The “Fourteen Points.”—On January 8, 1917, less than sixty days before we found ourselves in a state of war with Germany, President Wilson presented to Congress the following fourteen specific considerations as necessary to world peace:
1. Open covenants of peace without private international understandings.
2. Absolute freedom of the seas in peace or war, except as they may be closed by international action.
3. Removal of all economic barriers and establishment of equality of trade conditions among nations consenting to peace and associating themselves for its maintenance.
4. Guarantees for the reduction of national armaments at the lowest point consistent with domestic safety.
5. Impartial adjustment of all colonial claims based upon the principle that the peoples concerned shall have equal weight with the interest of the government.
6. Evacuation of all Russian territory and opportunity for Russia’s political development.
7. Evacuation of Belgium without any attempt to limit her sovereignty.
8. All French territory to be freed and restored, and France must have righted the wrong done in the taking of Alsace-Lorraine.
9. Readjustment of Italy’s frontiers along clearly recognizable lines of nationality.