The First World War was the defining event of the twentieth century and the Paris Peace Conference the most important such conference. The four years following the war helped determine whether the world would find peace or face another war. In December 1916 David Lloyd George became Prime Minister of Britain and came to dominate wartime diplomacy and postwar international affairs. Although he resigned in October 1922 and never held high office again, he was the pre-eminent liberal statesman of the twentieth century. Arguably Lloyd George was the equal of Winston Churchill as a war leader and indisputably superior as a creative, ingenious, and visionary statesman.