The armistice of November 11, 1918, resulted directly from the military defeat of German armies in France, following upon the collapse of Turkey, Bulgaria, and Austria-Hungary. But there were many circumstances other than military that led to Germany's downfall, and by no means of least importance were the moral issues so constantly stressed by Wilson. His speeches had been carefully distributed through the Central Empires; they had done much to arouse the subject peoples of Austria-Hungary to revolt for their freedom, and also to weaken the morale of the German people. The value of Wilson's "verbiage drives" was questioned in this country. Abroad, his insistence upon a peace of justice was generally reckoned a vital moral force in the political movements that supplemented the victories of Marshal Foch. Jugoslavs consented to coÖperate with their Italian enemies because they felt that "Wilson's justice" would guarantee a fair court for their aspirations in the Adriatic; Magyars and Austrians threw down their arms in the belief that his promise to "be as just to enemies as to friends" secured a better future than they could hope for through the continuance of the war; the leaders of the German Reichstag demanded the Kaiser's abdication in November, under the impression that Wilson had laid it down as a condition of peace.

From the time when the United States entered the war it was obvious that Wilson placed less emphasis upon defeating Germany than upon securing a just peace. Military victory meant nothing to him except as the road to peace. In his first war speeches the President, much to the irritation of many Americans, insisted that the United States was fighting the government and not the people of Germany. "We have no quarrel," he said, "with the German people. We have no feeling towards them but one of sympathy and friendship." In his Flag Day address he was careful not to attack "Germany" but only "the military masters under whom Germany is bleeding." Certain effects of this attitude were to be seen in the Reichstag revolt of July, 1917, led by that most sensitive of political weathercocks, Matthias Erzberger, which was designed to take political control out of the hands of the military clique. That crisis, however, was safely survived by Ludendorff, who remained supreme. President Wilson then returned to the attack in his reply to the Pope's peace proposals of August. "The object of this war is to deliver the free peoples of the world from the menace and the actual power of a vast military establishment controlled by an irresponsible government.... This power is not the German people. It is the ruthless master of the German people.... We cannot take the word of the present rulers of Germany as a guarantee of anything that is to endure, unless explicitly supported by such conclusive evidence of the will and purpose of the German people themselves as the other peoples of the world would be justified in accepting."

There was serpentine wisdom in these words, for their very vagueness attracted German liberals. Wilson did not demand a republic; he did not insist upon the Kaiser's abdication, for which Germany was not then prepared; all that he asked was a government responsible to the people, and more and more the Germans were demanding that themselves. Furthermore, he again laid stress upon the fact that the Germans need not fear vengeance such as the Allies had threatened. "Punitive damages, the dismemberment of empires, the establishment of selfish and exclusive economic leagues, we deem inexpedient." The appeal was fruitless in its immediate effects, for the political party leaders were still dominated by the military; but ultimately, in conjunction with a dozen other appeals, its influence acted like a subtle corrosive upon the German will to conquer.

Still less successful were the attempts to win Austria away from her ally by secret diplomatic conversations. In these neither President Wilson nor his personal adviser, Colonel House, placed great confidence. They had been undertaken by the French through Prince Sixtus of Bourbon, and in August, 1917, Major Armand of France discussed with the Austrian emissary, Revertata, possible means of bringing about peace between Austria and the Allies. Lloyd George enthusiastically approved this attempt to drive a wedge between Austria and Germany, was anxious to send Lord Reading as intermediary, and, upon the refusal of the latter to undertake the mission, actually dispatched General Smuts to Switzerland. The Emperor Carl seemed sincerely anxious to make sacrifices for peace and was urged by liberal counselors, such as FÖrster and Lammasch, in whom the Allies had confidence, to meet many of the demands of his discontented Slav subjects by granting autonomy to the Czechs, Poles, and Jugoslavs. Negotiations were hampered by the belief of the Italians that immediate peace with Austria would prevent them from securing the territories they coveted; by the sullen obstinacy of the Magyars, who were jealous of their mastery over the Hungarian Slavs, and above all, as Colonel House had foreseen, by Austria's fear of Germany. In fact it was a stern ultimatum sent by Ludendorff that brought the wavering Carl back to his allegiance.

