The British prime minister, David Lloyd George, pandering to public opinion, appointed to the British delegation to the Reparations Commission in Paris three of the most hard-line advocates of a punitive settlement: William Hughes, the doggedly aggressive prime minister of Australia; Lord Sumner, a law lord with a reputation for being “stony-hearted”; and Lord Cunliffe, the boorish and irascible former governor of the Bank of England.
