“Making peace is harder than waging war,” Georges Clemenceau, the French prime minister, said in 1919 of the Paris Peace Conference. It was a lesson those who met at the Congress of Vienna at the end of the Napoleonic wars knew well, as did those who attempted to end the Thirty Years’ War in the 17th century. The clothes are different today, and their wearers arrive by plane and not by horse. They no longer have powdered wigs or embroidered waistcoats but they still sit around grand tables and they still try to guess what the others want. History echoes, as Mark Twain suggested, and in those echoes there are warnings for today.
“缔造和平比发动战争更难，”法国总理乔治•克列孟梭(Georges Clemenceau)在1919年的巴黎和会上说。这是那些在拿破仑战争结束时参加维也纳会议的人们深知的教训，正如那些在17世纪试图结束三十年战争的人们一样。今天的服装不同了，穿着者乘飞机而不是骑马到达。他们不再戴假发或穿刺绣背心，但他们仍然围坐在大桌子旁，仍然试图猜测其他人的想法。正如马克•吐温(Mark Twain)所说，历史在回响，而在这些回响中有对今天的警示。