conference Italy had no directing policy.  It had been a part of the system of the German Alliance, but it had left its Allies, Germany and Austria-Hungary, because it recognized that the War was unjust, and had remained neutral for ten months.  Then, entering into the War freely and without obligation, there was one road for it to follow, that of proclaiming solemnly and defending the principles of democracy and justice.  Indeed, that was a moral duty in that the break with the two countries with which Italy had been in alliance for thirty-three years became a matter not only of honesty but of duty solely through the injustice of the cause for which they had proclaimed an offensive war.  It was not possible for Italy to go to war to realize the dream of uniting the Italian lands to the nation, for she had entered the system of Alliance of the Central Empires and had stayed there long years while having all the time Italian territories unjustly subjected to Austria-Hungary.  The annexation of the Italian lands to the Kingdom of Italy had to be the consequence of the affirmation of the principles of nationality, not the reason for going to war.  In any case, for Italy, which had laid on itself in the London Agreement the most absurd limitations, which had confined its war aims within exceedingly modest limits, which had no share in the distribution of the wealth of the conquered countries, which came out of the War without raw materials and without any share in Germany’s colonial empire, it was a matter not only of high duty but of the greatest utility to proclaim and uphold all those principles which the Entente had so often and so publicly proclaimed as its war policy and its war aims.  But in the Paris Conference Italy hardly counted.  Without any definite idea of its own policy, it followed France and the United States, sometimes it followed Great Britain.  There was no affirmation of principles at all.  The country which, among all the European warring Powers, had suffered most severely in proportion to its resources and should have made the greatest effort to free itself from the burdens imposed on it, took no part in the most important decisions.  It has to be added that these were arrived at between March 24 and May 7, while the Italian representatives were absent from Paris or had returned there humbled without having been recalled.

After interminable discussions which decided very little, especially with regard to the League of Nations which arose before the nations were constituted and could live, real vital questions were tackled, as is seen from the report of the Conference, on March 24, and it is a fact that between that date and May 7 the whole treaty was put in shape:  territorial questions, financial questions, economic questions, colonial questions.  Now, at that very moment, on account of the question of Fiume and Fiume alone, for some inscrutable reason the Italian delegates thought good to retire from the Conference, to which they returned later without being invited, and during that time all the demonstrations against President Wilson took place in Italy, not without some grave responsibility on the part of the government.  Italy received least consideration in the peace treaties among all the conquering countries.  It was practically put on one side.