The Dominion. SATURDAY, MARCH 22, 1919. VERSAILLES AND ITS TRAGIC STORY

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 152, 22 March 1919, Page 6

The Dominion. SATURDAY, MARCH 22, 1919. VERSAILLES AND ITS TRAGIC STORY

Wilts 1914 ended, seven Powers had declared war on the Central. Powers. The years 1915 and 1916 saw the. seven Powers increased to nine, and in 1917 the States against Germany were increased to eighteen. The. year 1916 saw the defection of Russia and the addition of four small States to the Allies. The Allied Powers represented at the Peace Congress to-day number twenty-one, and so tho largest part of the human race has a direct and special interest in the peace gathering, which in a sense is a great international Court of Justice,' whose business it is to mete out righteous judgment on the war-makers whose criminality led to the sacrifiec of ten millions of human lives and to the loss of treasure to an extent that staggers the imagination. Everything about .this great gathering throbs with interest. Every morning the dolibcra-1 tions, reported in all languages, are studied by countless millions. The place where ■ this historic assembly has been meeting is, of course, of secondary interest, but it is of.interest, and the Peace Congress becomes more real ancl more intelligible/ when we can picture in our minds its meeting-place and its surroundings. The Peace Congress will not end its sitting without the world learning once more that despotism and injustice get at the last the punishment they deserve. The Peace Congress meets in buildings and surroundings where, if walls and trees could speak, they would toll the same stern lesson of the despots of the past and their merited doom. Versailles, the meeting-place of the Congress, has already played its part in the war. When the. Supreme War Council was set- up, Versailles was made its seat, and all the great decisions of the campaign that led to victory came from Versailles. When the beaten enemy asked for an

arnnsuce uiu ijuuuciii ibhubis am military and naval chiefs of the-Al-lies flocked to Versailles and grantee armistice terms which meant the unconditional surrender of the enemy. The place and surrounding! of this meeting of the Allied rcprc- - sentatives are sketched by Current ■History for December thus: "Trianon Palace was isolated. The deliberations were conducted amid the quietude of a woodland dell, retained in all its beauty by the French Government since the days of Louis XIV. To make more secure the isolation of the palace for the conferences, all traffic in all directions was stopped; Guards of French soldiers, British, American, and Italians stood on duly at various posts. During the sessions the guard about the palace was . considerably reinforced so as to prevent the slightest possibility of any unauthorised parson approaching the grounds." Such .were the mcctingplace and surroundings of the preliminary Peace Conference that granted the armistices, and the.v are the meeting-place and surroundings of the Peace Congress to-day. This palace and woodland dell are part of the great Versailles building enterprise which Louis XIV carried through for' his own glory—an : enterprise whose tragic story may well bo recalled. Some of the Pharaohs of Egypt used up the resources of their empires of long ago in building temples and pyramids, and thus sought to make themselves immortal. Louis XIV became obsessed by fi, similar madness for building. Paris, where his palace and court were, ho did not like, and he resolved to turn his hunting grounds at Versailles (and. Trianon) twelve miles away into gardens second •' to none in .Europe, and to. erect a palacc which for size and splendour would have no rival in Europe, and' to transport his court from Paris to bis new creation. "Armies," Says Thackeray, "were employed in thn. inturviils of their ivnrliko. ln-

hours to.level hills, or pile them up; •to turn rivers, and to build aque l ducts,-and - transport woods, and ' construct smooth terraces and long, canals. A. vast garden grew up ina wilderness, am! a stupendous palace in a garden, and a stately- city round the palace: the 'City "was I peopled with'parasites who daily. came to worship before the creatov !of these wonders—the Great King." Thousands of millions of francs, wrung from the poor and the middle class by heavy taxation, was spent on this stupendous enterprise. A great number, of architects, sculptors, and artists sweated their brains planning and adorning this, palacq. A city soon sprang uj).'contiguous to the King's palace, for the nobles migrated, and places of commerce and industry sprang up to provide for the needs of the new inhabitants. At.first' the-furniture, of the palace was made of solid silver, but as timo ■ went on and France was hit by disastrous wars,-and the taxpayer be-, came harder to bleed, the : silver furniture was sent to the mint, and highly carved wood furniture took its place. Later on the Grand Trianon, rich in historic associations, was added to the palace. The two Bourbon succcssors of Louis XIV lived in it, and later on Napoleon made it his home. But before Napoleon's rise the people rose against the corrupt, worn-out Bourbon despotism. When the Bastilc fell, the women gathered in insurrection, inarched to Versailles fol-

lowed by the National Guards, flowed over the King's palaces and gardens, and swept the King and his court to Paris, to prison, and to punishment, ending in death. The palaces were, emptied of their dwellers, and the city.was soon depopulated. This was in a bloody period that began with 1789. Eighty years passed away, and in 1870, in the Gallery of Mirrors, nut far from the Great Trianon.'the .conquering Huns set up a new despotism by proclaiming the Prussian King German Emperor. That despotism, defeated and disgraced, is waiting now 'for sentence and punishment almost under the shadow of the palace in which it was proclaimed in IS7O. The- story of Versailles is thus full of tragedy, and the historian is constrained to become the moralist.Mit. ■ Bradley, in his (trail Days of Pe.r-1 mill eg, very aptly says: "Here as nowhere else in history, n great drama was played out to the bitter end. Every sin was allowed to work out its logical consequences. The Hag that floats above it records the vengeance that inertakes all authority and power that waste themselves on selfish aims and ilaro not face reality."