WHY WE WENT TO WAR CHAPTER I FUNDAMENTAL ANTAGONISMS T is a mistake to believe that a declaration of IT. war is the beginning of a conflict. It merely marks the transference of that conflict from the field of statesmanship to the field of arms. It is the last gesture of diplomacy, its non possumus in the face of an impending crisis. Wars, recent wars especially, are the final expression of seemingly fundamental and irreconcilable antagonisms between nations or races, and the entire world was called to arms between 1914 and 1918, not so much because boundaries were threatened as because national ideals were at stake. When, on April 6, 1917, Congress called into extraordinary session by President Wilson, declared war upon Germany it meant that since American principles were threatened the people of the United States could do no less than accept the repeated challenges and meet force |