In the autumn of 1917, however, talk of peace was in the air and a definite demand for its consideration was made in a noteworthy speech by Lord Lansdowne, a Conservative leader in England. Negotiations were inaugurated between Germany and the new Bolshevik Government of Russia, and for a few weeks at the beginning of the new year the war-weary world seemed close to the possibility of a general understanding. For the first time Lloyd George outlined in specific language the main terms that would be considered by the Allies. It was President Wilson's opportunity. Careless of securing an overwhelming military victory, indeed unwilling to crush Germany, anxious to pledge the Entente to his programme in this moment of their discouragement, he formulated on January 8, 1918, his Fourteen Points, upon which he declared the final peace settlement should be based. His speech was at once an appeal to the liberals and peace-hungry of the Central Empires, a warning to the military clique in Germany then preparing to enforce degrading terms upon Russia, and a notification to the Allies that the United States could not be counted upon to fight for selfish national interests. He reiterated the principles which had actuated the United States when it entered the war: "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 safe for every peace-loving nation which, like our own, wishes to live its own life, determine its own institutions, be assured of justice and fair dealing by the 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."

Of the Fourteen Points into which he then divided his peace programme, the first five were general in nature. The first insisted upon open diplomacy, to begin with the approaching Peace Conference: "Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind." Next came "absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas ... alike in peace and in war." Then "the removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace." There followed a demand for the reduction of armaments "to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety." The fifth point called for an "impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon ... the interests of the populations concerned" as well as "the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined."

These generalizations were not so much God-given tables which must determine the international law of the future as they were subtle inducements to cease fighting; they were idealistic in tone, but intensely practical in purpose. They guaranteed to any Germans who wanted peace that there would be protection against British "navalism," against the threatened Allied economic boycott, as well as a chance of the return of the conquered colonies. The force of their seductiveness was proved, when, many months later, in October, 1918, defeated Germany grasped at them as a drowning man at a straw. At the same time Wilson offered to liberals the world over the hope of ending the old-style secret diplomacy, and to business men and labor the termination of the system of competitive armaments, with their economic and moral waste. No one would suggest that Wilson did not believe in the idealism of these first five points; no one should forget, however, that they were carefully drafted with the political situation of the moment definitely in view. They might be construed as a charter for future international relations, but they were designed primarily to serve as a diplomatic weapon for the present.

Each of the succeeding eight points was more special in character, and dealt with the territorial and political problems of the warring states. They provided for the evacuation and restoration of all conquered territories in Europe, including Russia, Belgium, France, and the Balkan States. The sovereignty of Belgium should be unlimited in future; the "wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine ... should be righted"; Italian frontiers should be readjusted "along clearly recognizable lines of nationality"; the peoples of Austria-Hungary "should be accorded the freest opportunity of autonomous development"; the relations of the Balkan States should be determined "along historically established lines of allegiance and nationality"; nationalities under Turkish rule should receive opportunity for security of life and autonomous development, and the Dardanelles should be permanently opened to all nations under international guarantees; an independent Polish state should be erected to "include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea."

Generally speaking these stipulations seemed to guarantee the moderate war aims of the Entente and corresponded closely to the demands made by Lloyd George; they certainly repudiated the extreme purposes attributed to German imperialists. And yet these eight points were so vague and capable of such diverse interpretation that, like the first five general points, they might prove not unattractive to liberals in Germany and Austria. France was not definitely promised Alsace-Lorraine; any hint at the dismemberment of Austria-Hungary was carefully avoided; the readjustment of Italian frontiers might mean much or little. What were "historically established lines of allegiance and nationality" in the Balkans? And if Poland were to include only populations "indisputably Polish," was it possible to assure them "free and secure access to the sea"? The political advantage in such generalities was obvious. But there was also great danger. The time might come when both belligerent camps would accept the Fourteen Points and would still be uncertain of their meaning and application. The struggle for definite interpretation would be the real test. The President's fourteenth and last point, however, was unmistakable and expressed the ideal nearest his heart: "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."

