(5000), Isola (7000), Parenzo (4000) and Dignano (6000)—– are, generally speaking, overwhelmingly Italian. Pisino and Gimino are the only cities of more than 4000 inhabitants which have a Slav majority. In general the Slavs are scattered over a rocky and miserable territory in small centres which rarely exceed 1000 inhabitants.

To sum up-the population of the Julian Veneto, when the district of Volosca is subtracted from Istria, is divided between Italians and Slavs in equal proportions even on the basis of things created by the Austrian régime, and calculated on the Austrian statistics.

The problem thus deals with a region which is ethnically an equally mixed one, about which it is futile to discuss whether it be Italian or Slav, as do the Italian and Slav Nationalists, since every fair-minded person must see that it is an Italo-Slav region, in which neither of the races that live together there can claim the right of imposing its own exclusive nationality.

This being so, it seems probable that, should it be possible to create a new Serbo-Sloveno-Croatian State, the apportionment of the Julian Veneto to Italy would be the solution which would create the fewest difficulties in daily administration, and would most quickly induce the Italians and Slavs to shake down together in the contested regions, while it would have the further result of more solidly assuring good relations between Italy and the Slav State.

We do not pretend that the Italians in the Julian Veneto are the 'superior race,' as the Italian Nationalists childishly imagine, nor can we fail to recognise that the Italian Government, in its administration of the region, will have great difficulty in restraining the tendency towards reprisals and vendette against the Slavs, because a half-century of ferocious fighting in those regions has perverted too many spirits and destroyed in them every sentiment of equity and liberty; and we cannot even

guarantee that the Italian Government, under the pressure of local hatreds, will not commit errors, perhaps great ones. But, on the other hand, it is not credible that the political agitators for Slav Nationalism have not been at least as much perverted and envenomed by the methods of the Austrian Government as the Italian Nationalist politicians, nor that their mania for persecution and violence might not make itself felt in the government of the new Slav State; still less that this Government, as against the Italian Government, could possibly be the only infallibly just Government recorded in human history.

Moreover, it cannot be denied that the Italians in the Julian Veneto constitute the most cultivated and refined social element, that they predominate in almost all the larger cities, are established at the head of such a great centre of political life as Trieste, and have a larger historical tradition of civilisation and government. They present, in brief, the characteristics requisite to assure to the region conditions of well-being, of order, and of a civilisation superior to that which could be hoped for from a rural Slav multitude, constrained by the sterility of the soil they dwell on to a life of exhausting exertion and of comparative rudeness. Trieste, administered by Italy, especially in the first years of the new régime, would certainly not be a bed of roses for an Italian Government desirous-as indeed it must be, even in its own interests -of maintaining legal equality and peaceful relations between the Italian majority and the Slovenian minority; but what a real Inferno the town would become if it were part of the new Slav State, with the Italian majority assailed on every side by Slovenian Nationalism!

Naturally, the Slavs who would be included in the new Italian frontiers must obtain guarantees that their own cultural liberty will be respected, and that they will enjoy perfect equality before the law with the Italian majority; and there is nothing to hinder this guarantee receiving the solemn sanction of an international pact. The problem of the treatment of national minorities is not one that belongs exclusively to the Julian Veneto; it presents itself in Alsace-Lorraine, in Bohemia, in Poland, in all lands inhabited by mixed races. It must be decided by the Peace Congress, with guarantees of an international

character. These guarantees Italy must not only give but maintain.

The military side of the problem cannot be passed over. In no part of the district of Gorizia is it possible to establish a military frontier which can protect the Veneto against attacks from the east, unless it be the heights almost as far as the forest of Ternova. The plain to the west of Gorizia, inhabited by Italians, has no possible line of defence. On the other hand, the State which is master of the heights between the Isonzo and Laibach can utilise various lines of defence against an assault from below.

Eastern Istria dominates, from the naval base of Pola, the whole of the upper Adriatic; and the maritime inferiority of Italy is aggravated by the political circumstance that, while the Italian forces are paralysed, as regards any offensive movement against the cities of the Istrian coast, by the fact that they are inhabited by Italians, the Austrian offensive from Pola against the Italian coast is not restrained by any preoccupation due to racial solidarity.

