"Lead this people into war, and they'll forget there was ever such a
thing as tolerance. To fight, you must be brutal and ruthless, and
the spirit of ruthless brutality will enter into the very fiber of
national life, infecting the Congress, the courts, the policeman on
the beat, the man in the street."
It is one of history's great ironies that Woodrow Wilson, who was re- elected as a peace candidate in 1916, led America into the first world war. With the help of a propaganda apparatus that was unparalleled in world history, Wilson forged a nation of immigrants into a fighting whole. An examination of public opinion before the war, propaganda efforts during the war, and the endurance of propaganda in peacetime raises
significant questions about the viability of democracy as a governing principle.
Like an undertow, America's drift toward war was subtle and forceful.…
