Global Implications of World War I & Constructing the PeaceRead Bentley chapter 34 plus pages 896-899, 902-908 and the articles attached. Answer the following ON ANOTHER SHEET OF PAPER!

Bentley:1. What are the three reasons for the “globalization” of the war?2. Why did Japan enter the war? What were her goals?3. Explain the significance of the “Twenty-one Demands.”4. Where and why was the war fought outside of Europe?5. What was the impact of Gallipoli on the British Empire?6. What were the people of the Middle East fighting for and who fought with the British?7. How would each of these things stand in the way of Woodrow Wilson's plan for a peace that would prevent future wars?

a. the meeting place for the conference b. the absence of Germany and Russia c. the small nations were excluded from the real negotiations d. the most decisions were arrived at by the "Big 4" in a summit level conference e. Wilson's political mistakes: there were no Republicans or Senators among the American delegation f. Italy left the conference early in anger

8. Was Wilson's promise of independent nationhood for all national groups an achievable goal? 9. What happened to the Ottoman Empire? Explain the mandate system. 10. Why did collective security, the concept behind the League of Nations, fail? 11. What were the post war conditions like in Europe? How will they contribute to the developments of dictatorship and war in the future?

Putting the ‘World’ in World War:1. What is the difference between total war and global war?2. Where was the war fought?3. Why did the nations of Latin America enter the war?4. What happened to the Armenians?

K.M. Panikkar:1. In what ways did Asians participate in the war?2. Why were many Asians pro-German?3. Why did most Asians fight with the allies if they were pro-German?4. What effect did colonial participation and Wilsonian Idealism have on the colonies?5. How did India and Japan benefit economically from the war?

Husain Letter and Balfour Declaration:1. What does Husain think the Arabs will get for helping the British against the Ottoman Empire? What does Lord Rothschild think he will get?2. What were the limits to the British promises made in the Husain Letter?3. How might Palestinians and Jews view the Balfour Declaration differently?

Wilson's 14 points, the Treaty of Versailles, Syrian Congress and German Response 1. What position is taken in each document on Alsace-Lorraine, disarmament, colonies, Poland, the creation of nation

states, war guilt and reparations? 2. To what extent did the Treaty of Versailles incorporate the 14 points? To what extent were they ignored? 3. A treaty can either establish peace by removing the causes of war or it can punish the loser of the war.

What do you thing should have been included in a treaty that would remove the causes of the war? 4. What approach to establishing a peace did each of the two documents use? Support your answer. 5. Explain the Syrian and German responses to the treaty?

Putting the “World” in World WarConsider the following facts about the First World War

In 1914 when German invaders reached the Marne River, they met divisions of the Indian Army under British officers. Later these colonial troops were used in the defense of the Suez Canal and the campaign to take Baghdad.

Laborers from French Indo-China were used in France to help fill the need for manpower. Native troops from Senegal and Algeria fought in the trenches of France.

Japan declared war on Germany on August 23rd of 1914. Japan's objective was to gain control of Germany’s imperial possessions in the Pacific and exploit the vacuum left by Europe in China for her own benefit. She had an army of one million men and a navy double the size of the one she had at the end of the Russo-Japanese War. She took the Marshall Islands and other German Pacific Islands. She captured the German treaty port of Tsing-tau in Kiao-Chau Bay on the coast of China. The Japanese navy patrolled the Pacific Ocean, the China Sea and the Indian Ocean permitting the British warships to withdraw to waters nearer home. She landed marines to quell riots in Singapore, and finally entered active service in European waters.

Despite China's distrust and fear of Japan, China answered the American request to follow the US in protesting Germany's practice of unrestricted submarine warfare, and declared war on Germany in August of 1917. She invaded the German and Austrian settlements in Tientsin and Hankow. Thousands of Chinese coolies went to Europe to work in the Allied interests behind the battle lines.

Siam entered the war in July 1917, seizing ships and interring Central Power citizens in her country. As a weak, but independent nation, her motive for entering the war was a desire to make "the world safe for democracy."

The war lead to a growing demand from the Allies for Brazil's sugar, beans and other staples. This expanding trade exposed its shipping to German reprisals. After German submarines torpedoed many Brazilian merchant ships, Brazil declared war on Germany. Her major contribution to the Allied war effort continued to be the supply of goods, but its navy assisted an English squadron in patrolling south Atlantic waters.

