224    THE PARIS PEACE CONFERENCE, 1919, VOLUME V


to maintain Peace, as Germany, Austria, Bulgaria and Turkey had
organised themselves to make war; and that little could be expected,
even from the best contrived organisation, unless the boundaries of
the States to be created by the Conference were framed, on the whole,
in accordance with the wishes and lasting interests of the populations
concerned.
This task of re-drawing European frontiers has fallen upon the
Great Powers; and admittedly its difficulty is immense. Not always,
nor indeed often, do race, religion, language, history, economic inter-
ests, geographical contiguity and convenience, the influence of na-
tional prejudice, and the needs of national defence, conspire to indi-
cate without doubt or ambiguity the best frontier for any State.:-be
it new or old. And unless they do, some element in a perfect settle-
ment must be neglected, compromise becomes inevitable, and there
may often be honest doubts as to the form the compromise should take.
Now as regards most of the new frontier between Italy and what
was once the Austrian Empire, we have nothing to say. We are
bound by the Pact of London, and any demand for a change in that
Pact which is adverse to Italy must come from Italy herself. But
this same Pact gives Fiume to Croatia, and we would very earnestly
and respectfully ask whether any valid reason exists for adding, in
the teeth of the Treaty, this little city on the Croatian coast to the
Kingdom of Italy? It is said indeed, and with truth, that its Italian
population desire the change. But the population which clusters
round the port is not predominantly Italian. It is true that the urban
area wherein they dwell is not called Fiume; for it is divided by a
narrow canal, as Paris is divided by the Seine, or London by the
tidal estuary of the Thames, and locally the name, Fiume, is applied
in strictness only to the streets on one side of it. But surely we are
concerned with things, not names; and however you name it, the
town which serves the port, and lives by it, is physically one town,
not two: and taken as a whole is Slav, not Italian.
But if the argument drawn from the wishes of the present popula-
tion does not really point to an Italian solution, what remains? Not
the argument from history; for up to quite recent times the in-
habitants of Fiume, in its narrowest meaning, were predominantly
Slav. Not the arguments from contiguity; for the country popula-
tion, up to the very gates of the city, are not merely predominantly
Slav, but Slav without perceptible admixture. Not the economic
argument; for the territories which obtain through Fiume their
easiest access to the sea, whatever else they be, at least are not Italian.
Most of them are Slav, and if it be said that Fiume is also necessary
to Hungarian and Transylvanian commerce, this is a valid argument
for making it a free port, but surely not for putting it under Italian
sovereignty.