Without
cable, radio, telegraph, and daily press, the experiment of the
Fourteen Points would have been impossible. It was an attempt to
exploit the modern machinery of communication to start the return to a
"common consciousness" throughout the world.
But first we must examine some of the circumstances as they presented
themselves at the end of 1917. For in the form which the document
finally assumed, all these considerations are somehow represented.
During the summer and autumn a series of events had occurred which
profoundly affected the temper of the people and the course of the
war. In July the Russians had made a last offensive, had been
disastrously beaten, and the process of demoralization which led to
the Bolshevik revolution of November had begun. Somewhat earlier the
French had suffered a severe and almost disastrous defeat in Champagne
which produced mutinies in the army and a defeatist agitation among
the civilians. England was suffering from the effects of the submarine
raids, from the terrible losses of the Flanders battles, and in
November at Cambrai the British armies met a reverse that appalled the
troops at the front and the leaders at home. Extreme war weariness
pervaded the whole of western Europe.
In effect, the agony and disappointment had jarred loose men's
concentration on the accepted version of the war. Their interests were
no longer held by the ordinary official pronouncements, and their
attention began to wander, fixing now upon their own suffering, now
upon their party and class purposes, now upon general resentments
against the governments.
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