THE CROATS' BLUNDER

A number of deplorable transactions ensued, and they were not all committed by the Italianists. The proclamations which were sent from Zagreb, exhorting the people to be tranquil, were printed in the two languages, but some Croat super-patriots at Rieka tried to make the town mono-lingual. At the railway station and the post office they removed the old Italian inscriptions and put up Croatian ones, they wrote to the mayor in Croat, which, although Dr. Vio has a Croat father and visited a Croat school and a Croat university, was tactless; they wrote that Croat would now be the language of the town, which was a foolish thing to do. They even seem to have demanded the evacuation of the town hall within twenty-four hours. And the irresponsible persons who made this demand were very properly snubbed by the municipal authorities.

MELODRAMA

These excited patriots, delirious with joy that at last their own town was in their hands, did not set Rieka on fire, nor did they murder women and children; but the Italianists forthwith sent wireless messages to Venice, screaming that all these enormities were taking place. A few of them rushed off in motors to Triest, where they made themselves into a Committee of Public Safety, picked up some Triest sympathizers and flew on to Venice, where they related breathless stories of foul deeds. One, which appeared in the Italian Press, was that three children of Rieka had been publicly committed to the flames.

FARCE

On November 4 an Italian destroyer, the Stocco, shortly followed by the Emanuele Filiberto, a cruiser, came on their errand of humanity. The I.N.C. at once organized a plebiscite—by which is meant not a dull giving and counting of votes in the usual election booths. A plebiscite, at all events a plebiscite at Rieka, signifies for the Italianists a mob assembled in a public thoroughfare; photographs of such assemblies illustrate their pamphlets and are entitled "plebiscito." At the harbour the Italian Admiral, whose name was Raineri, told the joyous I.N.C.—who now had flung aside their anonymity—that he had come to bring them a salute from Italy, and that he had been sent to shield Italians and to protect Italian interests. The plebiscite threw up its hats and waved its flags, and shouted its applause and sang its songs. Flowers fell upon the Admiral, and on his men and on the guns; the ships, as we are told, were changed to floating gardens. But the sailors did not disembark. Some ladies, members of the plebiscite, besought the Admiral to come ashore, and hoping to persuade the men, they climbed on board and playfully seized many sailors' caps, which in the town, they said, could be redeemed. Then shortly afterwards, the Yugoslav officials came to greet the Admiral, as did the commandant of the Yugoslav troops which had been for several days guarding the town. Meanwhile some unknown persons had been up in the old clock-tower and, for reasons known perhaps to themselves, had taken in both the Croatian and Italian flags; the Admiral drove up to see the Governor, Dr. Lenac, and requested that his country's flag should be rehoisted, which of course was done. And until November 17 the Admiral was nearly every day up at the Governor's palace, as a multitude of details had to be discussed. A French warship arrived on the 10th, followed by a British vessel on the 12th or 13th. Perfect calm prevailed. Croatian and Italian flags flew everywhere, as well as French ones, British and American. The name of the Hotel Deak was altered to Hotel Wilson.... But the men of the Emanuele Filiberto and the Stocco did not land. Colonel Teslić assured the Admiral that if anyone started to set fire to an Italianist child or to indulge in any other crime he would prevent it.

PAROLE D'HONNEUR

All this was very disconcerting to the I.N.C. They knew that on the hills outside Rieka were large numbers of Italian troops, which had come overland from Istria. But how to get them in? Rieka had not been ascribed to the Italians by the London Treaty.[16] ... On November 15 a detachment of Serbian troops arrived, under Colonel Maximović, and were given a magnificent reception. Thousands of people accompanied them, and in front of the French destroyer there was a manifestation. Some of the Serbs, old warriors who had been under arms since the first Balkan War, were moved to tears. The Italianists were furious; Admiral Raineri called on the Governor for an explanation of the Serbs' arrival. A conference was held between the Admiral, the Colonel and two Yugoslav officers. If the Serbs remained at Rieka, said the Admiral, he would land his marines. Maximović said he had come in obedience to his orders, and that he would have to prevent by force the disembarkation of the Italians. At this moment a Serbian officer entered to announce that Italian armoured cars were approaching from Abbazia. Maximović immediately ordered his troops to mobilize, but the Admiral said a mistake had been made and that the cars would be sent back. (The Government Secretary, Dr. Ružić, had been told at three o'clock by a telephone operator that the Admiral had himself telephoned to Abbazia for the cars.) It was decided at this conference that on Sunday, November 17, the Yugoslav troops would evacuate the town, that it would be occupied by Serbian and American troops, and that, to mark the alliance, a small Italian detachment would be landed. As Admiral Cagni, of Pola, ordered that Italian troops should be disembarked at Rieka, another conference was held between Admiral Raineri, Colonel Maximović, Colonel Teslić and Captain Dvorski (of the Yugoslav navy), as well as French and British officers. It was arranged sous parole d'honneur d'officier that at 4 p.m. the Serbian troops should leave Rieka and go to Porto Re, an hour's sea journey, that the Yugoslav troops should remain, and that the Italians should not land. No other steps would be taken till November 20 at noon, and the Supreme Command would be asked to settle the difficulty. As soon as the Serbian troops were out at sea, the Italian army, under General di San Marzano (attended by a kinematograph), marched in from the hills, entering the town simultaneously from four directions, in accordance with a strategic plan. The General was told what Raineri had agreed to do; he replied that he was Raineri's senior, that the final decision rested with him, and that he intended to proceed into the town. (One of the British officers is said to have addressed him rather bluntly.) At 4.30 Raineri landed his marines, and afterwards he was dismissed from his post—not, indeed, for having broken his word given at the inter-Allied conference, but for having delayed so long before disembarking troops in the town. He said he had received a written order from the Entente; if only Maximović had not left he might have shown it him. With twenty carabinieri the General went to the Governor's palace and asked Dr. Lenac to vacate it. He was so excited that he almost pushed the doctor out. "There is no room for the two of us," he said. And that is how the Italian occupation began. The French and British brought some troops in at a later date, but when they had six hundred each the Italians had 22,000. With the Italians came fifty Americans, so that the force might have an international appearance. These Americans were given broad-sheets, printed by the town Italianists in English; they welcomed the Americans as liberators, and informed them that the population had by plebiscite declared for annexation to the Motherland. On the same night the Yugoslav troops were turned out of their barracks into the street by the Italian army.... These are, I believe, the main facts as to the occupation which has been the subject of much heated argument. I had the facts from eye-witnesses and documents: I exposed the evidence of each side to the criticism of the other.

