This treaty, were it ever to be carried out, would incorporate in Italy about 800,000 Yugo-Slavs, nearly half of whom live in Dalmatia. It inevitably created great resentment at Belgrade and Agram, and helped to produce that regrettable state of relations between Italians and Yugo-Slavs which has had such unfortunate results in the past year. At any rate, during the negotiations of the past year the Italians themselves have elected not to adhere to the strict terms of the treaty of London, but have shown, I think it must be admitted, a genuine willingness to seek a compromise more acceptable to their opponents. At this point, it becomes necessary to consider the questions at issue, region by region. Gorizia, Trieste, and Istria are three small territories which, in Roman times, formed a part of Italy and of the province of Venetia, and which the modern Italians still call Venetia Julia. Most scholars will agree, I think, that geographically these territories belong to Italy, and that the Julian Alps and the Karst Mountains, which come down to the sea on the Quarnero, mark the natural frontier of Italy on the northeast. Historically, Venice held the larger part of Istria and a small part of Gorizia for many centuries down to the fall of the republic in 1797. Trieste was an independent commune until in 1382 it came under Hapsburg rule. The larger part of Gorizia and eastern Istria, after passing for centuries from one German princeling to another, have been under the Hapsburgs since the close of the Middle Ages.