Chinese delegate". On 4 May 1919, it was decided that the former German rights in the Shandong province would go to Japan, sparking the May Fourth Movement in China as hundreds of thousands of Chinese university students demonstrated against the decision. Koo found himself bombarded with telegrams from Chinese university students asking him not to sign the Treaty of Versailles if it meant ceding the Shandong, at one point receiving 7, 000 such telegrams in a single day. Koo also called for an end to imperialist institutions such as extraterritoriality, tariff controls, legation guards, and lease holds. The Western powers refused his claims and, consequently, the Chinese delegation at the Paris Peace Conference was the only nation that did not sign the Treaty of Versailles at the signing ceremony. Initially, Koo had planned to sign the Treaty of Versailles as long he could insert reservations stating his government was opposed to the Japanese gaining the German rights in the Shandong. Clemenceau however told Koo that this procedure was unacceptable and that the Chinese could either sign the Treaty of Versailles or not sign. Koo was keen to have China be one of the founding members of the League of Nations, which would signify its desire to be treated as an equal by the other nations of the world. The possibility of not signing the Treaty of Versailles and being excluded from the League was major concerns for him. Koo discovered a loophole in that the Treaty of St. Germain also included the Covent of the League of Nations in its first section. In this way, Koo could avoided signing the Treaty of Versailles while he signed the Treaty of St. Germain, which made China automatically a member of the League of Nations. Koo and Oei remained in Paris after the conference ended, and at an especially sumptuous ball attended by the elite of Paris society announced in French their engagement on 10 October 1919. By this time, many had assumed that Koo was already married to Oei as the fact that Koo's first wife had died in January of that year was not well known. Political career Koo also was involved in the formation of the League of Nations as China's first representative to the newly formed League. In 1921, Koo became the Chinese minister to Britain. Much to his displeasure, Punch published a ballad that "welcomed" Koo to London