January 8, 1918
Woodrow Wilson is featured today for his Fourteen Points speech used in an effort for peace negotiations to help end WW1 which was issued on January 8, 1918.
Forward by Bob Barney
The Plain Truth about America’s 28th President is that he was the first communist type president we have had in the great US of A. Imagine that being your true claim to fame. It gets worse. He also was an avid racist, to boot. One of his favorite movies was, ‘The Birth of a Nation’ which celebrated the birth of the Ku Klux Klan. His hatred for an American form of government stemmed from his immense favor for the British Parliamentary System. He suffered a stroke during his presidency and his wife really was the president at that point! Take a look at this day in history…
The Fourteen Points
Woodrow Wilson and the U.S. Rejection of the Treaty of Versailles
In his war address to Congress on April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson spoke of the need for the United States to enter the war in part to “make the world safe for democracy.” Almost a year later, this sentiment remained strong, articulated in a speech to Congress on January 8, 1918, where he introduced his Fourteen Points.
Designed as guidelines for the rebuilding of the postwar world, the points included Wilson’s ideas regarding nations’ conduct of foreign policy, including freedom of the seas and free trade and the concept of national self-determination, with the achievement of this through the dismantling of European empires and the creation of new states. Most importantly, however, was Point 14, which called for a “general association of nations” that would offer “mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small nations alike.” When Wilson left for Paris in December 1918, he was determined that the Fourteen Points, and his League of Nations (as the association of nations was known), be incorporated into the peace settlements.
The Points, Summarized
1. Open diplomacy without secret treaties
2. Economic free trade on the seas during war and peace
3. Equal trade conditions
4. Decrease armaments among all nations
5. Adjust colonial claims
6. Evacuation of all Central Powers from Russia and allow it to define its own independence
7. Belgium to be evacuated and restored
8. Return of Alsace-Lorraine region and all French territories
9. Readjust Italian borders
10. Austria-Hungary to be provided an opportunity for self-determination
11. Redraw the borders of the Balkan region creating Roumania, Serbia and Montenegro
12. Creation of a Turkish state with guaranteed free trade in the Dardanelles
13. Creation of an independent Polish state
14. Creation of the League of Nations
MORE OF TODAY IN HISTORY ~ 2021, our 45th President, Donald J. Trump was removed from Twitter (since reinstated on December 17, 2022). 1867, Black men were granted the right to vote. 1815, General Andrew Jackson led his forces to victory against British forces in the Battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812.