(_January 8, 1918_)
In an address to both Houses of Congress, assembled in joint session,
President Wilson enunciated the war and peace program of the United
States in fourteen definite proposals. The President spoke as
follows:
* * * * *
Gentlemen of the Congress,--Once more, as repeatedly before, the
spokesmen of the Central Empires have indicated their desires to
discuss the objects of the war and the possible basis of a general
peace. Parleys have been in progress at Brest-Litovsk between Russian
representatives and representatives of the Central Powers to which
the attention of all the belligerents has been invited for the
purpose of ascertaining whether it may be possible to extend these
parleys into a general conference with regard to terms of peace and
settlement.
The Russian representatives presented not only a perfectly definite
statement of the principles upon which they would be willing to
conclude peace, but also an equally definite program of the concrete
application of those principles. The representatives of the Central
Powers, on their part, presented an outline of settlement which, if
much less definite, seemed susceptible of liberal interpretation
until their specific program of practical terms was added. That
program proposed no concessions at all, either to the sovereignty of
Russia or to the preferences of the population with whose fortunes it
dealt, but meant, in a word, that the Central Empires were to keep
every foot of territory their armed forces had occupied--every
province, every city, every point of vantage--as a permanent addition
to their territories and their power. It is a reasonable conjecture
that the general principles of settlement which they at first
suggested originated with the more liberal statesmen of Germany and
Austria, the men who have begun to feel the force of their own
people's thought and purpose, while the concrete terms of actual
settlement came from the military leaders who have no thought but to
keep what they have got. The negotiations have been broken off. The
Russian representatives were sincere and in earnest. They cannot
entertain such proposals of conquest and domination.