Even after the president's testimony that the telegram was genuine, newspaper editors and some senators simply refused to believe it. - Arthur Herman

The result was a double disaster. The Chinese delegates refused to sign the final treaty, and left Paris in high dudgeon. When the news reached China, anti-Western and anti-Japanese riots exploded across the country. On May 4, some five thousand Chinese students stormed into Tiananmen Square in Peking to protest the Treaty of Versailles.

In Wilson's mind, the signing represented the defeat not simply of Germany but of an entire way of organizing the world. Balance of power, armed alliances, secret treaties, "might makes right" — all these assumptions would now be thrown out.

with the Bolshevik-dominated soviets around the country as their tool for enforcement — the first true totalitarian regime in history.