2 PARIS, 1937: COLONIAL QUESTIONS AND PEACE 161necessities of life?’^259 If all this were not enough, Schacht continued, the
German people, ‘the torch-bearers of European culture for thousands of
years,’ the same people who had given the ‘world Luther and Goethe,’
had had to sit by and see their nation’s ‘moral standing...affronted and
disparaged by its opponents for two decades! It is inconceivable that such
treatment,’ he stated in concluding his lament, ‘should not produce a
profound reaction in the German people.’^260
Schacht conceded that the question of Germany’s colonial possessions
was likely of no or little interest to American readers. Nonetheless, he
maintained that Americans could not remain indifferent to this ques-
tion for two reasons. The first reason was economic: without German
prosperity there can be no European prosperity and the ‘ebb and flow
of European prosperity’ was important to America. The second reason,
and the most important reason for the purposes of Schacht’s general
argument, was moral: Americans, he stated, ‘must not imagine that they
can evade the moral responsibility laid on their shoulders’ by President
Wilson.^261 This moral responsibility concerned Wilson’s Fourteen Points
of January 18, 1918, which formed the accepted basis of the peace nego-
tiations. Point five of Wilson’s program called for:
A free, open-minded and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial
claims, based on strict observance of the principle that in determining all
such questions of sovereignty the interest of the populations concerned
must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the Government
whose title is to be determined.^262Schacht stated that the Germans were more than willing to submit their
claims to the test specified in point five of the Fourteen Points and that
this was especially the case in light of an observation contained in what
he referred to as Edward M. House’s ‘well-known Lyons wireless of
October 1918’ from which he then proceeded to quote.^263 According
to an editorial comment concerning the so-called Lyons wireless, what
Schacht was actually referring to was a cable that House sent to Wilson
(^259) Ibid., 232.
(^260) Ibid.
(^261) Ibid., 223–24, 232–33.
(^262) Woodrow Wilson, 1918, quoted ibid., 224.
(^263) Schacht, ‘Germany’s Colonial Demands,’ 224.