Page - 1013 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

Afterword The moment came in Paris on 18 January 1919. It was no coincidence that this was the same date on which in 1871, in the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles, the proclamation of the German Empire had been made. The President of the United States and the prime ministers and foreign ministers of the Allied and associated powers met on the Quai d’Orsay for the first session of a conference that was described as a ‘peace conference’, but whose scale and duration were not foreseeable. Its aim was to end the war that had first been temporarily halted through a series of armistice treaties. Representatives of those states that were regarded as defeated had not been invited to take part in the sessions. This was perhaps the first major difference between this and the peace con- ference that had taken place over a hundred years previously, and which ended the Na- poleonic Wars as the ‘Congress of Vienna’. As was usual on such occasions, ceremony was at the forefront and, not least, veiled language was used. The site of the conference itself meant that France played the role of host. When the French President, Raymond Poincaré, entered the hall, the 72 politicians who had been invited rose and in some cases remained standing to listen to what he had to say. Poincaré presented the overall picture : ‘The most deceitful goal of the enemy has today been clearly proven. In the hope of seizing hegemony in Europe and, soon afterwards, dominance of the world, the Central Powers, which are bound together by culpable secret agreements, devised a hateful pretence in order to move beyond Serbia and to open a path to the Orient. At the same time, they renounced solemnly given obligations in order to prepare a road into the heart of France through Belgium […]. If now, after many vicissitudes, those who wished to rule by the sword have now died by the sword, they bear the blame for doing so themselves […].’ Poincaré then left the hall, the chair was given to the French Prime Minister, Georges Clemenceau, and then all those who numbered among the Allied and associated states were invited to bring to paper their ideas for the clauses to be contained in the agreements that were to be concluded with the defeated states. Then, the delegates separated and in political circles and groups of experts began to discuss the peace treaties for Germany, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire. Over time, twelve treaties and conventions were formulated. One treaty was still missing : the peace treaty with the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. It could not be drawn up, since