Paris Peace Conf. 184.01102/4½
Professor A. C. Coolidge to the Commission to Negotiate Peace
[Received January 22.]
Sirs: I have the honor to report that in this and some later despatches I shall take up certain questions concerning Austria and especially her future frontiers which will be determined by the Peace Conference. I shall usually confine myself to a brief exposition of the Austrian point of view, expressing it as clearly as I can without comment of my own. As I have been visited today by several representatives of the German part of Southern Tyrol to protest against annexation to Italy, I shall begin with that question.
The German speaking part of the Southern Tyrol, lying south of the Brenner Pass, is inhabited and has been for the last seven or eight hundred years by a purely German population, (except in the Ladin portion). The population is German to the core and intensely [Page 226] so. The people are a race of mountaineers, fervently patriotic and proud of their country, to which they are devotedly attached. Their spirit and their indomitable love of freedom were well shown in the famous rising under Andreas Hofer against the French in which they took a notable part. It is inconceivable that this population should ever submit or become reconciled to Italian rule. There are few Italians among them except a certain number of day labourers who come and go, especially in the district of Botzen. This district, whose only political connection with Italy in recent centuries was when it was united for a few years with the Kingdom of Italy in Napoleonic times, was claimed by the Italians when they were asking for a reward if they should keep out of the war. They now desire not only Botzen, but the regions of Meran and Brixen and the whole territory up to the top of the Brenner. The Austrians declare that under the principle of self-determination as proclaimed by President Wilson which has been loyally accepted by them, (to this point they continually return), they do not see how this territory can possibly be taken away from them. They say that in the Southern Tyrol the linguistic division between German and Italian agrees remarkably well with the geographical lines made by the wild mountain ranges and that the national separation between the two peoples is as good as could be desired. Even at the main gateway, the passage is a narrow one.
Economically the German district south of the Brenner would suffer severely by separation from the country to the north of it. The great influx of German tourists would be much reduced if the country were under Italian rule. The land is comparatively poor and its products which are only obtained through hard labor have now an assured outlet in Austria. If it were a part of Italy they could not compete with similar Italian products grown on a more fertile soil under cheaper conditions.
This part of the Tyrolese land has always had a peculiar sentimental value to the German race. It is their one playground of their own in southern climes. It was the home of the minnesinger in the Middle Ages. The loss of it would deeply wound national feeling in German Austria and would be regarded as an intolerable injustice.
The case of the small Ladin district is rather different. The Austrians assert that although the Ladin language is Latin, not a Germanic one, it is an independent language and the people prefer Austrian to Italian rule. The region is barren, but economically its interests lie with Austria rather than with Italy.
I have [etc.]