In his 8 January 1918 speech before a joint session of Congress, President Woodrow Wilson put forward his view of how the peace in Europe ought be concluded so that World War I might truly serve as the "war to end all wars," declaring:

We entered this war because violations of right had occurred which touched us to the quick and made the life of our own people impossible unless they were corrected and the world secured once for all against their recurrence. What we demand in this war, therefore, is nothing peculiar to ourselves. It is that the world be made fit and safe to live in; and particularly that it be made safe for every peace-loving nation which, like our own, wishes to live its own life, determine its own institutions, be assured of justice and fair dealing by the other peoples of...