to defend the integrity of states which she had helped to create while her own frontiers were indefinite.  But in the art of procrastination the Triumvirate was unsurpassed, and, as the time drew near for presenting the Treaty to Germany, neither the Adriatic, the colonial, the financial, nor the economic problems on which Italy’s future depended were settled or even broached.  In the meanwhile the plenipotentiaries in secret council, of whom four or five were wont to deliberate and two to take decisions, had disagreed on the subject of Fiume.  Mr. Wilson was inexorable in his refusal to hand the city over to Italy, and the various compromises devised by ingenious weavers of conflicting interests failed to rally the Italian delegates, whose inspirer was the taciturn Baron Sonnino.  The Italian press, by insisting on Fiume as a sine qua non of Italy’s approval of the Peace Treaty and by announcing that it would undoubtedly be accorded, had made it practically impossible for the delegates to recede.  The circumstance that the press was inspired by the government is immaterial to the issue.  President Wilson, who had been frequently told that a word from him to the peoples of Europe would fire their enthusiasm and carry them whithersoever he wished, even against their own governments, now purposed wielding this unique power against Italy’s plenipotentiaries.  As we saw, he would have done this during his sojourn in Rome, but was dissuaded by Baron Sonnino.  His intention now was to compel the delegates to go home and ascertain whether their inflexible attitude corresponded with that of their people and to draw the people into the camp of the “idealists.”  He virtually admitted this during his conversation with Signor Orlando.  What he seems to have overlooked, however, is that there are time limits to every policy, and that only the same causes can be set in motion to produce the same results.  In Italy the President’s name had a very different sound in April from the clarion-like tones it gave forth in January, and the secret of his popularity even then was the prevalent faith in his firm determination to bring about a peace of justice, irrespective of all separate interests, not merely a peace with indulgence for the strong and rigor for the weak.  The time when Mr. Wilson might have summoned the peoples of Europe to follow him had gone by irrevocably.  It is worth noting that the American statesman’s views about certain of Italy’s claims, although originally laid down with the usual emphasis as immutable, underwent considerable modifications which did not tend to reinforce his authority.  Thus at the outset he had proclaimed the necessity of dividing Istria between the two claimant nations, but, on further reflection, he gave way in Italy’s favor, thus enabling Signor Orlando to make the point that even the President’s solutions needed corrections.  It is also a fact that when the Italian Premier insisted on having the Adriatic problems definitely settled before the presentation of the Treaty to the Germans[213] his colleagues of France and Britain assured him that this reasonable request would be complied with.  The circumstance that this promise was disregarded did not tend to smooth matters in the Council of Five.