Italy undoubtedly gained a great deal by the war, into which she entered mainly for the purpose of achieving her unity and securing strong frontiers. But she signed the Peace Treaty convinced that she had not succeeded in either purpose, and that her allies were answerable for her failure. It was certainly part of their policy to build up a strong state on her frontier out of a race which she regards as her adversary and to give it command of some of her strategic positions. And the overt bearing manner in which this policy was sometimes carried out left as much bitterness behind as the object it aimed at. It is alleged that the Italian delegates were treated with an economy of consideration which bordered on something much worse, while the arguments officially invoked to non-suit them appeared to them in the light of bitter sarcasms. President Wilson, they complained, ignored his far-resonant principle of self-determination when Japan presented her claim for Shantung, but refused to swerve from it when Italy relied on her treaty rights in Dalmatia. And when the inhabitants of Fiume voted for union with the mother country, the President abandoned that principle and gave judgment for Jugoslavia on other grounds. He was right, but disappointing, they observed, when he told his fellow-citizens that his presence in Europe was indispensable in order to interpret his conceptions, for no other rational being could have construed them thus.

The withdrawal of the Italian delegates was construed as an act of insubordination, and punished as such. The Marquis de Viti de Varche has since disclosed the fact that the Allied governments forthwith reduced the credits accorded to Italy during hostilities, whereupon hardships and distress were aggravated and the peasantry over a large area of the country suffered intensely.[227] For Italy is more dependent on her allies than ever, owing to the sacrifices which she offered up during the war, and she was made to feel her dependence painfully. The military assistance which they had received from her was fraught with financial and economic consequences which have not yet been realized by the unfortunate people who must endure them. Italy at the close of hostilities was burdened with a foreign debt of twenty milliards of lire, an internal debt of fifty millards, and a paper circulation four times more than what it was in pre-war days.[228] Raw materials were exhausted, traffic and production were stagnant, navigation had almost ceased, and the expenditure of the state had risen to eleven milliards a year.[229]

According to the figures published by the Statistical Society of Berne, the general rise in prices attributed to the war hit Italy much harder than any of her allies.[230] The consequences of this and other perturbations were sinister and immediate. The nation, bereft of what it had been taught to regard as its right, humiliated in the persons of its chiefs, subjected to foreign guidance, insufficiently clad, underfed, and with no tangible grounds for expecting speedy improvement, was seething with discontent. Frequent strikes merely aggravated the general suffering, which finally led to riots, risings, and the shedding of blood. The economic, political, and moral crisis was unprecedented. The men who drew Italy into the war were held up to public opprobrium because in the imagination of the people the victory had cost them more and brought them in less than neutrality would have done. One of the principal orators of the Opposition, in a trenchant discourse in the Italian Parliament, said, "The Salandra-Sonnino Cabinet led Italy into the war blindfolded."[231]

After the return of the Italian delegation to Paris various fresh combinations were devised for the purpose of grappling with the Adriatic problem. One commended itself to the Italians as a possible basis for discussion. In principle it was accepted. A declaration to this effect was made by Signor Orlando and taken cognizance of by M. Clemenceau, who undertook to lay the matter before Mr. Wilson, the sole arbitrator in Italian affairs. He played the part of Fate throughout. Days went by after this without bringing any token that the Triumvirate was interested in the Adriatic. At last the Italian Premier reminded his French colleague that the latest proposal had been accepted in principle, and the Italian plenipotentiaries were awaiting Mr. Wilson's pleasure in the matter. Accordingly, M. Clemenceau undertook to broach the matter to the American statesman without delay. The reply, which was promptly given, dismayed the Italians. It was in the form of one of those interpretations which, becoming associated with Mr. Wilson's name, shook public confidence in certain of the statesman-like qualities with which he had at first been credited. The construction which he now put upon the mode of voting to be applied to Fiume, including this city—in a large district inhabited by a majority of Jugoslavs—imparted to the project as the Italians had understood it a wholly new aspect. They accordingly declared it inacceptable. As after that there seemed to be nothing more for the Italian Premier to do in Paris, he left, was soon afterward defeated in the Chamber, and resigned together with his Cabinet. The vote of the Italian Parliament, which appeared to the continental press in the light of a protest of the nation against the aims and the methods of the Conference, closed for the time being the chapter of Italy's endeavor to complete her unity, secure strong frontiers, and perpetuate her political partnership with France and her intimate relations with the Entente. Thenceforward the English-speaking states might influence her overt acts, compel submission to their behests, and generally exercise a sort of guardianship over her, because they are the dispensers of economic boons, but the union of hearts, the mutual trust, the cement supplied by common aims are lacking.

