President Woodrow Wilson addressing the United States Congress on April 2, 1917, asking for a declaration of war on Germany. From The Nations at War by Willis J. Abbot, 1918 Edition.
President Wilson delivering the message in which he called on Congress to declare a state of war between the United States and the Imperial German Government
"We have spoken now, surely, in terms too concrete to admit of any further doubt or question. An evident principle runs through the whole programme I have outlined. It is the principle 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. Unless this principle be made its foundation no part of the structure of international justice can stand. The people of the United States could act upon no other principle, and to the vindication of this principle they are ready to devote their lives, their honor, and everything that they possess. The moral climax of this the culminating and final war for human liberty has come, and they are ready to put their own strength, their own highest purpose, their own integrity and devotion to the test."
The final paragraph of President Woodrow Wilson's January 8, 1918 Address to Congress in which he lays out the country's war aims, the Fourteen Points for which he said the United States was fighting. The aims included open and transparent diplomacy, freedom of the seas, equality of trade between nations, reduction in armaments, 'impartial adjustment of colonial claims,' the evacuation of occupied Russian, Belgian, and French territory including Alsace and Lorraine, adjustment of Italy's frontiers along ethnic lines, the 'opportunity for autonomous development' of the peoples of Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, the end of the occupations of Romania, Serbia, and Montenegro, sovereignty for Turkey, an independent Poland, and a 'general association of nations' to guarantee 'political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.' Wilson made no mention of Albania, but calls for 'free and secure access to the sea' for Serbia. Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Albania all lie between Serbia and the Adriatic Sea.
World War I and America by A. Scott Berg, pp. 453–454, copyright © 2017 by Literary Classics of the United States, publisher: The Library of America, publication date: 2017
1918-01-08, 1918, January, President Woodrow Wilson, Woodrow Wilson, President Wilson, fourteen points, 14 points, President Wilson addresses Congress