Later events have magnified the significance of this notable speech of the 8th of January. It was a striking bid for peace, which indeed was not far away and it ultimately formed the general basis of the peace terms actually drafted. But it contained nothing new. Its definition of the conditions of peace was vague; its formulation of principles followed exactly along the lines developed by President Wilson ever since he had adopted the idea of a League of Nations founded upon international justice. His summing up of the main principle underlying his whole policy was merely the echo of his speeches for the past twelve-month: "The principle of justice to all peoples and nationalities, and their right to live on equal terms of liberty and safety with one another, whether they be strong or weak." The importance of the speech does not lie in its novelty but in its timeliness. It came at a moment when the world was anxiously listening and the undeniable idealism of its content assured to President Wilson, at least temporarily, the moral leadership of mankind. Unfortunately as the event proved, it promised more than could ever be secured by any single man. The President was to pay the price for his leadership later when he encountered the full force of the reaction.

As a step toward immediate peace the speech of the Fourteen Points failed. What might have been the result had von Hertling, Chancellor of Germany, and Czernin, in Austria, possessed full powers, it is difficult to say. But the military masters of Germany could not resist the temptation which the surrender of Russia brought before their eyes. By securing the eastern front and releasing prisoners as well as troops there, they would be able to establish a crushing superiority in the west; France would be annihilated before the American armies could count, if indeed they were ever raised. Hence the heavy terms of Brest-Litovsk and Bucharest and the preparations for the great drive of March. As Wilson said, "The tragical circumstance is that this one party in Germany is apparently willing and able to send millions of men to their death to prevent what all the world now sees to be just." Thus Germany lost her last chance to emerge from the war uncrushed.

The ruthless policy followed by Ludendorff and his associates gave the President new opportunities to appeal to the peoples of the Central Empires. He incorporated in his speeches the phrases of the German Socialists. "Self-Determination" and "No annexations and no indemnities" were phrases that had been made in Germany before Russia imported them; and when they formed the text of presidential addresses, many Germans, despite themselves, doubtless felt a twinge of sympathy. Coupled with these appeals went the President's warnings that if they persisted in tying up their fortunes with those of their rulers, they must share the penalties. If Germany insisted upon making force alone the deciding element, then he must accept the challenge and abide the issue. "There is, therefore, but one response possible from us: Force, Force to the utmost, Force without stint or limit, the righteous and triumphant Force which shall make Right the law of the world and cast every selfish dominion down in the dust." Neither the appeals nor the warnings of Wilson had any effect apparent at the moment, and yet the seed was sown. During the victorious German drives of March, April, and May, opinion to the east of the Rhine seemed to have rallied firmly behind the Teuton Government; but with the first slight setbacks of the following month the process of crumbling began. An American economist and banker, Henry C. Emery, then prisoner in Germany, tells of the pessimism prevalent as early as June and the whispers of the approaching fall of the Kaiser. In his memoirs Ludendorff lays the failure of the German armies in August to the complete breakdown of the national spirit.The end came with extraordinary speed. Already in September, after the defection of Bulgaria and the startling success of Foch's converging movement on Sedan, Germany knew that she was defeated. The Berlin Government turned to Wilson and on the 5th of October requested an armistice. At the same time Austria-Hungary made a similar request offering to negotiate on the basis of the Fourteen Points. Wilson's position was delicate. He knew in September that the end was near and prepared for the situation in some degree by sending Colonel House abroad to be ready to discuss armistice terms with the Allies. But the sudden character of the German collapse had intoxicated public opinion to such an extent that the political idealism which he had voiced ran the risk of becoming swamped. If Germany were indeed helpless and the Allies triumphant, there was the danger that, in the flush of victory, all the promises of a just peace would be forgotten. He must provide against such a contingency. On the other hand he must secure guarantees that Germany had indeed thrown off her militaristic cloak, as Prince Max of Baden, the new Chancellor, insisted; and also that under cover of an armistice she might not effect a withdrawal of her defeated armies, only to renew the struggle under more favorable conditions on her own borders. He was caught between the danger of German fraud and Allied exuberance.

