I’ve come across references to a speech given by President Wilson to Congress in which he uses the phrase ‘war to end the war’. I have not been able to track it down online. I hope someone can help me with this.
Perhaps it’s a misquote. I know he used the phrase “a war to end all wars” but not ‘war to end the war’
Yes, perhaps partial quote/misquote.
Here is a major speech:
With a profound sense of the solemn and even tragical character of the step I am taking and of the grave responsibilities which it involves, but in unhesitating obedience to what I deem my constitutional duty, I advise that the Congress declare the recent course of the Imperial German Government to be in fact nothing less than war against the government and people of the United States; that it formally accept the status of belligerent which has thus been thrust upon it, and that it take immediate steps not only to put the country in a more thorough state of defense but also to exert all its power and employ all its resources to bring the Government of the German Empire to terms and end the war.
Joint Address to Congress Leading to a Declaration of War Against Germany (1917)
https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/address-to-congress-declaration-of-war-against-germany
Thanks PastTense. Wilson doesn’t seem to use that phrasing anywhere, not even in his 14 Points speech. Yet he’s quoted as using “war to end all wars” and top it off it’s conflated with ‘make the world safe for democracy’, as if it’s all in the same speech.
The Wiki page on the expression does not mention Wilson at all.
Thanks Monty. I noticed that. But so many other websites do.
It’s probably one of those cases where a famous person used a particular phrase, and collective memory turned it into a similar, but catchier and more quotable wording that has since been associated with that person.
The notion the Great War as a “war to end war” was already widely current before Wilson’s speech. In the extract from his speech quoted above, Wilson doesn’t appeal to or invoke that notion at all — he simply calls for the US to prosecute the war vigorously in order to defeat Germany earlier than later. He doesn’t talk about ending war; he just talks about ending the war — big difference.
He did call for the world to be made “safe for democracy”, but this isn’t the same thing as ending war. In fact Wilson was clear that, rather than ending war, his priority was defending liberty:
The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty.
What he’s actually saying here is that war is justified by the need to defend democracy, and that the peace he wants is one which is founded on political liberty. Far from ending war, then, the implication is that war would continue to be an appropriate measure to defend democracy/liberty.
If you add in an assumption that liberal democracies won’t go to war with one another, and another assumption that all countries will become liberal democracies once war succeeds in making that “safe”, then, yeah, you can reason your way to any argument that the Great War would or should or at least could end war. But Wilson doesn’t state those assumptions and I don’t know if we have any reason to think that he made them. And, let’s be honest, they are pretty extravagant assumptions.
I can’t find any in the first few pages of Google hits.
Maybe not the best metric, to be admitted. Do you have a specific cite crediting Wilson with any variation of that phrase? My research indicates the author H. G. Wells coined the phrase or variations of it around 1914, well before Woodrow Wilson would have been making speeches about a war he and his administration was desperate to avoid entanglement in.
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DINK STOVER GOES TO WAR
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I just typed in the words “wilson war to end all wars” and got many pages of results
This is from the Washington Post.
“If not, Bush’s “new world order” will go the way of Wilson’s “war to end all wars.””
Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com › archive › 1991/01/31
](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1991/01/31/dink-stover-goes-to-war/6cd62913-1054-40e4-92ed-43ff5d0a4c15/)
Jan 31, 1991 — If not, Bush’s “new world order” will go the way of Wilson’s "war to end all wars." The “next American century” too depends on a willingness …
That’s an editorial, which often favor rhetorical power over factual accuracy.
I’m satisfied that Wilson did not actually use those words but I’m surprised that the quote “war to end all wars” repeatedly associated with him. I have not come across any speeches in which he uses those exact words.
He championed the League of Nations and the general principle of nations eschewing war as a means to accomplish their international goals.
The desire to end war is part of his legacy, so it gets conflated with the independent idea that this novel World War was so horrible and costly that it would provide useful impetus to that goal.