There is a cartoon, familiar to every GCSE history student, in which a group of Western leaders leave the Versailles peace conference while a child weeps. The infant is captioned "1940 class."

Peace and Future Cannon Fodder, a haunting prophecy drawn by the Australian newspaper cartoonist Will Dyson a century ago, was about the inevitable failure of the peace of 1918.

But as a condemnation of a myopic Western statesmanship foreshadowing catastrophe, it may as well have been published today. 

Donald Trump’s decision to pull out the handful of US forces required to keep the peace – apparently for no other reason than to be able to say he had brought the troops home before next year’s election -…

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