Things come and go as fast as they come. When the peace conference began, no one paid attention to Romania. Each delegation is fighting for the maximum benefits of its own country.

The fiercest competition was the meeting of the five major powers of the United States, France, Britain, Italy, and Japan, as well as the foreign ministers, also known as the 10-member meeting, in which all major issues were discussed and decided. Because of the provisions of the Peace Conference, the entire conference is divided into three forms: the highest meeting, the special meeting, and the plenary meeting. The Supreme Council is composed of the United States, Britain, France, Italy, and Japan.

Since the discussion was about the competing interests of the defeated Central Powers, in addition to the main competition between China and Japan over Germany's interests in China, the competition for its rights in Europe and Africa was also the most intense.

Among them, the four countries of Europe, the United States, Britain, France, and Italy, negotiate an endless quarrel.

The main purpose of the Italian delegates was to get the port of Fum in order to make it a base for Italian expansion in the Balkans. However, Italy's strength was not good, compared with the United States, Britain and France, it could only be regarded as a second-rate country, and in addition to the fact that it stepped on two ships in the early stage of the war, and did not play much role after entering the war, Orlando's request was rejected by the United States, Britain and France. Britain, France, and Russia agreed to Italy to grant the port of Hum and D'Al-Masia rights and interests after the war, but after the victory, the United States, Britain and France refused.

At the Feb-5 meeting, Orlando threatened that he would not be able to return to China for an explanation, and even threatened that there would be riots in the country, while the United States, Britain and France still opposed his demands. Orlando left the room in a fit of rage, while the rest of the attendees simply ignored it. Orlando was helpless, and quietly returned to the venue a few days later, continuing to play the role of a showman.

On the American side, President Wilson was particularly fascinated by the idea of building a League of Nations, not only because it was closely related to his political reputation and historical position, but also because he saw it as a fundamental plan and a necessary way to replace Britain and France in world hegemony.

Therefore, in his first speech at the Paris Peace Conference, he proposed that priority should be given to discussing the issue of the Covenant of the League of Nations, stressing that the Treaty of the League of Nations and the Treaty of Peace with Germany should become a unified and indivisible whole, binding on any country. But Britain and France were not interested in this. They advocated the separation of the two and gave priority to the division of territory and war reparations. The opposing sides insist on their own words and do not give in to each other.

Later, after four days of debate, the ten-member committee decided to hand over the question of the League of Nations to a special committee headed by Wilson to study, which would be responsible for formulating the draft of the League of Nations Treaty. The Anglo-French conspiracy was to wipe the American plan off the agenda. To that end, they suggested that all small and medium-sized States should also be represented in the Commission, making it bulky and inefficient in order to stall for time.

Before the special committee had begun its work, Britain and France proposed to discuss the question of partitioning the German colonies. Wilson woke up from a dream, dissatisfied with the tactics of Britain and France, and again proposed to the Committee of Ten to discuss the question of the League of Nations.

"We cannot give the world the impression that the great powers first carved up the defenseless parts of the world before they created the League of Nations," he said. ”

As a result, the Committee of Ten faced off again. The meeting was tense, Wilson was fierce, as were Lloyd George of England and Clemenceau of France. Under these circumstances, Wilson angrily stated that he would withdraw from the meeting without first finalizing the covenant of the League of Nations.

The seasoned Lloyd George retorted: "Only God knows when the complicated process of making a covenant of nations will be completed." ”

Wilson replied: "The work of the committee can be completed in 10 days, provided that no one deliberately causes trouble." ”

The American threat worked, and Britain and France had to back down. As Wilson said, after a series of intense consultations, the special committee finally worked out the draft of the League of Nations treaty on December 18 as scheduled.

On 19 December, Wilson reported the draft to the plenary in a solemn atmosphere, and it was unanimously adopted, and in the first round of the struggle, Wilson narrowly prevailed.

On the British side, Prime Minister George was scheming and deep, and in order to maintain Britain's shaky hegemony, he did everything he could at the Paris Peace Conference. Sometimes he sided with France against the United States, and sometimes formed an alliance with the United States to suppress France. When the United States and France were in a difficult dispute, he often acted as a mediator, thus reaping a lot of benefits for Britain.

