[Sailor Steve]

The above was posted in the '100 Years' thread. I took the liberty of moving it here to avoid distractions in that thread.

As to the question I hope my answer isn't as convoluted as the Peace Conference itself.

I started off with the simple idea of reading the day's proceedings and distilling it down into a simple post that would give a general idea of what happened. I thought it would be no problem. As the meetings got longer it became harder to do that. Part of the problem I have is that I find the wrangling and arguing among the members to be fascinating. I've never been overly political, and suddenly having a fly-on-the-wall view of some of the most important political discussions of the twentieth century was just amazing.

I sometimes forget that other people have other interests, and this isn't everybody's cup of tea. Unfortunately I'm crippled by a mild case of OCD which makes me way to pedantic.

Doing it this way hasn't made it any easier. Distilling it all down meant reading each day's proceedings at least twice, and sometimes more. On the other hand, while it may look that way, this isn't just a copy-and-paste job. The original notes are filled with page-markers, footnotes and flat-out mistakes in the typing, all of which have to be removed or corrected. Then there is my penchant for rendering things into the modern tense. In the end before I post any of this I have read it thoroughly.

So - the Short Version:

The Council of Four - the leaders of Britain, France, Italy and the United States, all sat down to draw up a Peace Treaty with the former Central Powers - Germany and Austria-Hungary. Working under them was the Council of Foreign Ministers. Who they were should be obvious. They had to decide how culpable the Central Powers, especially Germany, had been. In the interest of fairness they recognized that both sides owed each other for war losses, so they tried to confine the claims for German reparations to the countries Germany had actually invaded.

Another complication was that the Austro-Hungarian Empire no longer existed, and several new Nations had sprung out of its remains and from some other sources - Austria and Hungary of course, but also Poland, Croatia, and a host of others I can't remember offhand. This is made worse by the other things under consideration. Biggest is the League of Nations. They feel that many problems they are being asked to consider now should be put off and handled by the new League. They are having to deal with questions like: Should Germany be paid for the underwater Transatlantic Cables laid at their expense? If these were just taken over by the Allies they could just be handed back. But many of them were cut, and can't be repaired; they will have to be relaid. Many more were diverted to Allied destinations, and are now being used for huge amounts of international traffic. The could be handed back, but that means that all German traffic would have to go through Halifax or New York. The complications are huge, and the discussions cut into the main goal, which is to create a Peace Treaty with Germany.

Then came the Big Rift. Italy wanted the port of Fiume, which by the Treaty of London had already been awarded to Croatia. At this point the Italians have walked out and refuse to deal with what is now the Council of Three until their demands are met. Doubly unfortunate is that this is happening right as the German delegates are coming to Paris, and the Allies are showing less solidarity than before.

I'll be honest: I was so relieved with the signing of the Armistice last November. I though I was out of it, and I have several projects of my own that I've left untouched for four years. There is an end in sight. The Peace Treaty was signed on June 28. There are meetings going all the way through December, but they don't seem to be too bad.

So my dilemma is: Keep on doing it this way, which leaves the entire conversations intact, saving long speeches that go nowhere, or go back to distilling it down into terms everyone can understand and actually enjoy the read. The latter is probably the best, but it will mean doing twice the work I'm doing now just to try to make it clear while not losing too many interesting points.

Opinions?