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Updated: May 31, 2025
The construction which he now put upon the mode of voting to be applied to Fiume, including this city in a large district inhabited by a majority of Jugoslavs imparted to the project as the Italians had understood it a wholly new aspect. They accordingly declared it inacceptable.
Their initial omission to send a formidable military force to Poland was an irreparable blunder, for it left them without an executive in eastern Europe, where they now can help none of their protégées against their respective enemies. Poles, Rumanians, Jugoslavs are all left to themselves. From the Allies they may expect inspiriting telegrams, but little else.
But it was not their diplomatists who took the initiative. Eager for their respective countries' share of the spoils of war, certain business men on both sides met, deliberated, and worked out an equitable accord which gave four-fifths of the tonnage to Italy and the remainder to the Jugoslavs, who otherwise would not have obtained a single ship.
As a matter of fact, the entire coast of Dalmatia would not make up to the Jugoslavs for the loss of Fiume.
On these grounds, judgment should be entered for the Jugoslavs. The Italian Premier's answer was equally clear, but he could not unburden his mind of it all. His government had, it was true, adhered to the Fourteen Points without reservation.
It would be unfair to the Jugoslavs who inhabit the whole country to cut them off from their own seaboard. Nor would such a measure be helpful to Italy herself, whose interest it was to form a homogeneous whole, consolidate her dominions, and prepare for the coming economic struggle for national well-being. The principle of nationality must, therefore, be allowed full play.
Lansing completed and explained his statement as follows: "Since the issuance by this government on May 29 of a statement regarding the nationalist aspirations for freedom of the Czecho-Slovaks and Jugoslavs, German and Austrian officials have sought to misinterpret and distort its manifest interpretation.
The Czechoslovaks did not relish the project, but after some delay and fencing around agreed to furnish a contingent, whereas the Jugoslavs met the demand with a plain negative, which was afterward changed to acquiescence when the Council promised to keep the Italians from attacking them. As things turned out, none but the Rumanians actually fought the Hungarian Reds.
The Emperor Carl seemed sincerely anxious to make sacrifices for peace and was urged by liberal counselors, such as Förster and Lammasch, in whom the Allies had confidence, to meet many of the demands of his discontented Slav subjects by granting autonomy to the Czechs, Poles, and Jugoslavs.
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 Fumani themselves, should be safeguarded by making it a free city under international control.
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