In the meanwhile the Conference which ignored this problem of problems has transformed Europe into a seething mass of mutually hostile states powerless to face the economic competition of their overseas rivals and has set the very elements of society in flux.

E.J.  Dillon.

THE INSIDE STORY OF THE PEACE CONFERENCE

I

THE CITY OF THE CONFERENCE

The choice of Paris for the historic Peace Conference was an afterthought.  The Anglo-Saxon governments first favored a neutral country as the most appropriate meeting-ground for the world’s peace-makers.  Holland was mentioned only to be eliminated without discussion, so obvious and decisive were the objections.  French Switzerland came next in order, was actually fixed upon, and for a time held the field.  Lausanne was the city first suggested and nearly chosen.  There was a good deal to be said for it on its own merits, and in its suburb, Ouchy, the treaty had been drawn up which terminated the war between Italy and Turkey.  But misgivings were expressed as to its capacity to receive and entertain the formidable peace armies without whose co-operation the machinery for stopping all wars could not well be fabricated.  At last Geneva was fixed upon, and so certain were influential delegates of the ratification of their choice by all the Allies, that I felt justified in telegraphing to Geneva to have a house hired for six months in that picturesque city.

But the influential delegates had reckoned without the French, who in these matters were far and away the most influential.  Was it not in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, they asked, that Teuton militarism had received its most powerful impulse?  And did not poetic justice, which was never so needed as in these evil days, ordain that the chartered destroyer who had first seen the light of day in that hall should also be destroyed there?  Was this not in accordance with the eternal fitness of things?  Whereupon the matter-of-fact Anglo-Saxon mind, unable to withstand the force of this argument and accustomed to give way on secondary matters, assented, and Paris was accordingly fixed upon....

“Paris herself again,” tourists remarked, who had not been there since the fateful month when hostilities began—­meaning that something of the wealth and luxury of bygone days was venturing to display itself anew as an afterglow of the epoch whose sun was setting behind banks of thunder-clouds.  And there was a grain of truth in the remark.  The Ville Lumiere was crowded as it never had been before.  But it was mostly strangers who were within her gates.  In the throng of Anglo-Saxon warriors and cosmopolitan peace-lovers following the trailing skirts of destiny, one might with an effort discover a Parisian now and again.  But they were few and far between.