ABSTRACT
The negotiations for a German Armistice posed several issues for the British government which bore upon the ultimate territorial settlement. The Generalissimo recommended demanding a German withdrawal within two weeks from Belgium, France, Alsace-Lorraine, and Luxembourg. On October 11, the Imperial War Cabinet heard the Prime Minister’s report that the military authorities at Versailles sought stiff military and naval terms and a close approximation of armistice to peace terms. Woodrow Wilson’s peace programme also aroused anxiety in London. The Policy Committee of Northcliffe’s War Mission in America pointed out that Wilson’s pronouncements were not a full definition of peace conditions since they had been outrun by events. Arthur James Balfour offered Alsace-Lorraine as an example of the difficulties surrounding the simple application of the principles of nationality and of self-determination. Lloyd George, who around this time had described Wilson as a ‘mixture of old Bryce and Sir Arthur Yapp’, approved the tone of Wilson’s note of October 23.
