long hold the whole eastern coast and plant there Latin colonies and
a Latin tongue which, in some spots at least, seem never to have
disappeared; but Venice succeeded to the inheritance of Rome, and from
the tenth century to the end of the eighteenth imposed her sway over
a large part of the eastern littoral and the islands. The Slavs had,
indeed, penetrated to the coast or near it, in the seventh century; and
ever since it may be assumed that the bulk of the population in almost
every province on this coast has been of Slavic stock. Nevertheless,
the Italians remained the dominant race in every respect save numbers;
theirs was the language of business, of politics, of society, of
literature, the language which almost everyone understood and tried
to speak, if he pretended to be anybody; Italian was the civilization
which has left such splendid monuments in the _duomi_ and _palazzi_,
the _loggie_ and the _campanili_, which adorn the coast cities from
Trieste to Ragusa. It is no great exaggeration when Italians today
talk of eighteen centuries of _Italianità_ in the lands east of the
Adriatic. Nor is it strange that in Dalmatia, with her vines and
olives, laurels and cypresses, and here and there a palm; with her warm
Mediterranean sun and ever-present vistas of blue waters; with her
cities studded with Roman and Venetian remains, and the lion of San
Marco guarding every older edifice; the present-day Italian should feel
himself very much in his own country.
But the nineteenth century revivals of dormant nationalities have
brought cruel trials to the defenders of historic civilizations.
Since the middle of that century, the Adriatic lands have seen a
bitter conflict between the resurgent Croats and Slovenes, who are
in most cases the majority, and the Italians. This conflict has been
complicated and envenomed by the insidious and sometimes violent
interventions of the Austrian and Hungarian authorities, both anxious
to maintain their hold upon the coast by playing off the two chief
nationalities of that region against one another. At Fiume the Magyars
systematically favored the Italians in order to prevent the control of
Hungary’s one port by the Croatians. In the other coastal territories
the Austrians generally supported and spurred on the Slavs, who were
regarded as less dangerous than the obnoxious nation which had brought
Austria to grief in 1859 and 1866. Hence at the present day both of the
rival races can say that the natural course of development has been
perverted: neither quite likes to accept the ethnographic status quo
produced through fifty years of machinations or violence by Vienna and
Budapest.
Down to the World War the contest remained pretty much a local
one, attracting no great amount of attention from the Italians of
the kingdom, or the outside Yugo-Slavs, or the world at large. The
other Yugo-Slavs had more pressing problems nearer home. In Italy the
Carbonari did, indeed, dream of an ‘Ausonian Republic,’ extending from
Malta to the Trentino, and from Trieste to Cattaro; and such seems also
to have been the ideal of Daniel Manin and other heroes of 1848. All
Italians agreed that Gorizia, Trieste, and Istria belonged by nature
to Italy as much as did the Trentino or Venetia. But Dante, in a much
quoted passage, had described the eastern side of Istria as the natural
limit of Italy: he had spoken of the
“Quarnaro che Italia chiude.”
Mazzini, the greatest Italian political thinker of the nineteenth
century, had also taken this to be the eastern boundary of Italy, and
had spoken in the loftiest terms of the union and fraternity that ought
to reign between his countrymen and the Yugo-Slavs. There seems to be
no evidence that Cavour thought seriously of claiming anything east of
the Adriatic--certainly not Dalmatia.
The Italian public thus had no very clear idea as to how much
rightfully belonged to their country on the east; and as time wore on
after the close of the Risorgimento period, that public more or less
forgot about the Italian colonies beyond the Adriatic, or else gave
them up as indefensible positions which there could be little hope of
saving. Thus the Great War caught both Italians and Yugo-Slavs rather
unprepared, and without very definite ideas or clear-cut programmes
with respect to the Adriatic question.
It is well known that the Italian government then, rather hastily
perhaps, formulated its programme and its demands in the treaty of
London, of April 26, 1915--the treaty signed by England, France, and
Russia in order to secure Italy’s entry into the War. This treaty
promised Italy, in case of victory, a new frontier including the
southern Tyrol, all of Gorizia, Trieste, all Istria, northern Dalmatia
as far as a line which cuts the coast just west of Traù, and several
of the larger Dalmatian islands farther south, including Lissa and
Curzola. It did not include Fiume, presumably because the assumption
then was that Austria-Hungary would continue to exist after the War as
a great power, which must have at least one port on the Adriatic.
