![]() ![]() In France and Belgium an area the size of Holland was devastated. America, a pre-war debtor nation, emerged as the world’s largest creditor and its major industrial producer. The British Treasury estimated that victory cost an astronomical 24 billion British pounds (in 1914 gold values) whilst the effects on world trading patterns and economic power were extensive and long-lasting. Others remained unborn because of wartime separations. Millions more died in the inter- and intra-state wars that continued after 1918. Three or four times as many were wounded, some of whom would never work again, and each a reminder of the personal and financial cost of the conflict. Around 9.5 million young servicemen died. They had to deal not only with the problems that had caused the war, but also with the further complications occasioned and exacerbated by it, when the bitterness of loss and destruction was still raw. It is not one continent that is engaged – every continent is engaged." The peacemakers faced an awesome task. But the problems at the Congress of Vienna, great as they were, sink into insignificance compared with those which we have had to attempt to settle at the Paris Conference. In April 1919 British Prime Minister David Lloyd George (1863-1945) compared peacemaking in Paris with the 1815 post-Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars negotiations: "You then had to settle the affairs of Europe alone.
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