If they had met with him four months earlier, they would have encountered a different man. He had run on peace, after all, winning re-election in November 1916 on the slogan “He kept us out of war.” Most Americans had little interest in sending soldiers into the stalemated slaughter that had ravaged the landscapes of Belgium and France since 1914. Wilson, a careful, deliberative former professor, had even tried to convince England and Germany to end World War I through diplomacy throughout 1916. On January 22, speaking before the U.S. Senate, he had proposed a negotiated settlement to the European war, a “peace without victory.”
