When the war began the United States proclaimed a united policy of strict neutrality. Woodrow Wilson's goal was to broker a peace and he sent his top aside Colonel House on repeated missions to the belligerents, but they were so confident in the victory that the peace was ignored. When a German U-boat sank the British liner Lusitania in 1915, Wilson said "American is too proud to fight" and demanded an end to the attacks on passenger ships. Germany complied. Wilson repeatedly warned that the U.S. would not tolerate unrestricted marine warfare, in violation of international law and human rights. Wilson was under a lot of pressure from the war hawks led by former president, Theodore Roosevelt, who denounced German acts as "piracy". Wilson realized he needed to enter the war in oder to shape the peace; indeed in 1919 he won the League of Nations at the Pairs Peace Conference.
On April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson went before a joint session of Congress to request a declaration of war against Germany. Wilson cited Germany's violation of its pledge to suspend unrestricted submarine warfare in the North Atlantic and in the Mediterranean, as well as its attempts to entice Mexico into an alliance against the United States, as his reasons fro declaring war, In April 4, the U.S. Senate voted in support of the measure to declare war on Germany. The House concurred two days later. The United States later declared war on German ally Austria-Hungary on December 7, 1917.
President Woodrow Wilson's 14 Points were a statement made on January 8, 1918 declaring that WW1 was being fought for a moral cause and calling for postwar peace in Europe. Europeans generally welcomed Wilson's intervention, but his main allied colleagues were not sure of the applicability of Wilsonian idealism. This speech was the only explicit statement of the war aims by any of the nations fighting in WW1.
Picture Sources:
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/~le20j/images/neutrality1.jpg
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/pnp/cph/3g00000/3g03000/3g03800/3g03859v.jpg
http://new.euro-med.dk/wp-content/uploads/wilson%C2%B4s-14-points.png
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