The Fourteen Points

After over two years of war, the year 1917 saw separate attempts at a compromise peace put forward by Austria and by the Pope. These came to nothing, however. But the entry of the U.S. into the war in that same year gave opportunity for a fresh approach to peace by the idealistic president Wilson. Moreover, the Bolshevik overthrow of the Russian government in October of the same year resulted in peace negotiations between the new communist state and Germany. Lenin issued his Peace Decre e in November calling for immediate negotiations among all belligerent countries toward a "just and democratic" peace that would not be compromised by territorial annexations or infringement of the rights of ethnic groups. The Allies, along with the Unit ed States, were, of course, anxious to keep Russia in the war (a vain hope given the ideological estrangement between the two sides) and it was partly in response to Lenin's intervention that Wilson decided to make a statement on war aims. In a speech to both houses of Congress in January 1918, he outlined 14 Points as the basis of peace between the contending forces. They made an impact only when the Central Powers faced certain defeat by late summer of 1918; the Russians already having made their sepa rate peace with the Germans in March 1918. The Germans then accepted Wilson's terms, hoping that the moderate tenor of the 14 Points would let them off lightly in the peace to be negotiated. It was not easy, however, to bring Britain and France to the side of moderation as this would have required certain adjustments to their war aims that they were unwilling to make (assuring freedom of the seas in the case of Britain or not forcing severe reparations on the Germans in the case of France). But subjec t to certain modification and reinterpretation, the Points became the basis of the armistice concluded on Nov. 11, 1918. The resulting Treaty of Versailles , however, went far beyond the moderate proposal of the Fourteen Poin ts and left a legacy of bitterness and recrimination among the Germans, whose government had signed the Pre-Armistice Agreement on November 5 on the presumption that the Fourteen Points would largely shape the resulting peace treaty.

President Wilson's Address to Congress, January 8, 1918:

. . . . No statesman who has the least conception of his responsibility ought for a moment to permit himself to continue this tragical and appalling outpouring of blood and treasure unless he is sure . . that the objects of the vital sacrifice are part an d parcel of the very life of Society and that the people for whom he speaks think them right and imperative as he does. It will our wish and purpose that the processes of peace, when they are begun, shall be absolutely open and that they shall involve and permit henceforth no secret understandings of any kind. . . . We entered this war because violations of right had occurred which touched us to the quick and made the life of our own people impossible unless they were corrected and the world secure once f or all against their recurrence. What we demand in this war, therefore, is nothing peculiar to ourselves. It is that the world be made fit and safe to live in; and particularly that it be made safe for every peace-loving nation which, like our own, wishes to live its own life, determine its own institutions, be assured of justice and fair dealing by the other peoples of the world as against force and selfish aggression. All the peoples of the world are in effect partners in this interest, and for our own part we see very clearly that unless justice be done to others it will not be done to us. The program of the world's peace, therefore, is our program; and that program, the only possible program, as we see it, is this:

  1. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind, but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.
  2. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in war, except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part by international action for the enforcement of international covenants.
  3. The removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace and associatring themselves for its maintenance.
  4. Adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will be reduced to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety.
  5. A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined.
  6. The evacuation of all Russian territory and such a settlement of all questions affecting Russia as will secure the best and freest co-operation of the other nations of the world in obtaining for her an unhampered and unembarrrassed opportunity for the independent determination of her own political development and national policy and assure her of a sincere welcome into the society of free nations under institutions of her own choosing; and, more than a welcome, assistance also of every kind that she may need and may herself desire. The treatment accorded Russia by her sister nations in the months to come will be the acid test of their goodwill, of their comprehension of her needs as distinguished from their own interests, and of their intelligent and unselfish sympathy.
  7. Belgium, the whole world will agree, must be evacuated and restored, without any attempt to limit the sovereignty which she enjoys in common with all other free nations. No other single act will serve as this will serve to restore confidence among the nations in the laws which they have themselves set and determined for the government of their relations with one another. Without this healing act the whole structure and validity of international law is forever impaired.
  8. VIII. All French territory should be freed and the invaded portions restored, and the wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which has unsettled the peace of the world for nearly fifty years, should be righted, in order that peace may once more be made secure in the interest of all.
  9. A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearly recognizable lines of nationality
  10. The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to see safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the freest opportunityof autonomous development.
  11. Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro should be evacuated; occupied territories restored; Serbia accorded free and secure access to the sea; and the relations of the several Balkan states to one another determined by friendly counsel along historically established lines of allegiance and nationality; and international guarantees of the political and economic independence and territorial integrity of the several Balkan states should be entered into.
  12. The Turkish portions of the present Ottoman [Turkish] Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule [i.e., Kurds, Arab peoples, Armenians and some Greeks] should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development, and the Darrdanelles [namely, the straits leading from the Black Sea approaches to international waters] should be permanently opened as a free passage to the ships and commerce of all nations under international guarantees.
  13. XIII. An independent Polish state should be erected which should include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenant.
  14. XIV. A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.

    In the course of 1918 the president supplemented these basic propositions in further addresses that stressed the "just peace" and "impartial justice" tenor of the Fourteen Points. In his Feb. 11 speech to Congress the President proclaimed American war aims as a peace of "no annexations, no contributions, no punitive damages;" sentiments that went far to raise the hopes of the German negotiators nine months later during the pre-armistice talks. Noteworthy, also, was the statement in New York City on Sep. 27 asserting that "The impartial justice meted out must involve no discrimination between those to whom we wish to be just and those to whom we do not wish to be just. It must be a justice that plays no favorites and knows no standard but the equal rights of the several peoples concerned . . ." One qualification, owever, struck a blow at the continued existence of the German Imperial system when at Mount Vernon on July 4, Wilson looked to "The destruction of every arbitrary power anywhere that can separately, secretly, and of its single choice disturb the peace of the world; . . ." In other words, Kaiser Wilhelm had to abdicate before any peace could be concluded with Germany. Accordingly, it was the newly-established German Republic that faced its accusers at Versailles in May and June, 1919.

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