Treaty of Versailles (1919)

On 27 October 1918 British Prime Minister David Lloyd George summoned Canadian Prime Minister Sir Robert Laird Borden back to Britain to prepare for possible peace talks to end the First World War. Two days later Borden replied that “the press and the people of this country take it for granted that Canada will be represented at the Peace Conference.” Lloyd George was sympathetic but predicted “difficult problems.” In December it was agreed that dominion and Indian representatives would be present when questions directly relating to their interests were at stake and that one of the five members of the British delegation at the peace talks would always be from the dominions or India. A month later, after the conference had assembled at Paris, Lloyd George persuaded American president Woodrow Wilson and French premier Georges Clemenceau that Canada, Australia, South Africa, and India would have two delegates and New Zealand one at its plenary meetings. Borden recognized that these were more matters of form than substance and that representation was “largely a question of sentiment.” It was Charles J. Doherty and Arthur L. Sifton who signed the Treaty of Versailles in June 1919 on Canada’s behalf.

The summary of the treaty had been made public the month before. Borden returned to Ottawa, and the minister of trade and commerce, Sir George Eulas Foster, was given responsibility for the Canadians who remained in Paris. At the conference he spoke frankly of his reservations about some of the treaty’s harsh terms. He opposed the heavy reparations levied on Germany and its exclusion from the League of Nations. There was much left to be done, he thought, and the world, especially Europe, was in post-war turmoil. If Germany had been made a member of the league, “the solution of many of these problems would be greatly assisted.”