her losses and feel the deepest indignation at the cause of them, one may even admit that the guarantees she now demands are based not upon aggressiveness but upon apprehension, and yet deny utterly the validity of the French programme of security. Shall the safety and progress of the entire world be sacrificed to the hysteria of French fear?

What, one may ask then, can be done with France? Well, why not stop humouring her once for all? The policy of going with her to the limit is unthinkable. The policy of compromise has been tried and found unworkable as the economic experts argued at the time, and as events have since proved. The only safety, not only for the world but for France herself, lies absolutely to-day, as it did when President Wilson argued for it at Paris, in a new order of relationships-a new coöperation of nations with peace and justice based, not upon force, but upon mutual guarantees. There is no other possible alternative, and unless the world accepts and follows this straight and narrow way, it is doomed to drift along the broader and easier way to sure destruction, with military force and diplomatic alliances struggling to maintain artificial national boundaries and keep down the spreading unrest of the world.

PART VI

THE ITALIAN CRISIS

CHAPTER XXXI
xxx

THE ITALIAN CRISIS-WHAT ITALY DEMANDED-PERSONALITY OF ITALIAN LEADERS, ORLANDO AND SONNINO-BATTLE OF THE EXPERTS

Ο

N THE day that the Germans were at last summoned to Versailles (April 14) to learn their fate, President Wilson said in a public statement:

It is hoped that the questions most directly affecting Italy, especially the Adriatic question, can now be brought to a speedy settlement.

This hope was based upon the great fact that the Three Powers-America, Great Britain, and France—after weeks of struggle in the Dark Period (described in preceding chapters) had finally reached a basis of compromise on the French claims, and could now turn, with some semblance of unity, to meet the importunities of Orlando and Sonnino.

It may well have been assumed at the moment that this hope of the President for a "speedy settlement" was well founded; but it was not. No problems dragged themselves out to such tedious and exasperating lengths as those of Italy, and the reason is not far to seek. While a formula of the peace had indeed been arrived at by the Three, it was a mixture of oil and water. It contained in the League of Nations the programme of the New, and in the terms of the settlements an expression of the fears, greeds, and ambitions of the Old. There had been no real change of spirit, no genuine meeting of the minds