Whenever agreements were even in sight, the press was informed; so that, when the Treaty of Peace and the summary of it finally came out, there were no surprises for the public. Every covenant, every clause, had been already foreshadowed and accurately pictured. THE "BIG THREE" Naturally, the question is often asked: Who were the peacemakers at Paris? Were they two or three powerful Chiefs of State? The answer is both "Yes" and "No." The final decision on every important matter lay in the hands of the so-called Big Four, and after Premier Orlando's defection and return to Italy, it narrowed down to the Big Triumvirate, Messrs. Wilson, Lloyd George, and Clemenceau. Yet while they made the final decisions, these were almost invariably based upon reports and opinions expressed to this trio, or to the quartet, by their advisers and experts. The actual text of the Treaty was, of course, written by the technicians, and there is hardly a phrase in the whole of it that can claim as its original author any one of the Chiefs of State. In every true sense, then, the Treaty of Peace has been the product, not of three men, not even of three-score, nor of three hundred, but of thousands; for quite aside from the official delegations at Paris, which comprised several hundred persons, we must remember that the data and the various suggested solutions on most of the questions had been canvassed at home for each delegation by large groups of office and technical experts. Of course it sounds well to say that the Treaty was written by three men: the picture of those few Chiefs of State sitting in conference day after day is dramatic in the extreme. That is, I must confess, the picture which comes back oftenest to my mind. I see them today, as I saw them for months at Paris, sitting in that large but cosy salon in the house allotted to President Wilson on the Place des États Unis; for, by common consent, it was there that the Supreme Council finally held all its meetings. It is in that theatre, with the three or four Chiefs of State taking the leading rôles, that we saw the other characters in the great drama moving slowly on the stage, playing their parts, and then disappearing into the wings. Today it might be Paderewski, pleading with all his earnestness and sincerity, to have Danzig allotted to the sovereignty of Poland. To-morrow it might be Hymans, the Belgian Secretary for Foreign Affairs, begging that there should be a prompt realization of those pledges to Belgium, which Belgium felt had been made by all the Allies; or it might even be word brought by special aeroplane from the King of the Belgians at Brussels, with fresh and important instructions to his delegation in the matter of Reparation. Or it might be a group of the representatives of those newer nationalities, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, Jugoslavia, arguing some burning question of boundary rights. Or it might be the British shipping experts,