Wilson's Four Principles

On 11 February 1918 the President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, once again stood before the joint houses of Congress. A month earlier he had presented there the Fourteen Points of his peace programme, and on 24 January the Imperial Chancellor Georg von Hertling and the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister Count Ottokar Czernin had replied to him. Now the President answered them both. At the outset he expressed his satisfaction that the exchange of views on so great a matter was being conducted in public, “in the hearing of all the world”.

Two replies

To Czernin Wilson showed appreciation. His reply, he said, was couched in a very friendly tone, and its author saw the fundamental elements of peace “with clear eyes”. He understood that an independent Poland, made up of all the indisputably Polish peoples, was a matter for the whole of Europe, that Belgium must be evacuated and restored whatever the cost, and that national aspirations must be satisfied in his own empire too. If he was silent on matters that concerned his allies more closely, it was presumably because he had to consider Germany and Turkey. The President also took the occasion to deny the rumour that he had known Czernin’s text before it was delivered. He had received no advance notice and, as he assured his audience, was glad to remain one of its hearers.

Hertling he judged severely. He called his reply “very vague and very confusing”, full of equivocal phrases, and confirming the bad impression left by the negotiations at Brest-Litovsk. The Chancellor accepted the general principles but would not apply them to concrete questions. He wanted to discuss the Baltic countries only with Russia, the terms of the evacuation of France only with France, and the future of Poland only with Austria. The colonies were to return to Germany without discussion. Such a peace, made up of separate bargains and concessions, Wilson called the method of the Congress of Vienna. “We cannot and will not return to that,” he said. He asked whether the Chancellor had forgotten the Reichstag’s July resolution, which spoke of the conditions of a general peace, not of the aggrandisement of states. From the words of that resolution he drew the sentence that passed into history: peoples may henceforth be governed only by their own consent, and self-determination “is not a mere phrase” but an imperative principle of action, which statesmen will ignore at their peril.

The four principles

The President gave an assurance that the United States had no wish to interfere in European affairs or to arbitrate its territorial disputes, and that his Fourteen Points were only a “provisional sketch”. They had, however, entered the war because they had been made, against their will, partners in the sufferings inflicted by the military masters of Germany, and they saw no way to peace until its causes were removed. The test of whether it was possible to go on talking with Berlin and Vienna was, in his view, simple. It was to be four principles:

• each part of the final settlement must be based upon the essential justice of that particular case and upon such adjustments as are most likely to bring a lasting peace;
• peoples and provinces are not to be bartered about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were mere chattels and pawns in a game, even the great game, “now forever discredited”, of the balance of power;
• every territorial settlement involved in this war must be made in the interest and for the benefit of the populations concerned, and not as part of a compromise between rival states;
• all well-defined national aspirations shall be accorded the utmost satisfaction possible, but without introducing new or perpetuating old elements of discord which would be likely in time to break the peace of Europe and consequently of the world.

A peace built on such foundations, Wilson said, could be discussed. Until it could be achieved, America had no choice but to go on fighting. These principles, in his view, were accepted everywhere by everyone except the military and annexationist party in Germany, which was ready to send millions of men to their deaths to prevent what the whole world regarded as just. American armies were sailing to the front ever faster, and the country would not rest until it had mobilised all its strength. Finally the President gave an assurance that his words were not a threat and that the power of the United States menaced no nation.

Reception

European newspapers printed the address on 13 and 14 February. According to a dispatch from the American ambassador in Paris, all the French newspapers paid tribute to the President, the socialist press wrote most warmly, and the Foreign Minister Stéphen Pichon asked that the government’s thanks be conveyed. Le Temps set the address beside Trotsky’s recent declaration that Russia was leaving the war. In Rome it was received very favourably, although the semi-official Giornale d’Italia accused the President of having let himself be deceived by Czernin’s mild tone. The German press noticed above all that Wilson was separating Berlin from Vienna. The liberal Berliner Tageblatt wrote that one could agree with the President’s words at once, but recalled the declaration of the Entente prime ministers at Versailles, which announced war to the finish. The Social Democratic Vorwärts called the address at once an instrument of peace and a means of war, intended to set Germany against Austria and Germans against one another.

Replies came quickly. Emperor Charles I sent Wilson a confidential message through the King of Spain, Alfonso XIII. He agreed with the first principle without reservation, wished to settle territorial questions by a general renunciation of annexations, and proposed a direct conversation between his representative and a representative of the President. On 25 February Hertling declared in the Reichstag that he too regarded the four principles as a possible basis for a general peace, but on condition that all states accepted them, and at once accused Great Britain of purely imperialist war aims. He spoke these words at a time when German troops were advancing unhindered deep into Russia.