Italy came to Paris. It is not quite fair, however, to say that there was no Italian policy apart from the pursuit of these selfish and short-sighted interests. Italy, like all the other nations at Paris, was divided. She was divided politically at home. No nation in Europe has developed in recent years more rapidly in an economic and industrial sense than Italy in its northern citiesMilan, for example-and this has been accompanied by a remarkable growth of liberal opinion, represented by such great newspapers as the Corriere della Sera and the Secolo of Milan. Nowhere has the working-class cooperative movement had a finer or more intelligent expansion; and nowhere has there been a healthier revival in the intellectual life of the nation. If France impresses one as old-old and tired, seeking security rather than adventure, and safety before growth-the Italians of the north, at least, give one an unmistakable impression of new vitality. They are a prolific, industrious, vigorous people.

While the best of Italy is not yet represented in its political control, and the leaders in Paris, Orlando and Sonnino, supported the crudest aims of the old order of national competition, yet it is significant that the Italian economic delegates at Paris, notably Crespi, were not excelled in the breadth of their vision of world economic problems.

But Italy, as a whole, had no real leadership at Paris. She was a prey of conflicting tendencies with no single dominant personality at all comparable to Wilson, Clemenceau, or Lloyd George. Orlando was a scholarly gentleman with the urbanity of the southern Italian. While he was, like Lloyd George, progressive in his inclinations, he was first of all, also like Lloyd George, a politician playing for the glittering prizes of the moment. And he

was not a strong man. He could not, though he was Premier, control his own delegation and was not on speaking terms, at times, with his Foreign Minister, Sonnino. Sonnino was much the stronger character: a cold, determined, imperialistic diplomat of the old school. He was really not Italian at all. His father was an Italian Jew, his mother a Scotchwoman. A lonely man, with a dark immobile face, he gave the impression of being saturnine. He was never popular in Italy, but was kept for years in high places-was once Premier-because he was universally trusted as an honest man. possessed, perhaps, the clarity of mind and fixity of purpose to have given Italian policy a unified direction-in a very narrow, imperialistic sense-but he could do nothing when diluted by Orlando. And Orlando, who had much real sympathy for Wilson's ideals, could not lead.

Sonnino

President Wilson summed up the situation admirably when he told a group of experts, on March 29: "I can get along with Orlando, and could quickly arrange matters with him, if he was not scared to death of Sonnino."1

We may come now to the struggle itself—the first period beginning with the preliminary skirmishes for tactical position and developing into the battle of the experts.

FIRST PERIOD: SKIRMISHING FOR POSITION: THE BATTLE OF THE EXPERTS

Up to February 15, when the President sailed home to America, the Italian claims, by some sort of tacit understanding, were kept patted away out of sight. Yet the Italians were by no means idle. No nation at Paris was more indefatigable with its propaganda than Italy. Several Paris newspapers were commonly reputed to be From notes made at the time by Professor Douglas Johnson.

in the pay of Italy and were constantly giving publicity to Italian claims, reporting demonstrations in Italy and in Fiume; and there presently began to be a stream of distinguished visitors from Italy who sought out the American experts or came to the American Press Bureau to urge their case. They had elaborate and cleverly deceptive maps to show their claims and many pamphlets and publications. They gave the best dinners in Paris. In short, they were preparing the way for the struggle they saw just ahead.

The first real clashes were tactical, and like so many other important problems were precipitated during the President's absence. The more one studies the Peace Conference the more calamitous, so far as the fight for the New Order is concerned, appears the absence, during that crucial month, of President Wilson. Two problems of method arose in the very week that the President sailed away. The first was the struggle of Sonnino to prevent a complete settlement with Germany-under the proposed preliminary treaty-before the Italian question was considered. He felt that if peace were signed with Germany and the armies demobilized, they would stand a poor chance of realizing their hopes in the settlement with Austria. And here he won out: he got a promise that the Austrian and German settlements should go along together, but a promise that the Italians never quite trusted, for they raised the same question again and again.

The other problem was far more vital, for it concerned the procedure in dealing with the complicated claims of Italy. Boiled down to its essence it involved the question as to whether these claims should be settled by the old method of secret diplomacy-as Sonnino desired-or by new methods of impartial inquiry by experts.

Two days after the President left (February 17) Pashich, the Serbian Premier, plumped the whole problem before the Council of Ten by proposing to submit all claims conflicting with Italy openly to the arbitration of President Wilson-which meant, in effect, to the judgment of the American experts. Here was the New with a vengeance! Sonnino turned down the idea flatly at once. He then went further and refused all discussion whatsoever with the Jugoslavs. Nevertheless, it was decided by the Ten to hear the Jugoslavs, and they made a long and dull presentation of their claims (February 18) through which Sonnino sat like a graven image. What should be done next?

President Wilson had already set up a precedent when he had secured (February 1) the reference of the Rumanian claims to a commission of experts in the teeth of fierce objections from the Italians, who perceived that such a precedent might later affect their own interests. This was Wilson's programme-settlements on the open, impartial adjudication of scholars-but he was not there himself to press it. Balfour indeed asked "what should now be done?” and hesitatingly suggested a commission. Sonnino at once pounced upon the proposal.

He wished to be quite frank. Italy could not take part in any Commission or allow any Committee to make recommendations regarding questions outstanding between Italy and the JugoSlavs.1

With no one there to champion the President's ideafor House and Lansing took no vital part—and with the French none too keen to establish a practice of reference to expert commissions, for they, too, had issues which they did not care to have judged upon a calm basis of facts1Secret Minutes, Council of Ten, February 18.

Sonnino was able to prevent the reference of Italian claims to a commission, but, significantly, did not oppose the idea of having a commission set up to study Jugoslav claims, except where they conflicted with Italian claims. By this clever move Sonnino kept Italian claims for consideration wholly in secret councils by methods of the old diplomacy while Jugoslav claims would be presented openly in a commission! This was truly the "fine Italian hand"!

But Sonnino, like every reactionary, underestimated, because he despised, the New. He underestimated, for example, not only the sincerity and seriousness of purpose, but the determination, of the American experts; he underestimated the grip which the new idea, however "impractical" and "idealistic" he might think it, had already secured in the world. I have spoken in a former chapter of how the old diplomatic machine went on working its intrigues in central Europe no matter what Clemenceau did at Paris: well, the new diplomatic machine, the scholars and experts that both America and Great Britain had brought to Paris, were also on the ground and at work, even though Wilson was away. And that element will never again be absent from diplomacy! Notwithstanding all his cleverness, Sonnino's willingness to have even part of the Jugoslav claims submitted to the experts in reality helped to build up the forces against him. If the Italians had been as wise as the Japanese they would have held off entirely from any traffic with these men of knowledge. But they not only failed to do this, but recognizing the influence that the American experts would have upon President Wilson's attitude in the secret councils, they began a clever effort, by propaganda, argument, flattery, to influence or divide the American experts. They endeavoured thus, with over