Question

How do the reasons for U.S. entry into the war given by President Wilson differ from those given by Senator Norris? Whose perspective do you find the most convincing? Why?

Answer 1

President Wilson did not want to subdue its nation to German military forces, the reason why he declared the war to Germany and affirmed that although send his population to war sounded terrible, they needed to defend their rights and make to listen to their voices; he secured it would be the beginning of the freedom through his discourse of fourteen points. Meanwhile, Norris and other senators voted against the Germany war declaration. Norris claimed that the war would remove the prosperity to the citizens, that it was cruel and inhuman and it just carried the money to manufacture of ammunition and not for the nation's benefits.  

Of course, President Wilson had reason defend the governators' rights of different nations, included his, but maybe it was not the better way because the Senator Norris had the reason too; the violence and the war just would carry misfortune to the nation.

Answer 2

Woodrow Wilson wrote 14 points that would represent concrete morally defensible motives for the United States to enter the war. Most of them are geopolitical claims of European countries with little bargaining power, which are being stifled by the alliance of central countries participating in the Great War. These points would give legitimacy to the entry of the United States into the war after having been neutral since its inception, and would have the purpose of putting an end to the wars between different nations by creating diplomatic mechanisms and supranational institutions that allow the operation of them.

Quite the contrary, Senator George William Norris expounded in his speeches the reasons why the United States should not enter the Great War. Norris's arguments were based on expressing that the entry into the war was driven by big businessmen of the industrial-military conglomerate, bankers and brokers of Wall Street, who feared losing the money loaned to the nations of the Triple Entente and saw a opportunity to maximize their profits at the expense of the suffering of millions of Americans who would be greatly harmed by participating in the war.

Finally the United States entered the war with the official motive of having detected a telegram from the German minister of international relations towards the British ambassador in Mexico and the sinking of the ship Lusitania; and at the end of the war the United States ceded some of Wilson's 14 points in the negotiations with the central countries and managed to obtain the claims pointed out in other points.

Senator Norris 'arguments seem more convincing because history showed that the real reasons for the United States' entry into the conflict were to obtain economic benefits and position the country as a great military power. Wilson's arguments, on the other hand, were an excuse to achieve these proposed objectives.