faith in the efficacy of the League was sapped by the very men who were professedly seeking to spread it. The press of Rome, Turin, and Milan pointed to the loyalty of the Italian people, brought out, they said, in sharp relief by the discontent which the exclusive character of that triple military accord engendered among them. As kinsmen of the French it was natural for Italians to expect that they would be invited to become a party to this league within the League. As loyal allies of Britain and France they felt desirous of being admitted to the alliance. But they were excluded. Nor was their exasperation allayed by the assurance of their press that this was no alliance, but a state of tutelage. An alliance, it was explained, is a compact by which two or more parties agree to render one another certain services under given conditions, whereas the convention in question is a one-sided undertaking on the part of Britain and the United States to protect France if wantonly attacked, because she is unable efficaciously to protect herself. It is a benefaction. But this casuistry fell upon deaf ears. What the people felt was the disesteem--the term in vogue was stronger--in which they were held by the Allies, whom they had saved perhaps from ruin. By slow degrees the sentiments of the Italian nation underwent a disquieting change. All parties and classes united in stigmatizing the behavior of the Allies in terms which even the literary eminence of the poet d'Annunzio could not induce the censors to let pass. "The Peace Treaty," wrote Italy's most influential journal, "and its correlate forbode for the near future the Continental hegemony of France countersigned by the Anglo-American alliance."[233] Another widely circulated and respected organ described the policy of the Entente as a solvent of the social fabric, constructive in words, corrosive in acts, "mischievous if ever there was a mischievous policy. For while raising hopes and whetting appetites, it does nothing to satisfy them; on the contrary, it does much to disappoint them. In words--a struggle for liberty, for nations, for the equality of peoples and classes, for the well-being of all; in acts--the suppression of the most elementary and constitutional liberty, the overlordship of certain nations based on the humiliation of others, the division of peoples into exploiters and exploited--the sharpening of social differences--the destruction of collective wealth, and its accumulation in a few blood-stained hands, universal misery, and hunger."[234]