what key points did wilson make in this speech

Milestone Documents

President Woodrow Wilson's 14 Points (1918)

Citation: President Wilson's Message to Congress, January 8, 1918; Records of the United States Senate; Record Group 46; Records of the United States Senate; National Archives.

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In this January 8, 1918, address to Congress, President Woodrow Wilson proposed a 14-point program for world peace. These points were later taken as the basis for peace negotiations at the end of World War I.

In this January 8, 1918, speech on War Aims and Peace Terms, President Wilson set down 14 points as a blueprint for world peace that was to be used for peace negotiations after World War I. The details of the speech were based on reports generated by “The Inquiry,” a group of about 150 political and social scientists organized by Wilson’s adviser and long-time friend, Col. Edward M House. Their job was to study Allied and American policy in virtually every region of the globe and analyze economic, social, and political facts likely to come up in discussions during the peace conference. The team began its work in secret, and in the end produced and collected nearly 2,000 separate reports and documents plus at least 1,200 maps.

In the speech, Wilson directly addressed what he perceived as the causes for the world war by calling for the abolition of secret treaties, a reduction in armaments, an adjustment in colonial claims in the interests of both native peoples and colonists, and freedom of the seas. Wilson also made proposals that would ensure world peace in the future. For example, he proposed the removal of economic barriers between nations, the promise of “self-determination” for oppressed minorities, and a world organization that would provide a system of collective security for all nations. Wilson’s 14 Points were designed to undermine the Central Powers’ will to continue, and to inspire the Allies to victory. The 14 Points were broadcast throughout the world and were showered from rockets and shells behind the enemy’s lines.

When Allied leaders met in Versailles, France, to formulate the treaty to end World War I with Germany and Austria-Hungary, most of Wilson’s 14 Points were scuttled by the leaders of England and France. To his dismay, 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 Wilson’s blueprint for world peace would not apply to them.

However, Wilson’s capstone point calling for a world organization that would provide some system of collective security was incorporated into the Treaty of Versailles. This organization would later be known as the League of Nations. Though Wilson launched a tireless missionary campaign to overcome opposition in the U.S. Senate to the adoption of 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. Wilson would later suggest that without American participation in the League, there would be another world war within a generation.

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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 secure 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 programme of the world's peace, therefore, is our programme; and that programme, the only possible programme, 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, 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.

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 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.

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 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.

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. 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.

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 programme does remove. We have no jealousy of German greatness, and there is nothing in this programme 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.

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Woodrow Wilson’s 14 Points: How a Vision for World Peace Failed

By: Dave Roos

Updated: November 9, 2023 | Original: November 14, 2023

When war broke out in Europe in 1914, the United States vowed to remain neutral. The American people had no interest in becoming entangled in European alliances and empires. President Woodrow Wilson , a progressive Democrat, won reelection in 1916 on the slogan “He kept us out of war.”

But that promise proved impossible to keep. Germany, which had temporarily paused unrestricted submarine warfare after the 1915 sinking of the passenger ship Lusitania , declared open season on American vessels in 1917.

Vowing to defend American lives and make the world “safe for Democracy,” Wilson and the U.S. Congress declared war on Germany in April of 1917.

“Wilson was very conscious that America didn’t want to get in the war,” says John Thompson, author of Woodrow Wilson: Profiles in Power . “The only way he could resolve that dilemma was to do everything he could to bring the European war to an end.”

Wilson and his advisors recruited a team of 150 political and social scientists to research the root causes of the war in Europe. That group, known as “The Inquiry,” produced nearly 2,000 reports and 1,200 maps that were boiled down to 14 key recommendations to achieve a stable peace in Europe.

In a speech before Congress on January 8, 1918, Wilson laid out his “ 14 Points ,” an ambitious blueprint for ending World War I that emphasized “national self-determination” for both small and large nations, and included the creation of a cooperative League of Nations to peaceably resolve all future disputes.

In 1919, Wilson attended the Paris Peace Conference with hopes that the 14 Points would form the backbone of the Treaty of Versailles . But Wilson’s ideas met fierce resistance from the Allies, who were more interested in punishing Germany than pursuing an idealistic plan for world peace.

The failure of the 14 Points is widely seen as one of the factors leading to the outbreak of World War II just two decades later.

Envisioning a ‘Peace Without Victory’

Months before the U.S. officially entered World War I , Wilson was already thinking about how it would end. In January of 1917, he gave a speech before Congress that laid the philosophical groundwork upon which the 14 Points would stand. Chief among Wilson’s ideas was the notion of “peace without victory.”

“Victory would mean peace forced upon a loser, a victor’s terms imposed upon the vanquished,” Wilson said . “It would be accepted in humiliation, under duress, at an intolerable sacrifice, and would leave a sting, a resentment, a bitter memory upon which terms of peace would rest, not permanently, but only as upon quicksand. Only a peace between equals can last.”

Wilson understood that such a “peace between equals” would be a hard sell, particularly to the French. France suffered an unthinkable number of casualties during World War I—more than 1.3 million soldiers killed and another 600,000 civilian deaths. Russia, too, buried more than 2 million of its soldiers and citizens.

In drawing up what would become the 14 Points, Wilson and his advisors had to strike a balance between their progressive ideals and satisfying the demands for justice called for by allies like France, Britain and Russia.

5 Rules for a Peaceful World

Wilson was an idealist, but he wasn’t naive. He didn’t expect the warring powers of the world to simply drop their weapons, hold hands and promise to get along. Lasting peace required a new global framework based on a firm set of rules and governing principles.

When Wilson presented the 14 Points to the world in 1918, the first five proposals were dedicated to these governing principles:

• Public and transparent treaties and diplomatic agreements

Secret treaties and alliances sowed distrust between international governments. When the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia in 1917, for example, Leon Trotsky published the secret treaties between the Tsarist government and the Allies. While Wilson was not a supporter of the Bolsheviks, he agreed that honest and open negotiations were the only way to achieve a permanent peace.

• Free navigation of the seas during times of both war and peace

The sinking of commercial and passenger vessels by German U-boats was what drew both Britain and the U.S. into World War I. Wilson believed that free and safe passage in international waters was essential for safeguarding peace.

• Equal trade conditions and opportunities

While falling short of “free trade,” Wilson’s third general principle called for “the removal, so far as possible,” of economic barriers to trade between all nations, both large and small. “Economics was one of the major reasons why Wilson wanted to be involved [in shaping the postwar world],” says Christopher Warren, chief curator at The National WWI Museum and Memorial . “Freedom of navigation, open trade—it would be incredibly economically advantageous for the U.S. to have a say in the stability of Europe.”

• Reduction of armaments among all nations

Well before the advent of nuclear weapons , Wilson called for all nations—both the winners and losers of global conflicts—to reduce their arms to “the lowest point consistent with domestic safety.” 

• ‘Adjustment’ of colonial claims

The 14 Points called for “a free, open-minded and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims,” which sounds like a strong anti-imperialist stance. In practice, Wilson’s progressive commitment to “national self-determination” wasn’t applied universally. “Wilson was anti-imperialist when it came to the Central Powers—Austria-Hungary, Ottomans, Germany— but he didn't have any intention of touching Britain and France,” says Warren. “They weren't going to discuss any type of reduction of their overseas empires.”

8 Terms of Postwar Peace

After establishing those five general principles, the 14 Points made eight specific recommendations for resolving some of the major territorial disputes of World War I in places like France, Belgium, Russia, Italy and Poland.

While Wilson’s recommendations came down firmly in favor of the Allies, he was also careful not to alienate the Central Powers. In accordance with the philosophy of a “peace without victory,” the Central Powers would be held accountable, but their territorial claims wouldn’t be fully ignored.

Take the case of Austria-Hungary, whose empire stretched across most of Central and Eastern Europe. The British, under Prime Minister David Lloyd George, called for the total breakup of Austria-Hungary into a slew of independent nations. But Wilson, in his 10th point, was far more reserved, saying only that “the peoples of Austria-Hungary… should be accorded the freest opportunity of autonomous development.”

“Wilson was trying to strike a compromise between the two goals that he had,” says Thompson, “stability on the one hand and liberal principles of self-determination on the other.”

The 14 Points took a similarly measured approach in settling territorial disputes within the Ottoman and German empires. Germany would be required to return all of Alsace-Lorraine to the French, and to concede an independent Poland, but Wilson’s recommendations focused on “restoring” invaded territory, not exacting economic punishment.

“One of the reasons why German politicians became amenable to an Armistice is because they believed that Wilson was going to advocate on their behalf with his 14 Points,” says Warren. “They believed that the peace after the Armistice will be based on these 14 Points, which was much more palatable to them.”

The League of Nations, International Peacekeepers

Wilson’s 14th point is perhaps the best-known, a call for “a general association of nations” charged with safeguarding the “political independence and territorial integrity [of] great and small states alike.” This organization, the first international peacekeeping organization of its kind, came to be known as the League of Nations .

Wilson knew that a postwar Europe composed of large, weakened empires and small independent nations would be inherently unstable.

“He truly believed that if these small and large states couldn't solve their issues diplomatically, then this League of Nations—backed by the major democratic powers—could step in before they festered into a larger conflict,” says Thompson. 

Failure at the Paris Peace Conference

When Wilson arrived in Paris in December 1919, he was the first sitting American president to travel to Europe. America, previously isolationist, was ready to claim its place as a global power and Wilson hoped that 14 Points would set a new standard for global diplomacy. 

From the start, his hopes were dashed. For the peace process to work, the Central Powers needed to have an equal seat at the negotiating table. But the rest of the Allies took a hardline, refusing to participate if nations like Germany and Austria-Hungary had a say in the proceedings.

“Wilson conceded in the end,” says Thompson. “That was one of the major reasons why the peace failed to gain any sort of legitimacy in Germany. The Treaty of Versailles was seen as a diktat , not a peace in which all sides helped to shape.”

Other major provisions of the 14 Points were scuttled or watered down beyond recognition. Free navigation of the seas, for example, was rejected by the British, who controlled the most powerful navy in the world.

Several recommendations of the 14 Points were adopted by the Paris Peace Conference, including many of the territorial questions, and notably the creation of the League  of Nations.

But the progressive spirit of the 14 Points, the one that gave Germany hope that this treaty would be different, was absent from the Paris Peace Conference. Instead, the Allies voted to impose stiff economic penalties on Germany in the form of war reparations totaling 132 billion gold marks, or more than $500 billion today.

In the end, Wilson’s bold framework for world peace failed to gain traction and the Treaty of Versailles became a bitter pill that the German people were forced to swallow. In the 1930s, when Germany’s economy was crippled by a global Depression, Adolph Hitler tapped into resentment over the punitive Treaty of Versailles to place the blame on scheming politicians and Jews.

Interestingly, the harshness of the Treaty of Versailles was also used as a justification for the appeasement policies of Britain and other European nations in response to Hitler’s aggressions. “They ceded ground to Hitler partly on the reasoning that the Versailles treaty had been unjust to Germany,” says Thompson.

The one potential bright spot for Wilson should have been the creation of the League of Nations, but even that victory eluded him. Congress at the time was in the hands of Republicans, whom Wilson excluded from the Paris peace talks. Republicans repaid Wilson by refusing to ratify the Treaty of Versailles, which kept the United States out of the League of Nations.

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The Fourteen Points

In his war address to Congress on April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson spoke of the need for the United States to enter the war in part to “make the world safe for democracy.” Almost a year later, this sentiment remained strong, articulated in a speech to Congress on January 8, 1918, where he introduced his Fourteen Points.

Designed as guidelines for the rebuilding of the postwar world, the points included Wilson’s ideas regarding nations’ conduct of foreign policy, including freedom of the seas and free trade and the concept of national self-determination , with the achievement of this through the dismantling of European empires and the creation of new states. Most importantly, however, was Point 14, which called for a “general association of nations” that would offer “mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small nations alike.” When Wilson left for Paris in December 1918, he was determined that the Fourteen Points, and his League of Nations (as the association of nations was known), be incorporated into the peace settlements.

The Points, Summarized

1. Open diplomacy without secret treaties 2. Economic free trade on the seas during war and peace 3. Equal trade conditions 4. Decrease armaments among all nations 5. Adjust colonial claims 6. Evacuation of all Central Powers from Russia and allow it to define its own independence 7. Belgium to be evacuated and restored 8. Return of Alsace-Lorraine region and all French territories 9. Readjust Italian borders 10. Austria-Hungary to be provided an opportunity for self-determination 11. Redraw the borders of the Balkan region creating Roumania, Serbia and Montenegro 12. Creation of a Turkish state with guaranteed free trade in the Dardanelles 13. Creation of an independent Polish state 14. Creation of the League of Nations

President Wilson’s insistence on the inclusion of the League of Nations in the Treaty of Versailles (the settlement with Germany) forced him to compromise with Allied leaders on the other points. Japan, for example, was granted authority over former German territory in China, and self-determination—an idea seized upon by those living under imperial rule throughout Asia and Africa—was only applied to Europe. Following the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, Wilson returned to the United States and presented it to the Senate.

Although many Americans supported the treaty, the president met resistance in the Senate, in part over concern that joining the League of Nations would force U.S. involvement in European affairs. A dozen or so Republican “Irreconcilables” refused to support it outright, while other Republican senators, led by Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, insisted on amendments that would preserve U.S. sovereignty and congressional authority to declare war. Having compromised in Paris, Wilson refused to compromise at home and took his feelings to the American people, hoping that they could influence the senators’ votes. Unfortunately, the president suffered a debilitating stroke while on tour.

The loss of presidential leadership combined with continued refusal on both sides to compromise, led Senate to reject the Treaty of Versailles, and thus the League of Nations. Despite the lack of U.S. participation, however, the League of Nations worked to address and mitigate conflict in the 1920s and 1930s. While not always successful, and ultimately unable to prevent a second world war, the League served as the basis for the United Nations, an international organization still present today.

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Last updated 08 october 2014, fourteen points.

The Fourteen Points were U.S. President Woodrow Wilson’s post World War I blueprint to end territorial disputes in Europe, promote international commerce, and make the world safe for democracy. They were based on the ideas of open trade and collective diplomacy, and introduced the concept of national self-determination.

Table of Contents

• 1 Ideological Background
• 2 The Fourteen Points
• 3 Reception in Europe and Internationally
• 4 Reception in the United States

Selected Bibliography

Ideological background ↑.

President Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) was a champion of democracy and saw the First World War as the consequence of a Europe that was governed, not by the people, but by power-hungry monarchs. America’s participation in the war was, for Wilson, an opportunity to “make the world safe for democracy.” A few years prior to the United States’ entrance into the Great War, Wilson had intervened in the Mexican Civil War in an effort to “teach them how to elect good men.” Nine months after the U.S. entry into the war, Wilson introduced the Fourteen Points in a speech to Congress on 8 January 1918. The points were presented as a platform upon which global peace and prosperity could be built. Along with his desire to spread democracy, Wilson was also motivated by his fear of communism spreading westward from the newly born Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. In his own writings, Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924) had championed disarmament, an end to making treaties without parliamentary approval, an international forum for diplomacy, and no changes in territorial boundaries without the consent of the people affected. While Wilson may have shared these political views, he staunchly opposed communism’s economic policies, as well as its atheism. The Fourteen Points offered Europe many of Lenin’s ideas, but on a liberal-democratic and capitalist foundation rather than a communist one.

