in and the
United States to protect France if wantonly attacked, because she is
unable efficaciously to protect herself. It is a benefaction. But this
casuistry fell upon deaf ears. What the people felt was the
disesteem--the term in vogue was stronger--in which they were held by
the Allies, whom they had saved perhaps from ruin.

By slow degrees the sentiments of the Italian nation underwent a
disquieting change. All parties and classes united in stigmatizing the
behavior of the Allies in terms which even the literary eminence of the
poet d'Annunzio could not induce the censors to let pass. "The Peace
Treaty," wrote Italy's most influential journal, "and its correlate
forbode for the near future the Continental hegemony of France
countersigned by the Anglo-American alliance."[233] Another widely
circulated and respected organ described the policy of the Entente as a
solvent of the social fabric, constructive in words, corrosive in acts,
"mischievous if ever there was a mischievous policy. For while raising
hopes and whetting appetites, it does nothing to satisfy them; on the
contrary, it does much to disappoint them. In words--a struggle for
liberty, for nations, for the equality of peoples and classes, for the
well-being of all; in acts--the suppression of the most elementary and
constitutional liberty, the overlordship of certain nations based on the
humiliation of others, the division of peoples into exploiters and
exploited--the sharpening of social differences--the destruction of
collective wealth, and its accumulation in a few blood-stained hands,
universal misery, and hunger."[234]

Although it is well understood that Italy's defeat at the Conference was
largely the handiwork of President Wilson, the resentment of the Italian
nation chose for its immediate objects the representatives of France and
Britain. The American "associates" were strangers, here to-day and gone
to-morrow, but the Allies remain, and if their attitude toward Italy, it
was argued, had been different, if their loyalty had been real, she
would have fared proportionately as well as they, whatever the American
statesmen might have said or done.

The Italian press breathed fiery wrath against its French ally, who so
often at the Conference had met Italy's solicitations with the odious
word "impossible." Even moderate organs of public opinion gave free vent
to estimates of France's policy and anticipations of its consequences
which disturbed th