The Search for Peace in an Era of Revolution

World War I had unforeseen and dramatic consequences. Revolutionary fervor now swept the continent, especially in the former empires of Germany and Austria-Hungary. Many of the newly independent peoples of eastern and central Europe supported socialist principles, and activists on both the left and the right hoped for a political order based on military authority of the kind they had relied on during the war. Diplomats from around the world arrived in Paris in January 1919 to negotiate the terms of peace, though without fully recognizing the fact that the war was still going on not only in city streets, where soldiers were bringing the war home, but also in people’s hearts.