Paris is the diplomatic stage on which Italy’s hopes of territorial reward collide with the decisions of the victorious powers. In the book’s account, the city matters not for its streets or monuments but as the site of a negotiation from which Italy first withdraws in protest, then returns when the other powers continue without it. That sequence turns Paris into both the setting of a public humiliation and a measure of the country’s limited influence over the postwar settlement.

The conference and Italy’s claims

On April 24, Prime Minister Vittorio Emanuele Orlando and Foreign Minister Sidney Sonnino abruptly leave the peace conference in Paris. Their departure follows a dispute over the territory Italy expects to receive after the war. The 1915 treaty had promised Italy Dalmatia if it entered the conflict alongside Russia, France, and Great Britain. Italian nationalists also argue that the principle of self-determination should secure Fiume, a border city with a large Italian majority, although Fiume was not included in that agreement. Their claim joins the promised territory to the additional demand for Fiume, making the negotiations a test of both Italy’s wartime bargain and its interpretation of the new principle.

The account emphasizes the asymmetry of the dispute. Woodrow Wilson, whose support for self-determination gives the principle international force, addresses the Italian people directly in a letter published in a French newspaper on April 23. He explains why he will concede neither Dalmatia nor Fiume. The book acknowledges that the reasons might be defensible, but stresses that the paternalistic manner of the address magnifies the sense of insult. Paris is thus more than a venue for bargaining: it is where a territorial refusal is experienced in Italy as a judgment on the country’s standing among the victors.

Withdrawal and the politics of disappointment

The delegation’s walkout becomes a conspicuous act of defiance. Its departure is welcomed in Italy as a proud gesture, and public demonstrations demand Fiume and Dalmatia. The response draws together liberals, nationalists, and fascists around a shared feeling of deprivation. The book presents this mobilization as a risky political wager: by raising expectations so dramatically, the leaders leave themselves little room to accept a compromise without appearing to retreat.

Filippo Turati warns in parliament that the buildup of public opinion could trap Orlando and Sonnino if they cannot secure an agreement. His warning identifies the danger created by the walkout itself. The delegation’s absence may express indignation, but it also makes the outcome harder to manage at home. Ivanoe Bonomi describes the conference as seeming like an ambush, a judgment that captures how promises made during the war have come to appear, from Italy, as a betrayal by yesterday’s allies.

Negotiations continue in Italy’s absence

For fifteen days, the conference proceeds without the Italian delegates. The victorious powers continue negotiating borders and dividing former German colonies in Africa and territories of the Turkish Empire in the Near East. This contrast gives the walkout its consequence: while public attention in Italy fixes on the Adriatic claims, decisions affecting the wider postwar settlement are made without its representatives at the table. Paris therefore exposes the difference between a gesture that commands attention at home and a negotiation that can continue without the country making it.

Orlando and Sonnino eventually return, after roughly two weeks, having found that their departure has not stopped the conference. The narrative describes them as returning under pressure to resume negotiations, and the reversal deepens the damage to national confidence. The walkout had encouraged the belief that Italy could stand alone against the other powers; the return demonstrates the limits of that posture. In the book’s account, the resulting despair reaches beyond politicians to people who had endured years of war and now fear that their sacrifices have secured nothing.

Paris and the competing stage of politics

The return to Paris coincides with another political performance elsewhere. As the train carrying Orlando and Sonnino enters the city, Gabriele D’Annunzio appears on the balcony of the Campidoglio in Rome. The two scenes are set side by side: the Italian delegation comes back to negotiations where decisions have proceeded without it, while D’Annunzio addresses a crowd through the symbolism of a flag and a fallen soldier. Paris is the place of diplomatic bargaining; Rome is the place where the injury of disappointment is staged for an audience.

That contrast helps explain why the conference’s outcome matters beyond the territorial question. The diplomatic failure becomes material for competing accounts of Italy’s place in the world, including a sense of national humiliation and the political appeal of defiance. Later, D’Annunzio presents Fiume as youthful and vital in contrast to the decrepitude he associates with Versailles. Paris, as the location of the negotiations, remains the center of the contrast: it represents the order being settled by the victorious powers, while Italian political rhetoric turns exclusion from that process into a claim of renewed national purpose.