The first to stand up against the French proposal was British Prime Minister Lloyd George. Originally, Prime Minister Lloyd George wanted to sit firmly in the Diaoyutai area, after all, the British Empire is still the most powerful country in the world, and any distribution of interests is destined to be inseparable from the attitude of the British Empire.

But I didn't expect that the French came up as soon as they came up. The French are asking the Germans to pay the price for the war, which is simply stepping on Germany to re-establish French hegemony in Europe and make France the most powerful country in the world again.

Germany, which disbanded all military forces and expelled all the military-industrial complex, was not destined to be an opponent of the French.

This also means that the French will no longer be invincible in mainland France, especially in Western and Central Europe.

Under the influence of the French, countries like Belgium, the Netherlands and even Italy, Austria-Hungary were bound to change their diplomatic attitudes.

If these countries were to turn to France, the policy of continental balancing, which the British had painstakingly managed in Europe, would be nullified.

At that time, France will be unstoppable on the European continent, and it will be possible to have another anti-French alliance to combat the arrogance of the French.

"Mr. Clemenceau, such conditions in your country are too harsh for Germany and are not in keeping with our pacifist spirit. The total removal of the Germans' army will only plunge the country into further chaos, which is also not in the interest of all of us. At the same time, ceding too much German land will make the Germans hate us even more. I hope that the war will end because of this peace talks, and not because of this peace talks, it will lead to the next war. Lloyd George stood up and made his point.

It is necessary to teach the Germans a lesson, but it must also be done in moderation. For the British Empire, a Germany with a certain strength could hold back the expansion of the French.

After all, both Germany and France were a threat to the British Empire, and the attitude of the British and the French before World War I was not so good

As two old powers, Britain and France still have a lot of face in Europe. Although Britain was relatively stronger and supported more countries, the peace conference was held in Paris, the territory of the French.

The quarrel between Britain and France also turned the days before the peace talks into a wet market. The progress of the peace talks has increased almost to zero in recent days, and neither side has been able to come up with a good proposal to resolve their current conflicts.

In the end, Prime Minister Kent proposed a compromise solution, that is, to reduce the number of participants in the meeting, and the conflict between Britain and France would be resolved by the four major powers of the Entente, or even the peace talks would be directly negotiated by the four major powers.

Small countries like the Balkans and Belgium have only the right to wait for notice, but they do not have the right to participate in the talks in person to compete for their interests.

As for the United States and Italy, neither of these countries nor Germany is adjacent and has no territorial claims.

At that time, Germany's reparations would be distributed directly to all the victorious powers, and they would just have to leave a copy without caring too much about their opinions.

It was at the suggestion of Prime Minister Kent that Clemenceau, chairman of the Peace Conference, announced that the number of people participating in the peace talks would be reduced, and a total of 10 people would be drawn from the four major powers of the Entente, Britain, France, Russia, and Australia, to determine the current conflict of interests between Britain and France and the progress of the peace talks as a whole.

The announcement caused an uproar, but all the countries excluded from the conference were helpless.

Italy and the United States are the ones who are really qualified to resist, but this does not mean that Italy and the United States have the strength to resist.

As for the Balkan countries and Belgium and other countries, these small countries are relatively acquainted, and can only visit the representatives of the four major powers of the Entente as much as possible, each holding their thighs.

After the number of people was reduced, the progress of the peace talks proceeded smoothly. Although Britain and France still have conflicting interests, they both know that peace talks are inevitable.

After a preliminary estimate of the casualties and losses of various countries, and in combination with the actual situation in Germany, the four major powers of the Entente agreed to set the funds for the German reparations at 20 billion pounds, and the four major powers of the Entente to divide up all the military industrial enterprises and equipment of important factories in Germany.

Australasia was also allowed priority access to some of the equipment and skilled personnel of these factories, and all countries agreed to Australasia's immigration to Germany.

The share of the 20 billion reparations was also negotiated by the four major powers. As the real dominant powers of the Entente, the four major powers had the highest proportion, accounting for 85% of the 20 billion reparations, or 17 billion pounds.

Among them, the ratio of Britain, France, Russia and Australia to distribute the 17 billion pounds of compensation is 3:3:3:1, which is about 5.1 billion:5.1 billion:5.1 billion:1.7 billion (unit pounds).

Although it is true that Russia and France suffered the highest casualties, Britain is currently the strongest, and it is acceptable for each of the three countries to divide the reparations equally.

Although Australasia is also one of the four major powers, it has contributed the least and the lowest national strength, so it is natural to get the lowest 10% indemnity.

Although it seems that it is only one-third of the reparations paid by any one of Britain, France and Russia, it is only more than the reparations of all but the four great powers, and only a little less than their combined, which is worthy of the status of the four great powers of Australasia.

After all, Australasia is a small country, and theoretically a £1.7 billion reparations can do a lot of things, such as raising the country's strength to a big level.

If we add in the reparations from other countries of the Allies, the amount of reparations that Australasia can receive has exceeded 2 billion pounds, which can be described as a wave of sudden wealth.

As for the remaining 1.5 percent of the reparations, or about £3 billion, it will be distributed among the United States and Italy, as well as all the other victorious powers.

Just let them transfer the contradiction from the four major powers of the Entente to other competitors, after all, 3 billion pounds is not a small number, I am afraid that one-tenth is enough to make those small countries rich in an instant.

As for the most controversial Anglo-French cession of German lands, the four great powers also reached a certain consensus.

Germany must have ceded a part of the land as compensation, and Alsace and Lorraine, which the French had in their hearts, could not escape.

In addition, a small amount of land on the border between Germany and Belgium was to be ceded to Belgium as compensation for Belgium's innocent involvement in the war.

The French, on the other hand, abandoned their demand for a republic on the west bank of the Rhine and instead formed a republic with a part of the northern part of Alsace Lorraine, under a French mandate.

Although the West Bank of the Rhine was not at risk of being ceded, the French had demanded that the land be established as a military exclusion zone, forbidden to any German troops, and that Allied troops be stationed in the area.

On the German Eastern Front, the annexation of East Prussia by the Russians, German Poland and Silesia's great appetites would certainly not be satisfied by Britain and France.

Originally, the French did not oppose the Russian demands, but most of their own demands were rejected by the British, and the French did not want to see the Russians cut such a large amount of land for nothing.

Eventually, after negotiations between the four great powers, the Russians reached a compromise and abandoned the land claims of East Prussia and Silesia in favor of annexing all of Poland.

The Polish Corridor, which is famous in history, should also be called the Russian Polish Corridor at this time. In addition to being ceded to Poland, Danzig, an important city in East Prussia, was to be administered by the four Allied powers as a free city nominally belonging to Germany but garrisoned by Allied troops.

Because the current Austro-Hungarian Empire was not fragmented, and because Austria-Hungary was one of the defeated countries, the region of Silesia was not assigned to Czechoslovakia, which was not born, but remained under German rule.

But this was not a good thing for Germany, because the Entente was making up for it elsewhere.

First of all, the German army and navy, the German navy was completely disbanded, and only small warships of less than 300 tons were allowed to remain.

All German warships were accepted by Britain and France, of which the lead ships were handed over to Britain and France in a ratio of 6: 4.

The German Army was allowed to keep only 150,000 troops and was not allowed to be armed with weapons other than rifles.

Machine guns and artillery are prohibited weapons in Germany, and they are not allowed to be produced privately by German officials and civilians, and violators will be severely punished.

The 20 billion pounds of war reparations would be divided into 80 years, with 100 million pounds repaid annually for the first 10 years, and then handed over to the Allies for distribution.

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(End of chapter)