That those views were expressly formulated and thrown into the clauses of a secret program is unlikely.  But it seems to be a fact that the general outlines of such a policy were conceived and tacitly adhered to.  These outlines governed the action of the two world-arbiters, not only in the dictatorial decrees issued in the name of political idealism and its Fourteen Points, which were so bitterly resented as oppressive by Italy, Rumania, Jugoslavia, Poland, and Greece, but likewise in those other concessions which scandalized the political puritans and gladdened the hearts of the French, the Japanese, the Jugoslavs, and the Jews.  The dictatorial decrees were inspired by the delegates’ fundamental aims, the concessions by their tactical needs—­the former, therefore, were meant to be permanent, the latter transient.

All other explanations of the Italian crisis, however well they may fit certain of its phases, are, when applied to the pith of the matter, beside the mark.  Even if it were true, as the dramatist, Sem Benelli, wrote, that “President Wilson evidently considers our people as on the plane of an African colony, dominated by the will of a few ambitious men,” that would not account for the tenacious determination with which the President held to his slighted theory.

Italy’s position in Europe was in many respects peculiar.  Men still living remember the time when her name was scarcely more than a geographical expression which gradually, during the last sixty years, came to connote a hard-working, sober, patriotic nation.  Only little by little did she recover her finest provinces and her capital, and even then her unity was not fully achieved.  Austria still held many of her sons, not only in the Trentino, but also on the other shore of the Adriatic.  But for thirty years her desire to recover these lost children was paralyzed by international conditions.  In her own interests, as well as in those of peace, she had become the third member of an alliance which constrained her to suppress her patriotic feelings and allowed her to bend all her energies to the prevention of a European conflict.

When hostilities broke out, the attitude of the Italian government was a matter of extreme moment to France and the Entente.  Much, perhaps the fate of Europe, depended on whether they would remain neutral or throw in their lot with the Teutons.  They chose the former alternative and literally saved the situation.  The question of motive is wholly irrelevant.  Later on they were urged to move a step farther and take an active part against their former allies.  But a powerful body of opinion and sentiment in the country was opposed to military co-operation, on the ground that the sum total of the results to be obtained by quiescence would exceed the guerdon of victory won by the side of the Entente.  The correctness of this estimate depended upon many incalculable factors, among which was the duration of the struggle.