Paris Peace Conference

[Ghazala]

"What do you expect when I'm between two men of whom one (Lloyd George) thinks he is Napoleon and the other ((Woodrow Wilson) thinks he is Jesus Christ".  

Georges Clemenceau, French Prime Minister, on being asked why he always gave in to Lloyd George at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919.

Edited 12 April , 2019 by Ghazala

[yperman]

Given Wilson's er 'Southern' views on Afro-Americans I'd have thought he would see himself as Robert E Lee. And Lloyd George probably only saw himself in his bedroom ceiling mirror...

[Uncle George]

Clemenceau was not the only one to find himself squeezed, it seems. The attached is from Lord Hardinge’s ‘Old Diplomacy’ (1947):

 

[Uncle George]

Hardinge seems to have been somewhat opinionated. (Attachments from https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.216312).

 

 

[The Scorer]

This has been reissued (as a Centenary edition) and retitled "Paris 1919" .. I've just bought it, so it's on the reading pile!

[The Scorer]

I've finally managed to finish reading this, although it's taken me a while.

 

It's not because it's a hard read, it really isn't, but it's taken me so long because it's so detailed and it was necessary to stop several times to try to understand what I'd just read. It was a subject that I knew very kittle about, and I was amazed to find out how much work they had to do. For some reason, I thought that the only area where they worked was the treaty between the Allies and Germany / Austria / Hungry etc, and the formation  of the League of Nations, but of course this was far from the truth.

 

I also wasn't aware that the Conference took about six months in all, and the "main men" (Lloyd George, Clemenceau and Wilson) were there for most of that period. It couldn't happen now … could it?

 

That said, I did enjoy it; it passed the test that I apply to books like this, in that it taught me (a lot) about the subject, so I'd recommend it to anyone.