SOURCE: "Woodrow Wilson and World War I: A Reappraisal," in Journal of American Studies, Vol. 19, No. 3, December, 1985, pp. 325-48.

In the following essay, Thompson examines Wilson's management of World War I, praising him for his pragmatism.

Woodrow Wilson was the first American President to leave the Western Hemisphere during his period of office, and, as befitted him, the circumstances in which he did so were neither casual nor frivolous. He went to Europe in late 1918 to take part in the peace conference following a war that the United States had played a crucial part in bringing to a decisive end. His aim was to secure a peace that accorded with the proposals he had set out in his Fourteen Points address of January 1918 and in other speeches—a peace that would be based upon justice and thus secure consent, that would embody liberal principles (the self-determination of peoples...