The incorporation in Italy of Istria, as far as the Vena Mountains and Monte Maggiore, represents no great peril for Slovenia and Croatia. In fact, on the other side of the suggested Italian frontier, the mountainous land continues for a long distance, with many excellent lines of defence. By sea, in the Gulf of Quarnero, if Italy should gain, along with Istria, the double island, LussinoCherso (territory ethnically mixed, with a slight Croatian predominance), and the Slav State should take the other islands, a condition of perfect equilibrium would be created; the Slav powers could not make use of the Gulf of Quarnero to threaten the Italian coast, nor would the Italian forces care about venturing into the gulf to menace the Slav coast. In short, even from the military point of view, every consideration of equity suggests that, if this ethnically mixed region were given to Italy, one cause of Italy's unfair weakness on land and sea would be eliminated, so that, in a feeling of reciprocal security, friendly relations between Italy and the JugoSlav State might arise such as have been rendered impossible between Italy and Austria by mutual suspicions and anxiety.

The Slovenian Nationalists lay claim to Trieste, because Trieste is the only possible port for the Slovenian backcountry. But by this rule Switzerland ought to have Piedmont and Genoa, Germany would have been in her rights in conquering Belgium and Antwerp, and the Magyars could lay claim to Croatia and Fiume. The inhabitants of every back-country have a right to demand of the countries and ports which serve it, not political dominion, but free transit for imports and exports without payment of customs. And it would be in Italy's interest, installed politically at Trieste, to concede unconditionally to the inland territory this freedom of transit, of which, in fact, the port of Trieste would have need if it wished to prosper. Nor could Italy reasonably refuse to conclude with the Slav State conventions for the port of Trieste analogous to those which assure to Switzerland the free use of the Ligurian ports and the Italian railways. Indeed, international guarantees might also be given to these conventions in the Peace Treaty. For the Slavs to demand of the port of Trieste more than this would show such an evident desire to get the upper hand that all parties in Italy would unite against it.

The Slav Nationalists refuse this solution of the problem of the Julian Veneto because they aspire to suppress Italy on the eastern shores of the Adriatic, and to make the new Slav State the heir of the hated Adriatic claims of Austria as against Italy. They are under a fatal illusion if they think that the group of little more than a million Slovenes, who live between the Germans of Austria and the coast of the Adriatic, could by themselves suffocate the Italians in the Adriatic and at the same time defend themselves against the Germans. Fortunately, however, the problem of Gorizia, of Trieste and of Istria will not be decided by the Slav Nationalists, nor even by the Italian Nationalists, who are no better. It will be decided by the responsible men of the Italian and Serbian Governments; and it is to be hoped that these Governments will not fail to respond to the control and pressure of all the reasonable and loyal men of the Allied nations who are in league against Germany.

Whoever bases his views, without partisan preconceptions and without national arrogance, on good sense and equity, cannot, unless we are quite mistaken, fail to

recognise that, not only in the interest of the local population, not only in the interest of Italy, but in the interest of the future peace of Europe, the least unsatisfactory solution which can be suggested for the problem of the Julian Veneto is the following: (a) the incorporation of the Julian Veneto in Italy, with that land frontier which, while giving Italy the least extension possible in Slav territory towards the coast, will afford her a satisfactory line of military defence; (b) international guarantees of cultural liberty and equality before the law for the Slav population included in the new Italian frontier; (c) the right to commercial transit, free from customs duties, through the port of Trieste for all the inhabitants of the back-country.

The Problem of Fiume.

Fiume, without counting the 6000 Magyars, who almost all have been artificially brought to live there, and the 3000 citizens of other nationalities, who have no importance in the present enquiry, is inhabited by 24,000 Italians and 15,000 Slavs. It is divided from the industrial suburb, Sussak, which contains 11,000 Serbo-Croatians and 1500 Italians, by a river and a bridge. But, while Sussak forms part of Croatia, Fiume enjoys, or rather should enjoy, an autonomous constitution which separates it from the kingdom of Croatia and associates it from the juridical point of view, as a unit diverse from Croatia, with the kingdom of Hungary, among the so-called 'Crown-lands of St Stephen.'

So long as the Magyars respected this constitution, that is to say down to the last years of the 19th century, Fiume lived at peace. In 1902, although the first signs of Magyar greed had begun to reveal themselves, Pasquale Villari found it still sufficiently satisfied with its present status. No one in Fiume, nor, in fact, anywhere in Dalmatia, is talking of Irredentism; there does not even exist there a Committee of the National League for the defence of the Italian language, which for the moment does not appear to be in any way threatened.' But the Magyars began to lay claim to making Fiume Magyar, as they claimed to do with Croatia; and their brutal political

* Villari, 'Discussioni critiche.' Bologna: Zanichelli, 1905.