Post photo: US President Woodrow Wilson | © US Foundation for the Commemoration of the World Wars
In the course of reducing my websites, I am on the "Fourteen Points" of Woodrow Wilson encountered, which he explained in more detail on January 8, 1918 in a speech before the US Congress. This speech was very important at the time and was heavily influenced by the early Federalists. That is why Wilson's Fourteen Points were also mentioned in my book "Europe is for everyone!“, and were therefore made available by me in a forum for further reading.
Since this forum will also soon be history, since the effort is not worthwhile and I don't want to be responsible for "dead" websites on the World Wide Web myself, I take the opportunity and hereby make Wilson's Fourteen Points available to the inclined reader on my weblog. It's just annoying that I didn't consider this back in 2018, and that's why the corresponding hyperlink in my book mentioned above will soon lead to digital nirvana. "The good thing about it," it's unlikely anyone will even notice.
Wilson's speech presented here was composed of two parts. Namely from a couple of diplomatic points made by Woodrow Wilson themselves and a few points on certain territorial claims made by Walter Lippman were compiled. He worked out these points together with his colleagues Isaiah Bowman, Sidney Mezesand David Hunter Miller. With this, Wilson presents the US war aims and also the conditions for a peace with the Axis powers to the US Congress.
With this speech he opposed the ideas of his own European allies, who could hardly follow federal views. Also, this speech can be used in response to Vladimir Lenins political initiative that he undertook immediately after seizing power.
Although Wilson himself in his speech placed great value on the right of peoples to self-determination and thus set an example for the future, one has to acknowledge that this right of self-determination, which he promoted so much, was not implemented as many had hoped — one must assume that that these were concessions to his still very backward allies.
However, he later received the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts. For us federalists, this speech is so important because it is the first time that our ideas have been put forward — even if not implemented — by a professional politician. And we federalists still share this fate with our predecessors; Although no decent and responsible politician can consider our ideas to be bad and must therefore support them in principle - but the same politicians use every conceivable opportunity to avoid having to implement these good ideas: that is Realpolitik!
If you now think of the "European Federal State" and the "Conference on the Future of Europe", then the Fourteen Points Speech by Woodrow Wilson a really frightening reality.
Fourteen Points
"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 avow nor or at any other time the objects it has in view.
We entered this war because violations of the 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 for all against their recurrence. What we demanded 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 programme; 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, as 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 observation 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 child 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 to autonomous development.
XI. 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.
XII. The Turkish portion 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.
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 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."
