A Vision for Peace
While war was raging in Europe, Woodrow Wilson prepared a speech to Congress that outlined a leadership role for the United States in world affairs. He gave the speech on January 8, 1918.
Watch this video, which explains Wilson’s vision for peace and a “new world order.” As you watch and then read the video transcript, notice how the United States publicized the Fourteen Points to both the Allies and the Germans.
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Wilson made his speech without consulting other European leaders. France’s Georges Clemenceau, upon hearing of the Fourteen Points, is said to have proclaimed, “Le bon Dieu n’en avait que dix!” (“The good Lord only had ten!,” referring to the Ten Commandments.)
JAY WINTER, Historian: It is very, very hard to register how high the casualties were in the First World War. Americans I don’t think have ever seen how simply catastrophic and destructive it was. How stupidly ugly it was in destruction of human life, limb, property, everything. War degenerated between 1914 and ’18. And once you turn on brutal violence you can’t just turn it off.
NARRATOR: In its fourth year, the Great War continued to claim appalling casualties on both sides. Now, as millions of young Americans prepared to ship over to France, Woodrow Wilson was determined that the cause they were fighting for would be as great as the sacrifice he was asking them to make.
On January 6th, 1918, the President gathered up his notes, took to his study, and began work on a speech. Ever since the outbreak of the war, he had sought a pivotal role for America in the conflict. He wanted to advance the nation’s strategic and economic interests, but he also imagined a sweeping moral and democratic transformation of the struggle, one that would reshape the post-war world.
NARRATOR: Events in Russia added another dimension to Wilson’s mission. In October the revolutionary Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, had formed a new government and vowed to make peace with Germany. They offered the world a vision of socialist equality, and an end to the corrupt empires that had oppressed workers for centuries.
MARGARET MACMILLAN, Historian: Lenin, who was in his own way as great a speaker and a propagandist as Wilson was, said that we are going to build a new world order, this is the end of the divisions among nations, we’re going to build a different sort of world and I think Wilson felt he was under some pressure and perhaps obligation to make the American position very clear and possibly stake out a leadership role for the United States in any peace that was to come.
NARRATOR: On January 8th, the president travelled down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol. Before a joint session of Congress, he reiterated why he had felt compelled to enter the war. Then, in fourteen separate points, he outlined a plan for the war’s end. Germany must retreat back to its borders. Freedom of the seas would be restored. Governments were to respect the self-determination of their citizens.
MARGARET MACMILLAN: Underlying the whole speech is this idea that you can build a better world order. This is really an enunciation of what the United States is going to be like as a player in world affairs. You’ve got the president saying we’re going to get out there, we’re going to get involved, and we don’t see ourselves as just policing our own back yard. We see ourselves as somehow policing the world and helping the world find a better way forward.
NARRATOR: The Fourteen Points were Wilson’s creation, but it was George Creel and his Committee on Public Information who had proclaimed it to the world. The CPI had been created to shape public opinion of the war at home and abroad. It did such thorough work that German soldiers advancing into Russian towns found walls plastered with Wilson’s Fourteen Points, in German, as well as Russian. Thanks to the CPI, Wilson had become a savior to friend and foe alike.
