The Big Four refers to the top Allied leaders who met at the Paris Peace Conference in January 1919, following the end of World War I (1914–18). The Big Four are also known as the Council of Four. It was composed of Woodrow Wilson of the United States, David Lloyd George of Britain, Vittorio Orlando of Italy, and Georges Clemenceau of France.[1]
Contents |
Woodrow Wilson(December 28, 1856 – February 3, 1924) served as the 28th President of the United States from 1913 to 1921. A leader of the Progressive Movement, he served as sonPresident of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913. With Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft dividing the Republican Party vote, Wilson was elected President as a Democrat in 1912. He is the only U.S. President to hold a Ph.D. degree, which he obtained from Johns Hopkins University.
In his first term, Wilson persuaded a Democratic Congress to pass the Federal Reserve Act, Federal Trade Commission Act, the Clayton Antitrust Act, the Federal Farm Loan Act and America's first-ever federal progressive income tax in the Revenue Act of 1913. Wilson brought many white Southerners into his administration, and tolerated their expansion of segregation in many federal agencies.
Narrowly re-elected in 1916, Wilson's second term centered on World War I. He based his re-election campaign around the slogan "he kept us out of war", but U.S. neutrality was challenged in early 1917 when the German government sent the Zimmermann Telegram to Mexico and proposed a military alliance in a war against the U.S., and began unrestricted submarine warfare, sinking, without warning, every American merchant ship its submarines could find. In April 1917 Wilson asked Congress to declare war.
He focused on diplomacy and financial considerations, leaving the waging of the war primarily in the hands of the Army. On the home front in 1917, he began the United States' first draft since the American Civil War, raised billions of dollars in war funding through Liberty Bonds, set up the War Industries Board, promoted labor union growth, supervised agriculture and food production through the Lever Act, took over control of the railroads, enacted the first federal drug prohibition, and suppressed anti-war movements. He did not encourage the wave of anti-German sentiment sweeping the country in 1917-18, but did nothing to stop it.
In the late stages of the war, Wilson took personal control of negotiations with Germany, including the armistice. He issued his Fourteen Points, his view of a post-war world that could avoid another terrible conflict. He went to Paris in 1919 to create the League of Nations and shape the Treaty of Versailles, with special attention on creating new nations out of defunct empires. Largely for his efforts to form the League, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1919, during the bitter fight with the Republican-controlled Senate over the U.S. joining the League of Nations, Wilson collapsed with a debilitating stroke. He refused to compromise, effectively destroying any chance for ratification. The League of Nations was established anyway, but the United States never joined.
A Presbyterian of deep religious faith, he appealed to a gospel of service and infused a profound sense of moralism into his idealistic internationalism, now referred to as "Wilsonianism". Wilsonianism calls for the United States to enter the world arena to fight for democracy, and has been a contentious position in American foreign policy. Because of his leadership in World War I, he is frequently ranked as one of the greatest U.S. Presidents.
David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor OM, PC (17 January 1863 – 26 March 1945) was a British Liberal politician and statesman. He was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom at the head of a wartime coalition government between the years 1916–1922 and was the Leader of the Liberal Party from 1926–1931.
During a long tenure of office, mainly as Chancellor of the Exchequer, he was a key figure in the introduction of many reforms which laid the foundations of the modern welfare state. He was the last Liberal to be Prime Minister, as his coalition premiership was supported more by Conservatives than by his own Liberals, and the subsequent split was a key factor in the decline of the Liberal Party as a serious political force. When he eventually became leader of the Liberal Party a decade later he was unable to lead it back to power.
He is best known as the highly energetic Prime Minister (1916–1922) who guided the Empire through the First World War to victory over Germany. He was a major player at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 that reordered the world after the Great War. Lloyd George was a devout evangelical and an icon of 20th century liberalism as the founder of the welfare state. He is regarded as having made a greater impact on British public life than any other 20th century leader, thanks to his leadership of the war effort, his postwar role in reshaping Europe, and his introduction of the welfare state before the war.
He is so far the only British Prime Minister to have been Welsh and to have spoken English as a second language, with Welsh being his first.
Vittorio Emanuele Orlando (May 19, 1860 - December 1, 1952) was an Italian diplomat and political figure. He was born in Palermo, Sicily. His father, a landed gentleman, delayed venturing out to register his son's birth for fear of Giuseppe Garibaldi's 1,000 patriots who had just stormed into Sicily on the first leg of their march to build an Italian nation.
In 1897 he was elected in the Italian Chamber of Deputies (Italian: Camera dei Deputati) for the district of Partinico for which he was constantly reelected until 1925. He aligned himself with Giovanni Giolitti, who was Prime Minister of Italy five times between 1892 and 1921.
Aside from his prominent political role Orlando is also known for his writings, over a hundred works, on legal and judicial issues; Orlando was himself a professor of law.
Georges Benjamin Clemenceau (French pronunciation: [ʒɔʁʒ klemɑ̃so]; 28 September 1841 – 24 November 1929) was a French statesman, physician, and journalist. He served as the Prime Minister of France from 1906 to 1909, and again from 1917 to 1920. For nearly the final year of World War I he led France, and was one of the major voices behind the Treaty of Versailles at the Paris Peace Conference in the aftermath of the war. He is commonly nicknamed "Le Tigre" (The Tiger) and "Père-la-Victoire" (Father Victory) for his determination as a wartime leader.
While the Allies at the Paris Peace Conference were more than twenty nations, the Big Four entered the Versailles were the decision makers. However, Orlando pulled out of the conference after his demands weren't met,[2] leaving the Big Three (Woodrow Wilson, David Lloyd George and Georges Clemenceau) as the only remaining decision makers at the conference. These heads of government were the of it all leading architects of the Treaty of Versailles which was signed by Germany; the Treaty of St. Germain, with Austria; the Treaty of Neuilly, with Bulgaria; the Treaty of Trianon, with Hungary; and the Treaty of Sèvres, with the Ottoman Empire.[3]