The Italian Premier’s answer was equally clear, but he could not unburden his mind of it all.  His government had, it was true, adhered to the Fourteen Points without reservation.  But the assumptions on which it gave this undertaking were that it would not be used to upset past compacts, but would be reserved for future settlements; that even had it been otherwise the maxims in question should be deemed relevant in Italy’s case only if applied impartially to all states, and that the entire work of reorganization should rest on this ethical foundation.  A regime of exceptions, with privileged and unprivileged nations, would obviously render the scheme futile and inacceptable.  Yet this was the system that was actually being introduced.  If secret treaties were to be abrogated, then let the convention between Japan and China be also put out of court and the dispute between them adjudicated upon its merits.  If the Fourteen Points are binding, let the freedom of the seas be proclaimed.  If equal rights are to be conferred upon all states, let the Monroe Doctrine be repealed.  If disarmament is to become a reality, let Britain and America cease to build warships.  Suppose for a moment that to-morrow Brazil or Chile were to complain of the conduct of the United States, the League of Nations, in whose name Mr. Wilson speaks, would be hindered by the Monroe Doctrine from intervening, whereas Britain and the United States in analogous conditions may intermeddle in the affairs of any of the lesser states.  When Ireland or Egypt or India uplifts its voice against Britain, it is but a voice in the desert which awakens no echo.  If Fiume were inhabited by American citizens who, with a like claim to be considered a separate entity, asked to be allowed to live under the Stars and Stripes, what would President Wilson’s attitude be then?  Would he turn a deaf ear to their prayer?  Surely not.  Why, in the case of Italy, does he not do as he would be done by?  What it all comes to is that the new ordering under the flag of equality is to consist of superior and inferior nations, of which the former, who speak English, are to possess unlimited power over the latter, to decide what is good for them and what is bad, what is licit and what is forbidden.  And against their fiat there is to be no appeal.  In a word, it is to be the hegemony of the Anglo-Saxon race.

It is worth noting that Signor Orlando’s arguments were all derived from the merits of the case, not from the terms or the force of the London Treaty.  Fiume, he said, had besought Italy to incorporate it, and had made this request before the armistice, at a moment when it was risky to proclaim attachments to the kingdom.[210] The inhabitants had invoked Mr. Wilson’s own words:  “National aspirations must be respected....  Self-determination is not a mere phrase.”  “Peoples and provinces are not to be bartered about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were mere chattels and pawns in a game.  Every territorial settlement involved in this war must be made in the interest and for the benefit of the populations concerned, and not as a part of any adjustment for compromise of claims among rival states.”  And in his address at Mount Vernon the President had advocated a doctrine which is peculiarly applicable to Fiume—­i.e.: