The organization of the conference was undertaken by the four Entente
Powers, France, Great Britain, Japan, and Italy (who had signed the
Pact of London, obligating themselves not to make a separate peace), in
agreement with the United States. It was decided to make a distinction
between the “powers with general interests” and the “powers with
particular interests.” The former were the United States, the British
Empire, France, Italy, and Japan; and the latter were Belgium, Brazil,
the British Dominions and India, China, Cuba, Greece, Guatemala, Haiti,
Hedjaz, Honduras, Liberia, Nicaragua, Panama, Poland, Portugal,
Rumania, Serbia, Siam, and Czechoslovakia. The great powers were to
have five delegates; Belgium, Brazil, and Serbia, three; China, Greece,
Hedjaz, Poland, Portugal, Rumania, Siam, and Czechoslovakia, two; Cuba,
Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Liberia, Nicaragua, and Panama, one; while
the British Dominions and India were allowed two delegates, with the
exception of New Zealand, which was to have one. Four powers that had
broken off diplomatic relations with Germany, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru,
and Uruguay, were granted one delegate each “in the sittings at which
questions concerning them are discussed.” Provision was made for the
possibility of admitting Montenegro, but the question of Russia was
left to be determined by the conference.
The most important of the preliminary measures was the one which
proposed to limit the decision upon the matters of settlement to a
central commission, on which the “five powers with general interests”
were alone represented. The various details were to be studied by
commissions of fifteen, two members each for the great powers and
five members representing all the other powers together, which were
to report to the central commission. The Supreme War Council at
Versailles, under Marshal Foch, was to continue to meet during the
Peace Conference to deal with the enforcement of the armistices and
with military problems concerning the enemy powers and the regions
whose status the Peace Conference was to settle.
There was something to be said both for the exclusion of enemy powers
from the Peace Conference and for the exclusion of the “powers with
particular interests” from the central commission. The victors of the
World War realized only too well that they would have great difficulty
in reconciling their own ambitions and in agreeing upon any common
program of peace, and they did not purpose to have Germany repeating
the rôle of France in the Conference of Vienna a hundred years earlier.
With delegates from thirty countries, some of which were parts of the
British Empire and other states that had only a technical right to be
represented, it was reasonable to expect that the organizers of the
conference would adopt regulations to make it a feasible working body.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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