resenting it. And the fact that every delegate, and every member of every commission attached to the delegations, and every journalist charged with interpreting the Conference to his countrymen at home, imbibed morning by morning as the first intellectual diet of his day, the ex parte expression of one particular point of view, based on one particular political doctrine and dictated by a particular sectional or national interest, did unquestionably create a force of prejudice and partisanship for whose effects too little allowance has been made.

It is easy, as has been said, to excuse the exaggerated nationalism of France in view of what France had suffered. But there was more in it than a mere reaction from the strain of four years of war. France's attitude was determined by a double and overmastering fear. Half of it was the fear of renewed German aggression. Twice in fifty years France had been invaded by the same enemy. She thought and spoke of those attacks as utterly unprovoked. She had no memory for Napoleon's intransigeance in 1870, and no regard for the part played by the balance of power system and the Russian alliance in 1914. She put no trust in the power of any political instrument like the League of Nations to protect her in the future. Her hope of security rested solely on the emasculation of Germany and a new strategic frontier for defence.

That was one fear, the military. The other was the economic. France had failed hopelessly

to face her financial situation while the wär lasted. She had refused to impose new taxes. She had piled up a prodigious debt. (Her war costs to March, 1918, totalled 182,000,000,000 francs— nearly £7,300,000,000). She had poured out paper money in streams. By the end of the war every statesman who faced the facts squarely read in them the menace of imminent bankruptcy. The one hope was a vast indemnity. It was that hope that had governed the conduct of French finance throughout the war. It was the desperate need of such a remedy that dictated the attitude of French politicians and people on financial discussions throughout the Conference. No one will be disposed to pass a harsh judgment on France for her preoccupation with her own perils. It is stressed here only to emphasise the part it played in creating the environment that surrounded the Conference.

It was on such a stage that the actors began to take their places towards the end of December, 1918. The representatives of the British Dominions had been gathering for some weeks before. Col. House was already an old inhabitant of Paris, and President Wilson had brought other members of the American delegation with him on the George Washington in the middle of December. The Japanese arrived late, but the beginning of January found most of the delegations with their retinues of officials establishing themselves in Paris. The British Government had secured for its headquarters the Majestic and Astoria and two

or three smaller hotels, near the Arc de Triomphe. Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Balfour took up residence a few hundred yards away in the Rue Nitot, and President Wilson, who at first lived in the Villa Murat, near the Parc Monceau, settled down a minute's walk from the British Prime Minister in the Place des États Unis. The American delegation as a whole was installed at the Crillon in the Place de la Concorde, the Italians were at the Edouard VII., the Japanese at the Bristol in the Place Vendôme, the Belgians at the Lotti close by, and the Chinese at the Lutetia on the south of the river. The smaller nations represented found various abiding-places, and apart from them there arrived to hover on the outskirts of the Conference sundry delegations armed with nothing better than a claim-which in most cases remained entirely unrecognised-to a locus standi in the discussions. Among such were the Persians and Egyptians, and Esthonians, and Georgians, and Armenians, while in the third month of the sittings a new liveliness was infused into the proceedings by the arrival of a particularly active IrishAmerican delegation, intent on securing from the Conference an understanding that direct consideration should be given to the claims of the Irish Republic.

In one respect the small nations struck a new note in Paris. For the most part ruled out of court by the Conference itself, they applied themselves as an alternative to impressing public opinion outside. There were two ways of conducting

that kind of propaganda, through the newspapers and through pamphlets and other specialised literature. To those expedients, therefore, every nation desirous of stating a case betook itself. The presses of Paris poured out a ceaseless stream of propaganda literature, Polish and Esthonian and Korean and Georgian and Russian (antiBolshevik) and Chinese. Even the Japanese did not disdain to reply unofficially through this medium to allegations in regard to Shantung. At the same time invitations to educative lunches and propaganda dinners poured in from every side on the Allied journalists and anyone else whose influence on the public was of any account. How much came of it all is a matter of opinion. No one intent on following seriously the main stream of the Conference had much time to spare for its tributaries. But the small nations, among whom the Poles had developed their propaganda into almost a tour de force of efficiency, did at least succeed in keeping themselves and their troubles before the public mind. They had undeniably a place, even though a very minor place, on the stage of the Conference. They intensified the sense of the complexity and magnitude of the problems to be solved, and their activities keyed up the general tension of Paris to a still higher pitch. They were essentially a part of the setting.

B

CHAPTER III

THE CONFERENCE MACHINE

Y the middle of January the component parts of the Conference machine were as

sembled. The plenipotentiaries of each Power were in Paris, with small armies of permanent officials and other advisers to support them. The Hotel Astoria became a miniature Whitehall. The Foreign Office, the Board of Trade, the Treasury, the War Office, had each made its contribution. In the week the Conference opened the principal officials attached to the British delegation numbered two hundred, but that figure was multiplied several times by the addition of typists and other subordinates. There was further a large staff of telegraphists, Scotland Yard men, motordrivers and printers. A detail which need figure less prominently in permanent than it did in contemporary record, was the grant by the British Government of dress allowances to its officials of both sexes at the rate of £30 for men and £25 for women.

Similar organisations were set up by the other Powers. France, of course, had her own civil service on the spot. At the Crillon the American delegates could call on particularly competent

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