Excerpt from The Mirage of Versailles This book is an attempt to trace the historical connections and elucidate the strategic aspects of the Versailles settlement. It follows on the two earlier works The Hz'fiorjy of tba War and Tim Struggle for the Mine and seeks to place before the reader the necessary knowledge of high politics Which every day make history around us. I have sought to describe the settlement both in detail and as a Whole, to explain its significance and to identify the forces Which have been decisive in the history of the states con cerned. I need not say that I realise the immense difficulty of the task, that the exposition cannot possibly cover all the ground and that the attempt to connect facts and ideas in order to obtain Wide generalisations and broad outlook is conditioned by the limits set to this book. To confine myself to the essential appeared the only way to treat the mass of material. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.