FRtR > Presidents > Woodrow Wilson > Fourteen Points Speech
Woodrow Wilson
Fourteen Points Speech, January 8, 1918
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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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will
be reduced to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along
clearly recognizable lines of nationality.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.