war on the League and on the President at a time when, by a newspaper poll, Americanl opinion overwhelmingly favored the League.

Wilson's errors are usually discussed thus: he "should have" done so-and-so; "if" he had, the result "would have" been such-and-such. This is not a criticism of the author; it has to do with the nature of the problem. The reasoning could be reversed: what "would have " been the case if senators had acted otherwise? If Wilson blundered under the motive of high statesmanship and in keeping with American opinion as the author shows, what shall be said of the blunders of a few senators, whose motive, as he also shows, was to "knife" Wilson in the back? Recounting Wilson's "errors" implies regret for things as they hap- pened. Could it be that Wilson was right and that international order by way of the League was the best available program for saving the world the agony of the present war?

The book is not the last word, but it is competent, scholarly, and read- able. The author plans an-other on America's role in the collapse of in- ternational security. Perhaps he will then study whether the great de- bacle was in constructing a treaty, which permitted revision and adjust- ment, or in failing t6 ratify and maintain the continuing processes of peace. It will be his task to inquire whether the thing lost was not the thing that Wilson planned and largely built.

University of Illinois J. G. RANDALL

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