Paris 1919 - Margaret Macmillan [189]
29. The scene inside the Hall of Mirrors as the Treaty of Versailles was signed. The location had great significance for the French because it was here that the new nation of Germany had been proclaimed after France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71.
“Throughout the whole of my negotiations with the Italians,” Lloyd George recalled, “I found that their foreign policy was largely influenced by a compound mixture of jealousy, rivalry, resentment, but more particularly, fear of France.”23 For France it was not so much a matter of fear (although there was some concern over the Italian birthrate) but of condescension tinged with contempt.
In December 1918, after the Allied meetings in London, Orlando and Sonnino had traveled to Paris with Clemenceau. “We did not see them a single time in the course of the long journey,” reported Clemenceau’s aide, “and, at the Gare du Nord, they disappeared without taking leave of M. Clemenceau, who was not only quite astonished but even quite offended.” Clemenceau had a grudging respect for Sonnino but little use for Orlando: “all things to all men, very Italian.”24
The collapse of Austria-Hungary opened up fresh areas for rivalry as France and Italy competed for influence in the center of Europe. In the Adriatic, France was torn between befriending Yugoslavia and keeping on reasonable terms with Italy. “I am so bored with Adriatic matters,” wrote a French diplomat. “All the same we shouldn’t abandon the Yugoslavs. They are as unreasonable as these others, but they are weak. How stupid they are in Rome!” As Clemenceau said wearily one day, much to Orlando’s indignation, “My god, my god! Italy or Yugoslavia? The blonde or the brunette?” By April 1919 Clemenceau had gone firmly for the brunette. He was furious that the Italians had not supported France over the Saar or the issue of trying Germans for war crimes. He also took for granted that he had room to maneuver because, in the end, Italy would have to remain friendly to France.25
Orlando and Sonnino, suspicious of their allies, hostile to their Yugoslav neighbor and caught in an uneasy alliance which neither dared break for fear of bringing their government down, plowed on. Like a bomb with a slow-burning fuse, the official Italian memorandum went to the Peace Conference on February 7. It is an interesting document which, although it scarcely mentions the Treaty of London, repeats its provisions virtually unchanged, decked out this time in the ill-fitting clothes of the new diplomacy. “The Italian claims,” it started, “show such a spirit of justice, right-fulness, and moderation that they come entirely within the principles enunciated and approved by President Wilson and should therefore be recognised and approved by everybody.” Italy’s demands were based almost entirely on self-determination, for Italians of course; the few small instances where it claimed land inhabited by other peoples were solely to make secure borders.26
Orlando and Sonnino concentrated, to the dismay of their own colonialists, on Europe. The Italian Colonial Ministry had thrown itself enthusiastically into preparing grand schemes, particularly for Africa. For Italian nationalists, the “year of shame” of 1896, with the defeat at Aduwa, could be wiped out only by conquest. Britain and France must stand aside, the colonial minister, Gaspare Colosimo, urged his government, and allow Italy to have exclusive influence over Ethiopia. Furthermore, in order to cement Italy’s control over the routes from the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean into Ethiopia, Britain should add its share of Somalia to the piece already in Italian hands and hand over the northeast part of Kenya. France should relinquish its tiny piece of Somalia, as well as the railway from the port of Djibouti into Addis Ababa. Colosimo also dreamed of a Libya enlarged by territory from British-run Egypt and from French possessions and, if the Portuguese colonies went begging, of acquiring Angola as well. Just before the end of the war he sent a memorandum to Balfour and House outlining