same distinction. But the Italian
plenipotentiaries objected and Signor Tittoni asked, "Will it perhaps be
asserted that there was no enemy against whom we Italians fought for
three years and a half, losing half a million slain and incurring a debt
of eighty thousand millions?"

A French journal, touching on this Austrian problem, wrote:[294]
"Austria-Hungary has been killed and now France is striving to raise it
to life again. But Italy is furiously opposed to everything that might
lead to an understanding among the new states formed out of the old
possessions of the Hapsburgs. That, in fact, is why our transalpine
allies were so favorable to the union of Austria with Germany. France on
her side, whose one overruling thought is to reduce her vanquished enemy
to the most complete impotence, France who is afraid of being afraid,
will not tolerate an Austria joined to the German Federation." Here the
principle of self-determination went for nothing.

Before the Conference had sat for a month it was angrily assailed by the
peoples who had hoped so much from its love of justice--Egyptians,
Koreans, Irishmen from Ireland and from America, Albanians, Frenchmen
from Mauritius and Syria, Moslems from Aderbeidjan, Persians, Tartars,
Kirghizes, and a host of others, who have been aptly likened to the halt
and maimed among the nations waiting round the diplomatic Pool of Siloam
for the miracle of the moving of the waters that never came.[295]

These peoples had heard that a great and potent world-reformer had
arisen whose mission it was to redress secular grievances and confer
liberty upon oppressed nations, tribes, and tongues, and they sent their
envoys to plead before him. And these wandered about the streets of
Paris seeking the intercession of delegates, Ministers, and journalists
who might obtain for them admission to the presence of the new Messiah
or his apostles. But all doors were closed to them. One of the
petitioners whose language was vernacular English, as he was about to
shake the dust of Paris from his boots, quoting Sydney Smith, remarked:
"They, too, are Pharisees. They would do the Good Samaritan, but without
the oil and twopence. How has it come to pass that the Jews without an
official delegate commanded the support--the militant support--of the
Supreme Council, which did not hesitate to tyrannize eastern Europe for
their sake?"

Involuntarily the student of politics called to mind the report written
to Ba