three heads: sentimental, commercial, and political. Her sentimental
claims are based on the ground that the city's population, character,
and history are overwhelmingly Italian. I have already stated that the
Italians constitute about three-fourths of the total population of
Fiume, the latest figures, as quoted in the United States Senate, giving
29,569 inhabitants to the Italians and 14,798 to the Slavs. There is no
denying that the city has a distinctively Italian atmosphere, for its
architecture is Italian, that Venetian trademark, the Lion of St. Mark,
being in evidence on several of the older buildings; the mode of outdoor
life is such as one meets in Italy; most of its stores and banks are
owned by Italians, and Italian is the prevailing tongue. The claim that
the city's history is Italian is, however, hardly borne out by history
itself, for in the sixteen centuries which have elapsed since the fall
of the Roman Empire, Fiume has been under Italian rule--that of the
republic of Venice--for just four days.

The commercial reason underlying Italy's insistence on obtaining control
of Fiume is due to the fact that Italians are convinced that should
Fiume pass into either neutral or Jugoslav hands, it would mean the
commercial ruin of Trieste, where enormous sums of Italian money have
been invested. They assert, and with sound reasoning, that the Slavs of
the hinterland, and probably the Germans and Magyars as well, would ship
through Fiume, were it under Slav or international control, instead of
through Trieste, which is Italian. One does not need to be an economist
to realize that if Fiume could secure the trade of Jugoslavia and the
other states carved from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the commercial
supremacy of Trieste, which depends upon this same hinterland, would
quickly disappear. On the other hand, those Italians whose vision has
not been distorted by their passions clearly foresee that, should the
final disposition of Fiume prove unacceptable to the Jugoslavs, they