DOCUMENTS
LEROY KING'S REPORTS FROM CROATIA
MARCH TO MAY 1919
Edited by Jerome Jareb
[Journal of Croatian Studies, Annual Review of the Croatian Academy of America, New York, N.Y., number I, 1960, pp. 75-168]
Lieutenant LeRoy King was a member of Archibald Cary Coolidge's mission. Coolidge's mission was dispatched to Vienna by the American Commission to Negotiate Peace to ascertain the situation in the former territory of the Habsburg Empire. LeRoy King was sent by Coolidge to Croatia to ascertain the situation there. From Croatia King wrote Coolidge thirty-one reports of which twenty-seven are published hereunder. Four reports, those numbered 6, 13, 14, and 30, could not be yet located. The editor hopes to publish them subsequently if and when they are found. Twenty-three reports are published for the first time and four of them have been already printed either in full or partially as indicated in the appropriate footnotes. For the convenience of readers, they are republished. The editor is grateful to Dr. Carl L. Lokke of the National Archives in Washington, D. C., who was so kind to locate the reports and furnish the copies of them. If not otherwise indicated, the footnotes and material within brackets are added by the editor. Some information about the origin and work of Coolidge's mission seems to be appropriate.
Colonel House was sent to Europe by President Wilson to represent him in the Allied negotiations at the end of World War I. At that time, House was receiving "misinformation from the English, French and Italians" about the situation in the former enemy countries and requested Washington to send American agents there. The request was granted, and Professor Archibald Cary Coolidge of Harvard University was appointed a special assistant to the Department of State on November 16, 1918, "with instructions to proceed to Eastern Europe to investigate and report upon conditions there.'' Professor Coolidge arrived in Paris on December 6. His commission was changed a little thereafter. On December 26 he was assigned to the American Commission to Negotiate Peace "for the purpose of proceeding to Austria for that Commission to observe political conditions in Austria-Hungary and neighborhood countries." Coolidge and his collaborators arrived in Vienna on January 5, 1919. He stayed at Vienna almost all the time until the mission was withdrawn. The agents were sent into different areas of the former Austria-Hungary, dispatching reports to Coolidge who in turn forwarded them to Paris. At the end of March, Coolidge returned to Paris to report personally to the American Commission to Negotiate Peace. He remained there for about a week. On May 16 Coolidge was ordered to close the mission and proceed to Paris. He left Vienna on May 22, 1919, arriving in Paris two days later.
Lieutenant Colonel Sherman Miles and Lieutenant LeRoy King were ordered by Coolidge to investigate the situation in the South Slav area. In the middle of January they went to Ljubljana and were involved in Carinthian troubles. At the end of January and beginning of February, Miles and King, joined by two other members of Coolidge's mission, Major Lawrence Martin and Professor Robert J. Kerner, investigated the situation in Carinthia. They proposed a new armistice line between the Austrian and South Slav forces. When the investigation was accomplished, Miles went to Paris and personally reported to the American Commission on February 20. Lieutenant LeRoy King was sent to Belgrade in the second half of February and from there ordered to Zagreb. After his return from Paris, Miles proceeded to Rijeka. He investigated the situation there and along the Adriatic coast during March and April. At the end of April, he was ordered to Montenegro. From there he returned to Paris in the middle of May, 1919.
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