Indian soldiers in France going to sacrifice a sheep and a goat.

As the guns fell silent in 1918, World War 1 victors all agreed on one thing: Germany must pay. How much was a matter of debate but there was never any doubt that the post-war settlement enshrined in the Treaty of Versailles was going to be punitive. Germany did pay, but it was not alone. A century on, the world lives with the consequences of a peace accord that, even at the time, was criticised as making another war inevitable in Europe, a continent which had dominated the world for centuries. Economist JM Keynes, then a British Treasury official, resigned rather than be associated with a treaty he denounced as “Carthaginian” in its harshness. French Marshal Ferdinand Foch judged it “not so much a peace as a 20-year armistice”.