[122] American Note of October 23rd, 1918.
[123] Page 721. The armistice terms were to permit a “resumption of hostilities on our own borders.”
[124] Five thousand guns and 30,000 machine-guns, 5,000 locomotives, 22 big ships, and 50 destroyers.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE PEACE CONFERENCE
“War or peace, or both at once.”
Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Act V, Sc. ii.
The colossal strain of the last year of the Great War left both Ministers and peoples of the conquering Allies in a state of profound exhaustion. So near had been the peril of defeat that for a time it was scarcely possible to realise the fact of victory. For the first two weeks after the Armistice of November 11th, 1918, London, Paris, and New York were given over to a delirium of rejoicing such as the world never before witnessed. Mr. Lloyd George, speaking from the windows of Downing Street on the day of the Armistice, told the people plainly that they had a right to rejoice. He rejoiced with them.
But gradually, as the days passed, the world woke to the fact that the Armistice was only the opening of a new phase in the crisis of change. The Armistice terms imposed on Germany by the Allies had left her prone and helpless. She could not resume the fighting. Both the Central Empires were beaten and broken. The Emperors and the Kings were in flight. But the world could not be left to live in a vacuum. Desolation is not peace. Europe was like a shattered puzzle which had to be pieced together again before humanity could resume its normal life. It was urgent that a Conference should be summoned speedily both to make peace and to settle the future governance of the world.