Very soon the disorders began. On the evening of the occupation Italian troops ran through the town, accompanied by some of the plebiscite, and compelled the people to remove the Yugoslav colours from their button-holes. In cases they surrounded their victim and used force. When this was used against women, after the arrival of the French and British, it produced some serious international affrays. The Italians, who invariably outnumbered the others, did not scruple to employ their knives; thus in the middle of December two French soldiers were stabbed in the back and their murderers were never found.

THE POPULATION OF THE TOWN

But there had been at Rieka an Englishman for whom I have an almost inexpressible admiration. This was Mr. A. Beaumont who, a couple of days after the Italians occupied the town in the above-mentioned curious fashion, sent from Triest a long message to the Daily Telegraph. How can anyone not marvel at a gentleman who travels to a foreign town which is in the throes of unrest and who, undeterred by his infirmity, sits down to grasp the rather complicated features of the situation? I am not acquainted with Mr. Beaumont, but he must be blind, poor fellow, for he says that the Yugoslavs occupied with ill-concealed glee a town entirely inhabited by some 45,000 Italians. Perhaps somebody will read to him the following statistics made after the year 1868, when Rieka came under Magyar dominion. The statistics were made by the Magyars and Italianists combined, so that they do not err in favour of the Yugoslavs. He might also be told that the Magyar-Italian alliance closed the existing Yugoslav national schools for the 13,478 Yugoslavs in 1890, while they opened Italo-Magyar schools for the 13,012 "Italians" and Magyars. They would not even allow the Yugoslavs to have at Rieka an elementary school at their own expense. Everything possible was done during these decades to inculcate hatred and contempt for whatsoever was Slav, hoping thus to denationalize the citizens. In view of all this it speaks well for Yugoslav steadfastness that they were able to maintain themselves. Here are the figures:

YUGOSLAVS. ITALIANS. MAGYARS.

1880 10,227 (49%) 9,237 (44%) 379 (2%) 1890 13,478 (46%) 13,012 (44%) 1,062 (4%) 1900 16,197 (42%) 17,354 (45%) 2,842 (7%) 1910 15,692 (32%) 24,212 (49%) 6,493 (13%)

Assuming for the moment that these figures are correct—and it is an enormous assumption[17]—are not the Autonomists to be found chiefly among the Italians and Magyars? It is claimed that the Autonomist, Socialist and Slav vote exceeds that of those who desire annexation to Italy. One need not treat au serieux the great procession organized by the Italianists, when they could not scrape together more than about 4000 persons, including many schoolboys and girls, the municipal clerks, visitors from Italy, Triest and Zadar. One need not gibe the Italianists with the numbers who followed Dr. Vio on that famous day when, weary of palavering, he summoned round him his supporters and strode off to the Governor's palace, where General Grazioli, who had succeeded General di San Marzano, was installed.[18] Arrived there, Dr. Vio with a superb gesture begged the General to accept the town in the name of Italy. It is not often in the lifetime of a man that he has the opportunity of giving a whole town away. Dr. Vio made the most of that occasion; if the crowd which followed him was disappointing, there may be good explanations. The allegiance of a town, one may submit, should be settled in another fashion. The house-to-house inquiry, conducted in the spring of 1919 by the Autonomists—resulting in an anti-annexionist majority—was much impeded by the police; and it is of course the business of the authorities and not of any one party to hold elections in a town. Had the Italian National Council, bereaving themselves of Italian bayonets, held a real plebiscite—secret or otherwise—the result would doubtless have given them pain, but no surprise.... And this will happen even if the Magyar system of separating Rieka from the suburb of Sušak is perpetrated. Sušak contains about 12,500 Yugoslavs and extremely few Italianists; and, by the way, to show how the Magyars and the Italianists worked together, it is worth mentioning that the Magyar railway officials who lived at Sušak were allowed a vote at Rieka, while if a Croat lived at Sušak and carried on his avocation at Rieka he could vote in Sušak only. One must not imagine that Sušak is a poor relation; most people would prefer to live there. Dr. Vio was intensely wrathful because the British General resided in a beautifully situated house there by the sea. Not only is Sušak about twenty yards, across a stream, from Rieka, but from a commercial point of view their separation seems absurd, since half the port, including the great wood depots, is in Sušak. One of these timber merchants presented an example of Italianization. His original name was E. R. Sarinich and this was painted on his business premises at Sušak, while in Rieka he called himself Sarini. It must have caused him many sleepless nights.... Counting Sušak with Rieka as one town, the total population in the autumn of 1918 was about 51 per cent. Yugoslav, 39 per cent. Italian and 10 per cent. Magyar. These Magyars, by the way, seem not to have been noticed by Mr. Beaumont. There were still a good number of them in the town. "Whilst Italy might have consented," says Mr. Beaumont, "to a compromise with Hungary, had that State continued to exist as part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, she certainly never contemplated handing over"—["handing over" is rather humorous]—"Fiume and its exclusively Italian population to the Jugo-Slavs." Underneath Mr. Beaumont's dispatch there is printed a semi-official statement, sent by Reuter, from Rome. "Yesterday afternoon," it says, "our troops occupied Fiume. The occupation, which was made for reasons of public order, was decided upon in view not only of the urgent and legitimate demands of the Italian citizens of Fiume, but also of the insistent appeals of eminent foreigners...."

