I admit, none the less, that these concessions were made
grudgingly, and that in Paris Mr. Lloyd George and Monsieur Clemenceau did not treat their Italian colleagues with the respect due to the representatives of a Great Power and a recently victorious ally. Nothing irritates the Italians more than the mixture of sentimental affection and patronising dis- regard which the British are inclined to adopt towards them. They do not want to be thought picturesque, they want to be thought terrible ; they do not want to be liked, they want to be feared. I do not believe that the conflict which has developed between us since 1920 is a conflict of interests so much as a conflict of pride. Our beastly superbia Britannorum is apt to dismiss, as boastful and vulgar, ambitions other than our own. And the Italians, who remember the toga-versus-woad period, are determined to force us to take them seriously.
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