�������t¶��

Dozens of nations were invited to attend, but in the end the conference was dominated by three men: French premier Georges Clemenceau, British prime minister David Lloyd George, and American president Woodrow Wilson.

But during the treaty deliberations, French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau supposedly quipped that one thing was certain: "The historians will not say that Belgium invaded Germany."

Not far away on the Avenue Georges Clemenceau, lined with plane trees, the préfet who heads the Hauts-de-Seine department has come to survey the wreckage that was the front of the local tax office.

The lead ship of the class, Clemenceau, was dismantled and recycled in the 2000s after a similarly contentious struggle with environmentalists.

One visitor in 1922 was former French prime minister Georges Clemenceau, known as the “Tiger of France,” who, like Lafayette, was once imprisoned for political reasons.