The Big Four believed they had written a metaphor. That was their first mistake.
Diplomats often mistake metaphors for harmless things. They assume language floats harmlessly above reality, like decorative fog drifting across the machinery of politics. But metaphors are instructions and if repeated long enough, someone eventually tries to follow them and once someone tries to follow them, the metaphor becomes engineering.
Clause One of the Treaty of 1919 was meant to guide civilization gently away from violence. Instead, it became a blueprint. Not immediately though for history is rarely that efficient but over the next century, Clause One slowly stopped sounding poetic and began sounding practical.
The sword would be demilitarized. The sword would be shrunk. The sword would become a word. All that remained was figuring out how.