Not all questions were considered strictly along the lines of self-determination, or according to apparent requirements of justice and history. Many were considered along the lines of what would benefit France, what would enfeeble Germany, what would make useful counterweights in the balance of power. Sometimes old confusion would be replaced by new confusion; and sometimes new rearrangements would create new resentment and bitterness as well. Although the principle of self-determination might work relatively well in Western Europe, it tended toward absurdity in parts of Western Europe where political groups were often less important than – or intermingled with- ethnic or linguistic groups, or religious or social groups. When the diplomats