This treaty, were it ever to be carried out, would incorporate in Italy
about 800,000 Yugo-Slavs, nearly half of whom live in Dalmatia. It
inevitably created great resentment at Belgrade and Agram, and helped
to produce that regrettable state of relations between Italians and
Yugo-Slavs which has had such unfortunate results in the past year.
At any rate, during the negotiations of the past year the Italians
themselves have elected not to adhere to the strict terms of the treaty
of London, but have shown, I think it must be admitted, a genuine
willingness to seek a compromise more acceptable to their opponents.
At this point, it becomes necessary to consider the questions at issue,
region by region.
Gorizia, Trieste, and Istria are three small territories which, in
Roman times, formed a part of Italy and of the province of Venetia, and
which the modern Italians still call Venetia Julia. Most scholars will
agree, I think, that geographically these territories belong to Italy,
and that the Julian Alps and the Karst Mountains, which come down to
the sea on the Quarnero, mark the natural frontier of Italy on the
northeast.
Historically, Venice held the larger part of Istria and a small part of
Gorizia for many centuries down to the fall of the republic in 1797.
Trieste was an independent commune until in 1382 it came under Hapsburg
rule. The larger part of Gorizia and eastern Istria, after passing for
centuries from one German princeling to another, have been under the
Hapsburgs since the close of the Middle Ages.
Ethnographically, Venetia Julia seems to show a slight Yugo-Slav
majority (52%). In Gorizia there were in 1910 155,000 Slovenes
against 90,000 Italians; in Trieste 119,000 Italians against 59,000
Yugo-Slavs; in Istria 203,000 Yugo-Slavs against 147,000 Italians. But
the Italians, not without some show of reason, contest these figures
as being much too favorable to their opponents, owing to the bias and
the unscrupulous methods of the Austrian census-takers. Furthermore,
it would be difficult for even an honest census to give an accurate
picture of the racial complexities of a province like Istria, which
has been said to contain more fragments of diverse nationalities than
any other province of similar size in Austria, and fragments that
generally do not get properly classified in the census because there
is no rubric for them. What is one to do with such ethnographic curios
as the Chiches, the Morlaks, the Rumenes of Istria--people who do not
know what they are themselves, nor can any philologist tell them?
One of the best observers of the region has discovered no less than
thirteen “ethnographic nuances,” and such a confusion and intermixture
of tongues that even educated people had difficulty in deciding what
language they spoke. He found here Croaticized Slovenes, and Slovenized
Croats; Croaticized Rumenes, Italianized Croats, and Croaticized
Italians; finally a population of whom all that could be said was that
their costume was Italian, their manners Slav, and their language a
mixture of everything. Under such circumstances one cannot place great
reliance on the census.
Perhaps it is more significant that just before the War, out of
seventeen deputies elected from these three provinces to the Reichsrat,
ten were Italians, and only seven Yugo-Slavs. In the provincial diets
the Italians outnumbered the Slavs two to one. Seventy per cent of the
communes are said to have had Italian administrations. Italian was
indubitably the chief language of business, of administration, of the
cities, and of the educated classes pretty generally, the one language
that everybody knew and without which it was impossible to get along.
Under these circumstances, it has, in the first place, been settled
that Trieste belongs to Italy. Of the Italian character and sentiment
of that city throughout its history, there can be no doubt. If the
Yugo-Slavs for a time laid claim to it, that was because the rural
districts around it are Slovene and because Trieste is the natural
port for the Slovene provinces in the interior. Nevertheless, it would
appear that the Yugo-Slavs would have been wiser never to raise a claim
so obviously doomed to defeat.
It appears probable that the whole of Gorizia and Istria will also
go to Italy. This is, of course, a more questionable decision; but,
in view of the geographic facts in the case, the solidly Italian
population in the coastal districts, the preponderant position of
the Italian language and civilization everywhere, and the apparent
preponderance of Italian political sentiment as measured by the
elections, this would seem to be a not unfair solution.
Much more serious are the problems presented by the remaining two
territories: Dalmatia and Fiume.
