PARIS 1919

Previously published as Peacemakers Between January and July 1919 after the war to end all wars men and women from all over the world converged on Paris for the Peace Conference At its heart were the leaders of the three great powers Woodrow Wilson Lloyd George and Clemenceau Kings prime ministers and foreign ministers with their crowds of advisers rubbed shoulders with journalists and lobbyists for a hundred causes from Armenian independence to women s rights Everyone had business in Paris that year T E Lawrence Queen Marie of Romania Maynard Keynes Ho Chi Minh There had never been anything like it before and there never has been since For six extraordinary months the city was effectively the centre of world government as the peacemakers wound up bankrupt empires and created new countries They pushed Russia to the sidelines alienated China and dismissed the Arabs struggled with the problems of Kosovo of the Kurds and of a homeland for the Jews The peacemakers so it has been said failed dismally failed above all to prevent another war Margaret MacMillan argues that they have unfairly been made scapegoats for the mistakes of those who came later They tried to be evenhanded but their goals to make defeated countries pay without destroyi