The Inquiry was a study group established in September 1917 by Woodrow Wilson to prepare materials for the peace negotiations following World War I. The group, composed of around 150 academics, was directed by the presidential adviser Edward House and supervised directly by the philosopher Sidney Mezes. The Heads of Research were Walter Lippmann and his successor Isaiah Bowman. The group first worked out of the New York Public Library but later worked from the offices of the American Geographical Society of New York once Bowman had joined the group. Mezes's senior colleagues were the geographer Isaiah Bowman, the historian and librarian Archibald Cary Coolidge, the historian James Shotwell, and the lawyer David Hunter Miller. Progressive confidants who were consulted on staffing but did not contribute directly to the administration or reports of the group included James Truslow Adams, Louis Brandeis, Abbott Lawrence Lowell, and Walter Weyl. Twenty-one members of The Inquiry, later integrated into the larger American Commission to Negotiate Peace, traveled to the Paris Peace Conference in January 1919 and accompanied Wilson aboard USS George Washington to France. Also included in the group were such academics as Paul Monroe, a professor of history at Columbia University and a key member of the Research Division who drew on his experience in the Philippines to assess the educational needs of developing areas such as Albania, Turkey, and Central Africa, and Frank A. Golder, a history professor from Washington State University, who specialized in the diplomatic history of Russia and wrote papers on Ukraine, Lithuania, Poland, and Russia. Recommendations The Inquiry provided various recommendations for the countries which it surveyed. Specifically, the recommendations discussed the ideal borders for various countries as well as various other conditions that were felt necessary to achieve a lasting peace free of tensions. France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Denmark The Inquiry recommended Alsace–Lorraine to be returned to France, the parts of the Saarland, which France had controlled before 1815, to be returned to it, and the Rhineland to be demilitarized. In regards to Belgium, it was recommended for Belgium's neutral status to be abolished and for Belgium to be allowed to annex some territory in the Maastricht and Malmedy regions for strategic (in the case of Maastricht) and ethnic (in the case of Malmedy) reasons. As for Luxembourg, it was recommended for it to be annexed to Belgium or to have its independence restored. Meanwhile, there should