Chapter 23

And Mr. Wilson happened just then to be in quest of a fulcrum on which to rest his idealistic lever. For he had already been driven by egotistic governments from several of his commanding positions, and people were gibingly asking whether the new political gospel was being preached only as a foil for backslidings. Thus he abandoned the freedom of the seas ... on which he had taken a determined stand before the world. Although he refused the Rhine frontier to France, he had reluctantly given way to M. Clemenceau in the matter of the Saar Valley, assenting to a monstrous arrangement by which the German inhabitants of that region were to be handed over to the French Republic against their expressed will, as a set-off for a sum in gold which Germany would certainly be unable to pay.[194] He doubtless foresaw that he would also yield on the momentous issue of Shantung and the Chino-Japanese secret treaty. In a word, some of his more important abstract tenets professed in words were being brushed aside when it came to acts, and his position was truly unenviable. Naturally, therefore, he seized the first favorable occasion to apply them vigorously and unswervingly. This was supplied by the dispute between Italy and Jugoslavia, two nations which he held, so to say, in the hollow of his hand.

The latter state, still in the making, depended for its frontiers entirely on the fiat of the American President backed by the Premiers of Britain and France. And of this backing Mr. Wilson was assured. Italy, although more powerful militarily than Jugoslavia, was likewise economically dependent upon the good-will of the two English-speaking communities, who were assured in advance of the support of the French Republic. If, therefore, she could not be reasoned or cajoled into obeying the injunctions of the Supreme Council, she could easily be made malleable by other means. In her case, therefore, Mr. Wilson's ethical notions might be fearlessly applied. That this was the idea which underlay the President's policy is the obvious inference from the calm, unyielding way in which he treated the Italian delegation. In this connection it should be borne in mind that there is no more important distinction between all former peace settlements and that of the Paris Conference than the unavowed but indubitable fact that the latter rests upon the hegemony of the English-speaking communities of the world, whereas the former were based upon the balance of power. So immense a change could not be effected without discreetly throwing out as useless ballast some of the highly prized dogmas of the accepted political creeds, even at the cost of impairing the solidarity of the Latin races. This was effected incidentally. As a matter of fact, the French are not, properly speaking, a Latin race, nor has their solidarity with Italy or Spain ever been a moving political force in recent times. Italy's refusal to fight side by side with her Teuton allies against France and her backers may conceivably be the result of racial affinities, but it has hardly ever been ascribed to that sentimental source. Sentiment in politics is a myth. In any case, M. Clemenceau discerned no pressing reason for making painful efforts to perpetuate the Latin union, while solicitude for national interests hindered him from making costly concessions to it.

Naturally the cardinal innovation of which this was a corollary was never invoked as the ground for any of the exceptional measures adopted by the Conference. And yet it was the motive for several, for although no allusion was made to the hegemony of Anglo-Saxondom, it was ever operative in the subconsciousness of the two plenipotentiaries. And in view of the omnipotence of these two nations, they temporarily sacrificed consistency to tactics, probably without conscientious qualms, and certainly without political misgivings. That would seem to be a partial explanation of the lengths to which the Conference went in the direction of concessions to the Great Powers' imperialist demands. France asked to be recognized and treated as the personification of that civilization for which the Allied peoples had fought. And for many reasons, which it would be superfluous to discuss here, a large part of her claim was allowed. This concession was attacked by many as connoting a departure from principle, but the deviation was more apparent than real, for under all the wrappings of idealistic catchwords lay the primeval doctrine of force. The only substantial difference between the old system and the new was to be found in the wielders of the force and the ends to which they intended to apply it. Force remains the granite foundation of the new ordering, as it had been of the old. But its employment, it was believed, would be different in the future from what it had been in the past. Concentrated in the hands of the English-speaking peoples, it would become so formidable a weapon that it need never be actually wielded. Possession of overwhelmingly superior strength would suffice to enforce obedience to the decrees of its possessors, which always will, it is assumed, be inspired by equity. An actual trial of strength would be obviated, therefore, at least so long as the relative military and economic conditions of the world states underwent no sensible change. To this extent the war specter would be exorcised and trying abuses abolished.