The Fourteen Points ↑

Points one to four introduced general ideas that Wilson expected the nations of the world to adhere to in conducting foreign policy. The first point, open diplomacy, called for what today is referred to as transparency rather than secret alliances and partnerships for war. Wilson encouraged “open covenants of peace.” The next two points, freedom of the seas and free trade, argued for greater freedoms in commerce and trade and was certainly prompted by the United States’ wartime problems involving German U-boat attacks on American merchant ships. The fourth point, military disarmament, advocated a reduction in the peacetime armed forces of the world. In Wilson’s view the war broke out so quickly because European countries had armies at the ready. Future wars could thus be avoided by preventing nations from having armies prepared to go to war.

Point five introduced the concept of national self-determination. To Wilson, European empires were the antithesis of democracy; people have the right to determine who governs them and empires had taken away that right. The goal of point five was to dismantle European empires and to create new states organized along national-cultural lines. Points six to thirteen were specific steps for putting point five into action; for example, the monolith Austro-Hungarian Empire would be dismantled and out of it the nations of Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia , and parts of Yugoslavia would be created, each new nation sharing a common language, customs, and culture.

The fourteenth point was Wilson’s pride and joy. Wilson wanted a “general association of nations” that provided a forum for solving international crises with diplomacy instead of bullets. The realization of this point was the League of Nations . The League was to create a system of collective security that monitored world peace.

Reception in Europe and Internationally ↑

In 1918, with the failure of the St. Michael Offensive, Germany’s situation looked bleak. Its armies were defeated and its people were starving, while the rumblings of German communists grew louder in the cities. Fearing both revolution at home and total collapse at the front, the government requested an armistice using the Fourteen Points as its foundation. Under pressure, Wilhelm II, German Emperor (1859-1941) abdicated on 9 November 1918, and the Weimar Republic was established. The new government hoped that the gesture would ingratiate Germany with Wilson, and make him an ally of the new republic in the forthcoming peace negotiations.

Wilson’s vision was met with cheers from the masses – in Paris the crowds screamed “Vive Wilson!” when he arrived for the peace conference – but ran into colder receptions from world leaders. Wilson’s dreams of democracy, free trade, and self-determination clashed with Europeans leaders’ goals of territorial gain and revenge against Germany. Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929) , Prime Minister of France, upon hearing of Wilson’s Fourteen Points supposedly said, “God gave us the Ten Commandments and we broke them. Wilson gives us the Fourteen Points. We shall see.” [1]

The finished product of the conference, the Treaty of Versailles , contained only a fraction of the Fourteen Points. To ensure the realization of his association of nations, Wilson had to betray self-determination and its associated points. Japan , for example, wanted Chinese territory previously in German hands and threatened to quit the conference (and also the League), if not given what it wanted. Thus in the interests of his League of Nations, Wilson acquiesced and placed millions of Chinese in the control of the Japanese government . Point three – the removal of economic barriers - also suffered under the imperial ambitions of the victors. Wilson hoped, however, that the league, once functioning, could adjust these compromises.

Wilson only intended self-determination and the consent of the governed to apply to Europe. His upbringing in the American Jim Crow South made him oblivious to including non-whites in any discussion of political and social rights. However, despite his focus on Europe, the ideas of self-determination and public consent found fertile soil among nationalists and intellectuals in the colonies of European and American empires. These ideas gave subject peoples an ideological weapon to wield against the racism and ethnocentrism of the “White Man’s Burden.” This “ Wilsonian moment ” marked the beginning of decolonization, as nationalist leaders in China, Vietnam, Korea, Egypt, and India applauded the general principle and criticized the western powers for limiting it to Europe.

Reception in the United States ↑

Back in the United States, Wilson ran into staunch resistance in the Senate. Isolationists rejected the idea of belonging to a League of Nations that could entangle the country in European affairs once again. The leader of the Senate stonewall was Republican Henry Cabot Lodge (1850-1924) , who presented Wilson with Fourteen Reservations that Congress wanted Wilson to address before they would ratify the Treaty of Versailles. The President, already having made compromises with European leaders, refused to discuss a single point with the Senate, and inseparably welded the League Covenant to the Treaty of Versailles, forcing Republicans to either accept or reject both. Ironically, the United States never ratified the treaty and therefore did not join the League of Nations, Wilson’s most beloved of his points.

Despite its immediate failures, the impact of the Fourteen Points, particularly self-determination, shaped the remainder of the 20 th century. European colonies in Asia and Africa used self-determination as a weapon to demand their independence, and, with the help of the Second World War, led to decolonization in the latter half of the century. At the same time, the next world war itself was brought on in large part by the idea of self-determination. Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and imperial Japan used the principle of self-determination to justify their plans of expansion and conquest.

The Fourteen Points did not make the world safe for democracy, nor did they prevent future conflicts. Most of the conflicts of the 20 th century were fueled by nationalism , as were the genocides and atrocities that accompanied those wars. Nevertheless, the ideas set forth in the Fourteen Points set a new standard of national identity, and the League of Nation’s successor, the United Nations, remains with us to this day.

Chris Thomas, J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College

Section Editor: Lon Strauss

• ↑ As quoted in Bailey, Thomas: Woodrow Wilson Wouldn’t Yield, in: American Heritage, 8/4 (1957), online: http://www.americanheritage.com/content/woodrow-wilson-wouldn%E2%80%99t-yield (retrieved: 3 April 2014).
• Bailey, Thomas Andrew: Woodrow Wilson and the lost peace , New York 1944: Macmillan.
• Cooper, John Milton, Jr.: Woodrow Wilson. A biography , New York 2009: Alfred A. Knopf.
• Cooper, John Milton, Jr.: Breaking the heart of the world. Woodrow Wilson and the fight for the League of Nations , Cambridge; New York 2001: Cambridge University Press.
• Ferrell, Robert H.: Woodrow Wilson and World War I, 1917-1921 , New York 1985: Harper & Row.
• Knock, Thomas J.: To end all wars. Woodrow Wilson and the quest for a new world order , New York 1992: Oxford University Press.
• MacMillan, Margaret: Paris 1919. Six months that changed the world , New York 2002: Random House.
• Manela, Erez: The Wilsonian moment. Self-determination and the international origins of anticolonial nationalism , Oxford; New York 2007: Oxford University Press.
• Mee, Charles L.: The end of order, Versailles, 1919 , New York 1980: Dutton.
• Wilson, Woodrow: President Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points , 1918.

Thomas, Chris: Fourteen Points , in: 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War, ed. by Ute Daniel, Peter Gatrell, Oliver Janz, Heather Jones, Jennifer Keene, Alan Kramer, and Bill Nasson, issued by Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin 2014-10-08. DOI : 10.15463/ie1418.10085 .

This text is licensed under: CC by-NC-ND 3.0 Germany - Attribution, Non-commercial, No Derivative Works.

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Ch. 26 World War I

Wilson’s fourteen points, 29.5.2: wilson’s fourteen points.

The Fourteen Points was a statement of principles used for peace negotiations following the end World War I, outlined in a January 8, 1918, speech to the United States Congress by President Woodrow Wilson.

Learning Objective

Summarize the key themes of the Fourteen Points

• U.S. President Woodrow Wilson initiated a secret series of studies named The Inquiry, primarily focused on Europe and carried out by a group in New York that included geographers, historians, and political scientists. This group researched topics likely to arise in the anticipated peace conference.
• The studies culminated in a speech by Wilson to Congress on January 8, 1918, in which he articulated America’s long-term war objectives.
• The speech, known as the Fourteen Points, was authored mainly by Walter Lippmann and projected Wilson’s progressive domestic policies into the international arena.
• It was the clearest expression of intention made by any of the belligerent nations and was generally supported by the European nations.
• The first six points dealt with diplomacy, freedom of the seas, and settlement of colonial claims; pragmatic territorial issues were addressed as well, and the final point regarded the establishment of an association of nations to guarantee the independence and territorial integrity of all nations—a League of Nations.
• The actual agreements reached at the Paris Peace Conference were quite different than Wilson’s plan, most notably in the harsh economic reparations required from Germany. This provision angered Germans and may have contributed to the rise of Nazism in the subsequent decades.

The Fourteen Points was a statement of principles used for peace negotiations to end World War I. The principles were outlined in a January 8, 1918, speech on war aims and peace terms to the United States Congress by President Woodrow Wilson. Europeans generally welcomed Wilson’s points, but his main Allied colleagues (Georges Clemenceau of France, David Lloyd George of the United Kingdom, and Vittorio Orlando of Italy) were skeptical of the applicability of Wilsonian idealism.

The United States joined the Allied Powers in fighting the Central Powers on April 6, 1917. Its entry into the war had in part been due to Germany’s resumption of submarine warfare against merchant ships trading with France and Britain. However, Wilson wanted to avoid the United States’ involvement in the long-standing European tensions between the great powers; if America was going to fight, he wanted to unlink the war from nationalistic disputes or ambitions. The need for moral aims was highlighted when after the fall of the Russian government, the Bolsheviks disclosed secret treaties made between the Allies. Wilson’s speech also responded to Vladimir Lenin’s Decree on Peace of November 1917 immediately after the October Revolution, which proposed an immediate withdrawal of Russia from the war, called for a just and democratic peace that was not compromised by territorial annexations, and led to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on March 3, 1918.

The speech made by Wilson took many domestic progressive ideas and translated them into foreign policy (free trade, open agreements, democracy, and self-determination). The Fourteen Points speech was the only explicit statement of war aims by any of the nations fighting in World War I. Some belligerents gave general indications of their aims, but most kept their post-war goals private.

Background and Research

The immediate cause of the United States’ entry into World War I in April 1917 was the German announcement of renewed unrestricted submarine warfare and the subsequent sinking of ships with Americans on board. But President Wilson’s war aims went beyond the defense of maritime interests. In his War Message to Congress, Wilson declared that the United States’ objective was “to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the life of the world.” In several speeches earlier in the year, Wilson sketched out his vision of an end to the war that would bring a “just and secure peace,” not merely “a new balance of power.”

President Wilson subsequently initiated a secret series of studies named the Inquiry, primarily focused on Europe and carried out by a group in New York that included geographers, historians, and political scientists; the group was directed by Colonel Edward House. Their job was to study Allied and American policy in virtually every region of the globe and analyze economic, social, and political facts likely to come up in discussions during the peace conference. The group produced and collected nearly 2,000 separate reports and documents plus at least 1,200 maps. The studies culminated in a speech by Wilson to Congress on January 8, 1918, in which he articulated America’s long-term war objectives. The speech was the clearest expression of intention made by any of the belligerent nations and projected Wilson’s progressive domestic policies into the international arena.

The Speech to Congress

The speech, known as the Fourteen Points, was developed from a set of diplomatic points by Wilson and territorial points drafted by the Inquiry’s general secretary, Walter Lippmann, and his colleagues, Isaiah Bowman, Sidney Mezes, and David Hunter Miller. Lippmann’s draft territorial points were a direct response to the secret treaties of the European Allies, which Lippman was shown by Secretary of War Newton D. Baker. Lippman’s task according to House was “to take the secret treaties, analyze the parts which were tolerable, and separate them from those which we regarded as intolerable, and then develop a position which conceded as much to the Allies as it could, but took away the poison…It was all keyed upon the secret treaties.”

In the speech, Wilson directly addressed what he perceived as the causes for the world war by calling for the abolition of secret treaties, a reduction in armaments, an adjustment in colonial claims in the interests of both native peoples and colonists, and freedom of the seas. Wilson also made proposals that would ensure world peace in the future. For example, he proposed the removal of economic barriers between nations, the promise of self-determination for national minorities, and a world organization that would guarantee the “political independence and territorial integrity [of] great and small states alike”— a League of Nations.

Though Wilson’s idealism pervades the Fourteen Points, he also had more practical objectives in mind. He hoped to keep Russia in the war by convincing the Bolsheviks that they would receive a better peace from the Allies, to bolster Allied morale, and to undermine German war support. The address was well received in the United States and Allied nations and even by Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin as a landmark of enlightenment in international relations. Wilson subsequently used the Fourteen Points as the basis for negotiating the Treaty of Versailles that ended the war.

Wilson’s Fourteen Points: Wilson with his 14 points choosing between competing claims. Babies represent claims of the English, French, Italians, Polish, Russians, and enemy. American political cartoon, 1919.

Fourteen Points vs. the Versailles Treaty

President Wilson became physically ill at the beginning of the Paris Peace Conference, allowing French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau to advance demands substantially different from Wilson’s Fourteen Points. Clemenceau viewed Germany as having unfairly attained an economic victory over France, due to the heavy damage their forces dealt to France’s industries even duringretreat, and expressed dissatisfaction with France’s allies at the peace conference.

Notably, Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles, which would become known as the War Guilt Clause, was seen by the Germans as assigning full responsibility for the war and its damages on Germany; however, the same clause was included in all peace treaties and historian Sally Marks has noted that only German diplomats saw it as assigning responsibility for the war.

The text of the Fourteen Points had been widely distributed in Germany as propaganda prior to the end of the war and was thus well-known by the Germans. The differences between this document and the final Treaty of Versailles fueled great anger. German outrage over reparations and the War Guilt Clause is viewed as a likely contributing factor to the rise of national socialism. At the end of World War I, foreign armies had only entered Germany’s prewar borders twice: the advance of Russian troops into the Eastern border of Prussia, and following the Battle of Mulhouse, the settlement of the French army in the Thann valley. This lack of important Allied incursions contributed to the popularization of the Stab-in-the-back myth in Germany after the war.

Attributions

• “The Inquiry.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Inquiry . Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0 .
• “Stab-in-the-back myth.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stab-in-the-back_myth . Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0 .
• “Idealism in international relations.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idealism_in_international_relations . Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0 .
• “Fourteen Points.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteen_Points . Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0 .
• “World War I.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I . Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0 .
• “Wilsons_Fourteen_Points_–_European_Baby_Show.png.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteen_Points#/media/File:Wilsons_Fourteen_Points_–_European_Baby_Show.png . Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0 .
• Boundless World History. Authored by : Boundless. Located at : https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-worldhistory/ . License : CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike

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The Fourteen Points in Detail

In his Fourteen Points speech, Wilson had described the terms under which America would accept a peace settlement. Wilson wanted to grant independence to lands in Europe that had been under  imperial control. Wilson firmly believed that the Fourteen Points would solve the problems that had led to World War I, prevent future wars, and spread democracy across the globe. His “new world order” would serve as a contrast to Lenin’s vision of an international Communist society.

