On February 11, 1918, President Wilson confirmed before Congress that all territorial readjustments were to be made in the interest and for the advantage of the populations concerned, not merely as a bargain between rival States, and that there were not to be indemnities, annexations or punitive exactions of any kind. On September 27, 1918, just on the eve of the armistice, when German resistance was already shaken almost to breaking point, President Wilson gave it the _coup de grâce_ by his message on the _post-bellum_ economic settlement. No special or separate interest of any single nation or group of nations was to be taken as the basis of any settlement which did not concern the common interest of all; there were not to be any leagues or alliances, or special pacts or ententes within the great family of the society of nations; economic deals and corners of an egotistical nature were to be forbidden, as also all forms of boycotting, with the exception of those applied in punishment to the countries transgressing the rules of good fellowship; all international treaties and agreements of every kind were to be published in their entirety to the whole world. It was a magnificent programme of world policy. Not only would it have meant peace after war, but a peace calculated to heal the deep wounds of Europe and to renovate the economic status of nations. On the basis of these principles, which constituted a solemn pledge, Germany, worn out by famine and even more by increasing internal unrest, demanded peace. According to President Wilson's clear statements, made not only in the name of the United States but in that of the whole Entente, peace should therefore have been based on justice, the relations between winners and losers in a society of nations being exclusively inspired by mutual trust. There were no longer to be huge standing armies, neither on the part of the ex-Central Empires or on that of the victorious States; adequate guarantees were to be _given and received_ for the reduction of armies to the minimum necessary for internal defence; removal of all economic barriers; absolute freedom of the seas; reorganization of the colonies based on the development of the peoples directly concerned; abolition of secret diplomacy, etc. As to the duties of the vanquished, besides evacuating the occupied territories, they were to reconstruct Belgium, to restore to France the territories taken in 1871; to restore all the territories belonging to Rumania, Serbia and Montenegro, giving Serbia a free and secure access to the sea; to constitute a free Poland with territories _undoubtedly Polish_ to which _there might_ be granted a free and secure access to the sea. Poland, founded on secure ethnical bases, far from being a military State, was to be an element of peace, and her political and economic independence and territorial integrity were to have been guaranteed by an international agreement.