ABSTRACT
“Working on Peace” follows the development of peoples as problems over the course of the peace conference and its aftermath. Only Italy had territory that was seriously adjudicated at the conference (the return of Alsace being one of Wilson’s Fourteen Points, and Ireland not being included at all, despite Sinn Fein’s pleas). Nevertheless, the attempt to redraw the map of Europe along the lines of self-determination, while promoting democracy as the basis of peace, only made the respective population problems of the victor states look more serious. By the end of the war and the end of the peace conference, the prevailing logic of a new world order of democracy – based on both liberalism and national self-determination – was that the influence of minorities needed to be minimized (even at the expense of their rights) in order to ensure a working democratic state and thus a stable, peaceful postwar order. The victor powers thus felt that they had much work to do at home.
