Al Stewart - League of notions

I'm here sitting in the wreck of Europe


With a map of Europe


Spread out in a hall of Versailles


And every single nationality and principality


have come for a piece of the pie





I'm sitting in the wreck of Europe


With a map of Europe


And the lines and the borders are gone


We've got to do this jigsaw puzzle


It's an awful muddle


But somehow we've got to go on





Lawrence of Arabia is waiting in the wings


He's got some Arab sheikhs and kings


And we're in debt to them somehow


Lawrence of Arabia has got this perfect vision


Gonna sell him down the river


There's no time for him now





I think I'm gonna take a piece of Russia


And a Piece of Germany


And give them to Poland again


I'll put together Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia


And hope that is how they'll remain





Then I'll take a bit of Turkey


Then a lot of Turkey


This is all quite a heady affair


There's Persia and Iraq to pick up


And there's Churchill's hiccup


And we can't leave it up in the air





Woodrow Wilson waves his fourteen points around


And says "The time to act is now


Won't get this opportunity again"


Woodrow Wilson has his fourteen points


But Clemenceau turns to Lloyd George


And says "You know that


God himself had only ten"





Today I'm carried by a league of notions


(It's a league of notions)


By a league of notions


I don't think I quite understand


(I don't think I understand)


I only know from this commotion


(From this commotion)


There's a chance that we could turn


The world in the palm of our hands


(We can turn the world in the palm of our hands)





Voices in the corridors of power


Candles burning hour by hour


Still you know that to the victors go the spoils


Such a great responsibility to make it fair


And there must be some reparations now


And don't forget the oil





Today I'm carried by a league of notions


(It's a league of notions)


By a league of notions


I don't think I quite understand


(I don't think I understand)


I only know from this commotion


(From this commotion)


There's a chance that we could turn


The world in the palm of our hands


(We can turn the world in the palm of our hands)





Pax vobiscum


Wo-Oh, Pax vobiscum