One of the most telling arguments employed by President Wilson to dissuade various states from claiming strategic positions, and in particular Italy from insisting on the annexation of Fiume and the Dalmatian coast, was the effective protection which the League of Nations would confer on them.[232] Strategical considerations would, it was urged, lose all their value in the new era, and territorial guaranties become meaningless and cumbersome survivals of a dead epoch. That was the principal weapon with which he had striven to parry the thrusts of M. Clemenceau and the touchstone by which he tested the sincerity of all professions of faith in his cherished project of compacting the nations of the world in a vast league of peace-loving, law-abiding communities. But the faith of France's leaders differed little from unbelief. Guaranties first and the protection of the League afterward was the French formula, around which many fierce battles royal were fought. In the end Mr. Wilson, having obtained the withdrawal of the demand for the Rhine frontier, gave in, and the Covenant was reinforced by a compact which in the last analysis is a military undertaking, a unilateral Triple Alliance, Great Britain and the United States undertaking to hasten to France's assistance should her territory be wantonly invaded by Germany. The case thus provided for is extremely improbable. The expansion of Germany, when the auspicious hour strikes, will presumably be inaugurated on wholly new lines, against which armies, even if they can be mobilized in time, will be of little avail. But if force were resorted to, it is almost certain to be used in the direction where the resistance is least—against France's ally, Poland. This, however, is by the way. The point made by the Italians was that the League of Nations being thus admittedly powerless to discharge the functions which alone could render strategic frontiers unnecessary, can consequently no longer be relied upon as an adequate protection against the dangers which the possession of the strongholds she claimed on the Adriatic would effectively displace. Either the League, it was argued, can, as asserted, protect the countries which give up commanding positions to potential enemies, or it cannot. In the former hypothesis France's insistence on a military convention is mischievous and immoral—in the latter Italy stands in as much need of the precautions devised as her neighbor. But her spokesmen were still plied with the threadbare arguments and bereft of the countervailing corrective. And faith in the efficacy of the League was sapped by the very men who were professedly seeking to spread it.

The press of Rome, Turin, and Milan pointed to the loyalty of the Italian people, brought out, they said, in sharp relief by the discontent which the exclusive character of that triple military accord engendered among them. As kinsmen of the French it was natural for Italians to expect that they would be invited to become a party to this league within the League. As loyal allies of Britain and France they felt desirous of being admitted to the alliance. But they were excluded. Nor was their exasperation allayed by the assurance of their press that this was no alliance, but a state of tutelage. An alliance, it was explained, is a compact by which two or more parties agree to render one another certain services under given conditions, whereas the convention in question is a one-sided undertaking on the part of Britain and the United States to protect France if wantonly attacked, because she is unable efficaciously to protect herself. It is a benefaction. But this casuistry fell upon deaf ears. What the people felt was the disesteem—the term in vogue was stronger—in which they were held by the Allies, whom they had saved perhaps from ruin.

By slow degrees the sentiments of the Italian nation underwent a disquieting change. All parties and classes united in stigmatizing the behavior of the Allies in terms which even the literary eminence of the poet d'Annunzio could not induce the censors to let pass. "The Peace Treaty," wrote Italy's most influential journal, "and its correlate forbode for the near future the Continental hegemony of France countersigned by the Anglo-American alliance."[233] Another widely circulated and respected organ described the policy of the Entente as a solvent of the social fabric, constructive in words, corrosive in acts, "mischievous if ever there was a mischievous policy. For while raising hopes and whetting appetites, it does nothing to satisfy them; on the contrary, it does much to disappoint them. In words—a struggle for liberty, for nations, for the equality of peoples and classes, for the well-being of all; in acts—the suppression of the most elementary and constitutional liberty, the overlordship of certain nations based on the humiliation of others, the division of peoples into exploiters and exploited—the sharpening of social differences—the destruction of collective wealth, and its accumulation in a few blood-stained hands, universal misery, and hunger."[234]

Although it is well understood that Italy's defeat at the Conference was largely the handiwork of President Wilson, the resentment of the Italian nation chose for its immediate objects the representatives of France and Britain. The American "associates" were strangers, here to-day and gone to-morrow, but the Allies remain, and if their attitude toward Italy, it was argued, had been different, if their loyalty had been real, she would have fared proportionately as well as they, whatever the American statesmen might have said or done.

The Italian press breathed fiery wrath against its French ally, who so often at the Conference had met Italy's solicitations with the odious word "impossible." Even moderate organs of public opinion gave free vent to estimates of France's policy and anticipations of its consequences which disturbed the equanimity of European statesmen. "It is impossible," one of these journals wrote, "for France to become the absolute despot of Europe without Italy, much less against Italy. What transcended the powers of Richelieu, who was a lion and fox combined, and was beyond the reach of Bonaparte, who was both an eagle and a serpent, cannot be achieved by "Tiger" Clemenceau in circumstances so much less favorable than those of yore. We, it is true, are isolated, but then France is not precisely embarrassed by the choice of friends." The peace was described as "Franco-Slav domination with its headquarters in Prague, and a branch office in Agram." M. Clemenceau was openly charged with striving after the hegemony of the Continent for his country by separating Germany from Austria and surrounding her with a ring of Slav states—Poland, Jugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and perhaps the non-Slav kingdom of Rumania. All these states would be in the leading-strings of the French Republic, and Austria would be linked to it in a different guise. And in order to effect this resuscitation of the Hapsburg state under the name of "Danubian federation," Mr. Wilson, it was asserted, had authorized a deliberate violation of his own principle of self-determination, and refused to Austria the right of adopting the régime which she preferred. It was, in truth, an odd compromise, these critics continued, for an idealist of the President's caliber, on whose every political action the scrutinizing gaze of the world was fixed. One could not account for it as a sacrifice made for a high ethical aim—one of those ends which, according to the old maxim, hallows the means. It seemed an open response to a secret instigation or impulse which was unconnected with any recognized or avowable principle. Even the Socialist organs swelled the chorus of the accusers. Avanti wrote, "We are Socialists, yet we have never believed that the American President with his Fourteen Points entered into the war for the highest aims of humanity and for the rights of peoples, any more than we believe at present that his opposition to the aspirations of the Italian state on the Adriatic are inspired by motives of idealism."[235]

The fate of the disputed territories on the Adriatic was to be the outcome of self-determination. Poland's claims were to be left to the self-determination of the Silesian and Ruthenian populations. Rumania was told that her suit must remain in abeyance until it could be tested by the same principle, which would be applied in the form of a plebiscite. For self-determination was the cornerstone of the League of Nations, the holiest boon for which the progressive peoples of the world had been pouring out their life-blood and substance for nearly five years. But when Italy invoked self-determination, she was promptly non-suited. When Austria appealed to it she was put out of court. And to crown all, the world was assured that the Fourteen Points had been triumphantly upheld. This depravation of principles by the triumph of the little prudences of the hour spurred some of the more impulsive critics to ascribe it to influences less respectable than those to which it may fairly be attributed.

