The Banat question with Rumania was compromised by a Solomonic division of the disputed territory. As we have seen elsewhere, Jugoslav ambitions in regard to Albania were thwarted by the Albanians themselves, whose success in defending their independence was followed by the intervention of the League of Nations. The Montenegrin revolt was suppressed. Serbian claims at the expense of Bulgaria were allowed in the Treaty of Neuilly. The Treaty of Trianon gave the new state generous frontiers at the expense of Hungary. The Treaty of St.-Germain provided for a plebiscite in the Klagenfurt district of Carinthia, which resulted in a victory for the Austrians. But the Paris Conference left to direct negotiations between Italy and the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes the fixing of the frontier with Italy.
For eighteen months it looked as if war would break out between Italians and Jugoslavs. But the latter were not sufficiently united to make possible an uncompromising attitude toward the Italians. In violation of President Wilson’s ninth point in the famous Fourteen, the Jugoslavs finally agreed to sacrifice a large portion of the Slovenes, to renounce their claim to Fiume, and to agree to the incorporation of the Zara district and some of the Dalmatian islands in Italy. This compromise, called the Treaty of Rapallo, was signed on November 28, 1920. Like other compromise frontiers in the general settlement after the World War, the Rapallo arrangement created an irredentist problem more complicated and dangerous than the one it was supposed to solve. Italy was confirmed in the possession of Istria and secured a frontier in the hinterland of Trieste and the Isonzo Valley more advantageous than the frontier of the 1915 secret Treaty of London. Fiume was made a free state “in perpetuo.” Zara and its hinterland became an Italian _enclave_ in Dalmatia. The islands of Cherso and Lussin, with “minor islands and rocks” off the Istrian Peninsula, went to Italy. Former Austro-Hungarian subjects were allowed to opt for Italian nationality, without the obligation to transfer their domicile outside Jugoslav territory. Reciprocity for Jugoslavs residing within the new limits of the Kingdom of Italy was denied.