President Wilson was firmly opposed to a division of Germany's colonial possessions among the Powers which then held them. He believed that to divide the colonies among the Entente nations would be in direct contravention of the "Fourteen Points" which had been accepted as a basis of peace, and would violate the principles of the League of Nations.
The famous "Fourteen Points," it will be remembered, were formulated by President Wilson, and in January, 1918, were offered to the belligerent nations as the foundation for peace negotiations:
I. 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.
II. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in war, except as seas may be closed in whole, or in part by international action for the enforcement of international covenants.
III. The removal as far as possible of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace and associated for its maintenance.
IV. Adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will be reduced to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety.
V. A free, open-minded, and also impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon the strict observance of principles that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined.
VI. The evacuation of all Russian territory and such settlement of all questions affecting Russia as will secure the best and freest cooperation of the other nations of the world in obtaining for her an unhampered and unembarrassed opportunity for the desired determination of her own political development and national policy, and assure her of a sincere welcome into the society of free nations under the institutions of her own choosing; and, more than a welcome, assistance also of every kind that she may need and herself desire. The treatment accorded Russia by her sister nations in the months to some will be the acid test of their good will, of the comprehension of her needs as distinguished from their own interests and of their intelligent and unselfish sympathy.
VII. Belgium, the whole world will agree, must be evacuated and restored without any attempt to limit the sovereignty which she enjoys in common with all other free nations. No other single act will serve to restore confidence among the nations in the laws which they themselves have set and determined for the government of their relations with one another. Without this healing act the whole structure and validity of international law is forever impaired.
VIII. All French territory should be freed and the invaded portions restored, and the wrongs done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace and Lorraine, which has unsettled the peace of the world for nearly fifty years, should be righted, in order that peace may once more be made secure in the interest of all.