The Fourteen Points referenced free trade, open diplomacy, arms reductions, and an international organization—the League of Nations—to settle disputes without war. Over half of the points dealt with issues of national borders and national  sovereignty .

Read the full transcript of Wilson’s speech to the U.S. Congress, which includes the Fourteen Points. Highlight details that reference the impact of the war and plans for a future peace. Click Highlight It to get started.

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Fourteen Points

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Summary: “fourteen points”.

On January 8, 1918, toward the end of World War I, President Woodrow Wilson stood before both houses of Congress to lay out a vision for the postwar period. He proposed a plan based on “Fourteen Points,” which gave his short speech its name. Newspapers around the world quickly reprinted the speech’s core passages under that title. This guide uses the full text of the speech in the Congressional Record for the House of Representatives (Vol. 56, Part 1). The list of 14 points, which have often been published alone, composes most of the speech’s second half.

Wilson opens his speech with an explanation of why America needs to define the peace for which it is fighting. He recounts the recent peace talks at Brest-Litovsk between the enemy Central Powers (Germany and Austria) and Russia, a US ally. Wilson describes how the Russians offered reasonable and just principles for a settlement. In contrast, the Central Powers talked about liberal ideas but in practice made harsh demands to which the Russians could not submit (690).

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Wilson speculates that this discrepancy shows tension between the Central Powers’ civilian and military leaders, which may offer hope for future negotiations. He then says it is time for all participants, especially the US, to publicly state their vision for an armistice and postwar world. He condemns all attempts at making secret deals behind closed doors. He admits that Russia is militarily broken and helpless before Germany’s armies but praises its continued heroic defiance. America, Wilson proclaims, entered the war because the Central Powers violated rights and therefore must ensure that peace is made on the foundation of justice (690-91).

Wilson then moves into his proposals (691). His first five points describe principles that, if obeyed by all nations after the war, will lead to a more prosperous world that might avoid another such war. They include:

1. All international treaties and alliances should be made in full view of the public without backroom deals.

2. All nations should have freedom of navigation (the right to sail any sea without their ships being harassed or sunk).

3. There should be open trade between nations without economic barriers.

4. Militaries and stockpiles of military supplies should be reduced to the minimum needed for self-defense.

5. European and Japanese claims to rule parts of the world as colonies should be judged by a neutral party. The desires and rights of the colonial subjects need to be given as much weight as the claims of their colonial rulers.

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Wilson’s next eight points address the future borders of specific territories. These points include:

6. Wilson demands that the Central Powers withdraw from occupied Russian territory. He also demands that all nations respect the freedom of Russia to rule itself under the institutions of its choosing, a veiled reference to the new communist government being formed there.

7. Belgium, which was invaded at the beginning of the war in violation of international law, must be liberated.

8. The French territories of Alsace-Lorraine, taken by Germany in 1871, must be restored to France.

9. Italy’s frontiers are to be adjusted based on ethnicity. In other words, if most people in a disputed territory speak Italian, that region should be part of Italy.

10. The people who make up the Austro-Hungarian empire should be allowed to freely develop themselves. That is, the different ethnic groups in that empire should have the right to create their own countries.

11. The Central Powers should give up the countries in the Balkans (southeastern Europe) that they had conquered, including Serbia.

12. The Turks, who rule the Ottoman Empire, can keep the country of Turkey but other ethnic groups in the empire should be able to form their own countries.

13. The Polish people should have their own country.

Wilson rounds out his list with a final point that suggests a way to enforce his earlier principles. The later League of Nations is based on this point:

14. He calls for an association of nations that can guarantee peace and protect small nations against attack.

Wilson reaffirms that America’s concern is justice. He reassures Germans that he has no hatred of them or desire to humiliate them. He is happy to embrace a peaceful Germany as an equal—all that needs to happen is for liberal German civilians to overrule the generals who desire to become the masters of other nations. America will fight so long as justice is denied but will happily make a just peace.

Wilson concludes with a rousing declaration of America’s commitment to justice and liberty for all people. He casts the war in apocalyptic tones as the “final war for human liberty” (691). The US will fight to the end to ensure that good triumphs.

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November 11 is, of course, Veterans' Day . Originally called "Armistice Day," it marked the ending of World War I in 1918. It also marked the beginning of an ambitious foreign policy plan by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson . Known as the Fourteen Points, the plan—which ultimately failed—embodied many elements of what we today call " globalization ."

Historical Background

World War I, which began in August 1914, was the result of decades of imperial competition between the European monarchies. Great Britain, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Turkey, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Russia all claimed territories around the globe. They also conducted elaborate espionage schemes against each other, engaged in a continuous arms race, and constructed a precarious system of military alliances .

Austria-Hungary laid claim to much of the Balkan region of Europe, including Serbia. When a Serbian rebel killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, a string of events forced the European nations to mobilize for war against each other.

The main combatants were:

• The Central Powers: Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Turkey
• The Entente Powers: France, Great Britain, Russia

The U.S. in the War

The United States did not enter World War I until April 1917 but its list of grievances against warring Europe dated back to 1915. That year, a German submarine (or U-Boat) sank the British luxury steamer,  Lusitania , which carried 128 Americans. Germany had already been violating American neutral rights; the United States, as a neutral in the war, wanted to trade with all belligerents. Germany saw any American trade with an entente power as helping their enemies. Great Britain and France also saw American trade that way, but they did not unleash submarine attacks on American shipping.

In early 1917, British intelligence intercepted a message from German Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmerman to Mexico. The message invited Mexico to join the war on the side of Germany. Once involved, Mexico was to ignite war in the American southwest that would keep U.S. troops occupied and out of Europe. Once Germany had won the European war, it would then help Mexico retrieve land it had lost to the United States in the Mexican War, 1846-48.

The so-called Zimmerman Telegram was the last straw. The United States quickly declared war against Germany and its allies.

American troops did not arrive in France in any large numbers until late 1917. However, there were enough on hand to stop a German offensive in Spring 1918. That fall, Americans led an allied offensive that flanked the German front in France, severing the German army's supply lines back to Germany.

Germany had no choice but to call for a cease-fire. The armistice went into effect at 11 a.m., on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918.

The Fourteen Points

More than anything else, Woodrow Wilson saw himself as a diplomat. He had already roughed out the concept of the Fourteen Points to Congress and the American people months before the armistice.

The summarized Fourteen Points included:

• Open covenants of peace and transparent diplomacy.
• Absolute freedom of the seas.
• The removal of economic and trade barriers.
• An end to arms races.
• National self-determination to figure in adjustment of colonial claims.
• Evacuation of all Russian territory.
• Evacuation and restoration of Belgium.
• All French territory restored.
• Italian frontiers adjusted.
• Austria-Hungary given "opportunity to autonomous development."
• Rumania, Serbia, Montenegro evacuated and given independence.
• Turkish portion of the Ottoman Empire should become sovereign; nations under Turkish rule should become autonomous; Dardanelles should be open to all.
• Independent Poland with access to the sea should be created.
• A "general association of nations" should be formed to guarantee political independence and territorial integrity to "great and small states alike."

Points one through five attempted to eliminate the immediate causes of the war : imperialism, trade restrictions, arms races, secret treaties, and disregard of nationalist tendencies. Points six through 13 attempted to restore territories occupied during the war and set post-war boundaries, also based on national self-determination. In the 14th Point, Wilson envisioned a global organization to protect states and prevent future wars.

The Treaty of Versailles

The Fourteen Points served as the foundation for the Versailles Peace Conference that began outside of Paris in 1919. However, the Treaty of Versailles  was markedly different than Wilson's proposal.

France—which had been attacked by Germany in 1871 and was the site of most of the fighting in World War I—wanted to punish Germany in the treaty. While Great Britain and the United States did not agree with punitive measures, France won out.

The resultant treaty:

• Forced Germany to sign a "war guilt" clause and accept full responsibility for the war.
• Prohibited further alliances between Germany and Austria.
• Created a demilitarized zone between France and Germany.
• Made Germany responsible for paying millions of dollars in reparations to the victors.
• Limited Germany to a defensive army only, with no tanks.
• Limited Germany's navy to six capital ships and no submarines.
• Prohibited Germany from having an air force.

The victors at Versailles did accept the idea of Point 14, a League of Nations . Once created, it became the issuer of "mandates" which were former German territories handed over to allied nations for administration.

While Wilson won the 1919 Nobel Peace Prize for his Fourteen Points, he was disappointed by the punitive atmosphere of Versailles. He was also unable to convince Americans to join the League of Nations. Most Americans—in an isolationist mood after the war—did not want any part of a global organization which could lead them into another war.

Wilson campaigned throughout the U.S. trying to convince Americans to accept the League of Nations. They never did, and the League limped toward World War II with U.S. support. Wilson suffered a series of strokes while campaigning for the League, and was debilitated for the rest of his presidency in 1921.

• World War I: The Fourteen Points
• The Treaty of Versailles: An Overview
• Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points
• The US and Great Britain's Special Relationship
• Biography of Woodrow Wilson, 28th President of the United States
• 10 Things to Know About Woodrow Wilson
• A Guide to Woodrow Wilson's 14 Points Speech
• The Major Alliances of World War I
• Causes of World War I and the Rise of Germany
• Causes of World War II
• The Controversial Versailles Treaty Ended World War I
• World War 1: A Short Timeline 1919-20
• The Causes and War Aims of World War One
• World War 1: A Short Timeline Pre-1914
• The Consequences of World War I
• World War I's Mitteleuropa

Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points, 1918

Use this primary source text to explore key historical events.

Suggested Sequencing

• Use this Primary Source with  America Enters World War I  Narrative to further analyze President Wilson’s vision for the end of World War I.

Introduction

President Woodrow Wilson wrote the Fourteen Points as a program to preserve peace after World War I. Wilson first presented the Fourteen Points in a speech to Congress on January 8, 1918, in what would be the final year of the war. Wilson hoped the end of the war would be an opportunity to not only establish a peace treaty but also create a just and cooperative international order to prevent future wars in Europe and the rest of the world. American allies viewed the Fourteen Points positively and even the Central Powers began to see it as a reasonable basis for peace when they realized the war was unwinnable. Although all sides initially supported the ideas presented in the Fourteen Points, demands for German reparations and other punishments made the idealism of the Fourteen Points difficult to implement at the Peace of Paris.

Sourcing Questions

• Who wrote this document? What is his relationship to the peace of World War I?
• When was this speech delivered? Consider the specific date but also the larger historical context and surrounding events.
• Who is the author’s intended audience? How might this influence what he says?
• What is the author’s purpose for writing the document?

Comprehension Questions

• What diplomatic or military restrictions did Wilson call for?
• What economic recommendations did Wilson make to ensure international peace?
• How should colonial questions be resolved in the future?
• What countries had territory that was occupied or conquered by Germany during the war?
• What recommendation did Wilson make for German-occupied territory once the war was over?
• According to this part of the Fourteen Points, what countries should be established or have territorial changes?
• What was meant by autonomous development and political and economic independence for these territories?
• How should nationality influence the creation and borders of countries?
• What was the purpose of forming a “general association of nations?”

Historical Reasoning Questions

• Explain how Wilson’s Fourteen Points respond to the major causes of World War I.
• Explain how Wilson’s Fourteen Points attempt to secure a lasting international peace.

President Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points  http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/wilson14.asp

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Developments, story   the end of the war.

• A programme for world peace – President Wilson’s Fourteen Points

Präsident Thomas Woodrow Wilson, portrait photograph, 1918 Copyright: IMAGNO/Austrian Archives

Title page of the Freie Presse of 10 January 1918 with the report on Wilson's speech and the 14 points. Copyright: ÖNB/ANNO Partner: Austrian National Library

On 8 January 1918, Thomas Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924), who had been President of the USA since 1913, held a programmatic speech before both houses of Congress in which he interpreted the war as a moral struggle for democracy and staked out the cornerstones for post-war Europe.

Wilson demanded a new basis for international relations: there was to be no more secret diplomacy and the peace should be negotiated ‘frankly and in the public view’. Another point concerned the establishment of a ‘general association of nations’ as a platform to afford ‘guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike’. In 1920 this led to the foundation of the League of Nations, the forerunner of the United Nations, for which Wilson was later awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Wilson’s programme also contained a number of demands concerned with trade politics such as ‘absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters’ and the ‘the removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers’ in international trade relations. And in a further point he made reference to a ‘free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims’.

In addition to these demands, which were somewhat vaguely formulated and intended principally as food for thought and debate, Wilson’s famous ‘Fourteen Points’ speech also contained concrete demands for a new European order. Germany was to re-establish Belgium as an independent state and return Alsace-Lorraine to France. The Russian areas under German occupation were to be evacuated and given the freedom to determine their own political development. Furthermore, the new order after the conclusion of peace was to include the establishment of an independent Polish state and provide for stability in the Balkans and the Ottoman Empire.

With respect to the Habsburg Monarchy, Wilson demanded that the border to Italy be redrawn in accordance with the language spoken on either side (‘along clearly recognizable lines of nationality’). Particularly significant was the fact that Wilson supported the demand of the peoples of Austria-Hungary for guarantees of ‘the freest opportunity to autonomous development.’

The reactions were divided. The USA’s European allies were sceptical about the demands, which in their opinion were too idealistic. As from the German point of view Wilson’s demands seemed quite acceptable, Berlin interpreted the programme as a basic set of conditions for German capitulation. When the negotiations in the treaties of 1919/20 concluded in the suburbs of Paris finally led to results differing significantly from Wilson’s demands, the Germans considered that their trust had been abused and made extremely distorted claims concerning Wilson’s original intentions.

Vienna likewise considered Wilson’s plan for the post-war world an acceptable one. In particular, his concern for the continued existence of the Dual Monarchy was regarded as offering a glimmer of hope, for according to Wilson the multi-national state was in principle to remain in place, even though the individual nationalities were to be guaranteed the greatest possible autonomy.

In May 1918, however, the USA underwent a fundamental change of attitude. As Austria-Hungary was not willing to revoke its alliance with Germany, there was no longer any taboo on dismembering the Habsburg Monarchy and the establishment of nation-states in Central Europe now became the general aim of the Entente in the new ordering of post-war Europe.

This was the final death blow for the Monarchy, because Wilson’s call for the Central European nationalities to be accorded ‘the freest opportunity to autonomous development’ was now understood by their political leaders as a call for national liberation. The campaigns for independence being waged by the non-German and non-Magyar ethnic groups acquired new impetus and the anti-Austrian line gained the upper hand in public opinion.

Even though the noble principle of the ‘self-determination of the nations’ was hardly applicable to central and south-eastern Europe, because there were large areas inhabited by two or more different ethnic groups, the new catchword thus became the guiding principle for the creation of the new territorial order.

