Paris 1919 - Margaret Macmillan [196]
On April 21 he showed Lloyd George and Clemenceau a statement that he had typed out himself. In clear and direct language it explained why the Treaty of London must be set aside. He reminded the Italians of how much their country was already gaining. “Her lines are extended to the great walls which are her natural defense.” Italy had a chance to reach out in friendship to the new nation across the Adriatic. He called on the Italians to work with him to build a new order based on the rights of peoples and the right of the world to peace. Lloyd George and Clemenceau were impressed but cautious. Publication, Lloyd George remarked, “could indeed produce a helpful impression in Italy, but only after a certain period of time. For the moment, we must expect madness.” With Clemenceau’s support, he persuaded Wilson to wait while he made one final attempt to talk to the Italian delegation. When this failed too, Wilson sent his statement to the newspapers on the afternoon of April 23.52
When a special edition of Le Temps arrived at the Edward VII, there was intense indignation but no surprise. The Italians had known of the existence of Wilson’s statement for a couple of days and had been contemplating their withdrawal from the conference for even longer. Orlando decided to return to Italy the following day. After a meeting of the Council of Four, at which he and Wilson spoke stiffly but politely to each other, he left to catch his train. Sonnino followed a couple of days later. “Well,” said Lloyd George, “the fat is in the fire at last!”53
The Italian papers carried Wilson’s statement beside Orlando’s reply, the latter usually set in larger type. Cheering crowds welcomed Orlando’s train as it passed. In Rome, the church bells rang out on his arrival, while overhead airplanes scattered patriotic pamphlets and demonstrators chanted, “Viva Orlando! Viva Fiume! Viva l’Italia!” The Italian government placed a guard around the American embassy. Walls throughout Italy were daubed with demands for the annexation of Fiume and caricatures of Wilson in an Austrian helmet. In Turin, students forced the owner of the President Wilson Café to take down his sign; they went up and down the Corso Wilson, renamed in honor of the president’s recent visit, covering the street signs with new ones saying Corso Fiume. In Fiume itself, young Italians shouted, bizarrely, “Down with Wilson! Down with redskins!” The nationalist press demanded the immediate annexation of Fiume and Dalmatia.54
In a speech to the Italian parliament which started with a plea for “calm and serenity,” Orlando blamed the situation on his allies and insisted: “Italy firmly believes before everything else that the whole complex of her claims is based on such high and solemn reasons of right and justice that they ought to be recognised in their integrity.” His government won a vote of confidence, 382 votes to 40. Nationalists, the fascists prominent among them, held mass meetings throughout the country. D’Annunzio was in his element, savaging the Allied treachery and mocking Wilson, the “Croatified Quaker,” with “his long equine face,” his mouth “of thirty-two false teeth.” This was not a human being but an ugly puppet. Italy must not give in to criminal intrigues. “Down there, on the roads of Istria, on the roads of Dalmatia,” cried D’Annunzio, “do you not hear the footsteps of a marching army?”55
The peacemakers watched with concern. The Belgians were threatening not to sign the German treaty and there was also a serious crisis over Japan’s demands. The German delegates were arriving on April 29 and their terms had not been finalized. More worrying, could a Peace Conference in disarray force them to sign a treaty? “Chaos,” said the headline in a Paris newspaper. “The various delegations,” reported an American journalist, “are holding meetings to consider what shall be done, as it is suddenly being recognized that the very existence of the Peace Conference is threatened.” The conference secretariat