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By Root 982 0

as they liked to think. Of course, the peacemakers had considerable power. They still had armies and navies. They had the weapon of food if they chose to use it against a starving Europe. They could exert influence by threats and promises, to grant or withhold recognition, for example. They could get out the maps and move borders this way or that, and most of the time their decisions would be accepted—but not always, as the case of Turkey was to show in spectacular fashion. The ability of the international government in Paris to control events was limited by such factors as distance, usable transportation and available forces—and by the unwillingness of the Great Powers to expend their resources.

In 1919 the limits were not yet clear—to the peacemakers themselves, or to the world. Consequently, many people believed that, if only they could catch the attention of the Supreme Council, past wrongs would be righted and their futures assured. A young kitchen assistant at the Ritz sent in a petition asking for independence from France for his little country. Ho Chi Minh—and Vietnam—were too obscure even to receive an answer. A Korean graduate of Princeton University tried to get to Paris but was refused a passport. After the Second World War, Syngman Rhee became the president of a newly independent South Korea.14

Women’s suffrage societies met in Paris, chaired by the formidable Englishwoman Millicent Fawcett, and passed resolutions asking for representation at the Peace Conference and votes for women. Wilson, who had a certain sympathy for their cause, met their delegation and talked vaguely but encouragingly about a special commission of the conference, with women members, to look into women’s issues. In February, just before he left on a short trip back to the United States, he hesitantly asked his fellow peacemakers whether they would support this. Balfour said he was a strong supporter of votes for women but he did not think they should be dealing with such a matter. Clemenceau agreed. The Italians said it was a purely domestic issue. As Clemenceau whispered loudly, “What’s the little chap saying?,” the Japanese delegate expressed appreciation for the great part women had played in civilization but commented that the suffrage movement in Japan was scarcely worth notice. The matter was dropped, never to be taken up again.15

The peacemakers soon discovered that they had taken on the administration of much of Europe and large parts of the Middle East. Old ruling structures had collapsed and Allied occupation forces and Allied representatives were being drawn in to take their place. There was little choice; if they did not do it, no one would—or, worse, revolutionaries might. The men on the spot did what they could. In Belgrade, a British admiral scraped together a small fleet of barges and sent them up and down the Danube carrying food and raw materials. He brought about a modest revival in trade and industry, often in the face of obstruction from the different governments along the river, but it was a stopgap measure. As he told Paris, the long-term solution was international control of the Danube and the other great European waterways. There were other schemes and other enthusiasts, but was there the political will? Or the money?16

The economic responsibilities alone were daunting. The war had disrupted the world’s economy and it would not be easy to get it going again. The European nations had borrowed huge amounts of money—in the case of the Allies, increasingly from the United States. Now they found it almost impossible to get the credit to finance their reconstruction and the revival of trade. The war had left factories unusable, fields untilled, bridges and railway lines destroyed. There were shortages of fertilizer, seeds, raw materials, shipping, locomotives. Europe still depended largely on coal for its fuel, but the mines in France, Belgium, Poland and Germany were flooded. The emergence of new nations in central Europe further damaged what was left of the old trading and transportation networks. In Vienna, the