Chamber, Signor Orlando would not forget to say that a satisfactory solution may yet be found.  He would surely be incapable of jeopardizing the chances of such a desirable consummation.  “I will make the people arbiters of the whole situation,” the Premier announced, “and in order to enable them to judge with full knowledge of the data, I herewith ask your permission to communicate my last memorandum to the Council of Four.  It embodies the pith of the facts which it behooves the Parliament to have before it.  In the meantime, the Italian government withdraws from the Peace Conference.”  On this the painful meeting terminated and the principal Italian plenipotentiaries returned to Rome.  In France a section of the press sympathized with the Italians, while the government, and in particular M. Clemenceau, joined Mr. Wilson, who had promised to restore the sacredness of treaties[214] in exhorting Signor Orlando to give up the Treaty of London.  The clash between Mr. Wilson and Signor Orlando and the departure of the Italian plenipotentiaries coincided with the arrival of the Germans in Versailles, so that the Allies were faced with the alternative of speeding up their desultory talks and improvising a definite solution or giving up all pretense at unanimity in the presence of the enemy.  One important Paris journal found fault with Mr. Wilson and his “Encyclical,” and protested emphatically against his way of filling every gap in his arrangements by wedging into it his League of Nations.  “Can we harbor any illusion as to the net worth of the League of Nations when the revised text of the Covenant reveals it shrunken to the merest shadow, incapable of thought, will, action, or justice?...  Too often have we made sacrifices to the Wilsonian doctrine."[215] ...  Another press organ compared Fiume to the Saar Valley and sympathized with Italy, who, relying on the solidarity of her allies, expected to secure the city.[216]

While those wearisome word-battles—­in which the personal element played an undue part—­were being waged in the twilight of a secluded Valhalla, the Supreme Economic Council decided that the seized Austrian vessels must be pooled among all the Allies.  When the untoward consequences of this decision were flashed upon the Italians and the Jugoslavs, the rupture between them was seen to be injurious to both and profitable to third parties.  For if the Austrian vessels were distributed among all the Allied peoples, the share that would fall to those two would be of no account.  Now for the first time the adversaries bestirred themselves.  But it was not their diplomatists who took the initiative.  Eager for their respective countries’ share of the spoils of war, certain business men on both sides met,[217] deliberated, and worked out an equitable accord which gave four-fifths of the tonnage to Italy and the remainder to the Jugoslavs, who otherwise would not have obtained a single ship.[218] They next set about getting the resolution of the