ABSTRACT
During the 32-month period of American neutrality in the First World War, advocates of peace devised several plans for bringing the belligerents to the conference table, but all were variations of two central proposals: independent mediation by the United States or a European neutral or joint mediation by two or more neutral nations. The idea of mediation by non-belligerent third parties was nothing new in 1914. Neutral states had offered their good offices to mediate between hostile powers going back to ancient times, and they had frequently made mediation offers to try to resolve international conflicts and end wars in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. President Theodore Roosevelt had served as mediator in ending the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, and Article 3 of the conventions of the Hague Peace Conferences of 1899 and 1907 had stated: “Powers, strangers to the dispute, have the right to offer good offices or mediation, even during the course of hostilities. The exercise of this right can never be regarded by one or the other parties in conflict as an unfriendly act.” 1 Most immediately, the United States and Mexico had accepted the good offices of Argentina, Brazil, and Chile (ABC) to mediate their contentious dispute following President Woodrow Wilson's impulsive decision, in response to a slight to the nation's honor, to send U.S. marines ashore at Vera Cruz, Mexico, in April 1914. The incursion had cost lives on both sides, but the ABC powers had successfully mediated the issues and defused the situation.
