The decisive duel between Signor Orlando and Mr. Wilson was fought out in April, and the overt acts which subsequently marked their tense relations were but the practical consequences of that.  On the historic day each one set forth his program with a ne varietur attached, and the President of the United States gave utterance to an estimate of Italian public opinion which astonished and pained the Italian Premier, who, having contributed to form it, deemed himself a more competent judge of its trend than his distinguished interlocutor.  But Mr. Wilson not only refused to alter his judgment, but announced his intention to act upon it and issue an appeal to the Italian nation.  The gist of this document was known to M. Clemenceau and Mr. Lloyd George.  It has been alleged, and seems highly probable, that the British Premier was throughout most anxious to bring about a workable compromise.  Proposals were therefore put forward respecting Fiume and Dalmatia, some of which were not inacceptable to the Italians, who lodged counter-proposals about the others.  On the fate of these counter-proposals everything depended.

On April 23d I was at the Hotel Edouard VII, the headquarters of the Italian delegation, discussing the outlook and expecting to learn that some agreement had been reached.  In an adjoining room the members of the delegation were sitting in conference on the burning subject, painfully aware that time pressed, that the Damocles’s sword of Mr. Wilson’s declaration hung by a thread over their heads, and that a spirit of large compromise was indispensable.  At three o’clock Mr. Lloyd George’s secretary brought the reply of the Council of Three to Italy’s maximum of concessions.  Only one point remained in dispute, I was told, but that point hinged upon Fiume, and, by a strange chance, it was not mentioned in the reply which the secretary had just handed in.  The Italian delegation at once telephoned to the British Premier asking him to receive the Marquis Imperiali, who, calling shortly afterward, learned that Fiume was to be a free city and exempt from control.  It was when the marquis had just returned that I took leave of my hosts and received the assurance that I should be informed of the result.  About half an hour later, on receipt of an urgent message, I hastened back to the Italian headquarters, where consternation prevailed, and I learned that hardly had the delegates begun to discuss the contentious clause when a copy of the Temps was brought in, containing Mr. Wilson’s appeal to the Italian people “over the heads of the Italian government.”

The publication fell like a powerful explosive.  The public were at a loss to fit in Mr. Wilson’s unprecedented action with that of his British and French colleagues.  For if in the morning he sent his appeal to the newspapers, it was asked, why did he allow his Italian colleagues to go on examining a proposal on which he manifestly assumed that they were no longer competent to treat?  Moreover a