THE TALE CONTINUES ON THE NORTHERN ISLES

"Italy's reward," says Mr. Beaumont, "must be commensurate with her sacrifices, and this is the attitude assumed here. It is quite apart from the mere question as to whether the Jugo-Slavs are in a majority in certain districts or not. Those districts form a part of old Italian territory, of Italian lands once peopled and occupied by the Italian race and into which, with Austria's encouragement, Slav populations have filtered." [I should love to know what are Mr. Beaumont's sources.] "The question must not be left to local ambition and antipathies. It must be decided authoritatively and quickly in strong counsel to the Jugo-Slav leaders." ... Let us leave Rieka and see how the Italians decided authoritatively and quickly on the island of Cres (Cherso). It is a large but not thickly populated island; having 8162 inhabitants for 336 square kilometres. The Yugoslavs, according to the census of 1910, number 5714 or 71.3 per cent., while the Italian-speaking population amounts to 2296 or 28 per cent. About the middle of November the Italian authorities placed in the village of Martinšćica, which is in the south-western part of the island, 17 soldiers, 3 carabinieri and a lieutenant. Let me say at once that I have never been to Cres, all my knowledge of this case comes from a Franciscan monk who lives there, the Rev. Ambrose Vlahov, Professor of Theology. At Martinšćica, he says, there is not a single Italianist; the entire village is Yugoslav. When the Italian military arrived the lieutenant insisted that the priest, Karlo Hlaća, should cease to sing the Mass in Old Slav, and that for the whole service he should use Italian, the only language, said the lieutenant, which he (the lieutenant) understood. It was futile for the priest to demonstrate what a ridiculous and unreasonable demand this was; the lieutenant always came back to the subject, being sometimes merely importunate and sometimes using menaces. As Hlaća was a model ecclesiastic, highly esteemed by his parishioners, the lieutenant comprehended that as long as this priest remained, he would be foiled in his endeavours; he therefore sought an opportunity to turn him out. On January 5, 1919, the priest had, by order of his bishop, to read during the service a pastoral letter on the duties of the faithful towards the Church and towards their fellow-men; he had also to add a simple and concise commentary. In this letter there was a passage dealing with schools, and the priest on that topic remarked that "by divine and human law every nation may ask that its children should be instructed in their mother tongue." When Mass was finished, the mayor of the village assembled the parishioners and notified them that henceforward, by order of the lieutenant, there would no longer be in the village a Croatian but an Italian school. And in order to mollify the people he added that the lieutenant proposed to give subsidies to such as stood in need; they had only to present themselves before that officer. But, though the people often found it hard to satisfy their simple wants and were at that period in very great distress, they walked away from this assembly without making one step in the lieutenant's direction. This incited him to such fury that he ran, accompanied by soldiers and carabinieri, to the priest, and publicly, in a loud voice, insulted him, calling him an intriguer, a rebel, an agitator. On the following day the lieutenant had him conducted to the village of Cres by two soldiers and a carabiniere, who were all armed.... At Cres the priest was brought before the commanding officer of the Quarnero Islands—our old acquaintance, the naval captain of Krk—who happened to be in this village. He started at once to bellow at the priest and, striking the table with his hand, exclaimed: "This is an Italian island, all Italian, nothing but Italian and evermore it will remain Italian." About a score of parishioners had come to Cres behind their priest and his escort; they begged the commandant to set him free. As an answer he harangued them with respect to the Italian character of the islands, told them that they would have to send their children to the Italian school and that the whole village would be Italianized and that only in their homes would they be permitted to speak Croatian.... On January 8 the priest was taken from Cres to the island of Krk, where he was informed that he would have to leave his parish, but that he might go back there for a day or two to fetch a few necessities. It was raining in torrents when Father Hlaća, wet to the skin, arrived at his village on the 11th at seven o'clock in the evening. As he suffers from several chronic ailments—which was known to the lieutenant—this bad weather had a grave effect upon him. When he reached his house he went to bed at once with a very high temperature. After about a quarter of an hour the lieutenant appeared with two carabinieri and shouted at him that he must get up. This draconian injunction had to be obeyed, the more so as the lieutenant was labouring under great excitement. He looked at the priest's permit which allowed him to come back to the village, and said, "If I were in your shoes I wouldn't venture to come back here." These words gave Father Hlaća an impression that his life was in danger. The lieutenant then ordered him not to go out among the people, but to stop where he was until he was taken away. Five days after this the priest was taken to Rieka, so that the villagers were left with nobody to guard them against the violence and the temptations offered them by the Italians. The Croat inscription outside the school was replaced by one in Italian and, with the lieutenant acting as teacher, the doors were thrown open. But the only children who went there were those of the lieutenant himself and those of the mayor, who was a renegade in the pay of the Italians. It was announced that heavy fines would be inflicted if the other children did not come. The villagers were in great trouble and in fear, with nobody to give them advice or consolation.... There may be some who will be curious to know concerning the "Italian" population of this island, which, according to the 1910 census, reached the large figure of 28 per cent. At a place called Nerežine it was stated, in the census of 1880, that the commissioner had found 706 Italians and 340 Yugoslavs. Consequently an Italian primary school was opened; but when it was discovered that the children of Nerežine knew not one traitor word of that language, the school was transformed into a Yugoslav establishment. This is one case out of many; the 28 per cent. would not bear much scrutiny.... But the Italian Government, at any rate the "Liga Nazionale" to whose endowment it contributes, had been taking in hand this question of elementary schools in Istria and Dalmatia among the Slav population. The "Liga" made gratuitous distribution of clothing, of boots, of school-books and so forth. Some indigent Slavs allowed themselves in this way to become denationalized.

* * * * *

When, however, you examine the embroideries of these islands—particularly beautiful on Rab and on the island of wild olive trees, the neighbouring Pag—you will be sure that such an ancient national spirit as they show will not be easily seduced. The Magyars, by the way, whose culture is more modern, borrowed certain features that you find on these embroideries—the sun, for instance, and the cock, which have from immemorial times been thought appropriate by these people for the cloth a woman wears upon her head when she is bringing a new son into the world, whose dawn the cock announces. Older than the workers in wood, much older than those who carved in stone, are these island embroiderers. In this work the people reproduced their tears and laughter.

RAB IS COMPLETELY CAPTURED

What will it avail to put up "Liga" schools in these islands, where the population is 99.67 per cent. Yugoslav and 0.31 per cent. Italianist—that is, if we are content to accept the Austrian statistics? What ultimate advantage will accrue to Italy from the doings of her emissaries, in November 1918, on the isle of Rab? It was Tuesday, November 26, when the Guglielmo Pepe of the Italian navy put in at the venerable town which is the capital of that island. The commander, with an Italianist deputy from Istria, climbed up to the town-hall with the old marble balcony and informed the mayor and the members of the local committee of the Yugoslav National Council that he had come in the name of the Entente and in virtue of the arrangements of the Armistice; he said that in the afternoon Italian troops would land, for the purpose of maintaining order. It was pointed out to him that no disturbance had arisen, and that, according to the terms of the Armistice, he had no right to occupy this island. The commander announced that he must disarm the national guard, but that the Yugoslav flags would not be interfered with; the Italian flag would only be hoisted on the harbour-master's office and the military headquarters. On the next day, after he had been unable to induce the town authorities to lower their national flag from the clock-tower, he sent a hundred men with a machine gun to carry out his wishes. Filled with confidence by this heroic deed, he marched into the mayor's office and dissolved the municipal council. Armed forces occupied the town-hall, over which an Italian flag was flown. An Italian officer was entrusted with the mayoral functions and with the municipal finances, while the post office was also captured and all private telegrams forbidden, not only those which one would have liked to dispatch, but those which came in from elsewhere—they were not delivered. All meetings and manifestations were made illegal. The commander, whose name was Captain Denti di —— (the other part being illegible), sent a memorandum to the municipal council which explained that he dissolved it on account of their having grievously troubled the public order; he did this by virtue of the powers conferred upon him and in the name of the Allied Powers and the United States of America. The islanders did not pretend to be experts in international law, but they did not believe that he was in the right.

