already reached agreement. But the prospect of a settlement roused the Italian Nationalists to a final effort: the Nitti Cabinet fell, and D'Annunzio, repeating his defiance of Europe, attempted a further raid upon Dalmatia. The continued presence of Ameri- can warships on the Dalmatian coast alone prevented a series of brawls between Italian sailors and the Croat population from developing into open warfare. Fortunately the new Giolitti and Vesnic Cabinets showed equal moderation and skill in restraining the hotheads on both sides, and the new Foreign Minister, Count Sforza, was assisted by a personal knowl- edge of Serbian and Balkan problems all too rare among western statesmen. It was not however till the autumn that direct negotiations could be resumed, and by that time the eclipse of President Wilson placed Italy at an advantage. By the Treaty of Rapallo (Nov. 12 1920) Italy acquired a frontier considerably farther east than the Wilson Line, and including the quicksilver mines of Istria, the watershed of the Julian Alps as far as Snjeznik (Monte Nevoso), almost all Istria with Abbazia and Volosca, and a narrow strip of shore connecting it with Fiume. The corpus separatum became an independent unit under the League of Nations, the Croat suburb of Susak remaining in Yugoslavia and the Baros port being added as an outlet for Yugoslav trade. Zara became a free city under Italian sover- eignty, but as a tiny isthmus without hinterland or islands. Italy renounced ah 1 claims to Dalmatia, and of the islands retained only Lussin and Cherso. Special linguistic and other privileges were assured to the Italian minority in the Dalmatian towns, but no corresponding charter was granted to the four to five hundred thousand Slovenes and Croats annexed to Italy. The settlement, though far from ideal, involved concessions on both sides: and Italy, though still forgetful of the principles enunciated at the Roman congress, could at least claim to be the only victorious Power which had relinquished its hold upon conquered territory. One practical result of the treaty was that Italy tacitly abandoned the cause of King Nicholas and accepted as inevitable Montenegro's incorporation in Yugoslavia.
The New Frontiers. The consolidation of the new State was seriously delayed by the prolonged dispute with Italy and by the fact that for nearly two years after the Armistice the dan- ger of an armed conflict could not be overlooked. But in five other directions also the frontiers were unregulated, (i). By the Armistice concluded at Belgrade on Nov. 12 1918 the Serbs were allowed to occupy Teme'svar and most of the Banat, the east of which is overwhelmingly Rumanian and which was claimed in its entirety by Rumania, in right of her treaty of Aug. 1916 with the Allies. At the Paris Conference Rumania's enforced conclusion of peace with Germany was treated as absolving the Allies from obligations which were admitted in the parallel case of the Italian treaty: and the necessity of a par- tition on mainly ethnographic lines was from the first admitted. The special commission, after hearing the views of Trumbic and Bratianu, recommended a line which as nearly as possible balanced the Serb and Rumanian minorities left to Rumania and Yugoslavia respectively, and secured to the latter the essentially Serb districts of Torontal county: but at the instance of the French this line was modified to include Vrsac (Versecz) and Bela Crkva (Weisskirchen) in Yugoslavia. This has the disadvantage that while the Serbs are stronger than any other single race in the two towns, their cession involved the loss of many purely Rumanian villages by Rumania, and also her loss of the important railway line connecting Temesvar southward with the Danube. (2). The regulation of the new Yugoslav frontier with Austria proved very thorny. Thanks to the efforts of Trumbic and the Slovene experts in Paris, Marburg (Maribor), a town with a German majority but surrounded by a purely Slovene district, was assigned to Yugoslavia: but under the Treaty of St. Germain a roughly triangular district north of the Karawanken range was referred to a popular plebiscite. The Inter-Allied Commission entrusted with the details was ordered to divide the disputed area into Zone A, mainly south of the river Drava (Drau) and Zone B, consisting of Klagenfurt and its basin, and to hold the plebiscite in the latter, only in
