8th. All French territories will be liberated, the invaded regions reconstructed, and the wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871, in the question of Alsace-Lorraine, and which has jeopardized the peace of the world for nearly half a century, must be made good, so as to ensure a lasting peace in the general interest.
9th. The Italian frontier must be rectified on the basis of the clearly recognized lines of nationality.
10th. The people of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to see safeguarded and maintained, should come to an agreement as to the best way of attaining their autonomous development.
11th. Rumania, Serbia and Montenegro are to be evacuated and occupied territories restored: a free and secure access to the sea for Serbia; mutual relations between the Balkan States to be determined on a friendly basis by a Council, following the lines of friendship and nationality traced by tradition and history; the political and economic integrity of the various Balkan States to be guaranteed.
12th. A certain degree of sovereignty must be assigned to that part of the Ottoman Empire which is Turkish; but the other nationalities now under the Turkish regime should have the assurance of an independent existence and of an absolute and undisturbed opportunity to develop their autonomy; moreover the Dardanelles should be permanently open to the shipping and commerce of all nations under international guarantees.
13th. An independent Polish State should be founded, comprising all territories inhabited by peoples of undoubtedly Polish nationality, with a free and secure access to the sea and its political and economic independence and territorial integrity guaranteed by international agreements.
14th. A League of Nations must be formed with special pacts and for the sole scope of ensuring the reciprocal guarantees of political independence and of territorial integrity, in equal measure both for large and small States.
The Peace Treaty as outlined by Wilson would really have brought about a just peace; but we shall see how the actual result proved quite the reverse of what constituted a solemn pledge of the American people and of the Entente Powers.
On February 11, 1918, President Wilson confirmed before Congress that all territorial readjustments were to be made in the interest and for the advantage of the populations concerned, not merely as a bargain between rival States, and that there were not to be indemnities, annexations or punitive exactions of any kind.
On September 27, 1918, just on the eve of the armistice, when German resistance was already shaken almost to breaking point, President Wilson gave it the coup de grâce by his message on the post-bellum economic settlement. No special or separate interest of any single nation or group of nations was to be taken as the basis of any settlement which did not concern the common interest of all; there were not to be any leagues or alliances, or special pacts or ententes within the great family of the society of nations; economic deals and corners of an egotistical nature were to be forbidden, as also all forms of boycotting, with the exception of those applied in punishment to the countries transgressing the rules of good fellowship; all international treaties and agreements of every kind were to be published in their entirety to the whole world.