The directing Powers were hypersensitive to the oft-repeated charge of meddling in the internal affairs of other nations. They were never tired of protesting their abhorrence of anything that smacked of interference. Among the numerous facts, however, which they could neither deny nor reconcile with their professions, the following was brought forward by the Italians, who had a special interest to draw public attention to it. It had to do with the abortive attempt to restore the Hapsburg monarchy in Hungary as the first step toward the formation of a Danubian federation. "It is certain," wrote the principal Italian journal, "that the Archduke Joseph's coup d'état did not take place, indeed (given the conditions in Budapest) could not take place, without the Entente's connivance. The official communiqués of Budapest and Vienna, dated August 9th, recount on this point precise details which no one has hitherto troubled to deny. The Peidl government was scarcely three days in power, and, therefore, was not in a position to deserve either trust or distrust, when the heads of the 'order-loving organizations' put forward, to justify the need of a new crisis, the complaints of the heads of the Entente Missions as to the anarchy prevailing in Hungary and the urgency of finding 'some one' who could save the country from the abyss. Then a commission repaired to Alscuth, where it easily persuaded the Archduke to come to Budapest. Here he at once visited all the heads of missions and spent the whole day in negotiations. 'As a result of negotiations with Entente representatives, the Archduke Joseph undertook a solution of the crisis.' He then called together the old state police and a volunteer army of eight thousand men. The Rumanian garrison was kept ready. The Peidl government naturally did not resist at all. At 10 P.M. on August 7th all the Entente Missions held a meeting, to which the Archduke Joseph and the new Premier were invited. General Gorton presided. The Conference lasted two hours and reached an agreement on all questions. All the heads of Missions assured the new government of their warmest support."[236]

Another case of unwarranted interference which stirred the Italians to bitter resentment turned upon the obligation imposed on Austria to renounce her right to unite with Germany. "It is difficult to discern in the policy of the Entente toward Austria anything more respectable than obstinacy coupled with stupidity," wrote the same journal. "But there is something still worse. It is impossible not to feel indignant with a coalition which, after having triumphed in the name of the loftiest ideas ... treats German-Austria no better than the Holy Alliance treated the petty states of Italy. But the Congress of Vienna acted in harmony with the principle of legitimism which it avowed and professed, whereas the Paris Conference violates without scruple the canons by which it claims to be guided.

"Not a whit more decorous is the intervention of the Supreme Council in the internal affairs of Germany—a state which, according to the spirit and the letter of the Versailles Treaty, is sovereign and not a protectorate. The Conference was qualified to dictate peace terms to Germany, but it wanders beyond the bounds of its competency when it construes those terms and arrogates to itself—on the strength of forced and equivocal interpretations—the right of imposing upon a nation which is neither militarily nor juridically an enemy a constitutional reform. Whether Germany violates the Treaty by her Constitution is a question which only a judicial finding of the League of Nations can fairly determine."[237]

It would be impolitic to overlook and insincere to belittle the effects of this incoherency upon the relations between France and Italy. Public opinion in the Peninsula characterized the attitude of Prance as deliberately hostile. The Italians at the Conference eagerly scrutinized every act and word of their French colleagues, with a view to discovering grounds for dispelling this view. But the search is reported to have been worse than vain. It revealed data which, although susceptible of satisfactory explanations, would, if disclosed at that moment, have aggravated the feeling of bitterness against France, which was fast gathering. Signor Orlando had recourse to the censor to prevent indiscretions, but the intuition of the masses triumphed over repression, and the existing tenseness merged into resentment. The way in which Italians accounted for M. Clemenceau's attitude was this. Although Italy has ceased to be the important political factor she once was when the Triple Alliance was in being, she is still a strong continental Power, capable of placing a more numerous army in the field than her republican sister, and her population continues to increase at a high rate. In a few years she will have outstripped her rival. France, too, has perhaps lost those elements of her power and prestige which she derived from her alliance with Russia. Again, the Slav ex-ally, Russia, may become the enemy of to-morrow. In view of these contingencies France must create a substitute for the Rumanian and Italian allies. And as these have been found in the new Slav states, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Jugoslavia, she can afford to dispense with making painful sacrifices to keep Italy in countenance.