"I have every confidence," said the Serbian Regent, when he was receiving a deputation of the Yugoslav National Council a few days after this—"I have every confidence that the operations for the freedom of the world will be accomplished, that large numbers of our brethren will be liberated from a foreign yoke. And I feel sure that this point of view will be adopted by the Government of the Kingdom of Italy, which was founded on these very principles. They were cherished in the hearts and executed in the deeds of great Italians in the nineteenth century. We can say frankly that in choosing to have us as their friends and good neighbours the Italian nation will find more benefit and a greater security than in the enforcement of the Treaty of London, which we never signed nor recognized, and which was made at a time when nobody foresaw the crumbling of Austria-Hungary."

AVANTI SAVOIA!

It would be tedious to chronicle a thousandth part of the outrages, crimes and stupidities committed on Yugoslav territory by the Italians. Where they were threatened with an armed resistance they yielded. Thus on November 14, when they had reached Vrhnica (Ober-Laibach) on their way to Ljubljana (Laibach), they were met by Colonel Svibić with sixteen other officers who had just come out of an internment camp in Austria. Svibić requested the Italians to leave Vrhnica. He said that he and the Serbian commander at Ljubljana would prevent the advance of the Italians into Yugoslav territory. They would be most reluctant to be obliged to resort to armed force should the Italians continue their advance, and they declined responsibility for any bloodshed which might ensue.... The colonel of the Italian regiment which had been stationed for some days at Vrhnica informed the mayor of that commune that he had received orders to depart; he retired to the line of demarcation fixed by the Armistice conditions.

THE ENTENTE AT RIEKA

It was ironical that a young State, struggling into life, should be hindered, not by former enemies but by friends of its friends. The Italians complained that the French, British and Americans were not fraternizing with them. In the first place, it was repugnant to the sense of justice of these nations when they saw that General di San Marzano, after having fraudulently seized the town of Rieka and turning its absolutely legal Governor into the street, did not ask the citizens to organize a temporary local government, in which all parties would be represented, but delivered, if you please, the town to fifteen gentlemen, the I.N.C., who—at the very utmost—represented half the population. On November 24, the local newspaper Il Popolo announced in a non-official manner that the I.N.C., in full accord with the military command, had taken over the administration—i poteri pubblici. This, by the way, was never confirmed by the representatives of the other Allies. The I.N.C. furthermore declared null and of no effect any intervention of the Yugoslav National Council in the affairs of the authorities of the State of Rieka. When the Yugoslavs appealed to the French, British or Americans they were naturally met with sympathy and urged to have patience. Case after case of high-handed dealing was reported to these officers. They sometimes intervened with good effect; far more injustice would have happened; far more Croats and Autonomists, for instance, would have been deported if the Allies had not interceded. It was now, of course, impossible for Yugoslavs to wear their colours; nor could they prevent the C.N.I. from hanging vast Italian flags on Croat houses. One of the largest flags, I should imagine, in the world swayed to and fro between Rieka's chief hotel and the tall building on the opposite side of the square—and both these houses, mark you, were Croat property. But the Allied officers knew very well (and the C.N.I. knew that they knew) that more than thirty of the large buildings on the front belonged to Croats, whereas under half a dozen were the property of Italians or Italianists. The ineffable Mr. Edoardo Susmel, in one of his pro-Italian books, entreats certain French and British friends of the Yugoslavs to come for one hour to Rieka and judge for themselves. But twenty minutes would be ample for a man of average intelligence. In many ways the presence of the Allies grieved the C.N.I. The Allies looked without approval at the "Giovani Fiumani," an association of young rowdies of whose valuable services the C.N.I. availed itself. But if these hired bands could not be dispersed they could have limits placed upon their zeal. One of their ordinary methods was to sit in groups in cafes or in restaurants or other places where an orchestra was playing, then to shout for the Italian National Anthem and to make themselves as nasty as they dared to anyone who did not rise. If everybody rose, then they would wait a quarter of an hour and have the music played again. The Allied officers persuaded General Grazioli to prohibit any National Anthem in a public place. It was distasteful to the Allied officers when a local newspaper in French—l'Echo de l'Adriatique—which had been established to present the Yugoslav point of view, was continually being suppressed. For example, on December 14, it printed a short greeting from the Croat National Council to President Wilson. The most anti-Italian phrase in this that I could find was: "Their fondest hope is to justify to the world, to history and to you the great trust you have placed in them." This was refused publication. It is unnecessary to say that Yugoslav newspapers were confiscated and their sale forbidden—after all, one didn't buy German or Austrian newspapers in England during the War, and the Italians now regarded the Croats as very pernicious enemies. La Rassegna Italiana of December 15 called its first article—printed throughout in italics—"I Prussiani dell' Adriatico," and took to its bosom an "upright American citizen" returning from a visit to "Fiume nostra," who defined the Yugoslavs "on account of their greed and their brutality and their spirit of intrigue and their lack of candour as the Prussians of the Adriatic." Personally I should submit that the Prussian spirit was not wholly lacking in those two Italian officers who penetrated on November 25 into the dining-room at the quarters of the Custom-house officials and informed them that they wanted their piano. No discussion was permitted; the piano "transferred itself," as they say in some languages, to the Italian officers' mess. The Prussian spirit was not undeveloped in a certain Mr. Štiglić—his name might cause his enemies to say he is a renegade, but as my knowledge of him is confined to other matters, we will say he is the noblest Roman of them all. He likewise had a dig at the Custom-house officials; I know not whether he was wiping off old scores. Appointed by the I.N.C. as director of the Excise office, he communicated with the resident officials—Franjo Jakovčić, Ivan Mikuličić and Grga Mažuran—on December 5, and told them to clear out by the following Saturday, they and their families, so that in the heart of winter forty-one persons were suddenly left homeless.

