give up certain of the Greek Islands, I understand, and the cities of Žara and Sebeonico would be free cities. I think that is what the Tardeau compromise provided, and that, as you know, after having been agreed upon was again bluepenciled by the President, which offended the Italians again, so that the matter remained unsettled. Now it seems they have arrived at another compromise, which is subject to approval here in Washington.

The CHAIRMAN. Anything more?

Mr. LAGUARDIA. No. I want to give the committee the rest of the time.

Senator HARDING. Just what do you mean by "approval here in Washington?"

Mr. LAGUARDIA. From press dispatches, I gather, and from the telegram which I read into the record, it seems that France, Italy, and England have agreed on this solution and it has been submitted to President Wilson for approval.

Senator HARDING. Not to our American commissioners over there? Mr. LAGUARDIA. No. That is what I gather from the press and from this telegram.

Mr. COTILLO. I wish to introduce Prof. Alexander Oldrini, an American citizen, representing the Italo-Irredentist Society.

The CHAIRMAN. What is your name?

Mr. COTILLO. S. A. Cotillo, State Senator from New York, representing the Eighteenth district.

The CHAIRMAN. In the Senate?

Mr. COTILLO. In the Senate.

STATEMENT OF PROF. ALEXANDER OLDRINI, PRESIDENT OF THE ITALIAN IRREDENTIST ASSOCIATIONS OF AMERICA.

Mr. OLDRINI. Mr. Chairman, for myself, as an American citizen of Italian descent, my colleagues also American citizens, and the Federazione of the Italian Irredentists Association of the United States, I beg to thank you for the honor and the privilege afforded us to state at this hearing before your committee the main reasons, facts, and rights for which Fiume and Dalmatia, a part of Italy's national aspirations, should be defended by the United States Senate of America with regard to that part of the treaty with Austria which governs the subject. That is, why should Fiume and Dalmatia become a part of the Italian body politic?

The name of the city of Fiume, a little speck on the map of Europe is an advance sentinel of democratic civilization in contact with the influences of central, eastern, and southern Europe; it assumes a transcendent importance with regard to Italians and to the democratic Latin and Anglo-Saxon nations in the conflict now going on, and extending, of the Bolshevik leveling program of Slav-Russia and associates.

For a basical understanding of the Fiume self-determination in its relation with the Italian aspirations in the Adriatic it is paramount to call first your attention to the physical lines of the defense of democratic civilization in Europe itself.

The line of defense of Roman civilization has been for 500 years along the Rhine and the Danube. When that immense dam broke,

Latin civilization foundered with the jus gentium proclaimed by Rome, almost to its disappearance for centuries, until a new scientific and Italian civilizing power spread over Europe and the world, in the splendors of the renaissance of arts and the discoveries of science. Never more so humanly perfect collective expressions of it, as in the name of Gallileus, Leonald, Raphael, Michael Angelo, and Columbus, the giants of "Renaissance."

Now, passing from the fifteenth century to the twentieth, during which this second Latin civilization spread all over Europe, reaching America, we have arrived at the necessity of a new form of civilization, international in character, over and above conflicting social theories. Honorable Senators, it is still in Europe that this new form of civilization must be defended by Latin and Anglo-Saxon democracy against militarism and Bolshevism theories and might. And this time no more behind the Rhine and the Danube, but from the Northern Sea to the Rhine, and from the Rhine along the watershed of the Alps from Switzerland to Retia, Carnic, Julian, Velebit, and Dinaric Alps until you reach Albania. Should the United States of America allow it to be pierced at any point, should you allow the Adriatic line from Fiume, the apex of the defense-that is, the eastern pillar of the new dam-to be undermined by visionary conceptions of an instant or future possible Wilsonian European Arcadia, it is my opinion that democratic civilization would suffer at the hands of turbulent eastern and southern Slav elements right now, viz, before they could polarize into orderly democratic States.

Fiume and Dalmatia in the vast reorganization and rejuvenation of political Europe assume, therefore, a position of immediate consistency of paramount value. Not only for the city itself or even for Italy but in the broadest sense for civilization.

Coming to Fiume herself these facts are already known to you, first, that in the first fortnight of October, 1918, upon a proclamation of the then Austrian Emperor, every one of the Crown lands of the empire was admitted to self-determination. Fiume, a separate political body in the dual monarchy, declared then before the Hungarian Parliament, through her deputy, the Hon. Andrea Oissnack, her independence. And October 29, that is before the final victory of the Italian armies and the foundering of the dual monarchy as such, the city of Fiume by popular vote proclaimed through the organization of its present national council not only political independence but also her self-determination to join the Italian motherland, putting herself temporarily under the protection of the American democracy.

