To be quite candid, I do not think that it is against Jugoslavia, or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say, against an unaided Jugoslavia, that Italy is taking precautions.  I have already said, I believe, that thinking Italians look with grave forebodings to the day when a great Slav confederation shall rise across the Adriatic, but that day, as they know full well, is still far distant.  Italy’s desperate insistence on retaining possession of the more important Dalmatian islands is dictated by a far more immediate danger than that.  She is convinced that her next war will be fought, not with the weak young state of Jugoslavia, but with Jugoslavia allied with France.  Every Italian with whom I discussed the question—­and I might add, without boasting, many highly placed and well-informed Italians have honored me with their confidence—­firmly believes that France is jealous of Italy’s rapidly increasing power in the Mediterranean, and that she is secretly intriguing with the Jugoslavs and the Greeks to prevent Italy obtaining commercial supremacy in the Balkans.  I do not say that this is my opinion, mind you, but I do say that it is the opinion held by most Italians.  I found that the resentment against the French for what the Italians term France’s “betrayal” of Italy at the Peace Conference was almost universal; everywhere in Italy I found a deep-seated distrust of France’s commercial ambitions and political designs.  Though the Italians admit that the Jugoslavs will not be able to build a navy for many years to come, they fear, or profess to fear, that the day is not immeasurably far distant when a French battle fleet, co-operating with the armies of Jugoslavia, will threaten Italy’s Adriatic seaboard.  And they are determined that, should such a day ever come, French ships shall not be afforded the protection, as were the Austrian, of the Dalmatian islands.  Italy, with her great modern battle fleet and her 5,000,000 fighting men, regards the threats of Jugoslavia with something akin to contempt, but France, turned imperialistic and arrogant by her victory over the Hun, Italy distrusts and fears, believing that, while protesting her friendship, she is secretly fomenting opposition to legitimate Italian aspirations in the Balkan peninsula and in the Middle Sea. (Again let me remind you that I am giving you not my own, but Italy’s point of view.) You will sneer at this, perhaps, as a phantasm of the imagination, but I assure you, with all the earnestness and emphasis at my command, that this distrust of one great Latin nation for another, whether it is justified or not, forms a deadly menace to the future peace of the world.