Translation: Peter John Nicholson

• Martin Mutschlechner

Bihl, Wolfdieter: Der Erste Weltkrieg 1914–1918. Chronik – Daten – Fakten, Wien/Köln/Weimar 2010

• The course of the war 1917–1918: Face-to-face with imminent downfall
• The situation in the hinterland
• Apathy and resistance – The mood of the people
• The Sixtus Affair: A major diplomatic débacle
• ‘To My faithful Austrian peoples’ – Emperor Karl’s manifesto
• The collapse
• The disintegration of the Habsburg Monarchy – Part I: On the road to self-determination
• The disintegration of the Habsburg Monarchy – Part II: The situation in Vienna and Budapest
• The last days of the Monarchy

Contents related to this chapter

The longer the war lasted, the more disagreement was voiced by representatives of the Austrian peace and women’s movements and also by sections of the Austro‑Hungarian population. They became increasingly tired of the war, reflected in strikes and hunger riots and in mass desertions by front soldiers towards the end of the war.

Thomas Woodrow Wilson

Wilson was the President of the USA during the First World War. His “Fourteen points” of 1918 were decisive for the restructuring of Europe after the end of the war.

Peace message by US President Wilson (“14 points”)

The Paris peace treaties: post-war restructuring of Europe

National attitudes to the war

The Habsburg Monarchy as a state framework for the smaller nationalities of Central Europe was not seriously questioned before 1914, either internally or externally. With the outbreak of war, representatives of the nationalities initially emphasised their loyalty to the Monarchy’s war aims.

Memoirs from the left papers of Johann Obermüllner

War memoirs from the left papers of Anton Hanausek

War notebook from the left papers of Johann Tanzer

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Lesson 4: Fighting for Peace: The Fate of Wilson's Fourteen Points

In the aftermath of the First World War, Woodrow Wilson tried to push a comprehensive and enlightened peace plan.

Wikimedia Commons

In January 1918, less than one year after the United States entered World War I, President Woodrow Wilson announced his Fourteen Points to try to ensure permanent peace and to make the world safe for democracy. Wilson's aims included freedom of the seas, free trade, and, most important, an international organization dedicated to collective security and the spreading of democracy. The other Allied powers tacitly and cautiously accepted Wilson's plan as a template for a postwar treaty; however, numerous obstacles lay in the path of the Fourteen Points at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. Wilson reluctantly made several concessions, yet he successfully protected the Fourteenth Point, the League of Nations, which was written into the Versailles Treaty. After enduring months of bruising, frustrating negotiations, Wilson finally returned to the United States. Despite obvious Senate reservations about the League of Nations, Wilson was certain the Versailles Treaty would be ratified. He was wrong.

Through the use of primary source documents and maps, this lesson will introduce students to Wilson's Fourteen Points, as well as his efforts to have them incorporated into the final peace treaties.

Guiding Questions

Did the Versailles Treaty represent the fulfillment of Wilson's Fourteen Points, or their betrayal?

Learning Objectives

Discuss how the Fourteen Points, especially the League of Nations, demonstrated Wilsonian principles

Summarize the aims of the other Allied powers at the Paris Peace Conference

Identify which of the Fourteen Points became part of the final peace settlement

Lesson Plan Details

In January 1918, Woodrow Wilson unveiled his Fourteen Points to the U.S. Congress. The speech was a natural extension of the proposals he had offered in his " Peace without Victory " address and his request for a declaration of war. Presuming an Allied victory, the President proposed freedom of the seas and of trade, arms reductions, and fair settlement of colonial claims and possessions. He insisted that "open covenants of peace, openly arrived at," must be the benchmark of postwar negotiations. He suggested that a repentant and reformed Germany would not be oppressed, but rather welcomed into the international community. That community, Wilson concluded, would be bound together in a league of nations devoted to collective security and spreading democracy.

Although the Allied powers cautiously agreed to use the Fourteen Points as a treaty template, the circumstances of the war and the specific postwar aims of numerous nations combined to make a formidable obstacle. In 1915, the secret London agreements had proposed ceding the German territory of the Saar (rich in coal) to France, and South Tyrol, controlled by Austria-Hungary, to Italy. Japan hoped to take German claims in the North Pacific and China, while Great Britain hoped to secure claims in Africa and south of the equator in the Pacific.

By the war's end, in November 1918, these tensions had mounted. France and Great Britain both wanted Germany to pay extensive war reparations. Great Britain, with an eye toward protecting its far-flung empire, also resisted freedom of the seas. Wilson hammered out a compromise. Together, the Allies would precisely define "freedom of the seas," and Germany would have to pay some reparations. Meanwhile domestic political tensions were rising. In the midterm elections, Republicans gained control of Congress. Nevertheless, Wilson opted only for token Republican representation on the U.S. delegation headed to Paris, the site of the postwar peace proceedings, which began in January 1919. This snub did not pass unnoticed by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge (R-Mass.), who now chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The proceedings were raucous and confusing. Wilson, who had rejected advice that he might better fulfill his Fourteen Points by remaining in Washington, immersed himself in the day-to-day negotiations. His greatest challenge was the spirit of vengeance that animated the other Allied leaders. Not only did they want to punish Germany, they also wanted to use victory to obtain new territory in Europe and to divvy up Germany's colonial possessions. Wilson struggled to balance pragmatism and idealism. On the colonial question, he agreed to substitute the "mandate system" for full and fair self-determination. Under this system, the Allied powers assumed governing control over the colonies of Germany and areas such as Syria and Lebanon that had belonged to the Ottoman Empire. The expectation was that the Allied powers would eventually free their "mandates." He also accepted the transfer of some one million square miles of territory between nations; in return, the covenant of the League of Nations was embedded into the Versailles Treaty.

In June 1919, Germany's defiant representatives, who had been excluded from the proceedings, grudgingly signed the Versailles Treaty. Wilson's decision to now present the Versailles Treaty to the Senate as a fait accompli was quite risky. Republican doubts about the League had hardened; indeed, a group of Senators known as the "Irreconcilables," led by William Borah of Idaho, had proclaimed they would not support American membership in the League. Much opposition resulted from Article Ten of the League's covenant, which committed nations to the protection of the territorial integrity of all other members. This seemed to undermine Congressional authority to declare war, though the precise obligations of the United States were not clear. Lodge and the "Reservationists" were, at least initially, ready to act on the Versailles Treaty if Wilson separated the covenant. They also seemed willing to accept U.S. membership provided Congress kept the power to decide whether or not the United States would intervene militarily on behalf of the League. But Wilson refused to yield, as did Lodge and his allies. The debate over the League spilled over onto the 1920 presidential campaign, and while the election of Republican Warren G. Harding, who declared his opposition to the League, cannot be assessed only as a referendum on Wilsonian diplomacy, it was clear that the American public had grown weary of crusades, domestic and international. The United States never joined the League, finally ending the official state of war with Germany in the summer of 1921 through the Treaty of Berlin .

For an overview of the League of Nations and the Versailles Treaty, visit From Revolution to Reconstruction . For another EDSITEment lesson plan on this subject, see The Debate in the United States over the League of Nations: League of Nations Basics .

• This lesson may be used in sequence with the other plans in this unit on Wilsonian foreign policy, or it may be used in conjunction with the lessons in the EDSITEment curriculum unit The Debate in the United States over the League of Nations . While this lesson concentrates on Wilson's Fourteen Points, the Paris Peace Proceedings, and the Versailles Treaty, the other lessons focus on domestic political and public reaction to the League of Nations. See The Great War: Evaluating the Treaty of Versailles .
• Bookmark or print out the referenced websites. You should also bookmark or print the Text Document that accompanies this lesson and distribute the relevant pages to your students as handouts. The Text Document provides excerpts of the online documents used in this lesson, thus allowing your students to read only the pertinent portions of the source.
• For the card game in Activity 3, cut out the cards found on pages 12-20 of the Text Document and place them in two decks—one called "Wilson's Fourteen Points" (consisting of the cards on pages 12-16 of the Text Document ) and the other called "Versailles Treaty" (consisting of the cards on pages 17-20 of the Text Document ).

Analyzing primary sources —To provide your students with the skills needed to examine primary sources, you may find it helpful to visit the Learning Page from the Library of Congress. In particular, students may find the Mindwalk activity useful in preparing to work with primary sources. At the National Archives website, the Educator Resources  provides worksheets to practice analysis of various primary sources, including photographs.

Another exercise involving interpretation of historic photographs can be found at History Matters .

Activity 1. The Fourteen Points

In the first activity, the students will read Wilson's Fourteen Points and determine how the points reveal Wilson's foreign policy goals. Divide the class into groups of three or more, and then distribute copies of an abridged version of the Fourteen Points . This address is available in its complete form at the EDSITEment-reviewed site The Avalon Project , but excerpts may be found on pages 1–3 of the Text Document . In addition, give each group a copy of the worksheet on page 4 of the Text Document . This worksheet provides capsule summaries of four goals of Wilsonian foreign policy. In their groups, students will create a poster-size concept map that matches each of the Fourteen Points to one of the four goals. ( See Text Document for more detailed instructions .)

To help students identify the locations mentioned in the document, they should be directed to the following map of Europe in 1914  (picture), accessible via the EDSITEment-reviewed site History Matters . Either photocopy and distribute the map to the students, or project an image onto a screen in the classroom.

Activity 2. Allied Reactions to the Fourteen Points

In the second activity, students will divide into two teams, A and B. Each team will further divide into small groups (depending on class size). Team A groups will study documents 1–3; Team B groups will read documents 4–6. In presentations to the rest of the class, the groups for both teams will answer this question: how supportive of the Fourteen Points were the other Allied nations? All groups will be required to use historical evidence from their sources to support their answer.

Excerpts of the documents, and specific questions to be answered, may be found on pages 6–9 of the Text Document . Team A groups should receive pages 5–6, while Team B groups get pages 7–9.

• Photograph of devastation in Belgium  
• Allied conditional acceptance of Fourteen Points, November 5, 1918 (from the EDSITEment-reviewed Great War Primary Documents Archive )
• French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau's opening remarks, January 18, 1919 (excerpted). From the EDSITEment-reviewed resource First World War.com
• French President Raymond Poincare's opening remarks to the Paris Peace Conference, January 18, 1919 (excerpted). From the EDSITEment-reviewed resource First World War.com
• British observer Sisley Huddleston's description of the conference, January 18, 1919 (excerpted). From the EDSITEment-reviewed resource First World War.com
• Excerpt of report from the Commission to Determine War Guilt, May 6, 1919 . From the EDSITEment-reviewed resource First World War.com

Activity 3. The Fourteen Points and the Treaty of Versailles

The third and final activity is a card-based game in which students attempt to match up Wilson's Fourteen Points to specific terms of the Versailles Treaty. Complete rules of the game may be found on pages 10–11 of the Text Document —these should be handed out to students. In addition, students should have access to maps showing the boundaries of Europe both before and after World War I. Such maps may be found at the site of the United States Military Academy at West Point , accessible via History Matters. Copies of the map may be distributed to the students, or they may be projected onto a screen for the class to view.

Pages 12–20 of the Text Document contain a total of 26 cards—15 marked "Wilson's Fourteen Points," and 12 marked "Versailles Treaty." Divide the students into two teams; give each member of the first team a card from the "Wilson's Fourteen Points" deck, and give each member of the second a card from the "Versailles Treaty" deck.

Begin by asking a student holding the lowest-numbered "Versailles Treaty" card to stand and read his or her card aloud. At that point any member of the "Fourteen Points" team who believes that his or her card pertains to that particular clause of the Versailles Treaty should also stand and read the contents of his or her card, and explain why it fits. If more than one student from the "Fourteen Points" team responds, the teacher should lead a brief discussion (no more than five minutes) before asking the class to decide which of the cardholders has the closest connection to the Versailles peace term. If a geographic location is mentioned on any of the cards, ask the students to note that location on the map.

Each time that a member of the "Fourteen Points" team is matched up with a member of the "Versailles" team, that pair should write the contents of their cards on the board. The game continues until each member of the "Versailles" team has read his or her card, and has been matched with a member of the "Fourteen Points" team. At this point there should still be three members of the latter team who have not read aloud the contents of their cards. They should do so now.

To conclude the activity, teachers should lead students in a discussion touching on the following questions:

• Which parts of the Fourteen Points were represented in the Versailles Treaty?
• Which parts of the Fourteen Points were dealt with only partially in the Treaty?
• What parts of the Fourteen Points were ignored completely in the Treaty?
• If you were a believer in Wilsonian foreign policy, would you support the Treaty of Versailles? Why or why not?

After completing this lesson, students should also be able to write brief (1-2 paragraph) essays answering the following questions:

• How did the Fourteen Points promote Wilsonian ideas?
• How did the Versailles Treaty affect the boundaries of Europe?
• How well did the Versailles Treaty represent the Fourteen Points?

Students should be able to identify and explain the significance of the following:

• Fourteen Points
• Paris Peace Conference
• Versailles Treaty
• international collective security
• League of Nations

Finally, students should be able to locate the following on a blank map of Europe:

• Alsace-Lorraine
• Czechoslovakia
• Wilson's lost battle to secure Senate ratification of the Versailles Treaty could be a student research topic. The National Park Service provides a guided reading of relevant sources
• Also available are graphic items related to the League of Nations, including a map of the member states
• The American Memory project at the Library of Congress offers an online collection of recordings of speeches for and against the League of Nations (click on the link to "League of Nations—United States")
• The most common criticism of the Treaty of Versailles was that it was overly harsh, and that it therefore violated the spirit of Wilson's Fourteen Points. Two examples of this may be found at the EDSITEment-reviewed resource First World War.com . One is the official German protest to the terms of Versailles , while the other is an editorial from a Dutch newspaper critical of the treaty. Students might be asked whether or not they agree with these assessments.
• The influence of Wilson's Fourteen Points can be traced using the National Archives Teaching with Documents unit on Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill ; it outlines the similarities between the 1941 Atlantic Charter and the Fourteen Points.
• Using primary sources available at the Truman Presidential Library , students could research the influence of the Fourteen Points and Wilsonian foreign policy (especially an active role for the United States) on the formation of the United Nations in 1945 .

Selected EDSITEment Websites

• Wilson's Fourteen Points (January 1918)
• Photograph of devastation in Belgium
• Allied conditional acceptance of Fourteen Points
• Europe, 1914  (picture)
• Europe, 1919  (picture)
• French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau's opening remarks
• German protest of peace terms
• Dutch editorial criticizing Versailles Treaty
• Excerpt of report from the Commission to Determine War Guilt
• Woodrow Wilson: Prophet of Peace
• American Leaders Speak: Recordings from World War I and the 1920 Election
• Documents Related to Churchill and FDR
• Truman and the United Nations

Materials & Media

Lesson 4: fighting for peace: worksheet 1, related on edsitement, the great war: evaluating the treaty of versailles, lesson 1: the origins of "wilsonianism", lesson 2: "to elect good men": woodrow wilson and latin america, lesson 3: wilson and american entry into world war i.