A trivial incident which affords a glimpse of the spirit prevailing between the two kindred peoples occurred at St.-Germain-en-Laye, where the Austrian delegates were staying. They had been made much of in Vienna by the Envoy of the French Republic there, M. Allizé, whose mission it was to hinder Austria from uniting with the Reich. Italy's policy was, on the contrary, to apply Mr. Wilson's principle of self-determination and allow the Austrians to do as they pleased in that respect. A fervent advocate of the French orthodox doctrine—a publicist—repaired to the Austrian headquarters at St.-Germain for the purpose, it is supposed, of discussing the subject. Now intercourse of any kind between private individuals and the enemy delegates was strictly forbidden, and when M. X. presented himself, the Italian officer on duty refused him admission. He insisted. The officer was inexorable. Then he produced a written permit signed by the Secretary of the Conference, M. Dutasta. How and why this exception was made in his favor when the rule was supposed to admit of no exceptions was not disclosed. But the Italian officer, equal to the occasion, took the ground that a military prohibition cannot be canceled by a civilian, and excluded the would-be visitor.

The general trend of France's European policy was repugnant to Italy. She looked on it as a well-laid scheme to assume a predominant rôle on the Continent. That, she believed, was the ultimate purpose of the veto on the union of Austria and Germany, of the military arrangements with Britain and the United States, and of much else that was obnoxious to Italy. Austria was to be reconstituted according to the federative plans of the late Archduke Franz Ferdinand, to be made stronger than before as a counterpoise to Italy, and to be at the beck and call of France. Thus the friend, ally, sister of yesterday became the potential enemy of to-morrow. That was the refrain of most of the Italian journals, and none intoned it more fervently than those which had been foremost in bringing their country into the war. One of these, a Conservative organ of Lombardy, wrote: "Until yesterday, we might have considered that two paths lay open before us, that of an alliance with France and that of an independent policy. But we can think so no longer. To offer our friendship to-day to the people who have already chosen their own road and established their solidarity with our enemies of yesterday and to-morrow would not be to strike out a policy, but to decide on an unseemly surrender. It would be tantamount to reproducing in an aggravated form the situation we occupied in the alliance with Germany. Once again we should be engaged in a partnership of which one of the partners was in reality our enemy. France taking the place of Germany, and Jugoslavia that of Austria, the situation of the old Triple Alliance would be not merely reproduced, but made worse in the reproduction, because the Triplice at least guaranteed us against a conflict which we had grounds for apprehending, whereas the new alliance would tie our hands for the sake of a little Balkan state which, single-handed, we are well able to keep in its place.

"We have had enough of a policy which has hitherto saddled us with all the burdens of the alliance without bestowing on us any advantage—which has constrained us to favor all the peoples whose expansion dovetailed with French schemes and to combat or neglect those others whose consolidation corresponded to our interests—which has led us to support a great Poland and a great Bohemia and to combat the Ukraine, Hungary, Bulgaria, Rumania, Spain, to whose destinies the French, but not we, were indifferent."[238] A press organ of Bologna denounced the atrocious and ignominious sacrifice "which her allies imposed on Italy by means of economic blackmailing and violence with a whip in one hand and a chunk of bread in the other."[239]

Sharp comments were provoked by the heavy tax on strangers in Tunisia imposed by the French government,[240] on strangers, mostly Italians, who theretofore had enjoyed the same rights as the French and Tunisians. "Suddenly," writes the principal Italian journal, "and just when it was hoped that the common sacrifices they had made had strengthened the ties between the two nations, the governor of Tunisia issued certain orders which endangered the interests of foreigners and the effects of which will be felt mainly by Italians, of whom there are one hundred and twenty thousand in Tunisia.[241] First there came an order forbidding the use of any language but French in the schools. Now the tax referred to in the House of Lords gives the Tunisian government power to levy an impost on the buying and selling of property in Tunisia. The new tax, which is to be levied over and above pre-existing taxes, ranged from 59 per cent. of the value when it is not assessed at a higher sum than one hundred thousand lire to 80 per cent. when its estimated value is more than five hundred thousand lire." The article terminates with the remark that boycotting is hardly a suitable epilogue to a war waged for common ideals and interests.

These manifestations irritated the French and were taken to indicate Italy's defection. It was to no purpose that a few level-headed men pointed out that the French government was largely answerable for the state of mind complained of. "Pertinax," in the Echo de Paris, wrote "that the alliance, in order to subsist and flourish, should have retained its character as an Anti-German League, whereas it fell into the error of masking itself as a Society of Nations and arrogated to itself the right of bringing before its tribunal all the quarrels of the planet."[242] Italy's allies undoubtedly did much to forfeit her sympathies and turn her from the alliance. It was pointed out that when the French troops arrived in Italy the Bulletin of the Italian command eulogized their efforts almost daily, but when the Italian troops went to France, the communiqués of the French command were most chary of allusions to their exploits, yet the Italian army contributed more dead to the French front than did the French army to the Italian front.[243] At the Peace Conference, as we saw, when the terms with Germany were being drafted, Italy's problems were set aside on the grounds that there was no nexus between them. The Allies' interests, which were dealt with as a whole during the war, were divided after the armistice into essential and secondary interests, and those of Italy were relegated to the latter class. Subsequently France, Britain, and the United States, without the co-operation or foreknowledge of their Italian friends, struck up an alliance from which they excluded Italy, thereby vitiating the only arguments that could be invoked in favor of such a coalition. When peace was about to be signed they one-sidedly revoked the treaty which they had concluded in London, rendering the consent of all Allies necessary to the validity of the document, and decreed that Italy's abstention would make no difference. When the instrument was finally signed, Mr. Wilson returned to the United States, Mr. Lloyd George to England, and the Marquis of Saionji to Japan, without having settled any of Italy's problems. Italy, her needs, her claims, and her policy thus appear as matters of little account to the Great Powers. Naturally, the Italian people were disappointed, and desirous of seeking new friends, the old ones having forsaken them.