As to Dalmatia the Yugo-Slav claim can be stated very simply. That
province had in 1910 a population of 635,000, of whom 611,000 (96%)
were Yugo-Slavs and only 18,000 (3%) Italians. Even if one admits
some inaccuracy in these figures, the most extreme Italian claims do
not rise above 60,000 (10% of the total population). All the deputies
sent from Dalmatia to the Reichsrat for many years back have been
Yugo-Slavs, and the latter control every commune in the province, save
only the capital Zara. The Yugo-Slav predominance is so overwhelming
that, at first glance, it is not easy to understand how the Italians
can have any serious claim at all.
The Italians rest their case, in the first place, upon history. They
point to the wellnigh eighteen hundred years of Latin rule in Dalmatia:
the Roman period, the age of the independent Latin-Dalmatian communes,
the long sway of Venice, inaugurated by the famous expedition of
998, in honor of which the Doge ever afterwards bore the title _Dux
Dalmatiae_, and to commemorate which there was instituted the famous
annual ceremony of the ‘wedding of the sea’ by Venice.
The Italians do not deny that the great majority of the Dalmatian
population has for centuries been of Slavic speech. But they assert
that in almost every other respect this population is Italian: in
its customs, costumes, games, in its artistic, literary, and musical
tastes--even in its cuisine. The whole civilization of the province is
Italian. Even as regards language, there is no real barrier: the Slavs
are, most of them, bilingual, and even their own dialect is studded
with Italianisms.
Thirdly, while admitting that the harmony which long reigned between
the two races has, since 1866, given way to bitter enmity, the Italians
declare that this was mainly the work of the Austrian government. Now
that that influence is removed, and if the church, the school, and
the gendarme are no longer used to stir up anti-Italian feeling, many
Italians seem to believe that the Dalmatian Slavs could be won back
to the old friendly relations and to peaceful acceptance of Italian
rule. In any case, can Italy abandon those communities which remained
faithful to her even during the period of Austrian persecution--that
is, the capital, Zara, and some of the islands?
To understand Italian feelings on this subject, one must recall the
long, agonizing, and--in the main--losing fight of the last forty years
to save the Italian character of the Dalmatian cities. The struggle
turned about control of the municipal councils, for it was they that
decided what was to be the official language of the schools and the
public services and which nationality was to set the tone and get all
the favors in the community. The Austrians seem to have employed every
form of corruption, fraud, and violence to sweep the Italians out of
the municipalities. It is said that at the elections in Spalato in
1883 all the officials were ordered to vote Croat; the clergy also; a
cruiser was sent to overawe the city; the election officials and the
soldiery completed the intimidation of the voters; and it was thus that
Spalato was lost to the Italians. One after another the other cities
succumbed. Cattaro and Ragusa holding out bravely until 1900; and then
only one Italian stronghold was left. That is why people in Rome speak
of it as ‘Zara Italianissima’--any city that could defend itself so
long must have a superlative character about its patriotism; and this
is why the Italians have been so anxious to save at least that last
bulwark of Latin Dalmatia.
Fourthly, the Italian argument dwells upon the geographic character of
the province--shut off from Yugo-Slavia by rough and savage mountains,
united to Italy by the sea over which practically all its external
communications are carried on. Ratzel declared that Dalmatia lived like
an island, and Freeman compared it to a branch cast forth from Italy
across the Adriatic.
Finally, the Italians invoke strategic reasons for demanding at least
a part of Dalmatia. The Adriatic Sea forms a narrow couloir, about 400
miles in length but in places scarcely 100 miles across. The western
coast of that sea, the Italian side, is almost destitute of harbors
that could serve as defensive naval bases; while on the eastern side
the Dalmatian coast, with its many fine ports, its protecting chains
of islands, its labyrinth of back channels and concealed inner basins,
offers the most marvellous basis for naval operations. Obviously, the
Italian fleet, with its bases at Venice and Pola at one end of the
Adriatic and Brindisi at the other, would be at a grave disadvantage as
against a naval power planted midway in the couloir in the impregnable
strongholds of Dalmatia. And if it is said that Yugo-Slavia is never
likely to have such a fleet as would be a serious menace, the Italians
reply that even a small fleet of cruisers, lurking in the recesses of
the Dalmatian coast, could be a scourge to Italian commerce and to the
unprotected coast of Italy only three hours distant; and for submarine
bases Dalmatia offers unrivalled advantages, as the World War has
shown. Hence, it is argued, Dalmatia is necessary to Italy’s security.
