PARIS 1919 (56 page)

Lloyd George and Clemenceau were equally annoyed. “I told Orlando,” said Clemenceau, “that he thought I was the sainted King Stanislas of Poland who, when he was bitten by a dog, not only pardoned the animal but gave him a chunk of cheese in addition. Well, my name is Georges, not Stanislas. I am not giving cheese to the boys who scampered away from Caporetto. I shall live up to our treaty pledge, and in addition I shall convey a frank expression of my profound contempt. But I shall give no extras.” Clemenceau privately asked the Italians to back down.
⁴²
The Italians reiterated that the Treaty of London must be kept.

Wilson, not surprisingly, failed to produce a compromise. With his experts reminding him of his remark on the way over to Europe—“Tell me what's right and I'll fight for it”—he was digging in his heels. He repeatedly assured those close to him that he was not going to let the Italians get Fiume. When Baker, who saw him almost every evening, reported that he had told an Italian delegate that if Italy chose to leave the conference over Fiume, then the United States would feel under no obligation to continue its economic aid, Wilson replied: “That is exactly what you should have said.”
⁴³

A meeting on April 14 between Wilson and Orlando was, according to the Italians, “very stormy.” Wilson described it to House as one of the worst experiences of his life, comparable to the time when he had had to listen to the mother of a student he had expelled from Princeton tell him that her son was about to have an operation and would probably die. Wilson gave Orlando a memorandum in which he said he had made the German peace on the basis of the Fourteen Points and that he could not now make the peace with Austria on a different one. Orlando told his delegation that the memorandum left no room for discussion.
⁴⁴

On April 19, the Saturday before Easter, what were to be six solid days of discussions began. The Italians, almost at once, talked of Passion Week. “I am indeed a new Christ,” said Orlando, “and must suffer my passion for the salvation of my country.” He threatened to leave, whatever the consequences. “I understand the tragic solemnity of this moment. Italy will suffer from this decision. For her, it is only a question of choosing between two deaths.” Lloyd George asked: “On account of Fiume? On account of a city where there are 24,000 Italians and where, if you count the population of the suburbs, the Italian majority is very doubtful?” He begged the Italians to think of what would happen if the Americans responded by pulling out. “I do not know how Europe can get back on its feet if the United States does not stay with us and help us to oil the machinery.”
⁴⁵

Wilson urged the Italians to think in new terms. “In America there is disgust with the old order of things; but not only in America: the whole world is weary of it.” The Italians were unmoved. As Sonnino told Wilson, “after a war requiring such enormous sacrifices, in which Italy has had 500,000 killed and 900,000 disabled, it is not conceivable that we should return to a worse situation than before the war; certain islands on the Dalmatian coast were conceded to us even by Austria-Hungary to secure our neutrality. You would not even grant us these; that could not be explained to the Italian people.” He regretted negotiating Italy's entry into the war on the Allied side. “For my part, I see my death in all this—I mean my moral death. I have ruined my country whilst believing that I was doing my duty.”
⁴⁶

Orlando warned of civil wars in Italy. “What will happen in the country?” asked Sonnino. “We shall have, not Russian bolshevism, but anarchy.” These were not idle threats, given the reports coming in from Italy: of strikes, marches, riots, buildings sacked, demonstrators killed, violent clashes between left and right. The rumors from Paris were inflaming the situation: Orlando was giving way; the Allies had decided to build up Yugoslavia as an anti-Bolshevik power; Wilson was determined to keep Dalmatia out of Italian hands; Fiume was to be a free port. Cables came back from Italy, exhorting the delegation to stand firm .
⁴⁷

Standing firm was all that Orlando and Sonnino could do at this point. They had put themselves into a position where any compromise would look like a major concession. Lloyd George and Clemenceau did their best to bridge the gap between the Italians and the Americans: they were prepared to give Italy the islands but not the mainland of Dalmatia; Fiume and perhaps all the cities on the Dalmatian coast could be free cities; Italy could be compensated in Asia Minor; maybe it could even have Fiume if a new port could be built for Yugoslavia somewhere else. Wilson agreed reluctantly to their attempts: “I don't much like to make a compromise with people who aren't reasonable. They will always believe that, by persisting in their claims, they will be able to obtain more.” After a fruitless errand to the Italians with yet another set of proposals, Hankey confided to his diary: “We have now reached an impasse. The Italians say they won't sign the German Treaty unless they are promised Fiume and the whole Treaty of London. No one will give them Fiume, and President Wilson won't give them Dalmatia, which, he says, would contravene the ethnical principle.” The Italians remained “absolutely inflexible.” And now the Yugoslavs, who had been quietly watching the crisis develop, warned that they would fight if Italy got Fiume or the Dalmatian coast.
⁴⁸