It would be difficult to exaggerate the consequences which this attitude of the Allies toward Italy may have on European politics generally. Her most eminent statesman, Signor Tittoni, who succeeded Baron Sonnino, transcending his country's mortifications, exerted himself tactfully and not unsuccessfully to lubricate the mechanism of the alliance, to ease the dangerous friction and to restore the tone. And he seems to have accomplished in these respects everything which a sagacious statesman could do. But to arrest the operation of psychological laws is beyond the power of any individual. In order to appreciate the Italian point of view, it is nowise necessary to approve the exaggerated claims put forward by her press in the spring of 1919. It is enough to admit that in the light of the Wilsonian doctrine they were not more incompatible with that doctrine than the claims made by other Powers and accorded by the Supreme Council.

To sum up, Italy acquired the impression that association with her recent allies means for her not only sacrifices in their hour of need, but also further sacrifices in their hour of triumph. She became reluctantly convinced that they regard interests which she deems vital to herself as unconnected with their own. And that was unfortunate. If at some fateful conjuncture in the future her allies on their part should gather the impression that she has adjusted her policy to those interests which are so far removed from theirs, they will have themselves to blame.

FOOTNOTES:

[194] This clause, which figured in the draft Treaty, as presented to the Germans, provoked such emphatic protests from all sides that it was struck out in the revised version.

[195] In an interview given to the Correspondenz Bureau of Vienna by Conrad von Hoetzendorff. Cf. Le Temps, July 19, 1919.

[196] The Prime Minister, Salandra, declared that to have made neutrality a matter of bargaining would have been to dishonor Italy.

[197] King Carol was holding a crown council at the time. Bratiano had spoken against the King's proposal to throw in the country's lot with Germany. Carp was strongly for carrying out Rumania's treaty obligations. Some others hesitated, but before it could be put to the vote a telegram was brought in announcing Italy's resolve to maintain neutrality. The upshot was Rumania's refusal to follow her allies.

[198] On the eastern Adriatic, the Treaty of London allotted to Italy the peninsula of Istria, without Fiume, most of Dalmatia, exclusive of Spalato, the chief Dalmatian islands and the Dodecannesus.

[199] The present population of Fiume is computed at 45,227 souls, of whom 33,000 are Italians, 10,927 Slavs, and 1,300 Magyars.

[200] Another delegate is reported to have answered: "As we need Italy's friendship, we should pay the moderate price asked and back her claim to have the moon."

[201] A number of orders of the day eulogizing individual Slav officers and collective military entities were quoted by the advocates of Italy's cause at the Conference.

[202] Official communiqué of June 17, 1918.

[203] Journal de Genève, April 25, 1919.

[204] Cf. Il Corriere della Sera and Il Secolo of May 26, 1919.

[205] In the Senate he defended this attitude on March 4,1919, and expressed a desire to dispel the misunderstanding between the two peoples.

[206] In April, 1919.

[207] This fact has since been made public by Enrico Ferri in a remarkable discourse pronounced in the parliament at Rome (July 9, 1919). It was Baron Sonnino who deprecated the publication of any statement on the subject by President Wilson. Cf. La Stampa, July 10, 1919.

[208] On January 10, 1919.

[209] It gave eastern Friuli to Italy, including Gorizia, split Istria into two parts, and assigned Trieste and Pola also to Italy, but under such territorial conditions that they would be exposed to enemy projectiles in case of war.

[210] The National Council of Fiume issued its proclamation before it had become known that the battle of Vittorio Veneto was begun—i.e., October 30, 1918.

[211] Speech delivered at Mount Vernon on July 4, 1918.

[212] Of the United States, France, and Great Britain.

[213] Between April 5th and 12th.

[214] In his address to the representatives of organized labor in January, 1918.

[215] L'Echo de Paris, April 29, 1919.

[216] Le Gaulois, April 29, 1919.

[217] These meetings were held from March 28 till April 23, 1919.

[218] See Marco Borsa's article in Il Secolo, June 18, 1919; also Corriere della Sera, June 19, 1919.

[219] From May 5 to 16, 1919.

[220] Il Secolo, June 19, 1919.

[221] On April 23, 1919.

[222] "Can and will our allies treat our absence as a matter of no moment? Can and will they violate the formal undertaking which forbids the belligerents to conclude a diplomatic peace?... The London Declaration prohibits categorically the conclusion of any separate peace with any enemy state. France and England cannot sign peace with Germany if Italy does not sign it.... The situation is grave and abnormal, for our allies it is also grave and abnormal. Italy is isolated, and nations, especially those of continental Europe, which are not overrich, flee solitude as nature abhors a vacuum."—Corriere della Sera, April 26, 1919. Again: "'The Treaty of London' restrains France and England from concluding peace without Italy. And Italy is minded not to conclude peace with Germany before she herself has received satisfaction."—Journal de Genève, April 25, 1919.

[223] On May 6, 1919, at Versailles.

[224] Cf. Corriere della Sera, May 10, 1919.

[225] Annex W of the Revised Treaty.

[226] This incident was revealed by Enrico Ferri, in his remarkable speech in the Italian Parliament on July 9, 1919. Cf. La Stampa, July 10, 1919, page 2.

[227] Cf. The Morning Post, July 9, 1919.

