“It is not a question of finding a good harbor for the Jugoslavs,” he said.  “This coast is rich in splendid harbors.  It is a question, rather, of finding a practicable route for a standard-gauge railway over or through the mile-high range of the Dinaric Alps, which parallel the entire coast, shutting the coast towns off from the hinterland.  Until such a railway is built, the peoples of the interior have no means of getting their products down to the coast save through Fiume.  Italy already has the great port of Trieste.  Were she also to be awarded Fiume she would have a strangle-hold on the trade of Jugoslavia which would probably mean that country’s commercial ruin.”

I have now given you, as fairly as I know how, the principal arguments of the rival claimants.  The Italians of Fiume, as I have already shown, outnumber the Slavs almost three to one, and it is they who are demanding so violently that the city should be annexed to Italy on the ground of self-determination.  But I do not believe that, because there is an undoubted Italian majority in Fiume, the city should be awarded to Italy.  If Italy were asking only what was beyond all shadow of question Italian, I should sympathize with her unreservedly.  But to place 10,000 Slavs under Italian rule would be as unjust and as provocative of future trouble as to place 30,000 Italians under the rule of Belgrade.  Nor is the cession of the city itself the end of Italy’s claims, for, in order to place it beyond the range of the enemy’s guns (by the “enemy” she means her late allies, the Serbs), in order to maintain control of the railways entering the city, and in order to bring the city actually within her territorial borders, she desires to extend her rule over other thousands of people who are not Italian, who do not speak the Italian tongue, and who do not wish Italian rule.  Italy has no stancher friend than I, but neither my profound admiration for what she achieved during the war nor my deep sympathy for the staggering losses she suffered can blind me to the unwisdom, let us call it, of certain of her demands.  I am convinced that, when the passions aroused by the controversy have had time to cool, the Italians will themselves question the wisdom of accumulating for themselves future troubles by creating new lost provinces and a new Irredenta by annexing against their will thousands of people of an alien race.  Viewing the question from the standpoints of abstract justice, of sound politics, and of common sense, I do not believe that Fiume should be given either to the Italians or to the Jugoslavs, but that the interests of both, as well as the prosperity of the Fumani themselves, should be safeguarded by making it a free city under international control.