Week 87

 

We are running late. And if we want to catch the fascist train – which, as everybody knows, is always running on perfect schedule – we must hurry up. Therefore, this one is going to be exceedingly long. And the next one too.

I hope I'll manage to conclude this coverage of the first stage of the Italian diplomatic action at the Peace Conference of Paris on time for its actual conclusion, with the arrival of the new Italian Foreign Minister Tommaso Tittoni at the end of June 1919 – in order to move then to the definition of the very broad lines of the political program of the Fasci di Combattimento, as formulated largely thanks to A. De Ambris during the Summer of 1919, to the formation of the new Italian government and the character and difficulties of the internal policies of F.S. Nitti, to the electoral build up of Autumn 1919 – to return to international and diplomatic matters with the occupation of Fiume by D'Annunzio in early September.

As the appearance of Nitti as Prime Minister should make obvious, this (this actual week, since his Ministry fell on June 19^th 1919) is also the end of V.E. Orlando's Victorious Government – a position the jurist and prominent lawyer, who nonetheless remained a relevant figure in Italy's political history for three more decades, would never occupy again. Unlike him, Italy's Foreign Minister, Sidney Sonnino, who had foreseen his "moral death" in the laborious negotiations with the Allies during the third week of April, succumbed to his inability to secure the Italian goals, making these weeks the last of his active political career.

As you can probably see by yourselves, we have spent a significant amount of time on the development (and involution) of the diplomatic relations between Italy and her Allies at the end of the Great War. This attention may appear excessive and it is not meant to imply or suggest a prominent influence of these matters in the subsequent political events – Fascism was in its largest part an internal phenomenon, with internal causes and manifestations – but the action of Italian diplomacy, and the character of the Italian diplomatic action are not independent or abstracted from Fascism.

Not only certain general trends of Italian foreign policy were continued and pursued well into the 1930s – even if certain arguments raised at the time (see for instance M. Toscano - Il Patto di Londra, 1931) to support the natural coincidence of the Italian and Fascist foreign policies should be handled with special care – but certain specific patterns of "diplomatic presence" found a more institutional and less extemporaneous application in the short lived attempts to define an Italian permanent sphere of influence.

It is also of some interest to examine how the Italian political world – which had almost always been driven (except for the brief Crispi parenthesis) by practical and general considerations alike, to regard foreign policy as an appendix of the internal one – adapted to a state of things where, by force or reason, the international affairs acquired a decisive weight in the settlement of internal problems (from supplies to financial credit), to the point of defining the action of the government. And this right at a time when the mutated international circumstances deprived Italy of her traditional appeal to a decisive weight.

As an additional note, it's an unfortunate consequence of focusing on major and minor international events from the exclusive point of view of their impact on the Italian things – despite the fact that Italy's role in these events was in many circumstances a marginal, and even incidental one – that one is bound to take a very cursory approach to moments of absolute significance in the lives of people, nations, countries. The alternative, given that I don't know enough to discuss those circumstances in any detail, would be to provide a few sloppy summaries here and there, which seems to me even worse.

It is for matters of convenience that I have split the following into parts, which nonetheless follow a somewhat chronological order.

 

Part 1 – the Italian return and the German Treaty

 

The Italian delegation, led by Prime Minister Orlando and Foreign Minister Sonnino, had left Paris between April 24^th and April 26^th – the (somewhat legitimate) justification, to avoid the impression of a complete break up with the Allies, was the necessity for Orlando to ask for a vote of confidence from the Italian Parliament after Wilson's declaration of April 23^rd had undermined his political authority. Orlando gained support from the Chamber on April 29^th with an overwhelming majority, as well as enjoying what appeared to be a the unanimous confidence of the nation, and begun to wait, maintaining – like his colleague at the Foreign Office – sporadic communications with Paris through the Allied Ambassadors, and with the leftovers of the Italian delegation (which was now led by industrialist Silvio Crespi, with the assistance of the Ambassadors Imperiali, Bonin and Macchi di Cellere).

