the defeat of Germany Great Britain found herself with a fleet far
superior to those of all the rest of Europe put together; once more
she broke away from Continental Europe.

Lloyd George, with swiftly acting brain and clear insight, undoubtedly
the most remarkable man at the Paris Conference, found himself in a
difficult situation between President Wilson's pronouncements, some
of them, like that regarding the freedom of the seas, undefined and
dangerous, and the claims of France tending, after the brutal attack
it had had to meet, not towards a true peace and the reconstruction of
Europe, but towards the vivisection of Germany. In one of the first
moments, just before the General Elections, Lloyd George, too,
promised measures of the greatest severity, the trial of the Kaiser,
the punishment of all guilty of atrocities, compensation for all who
had suffered from the War, the widest and most complete indemnity. But
such pronouncements gave way before his clear realization of facts,
and later on he tried in vain to put the Conference on the plane of
such realization.

Italy, as M. Tardieu says very plainly, carried no weight in the
Conference. In the meetings of the Prime Ministers and President
Wilson _le ton était celui de la conversation; nul apparat, nulle
pose. M. Orlando parlait peu; l'activité de l'Italie à la conference
a été, jusqu'à l'excès, absorbée par la question de Fiume, et sa part
dans les débats a été de ce fait trop réduite. Restait un dialogue à
trois: Wilson, Clemenceau, Lloyd George_. The Italian Government came
into the War in May, 1915, on the basis of the London Agreement of the
preceding April, and it had never thought of claiming Fiume either
before the War when it was free to lay down conditions or during the
progress of the War.