Charles Austin Beard, the noted progressive historian, commented to The New York Times that the only conceivable reason Wilson would have taken such an initiative was that, as in 1905 when President Roosevelt mediated the Russo-Japanese War, one of the sides in the conflict was on the point of bankruptcy and needed urgently to end the struggle.24 That Wilson meant to bankrupt them was precisely what the Entente feared. For Paris and London the questions raised by Wilson’s speech went beyond constitutional niceties.