Cuba and Panama also declared war on the Central Powers in 1917. The Allies became dependent on Cuban sugar, since they were fighting their major former supplier, Austria-Hungary. Cuba entered the war because it was economically advantageous. There was a tremendous expansion in sugar production and mill construction. Cuba brought laborers from Jamaica and other Caribbean Islands to handle the manpower shortage. The war accelerated the trend toward concentration of the sugar industry in American hands.

In Sub-Sahara Africa, the British, French and Belgians disposed of German forces in Togoland and Cameroon in a few weeks. In southwest Africa, the Germans encouraged a rebellion of the Boers, many who saw the war as the right moment to reclaim their country from the British.

With the help of 50,000 South Africans, the English imperialists Botha and Smuts put down this rebellion and defeated the Germans in German South West Africa. Defeating the Germans in East Africa was not so easy. The Germans managed to hold out in a series of campaigns and still had forces in the field on Armistice Day.

On August 15th 1914 a New Zealand expedition of about 1000 men sailed for German Samoa and took it without resistance. An Australian expedition of 1600 men landed in September on New Pommern (off the coast of New Guinea); the Germans offered resistance, however, they shortly submitted to unconditional surrender.

The campaign by the British against the Ottoman Empire was not only the most extensive outside Europe, but it was also the most complex:

-Indian, Australian and New Zealand units, as well as many Arabs, participated alongside British troops.

-In the north, there was catastrophe-the Gallipoli campaign was a failure and resulted in 500,000 casualties. The Anzac (Australian and New Zealand) troops felt they had been led into senseless slaughter by their British officers as a result, a sense of Australian nationalism emerged.

-The Armenians in the empire chose to sympathize with the Russians. The Turks rounded up and deported Armenians males as labor battalions. The Turks burned the villages. Men, women, the aged, and children were carried off to unknown destinations in the mountains. In areas where the Armenians were in the majority, the populace was massacred. The Turks sent convoys of other Armenians south into Syria. The weak died en route, the survivors arrived exhausted and were sent into the desert, where most of them starved to death. (The Holocaust of World War II was not the first genocide of the 20th century).

-On the other end of the Ottoman Empire, things went better, at least for the British. The British from the Indian, Egyptian and London foreign offices encouraged the Arabs to rebel, promising each tribal group independence for their help. The most famous of these campaigns was that led by T. H. Lawrence in Arabia. With the help of Bedouins, he captured Aqaba (on the edge of the Sinai and critical for protecting the Suez Canal and Red Sea). The British also took Mesopotamia, protecting the oil pipeline, and the Persian Gulf. Then successfully took Baghdad. Under Sir Edmund Allenby, the British took Palestine and by 1918 were in Damascus.

-Under the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916, the British and French secretly agreed to divide the spoils of the Ottoman Empire despite the promises of an independent Arab state made by the British to the Arabs in the McMahon and Husein letters. A statement made by Lord Arthur Balfour, Foreign Minister of Great Britain, known as the Balfour Declaration, which supported the European Zionist movement's demands for a homeland in Palestine further complicated the post war situation.

World War I in World HistoryK.M. Panikkar. Readings in World Civilizations, Volume 1

From an Asian perspective, according to this Indian historian and diplomat, World War I was a European civil war. But the involvement of African and Asian soldiers and colonial subjects made the war a major turning point in world history.

The Great War of 1914-18 was from the Asian point of view a civil war within the European community of nations. The direct participation of Asian countries, during some stages of this conflict, was at the invitation and by the encouragement of one of the parties, the entente Powers, and was greatly resented by the Germans. It is necessary to emphasize this internal character of the European conflict to realize its full significance on the development of events in Asia.

We have already noticed that at the beginning of the twentieth century the European nations, in the enjoyment of unprecedented economic prosperity and political prestige, remained unshakably convinced that they had inherited the earth, and that their supremacy in Asia was permanent and was something in the nature of a predetermined Divine Order. It was the age of Kipling and the white man's burden, and it seemed the manifest destiny of the white race to hold the East.

