While Lord Curzon acknowledged that the Treaty of Versailles was not a peace treaty but a cessation of hostilities, Ezra Pound referred to it on Radio Rome, stating bluntly: The real crime is to end one war in order to make the next inevitable . The spectral pretensions to a peace without victors or vanquished, i.e. on the basis of President Wilson's programme, not only faded dramatically in Paris, but were transformed into humiliating conditions that cruelly punished the German people.
What is astonishing is that the hope of a negotiated peace could have been conceived after seeing the manufactured anti-German campaign in the international press and after seeing who and how the United States had been pushed into war against Germany. Even Stalin declared that the Treaty of Versailles was a diktat of hatred and theft. In Paris, a three-tier system was adopted.
The first was the public conference, held in full view of the public, which was shown to the swarms of journalists from all over the world who had come to cover the debates extensively, with all the paraphernalia openly staged.
The second level was the secret conferences of allied presidents and co-opted politicians, who met in private and compared notes and instructions passed to them by their hidden masters.
The third level was the nightly conferences of the Jewish leaders and their good Masons, known only to a select few, where the real agenda was discussed and decided.