The Vision for Peace

IN 1916, before the United States even entered the war, Wilson began to promote his vision of a permanent arrangement to ensure peace on earth. According to biographer Gene Smith, he envisioned “the establishment of a League of Nations which would be a forum for the dispensation of justice for all men and wipe out the threat of war forever.” Then in 1917, and with the United States at war, he became the great crusader for what he hoped would be an everlasting peace and the culminating glory of his career.

He now devoted his energies to spreading his gospel of the League of Nations, as he conceived it. He aimed for a “peace without victory” in which there would not be a vanquished German people but, rather, overthrown militaristic, autocratic rulers.

As the basis for peace negotiations, he established his famous Fourteen Points. These consisted of five general ideals for all the contending nations to respect, plus eight points that dealt with specific political and territorial problems. The 14th point was the most vital, since it represented the very core of Wilson’s crusade​—the establishment of a League of Nations.

“The Greatest Success or the Supremest Tragedy”

He was so convinced of having God’s backing in his project that he insisted on attending the Paris Peace Conference in 1919​—this in spite of the fact that many political friends thought that the president of the United States should remain independent of the peace negotiations. He believed that he had the people of the world behind him even if he did not have all the politicians. He was convinced that he was God’s instrument for peace. He, more than anyone else, had to go to Paris.

He confided to his private secretary, Tumulty: “This trip will either be the greatest success or the supremest tragedy in all history; but I believe in a Divine Providence . . . It is my faith that no body of men, however they concert their power or their influence, can defeat this great world enterprise.” (Italics ours.) As one authority states: “The President was determined to use his power and prestige to have the final peace settlement include a plan for a League of Nations.”

Back in November 1918, the German armies were at the point of defeat. They were offered an armistice that would bring the war to a halt. Negotiations were started that involved Britain’s Welsh Prime Minister Lloyd George, rugged French Premier Georges Clemenceau, cultured Italian Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando, and the inscrutable Japanese representative, Count Nobuaki Makino. Wilson was determined to convince them that his League was the only answer to Europe’s problems as well as the world’s.

“The Star of Bethlehem Rising Again”

Wilson was the people’s hero as he toured Europe prior to the Peace Conference in Paris. As Herbert Hoover later wrote: “He was received everywhere with almost religious fervor . . . The ovations were greater than had ever come before to a mortal man.” His peace initiative and vision had stirred the masses. During his tour of Italy, the crowds shouted, “Viva Wilson, God of Peace.” Almost supernatural powers were attributed to him. Hoover adds: “To them, no such man of moral and political power and no such an evangel of peace had appeared since Christ preached the Sermon on the Mount. . . . It was the star of Bethlehem rising again.”

Evidently Wilson believed with evangelistic fervor in his mission to establish peace on earth. Writer Charles L. Mee states: “At one point he amazed Lloyd George and Clemenceau by explaining how the league would establish a brotherhood of man where Christianity had not been able to do so. ‘Why,’ Lloyd George recalled Wilson as saying, ‘has Jesus Christ so far not succeeded in inducing the world to follow His teachings in these matters? It is because He taught the ideal without devising any practical means of attaining it. That is the reason why I am proposing a practical scheme to carry out His aims.’”​—The End of Order, Versailles 1919.

Certainly, Wilson got encouragement from many quarters. The U.S. secretary of the Navy, Josephus Daniels, greeted the publication of the draft of the Covenant of the League of Nations with this eulogy: “The draft of the League of Peace is almost as simple as one of the Parables of Jesus and almost as illuminating and as uplifting. It is time for church bells to peal, for preachers to fall upon their knees, for statesmen to rejoice, and for the angels to sing, ‘Glory to God in the Highest!’”

The League and the Catholic Church

Did preachers fall on their knees? Some were certainly quick to hail the League as God’s answer to mankind’s problems. Pope Benedict XV had nearly upstaged Wilson in August 1917 when, according to writer John Dos Passos, he appealed to the warring nations “to negotiate a peace without victory, on approximately the terms laid down in Woodrow Wilson’s speeches before America’s entrance into the war.” However, Wilson felt he was too busy waging war to pay attention to the pope​—that is, until he received a significant letter from Colonel House, his personal aide. It stated:

“I am so impressed with the importance of the situation that I am troubling you again . . . I believe that you have an opportunity to take the peace negotiations out of the hands of the Pope and hold them in your own.”