In 1914, when the German invaders had reached the Marne, divisions of the Indian Army under British officers had been rushed to France and had helped at the critical moment to stem the German tide. Later, they were extensively used in the defense of the Suez Canal and the Middle East and in campaigns elsewhere in Africa. In 1917, Siam declared war on Germany. An Indo-Chinese labor force had been recruited and was working in France. On August 14, 1917, China also joined the Allies. Thus all the nations of Asia were brought into the European Civil war. However, opinion in India, China and even in Japan was at the time more pro-German than pro-Ally. In India, except among the ruling princes, there was no pro-British feeling, and public opinion rejoiced at every report of German victory and felt depressed when the Allies were winning. China declared war only with the greatest reluctance and for the express purpose of checkmating Japanese plans of aggression. In Japan itself, after the Shantung Campaign, feeling against the Allies was most marked, and a Press campaign of great virulence was conducted against Britain at the end of 1916. Actually, though the Asian countries fought on the side of the Allies, public opinion in the East looked upon the conflict as a civil war in which neither party had a claim to the friendship of the peoples of Asia, and if any party could appeal to the sympathy of Asians it was the Germanic alliance which had no tradition of Asian conquest and was allied with the chief Muslim Power, Turkey.

But the participation of Asian people in the war had far-reaching consequences. The Indian soldier who fought on the Marne came back to India with other ideas of the Sahib than those he was taught to believe by decades of official propaganda. Indo-Chinese Labor Corps in the South of France returned to Annam (Vietnam) with notions of democracy and republicanism which they had not entertained before. Among the Chinese who went to France at the time was a young man named Chou En-lai, who stayed on to become a Communist and had to be expelled for activities among the members of the Chinese Labor Corps.

More important than these influences was the fact that the French and British administrations in Asia had to appeal to their subjects for moral support. To ask Indians and Indo-Chinese to subscribe to war loans for the defense of democracy and to prevent the world being overwhelmed by German Kultur (culture), would have sounded as strange and callous irony unless accompanied by promises of democracy for themselves and freedom for their own cultures. When, besides subscriptions for war loans, Indians and Indo-Chinese were pressed to join up and fight to save democracy, the contradictions of the position became too obvious even for

the colonial administrators. In India the demand was made openly by the nationalist leaders that prior agreement on political problems was necessary before support of the war could be considered a national program.

Politically, a further weakening of the colonial and imperialist position came about as a result of President Wilson's declaration of fourteen points. In 1917, the doctrine of the "self-determination of peoples" had the ring of a new revelation. Whatever its effect was on the suppressed nationalities of Europe, in Asia it was acclaimed as a doctrine of liberation. As every Allied Power hastened to declare its faith in the new formula of Wilson (and it was soon raised to the position of an accepted "war aim" in the propaganda campaign against the Germans), the colonial Powers found it difficult to oppose openly or resist publicly the claims of Asian nations based on this formula. It became difficult to proclaim self-determination of people as a great ideal for the establishment of which Asian peoples should co-operate with Europeans and fight and lose their lives in distant battlefields, but which, however excellent, could not be applied to themselves. Self-government for colonial countries had thus to be accepted, and the claim to it could no longer be brushed aside as premature or stigmatized as sedition.

Apart from these political considerations economic forces generated by the war were also helping to undermine the supremacy of the West. Japan utilized the four years of war for a planned expansion of her trade in the East. German competition had been eliminated. Britain and France engaged in a mortal struggle when their entire resources of production bad to be directed towards victory, had also left the field fairly open. India gained her first major start on the industrial road and, with the strain on British economy; Indian national capital was placed in a position of some advantage. In fact the full results of the weakening of European capitalism became evident only after the war when the pre-eminence of London was challenged by America, and British capital; though still powerful, began to be on the defensive in India. The growth of capitalist enterprise in India, and the development of industries and participation by Indian capital in spheres so far monopolistically held by Britain, like jute [a plant fiber used in making burlap], resulted directly from the weakening of the economic position of Britain.

Two other results of a general character may be indicated. The first, the growth of a powerful left-wing movement in the countries of Western Europe had a direct effect on shaping events in the Eastern Empire. The Labour Party in England during the days of its growth had been closely associated with the nationalist movement in India. In fact, Ramsay MacDonald, the leader of the Socialist party after the war, had been one of its champions from the earliest days. Similarly, Annamite nationalism had worked hand in hand with left-wing parties in France. In the period that immediately followed the war these parties had come to possess considerable influence in national affairs and, as we shall see, were instrumental in giving effect to policies which loosened the old bonds of political domination. .

