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Updated: June 30, 2025
But the underlying reason for the deep-seated distrust of France is to be found, I think, in France's attempt to maintain the balance of power in Southeastern Europe by building up a strong Jugoslavia. Now the Rumanians, it must be remembered, hate the Jugoslavs even more bitterly than they hate the Hungarians and they are far more afraid of them.
The situation is best summed up by the commander of the American war-ship on which I dined at Spalato. "It is not a question of finding a good harbor for the Jugoslavs," he said. "This coast is rich in splendid harbors.
Just as Rome, twenty-two centuries ago, could not permit the neighboring islands of Sicily to fall into the hands of Carthage, so Italy cannot permit these coastwise islands, which form her only protection against attacks from the east, to pass under the control of the Jugoslavs.
But Italian opinion had been steadily aroused by a chauvinist press campaign to demand not merely the application of the Treaty of London but the annexation of Fiume, which the treaty assigned to the Jugoslavs. To this demand both the British and French were opposed, although they permitted Wilson to assume the burden of denying Italian claims to Fiume.
The American delegates, having seen more Italians in New York than there are in Fiume, without regarding New York as Italian, fixed their eyes on Fiume as a central European port of entry. They saw vividly the Jugoslavs in the suburbs and the non-Italian hinterland. Some of the Italians in Paris were therefore in need of a convincing explanation of the American perversity.
No account of the extraordinary drama farce would be a better name were its possibilities not so tragic which is being staged at Fiume would be complete without some mention of the romantic figure who is playing the part of hero or villain, according to whether your sympathies are with the Italians or the Jugoslavs.
"But," I said to the Italians with whom I discussed the matter, "why do you need any such protection now that the world is to have a League of Nations? Isn't that a sufficient guarantee that the Jugoslavs will never attack you?" "The League of Nations is in theory a splendid thing," was their answer. "We subscribe to it in principle most heartily.
Even assuming that justice demanded as strong a stand for the Chinese as Wilson had taken for the Jugoslavs, the practical importance of the Shantung question in Europe was of much less significance. The eyes of every small nation of Europe were upon Fiume, which was regarded as the touchstone of Allied professions of justice.
For, looking across the Adriatic, she sees the monstrous vision of a united and aggressive Slavdom, untold millions strong, of which the Jugoslavs are but the skirmish-line, ready to dispute not merely Italy's schemes for the commercial mastery of the Balkans but her overlordship of that sea which she regards as an Italian lake. Jugoslavia's claims to Fiume are more briefly stated.
The Jugoslavs, recognizing that the possession of Klagenfurt would give them virtual control of the principal railway entering Austria from the south, and that such control would probably enable them to divert much of Austria's traffic from the Italian ports of Venice and Trieste to their own port of Fiume, which they confidently expected would be awarded them by the Peace Conference, lost no time in occupying the town with a considerable force of troops.
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