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sovereignty. For the Hapsburg dynasty and for the bureaucracy which depends upon it, the Roman Catholic religion is a normal instrument not only of internal administration, but also of international politics. Thus, to incite the Croatian Clericals to hostility against the Croatian Liberals and against the Orthodox Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia, and the Slovenian and Croatian clergy against the Italians of the Adriatic, has been, during the whole of the past half-century, a regular function of the State, in which clergy and police, judiciary, school and army have joined hands. The present war against Serbia, Russia and Italy is, for a great part of the lower clergy and the Austro-Hungarian peasants, a religious Crusade against schismatics and infidels, rather than a war of German-Magyar Imperialism. At present, Austrian clericalism relies especially upon the rural population of Slovenia and Croatia. Taking away these countries from the Austrian administration and combining them with Serbia, an Orthodox country, would mean creating, to the east of Italy, in place of a compactly Catholic Austria, a State owning a mixed religion (Catholic in the north and Orthodox in the south), in which the influence of the Catholic clergy would be politically paralysed by that of the Orthodox clergy, until such time as the progress of civilisation has attenuated the power of both. The dismemberment of AustriaHungary to the advantage of the schismatic Rumania and Serbia, and of liberal Italy and Bohemia, would be the greatest possible disaster to political Catholicism that has happened since the formation of a United Italy and the separation of Church and State in France.

This condition of things, explaining as it does the Russophobia and the Germanophile attitude of the Vatican, should have shown clearly to Italians-at least to those Italians who feel the national necessity of combating everywhere the political power of the Vaticanthe way to be followed in the present crisis: namely, to draw close to the Czechs and Rumanians and to the Slavs of the south in the fight for the dismemberment of Austria, that is to say, the fight for the creation of an independent Bohemia, of a Great Rumania, and of a Great Serbia.

For what concerns the allies of Italy, the foundation

of a Serbo-Sloveno-Croatian unity is an absolute necessity, especially for England. As Lord Cromer, the great organiser of Modern Egypt, has explained, the Slav State of the south, like Belgium, is one of those KeyStates whose existence is vital for the maintenance of the equilibrium of power in Europe (Times,' Sept. 28, 1916). Only when German access to the Egean Sea is intercepted by a 'block' of some 12,000,000 Slavs, allied to Rumania and Italy, will England be sure of the eastern Mediterranean. England would defend the Isthmus of Suez, thenceforward, against Germany, by means of the new Slav State, on the line of the Drave. And in this respect Italy stands in the same position as England, because the line of the Drave blocks the road which Germany would take towards the Adriatic. The formation of a Serbo-Sloveno-Croatian State would, in and by itself, represent the failure of the whole Oriental policy of Austria and Germany. On the other hand, to keep Serbia, Montenegro and Croatia disunited is to leave open a way for the renewal of the eastern ambitions of Austria and Germany. Consequently, Austrian policy, from the Congress of Berlin onward, has been wholly directed towards the political, economic, and moral disintegration of the Southern Slavs, in order to remove every barrier towards the East that might stand in the way of German penetration.

The new State will touch Italy on the Adriatic; and now is the time to ask what would be the most convenient and reasonable frontier line to draw between these two powers; that is to say, the line which, while respecting the legitimate claims of both nations, would create friendly relations between the neighbouring inhabitants, and make possible that Italo-Slav alliance which the new Europe will so much need to defend the southern routes against every new attempt at German conquest.

The problem is by no means easy to settle. There does not exist in the eastern Adriatic region any clear national division between the parts inhabited by Italians and those inhabited by Slavs, for the two nations are almost everywhere mixed up together. The physical confines that might be satisfactory, from a military point of view, to both States, do not everywhere coincide with the line that, from the exclusively ethnical point of view,

would be the fairest; while the local hatred between the Italians and Slavs, perfidiously fomented in the last halfcentury by the Austrian Government, makes all reasonable discussion well-nigh impossible.

The Problem of the Julian Veneto.

In the Upper Adriatic, the lands in dispute between Italians and Serbians are: (a) the territory called by the Austrian Government the Küstelband and by the Italians the Julian Veneto (Venezia Giulia), that is to say, Gorizia, Trieste and Istria; (b) the territory of Fiume.

According to the Austrian census of 1910, the Gorizian region is inhabited by 154,000 Slovenes and 90,000 Italians. The district of Gradisca, to the south-west, is compactly Italian both in the towns and in the country; the north-eastern districts of Sesana, Tolmino, and Gorizia-except the town of Gorizia-are compactly Slav. But a political division which should coincide with this racial division would not be possible. The Slovenes live in the north, to the right of the Isonzo and on the nearer side of the old Austro-Italian frontier, in the province of Udine, while Italians dwell to the southward on the left bank of the Isonzo, and along the shore.