Without it, her long and vulnerable flank will remain undefended and
indefensible.
I have tried to set forth the Italian side of the Dalmatian question
at some length, because it is far less simple and obvious than the
Yugo-Slav standpoint. Nevertheless, I am inclined to think that the
latter case is the stronger. In view of the overwhelming Yugo-Slav
majority and the attitude which, from whatever cause, the Dalmatian
Slavs have come to adopt towards the Italians, the assignment of any
considerable part of the province to Italy would, I believe, be a grave
violation of the principles of the Allies, and a source of endless
embarrassments for Italy.
After a year of discussions the Italian government has come to the
point where, if it can obtain a satisfactory settlement as to Fiume,
it seems willing to drop its claims to Dalmatia, except for a couple of
points. For strategical purposes it still demands the island of Lissa,
which Mazzini called “the Malta of the Adriatic”--a claim that seems
not unreasonable; and it is also apparently asking that Zara should be
constituted a free city--which might be of questionable advantage for
Zara.
The main contest, then, is over Fiume.
Fiume is a rather small place in proportion to the commotion it has
excited in the world--a city of about 50,000 people. Who founded it
or when, we do not exactly know. It appears in the later Middle Ages
as a small self-governing commune of the Italian type, which in 1465
passed under the suzerainty of the Hapsburgs, and was by them treated
as a part of their hereditary Austrian lands until in 1776-79 Maria
Theresia, wishing to endow the Magyars with a port of their own,
transferred the city to the kingdom of Hungary. Amid all these changes,
the ‘Magnificent Community’ of Fiume kept up its self-government and a
very strong spirit of local independence. Indeed, down to a few years
ago, at least, the only patriotism that the Fiumani knew was an intense
love for their own little city. This spirit helped to preserve them
from ever falling under the rule of Venice or any other Italian state;
and, equally, it led them to fight strenuously at various times against
the incorporation of their city in the kingdom of Croatia, which the
Diet of Agram was always trying to put through. On the other hand, they
long accepted with enthusiasm the union with Hungary, which did not
seem to threaten their independence and which brought great economic
advantages to their city as the single port of the Magyar kingdom.
As far back as we can trace it, the population of Fiume seems always
to have been a mixed one--in part Croatian, in part Italian. It could
hardly be otherwise with a city whose hinterland was solidly Croatian,
but whose commercial relations were mainly with Italy. Hence it
appears that the lower classes of the population were always chiefly
Croats, constantly replenished from the country districts, while the
upper classes were partly of the one race, partly of the other. But
Italian was the language of society, of business, and of government,
and to it the citizens were much attached. During the struggles of the
period between 1848 and 1867, when annexation to Croatia was always
staring them in the face, the municipal authorities again and again
petitioned the Emperor not to permit the violation of “the sacred
rights of the Italian language,” “the tongue that has been spoken here
ever since Fiume existed.” “It would be superfluous,” they declare,
“to demonstrate what is universally known, that in Fiume the Italian
idiom has for centuries been the language of the school, of the forum,
of commerce, of every public and private meeting; in short, it is the
language of the community, and one of the chief sources to which it
owes its grade of culture and of commercial and industrial progress.”
Two races living together in harmony, untouched by any national
feeling, swayed only by love of their city-state, devotion to its
time-honored customs, including the use of the Italian language,
and zeal for the connection with Hungary, on which their economic
prosperity depended--these conditions began to break down after
1867. The great development of the port carried out by the Hungarian
government brought in a flood of new citizens--mainly Italians,
since the Magyars favored that element. It was at this time that the
Italians seem to have gained the numerical preponderance in the city.
Then, in the last few decades, the importation of Magyars set in, at
such a rate that the Italian ruling class in alarm concluded that the
government at Budapest was bent on Magyarizing the city and that their
connection with Hungary was not so comfortable after all. Hence there
arose a new Italo-Magyar conflict to complicate the struggle that had
already broken out between the Italians and the Yugo-Slavs. Now at last
the Italian-speaking population began to turn their eyes across the
Adriatic for liberators, and the Croat-speaking citizens began to sigh
for the Yugo-Slav fatherland.
In the Fiume problem, as it presents itself today, the respective
rôles of the Italians and the Yugo-Slavs are just the opposite of what
they are in Dalmatia. In the case of Fiume, the Italian argument rests
solely on the rights of nationality and the alleged wishes of the
population.
