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This lively and original book critically re-examines Lloyd George's part, crucial but enigmatic, in the 'lost peace' of Versailles, 1919-1940. In a re-examination of six key episodes 1919-1940, it reviews his protean role at the Paris Peace Conference, 1919, his strategy on reparations, his abortive guarantee-treaty to France, and the emergence at the Conference of 'Appeasement'. It then reassesses his controversial visit to Hitler, and his bids to halt World War II after the fall of Poland and France.
Jan Smuts was one of the key figures behind the creation of the League of Nations; Wilson was inspired by his ideas, including the mandates scheme. He pleaded for a magnanimous peace, warning that the treaty of Versailles would lead to another war.
According to the Law Journal in 1932, ‘No present-day figure on the Bench is of greater interest than Mr Justice McCardie’. A High Court Judge from 1916 to 1933, no twentieth-century judge was more conspicuous or controversial. To his critics, he was a ‘rogue judge’ whose headline-hitting pronouncements often angered his fellow judges, called down the ire of the Churches, provoked calls in Parliament for his removal and earned a public rebuke from the Prime Minister. To his admirers, he was ‘a Crusader on the Bench’, a pioneer who denounced outdated laws, strove to make the law meet the needs of modern society and boldly championed women’s causes, birth control and abortion. The Law Quarterly Review described him as ‘one of the most interesting men in the history of the English Bench.’
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Sir Edgar Speyer was a conspicuous figure in the financial, cultural, social and political life of Edwardian London. Head of the syndicate which financed the construction of the deep "tube lines" and "King of the Underground", he was also a connoisseur and active patron of the arts who rescued the "Prom" from collapse, enhanced the nation's musical and artistic life at his own expense and directed the funding of Captain Scott's Antarctic expeditions. Speyer and his wife, the concert violinist, Leonora Speyer lived in fabulously magnificent style. Early in the early summer of 1914 they stood at the peak of their success and celebrity in London society. Within weeks, on the outbreak of war, th...
This text scrutinizes the motives, actions, and constraints that informed decision making by the various politicians who bore the principal responsibility for drafting the Treaty of Versailles.