1919 ★^773
recognizing the equality of all people, regardless of race. Hundreds of letters,
petitions, and declarations addressed to President Wilson made their way to
the Paris headquarters of the American delegation to the peace conference. Few
reached the president, as his private secretary, Gilbert Close, carefully screened
his mail.
Outside of Europe, however, the idea of “ self- determination” was stillborn.
When the peace conference opened, Secretary of State Robert Lansing warned
that the phrase was “loaded with dynamite” and would “raise hopes which can
never be realized.” Wilson’s language, he feared, had put “dangerous” ideas “into
the minds of certain races” and would inspire “impossible demands, and cause
trouble in many lands.” As Lansing anticipated, advocates of colonial inde-
pendence descended on Paris to lobby the peace negotiators. Arabs demanded
that a unified independent state be carved from the old Ottoman empire in the
Prague
Vienna
London Berlin
Paris
Rome
Sarajevo
Constantinople
Petrograd
Moscow
BRITAINGREAT
FRANCE
BELGIUM
NETHERLANDS
DENMARK
NORWAY
SWEDEN
SPAIN
PORTUGAL ITALY
SWITZERLAND
GERMANY
AUSTRO-HUNGARIANEMPIRE
ROMANIA
MONTENEGROSERBIA BULGARIA
ALBANIA
GREECE
(OTTOMAN EMPIRE)TURKEY
RUSSIA
LUXEMBOURG
Sicily
Crete Cyprus
North
Sea
Mediterranean Sea
Balt
ic^ S
ea^
Black^ Sea^
Atlantic
Ocean
0
0
250
250
500 miles
500 kilometers
AlliesCentral Powers
Neutral nations
EUROPE IN 1914
World War I and the Versailles Treaty redrew the map of Europe and the Middle East. The
Austro- Hungarian and Ottoman empires ceased to exist, and Germany and Russia were
reduced in size. A group of new states emerged in eastern Europe, embodying the principle of
self- determination, one of Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points.
Why was 1919 such a watershed year for the United States and the world?