Between the borders

OF ALL the glories contained in the French foreign ministry, the most glorious is the Salon de l’Horloge. Sumptuous in gold and marble, graced by chandeliers and silks, washed with light slanting up from the River Seine, this is where old men thrashed out the Treaty of Versailles after the first world war. The Kellogg-Briand pact was signed here in 1928, pledging to outlaw the aggressive resort to arms for ever. And, on April 18th 1951, exalted by the trappings of empire, ministers from West Germany, Italy, France and the three Benelux countries put their names to the Treaty of Paris, the founding document of what, four decades later, was to become the European Union.