There ensued a month of negotiations, during which the military victory of the Allies was further assured, as described in the preceding pages. The German Government was first asked by Wilson if it accepted the Fourteen Points and the similar stipulations made by the President in subsequent addresses. Replying in the affirmative, Prince Max then promised to acquiesce in armistice terms that would leave the military situation unchanged, and further agreed to order a cessation of unrestricted submarine warfare and of the wanton destruction caused by the German armies in their retreat. Finally he declared in answer to Wilson's demand, that the request for an armistice and peace came from a government "which is free from any arbitrary and irresponsible influence, and is supported by the approval of an overwhelming majority of the German people." The President then formally transmitted the correspondence to the Allies, and Colonel House entered upon discussions to establish with them the understanding that the basis of the peace negotiations would be the Wilsonian programme. He was successful; and the Fourteen Points, with reservation of the second, "Freedom of the seas," were accepted by the Allied governments. The Allies, on the other hand, secured President Wilson's approval of the principle that "compensation will be made by Germany for all damage done to the civilian population of the Allies and their property by the aggression of Germany by land, by sea, and from the air." Upon this understanding the details of the armistice were left to the military leaders. The terms as fixed reflected the military situation on the fighting front and the political situation in Germany and placed Germany entirely in the power of the victors without possibility of renewing the war. The conditions laid down were so stringent that until the last moment a refusal by the German delegates seemed imminent; but on the 11th of November, just before the expiration of the time limit allowed them, they accepted the inevitable.

It is a mistake to regard the armistice as forced upon the Allies by President Wilson. Many persons abroad, as in this country, felt, it is true, that it was wrong to permit the peaceful withdrawal of the German armies, even though the full military advantages of victory were secured by the armistice conditions; the Allies ought, they argued, to impress on the Germans the magnitude of their defeat on the field of battle, and this could not be done so long as German soil had been free from warfare. General Pershing was strongly opposed to the granting of an armistice. The Allied chiefs knew, however, that although the continuation of the fighting would lead to the surrender of a great German force, every day would cost the victorious armies a heavy toll of killed and wounded, and the advantage to be gained thereby was at least questionable. This fact was emphasized even by Marshal Foch. They hesitated, certainly, to accept the Fourteen Points as the basis for peace, for they feared lest the interpretation put upon them at the Peace Conference might rob them of what they believed to be the just fruits of victory. In both France and England there was, it is true, a body of liberal opinion which would not brook open repudiation of the ideals that Wilson had sponsored during the war and to which Allied ministers had themselves paid tribute. In each country there was another group demanding a "peace of annihilation," with the payment of all war costs by the defeated, but Lloyd George and Clemenceau feared at the moment to raise this issue. Both England and France were dependent upon American assistance for the immediate future as they had been during the war. They needed American food, raw materials, and money. A break with Wilson, who for the moment was the popular hero of Europe, taken in conjunction with an economic crisis, might be the signal for domestic disturbances if not revolution.

