The Time for Decision; U.S. War Aims; and Woodrow Wilson and the Lost Peace

Abstract

These three books about recent diplomatic history are part of the great public debate which will help to settle the immediate controversies of our foreign policy. Each attempts to draw lessons for the future from what it treats as the mistakes, and successes, of the last thirty years of our behavior in the international community. Each is primarily concerned with certain of the large decisions which the government of the United States will have to make: whether to help build, and then join, a new League of Nations; whether to maintain our wartime alliances and associations; and how to treat Germany, Japan and our other enemies. These are the first questions of our times. Their resolution will fix the course of our foreign policy for a generation, and establish the framework within which we can pursue domestic social, political and economic goals. How they are met will determine the fate of the Republic. In that sense these are desperately popular books, and it may not be altogather inappropriate for them to be reviewed by a lay reader, rather than a professional historian.