ropping, and given it as his opinion that
it would be absurd "to deprive of this advantage those who had made most
progress in perfecting this weapon." But M. Tardieu successfully
exorcised these and other ghosts. And on his return from the United
States he was charged with organizing a press bureau of his own, to
supply American journalists with material for their cablegrams, while at
the same time he collaborated with M. Clemenceau in reorganizing the
political communities of the world. It is only in the French Chamber, of
which he is a distinguished member, that M. Tardieu failed to score a
brilliant success. Few men are prophets in their own country, and he is
far from being an exception. At the Conference, in its later phases, he
found himself in frequent opposition to the chief of the Italian
delegation, Signor Tittoni. One of the many subjects on which they
disagreed was the fate of German Austria and the political structure and
orientation of the independent communities which arose on the ruins of
the Dual Monarchy. M. Tardieu favored an arrangement which would bring
these populations closely together and impart to the whole an
anti-Teutonic impress. If Germany could not be broken up into a number
of separate states, as in the days of her weakness, all the other
European peoples in the territories concerned could, and should, be
united against her, and at the least hindered from making common cause
with her. The unification of Germany he considered a grave danger, and
he strove to create a countervailing state system.

To the execution of this project there were formidable difficulties.
For one thing, none of the peoples in question was distinctly
anti-German. Each one was for itself. Again, they were not particularly
enamoured of one another, nor were their interests always concordant,
and to constrain them by force to unite would have been not to prevent
but to cause future wars. A Danubian federation--the concrete shape
imagined for this new bulwark of European peace--did not commend itself
to the Italians, who had their own reasons for their opposition besides
the Wilsonian doctrine, which they invoked. If it be true, Signor
Tittoni argues, that Austria does not desire to be amalgamated with
Germany, why not allow her to exercise the right of self-determination
accorded to other peoples? M. Tardieu, on the other hand, not content
with the prohibition to Germany to unite with Austria, proposed[52] that
in the