763.72119/1266½
President Wilson to the Secretary of State
My Dear Mr. Secretary: This is a very delicate matter;63 but while you were away from your office I took occasion to say to the Italian Ambassador (who, oddly enough, had called to thank me in the name of his Government for what I had said) that I had limited my statement about Italian rights as I did because I was taking my programme as a whole, including the league of nations through which mutually defensive pledges were to be given and taken which would render strategic considerations such as those affecting the Adriatic much less important. I told him that, failing a league of nations, my mind would be open upon all such matters to new judgments.
I am clear that I could not pledge our people to fight for the eastern shore of the Adriatic; but there is nothing in what I have omitted to say to alarm the Italian people, and it ought to be possible for Orlando to make that plain to his own followers.
Faithfully Yours,