In Paris Mr. Cuthell found representatives of Italy prepared to discuss the American claims against Italy. Soon after the conferences started, however, President Wilson made public at the Peace Conference his attitude toward the Italian occupation of the Adriatic port of Fiume; and the Italian delegation, including those ready to negotiate a business settlement with us, withdrew from Paris. Mr. Cuthell thereupon went to London to negotiate with the British. The British Government appointed and empowered a special commission, headed by Lord Inverforth, then the British Minister of Munitions, and including several eminent representatives of the British Government, among them Mr. W. T. Layton, a man of unusual ability and the one who took the actual lead for the British in the subsequent negotiations, to deal with the American claims. Meanwhile Mr. Cuthell’s principal assistants had arrived from the United States, bringing with them the now formulated statements analyzing the British war business in America and setting forth what our negotiators regarded as the proper charges for the British to pay in settlement. These assistants were Mr. Ralph W. Gwinn, who was to present the Liberty engine case; Mr. Miller D. Steever, in charge of the airplane lumber claim; and Mr. F. C. Weems, who had prepared the smokeless powder and cotton linters cases. The conferences began immediately, and such was the progress made that within ten days a complete agreement was reached, and the British war business in the United States was definitely terminated. The so-called Cuthell-Inverforth Agreement, which embodied the terms of settlement, was dated May 10, 1919. The agreement, reached so speedily and with such complete mutual accord, terminated a vast business within the United States. From the United States as dealer, Great Britain had procured smokeless powder, picric acid, airplane lumber, and Liberty engines. As a partner of the United States, Great Britain participated in the pool of cotton linters which cornered the entire American supply for the benefit of the powder mills. England was also a partner with us in the project to build a chain of chemical factories in America to produce acetone, used in making dope for airplane wings. These factories never came into production, and the project was closed out with a loss of over $6,000,000, half of which loss the British were bound to share. We participated with England in the purchase of Australasian wool. The terms under which the wool contract was closed out were noted in a previous chapter of this volume.