When Wilson gave this speech he did not intend only for the people of the United States to hear of his ideas but for his European Allies and other countries and who wanted peace and the war to end. He wanted his European allies to base the peace treaty made later in 1919 on his speech, focusing on a long term peace. It is evident that the allies did not use this speech to create the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. Wilson advocated for more than imposing war reparations on Germany for fear it would cause greater conflict in the future. Wilson was correct in his assumptions for if the leaders of France and Great Britain would have listened, World War II could have been avoided. He wanted to persuade the Central Powers into surrendering to the Allied Powers; even if the leaders of these countries did not listen, he was hoping the people of these countries could in turn persuade their governments to …show more content…
Without this speech one could say the United Nations would never have been formed after World War II after Wilson’s idea of a League of Nations, nor would the credibility of the United States as a free and peaceful country be as apparent as it is today. This document was important to history to form modern day relations between countries and to help conclude World War I. It showed the will power and the ideals that the United States had for the World and established them as a major power in the 20th century and into