Jumbo's Hide, Elvis's Ride, and the Tooth of Buddha

by Harvey Rachlin

  The United States did not demand anything specific for itself, asserted Wilson, only that “the world may be made safe and fit to live in,” and that peaceful nations might enjoy justice, self-determination, and freedom from attack by belligerent nations. All countries were partners in this enterprise, Wilson pointed out. Without justice served to other peoples, it would not be served to Americans, and therefore the world’s peace was America’s peace. “The programme of the world’s peace, therefore, is our programme,” Wilson declared, “and the programme, the only possible programme,” was the Fourteen Points, which were as follows:

  1. Open peace agreements with diplomacy in the public view and not with any secret international understandings.

  2. Complete freedom to navigate the seas in war and peace except as closed by international agreements.

  3. The creation of equal trade conditions among all nations that agree to peace, with all economic barriers removed.

  4. The reduction of national armaments to the lowest level guaranteeing domestic safety.

  5. The adjustment of colonial claims on an impartial and open-minded basis, with strict observance of the principle that questions of sovereignty are determined with the interests of the concerned populations having equal weight with the claims of the foreign governments.

  6. The evacuation of foreign forces from Russia and the settlement of issues enabling Russia to independently determine its own political development and national policy.

  7. The evacuation of foreign forces from Belgium and restoring it to its former position without limiting the sovereignty it has in common with other free countries.

  8. The liberation of all French territory and rectifying the wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 by returning to France the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine.

  9. The reestablishment of Italy’s borders in accordance with recognized lines of nationality.

  10. Autonomous development for Austria-Hungary.

  11. The evacuation of foreign forces from Romania, Serbia, and Montenegro, and international guarantees made for the political and economic independence of the Balkan states.

  12. The assurance of a secure sovereignty for the Turkish territories of the Ottoman Empire, and the assurance of a secure life and autonomous development for other nationalities under Turkish rule.

  13. The creation of a free Polish state.

  14. The establishment of an association of nations whose purpose is to guarantee political independence and territorial integrity to large and small countries alike.

  Wilson believed the terms he outlined were just and worthy of insisting on. “For such arrangements and covenants we are willing to fight until they are achieved,” he declared, “but only because we … desire a just and stable peace such as can be secured only by removing the chief provocations to war.” He also said that the United States was not envious of German achievement and did not wish to hurt Germany if it was willing to join other countries in implementing justice and fair dealing. “We wish her only to accept a place of equality among the peoples of the world,—the new world in which we live now,—instead of a place of master,” Wilson proclaimed.

  Wilson wound up his address by noting that running through his whole program was the thread 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.” This was the principle upon which the people of the United States acted and to which they devoted their lives, honor, and property. “The moral climax of this culminating and final war for human liberty has come,” Wilson concluded, “and they are ready to put their own strength, their own highest purpose, their own integrity and devotion to the test.”

  President Wilson typed out the final draft of his Fourteen Points speech at the White House and made handwritten corrections in pen. It was basically a clean copy, with some misspelled words corrected such as “parleys” for “parlies,” some extraneous words or phrases deleted, and some words substituted for others, such as “settlement” for “arrangement” and “definitive” for “actual.”

  Some of the pages of Woodrow Wilson's shorthand draft of the Fourteen Points.

  After President Wilson had delivered the speech and returned to the White House, he gave the pages of his address that he typed on his own typewriter to his daughter, Jessie. This copy contained pages that were cut and pasted together.

  Wilson originally wrote his Fourteen Points address in shorthand as a matter of habit. He had learned shorthand in college so he could take copious notes, and as president he customarily wrote his speeches first in shorthand for his own convenience. Wilson developed a bastardized form of shorthand that he taught to a man named Charles Swem, who became his transcriber. He and Swem were the only two persons who could read the squiggles. Wilson trusted few around him other than Swem, and his personal shorthand may have been a way of keeping others from knowing exactly what Wilson was formulating. Wilson’s shorthand version of the Fourteen Points, his first draft, was close to the final draft.

  The Fourteen Points received worldwide attention and became an invaluable political tool for the Allies. Heavily publicized, the proposal made its way behind enemy lines and weakened the morale of the Germans; citizens of the Central Powers nations looked upon Wilson’s plan as an assurance that the Allies would establish peace rather than defeat and subjugate their countries.

  An armistice was signed on November 11, 1918, which brought an end to the fighting, but the terms of peace still needed to be ironed out. To this end, the Paris Peace Conference was held, beginning on January 18, 1919, with some thirty nations attending. President Woodrow Wilson led an American delegation at the conference but made a political blunder in not choosing a Republican leader from the Senate to be a member.

