Wilson was no doubt more comfortable with the British than the French and wrote eloquently about the merits of the British constitution. But precisely because Britain was the nation from which America’s own political culture had historically derived, it was essential for Wilson that Britain itself must remain fixed in the past. The thought that it might be advancing along the path of democratic progress, alongside rather than behind America, was deeply unsettling. The fact that the Prime Minister who took office weeks after Wilson’s re-election, Lloyd George, was perhaps the greatest pioneer
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