Flaws Of The 14 Points Essay

Flaws of the 14 Points
Woodrow Wilson’s 14 Points speech had many implications. In this speech to Congress, Wilson described what he hoped to accomplish in a peace treaty with Germany. Wilson believed if the points were followed, the world would have lasting peace. However, the 14 Points were flawed because they spoke of justice ideals not practiced in the United States and did not take into account what the other allies desired.
The 14 Points called for equality and justice around the world. Wilson said, “We see very clearly that unless justice be done to others it will not be done to us” (Wilson). Yet, there was little to no justice for African Americans at home. The Jim Crow laws were in full effect. Race riots were happening all too often.

Segregation, beatings, and unequal treatment were an everyday occurrence. However, the war had brought African Americans some hope. They had hope as soldiers and as a work force.
As soldiers, African Americans believed if they fought in the war, they could prove their worth to the whites. Many allowed themselves to believe they might even have a warm welcome home. Unfortunately, this was not the case. W.E.B. Dubois was an African American vocal leader and author. He encouraged blacks to fight in the war in Europe for their country, even though they weren’t being treated equally in their country (Kennedy 279). However, when the few soldiers that were allowed to fight in Europe came home, Dubois encouraged them to keep fighting. He encouraged them to fight for democracy in America as they had saved Democracy in France. He shared their frustration of not being treated as an equal at home, but it was their home and they had to fight to make their home a better place (Dubois).
African Americans also had hope as workers. The war created a need for more factory workers, specifically in the north. Many African Americans had longed for a reason to go north to escape the brutality of the southerners. They were given a chance when many white factory workers were drafted and immigration slowed, creating a lull in the work force. Northern factory managers went south and began recruiting blacks to come north and fill the void. African Americans were promised transportation, employment, and better pay. Word spread quickly and upwards of 300,000 African Americans fled north. Southerners weren’t happy. At first glance, this was ironic. Blacks were obviously hated based on the way they were treated. Why would the southerners care if they left? Some would think they would be thrilled they were gone. But the blacks were their working class, they were hired for jobs that southern whites would never do. The southern society depended on African Americans to be their labor. Southerners tried to keep them in the south by using police, detaining them illegally, or beating them so they couldn’t leave (Kennedy, Over Here 280).
Moving north did not prove to be an escape. When the Aluminum Ore Company in East St. Louis went on strike, the managers hired black workers. From then on, blacks were seen in East St. Louis as strike breakers, even though the managers purposefully hired one-third white workers, one-third immigrant workers, and one-third black workers to avoid another strike, knowing full well those three groups would not ban together. There was eventually a race war in which nine whites were killed, but even more blacks were dead. There was another riot on a Lake Michigan beach. 60,000 blacks had migrated to the Chicago area at the request of The Defender, a circulation begging southern blacks to move north to find freedom and work. Instead of freedom, they found thirteen days of anti-black rioting. African American leaders begged Wilson to help. He refused to do anything (Kennedy, Over Here 282-283).
Wilson was from Virginia and was a true southerner.

Within his presidency, he had endorsed a pro-KKK movie, had no objection of widening segregation among federal employees, dismissed a group of black leaders from the White House because he found their language insulting, and helped stir racial hatreds in East St. Louis by claiming Republicans colonized black voters (Kennedy, Over Here 281). Based on his words in The 14 Points and his actions towards African Americans, Wilson himself was a hypocrite, which could have contributed to how he was viewed in Europe. How can he expect the rest of the world to treat people well, when he wasn’t able to treat his own citizens equally?
Wilson’s 14 points spelled out for Europe how he believed they could best coexist. Wilson wanted Germany out of Belgium, Austria-Hungary, the Balkan states, Italy, Poland and France, including the Alsace-Lorraine area. If they did that, Wilson believed there would be a lasting peace because the irritants that could incite a war would be removed. Wilson said of Germany, “We have no jealousy of German greatness,” and later said, “we do not wish to injure her…We wish her only to accept a place of equality among the peoples of the world”

(Wilson).
Regrettably, that was not how France and Britain felt about Germany. They had a deep-seeded hatred of the Germans. Their countries had been decimated in the war. The United States was not a war zone. Its citizens, economy and resources had not been directly affected the way that Great Britain and especially France had been. They were the countries that had been slaughtered by the war, they were the winners, and they wanted reparations. They wanted a treaty that would help them economically. The treaty they came up with, The Treaty of Versailles, mostly mocked Wilson’s ideals. The Treaty of Versailles moved coal, iron and steel properties from Germany to France, stripped Germany of overseas colonies, foreign investments and restricted the use of their waterways. On top of taking many of their economic resources from them, there was also a guilt clause which forced Germany to acknowledge full responsibility for the war as well as repay $33 billion to the other countries (Kennedy, Freedom From Fear 7). This treaty showed the vengeance Britain and France felt for Germany by putting Germany in an impossible position economically. Germany’s main sources of revenue had been taken from them plus they had to pay their enemies and somehow rejuvenate their devastated country. The Treaty of Versailles did not treat Germans well, which was not part of Wilson’s plan.
Wilson believed his 14 Points would create a lasting peace. Would it have been possible to have racial peace in America if he had instilled his policies of justice and equality in his own country? If Europeans had been able to look to the United States as a model of equality and peace would they have been more apt to follow it? Maybe they would have, but as it was, the 14 Points were flawed.