[228] On July 10th the Italian Finance Minister, in his financial statement, announced that the total cost of the war to Italy would amount to one hundred milliard lire. He added, however, that her share of the German indemnity would wipe out her foreign debt, while a progressive tax on all but small fortunes would meet her internal obligations. Cf. Corriere della Sera, July 11 and 12, 1919.

[229] Cf. Avanti, July 19, 1919.

[230] Shown in percentages, the rise in the cost of living was: United States, 220 per cent.; England, 240 per cent.; Switzerland, 257 per cent.; France, 368 per cent.; Italy, 481 per cent.

[231] Enrico Ferri, on July 9, 1919. Cf. La Stampa, July 10, 1919.

[232] At a later date the President reiterated the grounds of his decision. In his Columbus speech (September 4, 1919) he asserted that "Italy desired Fiume for strategic military reasons, which the League of Nations would make unnecessary." (The New York Herald (Paris edition), September 6, 1919.) But the League did not render strategic precautions unnecessary to France.

[233] Corriere della Sera, May 11, 1919.

[234] La Stampa, July 16, 1919.

[235] Avanti, April 27, 1919. Cf. Le Temps, April 28, 1919.

[236] Corriere della Sera, August 9, 1919.

[237] Corriere della Sera, September 3, 1919.

[238] Quoted in La Stampa of July 20, 1919.

[239] Ibidem.

[240] Corriere d' Italia, June 29, 1919.

[241] Cf. Modern Italy, July 12, 1919 (page 298).

[242] Echo de Paris, July 7, 1919.

[243] Cf. "An Italian Exposé," published by The Morning Post, July 5, 1919.

IX

The most influential daily press organ in the Tsardom, the Novoye Vremya, wrote: "The war with Germany has supplied our Asiatic neighbor with an opportunity of proving the sincerity of her friendly assurances. She behaves not merely like a good friend, but like a stanch military ally.... In the interests of the future tranquil development of Japan a more active participation of the Japanese is requisite in the war of the nations against the world-beast of prey. An alliance with Russia for the attainment of this object would be an act of immense historic significance."[244]

Ever since her entry into the community of progressive nations, Japan's main aspiration and striving has been to play a leading and a civilizing part in the Far East, and in especial to determine China by advice and organization to move into line with herself, adopt Western methods and apply them to Far-Eastern aims. And this might well seem a legitimate as well as a profitable policy, and a task as noble as most or those to which the world is wont to pay a tribute of high praise. It appeared all the more licit that the Powers of Europe, with the exception of Russia, had denied full political rights to the colored alien. He was placed in a category apart—an inferior class member of humanity.

"In Japan, and as yet in Japan alone, do we find the Asiatic welcoming European culture, in which, if a tree may fairly be judged by its fruit, is to be found the best prospect for the human personal liberty, in due combination with restraints of law sufficient to, but not in excess of, the requirements of the general welfare. In this particular distinctiveness of characteristic, which has thus differentiated the receptivity of the Japanese from that of the continental Asiatic, we may perhaps see the influence of the insular environment that has permitted and favored the evolution of a strong national personality; and in the same condition we may not err in finding a promise of power to preserve and to propagate, by example and by influence, among those akin to her, the new policy which she has adopted, and by which she has profited, affording to them the example which she herself has found in the development of Eastern peoples."[245]

Now that is exactly what the Japanese aimed at accomplishing. They were desirous of contributing to the intellectual and moral advance of the Chinese and other backward peoples of the Far East, in the same way as France is laudably desirous of aiding the Syrians, or Great Britain the Persians. And what is more, Japan undertook to uphold the principle of the open door, and generally to respect the legitimate interests of European peoples in the Far East.

But the white races had economic designs of their own on China, and one of the preliminary conditions of their execution was that Japan's aspirations should be foiled. Witte opened the campaign by inaugurating the process of peaceful penetration, but his remarkable efforts were neutralized and defeated by his own sovereign. The Japanese, after the Manchurian campaign, which they had done everything possible to avoid, contrived wholly to eliminate Russian aggression from the Far East. The feat was arduous and the masterly way in which it was tackled and achieved sheds a luster on Japanese statesmanship as personified by Viscount Motono. The Tsardom, in lieu of a potential enemy, was transformed into a stanch and powerful friend and ally, on whom Nippon could, as she believed, rely against future aggressors. Russia came to stand toward her in the same political relationship as toward France. Japanese statesmen took the alliance with the Tsardom as a solid and durable postulate of their foreign policy.

All at once the Tsardom fell to pieces like a house of cards, and the fragments that emerged from the ruins possessed neither the will nor the power to stand by their Far Eastern neighbors. The fruits of twelve years' statesmanship and heavy sacrifices were swept away by the Russian revolution, and Japan's diplomatic position was therefore worse beyond compare than that of the French Republic in July, 1917, because the latter was forthwith sustained by Great Britain and the United States, with such abundance of military and economic resources as made up in the long run for that of Russia. Japan, on the other hand, has as yet no substitute for her prostrate ally. She is still alone among Powers some of whom decline to recognize her equality, while others are ready to thwart her policy and disable her for the coming race.