That those views were expressly formulated and thrown into the clauses of a secret program is unlikely. But it seems to be a fact that the general outlines of such a policy were conceived and tacitly adhered to. These outlines governed the action of the two world-arbiters, not only in the dictatorial decrees issued in the name of political idealism and its Fourteen Points, which were so bitterly resented as oppressive by Italy, Rumania, Jugoslavia, Poland, and Greece, but likewise in those other concessions which scandalized the political puritans and gladdened the hearts of the French, the Japanese, the Jugoslavs, and the Jews. The dictatorial decrees were inspired by the delegates' fundamental aims, the concessions by their tactical needs--the former, therefore, were meant to be permanent, the latter transient.

All other explanations of the Italian crisis, however well they may fit certain of its phases, are, when applied to the pith of the matter, beside the mark. Even if it were true, as the dramatist, Sem Benelli, wrote, that "President Wilson evidently considers our people as on the plane of an African colony, dominated by the will of a few ambitious men," that would not account for the tenacious determination with which the President held to his slighted theory.

Italy's position in Europe was in many respects peculiar. Men still living remember the time when her name was scarcely more than a geographical expression which gradually, during the last sixty years, came to connote a hard-working, sober, patriotic nation. Only little by little did she recover her finest provinces and her capital, and even then her unity was not fully achieved. Austria still held many of her sons, not only in the Trentino, but also on the other shore of the Adriatic. But for thirty years her desire to recover these lost children was paralyzed by international conditions. In her own interests, as well as in those of peace, she had become the third member of an alliance which constrained her to suppress her patriotic feelings and allowed her to bend all her energies to the prevention of a European conflict.

When hostilities broke out, the attitude of the Italian government was a matter of extreme moment to France and the Entente. Much, perhaps the fate of Europe, depended on whether they would remain neutral or throw in their lot with the Teutons. They chose the former alternative and literally saved the situation. The question of motive is wholly irrelevant. Later on they were urged to move a step farther and take an active part against their former allies. But a powerful body of opinion and sentiment in the country was opposed to military co-operation, on the ground that the sum total of the results to be obtained by quiescence would exceed the guerdon of victory won by the side of the Entente. The correctness of this estimate depended upon many incalculable factors, among which was the duration of the struggle. The consensus of opinion was that it would be brief, in which case the terms dangled before Italy's eyes by the Entente would, it was believed by the Cabinet, greatly transcend those which the Central Powers were prepared to offer. Anyhow they were accepted and the compact was negotiated, signed, and ratified by men whose idealism marred their practical sense, and whose policy of sacred egotism, resolute in words and feeble in action, merely impaired the good name of the government without bringing any corresponding compensation to the country. The world struggle lasted much longer than the statesmen had dared to anticipate; Italy's obligations were greatly augmented by Russia's defection, she had to bear the brunt of all, instead of a part of Austria's forces, whereby the sacrifices demanded of her became proportionately heavier. Altogether it is fair to say that the difficulties to be overcome and the hardships to be endured before the Italian people reached their goal were and still are but imperfectly realized by their allies. For the obstacles were gigantic, the effort heroic; alone the results shrank to disappointing dimensions.

The war over, Italian statesmen confidently believed that those supererogatory exertions would be appropriately recognized by the Allies. And this expectation quickly crystallized into territorial demands. The press which voiced them ruffled the temper of Anglo-Saxondom by clamoring for more than it was ever likely to concede, and buoyed up their own nation with illusory hopes, the non-fulfilment of which was certain to produce national discontent. Curiously enough, both the government and the press laid the main stress upon territorial expansion, leaving economic advantages almost wholly out of account.

It was at this conjuncture that Mr. Wilson made his appearance and threw all the pieces on the political chessboard into weird confusion. "You," he virtually said, "have been fighting for the dismemberment of your secular enemy, Austria. Well, she is now dismembered and you have full satisfaction. Your frontiers shall be extended at her expense, but not at the expense of the new states which have arisen on her ruins. On the contrary, their rights will circumscribe your claims and limit your territorial aggrandizement. Not only can you not have all the additional territory you covet, but I must refuse to allot even what has been guaranteed to you by your secret treaty. I refuse to recognize that because the United States government was no party to it, was, in fact, wholly unaware of it until recently. New circumstances have transformed it into a mere scrap of paper."

