The sentence which most clearly states President Wilson's desire to stay out of the war is: "UNBENDING TO THE PUBLIC EYE FOR IMMEDIATE WAR, WILSON DID NOT WANT TO MAKE MATTERS WORSE."
President Wilson is known to have been an advocate of world peace, and was originally determined to keep the United States neutral in the First World War. The American public originally supported this policy, but things changed in 1915 when news of the atrocities committed by the Triple Alliance in Europe, including the murder of many Americans, spread in the U.S. media. Yet Wilson remained opposed to entering the conflict, as expressed by this phrase: "unbending to the public eye for immediate war."
Wilson is the one who eventually asked Congress to declare war on Germany in 1917, after Germany ordered a series of submarine attacks against American merchant ships. This excerpt mentions the measures Wilson took as a response to this threat: "the arming of U.S. flag merchant ships" (with "naval armed guards" and "guns fixed on the decks"). However, this was not sufficent to keep the civilian ships safe: "they proved no match for the deadly U-boats." U-boat is the Americanization of U-Boot, which is short for Unterseeboot (submarine in German).
