§ 880]

66

THE FOURTEEN POINTS

737

880. During these same months America and England, won a supremely important victory in the moral field. In the summer of 1917 the Pope had proposed peace negotiations on the basis of July, 1914 - before the war began. Woodrow Wilson answered, for America and for the Allies, that there could be no safe peace with the faithless Hohenzollern government. This cleared the air, and made plain at least one of the guarantees" the Allies must secure. And when, a little later, Austria suggested peace negotiations in a conciliatory note, Premier Lloyd George and President Wilson stated the war aims of the Allies with a studious moderation which conciliated wavering elements in their own countries, and at the same time with a keen logic that put Germany in the wrong even more clearly than before in the eyes of the world and drove deeper the wedge between the German government and the German people. Lloyd George (January 6, 1918) demanded complete reparation for Belgium, but disclaimed intention to exact indemnities other than payment for injuries done by Germany in defiance of international law. President Wilson's address contained his famous Fourteen Points, which were soon accepted apparently throughout the Allied world as a charter of a coming world peace.

1. "Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at; after which, diplomacy shall proceed always . . . in the public view." 2. Absolute freedom of the seas (outside territorial waters) in peace and in war, except where they may be closed by international action. 3. Removal, so far as possible, of economic barriers. 4. Disarmament by international action. 5. An "absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims . the interests of peoples concerned to have equal weight with the equitable claim of the government whose title is to be determined." 6. Evacuation of all Russian territory, and . . . "a sincere welcome into the society of free nations under institutions of her own choosing, [with] assistance also of every kind that she may need and may herself desire." 7. Evacuation and restoration of Belgium. S. Reparation for devastation in France, and return of Alsace-Lorraine. 9. "Readjustment of the frontiers of Italy . . . along clearly recognizable lines of nationality." 10. Peoples

of the Austrian Empire to be accorded an opportunity for autonomous development (a provision that was to be outrun in a few months by the course of the war). 11. Serbia to be given a free and secure access to the sea; and the relations of the Balkan states to be "determined by friendly council along clearly recognizable lines of allegiance and nationality." 12. Subject nationalities of the Turkish empire assured of autonomous development. 13. A free Poland (with access to the sea), "to include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations." 14. A "general association of nations" under specific covenants. The significance of the Fourteen Points lay even more in their spirit than in these detailed provisions. "We have no jealousy of German greatness," concluded this great utterance, "and there is nothing in this program that impairs it. We do not wish to injure her or to block in any way her legitimate influence or power. We do not wish to fight her either with arms or with hostile arrangements of trade if she is willing to associate herself with us and the other peace loving nations of the world in covenants of justice and law and fair dealing."

881. And now Germany herself made plain how absolutely right the Allies were in their contention that the Hohenzollerns could be trusted to keep no promises. March 3, 1918, the German militarists, with the grossest of bad faith, shamelessly broke their many pledges to the helpless Bolsheviki and forced upon Russia the Peace of Brest-Litovsk. By that dictated treaty, Germany virtually became overlord to a broad belt of vassal states taken from Russia Finland, the Baltic Provinces, Lithuania, Poland, Ukrainia—and even the remaining" Great Russia had to agree to German control of her industrial reorganization. When the German perfidy had revealed itself suddenly, after long and deceitful negotiations, the angered and betrayed Bolsheviki wished to break off, and renew the war. They were absolutely helpless, however, without prompt Allied aid upon a large scale. This aid they asked for, but urgent cablegrams brought no answer. The Allies apparently had been so repelled by the Bolshevist industrial and political policy that they were unwilling to deal with that government, and preferred to leave Russia to its fate and to the Germans.

§ 882]

GERMANY'S LAST OFFENSIVE

739

882. Naturally the Germans opened the campaigns in the West at the earliest moment possible. They had now a vast superiority both in men and in heavy guns there. March 21 they attacked the British lines in Picardy with overwhelming forces. After five days of terrific fighting the British were

THE MITTEL-EUROPA EMPIRE at its greatest extent in March, 1918. In Asia, only a few months before, it had reached to the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea (cf. p. 720).

hurled out of their trench lines and driven back with frightful losses nearly to Amiens, leaving a broad and dangerous gap between them and the French. But, as so often in their great offensives in this war, the Germans had exhausted themselves in their attack; and, while they paused, a French force threw itself into the gap, and British reserves reinforced the shattered front lines.

In April the Germans struck again farther north, in Flanders, and again they seemed almost to have overwhelmed the British;

but, fighting desperately, "with our backs to the wall" as the English General Haig phrased it in his solemn order to his dying army, and reinforced by some French divisions, the

THE WAR ON THE WEST FRONT.-German lines on July 15 and November 10, 1918.

British kept their front unbroken, bent and thinned though it was. After another month for preparation, the Germans struck fiercely in a general attack on the French lines north of the Aisne, and, breaking through, for the moment, on an eighteen

$ 883]

GERMANY'S LAST OFFENSIVE

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mile front, once more reached the Marne. Here, however, they were halted, largely by American troops, at ChâteauThierry. Then, while the Americans made splendid counterattacks, as at Belleau Wood (renamed, for them, "Wood of the Marines "), the French lines were reformed, so that still the Allies presented a continuous front, irregular though it was with dangerous salients and wedges.

883. Time was fighting for the Allies. Disasters had at last induced them to appoint a generalissimo. This position was given to Ferdinand Foch, who, though then a subordinate, had been the real hero of the First Marne. For the rest of the struggle, the Allied forces were directed with a unity and skill that had been impossible under divided commands, even with the heartiest desire to coöperate.

And now, too, America really had an army in France. Before the end of June, her effective soldiers there numbered 1,250,000. Each month afterward brought at least 300,000 more. By September the number exceeded two millions, with a million more already training in America. The Germans could not again take up the offensive for five weeks (June 11-July 15), and in this interval the balance of available man-power turned against them. July 15, they attacked again in great force along the Marne, but this onset broke against a stone-wall resistance of French and American troops. For the first time, a carefully prepared German offensive failed to gain ground. The German failure was plain by the 17th. On the 18th, before the Germans could withdraw or reorganize, Foch began his great offensive, by counter-attacking upon the exposed western flank of the invaders. This move took the Germans completely by surprise. Their front all but collapsed along a critical line of twenty-eight miles. Foch allowed them no hour of rest. Unlike his opponents, he did not attempt gigantic attacks, to break through at some one point. Instead, he kept up a continuous offensive, threatening every part of the enemy's front, but striking now here, now there, on one exposed flank