Existing comment:
A Meeting to Discuss War
President Wilson and his cabinet met on March 20, 1917, to discuss the question of declaring war. Secretary of State Robert Lansing urged war, but he did not believe the United States should go to war solely because German submarines had sunk U.S. ships and killed Americans. In his account of the cabinet meeting discussion, Lansing related how he tried to convince the president of the duty "to suppress an autocratic government like the German because of its atrocious character and because it was a menace to the national safety of this country and of all other countries with liberal systems of government." |