effective reply by declaring war on Austria on Dec. 4, and ful- minating against German power as " a thing without conscience or honour or capacity for covenanted peace " and refusing to negotiate until the " German people have spokesmen whose word we can believe " and " those spokesmen are ready in the name of their people to accept the common judgment of the nations as to what shall henceforth be the bases of law and of covenant for the life of the world. . . . Our immediate task is to win the war." But even he had not grasped all the implications: " We do not wish in any way to impair or to rearrange the Austro-Hungarian Empire," and it was left to France to recognize on Dec. 19 the Czechoslovak forces as " an autonomous army."
The Fourteen Points. The initiative in a comprehensive and radical restatement of war aims was taken in a British Labour Memorandum, which was adopted without amendment by a special Labour conference on Dec. 28 and was then, with changes due to President Wilson's address of Jan. 8 1918, accepted by the Inter-Allied Labour and Socialist Conference in London on Feb. 22. Basing itself on Wilson's principle that " the world must be made safe for democracy," it emphasized the necessity, and sketched a plan, for a League of Nations, declared that the problem of Alsace-Lorraine was one of right and not of territorial readjustment, demanded restoration and reparation for Belgium and the Balkan States (with a Customs and Postal Union for the latter), the independence of Poland with access to the sea, the liberation of subject peoples from Turkish rule with the neutralization of the Dardanelles, condemned German annexa- tion in Livonia, Courland, or Lithuania, and " the aims of con- quest of Italian imperialism," and while " not proposing as a war aim the dismemberment of Austria-Hungary " protested against regarding "the claims to independence made. by the Czechoslovaks and the Yugoslavs merely as questions for in- ternal decision." Most of these aims were accepted in principle by Mr. Lloyd George on Jan. 5 after consultation with Dominion statesmen, Labour leaders, and Lord Grey and Mr. Asquith; but he made some notable concessions to what seemed to be the realities of the situation, and disclaimed any idea of fighting to " alter or destroy the imperial constitution of Germany," " to destroy Austria-Hungary," or even " to deprive Turkey of its capital or of the rich and renowned lands of Thrace, which are predominantly Turkish in race "; and he seemed lukewarm about the League of Nations. Then on Jan. 8, in an address to Congress, President Wilson laid down his famous " Fourteen Points," demanding:
I. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understanding of any kind, but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.
II. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside terri- torial waters, alike in. peace and in war, except as the seas may be closed in whole or in. part by international action for the enforce- ment of international covenants.
III. The removal, as 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.
IV. Adequate guarantees given and taken that national arma- ments 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 equi- table claims of the Governments whose title is determined.
VI. The evacuation of all Russian territory and such a settle- ment 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 in- dependent 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 to 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 heal- ing 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 had 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 recognized 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 estab- lished lines of allegiance and nationality; and international guar- antees 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 auton- omous 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.
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.
The Humiliation of Russia. In introducing these points President Wilson referred to the Brest Litovsk negotiations as having been broken off, and described " the whole incident '* as " full of significance." There had, indeed, during the interval allowed for the Entente to reply, been a violent disagreement between Ludendorff arid Kiihlmann, who was supported by Czernin and Hertling. On Dec. 28 the militarists secured a German declaration to the effect that the representative bodies existing in the occupied territories under German protection expressed their " self-determination " and that plebiscites were superfluous. On Jan. 2 Trotsky denounced these claims as hypocritical, and proposed to change the seat of the conference from Brest to Stockholm. He reappeared at Brest, however, on Jan. 7, asseverating that the Bolsheviks would make no peace that was not " just and democratic ": and there followed weeks of discussion on the meaning of " self-determination " and its methods of expression. Trotsky's flank was turned by the appear- ance of delegates from the Ukraine asserting their independence of Russia. They represented only the middle-class Rada, while Ukraine revolutionaries sided with the Bolsheviks, seized Kiev, and overran most of the Ukraine. The Rada thereupon signed a peace with the Central Powers on Feb. 9, which gave Polish Kholm to the Ukraine and sowed the seeds of discord between the two nationalities, and invited the Germans and Austrians to drive the Bolsheviks out of the Ukraine. They were willing enough ; food was their real quest, and alarming strikes had already broken out in Vienna, Berlin, and elsewhere.
These seemed to give Trotsky the leverage he had been seeking, and on the day the Ukraine treaty was signed he issued a wireless call to the German army to refuse obedience to the Kaiser. Next day he declared war to be at an end, but refused to sign a German peace. On Feb. 13 Germany denounced the armistice, and on the iSth recommenced the march toward Petrograd and the occupation of the Ukraine. There was no organized resist- ance; the peace of Brest Litovsk was signed on March 3 and ratified by a congress of Soviets at Moscow, after a three days' debate, on the i6th. The Baltic nationalities were surrendered by Russia for their fate to be determined between themselves and Germany; the Ukraine treaty of Feb. 9 was accepted by the Bolsheviks; Russia was also required to cede the districts
