Note 16 — VI

Most people have assumed that this was done in order that Rieka should be left to Austria-Hungary, although they should have taken with some grains of salt this Italian generosity which presented the Habsburgs with a good harbour instead of one of those others in Croatia which the Italians of to-day are never weary of extolling. The real reasons why Rieka was omitted from the Treaty of London are, as the Secolo (January 12, 1919) remarks, perfectly well known. "In order," it says, "to claim Fiume it is necessary to make appeal to the right of the people to dispose freely of themselves. In this case the same principle must be admitted for the people of Dalmatia, who are Slav in a crushing majority. But this is precisely the negation of the Treaty of London."