The ordinary American showed what courage lay behind the quiet round of his peace-time life. Our soldiers were clean and full of high spirits, and they were keyed to the most stubborn efforts by knowing that they were not fighting in a selfish cause. They "fraternized" famously with the French children of the villages.
Work of the Peace Conference
251. The Treaty of Peace. After the armistice, the nations which had won the victory planned to meet at Paris to make a treaty of peace. President Wilson went over to France to take part in this meeting.
The men who made the peace treaty gave France her two states, Alsace and Lorraine, which Germany had taken in the war of 1870. They divided Austria into a number of separate states, giving to each kind of people its own government. They took land from Germany and Russia and created Poland. They also decided that Germany should pay Belgium and France for the destruction of property in those countries.
Opinion favors a League
Why the League was defeated
252. America and the League of Nations. Included in the treaty was an agreement called the League of Nations. Its purpose was to combine all nations, great and small, in a covenant which would work for the peace of the world. The need of a league was urged by men of different parties in this country during the war. A great number of Americans were in favor of such a world agreement. This country had always been a peace-loving people, and had fought in the hope that this would be a war to end war. But after the armistice Europe remained more unsettled than anyone had expected. In spite of all the treaties, wars of various kinds continued in Europe. President Wilson toured the country speaking for the League, but met much opposition. The American people came to believe that under the League they would be too closely bound up with European affairs, which were now so disturbed.
In 1920 the question of entering the League in its original form was widely debated. It was the chief point on which the presidential election turned, and the result was overwhelmingly against the League as it had been drawn up at Paris.