  President Wilson hoped to push through his Fourteen Points as the basis of a treaty, but his American war aims were not shared by other Allied countries. One of the problems was that some Allied nations had already entered into secret treaties providing for them to split up territories of the Central Powers. Wilson’s biggest challenge was to win acceptance of his proposal for a League of Nations, but he was ultimately able to convince other delegates to support it. The conference was dominated by the “Big Four” leaders, who were, in addition to President Wilson, Premier Georges Clemenceau of France, Prime Minister David Lloyd George of England, and Premier Vittorio Orlando of Italy. Each had particular goals he wanted to achieve as a result of the conference. Finally, after four months of wrangling, in April 1919 a treaty was finalized that contained compromises and modifications addressing the different countries’ aims. (The next month it was given to Germany, which approved it in late June.) Many of Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points were not included in the Treaty of Versailles, but it did incorporate his principles of territorial readjustment based on nationality and a world political association, the League of Nations, which he felt necessary for a lasting peace.

  Woodrow Wilson returned to the United States and on July 8, 1919, received an uproarious welcome in New York City. Two days later, on July 10, he delivered the Versailles Treaty himself to the Senate, urging the body to ratify the treaty. But after much debate, the Republican-majority Senate rejected the agreement, judging the sanctions against Germany too harsh and believing that the League of Nations would force the United States out of its longtime isolation from European imbroglios. The repudiation of the Versailles Treaty by the United States, which would emerge from World War I a major world power, as well as the denial of membership to certain countries, kept the League of Nations from being a strong and effective world organization that could resolve disputes between nations and promote peace in the world.

  Following the Paris conference, the Allies made a treaty with Austria (the Treaty of St. Germain), and the next year, 1920, treaties were made with Hungary (the Treaty of Trianon), Turkey (the Treaty of Sèvres), and Bulgaria (the Treaty of Neuilly, revised in 1923, pursuant to a new Turkis
h government, in the Treaty of Lausanne).

  Although many of its provisions were specific, the Fourteen Points might well be considered a covenant for world peace for all time. Its general principles in their essence champion freedom of the seas, equity in commerce, open peace covenants, reduction of national armaments, self-determination, autonomous development, and political independence and territorial integrity for all nations. Such provisions, if observed, would be timeless in their ability to ensure that powerful nations do not conquer and subjugate weaker ones. The Fourteen Points were composed during the darkest hours of the early twentieth century, but they give voice to the eternal hopes and dreams of all freedom-loving men and women.

  LOCATIONS:

  Shorthand version: Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

  Typewritten version: Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

  Typeset reading copy for Wilson’s congressional address: Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

  THE TRUCE FLAG THAT ENDED

  WORLD WAR I

  DATE: 1918.

  WHAT IT IS: A fragment of the cloth that was carried as a truce flag by German soldiers to the armistice ending World War I.

  WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE: The rectangular fragment is white and measures 5 inches long and 4½ inches wide; its edges are tattered. The cloth, which has printed on it the military unit and name of the soldier who received it, as well as the date on which it was received, is pinned to a letter.

  It was the first monumental conflict of modern warfare. Armies swept into combat carrying new types of sophisticated weapons. Agile submarines navigated the ocean depths, destroying in their unrestricted warfare battleships and passenger ships alike. Airplanes for the first time in war unleashed terror and death from the sky. Some 60 million soldiers from all over the globe were deployed; approximately 10 million lost their lives, with another 29 million injured, taken prisoner, or reported missing.* Warring nations wreaked havoc on one another on an unprecedented scale, and civilian populations were further devastated by rampant disease and hunger. More than four years after the commencement of World War I, the most massive international conflict in the history of humankind up to that time, its hostilities came mercifully to an end, symbolically brought to a halt by a beat-up old tablecloth.

  Armistice Day was the day armies ceased their advances, the cannons stopped thundering, the bloodshed ended. It transpired on the 11th of November, 1918, pursuant to French Marshal Ferdinand Foch’s announcement to the Allied commanders that hostilities would cease on that date at eleven o’clock in the morning, and that there would be no movement of Allied troops beyond their positions on that date until further orders. For people in every corner of the globe, the long-hoped-for Armistice Day, which just a few weeks earlier had seemed impossibly far away, came into reality.

  Indeed, by the end of October 1918 the Central Powers’ alliance had crumbled. Turkey and Bulgaria had already had enough of the war and wanted to negotiate a treaty with the Allies. Austria-Hungary had accepted Woodrow Wilson’s proposal to negotiate peace and in early November was given treaty terms from the Allies. The surrender of its partners was a severe blow to Germany, as the Allies could now launch attacks from inside the borders of the fallen countries.

  In its weakened position, Germany’s descent to defeat came quickly. Soon the Kaiser, informed that German soldiers would no longer carry out his orders, abdicated, and the crown prince announced that he would not succeed him (both would flee to Holland). Groups of working-class people and soldiers commenced a movement that flourished across Germany and took over Berlin. The war was still being waged on the Western Front, but the Allies fought aggressively, forcing the German armies to retreat.

  A patch of the World War I truce flag pinned to the letter to Georges Clemenceau that accompanied it.

