Number nine, a little less subtly, does the same thing in respect to
Italy. "Clearly recognizable lines of nationality" are exactly what
the lines of the Treaty of London were not. Those lines were partly
strategic, partly economic, partly imperialistic, partly ethnic. The
only part of them that could possibly procure allied sympathy was that
which would recover the genuine Italia Irredenta. All the rest, as
everyone who was informed knew, merely delayed the impending Jugoslav
revolt.
5
It would be a mistake to suppose that the apparently unanimous
enthusiasm which greeted the Fourteen Points represented agreement on
a program. Everyone seemed to find something that he liked and
stressed this aspect and that detail. But no one risked a discussion.
The phrases, so pregnant with the underlying conflicts of the
civilized world, were accepted. They stood for opposing ideas, but
they evoked a common emotion. And to that extent they played a part in
rallying the western peoples for the desperate ten months of war which
they had still to endure.
As long as the Fourteen Points dealt with that hazy and happy future
when the agony was to be over, the real conflicts of interpretation
were not made manifest. They were plans for the settlement of a wholly
invisible environment, and because these plans inspired all groups
each with its own private hope, all hopes ran together as a public
hope.
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