The Ethiopian delegates straggled in, tall and handsome in their white robes. The great museums gradually reopened and the children played in the parks. On May Day, the city closed down as the left brought out thousands of demonstrators for the annual socialist rally and the government responded by calling out the troops. All over the center of Paris there were clashes; rumor had it that more than two thousand had been taken to hospital seriously injured.1By May, the German terms were largely completed, many of the borders in Central and Southern Europe had been drawn, at least on paper, and a start had been made on the treaties with Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman empire. A sour joke ran around Paris that they were preparing a “just and lasting war.”2 At the heart of the conference was the new Council of Four—Clemenceau, Lloyd George, Orlando and Wilson—which had been formed in the last week of March. The idea was to meet without the customary entourage of experts and secretaries, to settle the big questions among themselves.
