All attempts at force are useless, all impositions are sterile.

All this is true and cannot be denied, but at the same time it must be recognized that in the first move for the indemnity there was a reasonable cause for anxiety on the part of the Allies.

If Germany had had to pay no indemnity this absurd situation would have come about, that although exhausted, Germany would have issued from the War without debts abroad and could easily have got into her stride again, while France, Italy, and in much less degree Great Britain, would have come out of the War with heavy debts.

This anxiety was not only just and well founded, but it is easy to see why it gave ground for a feeling of grave disquiet.

France and Italy, the two big victor States of the Continent, were only able to carry on the War through the assistance of Great Britain and the United States.  The War would not have lasted long without the aid of the Anglo-Saxons, which had a decisive effect.

France has obtained all she asked for, and, indeed, more than all her previsions warranted.  Italy has found herself in a difficult position.  She too has realized her territorial aspirations, though not completely, and the assistance of her Allies has not always been cordial.

I have had, as head of the Government, to oppose all the agitations, and especially the Adriatic adventures, which have caused an acute party division in Italy.  From a sense of duty I have also assumed all responsibility.  But the rigidness of Wilson in the Fiume and Adriatic questions and the behaviour of some of the European Allies have been perfectly unjustifiable.  In certain messages to Wilson during my term of government I did not fail to bring this fact forward.  Certainly, Jugo-Slavia’s demands must be considered with a sense of justice, and it would have been an error and an injustice to attribute to Italy large tracts of territory in Dalmatia; but it would have been possible to find a more reasonable settlement for a country which has had such sufferings and known such losses during the War.  In any case, when by the absurd system followed in the treaties so many millions of Germans, Magyars, Turks and Bulgarians have been handed over to States like Serbia, whose intemperate behaviour precipitated the War, or to States like Greece, which took only a small and obligatory part in it, when States like Poland have won their unity and independence without making war, when Germany has been dismembered in order to give Poland an access to the sea and the ridiculous situation of Danzig has been created, when the moral paradox of the Saar, which now becomes a German Alsace-Lorraine, has been set up, when so many millions of men have been parcelled out without any criteria, it was particularly invidious to contest so bitterly Italy’s claims.  I can freely affirm this inasmuch as, risking all popularity, I have always done my duty as a statesman, pointing out that solution which time has proved to be inevitable.