Fourteen Points
FOURTEEN POINTS
FOURTEEN POINTS. Nine months after the American declaration of war on Germany, President Woodrow Wilson addressed Congress on 8 January 1918, to declare America's terms of peace. Briefly, they were as follows: (1) "open covenants of peace openly arrived at"; (2) freedom of the seas; (3) freedom from trade barriers; (4) reduction of armaments; (5) impartial adjustment of colonial claims; (6) evacuation of Russian territory and Russian self-determination; (7) evacuation and restoration of Belgium; (8) evacuation of France and restoration of Alsace-Lorraine to France; (9) readjustment of Italian frontiers; (10) autonomous development for the peoples of Austria-Hungary; (11) readjustments in the Balkans; (12) autonomous development for the non-Turkish nationalities of the Ottoman Empire and the opening of the Dardanelles; (13) restoration of an independent Poland with access to the sea; and (14) establishment of a general
association of nations. The Allied Powers refused to agree to Wilson's terms until the German government began peace negotiations on the basis of the fourteen points in October 1918. After Col. Edward M. House, Wilson's chief foreign policy adviser, warned Britain and France that the United States might make a separate peace with Germany, the Allies accepted the fourteen points on 4 November 1918—with the reservation that they did not accept a blanket principle of freedom of the seas and with the further caveat that they demanded financial compensation from Germany for wartime damages. After Germany's formal surrender one week later, the fourteen points became the legal basis for the ensuing treaty of peace.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Clements, Kendrick A. The Presidency of Woodrow Wilson. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1992.
Knock, Thomas J. To End All Wars: Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a New World Order. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Bernadotte E.Schmitt/a. g.
See alsoGermany, Relations with ; House-Grey Memorandum ; League of Nations ; Treaties with Foreign Nations ; World War I ; andvol. 9:The Fourteen Points .