Despite public displays of outrage over the loss of American lives to German torpedoes, the great majority of Americans continued to oppose going to war to protect their country’s neutral rights. So did Wilson, although he continued to warn Berlin that he was prepared to hold Germany to strict accountability. At the same time, he refused to equate the defense of American national interests with an interventionist military policy. When he talked of strengthening America’s army and navy in November 1915, he stressed that he was thinking only of defense. He had a very practical reason for holding an olive branch rather than sword. As he told Edward House on December 15, 1915, “if the Allies were not able to defeat Germany alone, they could scarcely do so with the help of the United States because it would take too long for us to get in a state of preparedness. It would therefore be a useless sacrifice on our part to go in.”

House offered a policy that was amenable to Wilson’s idealism: an interventionist political policy as the mediator of a compromise peace between the belligerents. Encouraged by both House and the British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey, Wilson hoped to exploit what he assumed was America’s superior moral position to achieve a negotiated peace followed by general disarmament and a league of nations.