8 Points v. 14

When President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill set down in black & white the peace aims that they had in common, there was no doubt that they had a historical precedent in mind.

In 1918's beginning, when the Allies were in despair, Woodrow Wilson published his famed Fourteen Points. Their impact was immediate, enormous, beyond all hopes. Little peoples of Central Europe scrambled for what they now saw clearly, for the first time, were their rights: self-determination of government, open covenants, freedom of the seas, removal of trade barriers, a general association of nations on principles of good will, reduction of armaments. The 14 points became the greatest victory of the war, and Woodrow Wilson was the victor.

In drawing up their eight points the President and Prime Minister hoped to achieve the same general effect. Notable were the similarities and the differences between the two documents. The eight points in full read:

1) "Their countries seek no aggrandizement, territorial or other;

2) "They desire to see no territorial changes that do not accord with the freely expressed wishes of the people concerned;

3) "They respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live; and they wish to see sovereign rights and self-government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them;

4) "They will endeavor, with due respect for their existing obligations, to further the enjoyment by all States, great or small, victor or vanquished, of access, on equal terms, to the trade and to the raw materials of the world which are needed for their economic prosperity;

5) "They desire to bring about the fullest collaboration between all nations in the economic field with the object of securing, for all, improved labor standards, economic advancement and social security;

6) "After the final destruction of the Nazi tyranny, they hope to see established a peace which will afford to all nations the means of dwelling in safety within their own boundaries, and which will afford assurance that all the men in all the lands may live out their lives in freedom from fear and want;

7) "Such a peace should enable all men to traverse the high seas and oceans without hindrance;

8) "They believe that all of the nations of the world, for realistic as well as spiritual reasons, must come to the abandonment of the use of force. Since no future peace can be maintained if land, sea or air armaments continue to be employed by nations which threaten, or may threaten, aggression outside of their frontiers, they believe, pending the establishment of a wider and permanent system of general security, that the disarmament of such nations is essential. They will likewise aid and encourage all other practicable measures which will lighten for peace-loving peoples the crushing burden of armaments."

The disappointment in Britain and the U.S. over the new pronouncement was largely due to a feeling that this time it sounded warmed over. But the eight points were not wholly warmed over from Wood-row Wilson. Whereas the 14 points dealt largely with political matters, the eight put much of their emphasis on economic solutions. The fourth point--access to victor and vanquished alike to raw materials --undertook to appeal directly to those Europeans who dislike Naziism but have regarded it as an economic necessity.

As a further appeal the eight points had a merit of their own: the 14 points were a promise held out by the President of the U.S. without the approval of Britain and France, who subsequently sabotaged it; the eight were a joint commitment. If Europeans did not distrust the promise of equal economic opportunity for victor and vanquished, there was a chance that the eight might have some of the same effect as the fourteen had 23 years earlier.

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