Office of the Historian

Paris Peace Conf. 185.1/9

Captain Walter Lippmann to the Chief of the Section of Territorial, Economic and Political Intelligence of the Commission to Negotiate Peace ( Mezes )

[ Paris ,] December 5, 1918.

I am noting for your information the most immediately pressing territorial questions:

1.
The extension of the boundaries of Lorraine to include the frontiers of 1814. In the last few weeks this has become a very serious political question. It will probably be raised in a form by which the valley of the Sarre is treated as part of the indemnity.
2.
The question of neutralizing the left bank of the Rhine has become of first-class importance.
3.
The problem of the mouth of the Scheldt.
4.
The Italo-Jugoslav frontier.
5.
The corridor by which Bohemia and Jugoslavia secure physical contact will be pressed by Benes.
6.
The Czechs will ask for Teschen as necessary to their communications with the Slovac territory and because of the mines. They are involved in a dispute with the Poles on the matter.
7.
The Czechs will suggest that the Ruthenians of northern Hungary be made into an autonomous state and attached to them in order that physical contact with the greater Roumania may be secured.
8.
The dispute between the Serbs and the Roumanians in respect to the Banat is a real one at the present time.
9.
Very serious troubles have occurred in Lemberg between the Poles and the Ruthenians, raising in an acute form the problem of eastern Galicia.
10.
Greek propaganda is very active in regard to northern Epirus, Thrace, Dodekanese and Smyrna.
11.
There is a very strong movement, especially in England, to return Sleswig-Holstein to Denmark.
12.
Our data bearing upon the control of the Baltic should be assembled immediately, especially with relation to Finland, the Aland Islands, Danzig and Libau.
13.
The most acute immediate problem in Asia Minor turns on Franco-British relations in Syria and negotiations in regard to it are now in progress.

Walter Lippmann

Captain, U. S. A.