Naturally, the question is often asked: Who were the peacemakers at Paris? Were they two or three powerful Chiefs of State? The answer is both "Yes" and "No." The final decision on every important matter lay in the hands of the so-called Big Four, and after Premier Orlando's defection and return to Italy, it narrowed down to the Big Triumvirate, Messrs. Wilson, Lloyd George, and Clemenceau. Yet while they made the final decisions, these were almost invariably based upon reports and opinions expressed to this trio, or to the quartet, by their advisers and experts. The actual text of the Treaty was, of course, written by the technicians, and there is hardly a phrase in the whole of it that can claim as its original author any one of the Chiefs of State. In every true sense, then, the Treaty of Peace has been the product, not of three men, not even of three-score, nor of three hundred, but of thousands; for quite aside from the official delegations at Paris, which comprised several hundred persons, we must remember that the data and the various suggested solutions on most of the questions had been canvassed at home for each delegation by large groups of office and technical experts.

Of course it sounds well to say that the Treaty was written by three men: the picture of those few Chiefs of State sitting in conference day after day is dramatic in the extreme. That is, I must confess, the picture which comes back oftenest to my mind. I see them today, as I saw them for months at Paris, sitting in that large but cosy salon in the house allotted to President Wilson on the Place des États Unis; for, by common consent, it was there that the Supreme Council finally held all its meetings. It is in that theatre, with the three or four Chiefs of State taking the leading rôles, that we saw the other characters in the great drama moving slowly on the stage, playing their parts, and then disappearing into the wings. Today it might be Paderewski, pleading with all his earnestness and sincerity, to have Danzig allotted to the sovereignty of Poland. To-morrow it might be Hymans, the Belgian Secretary for Foreign Affairs, begging that there should be a prompt realization of those pledges to Belgium, which Belgium felt had been made by all the Allies; or it might even be word brought by special aeroplane from the King of the Belgians at Brussels, with fresh and important instructions to his delegation in the matter of Reparation. Or it might be a group of the representatives of those newer nationalities, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, Jugoslavia, arguing some burning question of boundary rights. Or it might be the British shipping experts, maintaining that the captured German ships should be restored to the various Allies upon a basis dividing the ships pro rata to the losses sustained by submarines, and contending against the American claim that the United States should have all the German ships finding lodgment in American harbors. Or it might be Herbert Hoover, that brilliant American, come to describe to the Big Four starvation conditions in Vienna, and to emphasize his belief that, enemy or no enemy, those conditions must be relieved or Bolshevism would march into Austria and directly on west until it reached France—and beyond.

THE PLACE OF MEETING

The stage for this world drama was originally set at the Ministry of War, behind the Chamber of Deputies and across the Seine; and here Premier Clemenceau—who, it will be remembered, was Minister of War as well as President of the Council of French Ministers—was the presiding genius. But eventually, as the result of an interesting trend of circumstances, the all important conferences took place at President Wilson's house.

Copyright Walter Adams & Sons

David Lloyd George

Ray Standard Baker, who attended the Peace Conference, wrote in his book, "What Wilson Did at Paris": "Lloyd George personally was one of the most charming and amiable figures at Paris, full of Celtic quicksilver, a torrential talker in the conference, but no one was ever quite sure, having heard him express an unalterable determination on one day, that he would not be unalterably determined some other way the day following."

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The original theatre of operations at the War Ministry had been so large, and there was such an enormous chorus brought into play, that progress was interminably slow. There were usually present all five of the plenipotentiaries of each of the five great powers, including Japan, and very frequently Marshal Foch as well. His presence automatically commanded the attendance of the chief military experts of the other delegates. With the innumerable secretaries who had to attend the plenipotentiaries, with the interpreters and whatnot, the Supreme Council came to look like a legislative chamber, in the midst of which sat Clemenceau, presiding with his usual incisiveness. At such meetings progress could be made only upon rather formal matters which had been threshed out beforehand. When it came to a point of great delicacy, where the discussions could be only on a most intimate basis, it became quite impossible to "carry on." Nobody would feel like speaking out in meeting and calling the other fellow names—as was necessary at times in order to clear the atmosphere—if there were half a hundred other people around, to hear those names, and promptly to babble them to an expectant throng outside.