With regard to the colonial question, what concerned Wilson were not the rights of the oppressed people so much as the violence of inter-imperialist competition. Point 5 called for the claims of the rival powers to be settled not by war, but by ‘a free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment’.44 As far as the subordinate populations themselves were concerned, Wilson called simply for the ‘observance of the principle that in determining all questions of sovereignty . . . the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose
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