The second factor was, of course, the influence of the Russian Revolution. Imperialism meant something totally different after Lenin's definition of it as the last phase of capitalism and his insistence that the liberation of subject peoples from colonial domination was a part of the struggle against capitalism. Russia called for the practice of racial equality and abolition of special privileges.

Letter to Ali ibn Husain, 1915McMahon was British High Commissioner in Egypt and Ali Ibn Husain was the Sherif of Mecca during the First World War. In a series of ten letters from 1915 to 1916 McMahon tried to attract Arab support against the Ottoman Empire. The following excerpt is from a letter from October 24, 1915. The implied promise is of British support of an independent Arab state in exchange for support against the Ottoman Empire during World War I.

“As for those regions lying within those frontiers wherein Great Britain is free to act without detriment to the interests of her ally, France, I am empowered in the name of the Government of Great Britain to give the following assurances and make the following reply to your letter:

(1) Subject to the above modifications, Great Britain is prepared to recognise and support the independence of the Arabs in all the regions within the limits demanded by the Sherif of Mecca.

(2) Great Britain will guarantee the Holy Places against all external aggression and will recognise their inviolability.

(3) When the situation admits, Great Britain will give to the Arabs her advice and will assist them to establish what may appear to be the most suitable forms of government in those various territories.

(4) On the other hand, it is understood that the Arabs have decided to seek the advice and guidance of Great Britain only, and that such European advisers and officials as may be required for the formation of a sound form of administration will be British.

(5) With regard to the vilayets of Bagdad and Basra, the Arabs will recognise that the established position and interests of Great Britain necessitate special administrative arrangements in order to secure these territories from foreign aggression, to promote the welfare of the local populations and to safeguard our mutual economic interests.

I am convinced that this declaration will assure you beyond all possible doubt of the sympathy of Great Britain towards the aspirations of her friends the Arabs and will result in a firm and lasting alliance, the immediate results of which will be the expulsion of the Turks from the Arab countries and the freeing of the Arab peoples from the Turkish yoke, which for so many years has pressed heavily upon them.”

Source:From Great Britain. Parliamentary Papers, 1939, Misc. No. 3, Cmd. 5957.

The Balfour DeclarationTo enlist Jewish support for the war, British policy became gradually committed to the idea of establishing a Jewish home in Palestine (Eretz Yisrael). After discussions in the British Cabinet, and consultation with Zionist leaders, the decision was made known in the form of a letter by Arthur James Lord Balfour to Lord Rothschild. The letter represents the first political recognition of Zionist aims by a Great Power. (Source: The Times (London), November 9, 1917)

“Foreign OfficeNovember 2nd, 1917

Dear Lord Rothschild,

I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty's Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet.

"His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."

I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.

Yours sincerely,Arthur James Balfour “

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Woodrow Wilson’s Speech on the Fourteen PointsCongressional Record, 65th Congress

On January 8, 1918, President Woodrow Wilson put forth his Fourteen Points proposal for ending the war. In this speech he established the basis of a peace treaty and the foundation of a League of Nations.

We entered this war because violations of right had occurred which touched to the quick and made the life of our own people impossible unless they were corrected and the world secured once for all against their recurrence. What we demand in this war, therefore, is nothing peculiar to ourselves. It is that the world be made fit and safe to live in; and particularly that it be made for every peace-loving nation which, like our own, wishes to live its own way, determine its own institutions, be assured of justice and fair dealing by other peoples of the world as against force and selfish aggression. All the peoples of the world are in effect partners in this interest, and for our own part we see very clearly that unless justice be done to others it will not be done to us. The programme of the world's peace, therefore, is our programme; and that programme, the only possible programme, as we see it, is this:

I. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understanding of any kind but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.

II. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in war, except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part by international action for the enforcement of international covenants.

III. The removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the establishment of all equality of trade conditions among all the nations consent to the peace and associating themselves for its maintenance.

IV. Adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will be reduced to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety.

