Last Survivor of the Big Four: Vittorio Emanuele Orlando

Orlando: Official Portrait

Vittorio Orlando (1860–1952) was an Italian statesman and prime minister during the concluding years of World War I and head of his country’s delegation to the Versailles Peace Conference,  where he was considered one of "The Big Four", the quartet of national leaders who steered the proceeding at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919.  Though most famous for his participation at the conference,  his most lasting achievements were in twice leading Italy back from disastrous defeats: the 1917 Battle of Caporetto and the Second World War.  He outlived the other members of the Big Four (Wilson and Clemenceau died in the 1920s and Lloyd George in 1945).

Born in Sicily and educated at Palermo, Orlando made a name for himself with writings on electoral reform and government administration before being elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1897. He served as minister of education in 1903–05 and of justice in 1907–09, resuming the same portfolio in 1914. He favored Italy’s entrance into the war (May 1915). 

In October 1917, in the crisis following the defeat of Italy’s forces at the Battle of Caporetto by the Austrians, he became prime minister, successfully rallying the country to a renewed effort, gaining reinforcements from the other allies, and forcefully supporting the reorganization of the army, while reasserting civil control over it.

The Big Four in Paris

After the war’s victorious conclusion, Orlando went to Paris and Versailles, where he had a serious falling out with his allies, especially President Woodrow Wilson of the United States, over Italy’s claims to formerly Austrian territory. On the question of the port of Fiume, which was contested by Yugoslavia after the war, Wilson appealed over Orlando’s head to the Italian people, a maneuver that failed. Orlando’s inability to get concessions from the Allies rapidly undermined his position, both at the conference table and at home. He left the conference in April, returned briefly, but resigned on 23 June 1919. The fact he was not a signatory to the Treaty of Versailles became a point of pride for him later in his life.

On 2 December, he was elected president of the Chamber of Deputies. In the rising conflict between the workers’ organizations and the new Fascist Party of Benito Mussolini, he at first supported Mussolini, but when the leader of the Italian Socialist Party, Giacomo Matteotti, was assassinated by the Fascists, Orlando withdrew his support. (The murder marked the beginning of Mussolini’s dictatorship over Italy.) Orlando opposed the Fascists in local elections in Sicily and resigned from Parliament in protest against Fascist electoral fraud (1925).

After Mussolini fell, Orlando returned to politics becoming a leader of the National Democratic Union and the Constituent Assembly. He emphasized Italy’s pre-Fascist liberal and democratic traditions, seeking to embed them in the new republican constitution’s legal and political structures. A run for president of Italy at age 87 failed, however. He would die in Rome in 1952.

The Old Statesman in 1946

Postscript: One interesting aspect of Orlando's career is that with his Sicilian heritage, he endlessly accused of being a member of the Mafia. The charge—as far as involvement in criminal enterprises—was never investigated.