However, the man elected president in 1912, Woodrow Wilson, was "a man driven by vaunting ambition" with very different plans for the republic. Originally very conservative with a strong belief in laissez-faire capitalism, he believed himself a "man of destiny" and altered his political beliefs to seek elected office. As an historian, Wilson dreamed of negotiating a treaty among the warring European imperial powers but knew that as president, he would have to compel the US into the Great War to fulfil his statesman's ambition of setting Imperial Europe aright. Hence his presidential favoritism towards the Allies and inflexible antagonism towards the Germans and the Central Powers, despite every belligerent having violated international law in prosecuting the war. To suit his political, man-of-destiny ambitions, Wilson embroiled the US in a European war.