The armistice came effective on 11 November, 1918. The First World War was over. The peace conference opened on 19 January 1919 at Paris. Different from the precedents heads of states were invited because US president decided to go to Paris. This was a surprising news because it took 6 days from New York to Le Havre.

Wilson's backbone was supported by his idealism. His ideal was two fold. First, no more war in Europe. Second, self determination by each nationals.

On appearance Council of 10 was created by big 5 ; US, Great Britain, France, Italy and Japan. However, it was impossible for Japan to dispatch a prime minister to Paris because of the distance that it took 20 days from Yokohama to Marseille. As a result a former prime minister, Kinmochi Saionji who was eventually a friend of Clemenceau in his school boy days was chosen for the plenipotentiary representative for the conference.

Duke Saionji

However, in reality the three, Wilson, Lloyd George and Clemenceau decided all.

Territory

Out of the three Wilson had no intention to increase US territory. Great Britain also had nothing in mind but her dominions were crazy to increase any real estate available. Australia wanted anything like ground. South Africa wanted German Southwest Africa. Both states were racially discriminative against native dwellers; two of most shameful states in twentieth century.

Lloyd George already noticed that without American support British Empire could not survive and insistence on colony antagonise US. And probably, Western Europe also could not survive without US. The difference between Lloyd George and Chamberlain already existed. However, it was after Suez conflict in 1950 that the British totally gave up the independent diplomacy.

France duly retrieved Alsace and Lorraine and then proposed to take Lhine Land for security purpose. Wilson and Lloyd George did not give any consent to this; hand over of the land with no French speaking people.

France's main concern was security for all. They did not think of not only collective security but a league of nations as useful. They had to stand in the centre of security net work by bilateral treaty with each.

The Japanese had never been experienced such a gorgeous conference. They knew they were unable to deal with Wilson idealism. However, different from Great Britain and France in Europe they were confident independently to keep security in the Far East, which seemed to a vacuum area where only Japan was dominant or the Japanese thought like that.

The Japanese also discussed inside about how they involve security in Europe, but to no conclusion. They became arbitrary and irresponsible like Italians. Italian prime minister, Orlando only concerned over the destiny of Fiume, a small harbour on Adriatic Bay where Italians were outnumbered by Slovens.

Structurally, it was observed as more unfair and destructive that Russians and Germans as well were not invited. The American have considered it natural even afterwards. The peace conference originally meant victors and the vanquished alike should talk freely about the future. After the American appeared in European aristocratic diplomacy all suddenly changed.

The Japanese thought at least Germans should be summoned for inquiry or cross examination. According to Lloyd George Americans and French must not say "Yes" on this matter. Paris peace conference' main observers were people. The Europeans except Germans expected for big three to settle down by taking only their own people's language. Beyond that Americans in their belief seemed to provide the Germans with better conditions than Germans could do.

However, all of the Allied soldiers wanted to go home. It seemed impossible for the Allied to march beyond Rhine. In mid 1919 even France had only 10 divisions available for immediate use. If the Germans tried a march to Paris again it was doubtful for the Allied to make an effective defence line before Paris.

In East Europe armed conflicts continued. The Allied were unable to settle this by force. When French gave up the annexation of Rhine Land there was no border dispute among the big five except former German colonies.

And by collaboration with Austrian governmental officials new independent nations already were established. In most cases the former administrative border of Habusburg Empire was used to draw new lines. Shortly after the armistice the treaties of Brest Litvsk and Bucarest were written off. However, except that Ukraine and White Russia were virtually annexed by Soviet Russia the lines drawn up there were kept.

The border to divide Soviet Russia and newly established Poland was a problem, too. British diplomat, Curzon made a well developed surveillance over the area in question and drew up the line ,which was revised by Soviet-Poland war later. However, curiously enough Molotov-Rippentrop pact adopted this line to divide German influential area and Soviet. Then, it became today's border between Poland and White Russia.

