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“there are serious, very serious, choices of policy to be made, and made immediately, which it was neither right nor constitutionally permissible that I should assume the responsibility of making.”
President Woodrow Wilson signed this typed copy of the fourteen points in his proposal for peace to follow World War I. The first five points dealt with general principles, such as foreign policy ideals of free trade, open agreements, democracy, and self-determination. The next eight dealt with individual countries or areas, including Russia, Belgium, France, Italy, Austria-Hungary, Romania, Serbia, Montenegro, Turkey, and Poland. The final point looked forward to the League of Nations.
On October 3-4, 1918, Prince Maximilian of Baden, the German imperial chancellor, sent a note, via Switzerland, to President Wilson, requesting an immediate armistice and the opening of peace negotiations on the basis of the Fourteen Points. Germans would later argue a “betrayal,” when they faced the harsher terms of the Armistice and the Treaty of Versailles, which fed resentments that led to World War II twenty years later.
WOODROW WILSON.
Typed Document Signed,
“President Wilson’s Fourteen Points,” [January 8, 1918]. On White House stationery. 3 pp., 8 x 10½ in.
Inventory #27121.99
Price: $40,000
Excerpts
“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.”
“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.”
Historical Background
In a speech to Congress on January 8, 1918, President Woodrow Wilson outlined his principles for postwar peace. His plan had fourteen points, and the principles soon became known as the “Fourteen Points.” The United States joined the Allied Powers on April 6, 1917, to oppose the Central Powers of the German Empire, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Bulgaria. Wilson rejected the status quo antebellum and wanted to create a world that would no longer turn to war to resolve international conflicts. The speech promoted the foreign policy ideals of free trade, open agreements, democracy, and self-determination.
Wilson’s foreign-policy adviser Edward M. House led a team of approximately 150 academic researchers called The Inquiry, which had been established in September 1917 to prepare materials for the peace negotiations that would follow the war. The Inquiry’s general secretary Walter Lippmann developed the territorial points in direct response to the secret treaties among the European allies. According to House, Lippmann and his colleagues were “to take the secret treaties, analyze the parts which were tolerable, and separate them from those which were regarded as intolerable, and then develop a position which conceded as much to the Allies as it could, but took away the poison.” Their research informed the specifics of the Fourteen Points that Wilson presented in January 1918.
The Allies distributed Wilson’s speech behind German lines and elsewhere as a method of propaganda, but the German government initially rejected them as a basis for peace. After the failure of the 1918 German offensive, German imperial chancellor Prince Maximilian of Baden requested an armistice in October and negotiations based on the Fourteen Points.
When the Treaty of Versailles of June 1919 required reparations from Germany, many Germans thought it was an illegitimate treaty because it was contrary to the Fourteen Points. They also believed that Germany had decisively defeated the Allies, and only the November revolution against the German Army and Navy deprived the German Empire of victory. The revolution led to the establishment of the Weimar Republic, but the resentment contributed to the rise of the Nazi Party.
Thomas Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) was born in Staunton, Virginia, and graduated from the College of New Jersey (Princeton University) in 1879, attended the University of Virginia Law School, and received a doctorate from Johns Hopkins University in 1886. He taught at Bryn Mawr College (1885-1888), Wesleyan University (1888-1890), and Princeton University (1890-1902) before serving as president of Princeton University (1902-1910) and governor of New Jersey (1910-1913). Wilson won the presidential election of 1912, when William Howard Taft and Theodore Roosevelt split the Republican vote, and Wilson became the 28th President of the United States in March 1913. As the first southerner elected president since Zachary Taylor, Wilson brought to the office a progressive zeal for reform, both economic and social, and stressed individualism and states’ rights. He is perhaps best known for leading the United States into World War I, despite an election vow to do otherwise, and for helping to negotiate the resulting Treaty of Versailles, for which he was awarded the 1919 Nobel Peace Prize. Although he helped create and championed the League of Nations, Wilson could not obtain Senate approval for U.S. membership.
Condition: Smoothed folds with some light toning.
Provenance: Formerly in the collection of autograph authenticator and dealer Mary Benjamin.
