other side of the water. In case of war, Italy would have to immobilise many hundreds of thousands of soldiers whom she would urgently need for the defence of the Julian Veneto; and, in order to supply this army, immobolised in Dalmatia, she would have to use an enormous supplementary fleet in the Adriatic which she would only too sorely require for other more vital needs. Suppose, however, the Jugo-Slavs possessed the coast from Narenta to Antivari, then, it is true, the frontier which Italy would have to defend would be shorter, and would require few forces; but she would have to protect against the menace of the positions of Gravosa and of the Bocche di Cattaro not alone the Italian coast but the communications with her army in Dalmatia as well-that is to say, the Italian navy in the Adriatic would have to employ a much greater force than would be needful merely to protect the east coast of Italy.

That Italy must seek guarantees of security on the east coast of the middle Adriatic is the truth. But the middle Adriatic has three coast lines-an external line, made by the outer islands; an internal line, made by the coast of the mainland; and a middle line made by the islands between the outer islands and the mainland. If Italy should get one or more of the outer islands as bases necessary for the security of her eastern coast and for the movement of her navy from the lower to the upper Adriatic, she ought to ask for nothing more.

The Jugo-Slav State would not be in any way menaced by this occupation, for the Italian naval bases would serve merely to prevent the Slav navy from coming out of the archipelago to disturb the middle Adriatic, exactly as the possession of Pola and Lussino-Cherso would guarantee the position of Italy in the upper Adriatic; while the line of the internal islands, which would belong to the Slav State along with the coast of the mainland, would form an insurmountable obstacle to Italy if she claimed to pass from defence to attack. Only an admiral who had lost the use of his reason would dare to risk his navy in that labyrinth of channels.

Without doubt the islands that would thus fall to Italy's share-and just which they would be is a technical problem subordinate to the acceptance of the political principle-would be chiefly or almost wholly inhabited

by Slavs. But these do not number more than twenty or at most thirty thousand; and Italy could guarantee to them the most complete administrative autonomy and commercial liberty, reserving for herself only the high sovereignty and the indispensable right of fortification and military control. Nor is the principle of national right, in the modern conscience, so absolute that it can never, in small things, yield to other criteria of equity and opportunity. No man of good sense would take Gibraltar from England, because its vital importance to secure the communication of England with Egypt and India is so evident; nevertheless from the strict standpoint of nationality Gibraltar should be Spanish. What is required to decide the matter in these cases is that the military necessities should be obvious, and not such as to lead to the enslaving or the serious mutilation of whole nations, like the claims of the Germans in Belgium, Poland, France, Rumania and Serbia. Italy ceded to France in 1859 not only Savoy, which was a region incontestably French, but also the county of Nice, which at that time was quite as incontestably Italian and the fatherland of Garibaldi ; and to-day there cannot be found more than a few exaltés Italian Nationalists who dream of wanting to take back Nice and its county. This renunciation, which we made in the past and which no one of us to-day even discusses, inclines us to believe that some slight exception to the principle of nationality in our own favour might to-day be tolerated by the Slavs.

Territorial Compromise and National Guarantees.

The necessity of solving the problem of the Adriatic by means of a compromise was recognised by the governments of Italy, Russia, France and England, in the Convention of London of April 1915. According to what was then settled, if the rumours that have been circulated are exact, the Slavs would have Fiume, the coast of Croatia, the middle and southern coast of Dalmatia from Spalato south, and the islands of Brazza, Curzola and Lesina. Italy would get all the other islands, the Julian Veneto, and an enclave on the Dalmatian mainland which should include the districts of Zara and Sebenico as far as Traù. Serbia took no part in this

Convention; and at the moment of writing (Sept. 17, 1917) there has been no official or semi-official statement that she has accepted these conditions either in her own name or in the name of the other Southern Slavs, whose moral representative she claims to be.

This compromise has, before everything else, the fundamental merit of being a compromise, that is to say of being based on the conception that both Italian and Slav interests can be conciliated by a solution intermediate between the claims of each. Furthermore, given the wild exaggeration of Slav Nationalism-twin-brother to Italian Nationalism !—it has the merit of placing Serbia face-to-face with an agreement of the four Great European Powers of the anti-German coalition instead of with Italy alone. It will be anything but an evil that the Serbian Government should have to reconcile its claims with the necessity of not putting itself in opposition to all the greater Allied Governments. The Convention of London, however, like all human creations, is by no means so perfect that it cannot be improved; and it is to be hoped it will be improved when the time comes for Italy's treating directly with Serbia.

From the preceding pages, it should be clear which articles in the Convention of London require amendment. From the Italian point of view it has the defect of abandoning, for inclusion in Slav territory, without any guarantee of cultural liberty or legal equality, the Italian nucleus at Fiume and the Italians who are scattered in central and southern Dalmatia; further, it fails to protect the port of Trieste against the competition of the railway lines that serve Fiume, if they should avail themselves of an artificial system of tariffs. From the Slav point of view, on the other hand, the Convention of London is unsatisfactory in this respect, that, while it equitably assigns to the Serbo-Sloveno-Croatian State the ports of Fiume and Spalato, which are indispensable for the economic life of Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia, it takes away the districts of Zara and Sebenico, districts indisputably Slav (except the actual town of Zara), and cuts off also several islands which nevertheless would furnish Italy with no important advantages.

On these points Italy could very well make friendly concessions, asking in return for compensation on the

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