Italian Crisis at Paris Dramatic with Burden on President

Italian Crisis at Paris Dramatic with Burden on President

Baker, Ray Stannard, 1870-1946

WWP16072

1919 November 9

Cary T. Grayson Papers, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library, Staunton, Virginia

English

BY RAY STANNARD BAKER.

ANYTHING with which the Italians have to do is bound to be dramatic. They set everything to music and present it on the stage. D’Annunzio expressed the Italian temperament the other day, accurately if extremely, when he marched into Fiume and chose the grave in which he, the martyred hero, was to rest.

So it was that the Italian crisis at Paris was the most dramatic of any. It is an interesting fact that the President had to “go down on the mat” with each of the great powers in turn, the principles he stood for coming into conflict with the special interests they supported.

When an Englishman has his fancy fixed on an island, or a Frenchman wants some billions more of francs than there is any show of getting, or an Italian covets a town which was Italian in the days of the Venetian doges, there is difficult business afoot. The President could easily have had his principles adopted after the spoils of war had been divided, but it was a terrific task to get them adopted on the basis of peace. Every one wanted a good strong league of nations to guarantee a treaty in which each first got all he wanted! And often in these struggles the President was absolutely alone, but sometimes he could form combinations with one or other of the powers—usually the British—to help him maintain his position.

The British liberals and their excellent newspapers helped him more than any other single group in the world—better than any single group in his own country. Lord Robert Cecil and Gen. Smuts were often towers of strength. As for Lloyd George, he was powerfully on one side on one day and powerfully on the other the next—but on the whole and in the great main issues he was with the President. Lloyd George was one of the most charming and amiable figures in Paris, full of Celtic quick-silver, a torrential talker in the conferences—but no one was ever quite sure, having heard him express an unalterable determination on one day, that he would not be unalterably determined some other way on the day following. He was full of sudden bright ideas he contracted enthusiasms, he had panics—and amused or charmed nearly everybody with whom he came into personal contact. He had to have his tea every afternoon—and got it—though it overturned the ancient proprieties of the most solemn of institutions, the French foreign office; and he had the British passion for fresh air. I saw him one day come bursting out of the hermetically sealed room where the peace conference was sitting in supposed secrecy, and throwing up both hands, exclaim: “I don’t believe the air in that room has been changed since the time of Louis Philippe.”

As for Clemenceau, no one who saw him day after day in Paris could help coming to have a kind of abiding personal admiration for him—though he was against the President upon almost every real issue that arose. I see him now—his body as solid, square, strong, as though built out of oak wood, his short legs, his great drum of a chest, his head set far back and held very erect, the bald top of it the color of old yellow parchment, and freckled. He always wore gray cloth gloves in conference and out—I never saw his bare hands—got up at 4 o’clock in the morning and went to bed at 8 or 9 in the evening and though sevety-eight years old was able, within two weeks after being shot by a would-be assassin, to return to the conference. The French well called him “the Tiger.” He had a devastating wit and after a long life in which he had seen everything, done everything, felt everything, had no illusions left, nothing but a kind of burning flame of passion for France. Everything else was vanity. So old, so worldly wise, so obstinate, so witty and withal so gentle (French to the bone) there is no one like him in the whole world today.

These were strong men with whom the President had to deal; men who had managed the great war for two great powers and contrived, in spite of everthing, to maintain their hold upon their people. Some Americans forget to give him credit for the fact that he not only held his own with them, vindicated his position as the indisputably outstanding figure at the peace conference, but secured in large measure what he came to get; and, I am certain, left Paris not only with the high respect of these associates, but, if words ever mean anything at all, with their truly friendly consideration. They knew him, after six months, for a fighter—a hard fighter, but always fair—and respected him accordingly.

