25
Two guaranteed free navigation of all seas. Point Three mandated an
end to trade barriers between countries. Point Four demanded a re-
duction in armaments to the lowest possible level consistent with se-
curity concerns. Point Five called for changes to colonial claims based
on the right of self-determination. Points Six through Thirteen dealt
with specific postwar matters of territory. Point Fourteen advised that
nations should join together in a group so that future conflicts could
be settled peacefully through negotiation—the idea that led to the
League of Nations.
However, Wilson’s plan proved to be hopelessly naive with regard
to the aims of the other members of the Big Four. Prime Minister
Georges Clemenceau of France rejected Wilson’s idealistic dreams of
peace. The war had been fought mainly on French soil, and France
had lost 1.4 million soldiers and had suf-
fered massive damage to roads, telegraph
lines, coal mines, and other assets neces-
sary to daily life.The French leader sought
not only to prevent Germany from mount-
ing future attacks on his country but also
to punish it harshly for its aggression. He
wanted war reparations—large cash pay-
ments from Germany to the Allies—and
trade sanctions. “Clemenceau was also
determined to cripple German trade, so
the treaty stipulated that Germany had to
accept all imports from Allied countries,”
writes historian Stephen Clarke. “Clem-
enceau was furious that penknives engraved with ‘La Victoire’ [victory],
on sale in France, had been made in Germany.The exports, he said, had
to start flowing in the other direction.”
12
British prime minister David
Lloyd George was more sympathetic to Wilson’s plan. He privately
believed that if Germany became destitute from paying war reparations
and losing trade, its government might fall prey to Communist revolu-
tion as in Russia. Yet Lloyd George feared the plan’s effects on Britain’s
colonies and also was aware of the British public’s demands to make
Germany pay. Adding to the devastation in Europe—and the people’s
bleak perspective—was the outbreak of the Spanish flu in mid-1918,
“It will be ourwish
and purpose that
the processes of
peace, when they
are begun, shall be
absolutely open
and that they shall
involve and permit
henceforth no secret
understandings of
any kind.”
11
—President Woodrow
Wilson.
