Woodrow Wilson: Speech on the Fourteen Points – January 8, 1918
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 secured once and for all against their recurrence. What we demand in this
war, therefore, is nothing peculiar to ourselves. It is that the world be made safe and fit
for us to love 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 dealings 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 se very clearly that unless justice be done to others it will not be done to us.
The program of the world’s peace, therefore, is our program, and that program
the only possible program, 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 public view.
II. Absolute freedom of the seas…
III. The removal… of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade
conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace…
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.
[Points VI through XIII are concerned with the establishing of borders and
distribution of territory.]
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 nations alike.
We have no jealousy of German greatness, and there is nothing in this program that
impairs it. We grudge her no achievement or distinction… We do not wish to injure her
or block in any way her legitimate influence of power. We do not wish to fight her with
arms or 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…
Treaty of Versailles
Article 8 – The members of the League recognize that the maintenance of peace
requires the reduction of armaments to the lowest point consistent with national
safety and the enforcement by common action of international obligations… The
Members of the League undertake to interchange full and frank information as to
the scale of their armaments, their military, naval, and air programs and the
conditions of such of their industries as are adaptable to warlike purposes.
Article 10 – The Members of the League undertake to respect and preserve as against
external aggression the territorial integrity and existing political independence of
all Members of the League. In case of any such aggression or in case of any
threat or danger of such aggression the Council shall advise upon the means by
which this obligation shall be upheld.
Article 11 – Any threat of war, whether immediately affecting any member of the League
or not, is hereby declared a matter of concern to the whole League, and the
League shall take any action that may be deemed wise and effectual to
safeguard the peace of nations…
Political Cartoon, 1918
Senator Henry Cabot Lodge: Speech on Unconditional German Surrender –
August 23, 1918
Our part and our business is to put Germany in a position where she can do no more
harm in the future to the rest of the world. Unless we achieve this we shall have fought
in vain. Congress and the President had no right to declare war unless they meant to do
precisely this thing. Nothing less should justify our action. We are pouring out the best
blood of our country, the blood of our chosen youth, upon the altar of patriotism. We are
making every sort of pecuniary (monetary) sacrifice… The only peace for us is one that
rests on hard physical facts, the peace of unconditional surrender…. It must be a
dictated peace, and we and our allies must dictate it…
Woodrow Wilson: Address in Columbus, Ohio – September 5, 1919
When you read Article X, therefore, you will see that it is nothing but the inevitable,
logical center of the whole system of the covenant of the League of Nations, and I stand
for it absolutely. If it should ever in any important respect be impaired, I would feel like
asking the Secretary of War to get the boys who went across the water to fight… and I
would stand up before them and say, Boys, I told you before you went across the seas
that this was a war against wars, and I did my best to fulfill my promise, but I am obliged
to come to you in mortification and shame and say I have not been able to fulfill that
promise. You are betrayed. You have fought for something that you did not get.
Woodrow Wilson: Address in Pueblo, Colorado – September 25, 1919
Don’t think of this treaty as merely a settlement with Germany. It is that. It is a
very severe settlement and it is absolutely necessary in order that no other nation may
ever plot such a thing against humanity and civilization.
But the treaty is so much more than that. It is… a readjustment of those great
injustices which underlay the whole structure of European and Asiatic societies. It is
based on the principle that every government dealt with in this great settlement is put in
the hands of the people… It is a people’s treaty, that accomplishes by a great sweep of
practical justice the liberation of men who never could have liberated themselves… That
is the fundamental principle of this great settlement.
Senator Henry Cabot Lodge: Reservation to Article X of the Treaty of
Versailles – November 1919
The United States assumes no obligation to preserve the territorial integrity or political
independence of any other country or to interfere in controversies between nations –
whether members of the League or not – under the provisions of Article X, or to employ
the military or naval forces of the United States under any article of the treaty for any
purpose, unless in any particular case the Congress, which, under the Constitution, has
the sole power to declare war or authorize the employment of the military or naval forces
of the United State, shall by act or joint resolution provide.
Henry Cabot Lodge: Letter to former Secretary of State Elihu Root –
November 20, 1919
If Wilson had not written his letter to the Democratic caucus, calling on them to kill the
treaty rather than accept the reservations, the treaty would have been ratified on the 19th
of November. There would have been enough Democrats voting with us to have done it.
It was killed by Wilson. He has been the marplot from the beginning. All the delays and
all the troubles have been made by him… We have worked for more than two months
over those reservations, and they represent an amount of labor and modification and
concession that would take me a long time to explain to you. He can have the treaty
ratified at any moment if he will accept the reservations, and if he declines to do so we
are not in the least afraid to meet him at the polls on that issue.
Edith B. Wilson: My Memoir (1939)
On November 19th (1919) the Senate was to vote on the reservations. Senator
Hitchcock came to tell me that unless the (Wilson) Administration forces accepted them,
the Treaty would be beaten – the struggle having narrowed down to a personal fight
against the President by Lodge and his supporters. In desperation, I went to my
husband. “For my sake,” I said, “won’t you accept these reservations and get this awful
thing settled?”
He turned his head on the pillow and stretching his hand out to take mine
answered in a voice I shall never forget: “Little girl, don’t you desert me; that I cannot
stand. Can’t you see that I have no moral right to accept any change in a paper I have
signed without giving to every other signatory, even the Germans, the right to do the
same thing? It is not I that will not accept; it is the Nation’s honor that is at stake.”
His eyes looked luminous as he spoke, and I knew that he was right. He went on
quietly: “Better a thousand times to go down fighting than to dip your colors to
dishonorable compromise.”