The political indivisibility of the racial zones is clearly revealed by a study of the topographical, economic and administrative centre of the whole region-Gorizia. This town, with a population of about thirty thousand, was inhabited in 1910, according to the Austrian census, by 50-57 per cent. of Italians, 36.84 per cent. of Slovenes, and 11.05 per cent. of Germans. Inasmuch as the Germans, being almost all Government functionaries, in active service or pensioned, would emigrate to more congenial surroundings if the Austrian régime disappeared, we can eliminate this element from our consideration. As to the proportions between Italians and Slovenes, they are probably rather more favourable to the Italians than the official statistics tend to make out. In Austria, in the regions contested by different races, the arithmetic of census-taking always favours the nationality which enjoys the favour of the presiding authorities.

*Census of 1900: 140,000 Slovenes, 81,000 Italians.

In this case, the nationality protected by the Austrian Government (which took the census-making out of the hands of the Italian communal administration) was that of the Slovenes. Hence we are safe in assuming the Italians to be something more than 50 per cent. of the population and the Slovenes something less than 36 per cent. If we blindly accept the Austrian statistics, we shall be forced to believe that the Slovenes in Gorizia had almost doubled their numbers between 1900 and 1910, although the decennial increase of the Slovene population has generally during that period been only from 4 to 5 per cent. Even allowing for the fact that in a town like Gorizia, attracting to itself the population of a vicinity preponderatingly Slav, the Slav population would naturally increase more rapidly than its rivals, it is evident that an increase of 85 per cent. in ten years is impossible. It would not be far from the truth to calculate that in the town of Gorizia two-thirds of the population are Italian, and one-third Slovenian.†

This being so, if the town of Gorizia, on the left bank of the Isonzo, were incorporated in Italy, as it would have a right to be by the composition of its ethnical majority, this would leave the Slovenian nuclei to the north, scattered in the mountainous zones of Carnia and the Carso, without any economic and administrative centre: if, on the other hand, it were incorporated in the new Slav State, the south-east plateau zone would lose its centre, and a large city with a majority of Italian inhabitants would be incorporated in a Slav State.

In Trieste and the adjacent territory, according to the 1910 census, when the governing authority was favourable to the Slovenes, the 229,900 inhabitants are divided into 119,000 Italians (that is to say, 62.31 per cent.), and 59,000 Slavs (29.81 per cent.). On the other hand, according to the census made by the Italian municipal authorities, 74.67 per cent. were Italians and 1944 Slavs. Even if we accept the official figures, we are bound in good faith to conclude from this census,

Chevrin, op. cit., p. 11.

+ The census of 1900 gave Gorizia 16,112 Italians and 4754 Slovenians. The census of 1900, made by the municipal authorities, gave 116,000 Italians and 24,000 Slovenes.

which gives for Trieste 38,000 foreigners, of whom 30,000 are certainly Italians, that in Trieste and its territory the Slav population is one-quarter at the utmost, while three-quarters are Italian. And indeed, since the immigration of the Slovenian population into the towns has always been favoured by the Austrian Government as a weapon in its fight against the Italians, we may consider this element as greater now than it would be in different political conditions. In any case, the Slav element is mainly disposed in the country or in the suburbs; the city proper, in its upper and middle classes, even in its populace, is overwhelmingly Italian.

*

In Istria the census of 1910 gives 168,000 SerboCroatians, 55,000 Slovenes, 147,000 Italians; but in Istria it is important to distinguish the eastern zone, on the other side of the Vena Mountains and Monte Maggiore (district of Volosca), whose 50,000 inhabitants are overwhelmingly Slav, from Western Istria, where Italians and Slavs are everywhere mingled in such a fashion as to make it simply impossible to divide the territory of the one from that of the other, the only difference being that the Italians tend to concentrate in the cities, while the Slovenes and Serbo-Croatians form the bulk of the rural populations.

The district of Volosca (47,700 Slavs, 955 Italians) has been always considered by Italian writers (e.g. Combi, Benussi) as a 'monstrous appendage' connected with Istria proper by the Austrian Government in order to augment the preponderance of Slavs over Italians in the province. Take this appendage away from Istria, and the Slav preponderance in Eastern Istria would be reduced to not more than 27,000 persons on a total of 327,000 inhabitants. Even this minimal majority is partly determined by the fact that the Austrian Government has always admitted by preference Croatians to work in the Arsenal at Pola, excluding the Italian element as much as possible, without, however, succeeding in preventing an Italian majority in Pola. Furthermore, one must note that the most important Istrian towns-Pola (37,000), Rovigno (11,000), Capodistria (9000), Pirano (8000), Muggia

* Census of 1900: 143,000 Serbo-Croatians, 44,000 Slovenes, 136,000 Italians.

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