January 8, 1918: President Woodrow Wilson delivers his State of the Union Address. Nine months earlier, he had asked Congress for a Declaration of War on Imperial Germany. Now, in another Joint Session of Congress, he offers a plan for peace after the war.
He declared fourteen points, which he regarded as the only possible basis of an enduring peace:
I. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view. In other words, the nations of the world should not negotiate treaties in secret.
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. This one was done in reaction to German attacks on Allied ships, including the 1915 sinking of the RMS Lusitania.
III. 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 and associating themselves for its maintenance. This, sort-of, predicted the European Common Market, which led to the European Union.
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 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 of 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 people of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to see safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the freest opportunity to autonomous development.
XI. Romania, 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 portion of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Ottoman 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. This "access to the sea" became "The Polish Corridor," with the former German port city of Danzig, which became the Polish port city of Gdańsk, which eventually became the flashpoint of Poland's struggle to free itself from Soviet control.
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. This became the League of Nations.
As a major public statement of war aims, it became the basis for the terms of the German surrender at the end of the war. After the speech, House worked to secure the acceptance of the Fourteen Points by Allied leaders. The report was made as negotiation points, and the Fourteen Points were later accepted by France and Italy on November 1, 1918.
But there were doubts about the Fourteen Points. Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau of France, who would lead France's part in the peace negotiations, said, "The good Lord had only ten!" meaning the Ten Commandments, and humanity had managed to make a mess of those.
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January 8, 1918 was a Tuesday. Baseball and football were out of season. Professional basketball barely existed. This was the 1st season of the NHL, but no games were scheduled. So there were no scores on this historic day.
