Bryan didn’t stave off U.S. entry into World War I (in spite of trying). But from the earliest days of his stint as President Woodrow Wilson’s secretary of state in 1913–15, he concluded no fewer than thirty arbitration treaties between the United States and other countries, including the United Kingdom. As the Senate ratified treaty after treaty, Bryan distributed as souvenirs paperweights that had been created from War Department swords beaten into plowshares, inscribed with biblical peace promises. Notwithstanding the tsar’s good press for calling the peace conference in The Hague, no
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