1919, representatives from the victorious Allied Nations met in Paris to devise a treaty that might somehow make sense of the chaos and restore some measure of order to the European continent. 1 Each member of the peace conference approached the task at hand with his own agenda, reflective of his country’s experience during the war. President Woodrow Wilson of the
United States hoped to achieve a number of the idealistic goals laid out in his “Fourteen Points” speech and mold the post-War society into a peaceful
utopia, …show more content…
Many in the United States protested the treaty, either on the grounds that it did not reflect their own concerns or from a fear that the international agreement would rob America of its independence, both domestically and upon the world stage. Though Wilson ardently defended the treaty, major opposition in the Senate ultimately led to its failure, establishing firmly, at least for the time being, that the government of the United States was primarily responsible for itself before the rest of the world. 3
The Versailles Treaty that Wilson returned to the United States with in the summer of 1919 represented an amalgamation of widely varying approaches to peace. 4 His own view revolved around the idea of sustaining peace through the creation of a global oversight committee comprised of the most powerful nations on the planet (primarily England, France, and