Things went as quickly as they came. When the peace conference began, no one paid attention to Romania. Each delegation was fighting for its own country's maximum interests.
The most intense competition is undoubtedly the five leaders and foreign ministers of the United States, France, Britain, Italy, and Japan. It is also called the Conference of Ten. All major issues are discussed and decided by them. Because of the provisions of the Peace Conference, the entire conference is divided into a supreme conference.
, three forms: special meetings and plenary meetings. The Supreme Council is composed of the United States, Britain, France, Italy and Japan.
Since the discussion was about the competition for the interests of the defeated Allies, in addition to the competition between China and Japan over Germany's interests in China, its rights in Europe and Africa were also the most fiercely contested.
Among them, every negotiation between the four crucial countries of Europe, the United States, Britain, France, and Italy is an endless quarrel.
Among them, the main purpose of the Italian representatives is to obtain the Port of Fiume so that it can become Italy's expansion base in the Balkans. However, Italy's weak strength can only be regarded as a second-rate country compared with the United States, Britain and France. In addition, in the early days of the war, it had two boats, and after it entered the war, it
It did not play much role, so Orlando's request was rejected by the United States, Britain and France. Before entering the war, Britain, France and Russia promised Italy to give Italy the rights and interests of Fiume Port and Damasia after the war, but they were rejected after the victory.
Rejection by the United States, Britain and France.
At the meeting of the Five Powers in February, Orlando explained that he would not be able to return home without Fiume, and even threatened that there would be riots in the country. However, the United States, Britain and France still opposed his request. Orlando left the meeting angrily, while other participants did not
I ignored it. Orlando had no choice but to quietly return to the venue after a few days and continue to play the role of a walk-on.
As for the United States, President Wilson was particularly fascinated by the plan to establish the League of Nations, not only because it was closely related to his political reputation and historical status, but he also regarded it as the fundamental plan and the only way to replace Britain and France in dominating the world.
Therefore, in his first speech at the Paris Peace Conference, he proposed to prioritize the issue of the League of Nations Covenant, emphasizing that the League of Nations Covenant and the Peace Treaty with Germany should become a unified and indivisible whole, binding on any country. But Britain and France
They are not interested in this. They advocate separating the two and giving priority to the issue of dividing the territory and war reparations. The opposing sides insist on their own opinions and refuse to give in to each other.
Later, after four days of debate, the Committee of Ten decided to hand over the League of Nations issue to a special committee headed by Wilson for study, which would be responsible for formulating a draft of the League of Nations covenant. The conspiracy of Britain and France was to use this to remove the U.S. plan from the agenda.
.To this end, they suggested that representatives of all small and medium-sized countries should also participate in the committee, making the committee large, bloated, inefficient, and delaying time.
Before the Special Committee started working, Britain and France proposed to discuss the issue of carving up German colonies. Wilson woke up from his dream and was very dissatisfied with the tactics of Britain and France, so he once again proposed the Committee of Ten to discuss the League of Nations issue.
He said: "We cannot let the world get the impression that major powers first carved up areas of the world that were unable to defend themselves and then established an international alliance."
As a result, the Committee of Ten started another confrontation. The meeting was very tense. Wilson was very fierce, as was Lloyd George of England and Clemenceau of France. Under this situation, Wilson angrily expressed that if the country was not determined first,
The alliance agreed that he would withdraw from the meeting.
The tactful Lloyd George retorted: "God only knows when the complicated process of making the League of Nations will be completed."
Wilson replied: "As long as no one deliberately causes trouble, the committee's work will be over in 10 days."
The threat from the United States worked, and Britain and France had no choice but to give in. As Wilson said, the Special Committee finally formulated a draft of the League of Nations Covenant as scheduled on December 18 after a series of intense consultations.
On December 19, Wilson reported the contents of the draft to the plenary session in a solemn atmosphere, and it was unanimously adopted. In the first round of the struggle, Wilson barely gained the upper hand.
On the British side, Prime Minister George is very scheming and deep-seated. In order to maintain Britain's hegemony that was beginning to waver, he tried his best to maneuver and manipulate at the Paris Peace Conference. Sometimes he stood with France to deal with the United States, and sometimes he formed an alliance with the United States.
The alliance suppressed France. When the United States and France were at loggerheads, he often acted as a mediator, thus gaining a lot of benefits for Britain.
