partly for the practical reason that the complicated tracée of the Swiss-Italian frontier in this sector (especially where it traversed Lakes Maggiore and Lugano) made the prevention of smuggling a very difficult task for the Italian customs service. It was therefore not inconceivable that the local Fascisti might seize upon frontier incidents, however trivial, as a pretext for carrying on the tradition started during the Risorgimento by Garibaldi and recently revived at Fiume by Signor d'Annunzio.

On the 14th April the Swiss Government communicated to the Italian Minister at Berne the results of a second report from the committee of inquiry into the Ponte Tresa incident,1 together with Signor Tognetti's deposition, and proposed that severe punishments should be inflicted on both sides.2 On the 15th the incident was closed as the result of a conversation between Signor Mussolini and the Swiss Minister in Rome. Both parties undertook to communicate to one another the full dossier 3 of their respective inquiries; the Italian Government undertook to impress upon Fascisti organizations the importance of avoiding frontier incidents; and the Swiss Government set on foot yet a third inquiry in the hope of discovering the individual soldiers who had shouted at Ponte Tresa. Since this not unnaturally proved impossible, they satisfied the feelings of the Italian nation by placing the company-commander under temporary arrest.5

4

Fortunately, the Governments afterwards gave proof of greater statesmanship than their respective nationals. During a visit of Swiss journalists to Milan in May, Signor Mussolini took the opportunity of declaring that a Ticino Question did not exist as far as the Italian Government was concerned'; and on the 20th September there was signed the Italo-Swiss arbitration treaty of which some account has been given in a previous section. This treaty promised to be a valuable safeguard to both countries in the not improbable event of similar incidents occurring again.

7

1 The Corriere della Sera, 15th April; Le Temps, 16th April, 1924.

2 The Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, 16th April, 1924.

3 Le Temps, 19th April, 1924.

4 The Corriere della Sera, 19th April, 1924.

5 Ibid., 10th May; Le Temps, 11th May, 1924.

• The Corriere della Sera, 22nd May, 1924.

7 I. A (vi).

(iii) The Settlement of the Fiume Question (1921–4).1

In the History of the Peace Conference of Paris a full account has been given of the Adriatic controversy between Italy and Jugoslavia down to the exchange of ratifications of the Rapallo Treaty on the 2nd February, 1921.2

The Rapallo Treaty settled the frontier between Italy and Jugoslavia on the mainland from the Alps to the Adriatic; established Italian sovereignty over the Dalmatian town of Zara as an enclave; provided for the creation of an Independent State of Fiume; and arranged for the protection of Italians in Dalmatia outside the Zara enclave, where the sovereignty passed to Jugoslavia. In all these matters, except the question of Fiume, the treaty was definitive, and only needed to be completed in detail by technical agreements over which serious political difficulties were not likely to arise. In regard to Fiume, again, the tension between Italy and Jugoslavia was greatly relieved by the firm line which the Italian Government took with Signor d'Annunzio, after the treaty had been ratified in the Italian Chamber on the 27th November, 1920, by 253 votes to 14. D'Annunzio's declaration of war against Italy on the 1st December was answered by military operations, as a result of which d'Annunzio's Legionaries evacuated Fiume and were replaced by Italian regular troops on the 18th January, 1921. Yet while the Fiume question was thus isolated and reduced to less provocative terms, it remained unsolved. The frontiers of the Independent State had still to be established, its Government had to be brought into existence, and its economic relations with the hinterland had to be restored.3

1 A more or less consecutive account of events during this period will be found in G. Benedetti: La Pace di Fiume, dalla Conferenza di Parigi al Trattato di Roma (Bologna, 1924, Zanichelli), Part I, Ch. IV-VI inclusive. In this work it is not always easy to disengage the facts from the rhetorical and partisan commentary in which they are smothered.

2 See H. P. C., Vol. IV, Ch. V, Part (i) for the narrative; and Vol. V, Appendix III (iii) for documents, including the text of the Rapallo Treaty, but not the text of Count Sforza's letter to M. Trumbić (dated the 12th November, 1920, the day on which the Rapallo Treaty was signed) regarding the Delta and Port Baroš.

3 The position at Fiume was much more difficult than that at Danzig, where a superficially similar arrangement was made under the Versailles Treaty and proved to be not unworkable. In the constitution of the Free City of Danzig there was a League of Nations High Commissioner to mediate between the Polish and German elements in the population and also between Poland and Germany; there was a population of 324,000 (H. P. C., Vol. II, p. 215) instead of less than 40,000; and, above all, there had been no Putsch on either side. As compared with the Free City of Danzig, it is evident that the Independent State of Fiume started under great handicaps.