This language was not understood by the Italian people. For them the sacredness of treaties was a dogma not to be questioned, and least of all by the champion of right, justice, and good faith. They had welcomed the new order preached by the American statesman, but were unable to reconcile it with the tearing up of existing conventions, the repudiation of legal rights, the dissolution of alliances. In particular their treaty with France, Britain, and Russia had contributed materially to the victory over the common enemy, had in fact saved the Allies. "It was Italy's intervention," said the chief of the Austrian General Staff, Conrad von Hoetzendorff, "that brought about the disaster. Without that the Central Empires would infallibly have won the war."[195] And there is no reason to doubt his assertion. In truth Italy had done all she had promised to the Allies, and more. She had contributed materially to save France--wholly gratuitously. It was also her neutrality, which she could have bartered, but did not,[196] that turned the scale at Bucharest against the military intervention of Rumania on the side of the Teutons.[197] And without the neutrality of both these countries at the outset of hostilities the course of the struggle and of European history would have been widely different from what they have been. And now that the Allies had achieved their aim they were to refuse to perform their part of the compact in the name, too, of a moral principle from the operation of which three great Powers were dispensed. That was the light in which the matter appeared to the unsophisticated mind of the average Italian, and not to him alone. Others accustomed to abstract reasoning asked whether the best preparation for the future régime of right and justice, and all that these imply, is to transgress existing rights and violate ordinary justice, and what difference there is between the demoralizing influence of this procedure and that of professional Bolshevists. There was but one adequate answer to this objection, and it consisted in the whole-hearted and rigid application of the Wilsonian tenets to all nations without exception. But even the author of these tenets did not venture to make it.

The essence of the territorial question lay in the disposal of the eastern shore of the Adriatic.[198] The Jugoslavs claimed all Istria and Dalmatia, and based their claim partly on the principle of nationalities and partly on the vital necessity of having outlets on that sea, and in particular Fiume, the most important of them all, which they described as essentially Croatian and indispensable as a port. The Italian delegates, joining issue with the Jugoslavs, and claiming a section of the seaboard and Fiume, argued that the greatest part of the East Adriatic shore would still remain Croatian, together with all the ports of the Croatian coast and others in southern Dalmatia--in a word, twelve ports, including Spalato and Ragusa, and a thousand kilometers of seaboard. The Jugoslavs met this assertion with the objection that the outlets in question were inaccessible, all except Fiume and Metkovitch. As for Fiume,[199] the Italian delegates contended that although not promised to Italy by the Treaty of London, it was historically hers, because, having been for centuries an autonomous entity and having as such religiously preserved its Italian character, its inhabitants had exercised their rights to manifest by plebiscite their desire to be united with the mother country. They further denied that it was indispensable to the Jugoslavs because these would receive a dozen other ports and also because the traffic between Croatia and Fiume was represented by only 7 per cent. of the whole, and even that of Croatia, Slavonia, and Dalmatia combined by only 13 per cent. Further, Italy would undertake to give all requisite export facilities in Fiume to the Jugoslavs.

The latter traversed many of these statements, and in particular that which described Fiume as a separate autonomous entity and as an essentially Italian city. Archives were ransacked by both parties, ancient documents produced, analyzed, condemned as forgeries or appealed to as authentic proofs, chance phrases were culled from various writers of bygone days and offered as evidence in support of each contention. Thus the contest grew heated. It was further inflamed by the attitude of Italy's allies, who appeared to her as either covertly unfriendly or at best lukewarm.

M. Clemenceau, who maintained during the peace negotiations the epithet "Tiger" which he had earned long before, was alleged to have said in the course of one of those conversations which were misnamed private, "For Italy to demand Fiume is to ask for the moon."[200] Officially he took the side of Mr. Wilson, as did also the British Premier, and Italy's two allies signified but a cold assent to those other claims which were covered by their own treaty. But they made no secret of their desire to see that instrument wholly set aside. Fiume they would not bestow on their ally, at least not unless she was prepared to offer an equivalent to the Jugoslavs and to satisfy the President of the United States.

