In his speech to Congress on 2 April 1917 Wilson placed the United States on the side of democracy against untrustworthy autocracies. But he left open where the Entente were to be situated. In correspondence with London, it was the Irish impasse that he highlighted as the only obstacle to ‘an absolutely cordial cooperation’ between the US and Britain. Following the overthrow of Tsarism, all that was needed to demonstrate that ‘the real programme of government by the consent of the governed had been adopted everywhere in the anti-Prussian world’ was Home Rule.59
