Many of them will be arcane to today's readers, but some are still pertinent. For example, take a look at Point I. Our diplomacy SHOULD be conducted in the open, and I'm certain that Julian Assange would agree that would be better than what governments are currently doing. In fact, Point I is something that liars like Obama ad-Dajjal and Hillary the Harpy Clinton might demand of others but never do themselves.
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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 secure once for all against their recurrence. What we demand in this war, therefore, is nothing peculiar to ourselves. It is that the world be made fit and safe to live 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 dealing 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 see 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 the public view.
II. 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.
III. 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.
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.
VI. 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.
VII. 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.
VIII. All French territory should be freed and the invaded
portions restored, 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.
IX. A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be
effected along clearly recognizable lines of nationality.
X. The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the
nations we wish to see safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the freest
opportunity to autonomous development.
XI. 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.
XII. The Turkish portion of the present Ottoman Empire
should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are
now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an
absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development, and the
Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a free passage to the ships and
commerce of all nations under international guarantees.
XIII. An independent Polish state should be erected which
should include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations,
which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose
political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be
guaranteed by international covenant.
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 states alike.
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