Wilson's 14-Points At the end of World War I

The accord of Versailles was the result of the genus Paris Peace Conference, organized by the victors to settle the issues raised by the war. The 27 nations represented at the Conference had conflicting plans for peace, so the sessions were tumultuous and the resulting treaties controversial. The conference convened on January 18, 1919. Germany and the other defeated of import Powers were not permitted to sit at the conference tables, and the four major(ip) victorious powers--Britain, France, Italy, and the United States--dominated the proceedings. chair Woodrow Wilson favored a yielding settlework forcet based on the liberal principles of his Fourteen Points, which include national selfdetermination in Europe among its goals. french premier Georges Clemenceau, however, was most interested in securing his country against in store(predicate) German attack and took a different position. Many think that the Treaty of Versailles and other treaties, agreements, and policies that emerged from this Conference contributed directly to the maintenance of tensions in Europe over the next two decades and led needs to World War II. The fact that the Treaty was dictated sort of than negotiated would be important in subsequent history, for the Germans never did be in possession of a stake in the Treaty in terms of having been involved in its creation. The Fourteen Points were adopted as a basis for the armistice because the U.S. threatened to make a infract pea

. . . his high-minded principles were thoroughly unpractical at such a time. He implicitly believed that wars were started by handfuls of men in power with evil intentions. Realizing that in the Anglo-Saxon democracies "the concourse" were overwhelmingly pacific, he assumed that the same democratic foresight would, once the militarists had been removed, prevail among altogether other countries. . . His touching doctrine in the League of Nations and his childlike adherence to his Fourteen Points. . . commodious after they had been proved demonstrably unworkable, might have been modified, had he been accompanied to Paris by other Republican leaders.

It was as much Wilson's obstinacy and vanity as the wickedness and self-seeking, as he chose to see it, of his fellow delegates that ultimately brought about the rejection by Congress of his covenant of the League of Nations.

Richard M. Watt also sees the ultimate failure of the Peace Conference as deriving from Wilson's decisiveness to attend, and he calls this the first and most crucial of the mistakes dooming the treaty. He sees Wilson as failing to perceive the authorisation of his position and as dissipating that strength by his decision to attend:

Many feel that none of the Great Powers can be said to have carry through their responsibilities for maintaining the general peace between 1919 and 1939, and in particular they failed to damp the League the power it needed: "In varying degrees all acted in obedience to purely nationalistic policies." In doing fundamentally the same, Hitler found a way to rally the German pack against those whom they believed had created their economic difficulties and contributed to their social turmoil through the stringent prescriptions of the Treaty of Versailles.

Richard M. Watt, The King's Depart. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968.

No one who really saw the President in action at Paris, saw what he did in those grilling months of struggle, fired at in front, sniped at from behind. . . wi
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