What Really Happened at Paris; The Story of the Peace Conference, 1918-1919, by American Delegates
London, England: Hodder & Stoughton, 1921. Presumed First UK Edition, Presumed first printing. Hardcover. xiii, [3], 528 pages. Maps. Name of previous owner in ink on fep. Includes In Explanation by Edward W. Bok, and Foreword by Edward Mandell House. Chapters include Preparations for Peace; The Atmosphere and Organization of the Peace Conference; The New Boundaries of Germany; Poland; The End of an Empire: Remnants of Austria-Hungary; Fiume and the Adriatic Problem; Constantinople and the Balkans; The Armenian Problem & the Disruption of Turkey; The Protection of Minorities & Natives in Transferred Territories; The Trial of the Kaiser; Reparations; The Economic Settlement; The Labor Clauses of the Treaty; The Economic Administration During the Armistice; The Atlantic Fleet in the Great War; The Problem of Disarmament; The Making of the League of Nations; and The Versailles Peace in Retrospect. Also contains Maps of Germany, Showing the New Boundaries and the Dispositions of Territory made by the Peace Conference; Poland, Showing Arrangements and Dispositions of Territory Made by the Peace Conference; Map Showing the Dispositions of the Territories of the Former Austrian Empire by the Peace Conference; The Balkan Countries, showing the Changes Determined by the Peace Conference; and Map Showing the Dispositions Made by the Peace Conference of the Territories of the Former Turkish Empire. Also contains an appendix with stenographic notes of questions asked and answers given after the lectures in Philadelphia, as well as an index. The story of the Paris Peace Conference, 1918 - 1919, as told by the American delegates upon their return, in a 15 week series of talks in Philadelphia. This was the first authoritative and comprehensive report told to the people of America. The Treaty of Versailles (French: Traité de Versailles) was the most important of the peace treaties that brought World War I to an end. The Treaty ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June 1919 in Versailles, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which had directly led to the war. The other Central Powers on the German side signed separate treaties. Although the armistice, signed on 11 November 1918, ended the actual fighting, it took six months of Allied negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference to conclude the peace treaty. The treaty was registered by the Secretariat of the League of Nations on 21 October 1919. Of the many provisions in the treaty, one of the most important and controversial required "Germany [to] accept the responsibility of Germany and her allies for causing all the loss and damage" during the war (the other members of the Central Powers signed treaties containing similar articles). This article, Article 231, later became known as the War Guilt clause. The treaty required Germany to disarm, make ample territorial concessions, and pay reparations to certain countries that had formed the Entente powers. In 1921 the total cost of these reparations was assessed at 132 billion gold marks (then $31.4 billion or £6.6 billion, roughly equivalent to US$442 billion or UK£284 billion in 2020). At the time economists, notably John Maynard Keynes (a British delegate to the Paris Peace Conference), predicted that the treaty was too harsh—a "Carthaginian peace"—and said the reparations figure was excessive and counterproductive, views that, since then, have been the subject of ongoing debate by historians and economists. On the other hand, prominent figures on the Allied side, such as French Marshal Ferdinand Foch, criticized the treaty for treating Germany too leniently. The result of these competing and sometimes conflicting goals among the victors was a compromise that left no one satisfied, and, in particular, Germany was neither pacified nor conciliated, nor was it permanently weakened. The problems that arose from the treaty would lead to the Locarno Treaties, which improved relations between Germany and the other European powers, and the re-negotiation of the reparation system resulting in the Dawes Plan, the Young Plan, and the indefinite postponement of reparations at the Lausanne Conference of 1932. Although it is often referred to as the "Versailles Conference", only the actual signing of the treaty took place at the historic palace. Most of the negotiations were in Paris, with the "Big Four" meetings taking place generally at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the Quai d'Orsay. Condition: Good.
Keywords: Treaty of Versailles, Minorities, Edward Bok, Peace Conference, Boundaries, Charles Homer Haskins, James Brown Scott, Samuel Gompers, Herbert Hoover, Tasker Bliss, Disarmament, League of Nations, Henry Mayo, Fiume
[Book #80478]
Price: $125.00