As no protest was heard while the election raged, so, while the peace conference was sitting, the only protest against its activities came in occasional blustering telegrams from self-important members of parliament who conceived themselves to be responsible for keeping the prime minister up to the mark. The great, unpolitical mass of the English people was addressing itself to the new upheaval of demobilisation, to the prospect of hard-won idleness and, more remotely, to the problems of reconstruction; the professional politicians were more concerned with personalities than with principles; and the centre of gravity shifted in 1919 to Paris. Of the great restless army of women who believe that they influence domestic and foreign policy all who could secure a passport and a ticket hurried abroad, there to compete with the cosmopolitan army whose life is an imperceptible gliding from Ritz to Ritz in waiting with loaded dinner-tables on the fringe of the conference. One staked out a claim on one hotel and statesman, another on another; London, on their return, was filled with stories of their _protégés_ and listened patiently to what Colonel House or "Clemmy" had said to each and, less patiently, to what each had said to Mr. Balfour or to President Wilson; all who remembered how the Germans had striven to divide the allies during the war kept a vague look-out for attempts to sow dissension between them in the making of peace and were vaguely comforted by each new proof of solidarity among the high contracting parties. In questions of detail it was agreed that there must be differences of opinion; but, so long as a rupture was avoided, the principles of peace were left to take care of themselves. President Wilson might indeed, with a Disraelian gesture, order his ship to get up steam; but, as he remained at the last moment to see one or two more of his cardinal points rejected by the British and the French, it was assumed that they were impracticable. The treaty was signed on July 19th, and it was not until Mr. Maynard Keynes' _Economic Consequences of the Peace_ had been digested that the political army and the camp-followers ceased gossiping about the personalities of the conference and turned their attention to the settlement.