If Orlando and Sonnino were counting on the Allies offering something in exchange for the Italian return, they surely misjudged the situation. As we discussed with the matter of the publication of Clemenceau and Lloyd George's memorandum (to follow up to Wilson's one), both the Italians and the Americans were committed to promote the view that the British and French were in perfect agreement with them, and only hesitant to commit publicly in order to avoid complications (for the Italians, the break up with the US – for the US, their obligation to the Treaty of London). It's easy to see how this attempt to overpower the US in a strong arm contest – besides contributing to the growing irritation of the British and French who wanted to avoid the embarrassment of being called out for disowning the Treaty of London, and whose favorable attitude towards the Italians had never been to steady – could not result in the outcome the Italians desired.

The precipitate return to Paris of Orlando and Sonnino – argues R. Albrecht-Carrie [“New Light on Italian Problems in 1919.” The Journal of Modern History, vol. 13, no. 4, 1941, pp. 493–516] – was definitely a defeat. Had they come back immediately after consulting Parliament they would have been strengthened in front of their opponents […] But, misjudging the situation, they let that favorable moment pass allowing the impression to spread that they expected their return to the Conference to be purchased with concessions. Their complete withdrawal from the Conference would doubtless have caused embarrassment to the other powers, but Italy would unquestionably have been the greater loser from such a move; and, on the basis of a test of strength, she was bound to be defeated […]

By the early days of May, the Italian defeat had begun to appear clear to the Italian themselves – at least to those who were still present in Paris, and had a more direct view of the ongoing proceedings of the Conference and of the extreme difficulty of safeguarding the Italian diplomatic position without an official representative in place (Crespi was merely assigned to a financial commission, even if his role was much more significant than that of the delegates Salandra, Barzilai and Salvago-Raggi).

For their own part, the Allies – once the first moments of disarray for the Italian decision had been overcome – had resolved to pursue the urgent definition of the German Treaty (and in fact taken various steps the Italians would have likely objected to, or objected more strongly than they were able to, in the matters of reparations, of the implicit recognition of the Yugoslav State, of the summoning of the Austrian delegation), managing the Italian absence and the perspective of the Italian return as one of the many inconveniences on the way to a peace settlement. There was no real issue of giving them what they wanted. And even worse, the Italians begun to appear "unreliable" as a Great Power, and more akin to the many "lesser" nations which required guidance and assistance – a convenient view, for sure, which the Italian conduct did nonetheless very little to dispel.

Part 2 – Italy, Asia Minor and the bigger picture

 

General Henry Wilson (May 5^th – morning session) then entered the room, to offer his advice on the Italian movement in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Mr. Lloyd George said he had invited General Wilson to come here because he felt that the Italian movements in the East were, when considered in the aggregate, highly suspicious, and he thought his colleagues ought to be made acquainted with them.

General Wilson explained on a map the general military position in the East as regards the Italians. At the present time, there were about 30,000 Italians in Bulgaria. General Franchet d’Esperey was responsible for making those dispositions. There were two French divisions in this region, but they were troops who had come from Odessa, very tired and not the best French troops. In Hungary there were four Roumanian divisions, two weak French divisions, and, on the other side opposing the Roumanians, two Hungarian divisions.

Mr. Lloyd George said that in Asia Minor the Italians had occupied the harbour of Marmaris, nominally as a coaling station. They had a battalion at Konia, which had been sent there by agreement. They had landed troops at Adalia without consulting the Allied and Associated Powers and other movements were reported.

General Wilson said there were unconfirmed reports of landings at various places on the coast of Asia Minor, including Alaya.

Mr. Lloyd George re-called that the Italian expedition to Tripoli [the Libyan War of 1911-12] had been uncommonly well concealed. He was suspicious of a similar expedition now to Asia Minor. According to his information, the Italians were arming the Bulgarians and stirring them up to attack both the Greeks and the Serbians, but especially the latter. They were the only nation not demobilising.

M. Clemenceau said this was a fact.

It was indeed a fact that the Italians had halted demobilization – citing various technical difficulties, reasons of internal order, the perspective of unemployment for veterans, concerns over concentration of troops at the frontier (with a special attention to the engagements occurring between Yugoslavs and Austrians around Klagenfurth), the need to be ready to intervene in the circumstance of the assignation of a mandate, etc. - for all these different reasons, they had substantially maintained the size of their army, after an initial stage of rapid demobilization, from March-April 1919 to June-July 1919.

