The Paris Peace Conference and Wilson's Fourteen Points

The Paris Peace Conference formally opened on January 18, 1919, bringing together delegations from the victorious Allied powers to negotiate the terms of peace after the First World War. In practice the conference was dominated by the "Council of Four": U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, who arrived with enormous moral prestige as the first sitting American president to travel to Europe and with an idealistic program built around his Fourteen Points; British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, who sought a middle path between French demands and a stable, trading Germany; French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, nicknamed "the Tiger," who pushed for maximum security guarantees and harsh reparations given France's immense wartime losses; and Italian Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando, whose territorial claims were ultimately marginalized against the weight of the other three.