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 del