the event of Zone A voting for Yugoslavia. After a keen contest between the rival Slovene and Pan-German propagandists, voting took place in Oct. 1920, and resulted in a majority of 12,747 for Austria. The fact that many Slovenes voted against Yugoslavia was largely due to a desire to escape from all military service. Zone B, with Klagenfurt, now automatically passed to Austria. (3). Against Bulgaria the Yugoslav delegation claimed considerable frontier rectifications (a) the Strumnica salient, which threatened the Vardar railway from the east, (b) the district of Kochana (Tocana) and the Bregalnitsa (Bregalnica),
(c) a strip of territory running parallel with the old Serbo-Bul- garian frontier the whole way from Zaje&r to Kyustendil, and
(d) the town of Vidin on the Danube and the salient between it and the Timok. These claims were regarded by the Peace Conference as excessive, and under the Treaty of Neuilly only the two first were allowed, though in place of the third the town and district of Tsaribrod were assigned to Yugoslavia, and there- by the main strategic key to Sofia. This decision is so patently unjust that it has been very widely ascribed to a deliberate design to keep the two countries apart. (4). The Pan-Serb section of opinion in Belgrade, encouraged in this instance by some of the army chiefs for strategic reasons, has always coveted northern Albania: and the Montenegrin Unionists, led by Radovi6, made every effort to secure the adoption of their full claim by the Yugoslav delegation. This was opposed by Trumbic and all the more progressive elements in the new State, who realized' that the claim to Skutari knocked the bottom out of the whole Yugoslav case against Italy and Austria. Thus the advocates of an unscrupulous " deal " on the lines of " Skutari for Fiume " failed to assert themselves, and Yugoslavia pro- nounced in favour of an independent Albania, merely reserving her right to share the spoils if it came to a general partition. After Giolitti's renunciation of a mandate in Albania the claim to Skutari became untenable, and at last in 1921 the Supreme Council sanctioned the frontiers assigned to Albania in 1913. Yugoslavia's relations with Albania, though simplified by this decision, have been affected by the Albanian counterclaim to Pe, Djakovo and the plain of Kosovo, where since the middle of last century the Albanian element had grown steadily stronger at the expense of the Serbs. The murder of Essad Pasha (June 1920) deprived the Serbs of their chief supporter in Albania: and friction was increased by the bad administration in the Sanjak and Macedonia, by the inability of the Durazzo Govern- ment to prevent continual armed raids against Serbian territory, and by the encouragement given from some Serbian quarters to the Mirdite rising in the summer of 1921. (5). The frontier with Hungary was the last to be regulated. The Treaty of Trianon satisfied the most essential claims of Yugoslavia, by dividing the whole Banat (save a small Magyar triangle opposite the city of Szeged) between her and Rumania, and by assigning to her the whole Backa (except Baja and district), part of the Baranya (forming the angle between Drave and Danube) and the Medjumurje (between Drava and Mur). Thus, in order to secure the town of Subotica (Szabadka) with its large Bunjevac (or Catholic Serb) population, she was allowed to annex not less than 250,000 Magyars. Her claim to Pecs (Funfkirchen) was disallowed, but owing to the long delay in ratifying the treaty, Yugoslav troops remained in occupation of this district and its valuable coal-mines till Aug. 1921, when at the instance of the Supreme Council it was handed over to Hungary. Meanwhile Pecs had become a centre of the exiled Magyar progressives, who preferred a provisional Yugoslav regime to the white terror of Adml. Horthy. On the eve of evacuation an attempt was made in Pecs to reestablish the Hungarian Republic under Count Karolyi, but owing to the communist views of some of its promoters the Belgrade Government withheld all support, and the movement promptly collapsed.
Internal Politics. So long as vital frontier disputes were unregulated, the central Government in Belgrade held that elections could not be held, and governed for the first, two years through a provisional Parliament, for which no one could claim a really representative character. The deputies for Serbia
