The reconstruction of South-Eastern Europe

SOUTH-EASTERN EUROPE

Ttalians and the Serbo-Croats, are: Dalmatia, together with the Dalmatian Archipelago, Istria, Trieste, and Goritzia, with the naval port of Pola. As regards the nationality of the population of these provinces the following numbers (see the official Austro-Hungarian statistics of 1910) will give the best illustration—

Superficial Area, kms.

Italians Slavs Germans Total Dalmatia . . . 12,840 18,028 612,669 3,081 633,778 Istria . . . - 4,956 145,517 224,400 12,735 382,652 Trieste. . + - 95 118,959 59,974 11,870 190,803 Goritzia . . . 2,918 90,119 155,039 4,500 299,658 Total. . . 20,809 372,623 1,052,082 32,186 1,506,891

Following up the fallacious and the most dangerous theory of strong strategic frontiers, a very considerable and influential part of Italian public opinion has formulated a vast programme for incorporation in the kingdom of Italy of nearly all the Adriatic provinces lying on the opposite shore of the Adriatic. Italian statesmen have for a long time past expressed the view that Italy having a paramount interest in the Adriatic, that sea ought to become a closed Italian lake. The present European crisis, coupled with permanent anarchy in Albania, offered a good opportunity for Italy to realise that view, and already, in October of 1914, Italy occupied Valona, which port, with Brindisi on the Italian shore, completely commands the entrance into the Adriatic. Thus the idea has been propounded that the natural and strongly

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