of London, claimed 6,326 sq. km. with a pop. of 287,000, or 44% of the total, including at least 15,000 Italians. Italy demanded Dalma- tia also for strategic reasons. The Dalmatian coast, with its in- numerable bays, inlets, ample natural harbours and islands, repre- sented a danger for Italian security if it was held by an unfriendly Power, more especially as the opposite Italian coast had practically no ports from Venice to Brindisi.
5. Fiume. Though the Pact of London did not include Fiume in Italy's claims, a memorial as to what Italy should demand, presented to the Government in April 1917 by Senator Franchetti and bearing 3,000 signatures, expressly included Fiume as well as the other territpries provided for in the Pact.
Italian public opinion was not unanimous as to Italy's ter- ritorial aspirations, and this was one of the causes of the weakness of the Italian position at the Peace Conference. The Nationalists demanded all the territories of the London Treaty plus Fiume, and some claimed South Dalmatia as well. The rinunciatari on the other hand, as those who were prepared to give up part of these claims, were ready to abandon Dalmatia and part of Istria and of the Trieste hinterland, because they wanted to conciliate the Yugoslavs and took no account of Italy's strate- gical necessities, but they demanded Fiume as an Italian town. Sig. Bissolati was the leader of this group, and he even wished to give up the Alto Adigc because of its German majority. Among the Italian delegates at Paris there were also differences of tendency if not actually of opinion. While Baron Sonnino held to the Pact of London and did not insist on Fiume, Sig. Orlando demanded the latter but was ready to compromise on Dalmatia. Military opinion attached especial importance to the Trieste hinterland, as far as the Monte Nevoso line, as indispensable for the defence of Trieste and Pola, but it was less certain about Dalmatia, which it would be difficult to defend. Naval opinion, especially Adml. Thaon di Revel, the chief of the naval staff, was strongly in favour of retaining Dalmatia owing to its geographical situation and its many ports and islands. The general mass of public opinion demanded above all a good frontier the Brenner and the Julian Alps with the Nevoso line and the protection of the Italian character of Fiume and the other Italian communities on the Adriatic coast so that they should not be wiped out by the Slav tide. This latter point of view appealed to nearly every Italian, to whom the idea that civilized Italian communities should be ruled by semi-civilized Balkan races was profoundly repugnant. In the case of Fiume this feeling became peculiarly bitter owing to the subsequent developments of the controversy.
To the Italian claims on the eastern Adriatic the Yugoslavs
now opposed their demands. The minimum on which they
insisted would have brought the frontier to the
Yaxoslav i sonzo leaving even Trieste outside Italy, while their
Counter- "
Claims. maximum claims extended to the old Auslro-Italian frontier and even beyond it so as to include the eastern part of the province of Udine. The difference between the Italian attitude and that of the Yugoslavs was that, whereas in Italy only the ultra-Nationalists made exaggerated demands, and many moderate-minded men were ready to brave unpopular- ity by reducing Italy's claims very considerably and pleaded earnestly for conciliation with the Yugoslavs, among the latter no one said a word in favour of an understanding except the gallant Voivoda Michich, the Serbian commander-in-chief.
Italy and the Yugoslavs. Rivalry between Italy and the Yugo- slavs did not date from the end of the war. Under the Austrian regime bitter hatred had grown up, fostered by Austria herself, between the Italian and Slav elements of the population, and this antagonism had repercussions in Italy. Italians wishing to com- plete Italian unity hoped that on the day when the Dual Monarchy should collapse Italy would acquire those of its territories which had an Italian population and civilization. The Slavs, who also looked forward to their own unity most of them believed that it would be realized under Austrian aegis laid claim to those same territories on the ground that a part of their inhabitants were Slavs. As long as Austria-Hungary existed this rivalry assumed an acute form only in the disputed territories themselves and did not affect Italian policy very closely. But with the outbreak of the war the national aspirations of Italy and of the Yugoslavs came into more direct conflict. At first Italian sympathies, regardless of Serbia's eventual aspirations to Austria's Adriatic lands, were undoubtedly with the small and gallant Serb nation struggling against a brutal and over- bearing bully, and when Italy was about to enter the war coopera- tion between the two nations seemed the obvious course. A plan of
campaign whereby Serbia was to attack the Austrians in the direc- tion of Agram, while Italy was attacking on the Carso, had been agreed upon ; but it fell through at the last moment, in spite of the insistent appeals of the Allies to the Belgrade Government, owing to the influence of the Serbian secret societies, who dominated the army and refused to countenance any action which might be of ad- vantage to Italy. The Serbs, although they did not then know the exact terms of the Pact of London, knew that Italy claimed Gorizia, Trieste, Istria and parts of Dalmatia and the islands. There seemed then little prospect of a complete break-up of Austria, but the Serbs, who aspired to a union of all the Yugoslav peoples, laid claim to all these territpries; some even of the Serbs would have been ready to accept national unity under Austrian suzerainty. The Yugoslav soldiers in the Austrian army fought with particular energy against Italy, because they considered that they were defending what they regarded as Yugoslav territory against an Italian invasion. The fact remains that, owing to the failure of the Serbs to attack, Austria was able to withdraw five out of six divisions from the Serb front and send them to the Italian front.
