630 Chapter 23 Woodrow Wilson and the Great War
not the equal of his three colleagues in influence.
He left the conference in a huff when they failed to
meet all his demands.
The conference labored from January to May
1919 and finally brought forth the Versailles Treaty.
American liberals whose hopes had soared at the
thought of a peace based on the Fourteen Points
found the document abysmally disappointing.
The peace settlements failed to carry out the
principle of self-determination completely. They
gave Italy a large section of the Austrian Tyrol,
though the area contained 200,000 people who
considered themselves Austrians. Other German-
speaking groups were incorporated into the new
states of Poland and Czechoslovakia.
The victors forced Germany to accept responsi-
bility for having caused the war—an act of senseless
vindictiveness as well as a gross oversimplification—
and to sign a “blank check,” agreeing to pay for all
damage to civilian properties and even future pen-
sions and other indirect war costs. This reparations
bill, as finally determined, amounted to $33 billion.
Instead of attacking imperialism, the treaty attacked
German imperialism; instead of seeking a new inter-
national social order based on liberty and democracy,
it created a great-power entente designed to crush
Germany and to exclude Bolshevik Russia from the
family of nations.ATLANTIC
OCEANNorth
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SPAINALGERIA (Fr.) TUNISIA (Fr.)Europe before the Great WarIn 1914, five countries dominated
Europe: the German Empire, France, Great Britain, Austria-Hungary,
and Russia.
ATLANTIC
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SPAINCZECH
OSLOVAKIAEurope after the Great WarThe Versailles Treaty and other
postwar settlements punished the losers, especially Germany and
Austria-Hungary, transferring their lands to newly-created nations in
eastern Europe, such as Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia.to increase his sense of mission and to convince him,
in the fashion of a typical progressive, that whatever
the European politicians might say about it, “the peo-
ple” were behind his program.
When the conference settled down to its work,
control quickly fell into the hands of the so-called Big
Four: Wilson, Prime Minister David Lloyd George of
Great Britain, Premier Georges Clemenceau of France,
and Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando of Italy. Wilson
stood out in this group but did not dominate it. His
principal advantage in the negotiations was his untiring
industry. He alone of the leaders tried to master all the
complex details of the task.
The seventy-eight-year-old Clemenceau cared
only for one thing: French security. He viewed
Wilson cynically, saying that since mankind had
been unable to keep God’s Ten Commandments, it
was unlikely to do better with Wilson’s Fourteen
Points. Lloyd George’s approach was pragmatic and
almost cavalier. He sympathized with much that
Wilson was trying to accomplish but found the
president’s frequent sermonettes about “right being
more important than might, and justice being more
eternal than force” incomprehensible. “If you want
to succeed in politics,” Lloyd George advised a
British statesman, “you must keep your conscience
well under control.” Orlando, clever, cultured, a
believer in international cooperation but inflexible
where Italian national interests were concerned, was