Help inform the discussion

Woodrow Wilson / Woodrow Wilson - Key Events

Woodrow wilson - key events.

Congress debates and votes on a declaration of war against Germany. The Senate approves the declaration on April 4 by a vote of 82-6; on April 6, the House of Representatives passes the resolution by a vote of 373-50. Wilson signs the declaration on April 6.

United States Declares War on Germany

On April 6, 1917, the United States declared war on Germany. Although President Woodrow Wilson had campaigned for reelection in 1916 emphasizing how he had kept the United States out of the war, he soon realized that the United States could not stand by and remain neutral in the Great War.

At the end of January 1917, German U-Boats resumed unrestricted submarine warfare, attacking ships in the Atlantic Ocean. Shortly afterwards, the British released the Zimmermann telegram to the American government. The telegram revealed a German plot to try to entice Mexico into joining against the United States. President Wilson told the nation at his second inaugural on March 5 that he felt the United States had no control over its neutral status and that outside pressures “have drawn us more and more irresistibly into their current and influence.”

Nevertheless, Wilson remained locked in a remarkable struggle between conflicting principles in his own ideology over the decision whether to go to war. Congress and the public were divided enough on the issue of intervention that the decision to enter the Great War fell on Wilson alone. He remained hopeful in early 1917 for a “peace without victory” that would secure a balance of power and equality of rights for all sides. But he feared that war would undo the progressive reforms he sought domestically and exacerbate the social divisions already present in the country. Nevertheless, Wilson believed that German behavior stood out of bounds of the civilized world and that a German victory would have disastrous consequences for Western civilization.

After the American press published the Zimmermann telegram, Wilson could count on support for a declaration of war if he asked for one from Congress. On April 2, 1917, the President decided to address a joint session of Congress that night. Wilson's speech asked for a declaration of war not as a crusade for justice, but as a somber and terrible act to “make the world safe for democracy.” In the speech, the President asked for increased taxation, a compulsory draft, and government repression of dissent to support the war cause. The Senate debated a war declaration first, passing it on April 4, and the House passed it on April 6. American troops did not enter combat until more than a year later.

To read the full proclamation from April 6, 1917, declaring a state of war between the United States and Germany, click here .

Woodrow Wilson is inaugurated as the twenty-eighth President of the United States. He proclaims it his duty “to cleanse, to reconsider, to restore, to correct the evil without impairing the good, to purify and humanize every process of our common life without weakening or sentimentalizing it.”

The Ford Motor Company institutes the first automobile assembly line to produce the Model T. Company founder Henry Ford breaks precedence and pays his line workers $5 a day, believing that higher wages would lead to greater worker productivity and loyalty.

President Wilson appears before Congress to speak about revising tariffs. Not since John Adams in 1800 had a President addressed Congress personally.

President Wilson extends official recognition to the new Republic of China.

In one of the largest philanthropic acts in American history, John D. Rockefeller donates $100,000,000 to begin the Rockefeller Foundation.

In a discriminatory measure against the Japanese, Gov. Hiram W. Johnson signs the Webb Alien Land-Holding Law, prohibiting Japanese ownership of land in California. The statute is enacted despite the objection of President Wilson and the Japanese Government.

The Seventeenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is enacted, providing for the direct popular election of U.S. senators. Previously, senators were chosen by their respective state legislatures. This amendment succeeds in diminishing the prestige of state governments and enhances popular control of the federal legislature.

After considerable political instability in Mexico, following the assassination of President Francisco Madero, President Wilson declares the United States policy towards Mexico to be one of “watchful waiting.” Wilson refuses to recognize the new government of General Victoriano Huerta, who led the coup against Madero on February 22.

President Wilson signs the Underwood-Simmons Tariff Act, considerably reducing rates set by previous Republican administrations.

From the White House, President Wilson detonates a charge to destroy the Gamboa Dike in Panama, leading to the completion of the Panama Canal.

The Nobel Prize Committee selects Elihu Root, Theodore Roosevelt's secretary of state from 1905 to 1909, as the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for his work as president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

In an effort to safeguard America's financial institutions, the American economy, and the supply of U.S. currency, the Federal Reserve Act is signed into law. In contrast to the economies of Europe, the U.S. economy had functioned without the sophisticated management of banking ever since Andrew Jackson destroyed the Second Bank of the United States in 1830. The Federal Reserve Act created a Federal Reserve System, comprised of a Federal Reserve Board, twelve regional reserve banks, and the underpinnings of a smooth central banking system.

Federal Reserve Act Signed

On December 23, 1913, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act into law. The act created a Federal Reserve System, comprised of a Federal Reserve Board, twelve regional reserve banks, and the underpinnings of a smooth central banking system. It was the most comprehensive overhaul of the nation's banking system since the Civil War and represented one of the crowning achievements of President Wilson's New Freedom program. It helped to safeguard America's financial institutions, the American economy, and the supply of U.S. currency, and it created a new system that allowed a level of governmental control of the monetary supply that was unprecedented in American history. The Federal Reserve Act still provides the framework for regulating the nation's banks, credit, and money supply even today.

Wilson began to craft his monetary system soon after his election in 1912. He met with House Banking Committee Chairman E.C. Glass in December to discuss a variety of banking system plans emerging in Congress. Glass, a conservative Democrat from Virginia, favored a decentralized private system. Wilson remained wary of such a proposal and convinced Glass to consider drafting a plan that included privately controlled regional reserve banks that answered to a central government board with a minority representation for private bankers. Glass's plan contrasted with a competing Senate bill, drafted by progressive Oklahoma senator Robert Owen, which erected a system of reserve banks under direct governmental control. Progressives rallied to Owen's proposal and recoiled from Glass's privatization scheme as a system that would leave Americans at the mercy of Wall Street.

Wilson conferred with Secretary of the Treasury William McAdoo and adviser Louis Brandeis on the proposals making their way through Congress. In a meeting on June 11, 1913, Brandeis pushed the President to support governmental control of the banking and currency systpem of the nation as progressives had proposed. He also convinced the President to leave private bankers off the proposed Federal Reserve Board. After his meeting with Brandeis, Wilson urged Glass to revise his bill. The President addressed Congress on June 22 to push forward banking reform, which he claimed must remain a government responsibility. After a bruising six-month debate in Congress, the progressives' version of the Federal Reserve Act passed Congress on December 19, and Wilson signed it December 23, 1913.

The Federal Reserve Act established a system of twelve districts that each housed a Reserve bank. It also required national banks to join the federal system and contribute six percent of their capital to the system. State banks and trust companies could also join the system. Federal Reserve banks issued notes to member banks with the amount of currency issued regulated by a central Federal Reserve Board in Washington, DC. This board was comprised of the secretary of the treasury, the comptroller of currency, and six other presidential appointees. The act allowed a more flexible system of currency distribution that could respond to economic conditions unique to a given region or that impacted the entire nation. The flexibility of the system benefited both farm and business interests.

In the port of Tampico, Mexican officials detain several U.S. Marines from the U.S.S. Dolphin . Despite the their quick release and an expression of regret by President Victor Huerta, U.S. Admiral Henry T. Mayo demands that Mexican troops salute an American flag as a sign of contrition. President Huerta refuses the demanded salute on April 11; three days later President Wilson orders American warships to Tampico Bay.

In order to “obtain from General Huerta and his adherents the fullest recognition of the rights and dignity of the United States,” President Wilson requests authorization from Congress to use force in Mexico. After some debate, both houses sanction such force on April 22.

At Vera Cruz, Mexico, U.S. forces seize the customhouse. Marines occupy the city and a detachment is sent to exact an apology from President Huerta for the arrest of several drunken U.S. sailors earlier in the month.

President Wilson accepts the offer of arbitration presented by the “ABC Powers” of Argentina, Brazil, and Chile to resolve the Tampico controversy. The mediation proves unnecessary when Mexican President Huerta is forced to resign on July 15.

Congress establishes Mother's Day as the second Sunday in May.

Congress passes The Smith-Lever Act, providing federal funds for agricultural instruction for farmers and state college students.

A Serbian nationalist assassinates Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo, Serbia. This event serves as the proximate cause for the termination of diplomatic relations among the major European nations, contributing to the start of World War I. One month later, Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia.

Germany launches war on Belgium, France, and Great Britain. The United States declares its official neutrality as the Great War begins.

The Panama Canal officially opens after decades of toil, controversy, and diplomatic maneuvering.

Panama Canal Opens

On August 15, 1914, the Panama Canal opened to trans-oceanic traffic. Due to the outbreak of World War I earlier in the month, however, there was only modest commemoration and no official visit from President Woodrow Wilson. Only a few ships a day passed through the forty miles of locks in canal in its first few years of operation; after the World War I was over, this number increased to five thousand annually.

In 1903, the United States signed the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty with Panama, which gave the United States perpetual control of the canal for a price of $10 million and an annual payment of $250,000. Work on the Panama Canal began in 1904. The building of the canal was originally under the direction of John Stevens. However, President Theodore Roosevelt found Stevens lacking as the head of the project and replaced him with George Goethels, who led construction to its completion. Goethels undertook a “lock-and-lake” plan for the canal route, excavating land on either side of Gatun Lake and constructing massive locks to regulate water levels rather than dig across Panama at sea level.

Workers cleared 50 miles of land between the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans. Using primarily the labor of blacks from the Caribbean, the American construction team excavated more than 232 million tons to create the canal path. The canal's three poured-concrete locks measured 1,000 feet long and took four years to complete. Although completed six months ahead of schedule, the project was incredibly costly in dollars and lives. The United States spent almost $400 million on construction. Nearly 30,000 workers labored ten-hour days for ten years. They toiled in dangerous conditions and beset with swarms of mosquitoes bearing malaria and yellow fever. More than 5,500 workers died during construction, including 4,500 black laborers.

Initial plans for a grand armada procession through the Panama Canal upon its opening in August 1914 were cancelled when war broke out in Europe on August 3. That day the cement boat Cristobal became the first ship to pass through the canal. But it was not opened to trans-oceanic traffic until the 15th. Once operational, it shortened the voyage from San Francisco to New York by more than 8,000 miles. The process of building the canal generated advances in U.S. technology and engineering skills. This project also converted the Panama Canal Zone into a major staging area for American military forces, making the United States the dominant military power in Central America.

President Wilson signs legislation establishing the Federal Trade Commission, which is designed to regulate business conglomeration.

Signing the Clayton Anti-trust Act, President Wilson advances the third legócorporate regulationóof his “New Freedom” program. The law strengthens the original Sherman Anti-trust Act of 1890 by prohibiting exclusive sales contracts, predatory pricing, rebates, inter-corporate stock holdings, and interlocking directorates in corporations capitalized at $1 million or more in the same area of business. The act restricts the use of the injunction against labor, and it legalizes peaceful strikes, picketing, and boycotts.

Democrats gain five seats in the Senate giving them a 56-40 majority. Democrats in the House fare worse, losing 61 seats. Nevertheless, Wilson's party retains a 230-196 majority with nine seats held by minor parties.

U.S. forces in Vera Cruz, Mexico, are withdrawn as a result of the resignation of Mexican President Huerta, who fails to win Wilson's support.

Congress approves a bill requiring literacy tests for all immigrants to the United States, although President Wilson vetoes the bill on January 28. Proponents of immigration restriction argue that the United States is allowing too many ill-qualified immigrants into the country, and justify their positions by appealing to religious, ethno-cultural, or racial prejudice.

The first transcontinental telephone call is made by the same men who had made the original telephone call in 1876. Speaking from New York City, Alexander Graham Bell tells Dr. Thomas A. Watson in San Francisco, “Mr. Watson, come here, I want you.”

Congress establishes Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado.

Nevada signs an easy divorce bill, requiring only six months' residence for a divorce to take effect.

A German U-Boat torpedoes the British passenger liner Lusitania off the coast of Ireland. The American public recoils at the loss of 1,198 civilians, including 114 Americans. The Wilson administration issues a fiery response to Germany, holding that nation responsible for the loss of American lives and the violation of American neutrality. Eager to keep the United States at bay, Berlin promptly expresses its regret but claims that the British were illegally smuggling arms aboard the ship.

Lusitania Sinks

On May 7, 1915, the German submarine U-20 torpedoed the British luxury liner Lusitania within sight of the Irish coast. The largest passenger ship in wartime transatlantic service at the time, the Lusitania was struck by a single torpedo and sank in twenty minutes after a second internal explosion. Of the more than 1,900 people on board, nearly 1,200 died, including 128 Americans.

After the outbreak of World War I in Europe in the summer of 1914, Britain laid a blockade upon German ports. In response, Germany deployed experimental attack submarines, called U-boats, in the Atlantic Ocean. The German government declared the waters around the British Isles a war zone in February 1915 and cautioned that its U-boats would sink any ship entering the zone without warning. Germany justified the action of unrestricted submarine warfare by claiming that Britain had violated its own freedom of the seas with the blockade. The German government also argued, correctly, that the British used neutral and civilian ships to transport munitions.

With the outbreak of World War I, President Woodrow Wilson led the United States in its declaration of neutrality. However, this stance began to be tested when Germany began unrestricted submarine warfare. Shortly afterwards, four American citizens were killed in three U-boat attacks. Wilson debated a proper response to German violations of American neutrality with advisor Robert Lansing and Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan. While Wilson and his advisers debated, the Germans torpedoed the Lusitania .

The scale of the disaster shocked and enraged the American public and moved Wilson to take a defensive stand against Germany's violation of American neutrality rights at sea. The President issued a note to the German government demanding that it stop its policy of unrestricted submarine warfare and pay reparations for the deaths of those Americans lost on the Lusitania . The German Imperial Government defended itself by reminding Wilson that the ship had been illegally carrying contraband munitions. It claimed it was the explosion of such munitions that so rapidly sank the ship.

Wilson found Germany's reply unconvincing and drafted a second note over Bryan's objections that urged Germany again to respect civilian and neutrals' “rights of humanity” and warned of his will to defend his own citizens. Bryan resigned rather than sign the second note because he felt that Wilson was not balancing both British and German violations of American neutrality. He was also concerned that the President was taking too hard a stance towards Germany that would leave the United States no alternative except to enter the war. After Bryan's resignation, Wilson promoted Lansing to secretary of state and issued a third note to Berlin warning that the United States would regard another sinking of a passenger liner as a “deliberately unfriendly” act.

Germany never accepted culpability for the loss of the Lusitania . While the German government maintained its position that it sank the ship within the conventions of war, it wanted to keep the United States from entering the war and issued secret orders to its submarine captains to stop sinking large passenger liners. Nevertheless, the Lusitania issue remained a lingering sore spot in American-German relations as the two nations drifted closer to war.

The District Court of New Jersey rules that U.S. Steel is a lawful corporation and not in violation of anti-trust laws.

