because it was written right after the “great war” [woodrow wilson and the world war] is a fantastic historical image of how contemporaries viewed the war, its causes, results, and how woodrow wilson managed and used it to further his ideological goal of collective security. it really is a great contemporary look of the situations surrounding the united states and world war i. charles seymour was an american academic, historian and president of yale university from 1937 to 1951. as an academic administrator, he was instrumental in establishing yale’s residential college system. his writing focused on the diplomatic history of world war i.