Why would there be a "negotiating table"?
Both sides' terms will be such as the other could only accept after total collapse, which means that the war will be fought on until one side or the other does - after which you get a dictated peace, not a negotiated one.
Did you never heard of
haggling?
Everyone starts with demands of golden mountains. Why wouldn't he? The more he demands, the more likely that when compromise happens, he'll end up closer to what he actually wanted.
If you
started demands with what you want, you'll never get what you want.
Demands of individuals are of no indication what terms would be. Foch wanted to annex everything up to Rhein. Well then, turns out that even at diktats, winners do not get all they wanted.
There was no negotiating table, because two sides were evenly matched. If one side knows very well it's about to lose, and other side is exhausted to want to cut their losses, you'll get negotiating table.
The amount of debt UK and France got by 1916-1917, made it necessary to fight to the death, because modest victory would cause collapse of their government. But in 1915, do you want to go all the way to Berlin, when Germans already offer you what you can sell to your own people as victory? Or would you rather keep borrowing from American banks until you're defacto satellite state. No, you get to the table, posture a bit before initial offer is amended in your favour, and call it a day.
Now, the hard part is to get to the situation where Germans accepted they are gonna lose, but Allies don't know how bad German situation is. If they knew total victory is mere months away, they'd want to throw another million of bodies at Germans to get
slightly better terms. Allies have to think that Germans are merely reasonable enough to realise that after 12 or 16 moths they're gonna collapse, while in reality Germans would be suing because they are 3 months away from collapse.