740.00119 Control (Italy)/6–745
The Italian Minister for Foreign Affairs (De Gasperi) to the American Ambassador in Italy (Kirk)62
Dear Ambassador: I have been told that the conversations now taking place between Marshal Alexander and Tito seem to be directed toward the organization of an Anglo-American administration to the west of the Wilson line63 and of an exclusive Yugoslav administration to the east of that line.
I do not know whether the information is exact. If it is, it would cause us grave anxiety and worry.
You know our point of view and it is therefore superfluous to explain it again. I should like here only to emphasize particularly that, should the conversations really be taking this course, the division of Venezia Giulia into two zones and the entrusting of one of these zones to the exclusive administration of Yugoslavia would certainly signify in substance two things:
- 1)
- falling short of the principle that the administration of all the territory under discussion should be entrusted to Anglo-Americans;
- 2)
- yielding to the Yugoslav coup de main by granting them the advantages of it. That such advantages might be only partial does not seem to me to modify the fact that the fundamental principle of preventing violent methods and replacing them with means and methods more consonant with the new exigencies of international conduct, would as a result be gravely prejudiced and compromised.
I would like to add that under a regime of this sort the Yugoslavs could only feel encouraged to put forth even greater demands and to transform the already acquired advantage into a springboard for aspiring to ever greater concessions. This is, as you know, the invariable technique for all coups de force.
It is superfluous for me to tell you that I am keenly aware of the grave difficulties that the question presents for the British and North American Governments and how profound is our feeling of solidarity with Washington and London. But I am truly and deeply convinced that postponement of territorial questions until the peace conference, and the energetic suppression of violent methods, are really cardinal principles which must be safeguarded with all our power.
It is for this reason that I take the liberty to ask you to express our concern to your Government, which has given us such convincing proof of its friendly assistance in this question, and to convey our hope that, also with regard to the zone to the east of the Wilson line, should it be absolutely impossible to arrange for Anglo-American administration, as would be just, there be devised a formula for mixed administration which, while giving certain definite participation to Yugoslavia, would give to us a guarantee of justice and equity; and to everyone the feeling that the fundamental principles to which I have referred are being effectively and truly safeguarded.
Please believe me [etc.]
- Copy transmitted to the Department in despatch 1702, June 7, 1945, from Rome; received June 14.↩
- During the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, President Woodrow Wilson put forward a proposal for the demarcation of the Italo-Yugoslav frontier. The most detailed formulation of the line by the American Delegation at the Peace Conference appears in a memorandum by Douglas Johnson, dated May 8, 1919, printed in René Albrecht-Carrié, Italy at the Paris Peace Conference (New York, 1938), p. 93, and in Ray Stannard Baker, Woodrow Wilson and the World Settlement (New York, 1922), vol. iii, pp. 296–302. For President Wilson’s brief description of his proposal, made at a meeting of the Council of Four, May 13, 1919, see Foreign Relations, The Paris Peace Conference, 1919, vol. v, p. 579. The “Wilson Line” is indicated in Foreign Relations, 1945, vol. ii, on the map facing p. 252.↩