Mr. Lloyd George thought that the situation in the East was not being very well handled by the Allies. [...] [He] said that the Italians were the only considerable force in this region.

Mr. Lloyd George thought the question ought to be re-considered. Any day it might be found that the Italians had captured Anatolia and it would be difficult to get them out of there once they had occupied it. The mandates for Turkey could not be settled now, owing to the decision to send out a Commission. He thought, therefore, that we should fall back on his original proposal of a re-distribution of the forces of occupation. The United States troops ought to go to Constantinople and to provide troops for Armenia. The British would come out of the Caucasus and the French might put a garrison in Syria, while the Greeks should be allowed to [occupy] Smyrna, since their compatriots were actually being massacred at the present time and there was no one to help them.

Lloyd George's hastily conceived plan involved diverting the Italian troops under Allied command "to the Caucasus" to prevent their build up in Anatolia (the Italians would indeed prepare, much to Nitti's displeasure, an expedition corp allegedly destined to Batumi, and engage in vague plans of earning a mandate over Armenia or Georgia), while the modest Allied forces moved to secure control of the region, (with the help of the Greeks).

President Wilson said he did not approve of the Italians going to the Caucasus.

At Lloyd George's insistence that the British were leaving, Wilson continued

President Wilson asked why any troops should replace the British.

General Wilson said that unless some civilised Power was in occupation, there would be the most terrible massacres. […]

President Wilson said that the British troops were the only ones accustomed to this kind of business […]

The British Prime Minister agreed that the effect of the Italians going to the Caucasus could be "very serious" but that it was necessary to withdraw the British troops.

Mr. Lloyd George – who was either largely overestimating the Italian Army's capability and the Italian Government's initiative, or suspectly invested in the matter – said it had been proposed to put these troops in the region of Constantinople for the present, in order to have them ready to counter any move by the Italians.

After General Wilson had left to further discuss the issue with the American Plenipotentiary, Gen. Tasker Bliss, "it was agreed that the fact that the Italian Delegation was returning to Paris should be published."

Mr. Lloyd George said that a few days ago an old friend of his, formerly a Welsh member of Parliament, had called on him in Paris, and said he was just leaving for Rome. He had told Mr. Lloyd George that he was convinced that the Italians were anxious for an excuse to come back, and had asked if there was anything he could do. Mr. Lloyd George had explained the general situation to him, without, of course, giving him any authority to act. Last night he had received a telegram from his friend in Rome, the gist of which was that he had seen M. Orlando, who had said he was willing to stand by the Pact of London but had intimated that when Italy had got Dalmatia and the Islands, she would go to Croatia and make a bargain for the exchange of Fiume.

President Wilson pointed out that all this fitted in with the naval and military movements that the Italians were making.

Mr. Lloyd George said that the Italians had already broken the Treaty by occupying Fiume.

This again, was of course technically inaccurate, as the Italians had been more or less careful to maintain the city as a zone of inter-Allied occupation (not that the Allies had equal forces on place, but this was true of many other occupied zones as well) and had answered, with a certain reluctance but somewhat appropriately, to the Allied demands for shared occupation (see for instance the handling of the incidents in Ljubljana).

M. Clemenceau pointed out, however, that the Italians had not occupied it alone: Allied troops were also in Fiume.

President Wilson recalled that the Armistice had given the right to the Allies to advance troops for the maintenance of order, and the Italians had used this excuse to push forward troops to Fiume, in which they had been joined by their Allies. This prevented us from saying that the Italians were outside their rights.

Mr. Lloyd George said that he would like to tell the Italians they must withdraw. If they should plead the Armistice as an excuse for staying, we must say: “Then let the Serbians go in; they are Allies.” […] [He] said we ought to insist on adherence to the Armistice. They were playing the Pact of London against Great Britain and France, and it was Great Britain and France that must meet them. Our line should be to say: “You must clear out of Fiume and leave it to the Croatians, in accordance with the Pact.” They could not afford to do that.