The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the Ægean | Page 3

to illustrate a chapter of History which is of immense importance,
I have tried to sketch them, in brief, sharp outline, in this book.
Because I was curious to see for myself how the countrymen of
Andreas Hofer in South Tyrol would accept their enforced
Italianization; whether the Italians of Fiume would obey the dictum of
President Wilson that their city must be Slav; how the Turks of Smyrna
and the Bulgarians of Thrace would welcome Hellenic rule; whether
the Croats and Slovenes and Bosnians and Montenegrins were content
to remain pasted in the Jugoslav stamp-album; and because I wished to
travel through these disputed regions while the conditions and
problems thus created were still new, we set out, my wife and I, at
about the time the Peace Conference was drawing to a close, on a
journey, made largely by motor-car and destroyer, which took us from
the Adige to the Vardar and from the Vardar to the Pruth, along more
than five thousand miles of those new national boundaries--drawn in
Paris by a lawyer, a doctor and a college professor--which have been
termed, with undue optimism perhaps, the frontiers of freedom.
Some of the things which I shall say in these pages will probably give
offense to those governments which showed us many courtesies. Those
who are privileged to speak for governments are fond of asserting that
their governments have nothing to conceal and that they welcome
honest criticism, but long experience has taught me that when they are
told unpalatable truths governments are usually as sensitive and
resentful as friends. Now it has always seemed to me that a writer owes
his first allegiance to his readers. To misinform them by writing only
half-truths for the sake of retaining the good-will of those written about
is as unethical, to my way of thinking, as it is for a newspaper to
suppress facts which the public is entitled to know in order not to
offend its advertisers. Were I to show my appreciation of the many
kindnesses which we received from governments, sovereigns and
officials by refraining from unfavorable comment on their actions and
their policies, this book would possess about as much intrinsic value as

those sumptuous volumes which are written to the order of certain
Latin-American republics, in which the authors studiously avoid
touching on such embarrassing subjects as revolutions, assassinations,
earthquakes, finances, or fevers for fear of scaring away foreign
investors or depreciating the government securities.
It is entirely possible that in forming some of my conclusions I was
unconsciously biased by the hospitality and kindness we were shown,
for it is human nature to have a more friendly feeling for the man who
invites you to dinner or sends you a card to his club than for the man
who ignores your existence; it is probable that I not infrequently placed
the wrong interpretation on what I saw and heard, especially in the
Balkans; and, in those cases where I have rashly ventured to indulge in
prophecy, it is more than likely that future events will show that as a
prophet I am not an unqualified success. In spite of these shortcomings,
however, I would like my readers to believe that I have made a
conscientious effort to place before them, in the following pages, a
plain and unprejudiced account of how the essays in map-making of the
lawyer, the doctor and the college professor in Paris have affected the
peoples, problems and politics of that vast region which stretches from
the Alps to the Ægean.
The Queen of the Adriatic never looked more radiantly beautiful than
on the July morning when, from the landing-stage in front of the
Danieli, we boarded the vapore which, after an hour's steaming up the
teeming Guidecca and across the outlying lagoons, set us down at the
road-head, on the mainland, where young Captain Tron, of the
Comando Supremo, was awaiting us with a big gray staff-car. Captain
Tron, who had been born on the Riviera and spoke English like an
Oxonian, had been aide-de-camp to the Prince of Wales during that
young gentleman's prolonged stay on the Italian front. He was selected
by the Italian High Command to accompany us, I imagine, because of
his ability to give intelligent answers to every conceivable sort of
question, his tact, and his unfailing discretion. His chief weakness was
his proclivity for road-burning, in which he was enthusiastically abetted
by our Sicilian chauffeur, who, before attaining to the dignity of
driving a staff-car, had spent an apprenticeship of two years in piloting

ammunition-laden camions over the narrow and perilous roads which
led to the positions held by the Alpini amid the higher peaks, during
which he learned to save his tires and his brake-linings by taking on
two wheels instead of four