On May 5, 1919, the delegation from Italy—led by Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando and Foreign Minister Sidney Sonnino—returns to the Versailles Peace Conference in Paris, France, after leaving abruptly 11 days earlier during contentious negotiations over the territory Italy would receive after the First World War. Italy’s entrance into World War I on the side […]
Category Archives: World War I
Discussion Of Italian Claims Begins At Paris Peace Conference
On April 19, 1919, the Saturday before Easter, tense and complicated negotiations begin at the Paris peace conference over Italy’s claims to territory in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Italians must somehow be mollified, wrote Britain’s foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, and the only question is how to mollify them at the smallest cost to mankind. […]
International Labor Organization Founded
On this day in 1919, in Paris, France, the International Labor Organization (ILO) is founded as an independent, affiliated agency of the League of Nations. The call for just and equal labor standards and improved working and living conditions for the world’s workers had begun to be heard long before the outbreak of World War […]
Formal Commission Is Established On The League Of Nations
On January 25, 1919, in Paris, delegates to the peace conference formally approve the establishment of a commission on the League of Nations. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson insisted on chairing the commission—for him, the establishment of the League lay squarely at the center of the peace negotiations. He was supported by British Prime Minister David […]
Peace Conference Opens In Paris
On this day in Paris, France, in the sumptuous Salle d’Horloge on the Quai d’Orsay, delegates convene for the official opening of the peace conference that will end the Great War. For Germany, already laid low in defeat, opening the peace conference on January 18 was an affront to national pride. On that same day […]
Rebel Leaders Are Murdered In Failed Coup In Berlin
A coup launched in Berlin by a group of radical socialist revolutionaries is brutally suppressed by right-wing paramilitary units from January 10 to January 15, 1919; the group’s leaders, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, are murdered. Germany’s long, ultimately losing struggle on the battlefield—culminating in the signing of the armistice in November 1918—and dismal conditions […]
Leaders Of The Big Four Nations Meet For The First Time In Paris
The day after British Prime Minister David Lloyd George’s arrival in Paris, he meets with representatives from the other Big Four nations—Prime Ministers Georges Clemenceau of France and Vittorio Orlando of Italy and President Woodrow Wilson of the United States—at the French Foreign Ministry on the Quai d’Orsay, for the first of what will be […]
Theodore Roosevelt Dies
Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th president of the United States, dies at Sagamore Hill, his estate overlooking New York’s Long Island Sound. A dynamic and energetic politician, Theodore Roosevelt is credited with creating the modern presidency. As a young Republican, Roosevelt held a number of political posts in New York in the 1880s and ’90s and […]