US Ambassador to Great Britain Walter Hines Page to President Woodrow Wilson, London, March 5, 1917.
(Not published until October 14, 1934).
France and England must have a large enough credit in the United States to prevent the collapse of world trade and of the whole of European finance.
If we should go to war with Germany the greatest help we could give the allies would be such a credit.... Trade would be continued and enlarged until the war ends, and after the war, Europe would continue to buy food and would buy from us also an enormous supply of things with which to re-equip her peace industries. We should thus reap the profit of an uninterrupted, perhaps an enlarging trade, over a number of years, and we should hold their securities in payment
Unless we go to war with Germany our Government, of course, cannot make such a direct grant of credit, but is there no way in which our Government might indirectly, immediately, help the establishment in the United States of a large Franco-British credit without a violation of armed neutrality?...
Perhaps our going to war is the only way in which our present prominent trade position can be maintained and a panic averted.
President Woodrow Wilson, from Speech in St. Louis, MO September 5, 1919,
- as reported by the New York Times September 6, 1919, page 2
"Why, my fellow-citizens, is there any man here or woman, let me say, is there any child, who does not know that the seed of war in the modern world is industrial and commercial rivalry?"