This advocacy of the claims of the Jugoslavs was bitterly resented by the Italians. For centuries the two peoples had been rivals or enemies, and during the war the Jugoslavs fought with fury against the Italians. For Italy the arch-enemy had ever been Austria and Austria was largely Slav. "Austria," they say, "was the official name given to the cruel enemy against whom we fought, but it was generally the Croatians and other Slavs whom our gallant soldiers found facing them, and it was they who were guilty of the misdeeds from which our armies suffered." Official documents prove this.[201] Orders of the day issued by the Austrian Command eulogize "the Serbo-Croatian battalions who vied with the Austro-German and Hungarian soldiers in resisting the pitfalls dug by the enemy to cause them to swerve from their fidelity and take the road to treason.[202] In the last battle which ended the existence of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy a large contingent of excellent Croatian troops fought resolutely against the Italian armies."

In Italy an impressive story is told which shows how this transformation of the enemy of yesterday into the ally of to-day sometimes worked out. The son of an Italian citizen who was fighting as an aviator was killed toward the end of the war, in a duel fought in the air, by an Austrian combatant. Soon after the armistice was signed the sorrowing father repaired to the place where his son had fallen. He there found an ex-Austrian officer, the lucky victor and slayer of his son, wearing in his buttonhole the Jugoslav _cocarde_, who, advancing toward him with extended hand, uttered the greeting, "You and I are now allies."[203] The historian may smile at the naïveté of this anecdote, but the statesman will acknowledge that it characterized the relations between the inhabitants of the new state and the Italians. One can divine the feelings of these when they were exhorted to treat their ex-enemies as friends and allies.

"Is it surprising, then," the Italians asked, "that we cannot suddenly conceive an ardent affection for the ruthless 'Austrians' of whose cruelties we were bitterly complaining a few months back? Is it strange that we cannot find it in our hearts to cut off a slice of Italian territory and make it over to them as one of the fruits of--our victory over them? If Italy had not first adopted neutrality and then joined the Allies in the war there would be no Jugoslavia to-day. Are we now to pay for our altruism by sacrificing Italian soil and Italian souls to the secular enemies of our race?" In a word, the armistice transformed Italy's enemy into a friend and ally for whose sake she was summoned to abandon some of the fruits of a hard-earned victory and a part of her secular aspirations. What, asked the Italian delegates, would France answer if she were told that the Prussians whom her matchless armies defeated must henceforth be looked upon as friends and endowed with some new colonies which would otherwise be hers? The Italian dramatist Sem Benelli put the matter tersely: "The collapse of Austria transforms itself therefore into a play of words, so much so that our people, who are much more precise because they languished under the Austrian yoke and the Austrian scourge, never call the Austrians by this name; they call them always Croatians, knowing well that the Croatians and the Slavs who constituted Austria were our fiercest taskmasters and most cruel executioners. It is naïve to think that the ineradicable characteristics and tendencies of peoples can be modified by a change of name and a new flag."

But there was another way of looking at the matter, and the Allies, together with the Jugoslavs, made the most of it. The Slav character of the disputed territory was emphasized, the principle of nationality invoked, and the danger of incorporating an unfriendly foreign element which could not be assimilated was solemnly pointed out. But where sentiment actuates, reason is generally impotent. The policy of the Italian government, like that of all other governments, was frankly nationalistic; whether it was also statesman-like may well be questioned--indeed the question has already been answered by some of Italy's principal press organs in the negative.[204] They accuse the Cabinet of having deliberately let loose popular passions which it afterward vainly sought to allay, and the facts which they allege in support of the charge have never been denied.

It was certainly to Italy's best interests to strike up a friendly agreement with the new state, if that were feasible, and some of the men in whose hands her destinies rested, feeling their responsibility, made a laudable attempt to come to an understanding. Signor Orlando, whose sagacity is equal to his resourcefulness, was one. In London he had talked the subject over with the Croatian leader, M. Trumbic, and favored the movement toward reconciliation[205] which Baron Sonnino, his colleague, as resolutely discouraged. A congress was accordingly held in Rome[206] and an accord projected. The reciprocal relations became amicable. The Jugoslav committee in the Italian capital congratulated Signor Orlando on the victory of the Piave. But owing to various causes, especially to Baron Sonnino's opposition, these inchoate sentiments of neighborliness quickly lost their warmth and finally vanished. No trace of them remained at the Paris Conference, where the delegates of the two states did not converse together nor even salute one another.