On the French side, it was proposed by the President of the General Assembly, Prime Minister Clemenceau. France was not only to recover Alsace and Lorraine, but also to move the French borders east to the Rhine and advocated the merger of the German provinces on the left bank of the Rhine into a single independent state. France's naked desire to weaken Germany to the maximum and establish France's hegemonic ambition on the European continent was rejected by Britain, France and Italy at the beginning. They didn't want to find a hegemon for the continent by defeating Germany.

In the face of fierce opposition from the United States, Britain and Italy, Clemenceau had to give up this condition. Although he was forced to abandon his claim to establish a Rhine state, in exchange he offered to occupy the left bank of the Rhine by Allied troops for 30 years and hand over the Saar mines to France. The Saarland mining area mentioned by Clemenceau is the city of Saarland, close to the French border, which is an industrial and transportation center with a huge coal seam. Its factories produce iron and steel, sugar, beer, pottery, optical instruments, machines, and building materials. In particular, the coal industry here could meet a third of the Ruhr region's needs, so in order to further pinch Germany's strength, Clemenceau raised the Saar question.

U.S. President Wilson was very annoyed by the new French demand. He said impatiently, "He never heard of any other Sal questions. ”

Clemenceau was furious, attacking Wilson as a pro-German and declaring: "No French prime minister will sign a treaty that does not annex the Saar to France." ”

But Wilson did not show weakness, and he coldly mocked Clemenceau, saying: "You mean that France will refuse to cooperate with us if it does not get what it wants?" So you want me to go home. ”

Faced with the threat of creditors, Clemenceau replied: "I don't want you to go home, I want to go back." ”

As for the question of Saar, it was so unpleasant. In the face of the dispute between the United States and France, the treacherous and slick Lloyd George fully used his own means. He first formed an alliance with President Wilson on the issue, and then privately negotiated with Clemenceau that the United States could not be allowed to leave the peace conference, suggesting that he could change the Saarland from being assigned to France to establishing a temporal mandate.

Clemenceau was a little overwhelmed by the pressure of the Anglo-American alliance, and considering that France was unable to maintain order in Europe without Anglo-American support, he agreed to the conditions given by Prime Minister George. However, the two sides disputed the timing of the mandate.

The French side believes that the time should be 25 years, while Britain and the United States believe that this time is too long and will provoke Germany to provoke new disputes in Europe in the future, so the proposal is 10 years. After some more arguments, they finally gave a mutually acceptable 15-year term. Fifteen years later, a referendum was held in the Saarland to decide where they belonged.

In order to completely weaken Germany, France also put forward three demands: first, the establishment of a strong Poland in the east of Germany, including Poznan and Danzig. The reason for this is to deal with the red threat from Russia.

The second is to do its best to exhaust the pockets of the Germans, demanding that Germany must compensate for the war losses of 600 billion to 800 billion gold marks.

The third is to completely destroy the German military apparatus, and in particular, to limit the number of German land forces and the production of munitions.

These demands of France have been opposed to varying degrees by Britain and the United States. Britain and the United States believed that the establishment of a new Poland according to France's blueprint would mean the strengthening of France's position in Europe, and therefore did not approve of France's proposition.

Lloyd George said to Clemenceau: "Don't build a new Alsace-Lorraine. ”

Britain and the United States also did not want to use Germany's reparations to strengthen France's power, especially the United States, which was more worried that France's excessive demands would kill Germany, the hen that laid eggs.

Lloyd George proposed that reparations should not be excessive and should only be borne by the generation that participated in the war. Wilson argued that the issue should not be fixed and that the issue could be referred to a special committee.

On the question of limiting German armaments, Britain and the United States had different intentions than France. Their main interest was to weaken Germany's naval power, while to the army they advocated leniency, giving Germany the strength necessary to suppress the Bolsheviks.

When it came to the question of establishing Poland, Prime Minister Bretianu, who had been watching the show, was also involved. Because the Polish delegation proposed that the Lviv region currently occupied by Romania has always been a gathering place for Poles, it hoped that Romania would teach the region to Poland instead of the current Ukrainian government. Therefore, Prime Minister Bretianu was fortunate enough to join in the discussion of the Polish question.