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Perhaps Traxel's choices about which figures and movements to include and which to exclude can best be understood in light of what appears to be his real passion, for description and analysis of America's "crusade" in Mexico and the nation's subsequent entry into World War I. Most readers are likely to find this section of the book (which is nearly two-thirds of the text) to be the most engaging; it is rich in detail, and it points to America's current struggles to shape the broader world through foreign policy. Traxel immerses his readers in the often overlooked 1913-14 Mexican Revolution as a way of underscoring both the appeal of the crusading spirit and the sobering results that came from applying high ideals to a complex world. Not surprisingly, Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan and President Woodrow Wilson emerge as idealists somewhat misplaced in a world that seemed to demand skilled realists. Expressing anger at the events that led to the Mexican coup in 1913, Wilson found quickly that moral outrage against revolutionaries was not very effective. Gradually employing more military force as well as covert strategies of engagement, Wilson still found the results to be far from satisfactory. Even with good intentions, crusaders could not guarantee a desired outcome.
Yet Wilson and Bryan remained idealists in regard toevents that unfolded in Europe. Traxel's description of the outbreak of World War I is wonderfully detailed. He relies heavily on the perspective of Brand Whitlock, the American ambassador to Belgium, a journalist, novelist,and social reformer, to bring to life the atrocities of the German army. Through the eyes of Whitlock, readers gain a sense of the fear and trepidation that accompanied the German march through Belgium.
Moving back and forth across the Atlantic, Traxel describes American efforts to remain "neutral." He also depicts the extensive effort that the German government made first to spy out and then to orchestrate acts of sabotage against American installations they believed to be aiding the British and the French. We meet the idiosyncratic German ambassador, Count von Bernstorff, who had a penchant for wearing pink shirts, red suspenders, and occasionally yellow shoes. But Bernstorff was no comic book character; he was a highly skilled and often effective diplomat who, according to Traxel, participated in sophisticated espionage against the United States before this nation entered the war.
Given the current global "war on terror," this complex story of sabotage, espionage, and anti-German sentiment is all too timely. Traxel utilizes Jules Witcover's work on German sabotage, particularly of the Black Tom munitions facility in New Jersey in 1916, to underscore the involvement of the German overnment. According to Traxel, Franklin Roosevelt, then serving as assistant secretary of the Navy, was so disturbed by the level of sabotage that it led him to agree with military leaders after Pearl Harbor who "wanted to sequester both first generation Japanese immigrants and their citizen children in camps far from industrial centers."
Traxel also makes more understandable America's reluctance to get involved in the Great War. Not many Americans in 2009 are aware of the degree of anti-militaristic sentiment across the country after war broke in Europe in 1914 and casualties mounted at a staggering rate. Some readers may recall that William Jennings Bryan was an avowed pacifist who ultimately resigned his post as secretary of state; few will know that Josephus Daniels, Wilson's secretary of the Navy, and—even more stunningly—Wilson's secretary of War, Newton Baker, were both ardent pacifists. While Henry Ford's ill-conceived Peace Ship to Europe in 1915 might be categorized as almost quaint, the American Union Against Militarism and Women's Peace Party were but two of countless groups dedicated to ending military conflict, reflecting the widespread belief that war could be avoided by simply refusing to fight.
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