A CANDID FRENCHMAN

This and innumerable other manifestations of Prussianism were brought to the attention of the French, so that it was not surprising when a Frenchman made a few remarks in the Rijeć of Zagreb. His article, entitled "Mise au point," begins by a reference to the Yugoslav cockades which were sometimes worn by the French sailors. This, to the Italians, was as if an ally in the reconquered towns of Metz and Strasbourg had sported the colours of an enemy. "The cases are not parallel," says the Frenchman. "You have come to Rieka and to Pola as conquerors of towns that were exhausted, yielding to the simultaneous and gigantic pressure of the Allied armies. These towns gave themselves up. Are they on that account your property, and are we to consider as a dead-letter the clauses of the Armistice which settled that Pola should be occupied by the Allies? I am not so dexterous a diplomat as to be able to follow you along this track; let it be decided by others. But we who were present perceived that your occupation, which you had regulated in every detail, had a close resemblance to the entry of a circus into some provincial town, whose population is known beforehand to be of a hostile character. It is needless to say that this masquerade, these vibrating appeals to fraternity that were placarded upon the walls gave us in that grey, abandoned town an impression of complete fiasco." ["It is significant," writes Mr. Beaumont the Italophil, "that the Slav population ... observe an attitude of strange reserve and diffidence. They are silent and almost sullen. When the Italian fleet first visited Pola there was hardly a cheer...."] "Now let me tell you," says the Frenchman, "that our entry into Alsace was different. Foch was not obliged to send emissaries in advance in order to decorate the houses with flags and to erect triumphal arches. The French cockades had not nestled in the dark hair of our Alsatian women since 1870, for forty-eight years the tricolors had been waiting, piously folded at the bottom of those wooden chests, waiting for us to float them in the wind of victory—nous rentrions chez nous tout simplement. Or, vous n'etes pas chez vous ici, messieurs." ["Common reserve and decency should have induced the Jugo-Slavs to abstain," says Mr. Beaumont, "from rushing to take a place to which they were not invited ... an exclusively Italian city."] "Whatever you may assert," says the Frenchman, "everything seems to contradict it. Your actors play their parts with skill, but the public is frigid. Now the decorations are tattered and the torches on the ramparts have grown black.... Permit me, following your example, and with courtesy, to call back the glories of old Italy, to remind myself of the great figures that stride through your history and that give to the world an unexampled picture of the lofty works of man. Our sailors, who are simple and often uncultured men, have no remembrance of these things; the brutal facts, in this whirling age in which we live, have more power to strike their imagination. What is one to say to them when they see their comrades stabbed, slaughtered by your men as if they were noxious animals—yesterday at Venice, the day before that at Pola, to-day at Rieka. Englishmen and Americans, your Allies, receive your 'sincere and fraternal hand' which holds a dagger. As a method of pacific penetration you will avow that this is rather rudimentary and that the laws of Romulus did not teach you such fraternity. We have also seen you striking women in the street and disembowelling a child. What are we to think of that, fratelli d'Italia? Excuse us, but we are not accustomed to such incidents. Is it not natural that the legendary, gallant spirit of our sailors should infect the crowd? Our bluejackets have looked in vain for the three colours which are dear to them and which you have excluded utterly from all your rows of flags. Well, in default of them, they had no choice but to array themselves in the cockades which dainty hands pinned on their uniforms.... And our 'poilus,' in their faded, mud-smeared garments walk along 'your' streets, disdainfully regarded by your dazzling and pomaded Staff. Do you remember that these unshaven fellows who thrust back the Boche in 1918 are the descendants of those who in 1793 conquered Italy and Europe with bare feet? Therefore do not strike your breasts if now and then a smile involuntarily appears upon their lips. O you who henceforth will be known as the immortal heroes of the Piave, if our fellows see to-day so many noble breasts, it was not seldom that they saw another portion of your bodies."

ECONOMIC CONSIDERATIONS

"Yes, but that has nothing to do," some people will say, "with Rieka's economical position. We admit that Croatia has the historical right to the town, but we wish to be satisfied that the Croats are not moved by reasons that would cause Rieka's ruin. It may be nowadays, owing to the unholy alliance between Magyars and Italians, that the town, with respect to its trade, is more in the Italian sphere than in that of Yugoslavia." The answer to this is that Italy's share of the value of the imports into Rieka in 1911 was 7.5 per cent. of the total, while her share of the value of the exports amounted to 13 per cent., which proves that Italy depends commercially more on Rieka's hinterland than does that hinterland upon Italy. It seems to be of less significance that the millionaires of Rieka are mostly Croats, for they might conceivably have enriched themselves by trade with Italy. But of the nine banks, previous to the War the Italianists were in exclusive possession of none, while the Croats had four; of the eight shipping companies three were Croat, three were Magyar, one British, one German—not one Italian. It is true that some Italian writers lay it down that Rieka's progress should be co-ordinated with that of Venice, to say nothing of Triest, and should not be exploited by other States to the injury of the Italian Adriatic ports. Their point of view is not at all obscure. And all disguise is thrown to the winds in a book which has had a great success among the Italian imperialists: L'Adriatico et il Mediterraneo, by Mario Alberti (Milan, 1915—third edition). The author says that Italy, having annexed Triest and Rieka, will be "assured for ever"; her "economic penetration" of the Balkans "will no longer be threatened" by the projected Galatz-Scutari (Danube-Adriatic) railway; Italian agriculture which, he says, is already in peril, "will be rescued"; the Italian fisherman will no longer have the ports of Triest and Rieka closed (for exportation to Germany and Austria); the national wealth will be augmented by "several milliards"; new fields will be open to Italian industry; her economic (and military) domination over the Adriatic will be absolute. There will, he continues, be no more "disturbing" competition on the part of any foreign mercantile marine; the Adriatic will be the sole property of Italy, and so on. It would be worth while, as a study of expressions, to photograph a few Rieka Italianists in the act of reading these rapturous pages.... But lest it be imagined that I have searched for the most feeble pro-Italian arguments in order to have no difficulty in knocking them down, I will add that their strongest argument, taken as it is from the official report of the French Consul in 1909, appears to be that the commerce of Croatia amounted then to only 7 per cent. of the total trade of the port of Rieka. I am told by those who ought to know that wood alone, which comes almost exclusively from Croatia, Slavonia, etc., represents 16 per cent. If other products, such as flour, wine, etc., are considered, 50 per cent. of the total trade must be ascribed to Croatia, Slavonia, etc. And that does not take into account the western Banat and other Yugoslav territories. Serbia, too, would now take her part, so that there is no need to fear for the position of a Yugoslav Rieka based solely—omitting Hungary and the Ukraine altogether—on her Yugoslav hinterland. Rieka without Yugoslavia would be ruined and would degenerate into a fishing village, with a great past and a miserable future. This could very well be seen during the spring of 1919 when the communications were interrupted between Rieka and Yugoslavia. At Rieka during April eggs were 80 centimes apiece, while at Bakar, a few miles away, they cost 25 centimes; milk at Rieka was 6 crowns the litre and at Bakar one crown; beef was 30 crowns a kilo and at Bakar 8 crowns. Italy was calling Rieka her pearl—a pearl of great price; the Yugoslavs said it was the lung of their country. It is within the knowledge of the Italianists that the prosperity of Rieka would not be advanced by making her the last of a chain of Italian ports, but rather by making her the first port of Yugoslavia. What has Italy to offer in comparison with the Slovenes and the Croats? The maritime outlet of the Save valley, as well as of the plains of Hungary beyond it, is, as Sir Arthur Evans points out, the port of Rieka. And, in view of the mountainous nature of the country which lies for a great distance at the back of Split and of Dubrovnik, it would seem that Rieka—and especially when the railway line has been shortened—will be the natural port of Belgrade.

