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Foundation of Peace

On 8th January 1918, President Wilson delivered his famous 'Fourteen Point' speech before U.S. Congress, where he outlined a plan to end WWI and secure world peace.  When the war broke out in 1914, President Wilson stayed neutral with no intention of involving America in the war.  But in January 1917, the British intercepted and decoded a message known as the Zimmerman Telegram, in which Germany asked Mexico to ally with them against the United States and on the 1st February 1917, Germany announces unrestricted submarine warfare and started sinking merchant and passenger ships with US citizens onboard.  Something Germany agreed not to do after sinking the British ocean liner Lusitania in 1915, killing a total of 1,195 passengers, 123 Americans onboard. This was the final straw for President Wilson and on the 2nd of April 1917 President Wilson went before the U.S. Congress to request a declaration of war on Germany. Congress agreed and declared war on 4th April 1917 and America entered the war on 6th April 1917.​​

President Wilson

United States of America , President  Wilson

​Since America joined WWI, they had spent over 32 billion dollars and lost over 116,000 lives. President Wilson wanted the war to end, not only for American but he hoped to prevent a war ever happening again in the world.

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President Wilson and Colonel Edward House organise a group of about 150 political and social scientists. Their job was to study policy all over the world, collecting nearly 2,000 reports and 1,200 maps.


In Presidents Wilson speech, he addressed the causes of the world war by calling for the end of secret treaties, a reduction in weapons, an adjustment in colonial claims in the interests of both native peoples and colonists and freedom of the seas. President Wilson also made proposals that would ensure world peace in the future.

 

President Wilson’s, Fourteen Points were designed to undermine the Central Powers’ will to continue and to inspire the Allies to victory. The Fourteen Points were broadcasted throughout the world.

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When Allied leaders met in France, to plan out the treaty to end WWI with Germany and Austria-Hungary, most of President Wilson’s, Fourteen Points were skipped by the leaders of England and France. President Wilson discovered that England, France and Italy were mostly interested in regaining what they had lost and gaining more by punishing Germany.

 

Germany quickly found out that President Wilson’s plan for world peace would not apply to them, but President Wilson called for a world organisation that would provide some system and incorporated it into the 'Treaty of Versailles'. This organization would later be known as the League of Nations.

 

Though President Wilson launched a tireless campaign to overcome opposition in the U.S. Senate in adopting the treaty and membership in the League, the treaty was never adopted by the Senate, and the United States never joined the League of Nations. President Wilson would later suggest that without America's participation in the League, there would be another world war within a generation - and he was right!​

Fourteen Points

  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 associating 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 coöperation 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.​

  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 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 opportunity of 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 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.

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