Slovenes," said he courageously in his first speech as Prime
Minister, "ought to look upon Italy as an enemy country. We have to
settle important and difficult questions with Italy.... We must reduce
all causes of friction to a minimum."

The Treaty of Rapallo gives Zadar to Italy, because in that little town
there is an Italian majority; but central and eastern Istria, with their
overwhelming Slav majority, are not given to the Yugoslavs--a fact which
Professor Salvemini deplored in the Roman Chamber. By the Treaty of
Rapallo Rieka is given independence,[61] but with Italy in possession of
Istria and the isle of Cres, she can at any moment choke the
unprotected port, having very much the same grip of that place as
Holland has for so long had of Antwerp; and the sole concession on
Italy's part seems to be that in the south she gives up the large Slav
islands of Hvar, Kor[vc]ula and Vis, and only appropriates the small one
of Lastovo.... "It has cost Italy a pang," says Mr. George Trevelyan,
"to consent, after victory, to leave the devoted and enthusiastic
Italians of the Dalmatian coast towns (other than Zara) in foreign
territory." The truth is that henceforward Yugoslavia will contain some
5000 Italians (many of whom are Italianized Slavs), as against not less
than 600,000 Slavs in Italy. And while the former are but tiny groups in
towns which even under Venetian rule were predominantly Slav and are
surrounded on all sides by purely Slav populations, the latter live for
the most part in compact masses and include roughly one-third of the
whole Slovene race, whose national sense is not only very acute, but who
are also much less illiterate than their Italian neighbours. One cannot
be astonished if the Slovenes think of this more than of Giotto,
Leonardo, Galileo and Dante. But one may be a little surprised that
such a man as Mr. Edmund Gardner should allow his reverence for the
imperishable glories of Italy to becloud his view of the modern world.
It is certainly a fact that the Slovenes are to-day less illiterate than
the Italians, but because Dr. Seton-Watson alludes to this, Mr. Gardner
(in the _Manchester Guardian_, of February 13, 1921) deplores the
"Balkanic mentality that seems to afflict some Englishmen when dealing
with these problems."

ITS PROBABLE FRUITS

Now it is obvious that the Treaty of Rapallo has placed between the
Yugoslavs and the Italians all too many causes of friction. Zadar, like
other su