Its main forum was initially the Council of Ten – the heads of government and foreign ministers of America, Britain, France and Italy, as well as two Japanese representatives. The Paris Conference ran from 18 January 1919 until 21 January 1920. Much was repaired by the mid-1920s, but the legacy of human sacrifice and lethal debris continues to be unearthed a century later. In France and Belgium an area the size of Holland was devastated. America, a pre-war debtor nation, emerged as the world’s largest creditor and its major industrial producer. The British Treasury estimated that victory cost an astronomical 24 billion British pounds (in 1914 gold values) whilst the effects on world trading patterns and economic power were extensive and long-lasting. Others remained unborn because of wartime separations. Millions more died in the inter- and intra-state wars that continued after 1918. Three or four times as many were wounded, some of whom would never work again, and each a reminder of the personal and financial cost of the conflict. Around 9.5 million young servicemen died. They had to deal not only with the problems that had caused the war, but also with the further complications occasioned and exacerbated by it, when the bitterness of loss and destruction was still raw. It is not one continent that is engaged – every continent is engaged." The peacemakers faced an awesome task. But the problems at the Congress of Vienna, great as they were, sink into insignificance compared with those which we have had to attempt to settle at the Paris Conference.
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