The following extract is from an exceedingly long write-up on Woodrow Wilson's role in ''the Replacement of the European Lens by a Global Lens'' in 1919. You can visit the webpage, if you wish to read the text in full or to see the advertisement mentioned in the quote below: http://cambridgeforecast.wordpress.com/2008/04/01/from-a-eurocentric-lens-to-a-global-lens-1919-book/ ----- Harshawardhan_Bosham Nimkhedkar Nagpur, India QUOTE -- April 1, 2008 Nationalists in Asia quickly recognized the potential utility of Wilson's rhetoric for their causes, even if its scope and intent remained unclear. A leading nationalist paper in Calcutta, commenting in February 1918 on the address in which Wilson first used the term "self-determination," immediately probed the possible application of his words to India. The American president, it noted, had declared that the "whole world" was affected by the issues at hand, but it remained unclear whether India, and the rest of Asia and Africa, was to be included in the postwar reconstruction of world order. The real cause of wars was the condition of "the helpless and unprotected regions and peoples of Asia and Africa," and peace would not come "until Asia and Africa have secured full national autonomy." In China, too, the publication of Wilson's important speeches was accompanied by commentary that related his rhetoric to Chinese concerns. A major Shanghai daily accompanied the text of the Fourteen Points with an editorial comment noting that the U.S. president's ideas for peace were "a beacon of light for the world's peoples." They were credible, too, the editorial added: the United States already had enough resources to become the most powerful nation in the world, and therefore Wilson could not be suspected of ulterior motives in promoting these ideals. Shortly after the armistice, Ganesh, a prominent nationalist press in India, published a collection of the U.S. president's addresses under the rousing title President Wilson: The Modern Apostle of Freedom. In numerous ads that ran in the Indian press in early 1919, the book prominently headlined Ganesh's list of patriotic publications. The text of the ads described the U.S. president as "the most striking personality in the world" and a "man of destiny," whose speeches, "one of the finest and sweetest fruits of the deadly war," would "bring solace to a war-weary world and hope to small and weak nationalities." Such glowing copy was surely, at least in part, an adman's pitch, but the publisher clearly believed that it would strike patriotic Indians as plausible. Indeed, one reviewer exclaimed that "the eloquent addresses of this great inspiring apostle of Modern Freedom . must find a place in every household of a true patriot," and would enormously help the "itinerant Home Rule propagandist to advocate, in sober but clear and emphatic terms, the cause of liberty before his countrymen." In Shanghai, the venerable Commercial Press published a similar volume that compiled the texts of Wilson's wartime speeches. The book was published in two editions: one in Chinese translation only, and a second, more costly edition containing the original English texts with their Chinese translations alongside. This collection, too, was widely advertised in the press and became something of a bestseller, going through several printings. UNQUOTE