Time was running out. The Germans were due to arrive on April 25 to receive their peace terms, and by now the Italians were not the only ones threatening to withdraw. The Japanese, usually so quiet, were pressing their claim to the former German possessions in China and were making one last attempt to get a clause on racial equality written into the covenant of the League of Nations. Japan's delegates, with their usual politeness, hinted that they might also be unable to sign the German treaty. Belgium was angry that its demands for reparations had not been met. The last thing Wilson, Lloyd George and Clemenceau wanted was the Germans to see the Allies quarreling among themselves.
⁴⁹

Everyone was showing the strain. In the seclusion of the Edward VII, the Italians accused each other of weakening. On Easter Sunday Orlando had his fit of weeping. Wilson looked haggard and his voice shook. Clemenceau was especially sarcastic and rude to the Italians. Even Lloyd George seemed nervous. Sonnino no longer bothered to conceal his dislike of Wilson; he told Lloyd George and Clemenceau, “Now President Wilson, after ignoring and violating his own Fourteen Points, wants to restore their virginity by applying them vigorously where they refer to Italy.”
⁵⁰

The charge stung because it had some truth. Wilson had compromised his principle of self-determination over the Tyrol and the Polish Corridor. The week after Easter he reread his Fourteen Points and thought again about the new diplomacy he had hoped to bring the world. Issues, he reiterated, ought to be decided on the basis of facts. He went over the maps and the statistics with his experts. The ethnic mix did not entitle Italy to Fiume or Dalmatia: the Italian people were not being told the truth by their own government. Wilson now remembered, and misinterpreted, his trip to Italy four months previously. He had been deeply impressed by the crowds that had greeted him; they were, he was convinced, behind him. He resolved to make a direct appeal to the Italian people.
⁵¹

On April 21 he showed Lloyd George and Clemenceau a statement that he had typed out himself. In clear and direct language it explained why the Treaty of London must be set aside. He reminded the Italians of how much their country was already gaining. “Her lines are extended to the great walls which are her natural defense.” Italy had a chance to reach out in friendship to the new nation across the Adriatic. He called on the Italians to work with him to build a new order based on the rights of peoples and the right of the world to peace. Lloyd George and Clemenceau were impressed but cautious. Publication, Lloyd George remarked, “could indeed produce a helpful impression in Italy, but only after a certain period of time. For the moment, we must expect madness.” With Clemenceau's support, he persuaded Wilson to wait while he made one final attempt to talk to the Italian delegation. When this failed too, Wilson sent his statement to the newspapers on the afternoon of April 23.
⁵²

When a special edition of
Le Temps
arrived at the Edward VII, there was intense indignation but no surprise. The Italians had known of the existence of Wilson's statement for a couple of days and had been contemplating their withdrawal from the conference for even longer. Orlando decided to return to Italy the following day. After a meeting of the Council of Four, at which he and Wilson spoke stiffly but politely to each other, he left to catch his train. Sonnino followed a couple of days later. “Well,” said Lloyd George, “the fat is in the fire at last!”
⁵³

The Italian papers carried Wilson's statement beside Orlando's reply, the latter usually set in larger type. Cheering crowds welcomed Orlando's train as it passed. In Rome, the church bells rang out on his arrival, while overhead airplanes scattered patriotic pamphlets and demonstrators chanted, “Viva Orlando! Viva Fiume! Viva l'Italia!” The Italian government placed a guard around the American embassy. Walls throughout Italy were daubed with demands for the annexation of Fiume and caricatures of Wilson in an Austrian helmet. In Turin, students forced the owner of the President Wilson Café to take down his sign; they went up and down the Corso Wilson, renamed in honor of the president's recent visit, covering the street signs with new ones saying Corso Fiume. In Fiume itself, young Italians shouted, bizarrely, “Down with Wilson! Down with redskins!” The nationalist press demanded the immediate annexation of Fiume and Dalmatia.
⁵⁴

