This is CBS I on the World. I'm John Batchel.

Neil Langtoe's new book is The Approaching Storm.

Roosevelt, Wilson, Adams, and their clash over America's future.

This is progressivism, which is understood as a domestic reform movement in the United States,

but it comes up against the world of crisis in Europe. The armies, the allies and the

Axis, the Allies, the Germans are driven by the Kaiser. The English and the French don't

have one leadership, but they do have a concern to overwhelm the Germans and the Austrians.

Russia is in the war at this point, and the massacres are momentous.

They're transforming Europe for the next 50, 80 years, because a generation is being

exhausted and massacred, the best of the generation, the volunteers, the young people

from Paris, from London, from Berlin. And we come now to the U.S. staying back until it's May 7th,

1915. There has been an incident where a German submarine caused the death of an American traversing the Atlantic,

but the Lusitania is notable in that the number of Americans are killed, and it immediately introduces a crisis into the progressives.

Let's start with Wilson, Neil. His first reaction for the dead American previously in the spring was to write a sharp note to Germany.

What is his reaction to Lusitania?

Does he understand right away it's a crisis?

And who is Colonel House?

He does understand that this is a very troubling situation.

The previous death of an American citizen, Leon Thrasher, had really

concerned people in the administration, especially his Secretary of State, William Jennings,

Brian. And now with the Lucitaine, we have over 100 Americans being killed. It's multiplied

considerably. There's going to be immense pressure on Wilson to do something.

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