As I say, he had a struggle with each of the powers in turn. He met the British, for example, on the colonial issue, as I described in a former article, and little was heard of the fight, for if the British have to give in they are discreetly silent about it, and even make it appear afterward as though, after all, they were the real winners. The French fought always with foils, politely, but with a matchless ingenuity in alternatives and a persistence to wear away the solid rocks. It would seem one day, in the conference, that Clemenceau had been “talked around,” convinced, but the next morning, when the subject was reopened, he was back exactly where he was at the beginning, and the work of convincing him had to be started all over again. M. Bourgeois made the same speech, setting forth the French point of view on the league of nations at least ten times, in extenso, at various conferences; and after he had been voted down every time, put it out in the form of an elaborate statement. It was the wearing struggle chiefly with the French that led the President finally, in despair, to order the George Washington, as I narrated in the previous article.

The President also had struggles with the Italians over Fiume and with the Japanese over Shantung. Never were two peoples more radically different in their method of fighting than were the Italians and the Japanese. The Japanese never said anything; they took the palm for silence at the conference, as the Italians took the prize for vociferousness. The Japanese had their minds made up when they came as to what they wanted; they let it be known and then they waited and said nothing—but never let go. They were the one-price traders of the conference; they possess the genius—perhaps the oriental genius—of knowing how to wait. Though the disposition of the German colonies, including Shantung, was almost the first question to be discussed in the conference in January, it was almost the last to be settled in May.

But no one was ever quite sure of what the Italians wanted—except that they wanted more. A little breath of victory would fire their imagination and they were likely to increase their demands overnight They were inveterate traders; expostulated, insinuated, threatened, appealed charmingly to sentiment, expressed their undying loyalties, and withal were engagingly personal about everything.I once bought an ornate handkerchief box of a dealer in Naples; spent a joyous hour at it, paid twice as much, I think, for the box as it was worth as a box, but considering all the coruscating personality thrown in, the vivacity expended, so that I came away not only with a humdrum box, but with a poem about it!—I felt I had a real bargain. Well, that was the way the Italians tried to trade at Paris, and found the northern world too cold!If one day you thought you had them pinned down to their ultimate demands you might find them the next dreaming dreams of new domains in Asia. And when you had decided that they were a wholly unreasonable people they would come down upon you with a dose of realism that beat even the French, proving to you that Italy, as an impossibly crowded nation without raw materials, must have places for expansion or else explode. It was amusing, when I was in Italy in the winter, to find every city naming a square or street after President Wilson, and four months later to find that they were taking down the signs and renaming the streets after Fiume or D’Annunzio. If the French impress one as old—old and tired, seeking security rather than adventure, and safety before growth—the Italians give one an unmistakable impression of youth and vitality. If Clemenceau is a kind of type-figure of France, D’Annunzio is a type-figure of Italy—though Clemenceau is more truly French than D’Annunzio is Italian, for in Italy a new type is arising—a strong, modern, practical, very able type, represented by the industrial leaders of the north.

Consider the Italian situation as the President had to face it. In the fall of 1918, when the Austrians were still occupying a great part of northeastern Italy, there was a large body of public opinion in Italy—sick unto death of the struggle—that would have been glad to get out of the war with even the ante–bellum boundaries restored. A conference had been held at Rome between a group of Italian liberals and a delegation of Jugoslavs in which the future relationships of the two peoples were talked over, reasonably and quietly. But with the victory over the Austrians in the fall Italian ambitions began to soar, and, unfortunately, just as Lloyd George made impossible promises to the British electorate in December, so these extreme ambitions of the Italians were stimulated by the politicians. No Italian leader at first expected to get Fiume, for even making the secret London pact, which gave Italy so much of the Adriatic coast, they had themselves agreed that Fiume must remain—as it had always been—the outlet of the great hinterland reaching back to Hungary. But with the growth of Italian ambitions they wanted not only the Adriatic coast but also Fiume—and a slice of Asia as well.

When the Italians came to the peace conference there were three outstanding things that they wanted: First, to prevent a settlement with Germany by the allies in advance of a settlement with Austria; second, to make sure of realizing their territorial ambitions, and third, to secure immediate economic and financial assistance. They felt that if peace were signed with Germany and the armies demobilized they would stand a poor chance of realizing their hopes in the settlement with Austria. Soon after the President returned to France in March they saw that they were doomed to defeat in this respect: and that a peace with Germany, including the establishment of a league of nations, would speedily be made. Now, they knew that France had always been hostile to Italian expansion in the Mediterranean; and the British not over friendly—and they were not without warrant in this feeling, for they had sat in during the last century or so as the weaker sister at more than one of the realistic peace conferences of Europe; and knew exactly what weak sisters were likely to get.On the very day after the President’s return, March 15, the Italian premier, Orlando, had a conference with him and set forth clearly his case; that the Italians, if they were not to be accorded a settlement with Austria at the time the German treaty was made, must at least, before they signed the German treaty or agreed to enter a league of nations, know what they were to get in the Adriatic—and he put forward the claims for Fiume.

