ABSTRACT
Woodrow Wilson had inherited an enormous reserve of progressivism, which had already opened all avenues of social life to further enhancement. Those Progressives would survive publicly for the most part, in the 1910s, who accepted this dictum and who discerned the “average” American as grateful for new inventions and open-ended native opportunities, and for a history replete with integrity and good, victorious causes. The new radicals, standing on all the Progressives had accomplished in years of intense effort, believed they could direct national opinion. The keynote of optimism infected even the critics of progressivism, who saw themselves as enriching and refurbishing the national heritage. For dedicated Progressives saw American intervention in World War I as an extension of domestic progressivism: the crusade for democracy carried further. In fact, Frank P. Walsh, the son of poor Missourians before he became a famous trial lawyer and Progressive, had risen to what he clearly saw as a test of the nation’s policies.
