Here came in Mr. Lloyd George’s characteristic qualities—his genius for compromise, his twinkling good humour, his amazing capacity for finding a middle way between different points of view. Again and again, when matters seemed at a deadlock—on the Saar Valley, the Polish Corridor, or even the perplexing question of Fiume—Mr. Lloyd George achieved, or nearly achieved, a settlement. It is scarcely too much to say that without him the Conference would have inevitably broken down, and one of the other two would have flung out of the Conference like Signor Orlando. But Mr. Lloyd George was not only a conciliator—not merely the middle figure. He had a very definite view of his own as to the right peace to aim at. He was the first to formulate a peace; the first to insist on a decision. He was out for a peace stern but just. On Dantzig he took the initiative for moderation. He insisted on a settlement that would not create a new Baltic question. He was against Poland annexing a city of Germans—against it also for the sake of Poland. “We must set up a Poland that can live,” he would say. “If swollen by enemy populations she will explode from within. Dantzig is outside the real orbit of Poland. Make it International.” President Wilson supported him; M. Clemenceau was persuaded; and Mr. Lloyd George got his way. Poland had good friends at the Conference. Not only was it the policy of France to aggrandise Poland as a substitute for Russia, but President Wilson was enthusiastically pro-Polish. On the general issue Mr. Lloyd George was entirely with them. He wished Poland to flourish as a self-governing State, but not to enter on its existence by inflicting on others the crime of Partition from which it had so deeply suffered itself. For that reason, in the last stage, he took a strong solitary line on the demand for a plebiscite that came from Silesia. The whole British Cabinet supported him, and there again in the end he achieved his purpose. But on other matters the combination varied: Mr. Lloyd George sometimes took a sterner line than the other two. He was always for the trial of the Kaiser, as a supreme lesson to rulers. President Wilson opposed; M. Clemenceau was indifferent; Venizelos was opposed. But Mr. Lloyd George insisted, and persuaded them to agree to London as the place of trial. On the Rhine question and the Saar Valley he supported President Wilson in opposing the extreme French claims, and finally achieved the compromise inserted in the Peace Treaty.[130] He opposed the French proposals to separate the Rhine Provinces from Germany and occupy in permanence the bridge-heads. He looked far ahead. “See here,” he said to the French, “you will create another Alsace-Lorraine: you will give Germany a great cause.”