elegates begun to discuss the contentious clause when a
copy of the _Temps_ was brought in, containing Mr. Wilson's appeal to
the Italian people "over the heads of the Italian government."

The publication fell like a powerful explosive. The public were at a
loss to fit in Mr. Wilson's unprecedented action with that of his
British and French colleagues. For if in the morning he sent his appeal
to the newspapers, it was asked, why did he allow his Italian colleagues
to go on examining a proposal on which he manifestly assumed that they
were no longer competent to treat? Moreover a rational desire to settle
Italy's Adriatic frontiers, it was observed, ought not to have lessened
his concern about the larger issues which his unwonted procedure was
bound to raise. And one of these was respect for authority, the loss of
which was the taproot of Bolshevism. Signor Orlando replied to the
appeal in a trenchant letter which was at bottom a reasoned protest
against the assumed infallibility of any individual and, in particular,
of one who had already committed several radical errors of judgment.
What the Italian Premier failed to note was the consciousness of
overwhelming power and the will to use it which imparted its specific
mark to the whole proceeding. Had he realized this element, his
subsequent tactics would perhaps have run on different lines.

The suddenness with which the President carried out his purpose was
afterward explained as the outcome of misinformation. In various Italian
cities, it had been reported to him, posters were appearing on the walls
announcing that Fiume had been annexed. Moreover, it was added, there
were excellent grounds for believing that at Rome the Italian Cabinet
was about to issue a decree incorporating it officially, whereby things
would become more tangled than ever. Some French journals gave credit to
these allegations, and it may well be that Mr. Wilson, believing them,
too, and wanting to be beforehand, took immediate action. This, however,
is at most an explanation; it hardly justifies the precipitancy with
which the Italian plenipotentiaries were held up to the world as men who
were misrepresenting their people. As a matter of fact careful inquiry
showed that all those reports which are said to have alarmed the
President were groundless. Mr. Wilson's sources of information
respecting the countries on which he was sitting in judgment were often
as little to be depended on as presumably w