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fore eable future by weakening it to the greatest extent ible. Wilson, on the other hand, thought that he could prevent a future wars (World War I had en referred to in the United States as "the war to end all wars") by im ing the American view of gove ment on the rest of the world Wil n was strongly op ed to any form of gove ent w ch was not elected en Charles of Austr tried to communicate with Wilson to discu ce negotiation W n refu d to have anything to do with the Austrian Em ror u he had not en elected to offi . Wil n had even thought at first that the overthrow of the Ru n T was a rtu­ nate currence u Nicholas had not en dem ti lly elected
fore the war had ended, Wil n had published Fo teen Points, a list of the conditions he thought should included in any ace treaty. One of the was " lf etermination"-the notion that ople of different nationality ou should all have their own nation He therefore sup­ rted the li ral revolutionaries who wanted to split the A trian Empire into small countries, and he t out to re raw the map of E o . Unfor­ tunately, Wilson was w fully ignorant of th European history and Eu­ ropean geo aphy. He united the rbs and the Croats-who had a similar language-into the country of Yug lavia though the r and the Croats inten ly disliked each other and had very little in common (for example, the Croats were Catholic and the r Greek Orth ox} e C chs and Slovaks were yoked into C h lovakia, thou they had no more love for each other, or historic a iation, than the r and the Cr t Wil­ n gave Austr 's uth Tyrol to Italy au the Italians showed him a fal map marking the uth Tyrol as part of "historic" Italy. Em ror
Charles was driven from his homeland; with his wife and children, he t k refuge in Swit rland, watching in dismay as the Empire w ch had st for six and a half centuries was to into tiny pie
ides sup rting " etermination," Wil n's other eat l was to establish the League of Nations, an inte ational or ni tion which he lieved would ttle all di eements tw n nations and ereby guar­ antee world peace. Lloyd George and Clemenceau were t realistic to be­ lieve that the League would really work, but they sup rted it in exchange r Wilson's udging sup rt of their revenge on Germany.
e German delegat were treated as criminal confined to a hotel surrounded by r d wire and patrolled by ntinel They were. not con­ sulted on the peace treaty, but simply told that they must either si the treaty or have the war resumed Ninety minutes fo Allied tr were to invade Germany, the German government a eed to a treaty which one