TY - BOOK AU - MacMillan,Margaret TI - Peacemakers: the Paris Conference of 1919 and its attempt to end war SN - 0719562376 (pbk.) U1 - NF PY - 2002///, c2001 CY - London PB - John Murray KW - Wilson, Woodrow, KW - Lloyd George, David, KW - League of Nations KW - Paris Peace Conference KW - (1919-1920) KW - Treaty of Versailles KW - (1919 June 28) KW - World War, 1914-1918 KW - Peace KW - Germany KW - History KW - 1918-1933 KW - Boundaries N1 - Originally published: 2001; Cover title: Peacemakers: six months that changed the world; Includes bibliographical references and index N2 - Between January and July 1919, after "the war to end all wars," men and women from around the world converged on Paris to shape the peace. Center stage was an American president, Woodrow Wilson, who with his Fourteen Points seemed to promise to so many people the fulfillment of their dreams. Stern, intransigent, impatient when it came to security concerns and idealistic in his dream of a League of Nations that would resolve all future conflicts peacefully, Wilson is only one of the characters who fill the pages of this book. David Lloyd George, the British prime minister, brought Winston Churchill and John Maynard Keynes. Lawrence of Arabia joined the Arab delegation. Ho Chi Minh, a kitchen assistant at the Ritz, submitted a petition for an independent Vietnam. For six months, Paris was effectively the center of the world as the peacemakers carved up bankrupt empires and created new countries. This book brings to life the personalities, ideals, and prejudices of the men who shaped the settlement. They pushed Russia to the sidelines, alienated China, and dismissed the Arabs. They struggled with the problems of Kosovo, of the Kurds, and of a homeland for the Jews. The peacemakers, so it has been said, failed dismally; above all they failed to prevent another war. Margaret MacMillan argues that they have unfairly been made the scapegoats for the mistakes of those who came later. She refutes preconceived ideas about the path from Versailles to World War II and debunks the widely accepted notion that reparations imposed on the Germans were in large part responsible for the Second World War ER -