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Show IT JUL T STRIKES BLOW AT I LEAGUE OF NATIONS I OBSESSED with visions of glory and grandeur, Italy stands, like Chanticler, in the world's new dawn pluming herself in disdain at the rising sun of justice. But in the midst of this self-glorification she looks across the Ad- Iriatic and her vision is disturbed by another that wears a terrifying, 3 overpowering aspect. She can see issuing from the port of Fiume the S armadas of a great Jugo-Slavic nation, as great as the Austria-I Austria-I Hungary which has been swept from the face of the earth. J That is why Italy does not accept with patience the cool idealisms 'H of President Wilson. His assurance that Italy's peril has vanished 4 with the disappearance of her old enemy does not comfort her. Nor is I she cajoled out of her sense of insecurity by his statement that Jugo-4 Jugo-4 Slavia will be a member, with herself, of the League of Nations. For m all her visions Italy has not lost the Latin clarity and practicality of H judgment. She knows that the league is an experiment, knows that M the continent of Europe is a fact. The league may long have melted into oblivion when a prosperous and warlike Jugo-Slavia arms itself m to contest with Rome the supremacy of the Adriatic. S To make her new empire as secure as possible Italy would shut xg out the Slavic and Hungarian bloc from the Adriatic and tie it down to m commercial impotency. Italy would avoid war by crippling the Slavic M infant at his birth. And to better accomplish her purpose Italy would II possess herself of Fiume, which, it appears, was not conceded to her M even in the secret treaty of London. W Slowly the contents of the London pact have come to the knowl edge of Americans. They will ask themselves why they were not made fully acquainted with the terms of the treaty before this. The H American delegation in Paris must have been told the facts weeks H or perhaps months ago. It transpires that while France and Great H Britain were willing to grant Italy practically everything she asked H they balked at surrendering Fiume to her and arrived at an under- H standing that this port should gd to Croatia, then one of the Slavic H provinces of Hungary. M President Wilson, we feel sure, represents the judgment of the H world as against Italy. He has taken an elevated stand in consonance iH with his announced principles, looking forward to a world ruled by ,H justice rather than by force. Italy, on the other hand, looks forward ''H even though unwillingly to a world in which 'greed and lust for 'H power still will be dominant. It is a case of idealism versus realism. JH One side believes in a regenerated Europe which shall adjust its dis- H putes through courts of arbitration. The other confesses a pessimis- H tic belief in the invincibility of human depravity and implies that wars II will continue to be the decisive arguments of peoples as they were of ' kings. H As long as Italy cherishes these views there is a chasm which can- H not be bridged. She were better out of the League of Nations than .H in it. V I |