THE TURNCOAT MAYOR

One cannot expect in a place with Rieka's history that such considerations as these will be debated, calmly or otherwise, but at all events on their own merits. They will be approached with more than ordinary passion, since so many of the people of Rieka have been turncoats. Any man who changes sides in his religion or his nationality or politics—presuming, and I hope this mostly was so at Rieka, that his reasons were not base—that man will feel profoundly on these matters, more profoundly than the average person of his new religion, nationality or politics. He will observe the ritual, he will give utterance to his thoughts with such an emphasis that his old comrades will dislike him and his new associates be made uneasy. Thus a convert may not always be the most delightful creature in the garden, and he is abundant at Rieka. As an illustration we may study Dr. Vio. Many persons have repeated that he has a Croat father, yet they should in fairness add that his father's father came from Venice. But if he came from Lapland, that ought to be no reason why the present Dr. Vio should not, if he so desires, be an Italian. If he had, when he arrived at what is usually called the age of discretion, inscribed himself among the sons of Italy—a la bonheur. But he took no such step. He came out as a Croat of the Croats, for when he had finished his legal studies he became a town official, but discovered that his views—for he was known as an unbending Croat—hindered his advancement. The party in possession of the town council, the Autonomist party, would have none of him. At last he, in disgust, threw up his post and went into his father's office. He was entitled, after ten years' service, to a pension; the Autonomists refused to grant it for the reason that he was so dour a Croat. Very often, talking with his friends, did Dr. Vio mention this. He made a successful appeal to the Court at Buda-Pest and a certain yearly sum was conceded to him, which he may or may not be still obtaining. Then, to the amazement of the Croats, he renounced his nationality and became—no, not an Italian—a Magyar. He was now one of those who called Hungary his "Madre Patria," and as a weapon of the ruling Hungarian party he was employed against the Italianists. In the year 1913 the deputy for Rieka died and Dr. Vio was a candidate, his opponent being one of the Italianist party, Professor Zanella. Dr. Vio had the support of the Government officials, railway officials and so forth, and was elected. Now he was a Magyar of the Magyars: Hungarian police officials were introduced, and Magyar, disregarding the town statutes, was employed by them as sole official language. The citizens still speak of those police.... The War broke out, and Dr. Vio donned a uniform, serving chiefly on the railway line between Rieka and Zagreb. Gradually he seems to have acquired the feeling that it was unnatural for him to be a Magyar of the Magyars, even though he was compelled, like so many others, to wear this uniform. But one day in 1916 when his friend and fellow-officer, Fran Šojat, teacher at the High School at Sušak, walked into his room at Meja, when he happened to be putting little flags upon a map, he prophesied—King Peter and the Tzar would have been glad to hear him. Presently, he had himself elected as the mayor, which enabled him to leave an army so distasteful to him. How long would he wait until he publicly became a Croat once again? He did not doubt that the Entente would win, and told that same friend Šojat that Rieka on the next day would be Croat. To another gentleman in June of 1918 he said he hoped that he would be the first Yugoslav mayor of the town, and on that day, out hunting, he sang endless Croat songs. In September, to the mayor of Sušak, "You will see," he said, "how well we two as mayors will work together." When the Croat National Council entered into office at the end of October he again met Mr. Šojat, just as he was going up to that interview in the Governor's Palace. "Jesam li ja onda imao pravo, jesi li sada zadovoljan?" he said. ("Was I not right that time? Are you satisfied now?") Joyfully he pressed Mr. Šojat's hand and greeted the two other persons who were with him. And Mr. Šojat was pleased to think that Vio would now be a good Croat, as of old. But on the following day he was an Italian.

