The Foreign Service Journal, November 2021

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | NOVEMBER 2021 101 A Masterpiece of Diplomatic History The Road Less Traveled: The Secret Battle to End the Great War, 1916–1917 Philip Zelikow, PublicAffairs, 2021, $30/ hardcover, e-book available, 352 pages. Reviewed by Harry Kopp The Great War of 1914-1918 taught les- sons of pessimism, futility and corruption of the human spirit. Historian Barbara Tuchman blamed the war on “the bel- licose frivolity of senile empires.” Workers of the world did not unite, she wrote. Instead, across Europe a fevered nation- alism carried them to war “willingly, even eagerly, like the middle class, like the upper class, like the species.” When the fighting at last stopped, some 20 million soldiers and civilians were dead. The French poet Paul Valéry wrote: “We, we civilizations, we know now that we are mortal.” Memoirist Edmund Blunden wrote that victory belonged not to any of the belligerents but to War itself, a doom-laden insight that soon was vindicated. The Great War became World War I when the rapid arrival of the next conflict made it clear that people would have to give them numbers. “What if …” is not a question histori- ans normally ask. Nor do they normally spend time examining events that did not happen. But what if the war had ended differently, and earlier? It could have; it should have happened. President Woodrow Wilson in 1916 sought a way to bring the Allied and Cen- tral Powers to a peace conference that would end the war and keep the United States out of the fighting. The govern- ments of Britain and Germany were eager for peace (though not in public), and France and Russia were exhausted. Yet the road to peace was the road less traveled, the road not taken. The war raged on. Philip Zelikow, holder of two named chairs at the University of Vir- ginia, is a former Foreign Service officer and senior policy official under five presidents. In this book he documents and explains the misunderstandings, confu- sions, betrayals, egotism and cowardice behind this nearly forgotten episode. It is a meticulous, back-and-forth, almost day-by-day account, based largely on memoirs, diaries, letters and similar source materials left by the principals in Great Britain, Germany and the United States—the definitive history of a colossal failure. In brief, Wilson had wanted to mediate the crisis in Europe even before the first shots were fired. But his diplomatic infra- structure was feeble—no policy process, poor communications and only a few able career people (such as chargé Joseph Grew in Berlin) among many inexperi- enced patronage appointees—and he “did not know what he did not know.” As his conduit to London and Berlin Wilson relied on private citizen Edward House, a friend who had worked on his 1912 campaign and soon became “practically a member of the family.” House, from a wealthy Texas family, was in Zelikow’s words “a savvy political operator,” a “quintes- sential inside man,” an ami- able dilettante and a good listener, uninterested in public office but possessed of “odd utopian ambitions.” (House had written a novel, published anonymously, that columnist Walter Lippmann said displayed “the imagination of a romantic boy of 14 who dreams of what he would do if he had unlimited power and no one objected.”) British and German politics blocked Wilson’s early efforts. A divided British cabinet—with the foreign secretary on one side, and the war secretary and chief of the general staff on the other—would not respond to peace feelers before a military offensive planned for the sum- mer of 1916. A similar split prevailed in Berlin. The chancellor and foreign minister were eager for Wilson’s mediation—prepared even to pledge German withdrawal from Belgium and Alsace—but the general staff held that idea in contempt. They sought and expected the kaiser’s approval for the unrestricted submarine warfare that, they were sure, would bring quick victory. BOOKS In brief, Wilson had wanted tomediate the crisis in Europe even before the first shots were fired. But his diplomatic infrastructure was feeble … and he “did not knowwhat he did not know.”