claims?" How often have the same cries and queries been uttered in
Paris?

When the first confidential talks began at the Vienna Congress, the same
difficulties arose as were encountered over a century later in Paris
about the number of states that were entitled to have representatives
there. At the outset, the four Cabinet Ministers of Austria, Russia,
England, and Prussia kept things to themselves, excluding vanquished
France and the lesser Powers. Some time afterward, however, Talleyrand,
the spokesman of the worsted nation, accompanied by the Portuguese
Minister, Labrador, protested vehemently against the form and results of
the deliberations. At one sitting passion rose to white heat and
Talleyrand spoke of quitting the Congress altogether, whereupon a
compromise was struck and eight nations received the right to be
represented. In this way the Committee of Eight was formed.[9] In Paris
discussion became to the full as lively, and on the first Saturday, when
the representatives of Belgium, Greece, Poland, and the other small
states delivered impassioned speeches against the attitude of the Big
Five they were maladroitly answered by M. Clemenceau, who relied, as the
source from which emanated the superior right of the Great Powers, upon
the twelve million soldiers they had placed in the field. It was
unfortunate that force should thus confer privileges at a Peace
Conference which was convoked to end the reign of force and privilege.
In Vienna it was different, but so were the times.

Many of the entries and comments of the chroniclers of 1815 read like
extracts from newspapers of the first three months of 1919. "About
Poland, they are fighting fiercely and, down to the present, with no
decisive result," writes Count Carl von Nostitz, a Russian military
observer.... "Concerning Germany and her future federative constitution,