WAR MEMOIRS OF DAVID LLOYD GEORGE 1917

254 WAR MEMOIRS OF DAVID LLOYD GEORGE
I am pleased to see that Lord Robert Cecil spoke yesterday in
the same sense in the House of Commons.
"I will expect a telegram either from you direct or from
M. Paul Cambon, so that I can make my arrangements.
Very affectionately yours,
A. RIBOT."
The Anglo-French Conference for which M. Ribot asked
in this letter was duly held in London on Monday, May 28th,
running on to Tuesday morning. Greece was the principal
topic of discussion, and the Stockholm Conference and problems
of tonnage were also reviewed. But of course the Prince
Sixte correspondence could not be brought into conference,
as it was still a matter of the strictest secrecy.
Meantime Prince Sixte, after parting from me, had paid
a visit to Paul Cambon and had then retired to the Isle of
Wight to be at hand for further developments. His account
of his interview with Cambon reveals the immense suspicion
which that diplomat felt for Italy, and makes it easy to
understand why these negotiations were not pressed through
with much fervour by French statesmen. Cambon was
quite clear that the Italians would prove a rock upon which
the hopes of a separate peace with Austria would founder.
He was no less clear that this would on balance be a good
thing. For if once Italy got enough out of Austria to be
willing to sign a peace with her, he was confident that she
would forthwith drop her alliance with the Entente, and
render them no further help in the War. She would on the
contrary seize the opportunity while other countries were
exhausting themselves in the conflict, to expand industrially
and commercially, and advance her own interests at the expense
of France.
Cambon was of opinion that peace between Austria and
Italy would benefit those two Powers only and not France,