This is CBS Eye on the World.

Here's John Batchel.

I'm visiting with Neil Langtoe.

His new book is The Approaching Storm.

This is progressivism at the beginning of the 20th century.

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

America is hanging back from the Great War, the massacres in Europe, hanging back.

Wilson has said in 1915 he's too proud to fight.

He sends strong notes of protest to Berlin.

Each time there are Americans who die in attacks by submarines

against passenger liners.

And those notes have been enough to satisfy America that he's standing up for their rights

at the same time they're remaining neutral back from the war.

But in March of 1916 comes the word of the

sinking of the ship's Sussex, and with it more American deaths. Neil, again, we're dealing with

Wilson trying to find a way to explain his position to the American people and at the same time

dealing with the tension he feels from the peace movement, the neutral movement, represented

by Jane Adams and her colleagues, and Teddy Roosevelt, who is not only for preparedness,

he's for going to war now, as we will see it.

Teddy Roosevelt calls the the President Wilson, a Byzantine logo feat, meaning he comes up

with language that is confounding to me, and I shove it aside.

At this point, Wilson's anxiety about the Sussex and the delay because there is some

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