V. A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined.

VI. The evacuation of all Russian territory and such a settlement of all questions affecting Russia as will secure the best and freest cooperation of the other nations of the world in obtaining for her an unhampered and unembarrassed opportunity for the independent determination of her own political. development and national policy and assure her a sincere welcome into the society of free nations under institutions of her own choosing; and, more than a welcome, assistance also of every kind that she may need and may herself desire. The treatment accorded Russia by her sister nations in the months to come will be the acid test of their good will, of their comprehension of her needs as distinguished from their own interests, and of their intelligent and unselfish sympathy.

VII. Belgium, the whole world will agree, must be evacuated and restored without any attempt to limit the sovereignty which she enjoys in common with all other free nations. No other single act will serve as this will serve to restore confidence among the nations in the laws which they have themselves set and determined for the government of their relations with one another. Without this healing act the whole structure and validity of international law is forever impaired.

VIII. All French territory should be freed and the invaded portions restored, and the wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which has unsettled the peace of the world for nearly fifty years, should be righted, in order that peace may once more be made secure in the interest of all.

IX. A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearly recognizable lines of nationality.X. The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to see safeguarded and assured, should be

accorded the freest opportunity of autonomous development. XI. Rumania. Serbia, and Montenegro should be evacuated; occupied territories restored; Serbia accorded free and

secure access to the sea; and the relations of the several Balkan states to one another determined by friendly counsel along historically established lines of allegiance and nationality; and international guarantees of the political and economic independence and territorial integrity of the several Balkan states should be entered into.

XII. The Turkish portions of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development, and the Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a free passage to the ships and commerce of all nations under international guarantees.

XIII. An independent Polish state should be erected which should include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenant.

XIV. A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike…

The Treaty of VersaillesOn June 28, 1919, the Allied powers presented the Treaty of Versailles to Germany for signature. The following excerpts are from key territorial and political clauses.

Article 22. Certain communities formerly belonging to the Turkish Empire have reached a stage of development where their existence as independent nations can be provisionally recognized subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory [i.e., a Western power] until such time as they are able to stand alone. The wishes of these communities must be a principal consideration in the selection of the Mandatory.

Article 42. Germany is forbidden to maintain or construct any fortifications either on the left bank of the Rhine or on the right bank to the west of a line drawn 50 kilometers to the east of the Rhine.

Article 45. As compensation for the destruction of the coal mines in the north of France and as part payment towards the total reparation due from Germany for the damage resulting from the war, Germany cedes to France in full and absolute possession, with exclusive right of exploitation, unencumbered and free from all debts and charges of any kind, the coal mines situated in the Saar Basin …

Article 49. Germany renounces in favor of the League of Nations, in the capacity of trustee, the government of the territory defined above.

At the end of fifteen years from the coming into force of the present Treaty the inhabitants of the said territory shall be called upon to indicate the sovereignty under which they desire to be placed.

Alsace-Lorraine. The High Contracting Parties, recognizing the moral obligation to redress the wrong done by Germany in 1871 both to the rights of France and to the wishes of the population of Alsace and Lorraine, which were separated from their country in spite of the solemn protest of their representatives at the Assembly of Bordeaux, agree upon the following ...

Article 51. The territories which were ceded to Germany in accordance with the Preliminaries of Peace signed at Versailles on February 26, 1871, and the Treaty of Frankfort of May 10, 1871, are restored to French sovereignty as from the date of the Armistice of November 11, 1918.

The provisions of the Treaties establishing the delimitation of the frontiers before 1871 shall be restored.Article 119. Germany renounces in favor of the Principal Allied and Associated Powers all her rights and

titles over her overseas possessions. Article 156. Germany renounces, in favor of Japan, all her title and privileges…which she acquired in

virtue of the Treaty concluded by her with China on March 6, 1898 and all other arrangements concerning the Province of Shantung.

Article 159. The German military forces shall be demobilized and reduce as prescribed hereinafter.Article 160. By a date which must not be later than March 31, the German army must not comprise more

than ten divisions.Article 231. The Allied and Associated Governments affirm the responsibility of Germany and her allies

for causing loss and damage to which the Allies and Associated Governments have been subjected and a consequence of the aggression of Germany and her allies.

