I. NEGOTIATIONS BEFORE THE ARMISTICE It is important, therefore, at the outset to understand the im plications of the correspondence conducted between the German Government and President Wilson during Oct. and Nov. 1918, when the former was asking for peace. The governing document of the series is the reply of President Wilson to the German Gov ernment of Nov. 5, which embodied the result of the decisions of the principal Allied and Associated Governments as a whole (i.e., France, Great Britain, Italy and the United States).
In that document they offered to make peace on the basis of President Wilson's speech on Jan. 8, 1918, which embodied the "Fourteen Points" (q.v.; excluding only point 2 relating to the freedom of the seas). In addition, they promised to make peace by "the principles of settlement embodied in his subsequent addresses," i.e., speeches up to Nov. 5, 1918.
So we may say that the Allies offered to make peace on the general basis of President Wilson's speeches in 1918, minus his point about "freedom of the seas," and plus a definition of loss and damage. The Germans sent no reply to this offer in writing, but in fact accepted it by communicating with Marshal Foch and asking for an armistice. The course of the negotiations is related in the article PARIS, CONFERENCE OF, and all that can be done here is to indicate the character of the treaty itself and its ap parent meaning as deduced from its clauses. It is at once the largest and the most complicated of modern treaties, and the best way to analyse it would seem to be to take its 15 parts separately.