The cablegram addressed to your committee by the National Council of Fiume, the only authority elected and recognized by the Fiumeans, and read by you, Mr. Chairman, on the floor of the Senate, is a document that we American citizens beg to submit to the Senate under its rules that this and other documents which will be submitted may properly come under the consideration of the Senate in the discussion of that part of the treaty with Austria which will affect Fiume and Dalmatia.

I purposely avoid any reference to the first part of the treaty to Austria and to anything that may have happened or shall happen at the peace conference in Paris, only aiming capitally to furnish

in a summary form the main reasons underlying Fiume's unmistakable self-determination, as follows:

Geographical reasons, historical reasons, ethnographic and philological reasons, economic and commercial reasons, and political

reasons.

Geographical reasons.-The city of Fiume is situated at the eastern base of the peninsula of Istraia, a part of continental Italy. It is located within the Julian Alps, between Mount Nevoso and the Velebit Massif, forming the pass of Fiume, which, if not under immediate Italian control, is an easy gate of invasion. Two barbarian invasions, in fact, of grand style have forced in 410 and 943 A. D. their destructive Hun masses into the very heart of Italy. Hence Fiume, according to her location, is within the orographic Alpine boundaries of the Italian Peninsula, covering in her suzerainty 10,000 square miles.

In speaking of the geographic location of the city of Fiume it is, perhaps, useful to state at once the existence of the city of Sussak, a suburb on the left shore of the stream Fiumara, a confluent of the River Eneo, because her Slav majority has been used by an Austrian imperial statistician-and but yesterday before you by the Slavs of the south-with a view to swell the number of Slavs in Fiume's statistics.

I shall speak of population and statistics later on, but it is useful to state at once that Sussak only about 30 years ago was a small village, where the Italian language was prevalent, that has been since 1866 colonized by Slav elements under the activities of Vienna, as was the ancient Italian cities of Dalmatia herself, in order to denationalize them all.

Historical reasons.-Three hundred years before Christ the first Romans occupied the section which is now that of Fiume, at the head of the Adriatic, and fortified it with strategic walls, the ruins of which are still excellent, indicating that since those days the strategic importance of what was afterwards the Oppidum of Tarsatica. It is due to the municipal or communal organisms of Roma body politic that Latin civilization did not disappear under Hun, Slav, and Mongol invasions into Italy when the military dam of the empire, the Rhine and the Danube, gave way under their masses and might.

Fiume emerges in the thirteenth century, after the destruction, when invasions in Italy were diminishing in the form of a free Italian municipality or commune, to remain such to our own days. Inflexibly, immutably, although passing in the course of centuries under different influences and rules; the Franks, the princely patriarchs, bishops, archbishops of feudalism, until in 1471 she fell under the hegemony of the House of Hapsburg.

In 1530 Fiume, that had status of her own, received additional ones, that is, two councils presided over by two judges (Duumviri) and a caesarian captain. Thus, chosen from the leading citizens of Fiume and put under oath to respect the municipal statutes of the city, by the Duumviri or judges, the sundics or mayors, and the people assembled.

In 1776 Empress Maria Theresa, upon the insistent request of the Fiumeans, made Fiume territory over to Hungary, but as a separate political body ("corpus separatum adueræm regni corona").

It is under these very summary historical premises that Fiume reached the middle of the last century, when, in the revolutionary movements that shook the Hapsburg Empire, 1848-49, she was attacked by the Ban of Croatia and kept under the most ferocious Croatian yoke for 18 years.

In 1869, however, by rescript of the then dual monarchy of AustriaHungary the city and territory of Fiume was restored, always as a municipal independent, separate political body within the Empire, and attached as such to the Crown of Hungary, although about 300 miles distant from the Adriatic. The Government of Budapest, planning to use Fiume as a naval expedient base, as Austria reserved Trieste for herself and Germany, with a view to their well-known policy of "dranch nach osten," in the Balkan Peninsula, pointing to Constantinople and the Persian Gulf.

Never in history, except at one time for two or three years, have the Hapsburgs permitted Croatia to annex Fiume, although Croatia begins on the eastern side of the stream dividing her from the city of Sussak. And it is quite worthy of notice that in the 19 years during which the city has been under the Croatian yoke, as I said, that she unalterably refused to occupy the two seats afforded her in the Croatian Parliament, or Sabor. There never was love lost, indeed, between Fiumeans and Croatians, the Latin civilizing element, and the Slav faithful under serfdom to the autocracy of the Hapsburgs.