During the war the first contact between the Italians and the Serbs occurred in Albania, where Italian assistance materially helped to save the remnants of the Serbian army from annihilation by starvation and disease. Incidents, however, occurred in that con- nexion which caused bitterness of feeling on the part of the Serbs, for some individual Italian officers, including one general, failed to show proper consideration and tact, and subjected them to certain moral humiliations. These lapses were not forgotten. Later, indeed, when Italian and Serb troops were fighting side by side in Mace- donia, relations between the two armies became excellent, and on the eve of the Sept. offensive the Crown Prince Alexander deplored the fact that the plan of operations precluded a direct liaison between Italian and Serb troops. A certain amount of tension was caused, however, by the question of the Yugoslav prisoners in Italy. The Serbian Government wanted Italy to send those prisoners both those captured by the Serbian army and interned in Italy and those captured by the Italians to fight under Serbian command in Macedonia. The Italian Government raised difficulties, not so much from hostility to the idea of Yugoslav unity, as the Serbs asserted, as because most of these prisoners were Croats and Slovenes and had no wish to go and fight against Austria or her allies. There were other difficulties concerning the choice of officers, and the result was that only a very small number were sent to Macedonia.
It must be remembered in explanation of Italy's attitude, that the notion of Yugoslav unity independent of Austria-Hungary only assumed practical shape at the very end of the war save in a very limited circle. Austria's Yugoslav soldiers fought valiantly against the Italians, and even against the Serbs. Throughout the war the Yugoslav subjects of the Dual Monarchy were most emphatic in their expressions of loyalty to the dynasty. Thus on May 8 1917, the Serbo-Croat coalition in the Croatian Diet presented an address of loyalty to the Emperor Charles, demanding the formation of " Trialism," with a Yugoslav state which would constitute " on the Adriatic coast the most powerful bulwark of the greatness and splen- dour of Your Majesty's throne." On Oct. 19 1917, Herr Korosete, 1 president of the Yugoslav club in the Austrian Reichsrat, after speaking of the heroic sacrifices of the Yugoslav people " for the Emperor and the Fatherland," stated that Yugoslavism was " the warden of the Monarchy as a great Power on the Adriatic. 1 ' On May 30 1918, the Yugoslav Congress in Trieste protested against the friendliness towards Italy displayed by the Yugoslav delegates at the Rome Congress, and insisted that Trieste and all the coast from the Isonzo to the last town in Dalmatia must belong to the Yugoslav state under Austrian auspices. It was only on the eve of the Armistice, when the defeat of the Central Empires appeared inevitable even to their own subjects, that the project of breaking away from the Dual Monarchy was openly entertained by the Austro-Hungarian Yugoslavs. The Croatian Association did not actually proclaim the independence of Yugoslavia until Oct. 30 1918. An attempt was then made to secure the Austro-Hungarian fleet for the new state, and on Oct. 31 the Austro-Hungarian Govern- ment ordered the ships at Pola to place thejnselves under the Serbo- Croat-Slovene National Council created at Agram. The Yugoslav colours were raised on the fleet, but of course such a change of flag during war-time was null and void, and the Italians torpedoed the dreadnought " Viribus Unitis " in Pola harbour on Nov. I.
Italy after the War. Orlando and Baron Sonnino returned to Italy from the Versailles War Council on Nov. 4 1918, and great demonstrations were held to celebrate the victory. On the i4th the King returned to Rome from the front and had a triumphant reception. The Government was now faced by the difficult task of bridging the gulf between the state of war and the state of peace. It was still necessary to keep a large number of troops at the front until the frontier question was settled; and Serbia, now the Serbo-Croat-Slovene state, or Yugoslavia, instead of demobilizing, was increasing her army by taking over ex-Austro-
1 Who was afterwards a member of the Yugoslav Cabinet.
