No two honest men, indeed, could expect to agree on all the questions raised at this multifarious Conference. Take the problems of the Near East. There Mr. Lloyd George very strongly took the view that the Turks had forfeited the right to rule over Christians. He was always disposed to look to the great Prime Minister, Venizelos, as the prop of the Alliance in the Eastern Mediterranean. That made him lean to the Greeks. M. Clemenceau followed the traditional policy of the Quai D’Orsay in its leniency towards the Turks. President Wilson, perhaps influenced by the American professors of the Roberts College at Constantinople, was disposed to advocate clemency to Bulgaria. This is an instance of minor differences which never threatened cleavage, but harassed and delayed the proceedings of the Conference. For Mr. Lloyd George was never inclined to neglect the Near East. There was the home and cradle of those little nations in whose destiny he so profoundly believed. There were crises in the Conference when he boldly acknowledged that he had been wrong. Such a moment came when, in April, he was challenged on the Indemnity question by a mandatory telegram from 200 members of Parliament. He returned and faced his critics with defiance. “A good Peace,” he said, “is better than a good Press.” He had discovered in Paris that it was vain to hope for the great indemnities from Germany which Great Britain deserved, and for which he himself had hoped. He faced Parliament with realities; and Parliament bowed to the facts. Speaking broadly, Mr. Lloyd George and his colleagues followed throughout a sound British tradition. Instinctively they were, in 1919, pursuing in Paris the same policy that Wellington and Castlereagh pursued during 1815 in the Congress of Vienna, and the Second Treaty of Paris after the victory of Waterloo. Just as they prevented a triumphant Prussia from crushing France, so Mr. Lloyd George and President Wilson prevented a triumphant France from shattering Germany to atoms.[136] On the human side, Mr. Lloyd George lived in Paris a simple and homely life. He occupied a modest flat in the 23 Rue Nitot, near the Arc de Triomphe, in the pleasant neighbourhood of the Champs Elysées. European observers were surprised at the contrast between the daily life of the British Prime Minister and the high state which surrounded the American President, who occupied the Villa Murat over the way. But when they criticised the posting of sentries both inside and outside the President’s house, and when the French people objected to being forbidden to walk on the American side of their own beloved Parisian street, they perhaps forgot that President Wilson stood in the place of Royalty as the sovereign head of the country for which he spoke.