e herself with the
reflection that she was working in the vineyard of idealism. In vain
eminent publicists in Rome, Turin, and Milan pleaded their country's
cause. Adopting the principle which Mr. Wilson had applied to France and
Britain, they affirmed that even before the war France, with a larger
population and fewer possessions, had shown that she was incapable of
discharging the functions which she had voluntarily taken upon herself.
Tunis, they alleged, owed its growth and thriving condition to Italian
emigrants. With all the fresh additions to her territories, the
population of the Republic would be utterly inadequate to the task. To
the Supreme Council this line of reasoning was distinctly unpalatable.
Nor did the Italians further their cause when, by way of giving emphatic
point to their reasoning, their press quoted that eminent Frenchman, M.
d'Estournelles de Constant, who wrote at that very moment: "France has
too many colonies already--far more in Asia, in Africa, in America, in
Oceania than she can fructify. In this way she is immobilizing
territories, continents, peoples, which nominally she takes over. And it
is childish and imprudent to take barren possession of them, when other
states allege their power to utilize them in the general interest. By
acting in this manner, France, do what she may, is placing herself in
opposition to the world's interests, and to those of the League of
Nations. In the long run it is a serious business. Spain, Portugal, and
Holland know this to their cost. Do what she would, France was not able
before the war to utilize all her immense colonial domain ... for lack
of population. She will be still less able after the war...."[311]

The discussion grew dangerously animated. Epigrams were coined and sent
floating in the heavily charged air. A tactless comparison was made
between the French nation and a _bon vivant_ of sixty-five who flatters
himself that he can enjoy life's pleasures on the same scale as when he
was only thirty. Little arrows thus barbed with biting acid often make
more enduring mischief than sledge-hammer blows. Soon the estrangement
between the two sister nations unhappily became wider and led to marked
divergences in their respective policies, which seem fraught with grave
consequences in the future.

The Italy of to-day is not the Italy of May, 1915. She now knows exactly
where she stands. When she unsheathed her sword to fight against the
allies of the sta