  The German government corresponded with the Allies on a peace negotiation. The Allies informed the Germans that Wilson’s Fourteen Points would be the foundation of peace, and that Marshal Ferdinand Foch of France would provide their representatives with the armistice terms. The world awaited the outcome of the armistice.

  Four German envoys carrying a “surrender flag,” an old, stained tablecloth improvised to appear as a white flag of capitulation, were received by a French Army unit shortly after 8 P.M. on November 7 and were taken to La Capelle, where they were put on a train that took them to Rethondes. Soon after their arrival, the Germans were greeted by Allied commander in chief Marshal Foch and other high-ranking Allied commanders. The armistice terms were presented to the German delegates, who, because of the terms’ harshness—among other conditions the terms required evacuation of all occupied territories and the surrender of submarines and war supplies—requested permission to transmit them to their provisional government in Berlin, whose members convened and approved the terms on November 10. The German government informed their delegates, and at 5 o’clock the next morning, on November 11, 1918, they signed the armistice. As of that day, per Marshal Foch’s instructions to the Allied armies, hostilities ended.

  The Paris Peace Conference would follow in January 1919, attended by Woodrow Wilson for the purpose of incorporating as much of his Fourteen Points as possible into the Treaty of Versailles that would be drafted at the conference. Wilson arrived in France on December 13, 1918, meeting with the premier of France and then traveling to England and Rome before the conference began the following month.

  Shortly after his arrival in Paris in December, President Wilson made an official call on Georges Clemenceau at the War Office. Jubilant at the Allied victory, which the United States had greatly facilitated with its entrance into the war, the premier greeted Wilson with outstretched arms, saying, “I’m so glad to see you, Mr. President. It is so good of you to come to see me. I want to say to you right here that I am going to swear eternal friendship to you.”

  During the meeting Clemenceau presumably presented the German truce flag fragment to Wilson as a token of friendship. Pinned to the flag was a letter detailing the provenance of the cloth, which had accompanied the truce fragment when it was originally given to Clemenceau. On the first page of this letter, the French premier wrote an inscription: “Presented to M. Wilson by Clemenceau.” The letter, written in French in a formal military style, reads in translation:

  November 11th, 1918

  La Fortelle (Belgium) Sector 210

  Monsieur G. Clemenceau,

  President of the Council

  Minister of War, in Paris

  Captain Chuillier, Infantry Officer

  “Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur,”*

  Commander of the 171st Infantry Regiment

  Mr. President,

  This is a French “Poilu”** who is offering you a piece of the white flag waved by the German negotiators sent to the French front lines and received by himself on November 7th at 8:20 PM, east of “la Capelle,” hill 234.

  This was already a precursory symbol of victory.

  This is where arrogant Germany begged for peace.

  This is where the “Krauts” surrendered to the immortal French “Poilu.”

  Mr. President, would you please accept this gesture of gratitude from the last remaining “Poilu” and last souvenir of war.

  The happiest officer in France,

  M. Chuillier

  It was with no small measure of pride that the Wilsons received the World War I truce flag. In a letter to her family from Paris, dated Tuesday, December 17, 1918, Edith Wilson wrote of receiving the fragment. After mentioning her husband’s busy schedule and that he had rid himself of his cold, she then noted, “Yesterday he called on M. Clemenceau & when he left M. C. gave him a piece of the German flag of truce—to give to me. It looks like an old piece of table cloth, but it is such an interesting thing to have. I must stop now & write him a note to thank him.”

  Edith Wilson again called attention to the World War I armistice artifact in her 1938 autobiography, My Memoir. Reminiscing about her 1918 visit to Paris, she
wrote:

  That same morning M. Clemenceau brought me a small piece of the flag of truce which the Germans had carried when they came to sign the Armistice terms. It is a square about two and one half inches large of what looks like an old piece of damask tablecloth. The French premier wrote a few lines on a sheet of paper and pinned the bit of cloth to it: a very gracious thought on the part of this old man. …*

  While the armistice ended the hostilities of World War I, peace treaties still needed to be carved out. This would be effected through the Treaty of Versailles and other subsequent treaties, but the fealty pledged to Wilson by Clemenceau seemed to dissolve as the French premier (along with other Allied leaders) declined to support Wilson’s Fourteen Points as a foundation for peace. But Armistice Day in effect was the end of the war, and the truce flag is a symbol of the surrender of Germany, the last nation to hold out against the Allies, and the paving of the way for peace.

  The truce flag returned to the White House with the Wilsons. Woodrow Wilson collapsed in 1919 after giving a speech in Pueblo, Colorado, to rally public support for his proposed League of Nations. His health in decline, he stepped down after his second term as president ended in 1921. Soon thereafter the Wilsons moved into a home at 2340 S Street, N.W., in Washington, D.C., taking with them the truce flag fragment. Woodrow Wilson died in February 1924, and his wife continued to keep the truce cloth at her home until she died in 1961, when it became a part of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.