Hope to have Collections of...
DOLLs(exquisite ones)/ Figurines/ Some beautifully drawn Manga/ elegant clothes?/ stamps(had a lot already)/ coins from diff. countries/ [stickers was in the past]/ tiny bits of this & that for Art & Craft (maybe they're RUBBISH...)/...
To whoever completely read this whole column: congrats!; its damn long- a chunk of insights to WATASHIWA no SEIKAI...
Exits
♪3/3 '08 CLASS BLOG!♫
Cindy
Hiang Ngee
Hui Min
Kathy
Ming Liang
Mu Xin
Nicol
Sin Joo
Sin Woon
Tiew Tian
Veronica
Vincent
Wei Xuan
Yu Ting
Ice Angel
Xia Xue
Sassy Jan
Blinky Mummy
Dawn Yang
Sunday, March 02, 2008
Treaty of Versailles (Some Sources)
A Punitive Treaty
Not stern, but actually punitive.... The real crime is the reparations and indemnity chapter, which is immoral and senseless. There is not a single person among the younger people here who is not unhappy and disappointed at the terms. The only people who approve are the old fire-eaters.
Harold Nicolson, Letter to his father, quoted in his Diary (8 June 1919)
Nicolson was a British delegate at Versailles
A Protest
Had a talk with Barnes [one of the British officials]. In his view the villain of the Treaty was Wilson, who had proved himself to be anything but a strong man, and a child in the hands of Clemenceau, who, as Barnes put it, 'could buy him at one end of the street and sell him at the other'.... Barnes had written several times to the PM protesting about the terms of the Peace Treaty especially the Reparation Clauses..
Thomas Jones, Whltehall Diary (2 July 1919)
Jones was Assistant Secretary in the War Cabinet
Disgusted
We are all so disgusted with the peace that we have ceased to discuss it.
Beatrice Webb, a famous Socialist writer and historian (1919)
Nothing
It is not statesmanship. It is not business. It is not common sense. It is not the clean Peace by which I always meant, and other people meant, to end war with the war.
HH Asquith, former Prime Minister, campaigning for election in 1920
Stern but just'
The terms are in many respects terrible terms to impose upon a country. Terrible were the deeds which it requites... Germany not merely provoked, but planned the most devastating war the earth has ever seen... She deliberately embarked upon it, not to defend herself against assailants, but to aggrandise herself at the expense of her neighbours. I cannot think of a worse crime.
[The aim of the Treaty is] to compel Germany, in so far as it is in her power, to restore, to repair and to redress. Yes, and to take every possible precaution of every kind that is in our power against the recurrence of another such crime - to make such an example as will discourage ambitious peoples from ever attempting to repeat the infamy.
Lloyd George, speaking in Parliament (3 July 1919).
A German Comment
The Treaties were never given a chance by the miscellaneous and unimpressive array of second-rate statesmen who have handled them for the past 15 years.... The failure of a great deal of what is best and noblest in the Treaties has been entirely due to the fact that there has been no will-power or steady resolve behind their execution...
All of [the 1919 peacemakers] would be especially shocked at the spectacle of the great democratic countries, which in 1919 commanded universal respect, now shivering and begging for peace on the door-step of two European dictators.
David Lloyd George, Memoirs of the Peace Treaty (1938).