The Japanese are firm believers in the law of causality. Where they desire to reap, there they first sow. They invariably strive to deal with a situation while there is still time to modify it, and they take pains to render the means adequate to the end. Unlike the peoples of western Europe and the United States, the Japanese show a profound respect for the principles of authority and inequality, and reserve the higher functions in the community for men of the greatest ability and attainments. It is a fact, however, that individual liberty has made perceptible progress in the population, and is still growing, owing to the increase of economic well-being and the spread of general and technical education. But although socialism is likewise spreading fast, I feel inclined to think that in Japan a high grade of instruction and of social development on latter-day lines will be found compatible with that extraordinary cohesiveness to which the race owes the position which it occupies among the communities of the world. The soul of the individual Japanese may be said to float in an atmosphere of collectivity, which, while leaving his intellect intact, sways his sentiments and modifies his character by rendering him impressible to motives of an order which has the weal of the race for its object.

Japan has borrowed what seemed to her leaders to be the best of everything in foreign countries. They analyzed the military, political, and industrial successes of their friends and enemies, satisfactorily explained and duly fructified them. They use the school as the seed-plot of the state, and inculcate conceptions there which the entire community endeavors later on to embody in acts and institutions. And what the elementary school has begun, the intermediate, the technical, and the high schools develop and perfect, aided by the press, which is encouraged by the state.

Japan's ideal cannot be offhandedly condemned as immoral, pernicious, or illegitimate. Its partizans pertinently invoke every principle which their Allies applied to their own aims and strivings. And men of deeper insight than those who preside over the fortunes of the Entente to-day recognize that Europeans of high principles and discerning minds, who perceive the central issues, would, were they in the position of the Japanese statesmen, likewise bend their energies to the achievement of the same aims.

The Japanese argue their case somewhat as follows:

"We are determined to help China to put herself in line with ourselves, and to keep her from falling into anarchy. And no one can honestly deny our qualifications. We and they have very much in common, and we understand them as no Anglo-Saxon or other foreign people can. On the one hand our own past experience resembles that of the Middle Kingdom, and on the other our method of adapting ourselves to the new international conditions challenged and received the ungrudging admiration of a world disposed to be critical. The Peking treaties of May, 1915, between China and Japan, and the pristine drafts of them which were modified before signature, enable the outsider to form a fairly accurate opinion of Japan's economic and political program, which amounts to the application of a Far Eastern Monroe Doctrine.

"What we seek to obtain in the Far East is what the Western Powers have secured throughout the remainder of the globe: the right to contribute to the moral and intellectual progress of our backward neighbors, and to profit by our exertions. China needs the help which we are admittedly able to bestow. To our mission no cogent objection has ever been offered. No Cabinet in Tokio has ever looked upon the Middle Realm as a possible colony for the Japanese. The notion is preposterous, seeing that China is already over-populated. What Japan sorely needs are sources whence to draw coal and iron for industrial enterprise. She also needs cotton and leather."

In truth, the ever-ready command of these raw materials at their sources, which must be neither remote nor subject to potential enemies, is indispensable to the success of Japan's development. But for the moment the English-speaking nations have a veto upon them, in virtue of possession, and the embargo put by the United States government upon the export of steel during the war caused a profound emotion in Nippon. For the shipbuilding works there had increased in number from nine before the war to twelve in 1917, and to twenty-eight at the beginning of 1918, with one hundred slips capable of producing six hundred thousand tons of net register. The effect of that embargo was to shut down between 70 and 80 per cent. of the shipbuilding works of the country, and to menace with extinction an industry which was bringing in immense profits.

It was with these antecedents and aims that Japan appeared before the Conference in Paris and asked, not for something which she lacked before, but merely for the confirmation of what she already possessed by treaty. It must be admitted that she had damaged her cause by the manner in which that treaty had been obtained. To say that she had intimidated the Chinese, instead of coaxing them or bargaining with them, would be a truism. The fall of Tsingtao gave her a favorable opportunity, and she used and misused it unjustifiably. The demands in themselves were open to discussion and, if one weighs all the circumstances, would not deserve a classification different from some of those—the protection of minorities or the transit proviso, for example—imposed by the greater on the lesser nations at the Conference. But the mode in which they were pressed irritated the susceptible Chinese and belied the professions made by the Mikado's Ministers. The secrecy, too, with which the Tokio Cabinet endeavored to surround them warranted the worst construction. Yuan Shi Kai[246] regarded the procedure as a deadly insult to himself and his country. And the circumstance that the Japanese government failed either to foresee or to avoid this amazing psychological blunder lent color to the objections of those who questioned Japan's qualifications for the mission she had set herself. The wound inflicted on China by that exhibition of insolence will not soon heal. How it reacted may be inferred from the strenuous and well-calculated opposition of the Chinese delegation at the Conference.

Nor was that all. In the summer of 1916 a free fight occurred between Chinese and Japanese soldiers in Cheng-cha-tun, the rights and wrongs of which were, as is usual in such cases, obscure. But the Okuma Cabinet, assuming that the Chinese were to blame, pounced upon the incident and made it the base of fresh demands to China,[247] two of which were manifestly excessive. That China would be better off than she is or is otherwise likely to become under Japanese guidance is in the highest degree probable. But in order that that guidance should be effective it must be accepted, and this can only be the consequence of such a policy of cordiality, patience, and magnanimity as was outlined by my friend, the late Viscount Motono.[248]

At the Conference the policy of the Japanese delegates was clear-cut and coherent. It may be summarized as follows: the Japanese delegation decided to give its entire support to the Allies in all matters concerning the future relations of Germany and Russia, western Europe, the Balkans, the African colonies, as well as financial indemnities and reparations. The fate of the Samoan Archipelago must be determined in accord with Britain and the United States. New Guinea should be allotted to Australia. As the Marshall, Caroline, and Ladrone Islands, although of no intrinsic value, would constitute a danger in Germany's hands, they should be taken over by Japan. Tsingtao and the port of Kiaochow should belong to Japan, as well as the Tainan railway. Japan would co-operate with the Allies in maintaining order in Siberia, but no Power should arrogate to itself a preponderant voice in the matter of obtaining concessions or other interests there. Lastly, the principle of the open door was to be upheld in China, Japan being admittedly the Power which is the most interested in the establishment and maintenance of peace in the Far East.

