Paul Hymans was the champion of the small states in the League of Nations Commission at the Paris Peace Conference and was rewarded by becoming the League's first president. He thereby brought about Belgium's transition from the status of sheltered child to full participation in much great-power diplomacy.

Sally Marks is an American independent historian specializing in interwar European (and some American) international politics, particularly in the pre-Hitlerian era from 1918 to 1933. Her dissertation at the University of London dealt with the Paris peace settlement, as have her works since. A recipient of awards from the American Council of Learned Societies and the AHA, she has published numerous articles and chapters, especially about the controversial question of German reparations payments. Her books include: The Illusion of Peace: International Relations in Europe, 1918–1933 (Macmillan-St. Martin's-Palgrave, 1976, 2nd ed. 2003); Innocent Abroad: Belgium at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 (University of North Carolina Press, 1981), which won the George Louis Beer prize of the AHA and Phi Alpha Theta's senior scholar award; and The Ebbing of European Ascendancy: An International History of the World, 1914–1945 (Edward Arnold, 2002). She has served on the AHA's program committee and Beer prize committee, which she chaired, and is a member of the editorial board of H-Diplo. Her study of Paul Hymans of Belgium will appear in October 2009. Beyond that, she is engaged in re-examining the German question, 1918–1921.