<P> President Wilson subsequently initiated a secret series of studies named the Inquiry, primarily focused on Europe, and carried out by a group in New York which included geographers, historians and political scientists; the group was directed by Colonel House . Their job was to study Allied and American policy in virtually every region of the globe and analyze economic, social, and political facts likely to come up in discussions during the peace conference . The group produced and collected nearly 2,000 separate reports and documents plus at least 1,200 maps . The studies culminated in a speech by Wilson to Congress on January 8, 1918, wherein he articulated America's long - term war objectives . The speech was the clearest expression of intention made by any of the belligerent nations, and it projected Wilson's progressive domestic policies into the international arena . </P> <P> The speech, known as the Fourteen Points, was developed from a set of diplomatic points by Wilson and territorial points drafted by the Inquiry's general secretary, Walter Lippmann, and his colleagues, Isaiah Bowman, Sidney Mezes, and David Hunter Miller . Lippmann's draft territorial points were a direct response to the secret treaties of the European Allies, which Lippmann had been shown by Secretary of War Newton D. Baker . Lippmann's task according to House was "to take the secret treaties, analyze the parts which were tolerable, and separate them from those which we regarded as intolerable, and then develop a position which conceded as much to the Allies as it could, but took away the poison...It was all keyed upon the secret treaties ." </P> <P> In the speech, Wilson directly addressed what he perceived as the causes for the world war by calling for the abolition of secret treaties, a reduction in armaments, an adjustment in colonial claims in the interests of both native peoples and colonists, and freedom of the seas . Wilson also made proposals that would ensure world peace in the future . For example, he proposed the removal of economic barriers between nations, the promise of self - determination for national minorities, and a world organization that would guarantee the "political independence and territorial integrity (of) great and small states alike"--a League of Nations . </P> <P> Though Wilson's idealism pervades the Fourteen Points, he also had more practical objectives in mind . He hoped to keep Russia in the war by convincing the Bolsheviks that they would receive a better peace from the Allies, to bolster Allied morale, and to undermine German war support . The address was well received in the United States and Allied nations, and even by Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin, as a landmark of enlightenment in international relations . Wilson subsequently used the Fourteen Points as the basis for negotiating the Treaty of Versailles that ended the war . </P>

The fourteen points plan called for the creation of a diplomatic organization known as the