Wilson took swift action to make sure that he did not lose the initiative. The League of Nations vision was his, not the pope’s. And he was the man to see it through.

Nevertheless, the Catholic Church lent its support to the League. Cardinal Bourne, the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster until the end of 1934, stated: “Remember that the League of Nations, whatever imperfections it may have, is carrying out the desire of the Catholic Church for Peace, and carrying out the wishes of our Holy Father, the Pope.”

“The League of Nations Is Rooted in the Gospel”

The Protestant clergy were not reticent in their support of the League either. The New York Times for January 11, 1920, reported: “The London church bells this evening have been pealing in celebration of the conclusion of peace with Germany and the official coming into existence of the League of Nations.”

A booklet published in England under the title The Christian Church and the League of Nations stated: “The Christian Church in Great Britain supports the League of Nations. Here is an Affirmation made by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, thirty-five English Diocesan Bishops, the Moderator of the Church of Scotland, and official representatives of all the Free Churches in England:

“We are convinced:

“(1) That God at this time is calling the nations of the world to learn to live as one family;

“(2) That the machinery of international cooperation provided by the League of Nations . . . affords the best available means of applying the principles of the Gospel of Christ to stop war, to provide justice, and to organise peace.”

Prior to the above, in December of 1918, the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America issued a declaration that said in part: “As Christians we urge the establishment of a League of Free Nations at the coming Peace Conference. Such a League is not a mere political expedient; it is rather the political expression of the Kingdom of God on earth.” (Italics ours.) It then went on to say: “The Church has much to give and much to gain. It can give a powerful sanction by imparting to the new international order something of the prophetic glory of the Kingdom of God. . . . The League of Nations is rooted in the Gospel.”

“THE League exists, but what is it to be? Is it to be the real thing or an imposture?” That question was raised by British Lord Robert Cecil, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the League of Nations Union. Yes, although many people were led to believe that the League would guarantee peace, others expressed serious doubts.

Noted English author Jerome K. Jerome wrote: “The League of Nations has come into the world stillborn. . . . Its sponsors . . . invite us to the christening. . . . They hoped for a new Messiah. They seem to have persuaded themselves that by much shouting and prostrating of themselves they can raise it from the dead.” The London Standard stated: “A League of Nations in which no one believes, but to which lip service is paid by everybody, is simply a sham, and a most dangerous sham.”

A Dissenting Voice

On the other hand, we have seen how the clergy welcomed the League. But in the midst of the religious clamor in its favor, in May 1920 the Watch Tower magazine published an unequivocal denunciation of the League, stating: “This has been heralded abroad as the great emancipator of mankind . . . But of necessity it must fail.”

Why was the League destined to failure? Was it for purely political reasons, because the United States had failed to join? No, the whole issue of the League of Nations was seen by Jehovah’s Witnesses as merely an incident against the backdrop of a much greater drama​—the universal conflict between the Sovereign Lord, Jehovah, and the founder of universal rebellion, Satan. (Job, chapters 1 and 2; John 8:44) Thus the League, promoted by politicians and praised by the clergy, was really Satan’s counterfeit remedy to turn attention away from the only true solution for mankind’s ills​—God’s Kingdom by Christ. From God’s standpoint the League was truly a “sham” and an “imposture.”​—Compare Psalm 2.

Therefore the above-quoted Watch Tower continued: “Even had the United States adopted the League of Nations, joining with the other countries of the world, it could not have accomplished the purpose expressed, for the reason that it is man-made, formulated by selfish men; and for the further reason that it is contrary to God’s way.”

The End of a Vision

THE League of Nations was created and held its second meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1920. In spite of failing health and long and strenuous negotiations in Paris, Woodrow Wilson’s efforts seemed to have been crowned with success.

Through the League, Wilson was going to spread his “truth of justice and of liberty and of peace.” In one of his speeches, he stated: “We have accepted that truth and we are going to be led by it, and it is going to lead us [the American people], and through us the world, out into pastures of quietness and peace such as the world never dreamed of before.” Such was the stuff of his vision.

To the U.S. Senate he said: “The stage is set, the destiny disclosed. It has come about by no plan of our conceiving, but by the hand of God who led us into this way. . . . We can only go forward, with lifted eyes and freshened spirit, to follow the vision.” (Italics ours.) The visionary had spoken again. He still believed he was God’s tool to bring peace to mankind.

