And the Rapallo Treaty of November 1920, when at last the statesmen of
Italy and Yugoslavia came to terms regarding all their frontiers! This
Treaty was received with much applause by the great majority of the
French and British Press; in this country of compromise it was pointed
out by many that as each party knew that the other had abated something
of his desires the Treaty would probably remain in operation for a long
time to come. And column after column of smug comment was written in
various newspapers by the "Diplomatic Correspondent," whose knowledge of
diplomacy may have been greater than his acquaintance with the Adriatic,
since they followed one another, like a procession of sheep, in copying
the mistake in a telegram which spoke of Eritto, the curious suburb of
Zadar, instead of Borgo Erizzo. They noted that each side had yielded
something, though it was true that the Yugoslavs had been the more
generous in surrendering half a million of their compatriots, whereas
the Italians had given up Dalmatia, to which they never had any
right.[58] "The claim for Dalmatia was entirely unjustified," said
Signor Colajanni in the Italian Chamber on November 23--yet it was not
our business to weigh the profit and loss to the two interested parties.
After all, it was they who had between themselves made this Agreement,
and one might argue that it surely would be an impertinence if anybody
else was more royalist than the king. These commentators held that it
was inexpedient for anyone to ask why the Yugoslavs should now have
accepted conditions that were, on the whole, considerably worse than
those which President Wilson, with the approval of Great Britain and
France, had laid down as a minimum, if they were to realize their
national unity. And, of course, these writers deprecated any reference
to the pressure which France and Great Britain brought to bear upon the
Yugoslavs when the negotiations at Rapallo were in danger of falling
through. If we take two Scottish newspapers, the _Scotsman_[59] was
typical of this very bland attitude; it congratulated everyone on the
harmonious close to a long, intricate and frequently dangerous
controversy. The _Glasgow Herald_,[60] on the other hand, was one of the
few newspapers which took a more than superficial view. "Monstrous," it
said, "as such intervention seems, no student of the Adriatic White
Paper--as lamentable a collection of documents as British diplomacy has
to show--can deny its possibility, nay its probability. It is precisely
the same game as was nearly successful in January 1920 and again in
April 1920, but both times was frustrated by Wilson. We are entitled to
ask, for the honour of our nation, if it has been played again; indeed
if the whole mask of direct negotiation--a British suggestion--was not
devised at San Remo with the express purpose of making the game succeed.
If it be so--and if it is not so it is imperative that we are given
frankly the full story of British policy in the Adriatic, for instance
the dispatches so carefully omitted from the White Paper--then our
forebodings for the future are more than justified.... It is
emphatically a bad settlement."
"We shall not establish friendly and normal relations with our neighbour
Italy unless we reduce all causes of friction to a minimum," said M.
Vesni['c], the Yugoslav Prime Minister, who during his long tenure of
the Paris Legation was an active member of the Academie des Inscriptions
et Belles-Lettres and other learned societies; he excelled in getting at
the root of the worst difficulties in international law, and he was
particularly admired for his ability to combine legal and historic
knowledge. Because he studied history minutely--with a special fondness
for Gambetta who, racially an Italian, had something of the generous and
sacred fervour that distinguished the leaders of the Risorgimento--M.
Vesni['c] could not bring himself to hate Italy, despite all that
d'Annunzio and other Imperialists had made his countrymen suffer.
"Neither the Government nor the elected representatives of the Serbs,
Croats and Slovenes," said he courageously in his first speech as Prime
Minister, "ought to look upon Italy as an enemy country. We have to
settle important and difficult questions with Italy.... We must reduce
all causes of friction to a minimum."
The Treaty of Rapallo gives Zadar to Italy, because in that little town
there is an Italian majority; but central and eastern Istria, with their
overwhelming Slav majority, are not given to the Yugoslavs--a fact which
Professor Salvemini deplored in the Roman Chamber. By the Treaty of
Rapallo Rieka is given independence,[61] but with Italy in possession of
Istria and the isle of Cres, she can at any moment choke the
unprotected port, having very much the same grip of that place as
Holland has for so long had of Antwerp; and the sole concession on
Italy's part seems to be that in the south she gives up the large Slav
islands of Hvar, Kor[vc]ula and Vis, and only appropriates the small one
of Lastovo.... "It has cost Italy a pang," says Mr. George Trevelyan,
"to consent, after victory, to leave the devoted and enthusiastic
Italians of the Dalmatian coast towns (other than Zara) in foreign
territory." The truth is that henceforward Yugoslavia will contain some
5000 Italians (many of whom are Italianized Slavs), as against not less
than 600,000 Slavs in Italy. And while the former are but tiny groups in
towns which even under Venetian rule were predominantly Slav and are
surrounded on all sides by purely Slav populations, the latter live for
the most part in compact masses and include roughly one-third of the
whole Slovene race, whose national sense is not only very acute, but who
are also much less illiterate than their Italian neighbours. One cannot
be astonished if the Slovenes think of this more than of Giotto,
Leonardo, Galileo and Dante. But one may be a little surprised that
such a man as Mr. Edmund Gardner should allow his reverence for the
imperishable glories of Italy to becloud his view of the modern world.
It is certainly a fact that the Slovenes are to-day less illiterate than
the Italians, but because Dr. Seton-Watson alludes to this, Mr. Gardner
(in the _Manchester Guardian_, of February 13, 1921) deplores the
"Balkanic mentality that seems to afflict some Englishmen when dealing
with these problems."