Page:The Outline of History Vol 2.djvu/568

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
548
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY

(VII) Evacuation and restoration of Belgium.

(VIII) Evacuation and restoration of all French territory, and the "righting" of the wrong done to France by Prussia in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine.

(IX) The readjustment of the Italian frontier "on the lines of nationality."

(X) "Autonomy" of the Austrian "subject nations."

(XI) The Balkans to be evacuated, Serbia to be granted an outlet to the sea, and the independence of the Balkan States to be guaranteed.

(XII) Turkish subject nations to be assured of "undoubted security of life and unmolested opportunity of autonomous development." The Dardanelles to be internationalized, and Ottoman sovereignty to be recognized only in Turkish districts.

(XIII) Poland to be independent.

Finally the Fourteenth Point arises again to the Great Charter level out of this peddling with special cases.

(XIV) "A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political and territorial independence for great and small States alike."

So far the Fourteen Points. But some of the utterances of President Wilson after this epoch-making address went much further and much higher than this first statement. On September 27th, 1918, at New York, he said some very important things:

"As I see it, the constitution of that League of Nations and the clear definition of its objects must be a part, in a sense the most essential part, of the peace settlement itself. It cannot be formed now. If formed now, it would be merely a new alliance confined to the nations associated against a common enemy....

"But these general terms do not disclose the whole matter. Some details are needed to make them sound less like a thesis and more like a practical programme. These, then, are some of the particulars, and I state them with the greater confidence because I can state them authoritatively as representing this Government's interpretation of its own duty with regard to peace.

"First, the impartial justice meted out must involve no discrimination between those to whom we wish to be just and those to