lway over or
through the mile-high range of the Dinaric Alps, which parallel the
entire coast, shutting the coast towns off from the hinterland. Until
such a railway is built, the peoples of the interior have no means of
getting their products down to the coast save through Fiume. Italy
already has the great port of Trieste. Were she also to be awarded Fiume
she would have a strangle-hold on the trade of Jugoslavia which would
probably mean that country's commercial ruin."

I have now given you, as fairly as I know how, the principal arguments
of the rival claimants. The Italians of Fiume, as I have already shown,
outnumber the Slavs almost three to one, and it is they who are
demanding so violently that the city should be annexed to Italy on the
ground of self-determination. But I do not believe that, because there
is an undoubted Italian majority in Fiume, the city should be awarded to
Italy. If Italy were asking only what was beyond all shadow of question
Italian, I should sympathize with her unreservedly. But to place 10,000
Slavs under Italian rule would be as unjust and as provocative of future
trouble as to place 30,000 Italians under the rule of Belgrade. Nor is
the cession of the city itself the end of Italy's claims, for, in order
to place it beyond the range of the enemy's guns (by the "enemy" she
means her late allies, the Serbs), in order to maintain control of the
railways entering the city, and in order to bring the city actually
within her territorial borders, she desires to extend her rule over
other thousands of people who are not Italian, who do not speak the
Italian tongue, and who do not wish Italian rule. Italy has no stancher
friend than I, but neither my profound admiration for what she achieved
during the war nor my deep sympathy for the staggering losses she
suffered can blind me to the unwisdom, let us call it, of certain of her
demands. I am convinced that, when the passions aroused by the
controversy have had time to cool, the Italians will themselves question
the wisdom of accumulating for themselves future troubles by creating
new lost provinces and a new Irredenta by annexing against their will
thousands of people of an alien race. Viewing the question from the
standpoints of abstract justice, of sound politics, and of common sense,
I do not believe that Fiume should be given either to the Italians or to
the Jugoslavs, but that the interests of both, as well as the prosperity
of the Fuman