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THE US CONSTITUTION
ARTICLE CORNER
HOME PRESIDENT
THE US CONSTITUTION
ARTICLE CORNER
Woodrow
Wilson
“The
Fourteen Points”
Gentlemen of the Congress:
Once more, as repeatedly before, the spokesmen of the Central Empires have
indicated their desire to discuss the objects of the war and the possible basis
of a general peace. Parleys have been in progress at Brest-Litovsk between
Russian representatives and representatives of the Central Powers to which the
attention of all the belligerents has been invited for the purpose of
ascertaining whether it may be possible to extend these parleys into a general
conference with regard to terms of peace and settlement.
The Russian representatives presented not only a perfectly definite
statement of the principles upon which they would be willing to conclude peace,
but also an equally definite program of the concrete application of those
principles. The representatives of the Central Powers, on their part, presented
an outline of settlement which, if much less definite, seemed susceptible of
liberal interpretation until their specific program of practical terms was
added. That program proposed no concessions at all, either to the sovereignty of
Russia or to the preferences of the populations with whose fortunes it dealt,
but meant, in a word, that the Central Empires were to keep every foot of
territory their armed forces had occupied--every province, every city, every
point of vantage as a permanent addition to their territories and their power.
It is a reasonable conjecture that the general principles of settlement
which they at first suggested originated with the more liberal statesmen of
Germany and Austria, the men who have begun to feel the force of their own
peoples' thought and purpose, while the concrete terms of actual settlement came
from the military leaders who have no thought but to keep what they have got.
The negotiations have been broken off. The Russian representatives were sincere
and in earnest. They cannot entertain such proposals of conquest and domination.
The whole incident is full of significance. It is also full of perplexity.
With whom are the Russian representatives dealing? For whom are the
representatives of the Central Empires speaking? Are they speaking for the
majorities of their respective parliaments or for the minority parties, that
military and imperialistic minority which has so far dominated their whole
policy and controlled the affairs of Turkey and of the Balkan States which have
felt obliged to become their associates in this war?
The Russian representatives have insisted, very justly, very wisely, and
in the true spirit of modern democracy, that the conferences they have been
holding with the Teutonic and Turkish statesmen should be held within open, not
closed, doors, and all the world lies been audience, as was desired. To whom
have we been listening, then? To those who speak the spirit and intention of the
resolutions of the German Reichstag of the 9th of July last, the spirit and
intention of the liberal leaders and parties of Germany, or to those who resist
and defy that spirit and intention and insist upon conquest and subjugation? Or
are we listening, in fact, to both, unreconciled and in open and hopeless
contradiction? These are very serious and pregnant questions. Upon the answer to
them depends the peace of the world.
But whatever the results of the parleys at Brest-Litovsk, whatever the
confusions of counsel and of purpose in the utterances of the spokesmen of the
Central Empires, they have again attempted to acquaint the world with their
objects in the war and have again challenged their adversaries to say what their
objects are and what sort of settlement they would deem just and satisfactory.
There is no good reason why that challenge should not be responded to, and
responded to with the utmost candor. We did not wait for it. Not once, but again
and again we have laid our whole thought and purpose before the world, not in
general terms only, but each time with sufficient definition to make it clear
what sort of definite terms of settlement must necessarily spring out of them.
Within the last week Mr. Lloyd George has spoken with admirable candor and in
admirable spirit for the people and Government of
There is no confusion of counsel among the adversaries of the Central
Powers, no uncertainty of principle, no vagueness of detail. The only secrecy of
counsel, the only lack of fearless frankness, the only failure to make definite
statement of the objects of the war, lies with
There is, moreover, a voice calling for these definitions of principle and
of purpose which is, it seems to me, more thrilling and more compelling than any
of the many moving voices with which the troubled air of the world is filled. It
is the voice of the Russian people. They are prostrate and all but helpless, it
would seem, before the grim power of
They call to us to say what it is that we desire, in what, if in anything,
our purpose and our spirit differ from theirs; and I believe that the people of
the
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, all we see it, is this:
1. Open covenants of peace must be arrived at, after which there will
surely be no private international action or rulings 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 associating themselves for its maintenance.
4. Adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will be
reduced to the lowest points 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 population
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 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
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. 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 re-adjustment of the frontiers of
10. 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.
11. Romania, 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 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 autonomous development, and the Dardanelles should be permanently
opened as a free passage to the ships and commerce of all nations under
international guarantees.
13. 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. 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 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
Woodrow Wilson - January 8, 1918
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