1919 Парис буюу дэлхийг өөрчилсан 6 сар 1-р хэсэг

“offended Italian sentiment.” It was only in the vastly changed Italy and Europe of the 1970s that the Tyrol finally regained some of its old autonomy.662 Wilson was prepared to accept an injustice to the Germans of the Tyrol but he would not accept Italy’s claims where they ran up against those of the Yugoslavs. Outside the cities, the population along the eastern side of the Adriatic was almost entirely Slav: about 750,000 Croats, Slovenes, Serbs and Bosnians. Nevertheless, the Italians wanted to move the old border with Austria-Hungary between fifty and one hundred kilometers east into what is today Slovenia and Croatia, and south down the Dalmatian coast toward Split (Italian: Spalato). The result would take in the whole of the Istrian peninsula, including the naval base at Pula and AustriaHungary’s two major ports of Trieste and Fiume, with their railway links to central Europe; several key islands at the northeast end of the Adriatic; and chunks of Dalmatia around the cities of Zadar (Italian: Zara) and Šibenik (Italian: Sebenico). Italy also wanted Albania’s port of Vlorë in the south. With these gains, Italy would dominate the Adriatic, and the new state of Yugoslavia would be left with a short coast, no decent port and only one railway line between the sea and the interior. This was precisely what Italy intended.

The Italians did not, of course, use that argument in Paris.

They talked of strategic needs and they called on history. “The whole of Dalmatia was united to Italy in the centuries of Rome and Venice, for its own good fortune and the world’s peace.” They pointed to the Venetian lions, the Catholic churches, the Roman columns dotting the piazzas along the coast, the persistence of the Italian language despite Austrian oppression. They talked of the fearful injustice if Italians were made subject to “semi-barbaric” Slavs.663 Disturbing stories, however, were reaching Paris: tales of deportations of Slav nationalists, of arbitrary arrests, of Slav newspapers closed down and Yugoslav railway lines cut. A British officer sent a furious note to Balfour: “Dalmatia was being starved and the Italians only supplied food to those who signed a declaration of loyalty to Italy.” Hoover, in charge of the Allied relief