It is forgotten also that the major wrangle between Italy
and the Allied and Associated Powers arose, not over something which had been promised to Italy by the Treaty of London, but over areas which, under that Treaty, had been promised, not to Italy, but to other people. It had expressly been laid down in the Treaty of London that Fiume should remain in Croatian territory, and in acquiring Fiume Italy acquired some- thing more than she had even asked for in 1915. The same is true of Albania. Under the Treaty of London, northern Albania was to be given to the Slays and Southern Albania (with the strategic command of the Corfu channel) to Greece. In seeking to exclude Yugoslavia and Greece from Albania, Italy was herself violating the Treaty of London, and her suc- cess in doing so has since given her an immense strategic advantage. In the matter of the Dodecanese again Italy obtained far more than was her due under the Fourteen Points. Not only did these islands contain a wholly Greek population, but under the Venizelos-Tittoni agreement Italy undertook to hand over eleven of the twelve islands to Greece. With the fall of Venizelos this treaty was blandly repudiated by the Italian Government, who have since established in the islands a formid- able naval base. It is nonsense for Italy to argue that she obtained nothing in Paris when she acquired (in violation of the Fourteen Points) the protection of her northern frontier, the protection of her eastern frontier, the exclusion of Yugo- slavia and Greece from Albania, and a "vital space" plus a naval base in Rhodes and the adjacent Greek islands. Were she today to be deprived of these assets she would not regard them as in the least unimportant.
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