William Jennings Bryan resigns as secretary of state in protest over the Wilson administration's handling of the Lusitania sinking. Bryan thinks Wilson is acting too boldly and calls on him to take a more moderate approach, banning American travel on belligerents' ships. Wilson names Robert Lansing acting secretary of state.

A third Lusitania note is dispatched to Germany, warning the nation that any consequent violation of American rights would be viewed as “deliberately unfriendly.”

U.S. Marines land in Haiti to restore order after the assassination of Haitian president Vilbrun Guillaume Sam. With the country suffering seemingly endless political strife, Wilson justifies the intervention as an exercise in teaching Haitians “how to elect good men.”

Haiti signs an agreement with the United States to become an American protectorate for ten years. U.S. forces would not leave Haiti until 1934, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt withdraws them in accordance with his “Good Neighbor” policy.

American bankers, organized under J.P. Morgan & Company, authorize a $500 million loan to the British and French governments.

Georgia grants the Ku Klux Klan a new state charter after decades of dormancy.

President Wilson marries Edith Bolling Galt in a Washington, D.C., ceremony. The two honeymoon briefly in Virginia.

In Brushaber v. Union Pacific Railroad , the federal income tax survives a Supreme Court challenge.

Wilson appoints Louis B. Brandeis to the Supreme Court. He is the first Jewish justice in American history.

General John Pershing begins a punitive expedition into Mexico, without the approval of the Mexican government, to capture Pancho Villa and his bandit force. Villa had staged raids along the U.S.-Mexico border after President Wilson failed to support his claims on the leadership of the Mexican government.

U.S. Marines land in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, to restore political stability. The American occupation continues until 1924.

Germany issues the “Sussex Pledge” after a U-Boat sinks another passenger ship, the French liner Sussex , without warning on April 24. Following protests from Washington about German unrestricted submarine attacks, the German government promises not to sink any more merchant ships without prior warning and without time for passengers and crew to abandon ship.

Congress passes the National Defense Act in response to deteriorating relations between Germany and the United States. The act bolsters the standing Army to 175,000 and the National Guard to 450,000.

New York Governor Charles Evans Hughes earns the nomination for President at the Republican National Convention. Delegates select Charles Warren Fairbanks of Indiana as Hughes' running mate.

Democrats re-nominate Woodrow Wilson and vice president Thomas Marshall at their national convention.

After U.S. forces enter his country, the Mexican consul at Brownsville, Texas issues an ultimatum for their withdraw. Four days later, on June 21, American troops come under fire from Mexican forces in Carrizal with seventeen troops killed or wounded.

President Wilson signs the Federal Farm Labor Act, establishing a banking system for farmers to improve their holdings.

A bomb explodes in San Francisco during a Preparedness Day parade, killing ten and wounding forty. Labor leaders Tom Mooney and Warren K. Billings are convicted in the case on dubious evidence in 1917. Mooney, originally sentenced to death, would be pardoned in 1939; Billings would be released in 1940.

An ammunition depot explodes and destroys docks at Toms River Island near Jersey City, New Jersey. Investigators blame German saboteurs in for the attack and for an explosion at a munitions plant in Kingsland, New Jersey, on January 17, 1917.

The U.S. and Denmark sign a treaty for the purchase of the Danish West Indies for $25 million. These became the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The National Park Service is established under the Department of the Interior.

President Wilson signs the Adamson Eight-Hour Act, mandating an eight-hour day standard for most railroad workers.

Margaret Sanger, Fania Mindell, and Ethel Burne open the nation's first birth control clinic in Brooklyn, New York.

Woodrow Wilson is reelected President of the United States by a 23-vote margin in the Electoral College. Wilson staves off stiff competition from Charles Evans Hughes, winning a 49.6 percent majority of the popular vote versus Hughes' 46.1 percent. Wilson runs on the slogan “He kept us out of War” despite the growing implausibility of U.S. neutrality in the Great War. The election hinged on Wilson's slim 4,000-vote majority in California, where Hughes' loss of support from Governor Hiram Johnson may have cost him the election. In congressional elections, the Democrats maintain a 53-42 majority in the Senate and a thin 216-210 majority in the House of Representatives.

In an effort to mediate a settlement to the battlefield stalemate in Europe, President Wilson dispatches identical peace notes to all the belligerents, asking for the war aims of each.

President Wilson criticizes the European powers' war aims in a speech in the Senate, urging the combatants to accept “peace without victory” to ensure a settlement free of rancor that could ignite another war.

The War Department recalls U.S. forces under General Pershing from Mexico after searching in vain for Pancho Villa for almost a year.

The German government informs the United States that its naval forces will resume unrestricted submarine warfare in the Atlantic the next day.

In reaction to the German resumption of unrestricted attacks against merchant shipping, the United States severs diplomatic relations with Germany.

Congress overrides President Wilson's veto of the Immigration Act, which requires a literacy test for immigrants and restricts the entry of Asian laborers not covered by separate diplomatic agreements.

British officials present Walter Hines Page, U. S. ambassador to Great Britain, with a coded message from German foreign minister Alfred Zimmermann to the German ambassador of Mexico. The note instructs its recipient to seek a German-Mexican alliance in the event of war with the United States, and authorizes the German ambassador to offer the Mexican government the return of territory it lost to the United States in the Mexican-American war in return for Mexican military involvement.

The White House releases the contents of the Zimmermann Telegram to the press, three days after Wilson asks Congress for the authority to arm merchant ships.

President Woodrow Wilson and Vice President Thomas Marshall are inaugurated for second terms. In his inaugural address, Wilson reiterates the U.S. stance on neutrality but clearly hints at the almost certain likeliness of American intervention in the World War. Wilson declares that “The tragic events of the thirty months of vital turmoil through which we have just passed have made us citizens of the world. There can be no turning back. Our own fortunes as a nation are involved whether we would have it so or not.”

As the 65th Congress opens its first session, President Wilson asks for a declaration of war against Germany. Wilson argues that the United States needs to wage war to “make the world safe for democracy.”

The first woman in the House of Representatives, Rep. Jeannette Rankin (R-MT), is seated.

President Wilson issues an executive order creating the Committee on Public Information and appoints Denver journalist George Creel as its head. The CPI coordinates propaganda and censorship efforts for the federal government throughout the war.

President Wilson signs a bill instituting the first Liberty Loan drive, authorizing Secretary of Treasury William G. McAdoo to sell $3 billion of debt at 3.5 percent to the public.

Congress passes the Selective Service Act, requiring all men between the ages of 21 and 30 to register with locally administered draft boards for a federal draft lottery. It is the first conscription act in the United States since the Civil War.

Congress approves the Espionage Act, which President Wilson had requested in his April 2 speech. The act severely limits freedom of expression, mandating that public criticism of the military or the government be punished by a $10,000 fine or up to twenty years in jail.

The first U.S. troops arrive in France at St. Nazaire.

Federal agents stage raids against the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in twenty-four cities, seizing literature and arresting ten, including William “Big Bill” Haywood.

The first engagement involving U.S. forces in Europe takes place near the Rhine-Marne Canal in France.

Women in New York win the right to vote in accordance with a state constitutional amendment.

The U.S. 42nd “Rainbow Division” arrives in France, comprised of troops from every state in the Union. Colonel Douglas MacArthur proclaims, “The 42nd Division stretches like a Rainbow from one end of America to the other.”

Congress submits the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to the states for ratification. The amendment forbids the sale, manufacture, or transport of alcohol except under special circumstances.

In an address to Congress, President Wilson lists his “14 Points” for a just and lasting peace. His objectives include the self-determination of nations, free trade, disarmament, a pact to end secret treaties, and a league of nations to realize collective security. This speech becomes the basis for Wilson's peace proposals at the end of the war.

The Fourteen Points

On January 8, 1918, President Woodrow Wilson gave a speech to Congress in which he presented his Fourteen Points that outlined his program of peace to end World War I. The first five points called for an end to secret treaties, freedom of the seas, free trade, reduction of arms, and adjustment of colonial claims, taking into account the wishes of the colonial population. Wilson's sixth point called for Germany to withdraw from Russian territory and for Russian self-determination of its own government. The President then called for the restoration of Belgian, Italian, and French borders, the establishment of a Polish state, and autonomy for the ethnic peoples of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires. Wilson's final and, in his mind, most important point was the establishment of a “general association of nations” that would foster international cooperation, freedom, and peace.

Wilson had drafted the Fourteen Points as a series of war aims he hoped would reinvigorate the Allied cause after Russia withdrew from the war following the November 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. The war aims were based on the principle of “peace without victory” that Wilson had proposed in 1916 as a solution to the European stalemate. Along with his adviser, Colonel Edward House, Wilson had come up with his Fourteen Points after more than a year of discussions with other progressive thinkers, especially journalist Walter Lippmann, on what the United States should hope to accomplish through its intervention in the war.

Wilson intended his speech to rally support in the Allied governments to the idea of a league of nations and a more transparent international system. He hoped these war aims would entice the Russian people back into the war by giving them something worthy for which to fight. Wilson also hoped the democratic ideas of the proposal, especially self-determination, would breed unrest in Germany and Austria-Hungary.

The Fourteen Points speech, as the New York Herald dubbed it, became the basis for Allied armistice plans. As Germany neared military defeat in the fall of 1918, the German government approached Wilson first in response to his Fourteen Points plan. The plan's territorial provisions and call for the establishment of a league of nations became the basis for a portion of the Treaty of Versailles, which ended the war in 1919. However, Wilson was unable to convince Britain, France, and Italy to pursue “peace without victory,” and he was forced to compromise on many points.

Still, as a work of international relations policy, Wilson's Fourteen Points represent one of the most remarkable efforts of an American President. Wilson's embrace of anti-imperialism and national self-determination made a lasting impact in international relations through the rest of the 20th century.

To promote food conservation, food administrator Herbert Hoover calls for one meatless day, two wheatless days, and two porkless days each week.

Congress passes the Sedition Act, which couples with the Espionage Act to limit freedom of expression during the war. The Sedition Act grants the Postmaster General the right to ban the mailing of publications deemed subversive, and erects heavy penalties for those criticizing the government or the war effort.

President Wilson issues an executive order creating the War Industries Board, an agency designed to coordinate wartime production and transportation.

The U.S. Second Division blunts a German advance on Paris at Chateau-Thierry.

The U.S. Second Division and Fourth Marine Brigade counter a German offensive in the battle of Belleau Wood.

The Labor Department announces that the cost of living jumped seventeen percent in New York City from July 1917 to July 1918.

Prominent socialist and presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs is sentenced to a ten-year jail term for violating the Espionage Act, the result of an antiwar speech he delivered in Canton, Ohio, on June 30.

President Wilson addresses the Senate with the message that voting rights for women is a “vitally necessary war measure.”

Known as "Spanish flu," the world-wide influenza pandemic reaches its height in the United States. The extremely virulent strain of the disease first develops in east-coast cities and spreads rapidly across the country and the Atlantic as a result of war-related transportation. The epidemic eventually claims more than 600,000 lives in the United States (more than the Great War) and perhaps 20 million globally.

Republicans win majorities in both houses of Congress, securing a two-seat majority in the Senate and a comfortable cushion of fifty votes in the House.

Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicates the throne of the German Empire after revolution breaks out in Germany.

Allied and German military leaders implement an armistice. The new German government issues an appeal to President Wilson to negotiate peace along the lines he enumerated in his Fourteen Points speech.

Wilson announces he will attend the Paris Peace Conference.

President Wilson signs the Wartime Prohibition Act, banning the manufacture of alcohol for domestic sale effective from June 30, 1919, until demobilization.

The Paris Peace Conference opens, two weeks after President Wilson receives glowing welcomes in Rome and Paris.

The State Department announces the ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution as of January 16, 1919, when Nebraska's approval achieved the amendment's required three-fourths majority. A nation-wide ban on the sale, distribution, or production of alcoholic beverages will go into effect on January 16, 1920.

President Wilson presents his draft for the League of Nations covenant to the Paris Peace Conference.

The Supreme Court upholds the constitutionality of the Espionage Act in Schenck v. United States , establishing that civil liberties can be restricted by the government if there is a “clear and present danger” to law and order.

Congress adopts the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, giving women the franchise. The joint resolution reads: “The right of citizens of the U.S. to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”

After failing to secure a peace without rancorous provisions from his fellow Allied leaders, President Wilson submits the Treaty of Versailles and League of Nations to the Senate for ratification. Senatorial deliberation on the treaty will last longer than the Paris Conference itself.

The Communist Labor Party of America is founded in Chicago and adopts the platform of the Third International as its own.

Wilson Embarks on League of Nations Tour

On September 3, 1919, President Woodrow Wilson boarded a train to begin a transcontinental speaking tour to try to build support for the League of Nations and the Treaty of Versailles, which ended World War I. He gave his first speech in Columbus, Ohio, on September 4.

President Wilson had traveled to Europe in December 1918 to attend the Paris Peace Conference with representatives from Britain, France, and Italy. Germany signed the Treaty of Versailles on June 28, and Wilson returned to the United States on July 8. Two days later, he submitted the Treaty of Versailles to the Senate for ratification. Senatorial approval of the treaty faced an uphill battle. A number of senators remained skeptical of the League of Nations Covenant contained with the treaty. To make matters more difficult for the President, Republicans had regained control of both houses of Congress in 1918.

Senate resistance to the treaty came from a variety of sources. So-called “irreconcilable” progressive senators like Idaho's William Borah and California's Hiram Johnson rejected the treaty as a mechanism to preserve the British Empire through the League of Nations. Midwestern progressives like George Norris and Robert LaFollette, with large German constituencies, recoiled against the treaty's punitive measures. Senator James Reed of Missouri complained that the equal representation that all nations enjoyed in the League's assembly placed control of the body in the hands of the racially unfit.

The most damning opposition to the treaty, however, came from Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Lodge despised Wilson's idealism and attacked Article 10 of the League of Nations Covenant. Article 10 held members to a collective security agreement, and Lodge believed it was an indefensible infringement of American sovereignty. Lodge argued that the Senate should only ratify the treaty if it were modified to operate within the checks and balances system of the Constitution of the United States. He also insisted that implementing the collective security clause of the League Covenant required congressional approval as did declarations of war.

President Wilson headed out on his speaking tour against his doctors' wishes and the advice of some of his political advisers to try to win public support for the treaty and thus pressure senators to approve it. Over a period of three weeks, Wilson made forty addresses on the importance of the League of Nations, traveling to more than twenty-nine cities and covering a distance of almost 10,000 miles. The President rightly believed that the majority of the country supported both the peace treaty and the League of Nations but his speaking tour was unable to build any political momentum for ratification. Exhausted and worn out from his arduous journey, the President collapsed in Pueblo, Colorado, on September 25. He cut his tour short and headed back to Washington. Wilson suffered a serious stroke on Oct 2.

