According to Turner, the Fourteen Points, as far back as the drawing up of the armistice terms, were, to Wilson, no more than a means of making Germany lay down her arms; as soon as this end was achieved he dropped them.
Already a very large part of the American people has arrayed itself against Mr. Wilson and is unwilling to be discredited along with him. I am not dreaming of spontaneous American help for Germany; all I count upon is the sober acknowledgment by the American people that it has to make good the gigantic wrong done Germany by its former President. For the atmosphere of a victory does not last forever, and later on, not only in Germany, but elsewhere, people will remember the unreliability of the American President and look upon it as American unreliability.
That is not a good thing, however, for the American people. To have the policy of a nation branded with the stigma of unreliability is not advantageous. When judgment is passed hereafter on American policy, people will forget that Mr. Wilson, unversed in the ways of the world, was trapped by Lloyd George and Clemenceau.
I have met—particularly at the Kiel regattas—many American men and women whose political judgment and caution would make it impossible for them to approve such a flagrant breach of faith as was committed by Mr. Wilson, because of its effect on America's political prestige. It is upon such considerations of national egotism, not upon any sort of sentimental considerations, that I base my hope that Germany's burden will be lightened from across the ocean.
Besides the injustice in the abandonment of the Fourteen Points, it must also be remembered that Mr. Wilson was the first to demand of the German reigning dynasty that it withdraw, in doing which he hinted that, were such action taken, the German people would be granted a better peace. Before the Government of Prince Max joined in the demand for my abdication of the throne, which it based on the same grounds as Mr. Wilson—that Germany would thereby get better terms—(prevention of civil war was used as a second means of bringing pressure on me)—it was in duty bound to get some sort of a binding guaranty from Mr. Wilson. In any event, the statements made, which became continually more urgent and pressing, contributed toward making me resolve to quit the country, since I was constrained to believe that I could render my country a great service by so doing.
ACCEPTED "SIGHT UNSEEN"
I subordinated my own interests and those of my dynasty, which certainly were not unimportant, and forced myself, after the severest inward struggles, to acquiesce in the wish of the German authorities. Later it transpired that the German Government had obtained no real guaranties. But, in the tumultuous sequence of events during those days, it was necessary for me to consider the unequivocal and definite announcement of the Imperial Chancellor as authoritative. For this reason I did not investigate it.
Why the Entente demanded, through Mr. Wilson, that I should abdicate is now obvious. It felt perfectly sure that, following my being dispossessed of the throne, military and political instability would necessarily ensue in Germany and enable it to force upon Germany not easier but harder terms. At that time the revolution had not yet appeared as an aid to the Entente.
For me to have remained on the throne would have seemed to the Entente more advantageous to Germany than my abdication. I myself agree with this view of the Entente, now that it has turned out that the Max of Baden Government had no substantial foundation for its declaration that my abdication would bring better terms to my fatherland.
I go even further and declare that the Entente would never have dared to offer such terms to an intact German Empire. It would not have dared to offer them to an imperial realm upon which the parliamentary system had not yet been forced, with the help of German Utopians, at the very moment of its final fight for existence; to a realm whose monarchical Government had not been deprived of the power to command its army and navy.