Rejected at Home

In Europe, Wilson had been heralded as a savior president. But even before he had gone to the Peace Conference, warning salvos had been fired across his bow in the United States. Author Elmer Bendiner reports: “Theodore Roosevelt handed down the verdict [of the U.S. Congress]: ‘Our Allies and our enemies and Mr. Wilson himself should all understand that Mr. Wilson has no authority whatever to speak for the American people at this time . . . Mr. Wilson and his fourteen points . . . have ceased to have any shadow of right to be accepted as expressive of the will of the American people.’”

Woodrow Wilson made the mistake of selling his vision in Europe while neglecting the doubters in his own country. In March 1920 the U.S. Congress voted to stay out of the League.

Blinded by his cause, Wilson plowed on regardless. In his last public speech, his conviction rang out loud and clear but in vain: “I have seen fools resist Providence before, and I have seen their destruction, as will come upon these again, utter destruction and contempt. That we shall prevail is as sure as that God reigns.”

With his health recently shattered by a stroke, the negative vote from his own countrymen only made things worse. His League vision became blurred and incomplete. On February 3, 1924, Woodrow Wilson died. His last words were: “I am a broken piece of machinery. When the machinery is broken​—I am ready.” He was physically broken and so was his vision of a world-embracing League of Nations.

“The Treaty of Versailles No Longer Exists”!

Although for 15 years no official war was declared again in the world, the League was in its death throes even from its birth. It proved to be impotent to stop Bolivia and Paraguay from going to war in 1933. It failed to impede Mussolini’s rape of Ethiopia in 1935. By destruction and conquest Italy removed Ethiopia from the League’s roster of nations and then abandoned the League itself in December 1937. The following year seven Latin-American nations quit the League. The vision was crumbling.

In 1936 civil war broke out in Spain. The members of the League opted for official nonintervention in that war. However, Germany, which had quit the League in 1933, and Italy both lent material support to General Franco’s rebellion against the Republican government in Madrid. The League was impotent to stop the slaughter on Spanish soil. The Spanish Civil War was the rehearsal for what would be the death knell of the League of Nations​—World War II.

In the meantime Hitler had come to power in Germany and was swiftly dismantling the shackles of the Treaty of Versailles, imposed on Germany after the Great War. He wanted Lebensraum (living space) for the German nation. He expanded Germany’s borders by taking over the Saar, the Rhineland, and Austria. In 1939 he completed his occupation of Czechoslovakia. In all these moves, the League was virtually impotent to take action.

Hitler had long been annoyed by the concession to Poland of a corridor through Germany to the Baltic port of Danzig. In August 1939 he brought an end to that. His representative delivered a message to the High Commissioner of the League of Nations in Danzig, stating: “You represent the Treaty of Versailles; the Treaty of Versailles no longer exists. In two hours the Swastika [Nazi flag] will be hoisted above this house.”

On September 1, 1939, Hitler’s armies invaded Poland. Britain and France retaliated by declaring war on Germany. World War II had started.

The Vision Fades and Dies

Woodrow Wilson made a prediction to the people of Omaha back in 1919 that was to prove that his League was a failure. According to biographer Ishbel Ross, he had said: “‘I can predict with absolute certainty, that within another generation there will be another world war if the nations do not concert the method [the League] by which to prevent it.’ And at San Diego he sounded another prophetic note when he said, ‘What the Germans used were toys as compared with what would be used in the next war.’” Despite the League, World War II became a reality, and the weapons used were no toys.

Why did the League fail? In his book A Time for Angels, writer Elmer Bendiner comments: “The League’s birth arose out of a series of political fantasies: that the cease-fire of 1919 was a peace and not merely a truce; that national interests could be subordinated to world interests; that a government can espouse a cause other than its own.” And the Bible points up one more fantasy​—that men can establish through political agencies that which only God’s promised Kingdom rule can bring—​true peace and happiness for all mankind.​—Revelation 21:1-4.

With the outbreak of World War II in 1939, the League lay like a cadaver, awaiting burial. In 1946 “its properties and its heritage of hope and folly,” as writer Bendiner puts it, were handed over to a successor, the United Nations.