The reconstruction of South-Eastern Europe

THE RECONSTRUCTION OF

They are to stimulate their productive energies on the manifold field of human activity, artistic, economic, commercial, and social. It must sound like an attempt upon the sacred rights of all other nations if any single nation among them should try to appropriate a sea and to create of it a monopoly for her selfish interests.

The argument for Italian incorporation of those provinces based upon ethnography must fall at once when we look at the numbers of the racial statistics. In Dalmatia, against a pure SerboCroatian population numbering 630,000, the Italians number only 18,000, which represents less than 3 per cent. of the total population. Therefore to base the Italian rights of occupation upon ethnography would be sheer absurdity.

In Istria, Trieste, and Goritzia the Italian claims based upon ethnography are better founded, although they are not justified. In Istria the geographical line of ethnographical division can be easily drawn. The Italians are thickly grouped on the western coast, and the Croat population is found in the central and eastern parts of the peninsula. In Istria the Slavs (220,000) represent 60 per cent. and Italians (145,500) 40 per cent. of the total population. In Trieste the Italians (118,959), to the contrary, represent 66 per cent., and the Slavs (59,974) 34 per cent. of the total population. In Goritzia, again, as in Istria, the line of ethnographic division can be easily drawn. The Italians in

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