Paris Peace Conf. 184.01102/318

Professor A. C. Coolidge to the Commission to Negotiate Peace

No. 192

Sirs: I have the honor to report that I beg to call attention to certain aspects of the question of the future of the German-speaking region of the Tyrol south of the Brenner Pass now held by the Italians and claimed by them.

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In no question of boundary at present under discussion have we more clearly the principles of history, nationality and self-determination on the one side and strategic and imperialistic considerations on the other. For this reason although the size of the territory itself and the number of people concerned are relatively small, the case might be regarded as a test one under the Fourteen Points.

It may be conceded that geographically German South Tyrol is a part of Italy, as is the Swiss canton of the Ticino, but, whereas the Ticino represents the result of a comparatively recent foreign conquest, is inhabited by an Italian-speaking population, and is separated by no good natural frontiers from the kingdom of Italy, German South Tyrol has a perfectly satisfactory southern frontier, and it is and has been inhabited for many centuries by a German-speaking population, which has come in by a process of peaceful colonization and by a gradual absorption of the earlier Ladin elements. In no question now before the Conference does the linguistic frontier coincide more exactly and satisfactorily with an excellent geographical one, and its application means hardship to smaller minorities. The proper solution for the small Ladin districts is more open to doubt although the sympathies of the inhabitants are for the most part on the side of Austria.

The Italians have maintained that for the protection of Italy against future attack they need to hold the territory up to the Brenner Pass which forms a good first line of defense. This argument of an advanced first line of defense is a strategic one that can be pushed to great lengths. It is no truer of the Brenner Pass than it is of the Lower Rhine as between France and Germany, and it belongs to an order of ideas which we trust will soon begin to be obsolete. We may hope that after the constitution of the League of Nations purely strategic considerations may be accorded less weight than they have been in the past, particularly when they sacrifice the happiness of peoples. With the acquisition of the Italian-speaking region of the Trentino Italy will have a much better and more defensible frontier than she has had up till now, but even the old one she was able to hold against all the offensive efforts of the Austrians during the present war. It was not there that the Italian armies gave way.

Historically, the district of German South Tyrol has been inhabited by people of German speech, race, sympathies and characteristics for many hundred years. During much the greater part of that time they have been connected politically with Germany, and the apparent barrier of the Alps has not interfered with Tyrolese unity except during one of the ephemeral arrangements made by the great Napoleon. The people of the whole Tyrol, both north and south of the Alps, in order to maintain their cherished unity are willing to make almost any [Page 284] sacrifice—to set themselves up as an independent republic or do whatever else is demanded of them.

Economically too, it should be remembered that German South Tyrol profits by its connection with the north. Its fruits have a great advantage in their easy access to the Austrian and German markets, where they are likely to have tariff protection. On the other hand, once within the Italian customs line, they will have to face the competition of similar products grown on more fertile soil and at less cost.

A last point worth taking into consideration is the extremely strong feeling on the part not only of German-Austrians but of all German peoples for this territory, small in area, population, and economic value but endeared to them by its beauty and its romance, the one bit of Germany in a southern clime, a land of legend and of history, the home of the Minnesingers in the Middle Ages, and of Andreas Hofer, who led the heroic struggle for independence against the French. Every year it is visited by hundreds of thousands, and its loss would produce far deeper resentment than would the cutting off of an equal number of people from some other part of Germany.

But the strongest argument of all is the one first mentioned, that to give the German South Tyrol to Italy would be as frank a departure from the principle of national self-determination as it is easy to conceive, and would be judged accordingly.

I have [ete.]

Archibald Cary Coolidge