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Woodrow Wilson’s
Fourteen Points Speech to Congress
NOTE:
This address, made prior to the conclusion of the
First World War, served as the basis for postwar peace
terms in Europe.
January 8, 1918
Gentlemen of the
Congress ...
It will be 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. The day of conquest and aggrandizement is
gone by; so is also the day of secret covenants entered
into in the interest of particular governments and
likely at some unlooked-for moment to upset the peace of
the world. It is this happy fact, now clear to the view
of every public man whose thoughts do not still linger
in an age that is dead and gone, which makes it possible
for every nation whose purposes are consistent with
justice and the peace of the world to avow now or at any
other time the objects it has in view.
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 secured once for 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:
I. 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.
II. 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.
III. 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 associating themselves for its maintenance.
IV. Adequate guarantees given and taken that national
armaments will be reduced to the lowest point consistent
with domestic safety.
V. 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.
VI. The evacuation of all Russian territory and such a
settlement of all questions affecting Russia as will
secure the best and freest cooperation of the other
nations of the world in obtaining for her an unhampered
and unembarrassed 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 good
will, of their comprehension of her needs as
distinguished from their own interests, and of their
intelligent and unselfish sympathy.
VII. 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.
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.
IX. A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be
effected along clearly recognizable lines of
nationality.
X. The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the
nations we wish to see safeguarded and assured, should
be accorded the freest opportunity of autonomous
development.
XI. 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.
XII. The Turkish portions of the present Ottoman Empire
should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other
nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be
assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely
unmolested opportunity of an autonomous development, and
the Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a free
passage to the ships and commerce of all nations under
international guarantees.
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.
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 regard to these essential rectifications of wrong and
assertions of right we feel ourselves to be intimate
partners of all the governments and peoples associated
together against the Imperialists. We cannot be
separated in interest or divided in purpose. We stand
together until the end.
For such arrangements and covenants we are willing to
fight and to continue to fight until they are achieved;
but only because we wish the right to prevail and desire
a just and stable peace such as can be secured only by
removing the chief provocations to war, which this
program does not remove. We have no jealousy of German
greatness, and there is nothing in this program that
impairs it. We grudge her no achievement or distinction
of learning or of pacific enterprise such as have made
her record very bright and very enviable. We do not wish
to injure her or to block in any way her legitimate
influence or power. We do not wish to fight her either
with arms or with hostile arrangements of trade if she
is willing to associate herself with us and the other
peace-loving nations of the world in covenants of
justice and law and fair dealing. We wish her only to
accept a place of equality among the peoples of the
world, -- the new world in which we now live, -- instead
of a place of mastery.
Neither do we presume to suggest to her any alteration
or modification of her institutions. But it is
necessary, we must frankly say, and necessary as a
preliminary to any intelligent dealings with her on our
part, that we should know whom her spokesmen speak for
when they speak to us, whether for the Reichstag
majority or for the military party and the men whose
creed is imperial domination.
We have spoken now, surely, in terms too concrete to
admit of any further doubt or question. An evident
principle runs through the whole program I have
outlined. It is the principle of justice to all peoples
and nationalities, and their right to live on equal
terms of liberty and safety with one another, whether
they be strong or weak. Unless this principle be made
its foundation no part of the structure of international
justice can stand. The people of the United States could
act upon no other principle; and to the vindication of
this principle they are ready to devote their lives,
their honor, and everything that they possess. The moral
climax of this the culminating and final war for human
liberty has come, and they are ready to put their own
strength, their own highest purpose, their own integrity
and devotion to the test.
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