Mr. Wilson first of all calls attention to the fact
that when Italy entered the war she made a private Treaty with Great Britain and France, known as the Pact of London. " Many other Powers, great and small, have entered the struggle with no knowledge of that private understanding. The Austro- Hungarian Empire, then the enemy of Europe, at whose expense the Pact of London was to be kept in the event of victory, has gone to pieces and no longer exists." Let us remark hem that though the Pact of London necessarily suffers from a kind of odium, inasmuch as it is now seen to be a snag in the broad stream which sets towards Peace, there was nothing whatever discreditable in it. The British nation ought to bear this fact in mind. When the negotiations with Italy occurred early in the war, Great Britain and France were almost in the position of an unarmed man who is set upon in the street by footpads. He calls for help from the passers-by, and if they call back that they will help him only on certain terms, he has neither time nor enough breath to consider those terms very severely or carefully. Such were the conditions in which the Pact was made.
