PUBLIC OPINION by WALTER LIPPMANN TO FAYE LIPPMANN ...

All these considerations entered into the making of the Fourteen
Points. No one man may have had them all in mind, but all the men
concerned had some of them in mind. Against this background let us
examine certain aspects of the document. The first five points and the
fourteenth deal with "open diplomacy," "freedom of the seas," "equal
trade opportunities," "reduction of armaments," no imperialist
annexation of colonies, and the League of Nations. They might be
described as a statement of the popular generalizations in which
everyone at that time professed to believe. But number three is more
specific. It was aimed consciously and directly at the resolutions of
the Paris Economic Conference, and was meant to relieve the German
people of their fear of suffocation.
Number six is the first point dealing with a particular nation. It was
intended as a reply to Russian suspicion of the Allies, and the
eloquence of its promises was attuned to the drama of Brest-Litovsk.
Number seven deals with Belgium, and is as unqualified in form and
purpose as was the conviction of practically the whole world,
including very large sections of Central Europe. Over number eight we
must pause. It begins with an absolute demand for evacuation and
restoration of French territory, and then passes on to the question of
Alsace-Lorraine. The phrasing of this clause most perfectly
illustrates the character of a public statement which must condense a
vast complex of interests in a few words. "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. ..." Every word here was chosen with meticulous care. The
wrong done should be righted; why not say that Alsace-Lorraine should
be restored? It was not said, because it was not certain that all of
the French _at that time_ would fight on indefinitely for
reannexation if they were offered a plebiscite; and because it was
even less certain whether the English and Italians would fight on. The
formula had, therefore, to cover both contingencies. The word
"righted" guaranteed satisfaction to France, but did not read as a
commitment to simple annexation. But why speak of the wrong done by
_Prussia_ in _1871_? The word Prussia was, of course, intended
to remind the South Germans that Alsace-Lorraine belonged not to
them but to Prussia. Why speak of peace unsettled for "fifty years,"
and why the use of "1871"? In the first place, what the French and
the rest of the world remembered was 1871. That was the nodal
point of their grievance. But the formulators of the Fourteen Points
knew that French officialdom planned for more than the Alsace-Lorraine
of 1871. The secret memoranda that had passed between the Czar's
ministers and French officials in 1916 covered the annexation of the
Saar Valley and some sort of dismemberment of the Rhineland. It was
planned to include the Saar Valley under the term "Alsace-Lorraine"
because it had been part of Alsace-Lorraine in 1814, though it had
been detached in 1815, and was no part of the territory at the close