The Rapallo Treaty (Art. 4) laid down that the State of Fiume should consist of the area which had constituted the corpus separatum under the previous Hungarian régime,1 together with a strip of territory in what had previously been the Austrian Crown Land of Istria, running north-westwards along the Adriatic coast up to the new Italo-Jugoslav frontier-this strip being added in order to place Fiume in direct territorial contact with Italy. Since the boundaries of this strip were defined in the treaty, while those of

the corpus separatum were well established, the new frontiers of Fiume seemed precise; but on the 12th November, 1920, the date on which the treaty was signed, the Italian Foreign Minister, Count Sforza, wrote a letter to the Jugoslav Foreign Minister, M. Trumbić, in which he agreed that certain localities within the former corpus separatum were to pass under Jugoslav sovereignty (notwithstanding the terms of the treaty). These localities were Port Baroš, an

1 Before the break-up of Hungary, Croatia had been a kingdom enjoying home-rule under the Hungarian Crown, but Fiume had been a corpus separatum or enclave in Croatian territory under the direct administration of Budapest.

artificial basin constructed at the old mouth of the River Recina (the stream flowing into the Adriatic immediately to the south-east of the town of Fiume, to which it had given its name), and the Delta between the old mouth (now turned into a canal called the Fiumara) and the new cut into which the Recina had been diverted and which debouched on the sea far enough to the south-east not to silt up the port. There were good economic and topographical reasons why Port Baroš (and the Delta, which necessarily went with it) should be incorporated in Jugoslavia, whatever the status of the rest of the corpus separatum might be. Port Baroš had been constructed specifically in order to serve the export trade in timber from Croatia, which was now part of Jugoslavia; and further, if it had not been assigned to Jugoslavia, the Jugoslav town of Šušak, on the heights overlooking the south-eastern bank of the Recina, just outside the corpus separatum, would have had no effective access to the sea through Jugoslav territory. Thus the concession made in Count Sforza's letter was of great importance to Jugoslavia and doubtless weighed strongly with the Jugoslav Government when it was making up its mind to sign the Rapallo Treaty. Clearly the letter was as fully binding upon Italy as the treaty itself; and this was expressly acknowledged by Signor Mussolini in a statement made to the members of his Cabinet on the 21st February, 1924,1 in which he reviewed the course of events after a settlement had at last been achieved. Unlike the treaty, however, the letter was kept secret to begin with; and although its immediate publication might conceivably have made it impossible for the Italian Government to secure the necessary public support for ratifying the treaty and ejecting Signor d'Annunzio, it is certain that the piecemeal and inaccurate disclosure of its contents, which inevitably followed, had much to do with the failure to settle the Fiume Question during the next three years. This mystification over one sector of the new frontiers of Fiume was the most immediately dangerous of the outstanding points at issue; but the most serious point in the long run was the economic problem of restoring communications between the port and the hinterland; since this hinterland, upon which the economic existence of Fiume depended, now lay entirely in foreign territory, whereas formerly Fiume, Croatia, and Hungary had been united in a single customs and railway area under the Hungarian Crown. Meanwhile, the most urgent practical task was to build up 1 Italian text in Benedetti, op. cit., pp. 135-8; English résumé in The Times, 22nd February, 1924.

an effective local administration in a community which had no strong corporate tradition.1

Upon the fall of Signor d'Annunzio the municipal authorities of Fiume were forced into the foreground. On the 29th December the dictator resigned his powers into the hands of the Mayor and People, and on the 31st December the Pact of Abbazia 2-which placed it on record that the State of Fiume submits, under force majeure, to the application of the Treaty of Rapallo', and which provided for the evacuation of the State by the Legionaries and the taking over of military and naval control by the Italian authorities-was

6

3

Fiume: The Port and Town.

signed by an Italian General of the one part and by representatives of the Municipal Council of the other. On the same day the Municipal Council ratified the Pact with a reservation regarding Port Baroš and the Delta, assumed full sovereign powers, and appointed a Provisional Government with a mandate to hold elections for a constituent assembly. Now that the d'Annunzio Putsch was over and

1 In the former corpus separatum the Hungarian Governor had counted for more than the Fiuman Municipality.

2 Italian text in Benedetti, op. cit., pp. 281-2.

3 The Municipal Council ratified the undertaking made by its representatives to submit to the application of the Treaty of Rapallo as that treaty appears in the official communiqués, with a reminder to Italy that the corpus separatum of Fiume has always included the Delta and the Nazario Sauro Basin (now Baroš) de jure and that at the present moment it likewise includes them de facto".

4 Text of the order of the day of the 31st December, 1920, in Benedetti, op. cit., p. 87.