Title page of the Freie Presse of 10 January 1918 with the report on Wilson's speech and the 14 points.

On 8 January 1918, Thomas Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924), who had been President of the USA since 1913, held a programmatic speech before both houses of Congress in which he interpreted the war as a moral struggle for democracy and staked out the cornerstones for post-war Europe.