The Italian people had always been kept in ignorance of the principles
established in the London Agreement. One of the men chiefly
responsible for the American policy openly complained to me that when
the United States came into the War no notification was given them of
the London Agreement in which were defined the future conditions
of part of Europe. A far worse mistake was made in the failure to
communicate the London Agreement to Serbia, which would certainly have
accepted it without hesitation in the terrible position in which it
then was.

But the most serious thing of all was that Italian Ministers were
unaware of its provisions till after its publication in London by the
organ of the Jugo-Slavs, which had evidently received the text from
Petrograd, where the Bolsheviks had published it. In Italy the London
Agreement was a mystery to everyone; its text was known only to the
Presidents of the Council and the Minister for Foreign Affairs of the
War Cabinets. Thus only four or five people knew about it, secrecy was
strictly kept, and, moreover, it cannot possibly be said that it was
in accordance either with national ideals or the currents of public
opinion, much less with any intelligent conception of Italy's needs
and Italy's future.

The framers of the London Agreement never thought of Fiume. Indeed
they specifically expressed their willingness that it should go to
Croatia, whether in the case of Austria-Hungary remaining united or of
the detachment of Croatia from it. It is not true that it was through
the opposition of Russia or of France that the Italian framers of the
London Agreement gave up all claim to Fiume. There was no opposition
because there was no claim. The representatives of Russia and France