628 Chapter 23 Woodrow Wilson and the Great War
Preparing for Peace
The fighting ended on November 11, 1918, but the
shape of the postwar world remained to be determined.
European society had been shaken to its foundations.
Confusion reigned. People wanted peace yet burned for
revenge. Millions faced starvation. Other millions were
disillusioned by the seemingly purposeless sacrifices of
four years of horrible war. Communism—to some an
idealistic promise of human betterment, to others a
commitment to rational economic and social planning,
to still others a danger to individual freedom, tolera-
tion, and democracy—having conquered Russia, threat-
ened to envelop Germany and much of the defunct
Austro-Hungarian Empire, perhaps even the victorious
Allies. How could stability be restored? How could vic-
tory be made worth its enormous cost?
Woodrow Wilson had grasped the significance of
the war while most statesmen still thought that tri-
umph on the battlefield would settle everything auto-
matically. As early as January 1917 he had realized
that victory would be wasted if the winners permitted
themselves the luxury of vengeance. Such a policy
would disrupt the balance of power and lead to eco-
nomic and social chaos. The victors must build a bet-
ter society, not punish those they believed had
destroyed the old one.
In a speech to Congress on January 8, 1918,
Wilson outlined a plan, known as the Fourteen Points,
designed to make the world “fit and safe to live in.”
The peace treaty should be negotiated in full view of
world opinion, not in secret. It should guarantee the
freedom of the seas to all nations, in war as in peace-
time. It should tear down barriers to international
trade, provide for a drastic reduction of armaments, and
establish a colonial system that would take proper
account of the interests of the native peoples con-
cerned. European boundaries should be redrawn so
that no substantial group would have to live under a
government not of its own choosing.
More specifically, captured Russian territory should
be restored, Belgium evacuated, Alsace-Lorraine
returned to France, the heterogeneous nationalities of
Austria-Hungary accorded autonomy. Italy’s frontiers
should be adjusted “along clearly recognizable lines of
nationality,” the Balkans made free, Turkey divested of
its subject peoples, and an independent Polish state
(with access to the Baltic Sea) created. To oversee the
new system, Wilson insisted, “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.”
Wilson’s Fourteen Points for a fair peace lifted the
hopes of people everywhere. After the guns fell silent,
however, the vagueness and inconsistencies in his list
became apparent. Complete national self-determination
was impossible in Europe; there were too many regions
of mixed population for every group to be satisfied. Self-
determination, like the war itself, also fostered the spirit
of nationalism that Wilson’s dream of international
organization, a league of nations, was designed toHundreds of soldiers in a Spanish flu ward at Camp Funston, Kansas (named for Frederick Funston, see American Lives, Chapter 22).