Location

The Versailles Palace is served by the RER line C to Versailles Rive Gauche station from Paris. The train is marked with a 'V'. It takes about 30 minutes to get to Versailles from Paris, with a further 800 metre walk to the Chateau.

Latitude

48.804489 (48° 48' 08" N)dd>

Longitude

2.121563 (02° 07' 47" E)

The Galerie des Glaces (Hall of Mirrors)

Everyone knows that World War I lasted from '1914 to 1918'. Or did it? On a number of war memorials in Australia the dates of the war are shown as '1914–1919'. It was on 28 June 1919, when two representatives of the new German Republic signed the Treaty of Versailles with the victorious Allies, that peace finally and officially arrived.

The town of Versailles is 20 kilometres west of Paris. Here is the Château de Versailles built by the 'Roi Soleil' (the 'Sun King'), Louis XIV who ruled France between 1682 and 1715. The Château (usually referred to as the 'Palace' in English) reflected the might and power of the kings of France during that period. Once upon a time through the entrance gates, and set in the middle of the forecourt, the Place d'Armes, was an imposing statue of Louis XIV on horseback. Behind him, engraved on the buildings, is the phrase 'A Toutes Les Gloires de la France'—'To all the glories of France'.

On 28 June 1919, just before 3 pm, Germany's Foreign Minister, Hermann Müller, and Minister for Transport, Johannes Bell, entered through the great gate. They were led up the Grand Staircase past soldiers of the elite Garde Republicaine dressed in their uniforms of white trousers, black boots, dark blue coats, silver helmets with horsehair plumes and sabres in their hands. Through another line of the Garde Republicaine the Germans were shown into the most famous room at Versailles—the Galerie des Glaces (Hall of Mirrors). There, seated behind a long row of tables with their backs to the mirrors and looking out to the great gardens, were the Allied delegates to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. At the centre were the 'big three'—Georges Clemenceau, Prime Minister of France, David Lloyd George. The British Prime Minister, and Woodrow Wilson the President of the United States. Hundreds of other members of the many delegations at the conference were seated in every available space.

Müller and Bell were ushered to a small elegant Louis XV table facing the 'big three'. On the table, in a leather box, was a copy of the Treaty of Versailles, a long document which the delegates had laboured on for months in various hotels and conference rooms around Paris.

The German delegation had been party to none of these deliberations. They had been presented with the treaty at the Trianon Palace Hotel in Versailles on 7 May and had been given just three weeks to comment. Publication of the provisions of the treaty in Germany led to the resignation of the government, no member of which would sign what they saw as a 'diktat', a dictated peace. However, the Allies demanded that Germany comply or face the consequences.Allied troops were already occupying Germany up to the west bank of the River Rhine, refusal to sign would mean further invasion and occupation. A hastily put together German government now sent the unfortunate Müller and Bell to append their names to a document nobody of any consequence in Germany wished to be associated with.

After being bid to sign by Clemenceau, the Germans signed with their own pens and not those on the table which had been provided by French patriotic societies. As the signatures dried, triumphant guns boomed out around the great gardens of Versailles and across France. Then, in their delegations, the Allies came to the same table to put their names to one of the most significant documents of the 20th century—the Treaty of Versailles—and along with the British Empire delegation came the Prime Minister of Australia, William Morris ‘Billy’ Hughes.

Australian Prime Minister William 'Billy' Hughes (centre behind desk) at a meeting of the British Empire Delegation at British Prime Minister David Lloyd George's house in the Rue Nitot, Paris, France, June 1919. [AWM A02616]

Hughes, representing the Commonwealth of Australia, had been part of the British delegation from the beginning as had the other Dominion premiers from Canada, New Zealand and South Africa. At the same time, each Dominion was able to speak in its own right at the endless official sessions of the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. For the six months from January to June 1919 Paris was the centre of a kind of world government as delegations from virtually every nation which had taken part in the 'Great War' came to settle the outlines of what all hoped might be the 'great peace'. Treaties were drawn up with all the main enemies of the Allied powers: the Treaty of Versailles with Germany, the Treaty of Saint–Germain with Austria, the Treaty of Neuilly with Bulgaria, the Treaty of Sèvres with Turkey and the Treaty of Trianon with Hungary. A new international organisation, the League of Nations was created—very much at the prompting of President Wilson of the United States. The hope was that the League, supported by the nations of the world, would provide a forum for the peaceful settlement of disputes and thus war would be prevented.