President Woodrow Wilson's speech, "The Fourteen Points"

Full Answer Section

      But we must do more than this. We must also make it clear to the world that we are fighting for something more than mere victory. We are fighting for a world in which the rights of all nations, great and small, will be respected and guaranteed. We are fighting for a world in which no nation will be permitted to dominate another or to dictate its policies.

To this end, I propose that the following principles be made the basis of a just and lasting peace:

1. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.
2. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in war, except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part by international action for the enforcement of international covenants.
3. The removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace and associating themselves for its maintenance.
4. Adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will be reduced to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety.
5. A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined.
6. The evacuation of all Russian territory and such a settlement of all questions affecting Russia as will secure the best and freest 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.
7. Belgium, the whole world will agree, must be evacuated and restored, without any attempt to limit the sovereignty which she enjoys in common with all other free nations. No other single act will serve as this will serve to restore confidence among the nations in the laws which they have themselves set and determined for the government of their relations with one another. Without this healing act the whole structure and validity of international law is forever impaired.
8. All French territory should be freed andrestored, and the wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which has unsettled the peace of the world for nearly fifty years, should be righted, in order that peace may once more be made secure in the interest of all.
9. A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearly recognizable lines of nationality.
10. The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to see safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the freest opportunity of autonomous development.
11. Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro should be evacuated; occupied territories restored; Serbia accorded free and secure access to the sea; and the relations of the several Balkan states to one another determined by friendly counsel along historically established lines of allegiance and nationality; and international guarantees of the political and economic independence and territorial integrity of the several Balkan states should be entered into.
12. The Turkish portions of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other

 

Sample Answer

   

Gentlemen of the Congress,

Once more, as on the 2nd of April, 1917, it is my duty to address you with regard to the grave crisis which now faces the nation.

The present moment is no less critical than that in which we entered the war. The war itself has entered upon its final and most critical phase. The object of the German submarine warfare is nothing less than to bring the United States to her knees and force her to surrender. The United States cannot and will not yield to this threat.

The war, therefore, has become a war of nations, a war against all nations. The Central Powers have abandoned the pretense of seeking to make the world safe for democracy. They have now shown their hand, and it is the hand of a ruthless and unscrupulous military mastery.

We must meet this challenge with all our resources. We must bring all our moral and material strength to bear upon the enemy. We must so organize our industries and our man power that we can produce, equip, and transport a vast army to the other side of the seas. We must so conduct our naval warfare that the seas will be kept free for the passage of our troops and supplies.