Throughout the conference the President and Orlando were upon terms of high mutual respect and personal confidence. Orlando was a scholarly gentleman with the urbanity of the cultivated southern Italian. He was progressive in his inclinations and desirous of helping the President in the main lines of his policy. But he was not a strong man, not a dominating figure either at Rome or in Paris. It was difficult for him, though he was premier, to direct his own delegation and at times he was said not to be on speaking terms with his foreign minister, Sonnino. Sonnino was much the stronger character—a rather cold, determined, imperialistic diplomat of the old school. He was really not Italian at all. His father was an Italian Jew; his mother a Scotchwoman. A rather lonely man, with a dark immobile face, he gave, I do not know how truly, the impression of being saturnine. He was never popular in Italy, but was kept for years in high places; was once premier, because he was universally trusted as an honest man. Throughout the conference he opposed the more moderate Orlando, and was for all he could get for Italy.By the 1st of April the Italian feeling at getting no satisfaction had grown so strong that they began, while the President lay ill, to threaten to go home and break up the conference if they were not accorded immediate satisfaction. They had already secured the great prizes for which they had dreamed for years—the return of the ancient Italian provinces of Trentino and Trieste and a good part of Istria, and they were certain of getting substantial naval control of the Adriatic to protect them on the east, besides, of course, reparations for their losses. But for the relatively small city of Fiume they seemed willing to break up the peace conference.

Now, Fiume, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, had, in 1900, a population of 17,354 Italians, 14,885 Slavs, 2,482 Hungarians and 1,945 Germans. At the close of the war, however, probably a little more than half of the population of the actual city of Fiume was Italian, due largely to the disappearance of the Austro-Hungarians, who made up the official class. But if the entire port, including the eastern suburb of Susak (inhabited almost exclusively by Croats) is considered the Italians were in a minority. However, they do constitute the largest single element in the population, and the town has a decidedly Italian aspect.It was soon evident that the Italians would not be denied; some answer was imperative; they were threatening every day to withdraw from the conference. The French and the British maintained a neutral attitude; they gelt themselves more or less bound up to Italy by many economic and commerical ties, and they were more or less suspicious of each other. Neither really wanted to see the Italians get what they were after; neither wanted to risk Italian hostility by taking a strong position; both were quite willing that the Americans should bear all the opprobrium.It fell, therefore, to the President—as did so many of the disagreeable jobs at the conference—to formulate a decision. Now, the facts and arguments had been presented to the point of utter weariness by both sides. Each side had its own confusing statistics. Jugoslav statistics never by any chance agreed with Italian statistics, nor Jugoslav history with Italian history. The figures I have given above of the population of Fiume—though I quote from the redoubtable Britannica and endeavor, as nearly as an outsider can, to set down the facts—are certain to be assailed from one side or the other; probably both. I’d like some time to write more comprehensively of the statistical war at Paris, and how the experts fired encyclopedias at one another, set off the deadly gases of innumerable red books, blue books and yellow books, and penetrated one another’s vitals with shafts cut out of musty and dusty annual reports. The struggle on the Hindenburg line had nothing to beat it! Every sort of ethnological, geographical, economic, historical and military argument was presented—until one’s head whirled.

To any one who was not at Paris and did not see in what complicated and often contradictory forms the various problems presented themselves may not realize how difficult it was to settle them on any kind of principle. I recall, toward the end of the conference, hearing a facile critic observe that President Wilson had made—“an utter failure in the application of his fourteen points”—to which there came the instant rejoinder: “How about the application of the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule? Has that ever succeeded?”Over and over again in the conference the most vexing problems of right and wrong were presented, where there seemed no way of getting a settlement on principle. As a single example, in forming the new state of Poland the Poles stood hard for the application of the thirteenth of the fourteen points, which promised them “a free and secure access to the sea”; but if they were accorded this it meant the inclusion of a million or more Germans within Polish borders, which offended the spirit of the principle of self-determination. It was a question of balancing antagonistic considerations, and the conferees had finally to decide which mixture gave promise, on the whole, of the greatest future justice and security.