From 1869 to 1918 Hungary, representing through its governor the Imperial Austrian autocracy, did all that hard rule and tyranny could do to denationalize Fiume, to destroy her municipal secular organism. Without result, however, owing to the inextinguishable spirit of Italianity of the Fiumeans manifesting itself in many ways, at all possible occasions, such as those most eloquent of furnishing volunteers in all the wars waged by Italy for independence since 1848, as well as in this last war of their final redemption. No group of Latin descent, even within the Italian Peninsula, offered in history such an inflexible racial spirit, such historical continuity of an İtalian municipal organism as did Fiume.

No wonder thus if the deputy of Fiume on the 13th of October, 1918, declared the independence of the city before the Magyar Parliament as other imperial crownlands and organized since October 18 a national council, when the Hungarian civil and military authorities and garrison fled from the city with the imperial governor at the advance of the Italian victorious armies on the Piave.

The subsequent agitation of the Fiumeans, it must be noticed, is not due to their lack of faith in the justice of American democracy, known to many of them living in America and to the intellectual men of the council, but to those contingent reasons of which I shall speak later on, converging in the dreaded conclusion that under the treaty of peace being manipulated at Paris without their direct consent their Italian city might be put under Croatian rule.

Philological reasons.-The language of the people being its most living expression in the daily affirmation of its national racial spirit and aspirations, the Italian idiom has been at all times that the

city of Fiume, the official language used between the municipal council and the Hapsburg monarchy as well as in all municipal documents in the archives of the city, which are uninterruptedly Italian. Even the inscriptions on the graves of the cemeteries of Fiume are 100 per cent Italian. The Emperors of Austria on ascending the throne received the homage of the city in Italian and separately from any other part of the crownlands. A privilege granted only to Fiume and the Hungarian city of Peccs. Moreover, the Hungarian Government itself since 1869 corresponded with Fiume in Italian only. The Italian language is being used exclusively by the Chamber of Commerce of Fiume, the courts, schools, the press, the navigation companies, the governor passports, and all other documents inherent to port transactions, and the citizens, the 87 per cent of Fiume city. Foreigners are wont to learn Italian, as are English all foreign born in the United States. All deputies of Fiume to the Hungarian Parliament since 1869 have been Italians and the municipal representatives of the city also, except at one sitting by a Hungarian, Count Ludovic Bathian. If, therefore, under the 14 points of President Woodrow Wilson any one people of the former dual monarchy is entitled to self-determination that one are the Fiumeans. Ethnological reasons.-After the fall of the Roman Empire of Occident and notwithstanding the great Slav invasion of the seventh century, among others, which threatened to submerge every vestige of Latin ethnology and Roman political organism, the Latin group of Fiume survived owing to the indomitable racial spirit of the population, persisting on one side secular Slav infiltration and the constant pressure of the Hapsburg Empire. And on the threshold of the world war even the manipulated last imperial statistics acknowledge 65 per cent Italian population as against 22 per cent Slavonic and 13 per cent Hungarian, including employees, garrisons, and even transients. The last census, taken by the National Council of Fiume after the war, resulted in 28,911 Italians, 9,092 Croats, 1,674 Slovenes, 161 Serbs, 4,431 Hungarians, 1,616 Germans, and 379 mixed nationalities.

Economic reasons.-Import and export statistic figures prove that the port of Fiume was not needed either by Croatia or other Slavs, that it was not the result of the economic interest of Croatia or any other Slav group, but of the whole interland, especially of Hungary proper. All the commerce affluing to Jugo-Slavia from the Mediterranean has found its way to Jugo-Slavia through central lines of affluence that are all under the parallel of Fiume, the 45°. And even if as the tentative Kingdom of the Serbo-Croat-Slovenes should be granted by the peace conference then the ports of trade affluence are all connected by good railroad communications with Serenico, Spalato, Metovic, Ragusa, and Cattaro, ports of great capacity. And while Hungary would have the greatest interest in the port of Fiume she does not aspire to it under any form, preferring, notoriously, to see it in the hands of the Italians.

The total imports and exports of Fiume, closing 1915 Austrian statistics, is divided as follows:

Seven per cent for Croatia, 13 per cent for Croatia, Dalmatia, Bosnia, Herzegovina together, the 87 per cent of these four Provinces import and export passing through the Dalmatian ports already quoted.