Wilson's Herculean efforts were not enough to make a dent in the considerable coalition of critics in the Senate. On November 19, the Senate rejected the treaty 38 to 53. Wilson's stroke prevented him from participating in a compromise treaty, and the Senate approved a separate peace treaty with Germany in July 1921. By not ratifying the Treaty of Versailles and rejecting the League of Nations Covenant, the Senate illustrated the strong feeling of isolationism that existed in the United States after World War I.

Against the advice of his doctors and advisors, President Wilson opens his nation-wide speaking tour to promote the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations in Columbus, Ohio.

Police in Boston walk out on strike.

President Wilson suffers a serious stroke in Wichita, Kansas, in the middle of his national speaking tour and returns to Washington, DC.

Congress passes the Volstead Act over President Wilson's veto to provide enforcement power to the Eighteenth Amendment.

After a lengthy national debate, the Treaty of Versailles fails to achieve ratification in the Senate by a vote of 53 to 38.

Foreign-born radicals arrested by the Department of Justice in the “Red Scare” raids of 1919 are deported, leaving from New York harbor on the U.S. transport Buford , popularly referred to as the “Soviet Ark,” bound for the U.S.S.R.

Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer stages the most extensive series of raids of the entire “Red Scare,” arresting nearly 2,700 people in 33 cities.

The Senate defeats a resubmitted version of the Treaty of Versailles with reservations added by Foreign Relations Committee chairman Henry Cabot Lodge.

U.S. forces cease their operations in support of counter-revolutionary forces in Siberia and are withdrawn.

Shoe factory employees Frank Parmenter and Alexander Berardelli are murdered in a robbery in South Braintree, Massachusetts. Immigrant laborers Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti are arrested three weeks later for the crimes in what becomes one of the most politically charged murder cases of the early twentieth century.

Congress passes a joint resolution declaring an end to the war with Germany. President Wilson vetoes the resolution.

Republicans gather in Chicago to select candidates for the presidential and vice presidential elections. After party leaders break the convention deadlock in what one attendee calls a behind-the-scenes deal “in a smoke-filled room,” Ohio Senator Warren G. Harding is nominated for the presidency. Massachusetts governor Calvin Coolidge receives the vice-presidential nomination.

Ohio governor James M. Cox and Franklin Delano Roosevelt of New York receive the nominations for President and vice president at the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco.

On August 18, 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States was ratified. The amendment gave women the right to vote.

Women activists in the United States had agitated for equal political rights since the mid-nineteenth century. Reformers in the Progressive Era succeeded in making suffrage a significant political issue, and four western states granted women the right to vote in state constitutions. However, business groups and conservative women's organizations opposed women's suffrage and blocked federal efforts.

During World War I, women contributed greatly to the war effort through their labor and volunteer efforts. Women activists capitalized on women's newfound economic prominence during the war to agitate further for suffrage. Activist organizations such as the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), which had pursued women's suffrage since 1890, connected the issue of a lasting peace with the extension of voting rights to women. As NAWSA campaigned through established political channels, the National Woman's Party (NWP) engaged in acts of civil disobedience in Washington, DC. The NWP staged hunger strikes and daily protests in front of the White House throughout 1917. Activists from NWP called President Woodrow Wilson's fight for democracy in Europe hypocritical while he denied women their voting rights in the United States. The well-publicized protests of the NWP embarrassed Wilson throughout the year.

By 1917, the political wind for suffrage had shifted. Thirteen additional states had passed women's voting measures, and pressure was mounting on Congress to consider a national women's suffrage amendment. President Wilson came around to the idea of a constitutional amendment for women's suffrage in 1916 when he decided that women could form a crucial voting block that would support his progressive agenda. Britain granted women the vote in 1917, adding international pressure for congressional action. When the special session of Congress sat in April 1917, activists added voting rights to the legislative docket. After the measure bypassed the House Judiciary Committee, the women's suffrage amendment passed the House on January 10, 1918. President Wilson appeared in the Senate as the body debated a bill to advocate the passage of the amendment. The suffrage amendment fell two votes short of ratification in an October 1918 vote. Congress revisited the issue in a special session in May 1919. The amenndment passed the House on May 21 and the Senate on June 14, 1919.

After congressional approval, the suffrage amendment entered into a tenaciously contested battle for ratification in state legislatures. The amendment faced its greatest opposition in the South, where conservative Protestants of both genders resisted women's voting rights as a challenge to traditional values and the institution of white supremacy. States in the North and West provided the bulk of support for the amendment, but Southern support in a few states was still needed for ratification. After the thirty-fifth state ratified the amendment in early 1920, President Wilson leaned heavily on Tennessee governor Albert Roberts to call a special session of the state legislature that summer. With heavy local and national pressure bearing down on the legislature, the Tennessee legislature passed the amendment by two votes on August 18, 1920, securing its ratification as the nineteenth amendment to the Constitution.

The Nineteenth Amendment, granting women the right to vote, officially becomes law.

In a speech given from his front porch in Marion, Ohio, Harding denounces the League of Nations.

Warren G. Harding is elected the twenty-ninth President of the United States with an overwhelming 404 electoral votes (60.3 percent of the popular vote to Democratic rival James Cox's 127 electoral votes (only 34.1 percent of the popular vote). Eugene V. Debs garners nearly one million popular votes for the Socialist Party despite his imprisonment for violating the Espionage Act the previous year. The election splits the North and South, with Cox winning all states (except for Tennessee) below the Mason-Dixon line and Harding winning the rest.

Woodrow Wilson wins the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to secure a lasting peace after the Great War.

The U.S. Census Bureau reports that for the first time in American history, 51 percent of Americans live in cities and towns of more than 2500 people.

Wilson’s Fourteen Points One Hundred Years Hence

By Matt Gobush on January 8, 2018

On January 8, 1918—a century ago today—President Woodrow Wilson mounted the rostrum of the U.S. House of Representatives, America’s inner sanctum of democracy, to deliver one of the most consequential speeches in history. The setting was somber; the audience, anxious; the speaker, stern. An ocean away, American soldiers were preparing to fight and die on Europe’s Western Front. Wilson had led the country into the Great War and mobilized its armed forces nine months before with a stirring speech to Congress pledging “to make the world safe for democracy” and secure “ultimate peace.” Now, as American troops finally descended into the trenches and awaited the enemy’s imminent onslaught, Wilson returned to this august chamber to renew his pledge and sanctify their certain sacrifice.

Fittingly, he would do so not with the soaring rhetoric of his earlier call to arms, but with a more subdued speech detailing his vision of a post-war peace. On this occasion, Wilson chose to play the professor, not the preacher. His speech in many ways was the scholarly product of The Inquiry, a secretive circle of experts convened by the president that would later become the Council on Foreign Relations. Drawing upon its recommendations, Wilson outlined in his address a fourteen-point program for settling territorial disputes and answering national aspirations from Alsace-Lorraine to Austria-Hungary, Belgium to Bulgaria. He framed it with policies of open diplomacy (point i), free trade (points ii and iii), disarmament (point iv), and national self-determination (point v). And, in his fourteenth and final point, he advocated for what one senator later called “the one great new idea of the 20th century in the field of international relations”—an international association for collective security, the League of Nations.

Despite its sobriety, what would become known as Wilson’s Fourteen Points address held deep emotive, even spiritual power. In a sense, it baptized U.S. foreign policy, infusing it with renewed moral clarity and revealing the nation’s ministry in a new world order. It recast a European war of realpolitik as a global clash of ideas, with the United States seizing the mantle of liberalism to resist both imperialism and communism. And it reconceived the very practice of international politics, not as a struggle for survival, but as an evangelistic enterprise, aiming to elevate the better angels of mankind’s nature. As Americans prepared to fight in the world war, their Commander in Chief reminded them of the world they were fighting for. Each of his fourteen points sought to achieve one noble ideal: “the principle of justice to all peoples and nationalities, and their right to live on equal terms of liberty and safety with another, whether strong or weak.”

In the months following the speech, the allies would survive the Central Powers’ spring offensive and, with the help of the American Expeditionary Force led by Gen. John J. “Blackjack” Pershing, turn the tide. By November 1918, the war was won, and the work of winning the peace had begun. Wilson’s Fourteen Points, endorsed by all parties, became the basis for peace negotiations held in Paris. To press his program at the conference, Wilson journeyed to Europe, the first sitting U.S. president to do so. In victorious allied capitals, he was greeted by adoring multitudes hailing “Wilson the Just” and “Savior of Humanity.” Even vanquished Germany welcomed the conquering president to the continent and sued for a “Wilson Peace.” Future president Herbert Hoover, on hand for the triumphant arrival, observed that “no such evangel of peace had appeared since Christ preached the Sermon on the Mount.” Less enthused, but no less mindful of the appeal and authority of the president’s message, French premier George Clemenceau grumbled, “The good Lord Himself required only ten points.”

Wilson had ended his Fourteen Points speech with a prophecy: “The moral climax of this, the culminating and final war for human liberty, has come.” Indeed, his inspired program for peace represented a moral climax, the height of hope for a bled-white Europe and a pinnacle of purpose for the United States. For many, Wilson appeared as a prince of peace, the leader of the self-described “redeemer nation” to broker a magnanimous and merciful settlement that would save a continent from itself. In this salvific mission, however, he failed utterly. Although the Paris peacemakers enacted the principles of self-determination and collective security called for by Wilson, the resultant Treaty of Versailles imposed a punitive peace contrasting with his vision of charity towards all and malice towards none. It left Germany’s proud people seething, its mighty economy reeling, and its fledgling democracy kneeling. The fragile nation-states that emerged, self-determined, from the wreckage of three empires were largely left defenseless against the radicalized great powers on their flanks. Wilson’s coveted League of Nations was rejected by the U.S. Senate, dealing the organization a mortal blow. Adding injury to insult, the president himself would suffer a debilitating stroke that effectively ended his political career. And, of course, the Great War would prove not to be the “culminating and final war.”

The reasons behind the spectacular ascent and catastrophic collapse of Wilson’s program for peace is of historical interest—and contemporary relevance. At the Paris negotiations, Wilson is said to have assured the American delegation skeptical of his idealistic designs by asserting he was “playing for a hundred years hence.” Having reached this time horizon, a critical examination of his worldview is called for, in part because our world today bears ominous resemblances to Wilson’s on the eve of World War I. Now, as then, autocracies such as Russia and China are increasingly energized and militarized; democracies, including our own, seem embattled and besieged, from within and without. Civil wars, particularly in the Middle East, have become powder kegs for Great Power confrontation, with terrorist organizations poised to light the fuse, not unlike proxy wars in the Balkans and the assassination of the Austro-Hungarian archduke by terrorists that sparked the first global conflagration. The “guns of August” World War I historian Barbara Tuchman famously described find their parallel today in the ballistic missile technology and nuclear ambitions of rogue states such as North Korea and Iran. And just as industrialization enabled the new total war and large-scale slaughter that shocked military planners a hundred years ago, the rapid digitalization of economies and militaries today is unleashing unpredictable forces with apocalyptic potential. Should we ignore the history of Wilson’s time, we risk repeating it.

The sine qua non of Wilson’s vision was the League of Nations, which he deliberately unveiled as the culminating point of his speech to underscore its crowning importance. Ultimately, he staked his legacy upon it. He believed fervently in the ability of nations, preferably democracies, to settle differences peaceably and cooperate in the preservation of world order if they were organized equitably and held accountable morally. This faith in collective security sprang from Wilson’s intellectual and religious convictions. He was one of our nation’s most learned presidents, the first and only to earn a doctorate, and was also one of the most devout, the son of a prominent Presbyterian clergyman in the Confederate South. The influence of the academy’s allegiance to Enlightenment rationality and his church’s notion of the covenantal community is pronounced in his worldview, as manifested in his Fourteen Points and especially the League of Nations. As former senator and scholar Daniel Patrick Moynihan observed, “Wilson’s vision of a world order was a religious vision: of the natural goodness of man prevailing through the Holy Ghost of Reason.”

The hope that Wilson and much of the world vested in the League of Nations was practically religious. During the Paris Peace Conference, the president was forced to compromise on nearly every one of his Fourteen Points, bowing to geopolitical realities and accommodating Britain’s and France’s continued insistence on balance-of-power politics. But on his fourteenth point, he would not yield, and his success in embedding the Covenant of the League of Nations as the first article of the Versailles Treaty ultimately won him the Nobel Peace Prize. His steadfast advocacy for establishing an international association for collective security was based on Wilson’s belief in its ability to address, through what he called “common counsel,” unresolved irritants to peace and future ones as well. As he confided to his trusted aide, Colonel Edward House, “At least, House, we are saving the Covenant, and that instrument will work wonders, bring the blessings of peace, and then when the war psychosis has abated, it will not be difficult to settle all the disputes that baffle us now.”

Wilson’s choice of the term “covenant” to characterize the League’s charter was deliberate, saturated with religious meaning. As scholar Malcolm Magee describes in his searching analysis of the president’s political theology, “To Wilson, the word ‘covenant’ was the starting place for the integration of the sacred and secular.” His reformed Presbyterian faith preached this synthesis, upholding founder John Calvin’s vision of Christian statesmen leading communities patterned after the biblical covenants that codified God’s will for his chosen people. The concept developed further with the seventeenth-century Scottish Covenanters, who broke from the established church of the day and to whom Wilson traced his ancestry. As the president remarked during a barnstorming tour of the American West to campaign for U.S. entry in the League, “My ancestors were troublesome Scotchmen, and among them were some of the famous group that were known as the Covenanters. Very well, here is the Covenant of the League of Nations. I am a Covenanter!”

The League of Nations would form such a sacred pact and establish a “presbytery of nations,” headquartered, perhaps not coincidentally, in Calvin’s Geneva. It would instill in member nations moral accountability, compelling them to prevent war and promote humanity’s shared interest, and God’s Providence, in peace. This imperative was most apparent in Article 10, the crux of the Covenant that Wilson claimed “strikes the taproot of war.” This provision called for all nations to “respect and preserve as against external aggression the territorial integrity and existing political independence of all Members of the League.” Article 10 implied, as Wilson’s nemesis Senator Henry Cabot Lodge argued, that the United States might be obligated to intervene militarily in conflicts against its self-interest and potentially counter to democratic values to preserve the political status quo. It might also be required to refrain from intervening to protect innocents or support freedom fighters. Had Article 10 been in force, “France could not have assisted this country to win the Revolution,” Lodge averred. Nor could the United States have “rescued Cuba from the clutches of Spain” in 1898.

Wilson maintained that the League would foster enlightened and disinterested peacekeeping by appealing to shared national interests in upholding international order and, in particular, democracies’ inherent pacific proclivities. He predicted that the federation would “operate as the organized moral force of men throughout the world, and that whenever wrong and aggression are planned or contemplated, this searching light of conscience will be turned upon them, and men everywhere will ask, ‘What are the purposes that you hold in your heart against the fortunes of the world?’” Furthermore, he conceded in a speech to Congress a month after his Fourteen Points address, “That unless [global problems] are dealt with in a spirit of unselfish and unbiased justice…no permanent peace will have been attained.”

