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.