The German eastern border was also in question. The Germans and the Polish had disputed this border for more than 700 years. The Germans had advanced further than the original Polish area and settled down along the Baltic coast. They were good at commerce and developed cities. So, Germans lived in cities and Polish and other Baltic tribes lived in the country side. Wilson stood for the Polish. Lloyd George was against. Wilson won over due to French support. It was an irony that the British declared war against Hitler's Germany for the sake of Danzig, which was, according to Lloyd George, a pure German city. However, following his opinion the area around Allenstein and upper Silesia was to be decided by plebiscite.

At present, there still exist minor group of German speaking people in Silesia and Pomerania as well. When the border changed it seems allowed for the conqueror as being poorer than the vanquished to confiscate private assets without compensation in both Great Wars. Is this being a good precedent for the future?

It should also be noted that most of borders were decided with consent of the people living there based on the former administrative lines. However, for hundreds years people had been mixed up so that new nationals did not match with the living people. 4 million Germans and 3.5 million Hungarians were destined to live outside their nations.

Most of borders were decided between newly established nations without consent of big three or big five. These borders also have not changed a lot to the present days except German eastern border, though these have been regarded as failures. If things appear cruel it is rather better for people without satisfaction to move to the nation they belong to. No solution other than this.

However, there was an exception to all. The Germans living in Austria wanted to merge with Germany. It was prohibited by French insistence. French told that it was not reasonable for the vanquished to acquire more population than before.

Reparation

Reparations caused worst trouble in the conference. The result of the First World War was different from the usual. The areas devastated by the war were in North France and Belgium. In most wars the vanquished had suffered more. Germany fought outside their territory except tiny area in East Prussia. Private assets in France and Belgium suffered also.

It was observed by the statesmen in the conference that it was totally absurd for Germany to repay for all the costs of the war. But, these same statesmen were shrunk from explaining it to their country folk. The French requested the sum should be paid by the Germans even beyond their capacity.

Wilson hesitated to agree. If Wilson also agreed to call for Germans the dual between them took place, probably to non-conclusion. This result might be better than it actually happened. French regarded Wilson as German's mouthpiece and called Americans when Germans failed to pay reparation depicted afterwards. Finally the sum for reparation was not decided and entrusted to the reparation committee.

On 27 April, 1921 the reparation committee decided the sum as gold mark 132 billion; equivalent to us dollar 760 billion at present value. Keynes, one of the most excellent economists of our days called this sum as the peace of Carthage. French insisted on everything such as war pension to foundations for orphans. Most of contemporary people showed sympathy for French because Germans invaded France without cause. They did it from military necessity. That was wrong, which Wilson never paid care for.

On the other hand, French tried to have communists Russia to request Germans to repay by article 116. And then, they imagined to get communists to repay their old debt to Imperial Russia. In this instance nobody showed any sympathy to them.

In reality the Germans only paid gold mark 5 billion for reparation during 1920s and then default by Hitler. German took more through generous US bank loan. After WW2 Germans paid it again based on Young plan and finished it by 1987.

Disarmament

Reparation was absurd enough and so was the disarmament, to no reconciliation. The French requested 200 thousand conscripted army for Germans only for internal security purpose with no air force, no tanks, few heavy guns, no general staff. The British and Americans shocked by the sound, conscription insisted on 100 thousand professional army instead.

The Germans lead by Seekt general staff found out loop holes to escape from any limitations. 100 thousand professional army turned out to be a nuclear of officer corps with highly skilled training ability supplemented by quasi-military formations, eventually called "Black Reichs Wehr" later.

30 divisions were always ready in Weimal Republic. Germans also developed their weapons to the state of the art level　through secret clauses of Rappalo treaty with Soviet Russians.

As a matter of fact, the Allied had no military means to enforce their limitations on Germans.

Making the matter worse, the Americans ashamed by one sided disarmament inserted a vague clause to disarm the Allied. Japanese diplomats were well explained it by the British but failed to clarify this to naval staff who tried to rebuild their haggard fleet. They had acquired too many captured Russian old type battle ships as a result of Russo-Japanese war, then failed to build new dreadnought class.

