points on which the compromise of 1915 is defective as towards herself. And since, on the basis of this compromise, Italy's renunciations would be rather more than her gains, it would not be out of place for her, in order to equalise the division, to ask from Serbia the neutralisation of all the coast of the mainland from Fiume to Antivari, and of the adjacent islands. The naval bases which Italy would own in the upper and middle Adriatic would remain disarmed so long as the pact of neutralisation was loyally observed by the Slav States; but these bases would guarantee the Italian coasts against the day when the relations between Italy and the JugoSlav State might become strained and the pact of neutralisation cease to be respected.

The methods for securing cultural liberty and legal equality to the Slav communities incorporated in Italy and the Italian populations remaining in the Slav State would have to be worked out in detail. Without pretending to exhaust the theme or to excogitate perfect proposals, I may perhaps venture to indicate the points deserving attention and the practical arrangements necessary for solving the problem.

The Italians who may remain scattered in Dalmatia, outside of the two autonomous towns (Fiume and Zara) should be guaranteed the use of the Italian language in the Law Courts of the region, in the administration of the mixed communes (to be particularised), and in the Diet. This would have the effect of forcing the Dalmatian magistrates of grades superior to that of Justice of the Peace, as well as all the functionaries of the mixed communes, and those of the provincial Diet, to speak Italian as well as Serbo-Croatian. In consequence, in the middle Serbo-Croatian schools of Dalmatia, the teaching of Italian as a complementary language would become obligatory; and, vice versa, the middle Italian schools of Dalmatia would have to teach Serbo-Croatian as an obligatory complementary tongue.

The schools of all grades would have to be administered in Dalmatia by two educational district-councils, one Italian and one Serbo-Croatian, which would sit together only when they had to deliberate upon matters of common interest. The two educational councils would be elected by the heads of families belonging to one or

the other of the ethnic groups according to their declaration of option at the time when the electoral school lists were framed. The schools would be maintained by means of a special school tax, leaving each contributing group to pay for the administration of its own establishments. The school grants which the Diet might accord would be distributed between the two administrations in proportion to the population served by each.

As it is not possible to pretend that Dalmatia ought to have a special College for the small number of Italian students, Dalmatian graduates of the middle Italian schools should have permission to pursue their University studies in Italy; and the Italian degrees granted to Dalmatian students should hold good for the exercise of the learned professions in Dalmatia.

All elections should take place on the system of proportional representation and universal suffrage. The same system should be followed by the electing bodies in nominating the special Commissions (electoral commissions, board of assessments, etc.). Italy would naturally concede analogous guarantees to the Slav population of the Julian Veneto.

An Italo-Slav Bank should assist those Italians and Slavs to emigrate and to sell their real estate, who may not be satisfied with the guarantees of the Adriatic Statute for the protection of national minorities. The Italian and Slav Governments might also appoint a permanent Arbitration Commission, whose function it would be to decide all cases of conflict which might arise in the interpretation and application of the Italo-Slav Statute regulating the administrative life of the mixed Adriatic territories both in Dalmatia and in the Julian Veneto. The Arbitration Commission might itself be presided over by an Arbitrator appointed by the Hague Tribunal.

These suggestions are, of course, based upon the assumption of the good faith of both Governments in arranging the whole of this juridical system, and on their firm intention of imposing upon all local elements a scrupulous adherence to the pacts. For the first years it will indeed be no easy task either for the Italian Government or the Government of the new Slav State. What glory, however, for the statesmen of the two nations if they succeed in creating and realising a new

type of legal guarantee which might serve, for the peace of the world, as the inspiration of all ethnically mixed countries in solving the difficult problem of national minorities!

English and French publicists could greatly help in creating and consolidating good relations between Italians and Slavs if they would treat the Adriatic problem with tact and a sentiment of equity. Unfortunately certain writers, both in England and in France, have not yet understood the situation, and are more or less violent partisans and upholders of the extremest claims of the Slav Nationalists. The propaganda of these somewhat indiscreet friends of Slavism has produced disastrous effects in Italy. Not only does it make more difficult the work of those who, resisting the claims of the Italian Nationalists, affirm the necessity of an Italo-Slav accord and compromise, but it plays only too well the game of the pro-German elements, which are always active in Italy, working to keep alive rancour and suspicion between Italians and Slavs in order to further Germany's political schemes, and only too delighted to present French and English public opinion as favourable to the excesses of Slav Nationalism and thus hostile to Italy. We do not ask foreign publicists to espouse the cause of Italian Nationalism against the Slavs, as in fact some have done in the intention of pleasing the Italians. England and France ought to be the common friends of both Italy and Serbia and mediate between them; public opinion in these two countries should not second the excesses of either Nationalist party, but should reinforce, both in Italy and among the Slavs, only the conciliatory and modern currents of opinion.

The foregoing study presents to the English public ideas which the writer, with his friends and associates, upheld in Italy down to the winter of 1914-1915, while Italy still maintained its neutrality; and which they and he have continued during the course of the present war to uphold and spread in their country, meeting, it is true, many obstacles, but attaining also useful results. The article was written some months ago, when no one foresaw the tragic military reverse of October-November,

and it is now published without any changes, as if no new facts had supervened in the military field, either to Italy's advantage or the opposite.

The dolorous crisis which threw the military organisation of Italy into sudden confusion has destroyed neither our faith in ultimate victory, nor our sense of the duty incumbent on us to continue the fight; nor has it modified in any way the essential elements of the Italo-Slav problem in the Adriatic. If we would secure a just national settlement between the Italians and the Southern Slavs, there is but one possible solution of the Adriatic problem. What was true before the AustroGermans overran the Venetian plain is equally true now.

Naturally all our arguments fall to the ground if the final victory is Germany's, and the Allies are beaten. But in that case so many other things would vanish into thin air-all, in short, that the world contains of what is just and what is good!—that, in the general disaster, no one would especially mourn the disappearance of the ideas of those who have always, in days of good and days of evil fortune, upheld the necessity of justice in the relations between Italy and the Slavs of the Adriatic. GAETANO SALVEMINI.