n the Chamber, Signor
Nitti announced that more than half the citizens had voted and that
four-fifths of them were in favour of the suggestion of the C.N.I. But
d'Annunzio, whose adherents by no means facilitated the plebiscite,
proclaimed it null and void. Yet, after all, Italy had likewise, on
every occasion when the Yugoslavs suggested a plebiscite under impartial
control, refused to sanction it.

FRUITLESS EFFORTS OF ITALY'S ALLIES

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