by Robert W. McDonald

Created on: November 21, 2008   Last Updated: January 22, 2009

There is no doubt that Woodrow Wilson was the first American President to assume a prominent role in international affairs. However, it is rarely mentioned that his second term in office was marked by his blatant disregard for the Constitutionally-guaranteed civil liberties of American citizens as well as for his de facto nationalization of the nation's wartime industries.

Although Wilson had campaigned for re-election in 1916 under the famous slogan "He kept us out of war," there is evidence that, once his second term in office had been assured, he had every intention of involving the United States in the European War. Regarding this evidence, two examples are illustrative.

During the summer of 1916 Major Douglas MacArthur was ordered to study the potential role of wartime government censorship and to prepare a report on that topic, along with his recommendations on how censorship could be implemented in the United States. MacArthur's recommendations were later distilled into six regulations with which the news media would be expected to "voluntarily" comply. These regulations were announced on the afternoon of March 25, 1917 (a full two weeks before war was declared) and one of these, the sixth, immediately caused a discussion regarding its probable violation of the First Amendment's protection of the freedom of the press.

The first five regulations dealt with reporting on matters of a purely military nature such as troop movements, munitions factories, and military-related technologies. The sixth regulation read:

"It is requested that no information, reports, or rumors attributing a policy to the government in any international situation, not authorized by the President or a member of the Cabinet, be published without first consulting the Department of State."

Major newspapers, such as the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle, openly criticized the regulation on the grounds that it would infringe on the right to free speech of the newspapers' usual contacts within the government as well as constrain what could be reported. Although these were certainly reasonable concerns, "voluntary" compliance with the regulations would soon become moot with the passage of the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918.

Another indication that Wilson deliberately misrepresented his intentions to the American people is provided by his actions concerning the War Industries Board.

Buried within the Army Appropriations Act of 1916 was a provision for establishing

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