King Victor Emanuel arriving at Trieste on a destroyer after its
occupation by the Italians]

Though Italy's original claims in this region, as made at the
beginning of the war, included only the so-called Trentino (by which is
generally meant those Italian-speaking districts which used to belong to
the bishopric of Trent) together with those parts of South Tyrol which
are in population overwhelmingly Italian, she has since demanded, and by
the Peace Conference has been awarded, the territory known as the upper
Adige, which comprises all the districts lying within the basin of the
Adige and of its tributary, the Isarco, including the cities of Botzen
and Meran. By the annexation of this region Italy has pushed her
frontier as far north as the Brenner, thereby bringing within her
borders upwards of 180,000 German-speaking Tyrolese who have never been
Italian in any sense and who bitterly resent being transferred, without
their consent and without a plebiscite, to Italian rule.

The Italians defend their annexation of the Upper Adige by asserting
that Italy's true northern boundary, in the words of Eugène de
Beauharnais, written, when Viceroy of Italy, to his stepfather,
Napoleon, "is that traced by Nature on the summits of the mountains,
where the waters that flow into the Black Sea are divided from those
that flow into the Adriatic." Viewed from a purely geographical
standpoint, Italy's contention that the great semi-circular barrier of
the Alps forms a natural and clearly defined frontier, separating her by
a clean-cut line from the countries to the north, is unquestionably a
sound one. Any one who has entered Italy from the north must have
instinctively felt, as he reached the summit of this mighty mountain
wall and looked down on the warm and fertile slopes sweeping southward