Thus with Germany helpless and the Allies at least outwardly accepting his peace programme, Woodrow Wilson seemed to be master of the situation. And yet his power was more apparent than real. Apart from that moral influence which he exercised over the European liberals and which among some of the working classes was so extreme that candles were burnt before his picture, but which also was inevitably unstable and evanescent, Wilson's power rested upon the fact that he was President of the United States. But the nation was no longer united behind him or his policy, if indeed it had ever been so. That hatred and distrust which had marked the electoral campaign of 1916, and which, stifled for the moment by entrance into the war, had flamed out early in 1918 in the attack upon his war administration, now in the autumn threatened an explosion of popular disapprobation in some parts of the country. Men had long whispered "autocrat" but had generally been silenced during the war by the admonition not to weaken the government by factious criticism. Now they began to shout it from the house-tops. Because of his inability to grasp the importance of either tact or tactics, the President made the way of his opponents easy for them.

Shortly before the Congressional elections of November, at the moment when he felt the need of national support in order to strengthen his position with the Allies, the President was prevailed upon to issue an appeal to the electors, asking them to vote for Democratic candidates on the ground that the nation ought to have unified leadership in the coming moment of crisis, and that a Republican Congress would divide the leadership. There was nothing novel in such an appeal; in 1898, McKinley had begged for a Republican Congress on the ground that "this is no time for divided councils," the same ground as that taken by Wilson in 1918. Roosevelt in the same year (1898) had said: "Remember that whether you will or not your votes this year will be viewed by the nations of Europe from one standpoint only.... A refusal to sustain the President this year will, in their eyes, be read as a refusal to sustain the war and to sustain the efforts of the peace commission." Wilson's appeal in 1918 was merely an echo of Roosevelt's in 1898. Yet it was a mistake in tactics. It enabled the Republicans to assert that, whereas they had sunk partisan differences during the war in order to secure the victory of the nation, Wilson was now capitalizing the war and foreign problems to win a partisan advantage. The result of the elections was Republican success, assuring to that party a slight majority in the Senate and a goodly majority in the House after March 4, 1919.

The President made other tactical mistakes. Instead of taking the Senate into his confidence by entering upon numerous conferences with its leaders, he stood upon the letter of the Constitution and gave the clear impression that he would conduct the peace negotiations himself without Senatorial assistance, leaving the Senators merely their constitutional privilege of "advice and consent" when a treaty should be laid before them. He would have done better to remember a remarkable passage in one of his own lectures, delivered ten years before. Speaking of the difficulty of bringing pressure to bear upon the Senate, he had said that there is a "course which the President may follow, and which one or two Presidents of unusual political sagacity have followed, with the satisfactory results that were to have been expected. He may himself be less stiff and offish, may himself act in the true spirit of the Constitution and establish intimate relations of confidence with the Senate on his own initiative, not carrying his plans to completion and then laying them in final form before the Senate to be accepted or rejected, but keeping himself in confidential communication with the leaders of the Senate while his plans are in course, when their advice will be of service to him and his information of the greatest service to them, in order that there may be veritable counsel and a real accommodation of views, instead of a final challenge and contest." Had Wilson in 1918, and after, followed his own advice, the outcome might have been different. But nothing describes so perfectly the exact opposite of his attitude as the passage quoted above.

The President might at least have assuaged the sense of injury that rankled in the hearts of the Senators by asking for their advice in the appointment of the Peace Commission. Instead he kept his own counsel. He decided to go to Paris himself as head of the Commission, and chose for his associates men who were not qualified to win for him the support that he needed in the Senate or in the country. Robert Lansing, as Secretary of State, was a necessary appointment. Colonel House was probably the best-fitted man in America for the approaching negotiations, alike by his temperament, by the breadth of his knowledge of foreign questions, and by his intimacy with foreign statesmen. But at least two places on the Commission should have been given to eminent Republicans and to men universally known and respected. If Wilson was unwilling to select members of the Senate, he might have heeded public opinion which called definitely for William Howard Taft and Elihu Root. Both were pledged to the most important item of Wilson's programme, the League of Nations; both exercised wide influence in the country and in the Republican party. The Senate, with a Republican majority, would almost certainly ratify any treaty which they had signed. But the President, for reasons of a purely negative character, passed them over and with what looked to the public like mere carelessness, chose General Tasker Howard Bliss and Henry White, formerly Ambassador to Rome and Paris under Presidents Roosevelt and Taft. Both were men of ability and experience, but neither enjoyed the particular confidence of the American people; and what Americans chiefly wanted was the assurance of persons they knew and trusted, that the peace was right. In the existing state of public opinion, the assurance of the President was not in itself sufficient.

