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In January 1919 the leaders of thirty-two countries, representing between them some three-quarters of the world’s population, assembled in Paris. Just two months previously, after four years of unremitting and savage conflict, an armistice had finally brought the First World War to its end. Now the politicians had to grapple with a whole range of problems thrown up by the war, and to thrash out the terms of a peace settlement. Their task was one of formidable complexity and difficulty, in view of the intractable nature of the issues to be resolved and the number of seemingly contradictory viewpoints and aspirations to be reconciled. In the circumstances, the settlement that emerged from the months of deliberation at Paris was a creditable achievement. The fact that it did not survive the 1920s intact stemmed, as we shall see, not so much from the terms of the peace treaties themselves but from the reluctance of political leaders in the inter-war period to enforce them.