Certainly so far the principle of unified control was justified by its results. ----- [107] Signor Philippo Philippi has brought from this phase of the war a wonderful photographic record which will make its glories lasting. [108] November 20th, 1917. In the same speech Mr. Lloyd George delicately expressed the fact that we were aware of the Italian peril but unable to find any effective expression for our views. [109] “I should like to be able to read to you the statement submitted to the Conference in Rome in January (1917) about the perils and possibilities of the Italian front this year, so that you might judge it in the light of subsequent events. I feel confident that nothing could more convincingly demonstrate the opportunities which the Allies have lost through lack of combined thought and action” (November 12th, 1917). [110] Ludendorff’s _War Memories_, Vol. II, pp. 497-99. He reveals that the attack was undertaken to prevent the collapse of Austria Hungary. [111] “In substance it was the document prepared here, discussed line by line in the Cabinet, and which I had in my pocket after the last Cabinet meeting which was held a few hours before I left” (November 20th, 1917. Mr. Lloyd George’s speech in the House of Commons). CHAPTER XXI THE VERSAILLES COUNCIL “Besides, he says, there are two councils held; And that may be determined at the one Which may make him and you to rue at the other.” SHAKESPEARE’S _Richard III_, Act III, Sc. ii. ITALY was saved for the time; but if it was to be saved for all time, and if other dangers were to be averted, it was not enough to pass resolutions at Allied Conferences. The proceedings at Rapallo must be followed up by more effective action. Mr. Lloyd George has always the instinct in his heart that no public purpose can be thoroughly achieved without the help of the peoples concerned. He is above all things a “crowd-compeller.” It was now his imperious instinct that he should appeal from a secret conference to the great peoples of Western Europe. It was his powerful conviction that he must take them into his counsel as to the reasons for a new centralisation of war-control—in short, that he must appeal over the heads of the Governments to the nations. If the new Versailles Council was to be anything more than an Aulic assembly, forcibly-feeble, strenuously impotent, it was necessary to rally behind it all the great democratic forces of the Western world. It was urgent to give it a new authority derived directly from the peoples. If this was to be achieved the peoples must be given a franker explanation of the strategy of the war, of the reasons for failure, and the motives for a new policy.