President Wilson's decision to go to Paris as a member of the Commission aroused still fiercer opposition, but had reasons infinitely more cogent. He knew that there would be great difficulty in translating his ideals into fact at the Peace Conference. He believed that he could count upon the support of liberal opinion in Europe, but realized that the leading politicians had not yet been won sincerely to his policy. The pledge they had given to accept the Fourteen Points might mean much or little; everything depended upon interpretation. A peace of justice and a League of Nations still hung in the balance. At this moment, with Germany clearly helpless, opinion abroad appeared to be tending, naturally enough, toward the old-style division of the spoils among the victors. More than one influential French and British newspaper began to sound the cry VÆ victis. Moreover, in America broke forth a chorus of encouragement to the Allies to pay no attention to Wilsonian idealism. On the 27th of November, shortly before the Commission sailed, Roosevelt wrote: "Our Allies and our enemies and Mr. Wilson himself should all understand that Mr. Wilson has no authority whatever to speak for the American people at this time. His leadership has just been emphatically repudiated by them.... Mr. Wilson and his Fourteen Points and his four supplementary points and his five complementary points and all his utterances every which way have ceased to have any shadow of right to be accepted as expressive of the will of the American people.... Let them [the Allies] impose their common will on the nations responsible for the hideous disaster which has almost wrecked mankind." It was frank encouragement to the Allies, coming from the American who, with Wilson, was best-known abroad, to divide the spoils and to disregard all promises to introduce a new international order, and it must have brought joy to Clemenceau and Sonnino.

Wilson feared that having won the war the United States might lose the peace: not by softness towards Germany—as yet there was no danger of that—but by forgetting the ideals for which it had entered the war, by forgetting that a peace of injustice sows the seeds of the next war, and by a relapse into the old bankrupt system of the Balance of Power. He realized that the peoples of France, England, and Italy had felt the pinch of war as the American people had never done, and that it was demanding too much of human nature to expect that their attitude would be one of moderation. He knew that in the negotiations Clemenceau and Sonnino would be definitely opposed to his programme and that he could not count upon Lloyd George. He decided therefore that he must himself go to Paris to fight for his ideals. The decision was one of tremendous significance. At the moment when domestic problems of reconstruction would be most acute, an American President was going to leave the country because of the interest of America in European affairs. The United States was now so much a part of the world system that domestic issues seemed of less importance than the danger that Europe might fall back into the old international system which had proved unable to keep the peace. The President's voyage to France was the clearest manifestation yet vouchsafed of the settled position of the United States as a world power.

If the justice of his policy and the necessity of full participation in the peace as in the war be admitted, Wilson was probably right in going to Paris. No one else could have secured so much of his programme. No one else was possessed of the political power or the personal prestige which belonged to him. The history of the Conference was to show that when he absented himself in February and after he left Paris in June, his subordinates found great difficulty in meeting Allied opposition. But the decision of the President to attend the Peace Conference furnished fresh material for criticism at home. It was a new thing in our history; people did not understand the importance of the issues involved and attributed his voyage to vanity. Unquestionably it weakened Wilson in America as much as it strengthened him abroad. When on the 4th of December, the presidential ship, George Washington, sailed out of New York harbor, saluted by the wild shrieks of a thousand sirens and the showers of glittering white papers streaming from the windows of the skyscrapers, preceded by the battleship Pennsylvania, flanked by destroyers, with acrobatic airplanes and a stately dirigible overhead, external enthusiasm was apparently at its height. But Wilson left behind him glowing embers of intense opposition which, during the next six months, were to be fanned into a dangerous flame.