President Wilson's Neutrality During World War I

When WWI started, President Wilson had no intention of joining in on the war. He even stated that he wanted Americans to be “neutral in their hearts and in their minds”. One reason why this request was difficult was because America was filled with immigrants. Since all these immigrants came from different countries and backgrounds, they had loyalty to certain countries that were involved in the war. Another reason neutrality was hard for America was our financial relationship with the allied powers. During the first 2 years of the war, the sales of our exports to Britain and France had tripled, but in Germany they had significantly dropped. This is mainly because of the British blockade across the North Sea. This made it so difficult for them to get things
Britain and France have a democratic government. This is why Wilson favored the allied countries. It would have been fine if he had kept this partiality to himself, but it was very contradictory for him to ask all of America to be neutral when he was not neutral. Also, the Brits would send out false news about Germany. Because of the blockade, it was difficult for Germany to tell the truth about what was going on. This made it hard for Americans to be neutral because they were led to believe that the Germans were cruel people. The Germans were not cruel, but they were not perfect either. They used submarines, called “U-boats,” to break through the British blockade. This was very controversial because international law said that if you wanted to destroy a ship that was a warship, you needed to stop the ship, warn them about what you were planning to do, and let passengers get off and go to safety. Submarines do not play by these rules. They used the element of surprise by staying completely submerged underwater and sinking ships. Germany then created a warzone around Great Britain that would sink any ship from any nation that came into that war