Then suddenly a ray of light shone through the clouds. The ever-cheerful
Signor Nitti, after a conference with Lloyd George and Clemenceau--no
Yugoslav being present, whereas Signor Nitti was both pleader and
judge--was authorized to say that the December memorandum had been
shelved. Terms more favourable to Italy were substituted and the
Yugoslav Government were told they must accept them. One of these terms
was to modify the Wilson line in Istria, ostensibly for the protection
of Triest and in reality to dominate the railway line Rieka-St.
Peter-Ljubljana; another of the terms was to present Italy with that
narrow corridor which in December the Allies had so peremptorily
disallowed. No wonder the American Ambassador in France gave his
warning. "You are going," he said, "much too far and much too quickly.
President Wilson cannot keep pace with you." The French Government was
passing through a period of change, and these new proposals, as was
underlined in the _Temps_,[47] emanated from London. Mr. Lloyd George,
who may have wished for Signor Nitti's aid in his offensive against
France in the Russian and Turkish questions, was this time very badly
served by his intuition. The Yugoslavs were ordered to accept the new
proposals or to submit to the application of the Treaty of London, that
secret and abandoned instrument which--to mention only one of the
objections against it--provided for complete Yugoslav sovereignty over
Rieka, a solution that, in view of Italy's inflamed public opinion, was
for the time being impracticable. And while the Yugoslavs were told that
Rieka would, under the Treaty of London, fall to them, no details were
given as to how d'Annunzio was to be removed. "Nous sommes dans
l'incoherence," as Clemenceau used to say of the political condition of
France before the war. Seeing that the Italian Government and the C.N.I.
had shown themselves so powerless, were France and England going to turn
the poet out? But Mr. Lloyd George was more fortunate than Disraeli,
whose error in the question of Bosnia and Herzegovina had had such dire
results; on February 13, a very firm note was issued by President
Wilson, which compelled France and Great Britain to withdraw from the
position they had taken up. Wilson would have nothing to do with the
notorious corridor, though Clemenceau had said on January 13, to the
Yugoslav delegates: "Si nous n'avions pas fait cette concession, nous
n'avions pas eu le reste." "The American Government," said Wilson,
"feels that it cannot sacrifice the principle for which it entered the
war to gratify the improper ambition of one of its associates, Italy, to
purchase a temporary appearance of calm in the Adriatic at the price of
a future world conflagration." The rejoinder of the French and British
Premiers was a trifle lame, and when they ventured to add that they
could not believe that it was the purpose of the American people, as the
President threatened, to retire from the treaty with Germany and the
agreement of June 28, 1919, with France unless his point of view was
adopted in this particular case, which, in their opinion, had "the
appearance of being so inadequate," they were not caring to remember
that while their own countries and Italy were suffering from a lack of
food-stuffs and provisions were being imported at a disastrous rate of
exchange from the United States, the products of Yugoslavia, such as
meat and meal, could not be obtained because Rieka, which ought surely
to serve its hinterland, was at that moment not available, owing to
d'Annunzio. At the same time the President did not go to the opposite
extreme of simply allocating the port to Yugoslavia, which the
application of the Treaty of London would involve. He preferred to act
on the principle that the differences between Italy and the Yugoslavs
were inconsiderable, especially as compared with the magnitude of their
common interests. And direct negotiations between the two parties were
to be recommended, with the proviso that no use be made of France and
Great Britain's immoral suggestion that an agreement be reached on "the
basis of compensation elsewhere at the expense of nationals of a third
Power." It had indeed been proposed that the Yugoslavs should be bribed
by concessions in Albania, but this idea was very explicitly rejected
and on more than one occasion by the Yugoslav delegates in Paris.
While, in the following months, the Yugoslavs and the Italians
negotiated, the task of their delegates was impeded by the occasional
Cabinet crises in Belgrade and in Rome. It was made no easier by those
Italians who clamorously objected to the remark of Clemenceau, when he
said that both Yugoslavs and Italians had been compelled to fight in
Austria's army. The _Corriere d'Italia_ told him that he displayed the
zeal of a corporal to defend the Yugoslavs. After alluding to his
"historical inexactitudes," it reminded him of the Italians who were
slain at Reims and the Chemin des Dames, but as usual omitted to speak
of the French soldiers who fell in Italy. And, while the negotiations
were being carried on, Gabriele d'Annunzio clung to his town. The
compromise of a mixed administration seemed to have small chance of
being realized. It had been proposed by that Inter-Allied Commission
which was set up to investigate the circumstances of the French
massacre; and the Italian delegate, General di Robilant, not only said
in his report[48] to the Senate that this compromise was most favourable
for Italian aspirations but he is alleged also to have included some
very drastic criticism of the actions of the high military authorities,
whom he charged with unconstitutional interference. Nevertheless neither
the poet nor the Premier were as yet in a tractable mood with regard to
the Rieka problem. Signor Nitti, parading his bonhomie, championed the
cause in a more statesmanlike fashion; he did not, like d'Annunzio,
evoke the world's ridicule by his footlight attitudes and those of his
faithful supporters who, when his "Admiral" Rizzo abandoned him, when
Giorati his confidant withdrew, when even Millo advised moderation, took
certain piratical steps in order to keep the garrison supplied with
food,[49] and composed an anthem which on ceremonial occasions was
chanted in the poet's honour. But when Signor Nitti observed, with the
utmost affability, that Rieka had, after the fall of the Crown of St.
Stephen, become mistress of her own fate and as such, regardless of the
Treaty of London, asked for inclusion in Italy, he, the Prime Minister,
was vying in recklessness with d'Annunzio. The prevailing sentiment both
in Triest and Rieka, said the _Times_,[50] was that both these towns
should become free ports in order to serve their hinterlands, which are
not Italian. "Italy is neglecting Triest in favour of Venice," says the
dispatch. In Rieka, where the situation was even worse, "an honest
plebiscite, even if confined to the Italian part of the city, would give
a startling result. The Italians of Rieka are convinced that their
existence depends on good relations with the Yugoslavs. They wish the
town and port to be independent under the sovereignty of the League of
Nations. This I have recently been told by a large number of Italians in
Rieka who are obliged, in public, to support d'Annunzio." Signor Nitti
must have been aware that the voice of the C.N.I. was very far from
being the voice of Rieka. The C.N.I. had reasons of their own for
wishing to postpone the day when their arbitrary powers would come to an
end and a legal Government, whether that of the League of Nations or of
the people's will or of Italy or of Yugoslavia, be established.