At the Conference, when the Kiaochow dispute came up for discussion, the Japanese attitude, according to their Anglo-Saxon and French colleagues, was calm and dignified, their language courteous, their arguments were put with studied moderation, and their resolve to have their treaty rights recognized was inflexible. Their case was simple enough, and under the old ordering unanswerable. The only question was whether it would be invalidated by the new dispensation. But as the United States had obtained recognition for its Monroe Doctrine, Britain for the supremacy of the sea, and France for the occupation of the Saar Valley and the suspension of the right of self-determination in the case of Austria, it was obvious that Japan had abundant and cogent arguments for her demands, which were that the Chinese territory once held by Germany, and since wrested from that Power by Japan, be formally retroceded to Japan, whose claim to it rested upon the right of conquest and also upon the faith of treaties which she had concluded with China. At the same time she expressly and spontaneously disclaimed the intention of keeping that territory for herself. Baron Makino said at the Peace Table:

"The acquisition of territory belonging to one nation which it is the intention of the country acquiring it to exploit to its sole advantage is not conducive to amity or good-will." Japan, although by the fortune of war Germany's heir to Kiaochow, did not purpose retaining it for the remaining term of the lease; she had, in fact, already promised to restore it to China. She maintained, however, that the conditions of retrocession should form the subject of a general settlement between Tokio and Peking.

The Chinese delegation, which worked vigorously and indefatigably and won over a considerable number of backers, argued that Kiaochow had ceased to belong to Germany on the day when China declared war on that state, inasmuch as all their treaties, including the lease of Kiaochow, were abrogated by that declaration, and the ownership of every rood of Chinese territory held by Germany reverted in law to China, and should therefore be handed over to her, and not to Japan. To this plea Baron Makino returned the answer that with the surrender of Tsingtao to Japan in 1914[249] the whole imperial German protectorates of Shantung had passed to that Power, China being still a neutral. Consequently the entry of China into the war in 1917 could not affect the status of the province which already belonged to Nippon by right of conquest. As a matter of alleged fact, this capture of the protectorates by the Japanese had been specially desired by the British government, in order to prevent Germany from ceding it to China. If that move meant anything, therefore, it meant that neither China nor Germany had or could have any hold on the territory once it was captured by Japan. Further, this conquest was effected at the cost of vast sums of money and two thousand Japanese lives.

Nor was that all. In the year 1915[250] China signed an agreement with Japan, undertaking "to recognize all matters that may be agreed upon between the Japanese government and the German government respecting the disposition of all the rights, interests, and concessions which, in virtue of treaties or otherwise, Germany possesses vis-à-vis China, in relation to the province of Shantung." This treaty, the Chinese delegates answered, was extorted by force. Japan, having vainly sought to obtain it by negotiations that lasted nearly four months, finally presented an ultimatum,[251] giving China forty-eight hours in which to accept it. She had no alternative. But at least she made it known to the world that she was being coerced. It was on the day on which that document was signed that the Japanese representative in Peking sent a spontaneous declaration to the Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs, promising to return the leased territory to China on condition that all Kiaochow be opened as a commercial port, that a Japanese settlement be established, and also an international settlement, if the Powers desired it, and that an arrangement be made beforehand between the Chinese and Japanese governments with regard to "the disposal of German public establishments and populations, and with regard to other conditions and procedures."

The Japanese further invoked another and later agreement, which was, they alleged, signed by the Chinese without demur.[252] This accord, coming after the entry of China into the war, was tantamount to the renunciation of any rights which China might have believed she possessed as a corollary of her belligerency. It also disposed, the Japanese argued, of her contention that the territory in question is indispensable and vital to her—a contention which Japan met with the promise to deliver it up—and which was invalidated by China's refusal to fight for it in the year 1914. This latter argument was controverted by the Chinese assertion that they were ready and willing to declare war against Germany at the outset, but that their co-operation was refused by the Entente, and subsequently by Japan. This allegation is credible, if we remember the eagerness exhibited by the British government that Japan should lose no time in co-operating with her allies, the representations made by the British Ambassador to Baron Kato on the subject,[253] and the alleged motive to prevent the retrocession of Shantung to China by the German government.

The arguments of China and Japan were summarily put in the following questions by a delegate of each country: "Yes or no, does Kiaochow, whose population is exclusively Chinese, form an integral part of the Chinese state? Yes or no, was Kiaochow brutally occupied by the Kaiser in the teeth of right and justice and to the detriment of the peace of the Far East, and it may be of the world? Yes or no, did Japan enter the war against the aggressive imperialism of the German Empire, and for the purpose of arranging a lasting peace in the Far East? Yes or no, was Kiaochow captured by the English and Japanese troops in 1914 with the sole object of destroying a dangerous naval base? Yes or no, was China's co-operation against Germany, which was advocated and offered by President Yuan Shi Kai in August, 1914, refused at the instigation of Japan?"[254]