the moment the single rallying-point of the elements of
social order on the Continent. The withdrawal of the Americans would have
shattered its waning prestige, discouraged liberals in every country, and
perhaps have led to its dissolution. Nearly every one in Paris was
convinced that the break-up of the Conference would be the signal for
widespread communistic revolt throughout central Europe. By his broad
concessions President Wilson had sacrificed some of his principles, but
he had held the Conference together, the supreme importance of which
seemed at the time difficult to over-emphasize. Having weathered this
crisis the Conference could now meet the storms that were to arise from
the demands of the Italians and the Japanese.

Wilson himself was to be encouraged in the midst of those difficulties by
the triumph accorded him on the 28th of April. On that day the plenary
session of the Conference adopted without a word of dissent the revised
Covenant of the League of Nations, including the amendment that formally
recognized the validity of the Monroe Doctrine.

CHAPTER XII

THE SETTLEMENT

President Wilson's success in securing approval for the League as the
basis of the Peace Treaty was his greatest triumph at Paris; and it was
accentuated by the acceptance of certain of the amendments that were
demanded in America, while those which the French and Japanese insisted
upon were discarded or postponed. In comparison with this success, he
doubtless regarded his concessions in the matter of reparations and the
special Franco-British-American alliance as mere details. His task,
however, was by no means completed, since Italian and Japanese claims
threatened to bring on crises of almost equal danger.

From the early days of the Conference there had been interested
speculation in the corridors of the Quai d'Orsay as to whether the
promises made to Italy by the Entente Powers in 1915, which were
incorporated in the secret Treaty of London, would be carried into effect
by the final peace settlement. That treaty had been conceived in the
spirit of old-time diplomacy and had assigned to Italy districts which
disinterested experts declared could not be hers except upon the principle
of the spoils to the strong. Much of the territories promised in the
Tyrol, along the Julian Alps, and on the Adriatic coast was inhabited
entirely by non-Italians, whose political and economic fortunes were bound
up with states other th