The same confusion existed in the settlement regarding Fiume. The Italians took their stand upon the principle of self-determination applied to one small city, which controlled the gateway of a great nation of people, who were wholly non-Italian. The Slavs argued that Fiume had never been an Italian city, that the Italians did not need it, having the excellent ports of Trieste and Pola not far off, that it was and always had been the natural outlet of the great back-country of the Croats, Slavs and Hungarians and that their access to the sea ought to be protected.The President finally made his decision and talked it over with Orlando, who objected sharply. Then he prepared a careful statement of policy and read it aloud to Clemenceau and Lloyd George, who approved it—or at least made no objection to it—though when the storm rose afterward and the lightning began to crash around their devoted heads there were denials in both British and French newspapers—not, however, directly attributable to the statesmen themselves—that they had ever really approved the report. But the Italians were obdurate and still threatening every day to leave the conference. They even went so far as to let it be known that they had chosen a train to go on. Indeed, they chose several trains and were even reported to have reserved their accommodations on two or three different occasions. Every one was trying to patch up a settlement. Lloyd George was particularly active; and one day I found Col. House , who was the great conciliator of the conference, with a group of Italians in one room and a group of Jugoslavs in another (they refused to meet each other) trying to get them united on some reasonable basis. Never in this world were there such torrents and floods of talk. Every day we heard of a new “formula of settlement” and the next heard that it had been discarded for another. One would have thought the whole war had been fought over the fortunes of twenty-odd thousands of Italians in Fiume.

Well, the Germans had been summoned to Versailles for April 25. Something had to be done, and the President acted with characteristic audacity and vigor. On April 23 he sent down to our press bureau, by Admiral Grayson, a copy of his statement on the Italian question. We got it at once upon the cables and the wireless, had it swiftly translated into French, and that night it went to every part of the world. It caused a tremendous sensation—in some ways the greatest sensation of the conference. And no one of the President’s acts was generall so well received, except, of course, in Italy. It shook the peace conference to its very foundations.

In his statement the President said that Fiume must serve the commecre not of Italy but of the other lands to the north and northeast of that port to which it had been the historical outlet; that Italy did not need the port; that if Fiume were assigned to Italy “it would create the feeling that we had deliberately put the port upon which all these countries depend for their access to the Mediterranean in the hands of a power of which it did not form an integral part. * * * It is for that reason, no doubt, that Fiume was not included in the pact of London, but was there definitely assigned to the Croatians.”

Orlando came back with a heated statement complaining that the President had gone over the heads of the Italian delegates and appealed to the people, and condemned this as unfair. The next ay the larger part of the Italian delegation left Paris in a blaze of glory, and Orlando made his report to the government at Rome. They confidently expected that their defection would break up the conference, but the conference continued to move along. It was significant also that while all the political delegates left—and left dramatically—the Italian economic representatives, who were looking after constant supplies of coal, iron, food and money from the allies, quietly remained.Every effort was made both before and after the Italians left to change the President’s position. He was willing to accede to some genuine international control of Fiume, but beyond that he would not go, and the Italians would not agree to that. The London Daily News said of his action:

“What is clear now is that two antagonistic principles, which have been more or less veiled, have been in conflict throughout the conference and have now met in a death grapple. One or the other must yield. * * * If Wilson’s principles prevail, all such claims as Italy is now advancing must be abandoned permanently.”

The President never budged in his position then or since. The treaty with Germany was completed and signed—and the Italians, though not Orlando, whose government had fallen, were there to sign it. The problem of Fiume remains still unsolved though the city was seized the other day by D’Annunzio.In the next article the facts regarding the crisis at the conference over the settlement of the Shantung question will be presented.

(The sixth article in the Baker series will be published in The Evening Star next Tuesday.)