e equanimity of European statesmen. "It is
impossible," one of these journals wrote, "for France to become the
absolute despot of Europe without Italy, much less against Italy. What
transcended the powers of Richelieu, who was a lion and fox combined,
and was beyond the reach of Bonaparte, who was both an eagle and a
serpent, cannot be achieved by "Tiger" Clemenceau in circumstances so
much less favorable than those of yore. We, it is true, are isolated,
but then France is not precisely embarrassed by the choice of friends."
The peace was described as "Franco-Slav domination with its headquarters
in Prague, and a branch office in Agram." M. Clemenceau was openly
charged with striving after the hegemony of the Continent for his
country by separating Germany from Austria and surrounding her with a
ring of Slav states--Poland, Jugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and perhaps the
non-Slav kingdom of Rumania. All these states would be in the
leading-strings of the French Republic, and Austria would be linked to
it in a different guise. And in order to effect this resuscitation of
the Hapsburg state under the name of "Danubian federation," Mr. Wilson,
it was asserted, had authorized a deliberate violation of his own
principle of self-determination, and refused to Austria the right of
adopting the regime which she preferred. It was, in truth, an odd
compromise, these critics continued, for an idealist of the President's
caliber, on whose every political action the scrutinizing gaze of the
world was fixed. One could not account for it as a sacrifice made for a
high ethical aim--one of those ends which, according to the old maxim,
hallows the means. It seemed an open response to a secret instigation or
impulse which was unconnected with any recognized or avowable principle.
Even the Socialist organs swelled the chorus of the accusers. _Avanti_
wrote, "We are Socialists, yet we have never believed that the American
President with his Fourteen Points entered into the war for the highest
aims of humanity and for the rights of peoples, any more than we believe
at present that his opposition to the aspirations of the Italian state
on the Adriatic are inspired by motives of idealism."[235]

The fate of the disputed territories on the Adriatic was to be the
outcome of self-determination. Poland's claims were to be left to the
self-determination of the Silesian and Ruthenian populations. Rumania
was told that her suit must remain in abeyance unti