[APPENDIX IV]
GERMANY'S DECLARATION OF WAR AGAINST FRANCE
The following letter was handed by the German Ambassador to M. René Viviani, President of the Council, Minister for Foreign Affairs, during his farewell audience, August 3, 1914, at 6.45 P.M.
M. le Président,
The German administrative and military authorities have established a certain number of flagrantly hostile acts committed on German territory by French military aviators. Several of these have openly violated the neutrality of Belgium by flying over the territory of that country; one has attempted to destroy buildings near Wesel; others have been seen in the district of the Eifel; one has thrown bombs on the railway near Karlsruhe and Nuremberg.
I am instructed, and I have the honour to inform your Excellency, that in the presence of these acts of aggression the German Empire considers itself in a state of war with France in consequence of the acts of this latter Power.
At the same time I have the honour to bring to the knowledge of your Excellency that the German authorities will detain French mercantile vessels in German ports, but they will release them if, within forty-eight hours, they are assured of complete reciprocity.
My diplomatic mission having thus come to an end it only remains for me to request your Excellency to be good enough to furnish me with my passports, and to take the steps you consider suitable to assure my return to Germany, with the staff of the Embassy, as well as with the staff of the Bavarian Legation and of the German Consulate-General in Paris.
Be good enough, M. le Président, to receive the assurances of my deepest respect.
(Signed) Schoen.
[APPENDIX V]
PRESIDENT WILSON'S FOURTEEN POINTS
An excerpt from President Wilson's address to Congress on January 8, 1918:
'The programme of the world's peace, therefore, is our programme, and that programme, the only possible one as we see it, is this:
'1. 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.