structural:reformatting, information:highlighting, linguistic:translation
Paris 1919

Lloyd George represented Britain at the Paris Peace Conference, clashing with French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, US President Woodrow Wilson, and Italian Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando. Unlike Clemenceau and Orlando, Lloyd George on the whole stood on the side of generosity and moderation. He did not want to utterly destroy the German economy and political system—as Clemenceau demanded—with massive reparations. The economist John Maynard Keynes looked askance at Lloyd George's economic credentials in The Economic Consequences of the Peace, and in Essays in Biography called the Prime Minister a "goat-footed bard, half-human visitor to our age from the hag-ridden magic and enchanted woods of Celtic antiquity".

Lloyd George was also responsible for the pro-German shift in the peace conditions regarding borders of Poland. Instead of handing over Upper Silesia (2,073,000 people), and the southern part of East Prussia (720,000 people) to Poland as was planned before, the plebiscite was organised. Danzig (366,000 people) was organised as the Free City of Danzig. The Poles were grateful that he had saved that country from the Bolsheviks but were annoyed by his comment that they were "children who gave trouble". Distrusting Foreign Office professionals, Lloyd George and his team at Paris instead relied on non-professional experts through informal networks below them. They consulted with James Headlam-Morley about Danzig. Several academic historians also were consulted. Their experiences were the basis for building up diplomatic history as a field of academic research and the emergence of the new academic discipline of international relations.

Asked how he had done at the peace conference, Lloyd George retorted: "I think I did as well as might be expected, seated as I was between Jesus Christ and Napoleon Bonaparte." Historian Antony Lentin evaluated his role in Paris as a major success, saying:

He was an unrivalled negotiator: on top of his brief, full of bounce, sure of himself, forceful, engaging, compelling.... Acutely sensitive to what he divined as the motive force in his listeners, he was adept at finding the right tone and turn of phrase to divert that force in the desired direction.... powerful combative instincts, executive drive and an indomitable determination to succeed.... as visible and immediate trophies... the spoils of empire: the coveted Middle Eastern mandates, protecting the route to India and rich in oil. There were the confiscated German colonies in Africa and the South Pacific, making a reality of British rule from Cairo to the Cape and setting the far-flung bounds of Empire at their widest.... wholly in accord with British interest in a continental balance of power.