They had the plan to build 8-8 new battleship and battle cruiser, each of which was to be equipped with one third-times larger inch guns, 20 inch. These planned battle ships were far-larger than US which had the natural limitation by Panama canal. All dreams of the naval staff went into scrap.

The disarmament conference following turned from the place to keep peace into a fiasco to make more conflicts.

League of Nations

Wilson proposed the idea, a League of Nations in his Fourteen Points and went to Paris with much hope. He found out the British had prepared more elaborated plan. In appearance the only thing to do was nailing British proposals down.

Wilson was satisfied with the process while receiving tycoons of trade unions coming from US. Japanese had internal troubles. The Emperor appointed an advisor for the proposed League of Nations. He was an academic person in the Constitution. He pointed out League covenants might supersede the Constitution bequeathed by the Emperor Meiji, demi-God to any Japanese. His points were around the same as US Republicans. Diplomats tramped up something to make troubles when discussing the covenants of the League of Nations.

That was to insert some description of race equality on the covenants. In reality that was a kind of gesture to interfere into the proposed bill for California congress which had anti-Japanese characters. This bill restricted the right of non-American land holding with racially discriminative phrase. However, this was apparently internal affairs and had no relations with the League of Nations.

Japanese representatives duly withdrew this proposal while knocking out their competitors inside Japan.

Collective Securities

The British set the League of Nations up as a centre pillar of their own security. This might cause a kind of the Entente Cordialle weakening. After the loss of Imperial Russia the French had to find their allies in the East. She found out four, Rumania, Yugo-Slav, Czech and Poland.

The British had to stand by two legs: the Empire and Europe. As a result, they diluted their relationship with old friends; Japan, Portugal and Belgium. These three kept neutral or antagonised during WW2.

However, after American withdrawal from the League there appeared no enthusiastic supporters for it except the British. This was the same fate as Weimal Republic without republicans. It was conspicuous that the policy of British liberals faced the narrow bottle neck.

After the basic problem were yielded to subcommittees Wilson was brought into the trouble of Fiume. The Italians were persistent in Fiume and surrounded areas. Apparently, Fiume had nothing to do with the integrity of Italy despite of the fact that a newly unified and rather militarily weak power has a tendency to enlarge its territory based on myth or any others. Wilson was also insisting on the necessity for new Yugo-Slav to have an access to the sea. Finally, this was brought to the bilateral negotiation. However, in 1924 the Italians took it by force.

The draft for the treaty, later called Versailles was finished. However, after that Council of Ten remained and recommended several matters to influence Europe afterwards as follows.

• 28 June, 1919 The Germans signed the treaty.
• 15 August, 1919 To notify Rumanians to change the border in old Hungary
• 22 August, 1919 To recommend Arch Duke Joseph in Hungary to abdicate
• 27 September, 1919 To order Germans to withdraw from CoorLand
• 16 October, 1919 To ask Baltic three states and Germany to join the sanction against Soviet Russia
• 7 November, 1919 To order Rumanians to withdraw from Hungary
• 21 November, 1919 To give Polish the administrative right to rule Galicia for 25 years

These decisions were dictated by Great Britain and France. However, without those it was impossible to keep peace in East Europe. And US and Japan which did not have direct interests also gave sympathy to Poland. US had the big Polish voters and Japan expected Poland for the buffer state against Soviet Russia.

Poland acquired credits from every corner. However, after the political struggle Pilzski successfully took over not only the military organisation but the whole chancellorship. That was one of the cases that democratic system turned out into rigid dictatorship in East Europe. Poland called themselves as a great power in Europe and asked France to hand over Madagascar to their colony. Lack of good faith has been seen in most of new independence. When asked by French of how to fight against Germany they always declared that they could march on "Unter den Linden" within a week.

This Polish problem finally caused WW2 and brought in the decline of Europe.