Tardieu's book, he said that France must get
reparation for Waterloo and Sedan. Even Waterloo: _Waterloo et Sedan,
pour ne pas remonter plus haut, nous imposaient d'abord les douloureux
soucis d'une politique de reparation_.
Tardieu noted, as we have seen, that there were only three people
in the Conference: Wilson, Clemenceau and Lloyd George. Orlando, he
remarks, spoke little, and Italy had no importance. With subtle irony
he notes that Wilson talked like a University don criticizing an essay
with the didactic logic of the professor. The truth is that after
having made the mistake of staying in the Conference he did not
see that his whole edifice was tumbling down, and he let mistakes
accumulate one after the other, with the result that treaties were
framed which, as already pointed out, actually destroyed all the
principles he had declared to the world.
Things being as they were in Paris, Clemenceau's temperament, the
pressure of French industry and of the newspapers, the real anxiety to
make the future safe, and the desire on that account to exterminate
the enemy, France naturally demanded, through its representatives,
the severest sanctions.
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