World War I started in August 1914, and the US insisted on neutrality. US President Woodrow Wilson's highest priority was to broker peace talks and used his trusted aide, Colonel House. Apart from an Anglophile element urging early support for Britain, US public opinion reflected that of the president: the sentiment for neutrality was particularly strong among Irish Americans, German Americans, and Scandinavian Americans as well as poor white southern farmers, cultural leaders, Protestant churchmen, and women in general. The British argument that the Allies were defending civilization against a German militaristic onslaught gained support after reports of atrocities in Belgium in 1914 and, following the sinking of the passenger liner "RMS Lusitania" in 1915, US citizens increasingly came to see Germany as the aggressor who had to be stopped. Former President Theodore Roosevelt and many Republicans were war hawks, and demanded rapid American armament