I have among my clippings from French newspapers during the past five years a legion of quotations from Vienna and Rome correspondents, concerning the friction between Austria-Hungary and Italy, and between the Italian-speaking population of Austria and the Viennese Government, over the question of distinct Italian nationality of Austro-Hungarian subjects. There have been frontier incidents; there have been demonstrations of Austrian societies visiting Italian cities and Italian societies visiting Trieste; there has been much discussion over the creation of an Italian Faculty of Law at the University of Vienna, and the establishment of an Italian University at Trieste or Vienna; and there have been occasional causes of friction between the Austrian Governor of Istria and the Italian residents of the province. But the general impression gained from a study of the incidents in question, and the effort to trace out their aftermath, leads to the conclusion that these irredentist incidents have been magnified in importance. A clever campaign of the French press has endeavoured to detach Italian public opinion from the Triple Alliance by publishing in detail, on every possible occasion, any incident that might show Austrian hostility to the Italian "nation."
In 1844, Cesare Balbo, in his Speranze d'Italia, a book that is as important to students of contemporary politics as to those of the Risorgimento, set forth clearly that the hope of Italy to the exclusion of Austria from Lombardy and Venetia was most reasonably based upon the extension of the Austrian Empire eastward through the approaching fall of the Ottoman Empire. Balbo was a man of great vision. He looked beyond the accidental factors in the making of a nation to the great and durable considerations of national existence. He grasped the fact that the insistence of the Teutonic race upon holding in subjection purely Italian territories, and its hostility to the unification of the Italian people, was based upon economic considerations. Lombardy and Venetia had been for a thousand years the pathway of German commerce to the Mediterranean. If Austria, Balbo argued, should fall heir to a portion of the European territories of the Ottoman Empire, she would have her outlet to the Mediterranean more advantageously than through the possession of Lombardy and Venetia. Once these Ottoman territories were secured, Austria would be ready to cede Lombardy and Venetia to a future united Italy.
After the unity of Italy had been achieved, and Austria had been driven out of Lombardy and Venetia, she did receive compensation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and, just as Balbo predicted, there was born the Austrian ambition to the succession of Macedonia. That this ambition has not been realized, and that Russia was determined to prevent the attempt to revive it, explains the Austro-Hungarian willingness to fight Russia in the summer of 1914.
Austria and Hungary, from the very beginning of existence as a Dual Monarchy, have been caught in the vise between Italian irredentism and Servian irredentism. They have not been able to secure their outlet through Macedonia to the Ægean Sea. They have been constantly threatened by their neighbours on the south-east and south-west with exclusion altogether from the Adriatic, their only outlet to the Mediterranean.
From the economic point of view, one cannot but have sympathy with the determination of the Austrians and Hungarians to prevent the disaster which would certainly come to them, if the aspirations of Italian and Servian irredentism were realized. The severity of Hungary against Croatia and the oppression of the Servians in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Dalmatia by Austria have been dictated by the same reasons which led England and Scotland to attempt to destroy the national spirit of Ireland for so many centuries after they had robbed her of her independence. They could not afford to have their communications by sea threatened by the presence and growth of an independent nation, especially since this nation was believed to be susceptible to the influence of hereditary enemies.
It has been fortunate for Austria-Hungary that the claims of the irredentists at the head of the Adriatic have overlapped and come into conflict in almost the same way that the claims of Greece and Bulgaria have come into conflict in Macedonia. From time immemorial, the Italian and Greek peoples, owing to their position on peninsulas, have been seafaring. Consequently, it is they who have developed the commercial life of ports in the eastern Mediterranean. Everywhere along the littoral of the Ægean and the Adriatic, Greeks and Italians have founded and inhabited, up to the present day, the chief ports. But, by the same token, those engaged in commercial and maritime occupations have never been excellent farmers, shepherds, or woodsmen. So, while the Italians and Greeks have held the predominance in the cities of the littoral, the hinterland has been occupied by other races. Just as the hinterland of Macedonia is very largely Bulgarian, the hinterland of the upper end of the Adriatic is very largely Slavic. Just as the realization of the dreams of Hellenic irredentists would give Greece a narrow strip of coast line along European Turkey to Constantinople, with one or two of the larger inland commercial cities, while the Slavs would be cut off entirely from the sea, the realization of the dreams of Italian irredentists would give to Italy the ports and coast line of the northern end of the Adriatic, with no hinterland, and the Slavs, Hungarians, and Germans an enormous hinterland with no ports.
Italian irredentism, in so far as the Tyrol goes, is not unreasonable. But its realization in Istria and the Adriatic littoral is impracticable. Our modern idea of a state is of people living together in a political union that is to their economic advantage. Only the thoughtless enthusiasts could advocate a change in the map of Europe by which fifty million people would be cut off from the sea to satisfy the national aspirations of a few hundred thousand Italians.
The Italian Society Dante Alighieri has gotten into the hands of the irredentists, and, before the Tripolitan conquest, was successful in influencing members of Parliament to embarrass the Government by interpellations concerning the troubles of Italians who are Austrian subjects. This society has advocated for Italy the adoption of a law so modifying the legislation on naturalization that Italians who emigrate can preserve their nationality even if they acquire that of the countries to which they have gone. It was a curious anticipation of the famous Article XXV, of the German Citizenship Law of 1914. In 1911, a Lombard deputy tried to raise the old cry of alarm concerning German penetration into Italy, and emphasized the necessity of the return to the policy of the Ghibelline motto, "Fuori i Tedeschi"—"Expel the Germans."
Italian statesmen, however, have never given serious attention to the claims of the irredentists. The late Marquis di San Giuliano deplored their senseless and harmful manifestations. In trying for the impossible, and keeping up an agitation that tended to make friction between Italy and Austria-Hungary, he pointed out that they harmed what were the real and attainable Italian interests.
The antagonism between Italy and Austria-Hungary has had deeper and more logical and justifiable foundation than irredentism. The two nations have been apprehensive each about allowing the other to gain control of the Adriatic. Up to 1903, Spezzia was the naval base for the whole of Italy. Since that time, Tarento has become one of the first military ports, important fortifications have been placed at Brindisi, Bari, and Ancona, and an elaborate scheme has been drawn up for the defence of Venice. The Venetians have been demanding that Venice become a naval base.