HIS FERVOUR

When I went up to see this variegated gentleman—whose personal appearance is that of a bright yellow cat—he purred awhile upon the sofa and then started striding up and down the room. As he sketched the history of the town, which, he said, had always been Italian and would insist on being so, he spoke with horror of the days when Jellačić was in control, and then, remembering another trouble, he raised both his hands above his head and brought them down with such a crash upon the desk where I was writing his remarks that—but nobody burst in; the municipal officials were accustomed to his conversation. He was reviling at that moment certain Allied officers who had not seen fit to visit him. "I care not!" he yelled. "We are Italian! I tell you we are Italianissimi!" (He was glad enough, however, when his brother Hamlet, who had remained a Yugoslav and was on friendly terms with the chief of the carabinieri, managed to obtain for the mayor a passport to Italy, concerning which the carabinieri had said that they must first of all apply to Rome.) The doctor was sure that Yugoslavia would not live, for it had two religions; and another notable defect of the Croats—"I speak their language quite well," he said—was that in the whole of Rieka not one ancient document was in Croatian. I was going to mention that everywhere in Croatia until 1848 they were in Latin—but he saw what I was on the point of saying and—"Look here! look here!" he cried, "now look at this!" It was a type-written sheet in English, whereon was recounted how the mayor had offered to four Admirals, who came to Rieka on behalf of their four nations, how he had, in order to meet them in every way—"They asked me," he said, with blankness and indignation and forgiveness all joined in his expression—it was beautifully done—"they asked me, the Italian mayor of this Italian town, whether it was truly an Italian town!"—well, he had offered to take a real plebiscite, on the basis of the last census, and the Admirals, while appreciating his offer, had not availed themselves of it. (Maybe some one had told them how the census officials, chiefly members of the "Giovani Fiumani," had gone round, asking the people whether they spoke Italian and usually filling in the papers themselves. Presumably the mayor did not propose to allow anyone who had then been described as an Italian now to call himself Croat.) I was just calculating what he was in 1910 when he played a trump card and begged me to go up to the cemetery and take note of the language used for the epitaphs. Then let me return to him on the morrow and say what was the nationality of Rieka. There seemed to be the question if in such a town where Yugoslavs so often use Italian as the business language, many of them possibly might use it as the language of death; as it happened the first Yugoslav to whom I spoke about this point—a lawyer at whose flat I lunched the following day—produced a little book entitled Regolamento del Cimitero comunale di Fiume, and from it one could see that in the local cemetery the blessed principle of self-determination was in fetters. Chapter iii. lays down that all inscriptions must have the approval of the civic body. You are warned that they will not approve of sentences or words which are indecent, and that they prohibit all expressions and allusions that might give offence to anyone, to moral corporations, to religions, or which are notoriously false. No doubt, in practice, they waive the last stipulation, so that the survivors may give praise to famous or to infamous men; but I am told that they raised fewer difficulties for Italian wordings, and that the stones which many people used—those which the undertakers had in stock, with spaces left for cutting in the details—were invariably in Italian.... I hope I have not given an unsympathetic portrait of the mayor who has about him something lovable. Whatever Fate may have in store for Rieka, Dr. Vio is so magnificent an emotional actor that his future is assured. I trust it will be many years before a stone, in Croat, Magyar or Italian, is placed above the body of this volatile gentleman.... And then perhaps the deed of his administrative life that will be known more universally than any other will be the omission of an I from certain postage stamps. When the old Hungarian stamps were surcharged with the word FIUME, the sixty-third one in every sheet of half an edition was defective and was stamped FUME.[19]

THREE PLEASANT PLACES

In the immediate neighbourhood of Rieka, across the bay, lies Abbazia, which Nature and the Austrians have made into a charming spot. By the famous "Strandweg" that winds under rocks and palm and laurel, you go to Volosca in the easterly and to Lovrana in the westerly direction. Just at the back of all these pretty places stands the range of Istria's green mountains. More than twenty years ago a certain Dr. Krstić, from the neighbourhood of Zadar, conceived the happy thought of printing, in the peasant dialect, a newspaper which would discourse on Italy in articles no peasant could resist. He was given subsidies, and for some time the newspaper was published at Volosca. But perhaps the peasants did not read it any more than those near Zadar would take in the Pravi Dalmatinac ("The Real Dalmatian"), which attempted a few years previous to the War to preach sectionalism to the Serbo-Croats. The Italians who came to the Abbazia district in November 1918 did not try such methods. In the combined commune of Volosca-Abbazia the population at the 1910 census consisted of 4309 Yugoslavs, 1534 German-Austrians, and 418 Italians. Most of the 418 had never seen Italy; the only true Italians were some officials who had come from other parts of Istria. The official language was Italian, which was regarded as more elegant. The district doctor was Italian, but all the other 29 non-official doctors were either Germans, Czechs or Croats. At Volosca eighteen years ago there was no Croat school; when one was opened the Italian school at once lost half its membership and before the War had been reduced to 25 pupils. Before the War at Abbazia the Croat school had six classes, while the Italian had ceased for lack of patronage. The German school had 160 pupils; this has now been dissolved, the pupils being mostly sent to the re-opened Italian school. Thus it will be seen that efforts were required to Italianize these places. The efforts were continued even during the War, it is said by the ex-Empress Zita. At any rate the people who had altered their Italian names saw that they had been premature and reassumed their former ones. They reassumed the pre-war privileges: at Lovrana, for example, they "ran" the village, not having allowed any communal elections since 1905 and arranging that their Croat colleagues in the council should all be illiterate peasants. Some Italians were interned in 1915, as the Croats had been in 1914, but the council came again into their hands. At the meetings they had been obliged, owing to the council's composition, to talk Croatian; but their own predominance was undisturbed. On their return to power during the War they displayed more generosity, and admitted even educated Croats to the council. And if such out-and-out Italians as the Signori Grossmann, Pegan, etc. of Lovrana were kinder to the Yugoslavs than the Signori Grbac, Korošać and Codrić of Rieka it may be because the gentle spirit of the place affected them. The leading families would even intermarry; Signor Gelletich, Lovrana's Italian potentate, gave his sister to the Croat chieftain. But, as we have said, idylls had to end when in November 1918 the Italian army came upon the scene. Abbazia and Volosca and Lovrana were painted thoroughly in the Italian colours. Public buildings, private houses—irrespective of their inmates—had patches of green, white and red bestowed upon them. Everything was painted—some occupation had to be found for the military, who appeared to be more numerous than the inhabitants. Meanwhile, their commanding officers had other brilliant ideas: an Italian kindergarten was opened at Volosca, and the peasant women of the hills around were promised that if they came with their children to the opening ceremony, every one of them would be rewarded with 1 lb. of sugar. So they came and were photographed—it looked extremely well to have so many women seizing this first opportunity of an Italian education for their babies. Some one at Rieka most unfortunately had forgotten to consign the sugar. The Italian officer who was appointed to discharge the functions of podesta, that is, mayor, of Abbazia was a certain Lieut.-Colonel Stadler. He sent to Rome and Paris various telegrams as to the people's ardent hope of being joined to Italy. The people's own telegrams to Paris went by a more circuitous route. But Stadler did not seem to care much for the French, nor yet for the English. About a dozen of the educated people, thinking that the French might also come to Abbazia and wishing to be able to converse with them, took lessons in that language; another dozen, with a similar motive, had a Mr. Pošcić, a naturalized American subject, to give them English lessons. Away with these baubles, cried Stadler; on January 10 he stopped the lessons.

