Sharp comments were provoked by the heavy tax on strangers in Tunisia imposed by the French government,[240] on strangers, mostly Italians, who theretofore had enjoyed the same rights as the French and Tunisians.  “Suddenly,” writes the principal Italian journal, “and just when it was hoped that the common sacrifices they had made had strengthened the ties between the two nations, the governor of Tunisia issued certain orders which endangered the interests of foreigners and the effects of which will be felt mainly by Italians, of whom there are one hundred and twenty thousand in Tunisia.[241] First there came an order forbidding the use of any language but French in the schools.  Now the tax referred to in the House of Lords gives the Tunisian government power to levy an impost on the buying and selling of property in Tunisia.  The new tax, which is to be levied over and above pre-existing taxes, ranged from 59 per cent. of the value when it is not assessed at a higher sum than one hundred thousand lire to 80 per cent. when its estimated value is more than five hundred thousand lire.”  The article terminates with the remark that boycotting is hardly a suitable epilogue to a war waged for common ideals and interests.

These manifestations irritated the French and were taken to indicate Italy’s defection.  It was to no purpose that a few level-headed men pointed out that the French government was largely answerable for the state of mind complained of.  “Pertinax,” in the Echo de Paris, wrote “that the alliance, in order to subsist and flourish, should have retained its character as an Anti-German League, whereas it fell into the error of masking itself as a Society of Nations and arrogated to itself the right of bringing before its tribunal all the quarrels of the planet."[242] Italy’s allies undoubtedly did much to forfeit her sympathies and turn her from the alliance.  It was pointed out that when the French troops arrived in Italy the Bulletin of the Italian command eulogized their efforts almost daily, but when the Italian troops went to France, the communiques of the French command were most chary of allusions to their exploits, yet the Italian army contributed more dead to the French front than did the French army to the Italian front.[243] At the Peace Conference, as we saw, when the terms with Germany were being drafted, Italy’s problems were set aside on the grounds that there was no nexus between them.  The Allies’ interests, which were dealt with as a whole during the war, were divided after the armistice into essential and secondary interests, and those of Italy were relegated to the latter class.  Subsequently France, Britain, and the United States, without the co-operation or foreknowledge of their Italian friends, struck up an alliance from which they excluded Italy, thereby vitiating the only arguments that could be invoked in favor of such a coalition.  When peace was about to be signed they one-sidedly