Yes, after a brief ‘holiday’ I’m back with my new old best friends, Georges, Woodrow and David at Versailles where we are all helping to draw up the peace treaty that will settle the problems of Europe for ever. (Yeah, fat chance!) Well, I’m not exactly helping, of course, but I have returned to Margaret MacMillan’s superb history of the problems these three men grappled with at the end of WWI. I needed a break not because Prof. MacMillan’s text isn’t as clear as crystal, it was just that my brain began to ache as we slugged our way through the endless arguments over reparations.
The main question which kept returning to me again and again was why Woodrow and David didn’t kill Georges? I refer, of course, to Georges Clemenceau, a man who seemed to contain within him everything that was the best and worst of France. In other words, he nearly drove the other two nuts! But then, they too had their faults. And, when I think about it, who else would have done any better? In fact, as I read further and further, reluctantly, my admiration for the three of them grows apace. Apart from the fact that they had all managed to climb the slippery pole of political ambition, they were ordinary, middle-class, professional men and the monstrously huge problems they faced and which awaited their joint decision were so complicated, so riven, so roiled in history and warfare and population movements that they defied any reasonable solution.
That these three ‘ordinary’ men did, in fact, come to some sort of decision on so many convoluted situations is quite remarkable. That they made mistakes comes as no surprise. That their efforts were swept away by a force upon which none of them could have reckoned, is a pity but, hey, that’s life – and death!