Article 232. The Allies and Associated Governments recognize the resources of Germany are adequate…to make complete reparations for all such lose and damage…---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Memorandum of the General Syrian CongressWhen Arab leaders learned of Article 22 in the Treaty of Versailles, which established Western rule (Mandates) in parts of the former Ottoman Empire they denounced the mandate system and reminded the Allies of President Wilson’s promise of self-determination.

We the undersigned members of the General Syrian Congress, meeting in Damascus on Wednesday, July 2nd, 1919, made up of representatives from the three Zones, viz., The Southern, Eastern, and Western, provided with credentials and authorizations by the inhabitants of our various districts, Moslems, Christians, and Jews, have agreed upon the following statement of the desires of the people of the country who have elected us.... 1. We ask absolutely complete political independence for Syria.... 2. We ask that the Government of this Syrian country should be a democratic civil

constitutional Monarchy on broad decentralization principles, safeguarding the rights of minorities, and that the King be the Emir Feisal, who carried on a glorious struggle in the cause of our liberation and merited our full confidence and entire reliance.

3. Considering the fact that the Arabs inhabiting the Syrian area are not naturally less gifted than other more advanced races and that they are by no means less developed than the Bulgarians, Serbians, Greeks, and Rumanians at the beginning of their independence, we protest against Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, placing us among the nations in their middle stage of development which stand in need of a mandatory power…

6. We do not acknowledge any right claimed by the French Government in any part whatever of our Syrian country and refuse that she should assist us or have a hand in our country under any circumstances and in any place.

7. We oppose the pretensions of the Zionists to create a Jewish commonwealth in the southern part of Syria, known as Palestine, and oppose Zionist migration to any part of our country; for we do not acknowledge their title but consider them a grave peril to our people from the national, economical, and political points of view. Our Jewish compatriots shall enjoy our common rights and assume the common responsibilities. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The German Response to the Treaty of VersaillesThe final draft of the treaty was submitted to the representatives of the German government on June 28, 1919. Before affixing his signature to the treaty, Count Brockdorff-Rantzau, the leader of the German delegation, made the following comment. Eyewitnesses reported that he trembled with rage.

The peace to be concluded with Germany was to be a peace of right, not a peace of might. ...

The peace document shows that none of [the] repeated solemn assurances has been kept. To begin with the territorial questions:

In the West, a purely German territory on the Saar with a population of at least 650,000 inhabitants is to be separated from the German Empire for at least fifteen years merely for the reason that claims are asserted to the coal abounding there....

The settlement of the colonial question is equally contradictory to a peace of justice. For the essence of activity in colonial work does not consist in capitalistic exploitation of a less developed human race, but in raising backward peoples to a higher civilization.... [Yet, the] treaty ... deprives Germany of her colonies....

Although President Wilson, in his speech of October 20th, 1916, has acknowledged that "no single fact caused the war, but that in the last analysis the whole European system is in a deeper sense responsible for the war, with its combination of alliances and understandings, a complicated texture of intrigues and espionage that unfailingly caught the whole family of nations in its meshes," "that the present war is not so simply to be explained and that its roots reach deep into the dark soil of history," Germany is to acknowledge that Germany and her allies are responsible for all damages .... Apart from the consideration that there is no incontestable legal foundation for the obligation for reparation imposed upon Germany, the amount of such compensation is to be determined by a commission nominated solely by Germany's enemies....

The same is also true with regard to Alsace-Lorraine. If Germany has pledged herself to right the wrong of 1871," this does not mean any renunciation of the right of self-determination of the inhabitants of Alsace-Lorraine. A cession of the country without consulting the population would be a new wrong, if for no other reason, because it would be inconsistent with a recognized principle of peace.

On the other hand, it is incompatible with the idea of national self-determination for two and one-half million Germans to be torn away from their native land against their own will. By the proposed … boundary, unmistakably German territories are disposed of in favor of their Polish neighbors.... This disrespect of the right of self-determination is shown most grossly in the fact that Danzig is to be separated from the German Empire and made a free state... The same may be said with reference to the fact that millions of Germans in German-Austria are to be denied the union with Germany which they desire and that, further, millions of Germans dwelling along our frontiers are to be forced to remain part of the newly created Czechoslovakian State....