Sin,—The decision of the Foreign Ministers' Conference in Paris to
refuse the return of South Tyrol to Austria perpetuates the worst and least excusable violation of the principle of self-determination sanctioned by the Peace Treaties at the close of the Great War. Italy has no just claim to the province if the liberation of oppressed nationalities means anything more than a convenient catch-phrase, as it was for military, not racial, reasons that the Italian delegates at Versailles demanded the Brenner. The transfer was made in September, 1919, in spite of the objections raised by the inhabitants concerned backed by so eminent an Italian patriot as Leonida Bissolati. Italy, however, declared herself ready to pursue a liberal policy towards her new sub- jects as regards language, education and economic interests, but not one of these promises has she kept.
At the time of the Treaty of St. Germain the population of South Tyrol consisted of 223,000 Tyrolese, 16,000 Ladines and only 6,000 Italians, and the province had clean-cut geographical and ethnical boun- daries on the South and West. Between the wars Mussolini and his Fascists pressed on with a policy of intensive Italianisation, and the native language and culture was suppressed by every possible means. In the neighbourhood of Bozen (Bolzano) and Meran, vineyards and orchards were cut down and factories built on the sites ; Italian work- men were imported, and everything possible was done to drive out the native Tyrolese from the farms which they had held for centuries. When Hitler sold the South Tyrolese to Mussolini, in return for his support, some of the inhabitants migrated over the Brenner, were settled in Poland and are now, presumably, displaced persons once again. The majority, however, remained in their homeland and struggled on as best they could.
A South Tyrolese once said to me, " We are too poor to pay for propaganda and too weak to fight. Unless you have a 'nuisance value' or are strong enough to fight you will not even get a hearing. By force the Poles got Vilna, dr. Italians Abyssinia, the Japanese Man- churia. Even if your cause is just, this is the only way." Does this still hold good to-day? Has the world war been fought and won for liberty that chains should be riveted on a people who once. were free, in favour of a power whose policy has been one of rapacity towards the weak and surrender to the strong?—I am, etc.,
Cortina, St. Andrews. D. E. INNES.
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