This is CBS I on the World. Here's John Bachelor.

I'm visiting with Neil Langto. 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 a 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 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 suggestion that the Sussex sank from a mine and was not deliberately attacked. That will be eventually shoved aside. was Neil. Good evening again. I think he was under enormous pressure with the

sinking of the Sussex. People around him felt that he had been extremely patient as far as Germans were concerned.

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