On the French side, Prime Minister Clemenceau, the chairman of the conference, proposed that France not only take back Alsace and Lorraine, but also move the French border eastward to the Rhine River, and advocated merging the German provinces on the left bank of the Rhine into an independent
Country. France's naked ambition to weaken Germany to the maximum extent and establish French hegemony on the European continent was rejected by Britain, France and Italy from the beginning. They did not defeat Germany to find a hegemon for the European continent.
Faced with fierce opposition from the United States, Britain, and Italy, Clemenceau had to give up this condition. Although he was forced to give up his request for the establishment of the Rhineland, in exchange, he proposed that the Allied forces occupy the left bank of the Rhine for 30 years and
The Saar mining area was handed over to France. The Saar mining area mentioned by Clemenceau is the city of Saar near the French border. There is an industrial and transportation center with a huge coal seam. Its factories produce iron and steel, sugar, beer, and pottery.
, optical instruments, machines and building materials. In particular, the coal industry here can meet one-third of the Ruhr area's needs, so in order to further pinpoint Germany's strength, Clemenceau raised the Saar issue.
U.S. President Wilson was very annoyed by France's new request. He said impatiently: "He has never heard that there is another Salar issue."
In response, Clemenceau was furious, attacking Wilson as a pro-German element, and forcefully declared: "No French prime minister will sign a treaty that does not annex the Saarland to France."
But Wilson did not show weakness. He sarcastically mocked Clemenceau and said: "You mean to say that if France doesn't get what it wants, it will refuse to cooperate with us? It seems that you want me to return
Home."
Faced with the threat from his creditor, Clemenceau replied: "I don't want you to go home, but I myself want to go back."
The issue of Saar broke up in this way. Faced with the dispute between the United States and France, the slick and cunning Lloyd George fully displayed his own methods. He first formed an alliance with President Wilson on this issue, and then with
Clemenceau privately discussed that the United States could not leave the peace conference, suggesting that it could change the Saarland from being assigned to France to establishing a time-honored mandate.
Clemenceau was somewhat overwhelmed by the pressure from the Anglo-American alliance. Considering that France was unable to maintain European order without the support of Britain and the United States, he agreed to the conditions given by Prime Minister George. However, the two parties argued over the time of the mandate.
France believes that the time should be 25 years, while Britain and the United States believe that this time is too long and will anger Germany and provoke new disputes in Europe in the future, so the suggestion is 10 years. After another dispute, they finally gave an agreement that both sides agreed on.
The acceptable number of years is 15 years. After 15 years, a popular referendum will be held in the Saar mining area to determine its ownership.
In order to completely weaken Germany, France also made three demands: First, the establishment of a powerful Poland including Poznan and Danzig to the east of Germany. The reason was to deal with the red threat from Russia.
The second is to try their best to drain the pockets of the German people and demand that Germany must compensate for war losses of 600 billion to 800 billion gold marks.
The third is to completely destroy the German military machine, especially to limit the number of German army and arms production.
These French demands were opposed to varying degrees by the United Kingdom and the United States. The United Kingdom and the United States believed that establishing a new Poland based on France's blueprint would mean the strengthening of France's position in Europe, and therefore they did not agree with France's claims.
Lloyd George said to Clemenceau: "Don't build a new Alsace-Lorraine."
Neither Britain nor the United States wanted to use Germany's reparations to strengthen France's power. In particular, the United States was more worried that France's excessive demands would kill Germany, the hen that lays eggs.
Lloyd George proposed that compensation should not be excessive and should only be borne by the generation who participated in the war. Wilson advocated not to determine the amount of compensation yet, but to leave the issue to a special committee to study and resolve.
Regarding the issue of limiting German armaments, Britain, the United States, and France also had different intentions. Their main interest was to weaken Germany's naval power, while they advocated leniency with regard to the army, allowing Germany to retain a force necessary to suppress the Bolsheviks.
However, when talking about the issue of establishing Poland, Prime Minister Bretianu, who has been watching this drama, was also involved. Because the Polish delegation proposed that the Lviv area currently occupied by Romania has always been a gathering place for Poles, hoping that
Romania gave the region to Poland, not the current Ukrainian government. So Prime Minister Bretianu also had the honor to join in discussing the Polish issue.