The Italians point out, in the first place, that at the last Hungarian
census (in 1910) the city contained about 24,000 Italians (not counting
6000 subjects of the kingdom of Italy), as against 16,000 Yugo-Slavs.
To this the Yugo-Slavs retort that the Italian majority has been built
up in the last few decades through the deliberate policy of the Magyar
government; and that if the suburb of Sušak, which is practically
part of the city, and the adjacent rural district were reckoned into
the account, the Fiume territory would contain as many Yugo-Slavs as
Italians.
Secondly, the Italians lay great weight upon the declarations of the
National Council of Fiume and upon a plebiscite held in the city soon
after the Armistice, as voicing the desire of the Fiumani to be united
to Italy. The Yugo-Slavs deny that either of these things can be taken
as a free and genuine expression of the wishes of the inhabitants.
At any rate, the Yugo-Slavs rest their argument mainly on other
grounds. They maintain that Fiume is as naturally soldered on to
their new state as Marseilles is to France; that this is the only
satisfactory port on the Adriatic that that state can obtain; that its
control by Italy would mean an intolerable subjection of Yugo-Slavia
to her neighbor; and that it is inconceivable that their one good port
should be taken away from them simply because within the walls of the
city itself, not counting in the suburbs on which it vitally depends,
Magyar machinations have built up an artificial plurality of barely
8000 Italians.
The Italians, of course, assert that farther south the Adriatic coast
is full of good harbors, which could amply provide for the rather
scanty trade of Yugo-Slavia. But it must be admitted that the mountain
wall, which lines the coast from Fiume southward to the Drin, opposes
very great obstacles to the opening up of a satisfactory outlet through
the Dalmatian ports. At present there is, south of Fiume, only a single
railway through to the coast--the wretched, winding rack-and-pinion
road which comes down from Bosnia to Metković and Ragusa. It would be
extremely difficult and expensive to develop and operate this line as a
first-class railroad, and to link it up with the various parts of the
Yugo-Slav state. Undoubtedly Fiume is the natural gate of Yugo-Slavia
to the West; it is the only port that is well equipped today and that
could easily adapt itself to the existing lines of communication. Even
granted that another outlet could be developed farther south, it would
require many years’ time and the expenditure of millions of dollars to
bring this about.
It was, I think, because of the undeniable weight of such
considerations, and in order that the new, poor, struggling state of
the Yugo-Slavs should not be terribly handicapped at the outset by
being denied that secure access to the sea for which Serbia had fought
so long, that the American delegation at Paris took the stand it did on
the Fiume question.
After going through many phases and fluctuations, this question
appears to be at least appreciably nearer to a solution. The margin
of difference between the two sides has now been reduced to a few
points. If Italy gives way altogether on Dalmatia, it would seem only
fair that the Yugo-Slavs should make some concessions as to Fiume,
providing their economic interests can be reasonably insured. And it
cannot be too strongly desired that if a compromise can be effected,
the Yugo-Slavs recognizing their great debt to Italy, and the Italians
recognizing the right to unity and independence of Yugo-Slavia, the two
nations should go back to that attitude of mutual respect, coöperation,
and fraternity which was the ideal of the noblest and most far-sighted
Italian statesman of the nineteenth century, the great Mazzini.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Probably the best history of Hungary available in any Western language
is that by E. Sayous: _Histoire générale des Hongrois_, Budapest, 1900.
Conditions in Hungary before the War are described from the Magyar
point of view in: Percy Alden (ed.), _Hungary of Today. By members of
the Hungarian Government_. (Apponyi, Kossuth, Wekerle, etc.) London,
1909. C. M. Knatchbull-Hugessen, _The Political Evolution of the
Hungarian Nation_. 2 vols. London, 1908.
The author who has done more than any other one man, perhaps, to
expose the tyranny of the old Magyar regime to the Western public, is
R. W. Seton-Watson, who at first wrote under the pseudonym of ‘Scotus
Viator.’ His chief books on this subject are: _Racial Problems in
Hungary_, London, 1908; _Corruption and Reform in Hungary: a study of
electoral practice_, _ibid._, 1911; _The Southern Slav Question and
the Habsburg Monarchy_, _ibid._, 1911.