No peace congress had ever confronted so colossal a task. The assembly at Paris met to end a world war, then in its fifth year, which had destroyed 9,000,000 lives and untold billions of property, and left the world staggering under a crushing burden of debt and destruction. It had in the first instance to liquidate the affairs of three bankrupt empires, the German, the Austro-Hungarian, and the Turkish. The peoples which they had held in unwilling subjection were to be set free, and either attached to the neighboring peoples from which they had once been torn, or established firmly as independent and self-governing states. “As Lord Bryce had predicted, the most knotty disputes which faced the Conference were ‘nearly all problems that involve the claims of peoples dissatisfied with their present rulers and seeking either independence or union with some kindred race.’” Several thousand miles of new boundaries had to be drawn, marking new frontiers, and if possible these frontiers must be just and lasting. Provision must be made for restoring the lands laid waste by war and reëstablishing the normal commercial and industrial life of the warring countries. Those responsible for the war must pay, and they must be punished. Finally, if possible, effective measures must be taken to prevent the recurrence of a similar war, whether brought about by Germany’s lust of conquest or by any other state. If war could not be prevented, it must at least be rendered more difficult and more abhorrent to the common moral sense of mankind.