In a speech to the Italian parliament which started with a plea for “calm and serenity,” Orlando blamed the situation on his allies and insisted: “Italy firmly believes before everything else that the whole complex of her claims is based on such high and solemn reasons of right and justice that they ought to be recognised in their integrity.” His government won a vote of confidence, 382 votes to 40. Nationalists, the fascists prominent among them, held mass meetings throughout the country. D'Annunzio was in his element, savaging the Allied treachery and mocking Wilson, the “Croatified Quaker,” with “his long equine face,” his mouth “of thirty-two false teeth.” This was not a human being but an ugly puppet. Italy must not give in to criminal intrigues. “Down there, on the roads of Istria, on the roads of Dalmatia,” cried D'Annunzio, “do you not hear the footsteps of a marching army?”
⁵⁵

The peacemakers watched with concern. The Belgians were threatening not to sign the German treaty and there was also a serious crisis over Japan's demands. The German delegates were arriving on April 29 and their terms had not been finalized. More worrying, could a Peace Conference in disarray force them to sign a treaty? “Chaos,” said the headline in a Paris newspaper. “The various delegations,” reported an American journalist, “are holding meetings to consider what shall be done, as it is suddenly being recognized that the very existence of the Peace Conference is threatened.” The conference secretariat started going through the draft treaty with Germany to remove all references to Italy. In a plenary session, the delegate from Panama placed a black scarf on Orlando's empty chair. It was removed by a Portuguese delegate, who said it was too early for mourning.
⁵⁶

Behind the scenes both the Italian government and the Allies were looking for a way for Italy to come back. The Italians were shaken that the other powers seemed prepared to carry on without them. Clemenceau added pressure when he announced that the Austrian delegates had been invited to come to Paris by the middle of May. The members of the Italian delegation who remained in Paris sent Orlando urgent warnings that Italy's position was deteriorating rapidly. The United States was holding up a badly needed credit of $25 million. Britain and France were saying his withdrawal freed them from their obligation to respect the Treaty of London. They had gone ahead and divided up the African colonies. Only Lloyd George was hinting at a possible compromise.
⁵⁷

On May 5, the Italians announced that Orlando and Sonnino were returning. “Orlando looks very white and worn and says very little and without much pep,” reported the American Seymour. “He looks ten years older. Sonnino is unchanged in appearance and preserves some truculence of manner, but is not aggressive.”
⁵⁸
The secretariat set about adding the words “Italy” and “Italian” by hand to the German terms.

The issue that had caused the rupture was still, however, a long way from being settled. Wilson was cool to any further negotiations with the Italians. “It is curious,” he said, “how utterly incapable these Italians are of taking any position on principle & sticking to it.” One faint hope, which House promoted, was that the Italians and the Yugoslavs might cut through the difficulties by dealing directly with each other. On May 16, the two sides came to House's suite at the Crillon, and, in a type of negotiation that became commonplace in the 1990s, sat in separate rooms while the Americans dashed back and forth between them. When Clemenceau asked Orlando the next day what had happened, his answer was gloomy: “Nothing. It is impossible.” The fact that House was trying to bridge the Italian and American positions may have contributed to Wilson's growing antipathy to his old friend.
⁵⁹

The main part of the Peace Conference wound down in an atmosphere of mutual irritation. Wilson inveighed to Baker about the greedy Italians. The French complained that Italy was now trying to take over Austrian railways that French money had paid for. Clemenceau shouted: “France will resent it. She will not forget it. I don't expect fairness from you.” When several French soldiers were lynched by nationalist mobs in Fiume, he loudly denounced the “peuple d'assassins” at the Council of Four. The Italians reserved their main venom for Wilson. When an assistant remarked to Sonnino, “Wilson seems affable this morning,” his superior replied, “Who knows what new offers, what new blackmail have been contrived?” Orlando had become convinced, he said in his memoirs, that “Wilson had his own personal engagement with the Yugoslavs; what it was I don't know but there it was.” The Italian press carried stories that Wilson had been bribed by the Yugoslavs or that he had a Yugoslav mistress. Sonnino and others believed rather that he was in the grip of American financial interests who wanted to develop the Adriatic for themselves, perhaps using the Red Cross as their cover.
⁶⁰