It was Wilson’s optimism that humanity could overcome “war psychosis” and embrace a “spirit of unselfish and unbiased justice” that theologian Reinhold Niebuhr pinpointed as the fatal flaw in the League of Nations’ covenant and the inflection point in the president’s tragic trajectory. The theologian sympathized with Wilson, “the president that most disappointed him”; his school of Christian realism furnishes a constructive critique of Wilson’s worldview, given its grasp of both the theoretical and theological influences upon them. Based on their “view [of] history from the standpoint of the moral and social imperatives which a rational analysis of a situation generates,” Niebuhr asserts that idealists such as Wilson “require a ‘federation of the world’” that “disregards the problem of power” and operates under “the illusion that ‘national sovereignty’ is merely the fruit of faulty conceptions of international law.”

In contrast, Niebuhr inverts the moral hierarchy to argue that nations, and furthermore, international associations such as the League of Nations, are inclined, even compelled, to act egotistically rather than altruistically. In his groundbreaking work Moral Man and Immoral Society , penned by Niebuhr during the interwar period as the League of Nations proved impotent in preventing the rise of fascism or preserving peace, he grapples with the paradox dooming schemes for collective security. “The moral obtuseness of human collectives makes a morality of pure disinterestedness impossible,” Niebuhr writes. This obtuseness reflects the dilemma characterizing any principle-agent relationship in which a representative is bound to faithfully serve the interests of his clients or constituents. Quoting conservative Hugh Cecil, Niebuhr continues: “Everything which falls under the heading of unselfishness is inappropriate to the action of a state. No one has a right to be unselfish with other people’s interest.” No human organization, however sanctified in covenantal terms, can sustain a “spirit of unselfish and unbiased justice,” in Wilson’s words, and uphold a “permanent peace.” In Niebuhr’s view collective security, relying on moral behavior of member states, is utopian.

A Christian realist critique of the Fourteen Points on the centennial of Wilson’s delivery of its maiden speech exposes its unfounded faith in the moral capacity of nations and the futility of collective security. However, it also affirms the moral merits of the liberal ideals they embody—ideals such as the defense of democracy, preference for international cooperation, support for political and economic freedom for all peoples, and a unique world leadership role for the United States. Despite the abject failure of the League of Nations, the worldview captured by President Wilson’s Fourteen Points has evolved and endured, embraced by successors of his from both parties—from Franklin Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton to George W. Bush. It continues to capture the moral imagination of Americans a hundred years hence, to a depth and degree that even the most hardened realists concede. As former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger observed, it is “to the drumbeat of Wilsonian idealism that American foreign policy has marched since his watershed presidency and continues to march to this day.”

And it continues to sanctify to this day the selfless sacrifice of America’s servicemen and women deployed not merely to defend our nation but the principles our nation stands for as well. To stem mounting opposition within the U.S. Senate to the centerpiece of his Fourteen Points agenda, the League of Nations, Wilson made a desperate, direct appeal to the American people in a series of campaign-style speeches across the nation in the summer of 1919. His last stop on his tour was Pueblo, Colorado, where he delivered what proved to be his swan song just twenty months after his Fourteen Points address and on the eve of his life-limiting stroke. Wilson’s words on this occasion impart transcendent value to his vision:

Again and again, my fellow citizens, mothers who lost their sons in France have come to me and, taking my hand, have shed tears upon it not only, but they have added, “God bless you, Mr. President!” Why, my fellow citizens, should they pray God to bless me? Because they believe that their boys died for something that vastly transcends any of the immediate and palpable objects of the war. They believe, and they rightly believe, that their sons saved the liberty of the world. They believe that wrapped up with the liberty of the world is the continuous protection of that liberty by the concerted powers of all civilized people… These men were crusaders. They were not going forth to prove the might of the United States. They were going forth to prove the might of justice and right, and all the world accepted them as crusaders, and their transcendent achievement has made all the world believe in America as it believes in no other nation organized in the modern world.

Matt Gobush served at the National Security Council in the Clinton White House, and as chair of the Episcopal Church’s Standing Commission on International Peace and Justice. He currently works in the private sector and lives in Dallas, Texas.

Photo Credit: President Woodrow Wilson discusses his plan for peace before Congress on January 8, 1918, via Wikimedia Commons.

Matt Gobush is a contributing editor to Providence and previously served on the staff of the National Security Council during the Clinton administration, the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, and the US Senate. He currently serves on the Standing Commission for World Mission of the Episcopal Church. Matt works in the private sector and lives in Virginia with his wife and six internationally adopted children.

Providence is the only publication devoted to Christian Realism in American foreign policy and is entirely funded by donor contributions. There are no advertisements, sponsorships, or paid posts to support the work of Providence , just readers who generously partner with Providence to keep our magazine running. If you would care to make a donation it would be highly appreciated to help Providence in advancing the Christian realist perspective in 2024. Thank you!

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World War I: 100 Years Later

A Smithsonian magazine special report

How Woodrow Wilson’s War Speech to Congress Changed Him – and the Nation

In 70 days in 1917, President Wilson converted from peace advocate to war president

Erick Trickey

A group of activists calling themselves the Emergency Peace Federation visited White House on February 28, 1917, to plead with their longtime ally, President Woodrow Wilson. Think of his predecessors George Washington and John Adams, they told him. Surely Wilson could find a way to protect American shipping without joining Europe’s war. 

If they had met with him four months earlier, they would have encountered a different man. He had run on peace, after all, winning re-election in November 1916 on the slogan “He kept us out of war.” Most Americans had little interest in sending soldiers into the stalemated slaughter that had ravaged the landscapes of Belgium and France since 1914. Wilson, a careful, deliberative former professor, had even tried to convince England and Germany to end World War I through diplomacy throughout 1916. On January 22, speaking before the U.S. Senate, he had proposed a negotiated settlement to the European war, a “ peace without victory .”

What the peace delegation didn’t fully realize was that Wilson, caught in a series of events, was turning from a peace proponent to a wartime president. And that agonizing shift, which took place over just 70 days in 1917, would transform the United States from an isolated, neutral nation to a world power.

“The President’s mood was stern,” recalled Federation member and renowned social worker Jane Addams, “far from the scholar’s detachment.” Earlier that month, Germany had adopted unrestricted submarine warfare: Its U-boats would attack any ship approaching Britain, France, and Italy, including neutral American ships. The peace delegation hoped to bolster Wilson’s diplomatic instincts and to press him to respond without joining the war. William I. Hull, a former student of Wilson’s and a Quaker pacifist, tried to convince Wilson that he, like the presidents who came before him, could protect American shipping through negotiation.

But when Hull suggested that Wilson try to appeal directly to the German people, not their government, Wilson stopped him.

“Dr. Hull,” Wilson said, “if you knew what I know at the present moment, and what you will see reported in tomorrow morning’s newspapers, you would not ask me to attempt further peaceful dealings with the Germans.”

Then Wilson told his visitors about the Zimmermann Telegram.

“U.S. BARES WAR PLOT,” read the Chicago Tribune ’s headline the next day, March 1, 1917. “GERMANY SEEKS AN ALLIANCE AGAINST US; ASKS JAPAN AND MEXICO TO JOIN HER,” announced the New York Times . German foreign minister Arthur Zimmermann’s decoded telegram , which Wilson’s administration had leaked to the Associated Press, instructed the German ambassador in Mexico to propose an alliance. If the U.S. declared war over Germany’s unrestricted submarine warfare, Zimmermann offered to “make war together” with Mexico in exchange for “generous financial support and an understanding on our part that Mexico is to reconquer the lost territory in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona” (ceded under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that ended the Mexican-American War nearly 70 years earlier ).

Until the dual shocks of unrestricted submarine warfare and the Zimmermann Telegram, Wilson had truly intended to keep the United States out of World War I. But just 70 days later, on April 2, 1917, he asked Congress to declare war on Germany. Wilson’s agonized decision over that period permanently changed America’s relationship with the world: He forsook George Washington's 124-year precedent of American neutrality in European wars. His idealistic justifications for that decision helped launch a century of American military alliances and interventions around the globe.

In his January speech, Wilson had laid out the idealistic international principles that would later guide him after the war. Permanent peace, he argued, required governments built on the consent of the governed, freedom of the seas, arms control and an international League of Peace (which later became the League of Nations). He argued that both sides in the war—the Allies, including England and France, and the Central Powers, including Germany—should accept what he called a “peace without victory.” The alternative, he argued, was a temporary “peace forced upon the loser, a victor’s terms imposed upon the vanquished.” That, Wilson warned, would leave “a sting, a resentment, a bitter memory” and build the peace on “quicksand.”

But nine days later, at 4 p.m. on January 31, the German ambassador in Washington informed the U.S. State Department that his nation would begin unrestricted submarine warfare—which threatened American commerce and lives on the Atlantic Ocean—at midnight. “The President was sad and depressed,” wrote Wilson’s adviser Edward House in his diary the next day. “[He] said he felt as if the world had suddenly reversed itself; that after going from east to west, it had begun to go from west to east and that he could not get his balance.”

Wilson cut off diplomatic relations with Germany, but refused to believe war was inevitable. “We do not desire any hostile conflict with the Imperial German Government,” he told Congress on February 3. “We are the sincere friends of the German people and earnestly desire to remain at peace with the Government which speaks for them. We shall not believe that they are hostile to us unless and until we are obliged to believe it.”

Though most Americans weren’t eager to fight, Wilson’s critics raged at his inaction. “I don’t believe Wilson will go to war unless Germany literally kicks him into it,” former President Theodore Roosevelt, who had failed in his bid to re-take the White House in 1912, wrote to U.S. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge.

Then, on February 23, came the “kick.” That day, the British government delivered a copy of the Zimmermann Telegram to Walter Hines Pace, the American ambassador in London. It was the espionage coup of the war. Britain’s office of naval intelligence had intercepted and partially decoded it in January, and a British spy’s contact in a Mexican telegraph office had stolen another copy on February 10. Pace stayed up all night drafting a message to Wilson about the telegram and its origins. When Zimmermann’s message arrived from London at the State Department in D.C. on Saturday night, February 24, Acting Secretary of State Frank L. Polk took it directly to the White House. Wilson, Polk recalled later, showed “much indignation.”

Four days later, when Wilson met with the peace activists, he revealed that his thoughts about how to bring about a lasting peace had changed. He told them, according to Addams’ recollection in her memoir, that “as head of a nation participating in the war, the President of the United States would have a seat at the Peace Table, but that if he remains the representative of a neutral country he could at best only ‘call through a crack in the door.’”

The telegram inflamed American public opinion and turned the nation toward war. Yet even then, the deliberative Wilson was not quite ready. His second inaugural address , delivered March 5, asked Americans to abandon isolationism. “We are provincials no longer,” he declared. “The tragic events of the 30 months of vital turmoil through which we have just passed have made us citizens of the world. There can be no turning back. Our own fortunes as a nation are involved whether we would have it so or not.” Today, Wilson’s address reads like a prelude to war—but at the time, pacifists like Addams heard it as a continuation of his focus on diplomacy.

When Wilson met with his cabinet on March 20, he was still undecided. But two events the previous week added to his calculus. German U-boats had sunk three American ships, killing 15 people. And the ongoing turmoil in Russia had forced Nicholas II to abdicate the throne , ending 300 years of Romanov rule. The czar’s abdication had ceded power to a short-lived provisional government created by the Russian legislature. That meant that all of the Allied nations in World War I were now democracies fighting a German-led coalition of autocratic monarchies .

The cabinet unanimously recommended war. Wilson left without announcing his plans. “President was solemn, very sad!” wrote Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels in his diary.

Wilson likely made his decision that night. On March 21, he set a date with Congress for a special session on April 2 on “grave matters of national policy.” Alone, Wilson wrote his speech by hand and by typewriter.

According to a story that appears in many Wilson biographies, the president invited his friend Frank Cobb, editor of the New York World, to the White House on the night before his speech. Wilson revealed his anguish to his friend. He’d tried every alternative to war, he said, and he feared Americans would forsake tolerance and freedom in wartime. In words that echoed his speech to the Senate, Wilson said he still feared that a military victory would prove hollow over time.

“Germany would be beaten and so badly beaten that there would be a dictated peace, a victorious peace,” Wilson said, according to Cobb. “At the end of the war there will be no bystanders with sufficient power to influence the terms. There won’t be any peace standards left to work with.” Even then, Wilson said, “If there is any alternative, for God’s sake, let’s take it!” (Cobb’s account, given to two fellow journalists and published after his death in 1924, is so dramatic that some historians think it’s not authentic. Other historians find it credible .)

On April 2, when Wilson came to the podium at the Capitol, no one but House and perhaps Wilson’s wife, Edith, knew what he would say. He asked Congress to “declare the recent course of the Imperial German Government to be in fact nothing less than war against the government and people of the United States,” and to “formally accept the status of belligerent.” He recounted Germany’s submarine attacks and called the Zimmermann Telegram evidence of “hostile purpose.” He also declared the German government a “natural foe of liberty.” His speech’s most famous phrase would resound through the next century, through American military victories and quagmires alike: “The world must be made safe for democracy.”

Cheers resounded through the House chamber. Later that week, Congress declared war, with 373-50 votes in the House and an 82-6 margin in the Senate.

But after the speech, back at the White House, Wilson was melancholy. “My message today was a message of death for our young men,” Wilson said—and then broke into tears. “How strange it seems to applaud that.” (His secretary, Joseph Tumulty, recorded the president’s words in his 1921 memoir. But as with Cobb’s dramatic anecdote, there is doubt among historians about the story’s veracity.)

All in all, 116,516 Americans died in World War I among about nine million deaths worldwide. (More would die from the flu epidemic of 1918 and pneumonia than on the battlefield.) Wilson’s own administration struck blows against freedom and tolerance during the war, imprisoning anti-war activists such as socialist Eugene Debs . And at the Versailles conference of 1919, Wilson became one of the victors dictating peace terms to Germany. His earlier fears that such a peace would not last eerily foreshadowed the conflicts that eventually erupted into another world war.

Wilson’s high-minded argument that the U.S. should fight World War I to defend democracy has been debated ever since. A different president might have justified the war on simple grounds of self-defense, while diehard isolationists would have kept America neutral by cutting its commercial ties to Great Britain. Instead, Wilson’s sweeping doctrines promised that the United States would promote stability and freedom across the world. Those ideas have defined American diplomacy and war for the last 100 years, from World War II and NATO to Vietnam and the Middle East. A century later, we’re still living in Woodrow Wilson’s world. 

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Erick Trickey | | READ MORE

Erick Trickey is a writer in Boston, covering politics, history, cities, arts, and science. He has written for POLITICO Magazine, Next City, the Boston Globe, Boston Magazine, and Cleveland Magazine