journal, “that the Archduke Joseph’s coup d’etat did not take place, indeed (given the conditions in Budapest) could not take place, without the Entente’s connivance.  The official communiques of Budapest and Vienna, dated August 9th, recount on this point precise details which no one has hitherto troubled to deny.  The Peidl government was scarcely three days in power, and, therefore, was not in a position to deserve either trust or distrust, when the heads of the ’order-loving organizations’ put forward, to justify the need of a new crisis, the complaints of the heads of the Entente Missions as to the anarchy prevailing in Hungary and the urgency of finding ‘some one’ who could save the country from the abyss.  Then a commission repaired to Alscuth, where it easily persuaded the Archduke to come to Budapest.  Here he at once visited all the heads of missions and spent the whole day in negotiations. ’As a result of negotiations with Entente representatives, the Archduke Joseph undertook a solution of the crisis.’  He then called together the old state police and a volunteer army of eight thousand men.  The Rumanian garrison was kept ready.  The Peidl government naturally did not resist at all.  At 10 P.M. on August 7th all the Entente Missions held a meeting, to which the Archduke Joseph and the new Premier were invited.  General Gorton presided. The Conference lasted two hours and reached an agreement on all questions.  All the heads of Missions assured the new government of their warmest support."[236]

Another case of unwarranted interference which stirred the Italians to bitter resentment turned upon the obligation imposed on Austria to renounce her right to unite with Germany.  “It is difficult to discern in the policy of the Entente toward Austria anything more respectable than obstinacy coupled with stupidity,” wrote the same journal.  “But there is something still worse.  It is impossible not to feel indignant with a coalition which, after having triumphed in the name of the loftiest ideas ... treats German-Austria no better than the Holy Alliance treated the petty states of Italy.  But the Congress of Vienna acted in harmony with the principle of legitimism which it avowed and professed, whereas the Paris Conference violates without scruple the canons by which it claims to be guided.

“Not a whit more decorous is the intervention of the Supreme Council in the internal affairs of Germany—­a state which, according to the spirit and the letter of the Versailles Treaty, is sovereign and not a protectorate.  The Conference was qualified to dictate peace terms to Germany, but it wanders beyond the bounds of its competency when it construes those terms and arrogates to itself—­on the strength of forced and equivocal interpretations—­the right of imposing upon a nation which is neither militarily nor juridically an enemy a constitutional reform.  Whether Germany violates the Treaty by her Constitution is a question which only a judicial finding of the League of Nations can fairly determine."[237]