naided 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, whe