ITALY IS LED ASTRAY BY SONNINO

While the Italians were thus engaged, what was the state of opinion in their own country? Would Bissolati's organ, the Secolo, and the Corriere della Sera, which had been favourable to the Slavs since Caporetto, have it in their power to moderate the fury of the anti-Slav papers? Malagodi of the Tribuna said on November 24 that the position at Rieka had been remedied. But was the public fully alive to what was happening at Zadar and Šibenik? "While these cities have been nominally occupied by us and are under the protection of our flag, the Italian population has never been so terrorized by Croat brutality as at this moment." The Mattino disclosed to its readers in flaring headlines that "Yugoslav oppression cuts the throats of the Italian population in Dalmatia and terrorizes them." Would the people of Italy rather listen to such thrills or to the Secolo, which deprecated the contemptuous writings of Italian journalists with regard to the Slavs—the Gazzetta del Popolo's "little snakes" was one of the milder terms of opprobrium. The Secolo recalled Italy's own illiterate herds and the fact that the Italian Risorgimento was judged, not by the indifferent and servile mass, but by its heroes. It explained that the Treaty of London was inspired by the belief that Austria would survive, and that for strategic reasons only it had given, not Rieka, but most of Dalmatia and the islands to Italy.

It was calamitous for Italy that she was being governed at this moment not by prudent statesmen such as she more frequently produces in the north, but by southerners of the Orlando and Sonnino type. The Giornale d'Italia would at a word from the Foreign Minister have damped the ardour of those journalists and other agitators who were fanning such a dangerous fire. Sonnino once himself told Radović, the Montenegrin, that he could not acquiesce in any union of the Yugoslavs, for such a combination would be fraught with peril for Italians. And now that Southern Slavs were forming what he dreaded, their United States, it would have been sagacious—it was not too late—if he had set himself to win their friendship. Incidents of an untoward nature had occurred, such as those connected with the Austrian fleet; nine hundred Yugoslavs, after fighting side by side with the Italians, had actually been interned, many of them wearing Italian medals for bravery;[20] the Yugoslavs, in fact, by these and other monstrous methods had been provoked. But it was not too late. A Foreign Minister not blind to what was happening in foreign countries would have seen that if he valued the goodwill of France and England and America—and this goodwill was a necessity for the Italians—it was incumbent on him to modify his politics. The British Press was not unanimous—all the prominent publicists did not, like a gentleman a few months afterwards in the Spectator, say that "if the Yugoslavs contemplated a possible war against the Italians, by whose efforts and those of France and Great Britain they had so recently been liberated, then would the Southern Slavs be guilty of monstrous folly and ingratitude." Baron Sonnino might have apprehended that more knowledge of the Yugoslav-Italian situation would produce among the Allies more hostility; he should have known that average Frenchmen do not buy their favourite newspaper for what it says on foreign politics, and that the Journal des Debats and the Humanite have many followers who rarely read them. And, above all else, he should have seen that the Americans, who had not signed the Treaty of London, would decline to lend themselves to the enforcement of an antiquated pact which was so grievously incongruous with Justice, to say nothing of the Fourteen Points of Mr. Wilson. But Sonnino threw all these considerations to the winds. He should have reconciled himself to the fact that his London Treaty, if for no other reason than that it was a secret one, belonged to a different age and was really dead; his refusal to bury it was making him unpopular with the neighbours. One does not expect a politician to be quite consistent, and Baron Sonnino is, after all, not the same man who in 1881 declared that to claim Triest as a right would be an exaggeration of the principle of nationalities; but he should not in 1918 have been deaf to the words which he considered of such weight when he wrote them in 1915 that he caused them to be printed in a Green Book. "The monarchy of Savoy," he said in a telegram to the Duke of Avarna on February 15 of that year, "has its staunchest root in the fact that it personifies the national ideals." Baron Sonnino was rallying to the House of Karageorgević most of those among the Croats and Slovenes who, for some reason or other, had been hesitating; for King Peter personified the national ideals which the Baron was endeavouring to throttle. As Mr. Wickham Steed pointed out in a letter to the Corriere della Sera, the complete accord between Italians and Yugoslavs is not only possible and necessary, but constitutes a European interest of the first order; if it be not realized, the Adriatic would become not Italian nor Slav, but German; if, on the other hand, it were brought about, then the language and the culture, the commerce and the political influence of Italy would not merely be maintained but would spread along the eastern Adriatic coast and in the Balkans in a manner hitherto unhoped for; if no accord be reached, then the Italians would see their whole influence vanish from every place not occupied by overwhelming forces. But Sonnino, a descendant of rancorous Levantines and obstinate Scots, went recklessly ahead; it made you think that he was one of those unhappy people whom the gods have settled to destroy. He neglected the most elementary precautions; he ought to have requested, for example, that the French and British and Americans would everywhere be represented where Yugoslav territory was occupied. But, alas, he did not show that he disagreed with the Tribuna's lack of wisdom when it said that "the Italian people could never tolerate that beside our flag should fly other flags, even if friendly, for this would imply a confession of weakness and incapacity."

THE STATE OF THE CHAMBER

The Government was in no very strong position, for the Chamber was now moribund and the many groups which had been formed, in the effort to create a war Chamber out of one that was elected in the days of peace, were now dissolving. An incident towards the end of November exhibited not only the contrivances by which these groups hoped to preserve themselves, but the eagerness with which the Government rushed to placate the powerful. A young deputy called Centurione, a member of the National Defence group (the Fascio), made a furious attack on Giolitti, under cover of a personal explanation. He had been accused of being a police spy. Well, after Caporetto, convinced that the defeat was partly due to the work of Socialists and Giolittians, he had disguised himself as a workman and taken part in Socialist meetings. He was proud to have played the spy for the good of his country, and he finished by accusing Giolitti and six others of treason. The whole Chamber—his own party not being strongly represented—seems to have made for Centurione who, amidst an indescribable uproar, continued to shout "Traitor!" to anyone who approached him. Sciorati, one of the accused, was at last able to make himself heard. He related how, at Turin, Centurione had made a fool of himself. (But if Lewis Carroll had been with us still he might have made himself immortal.) "I have seen him disguised," said Sciorati, "as an out-porter at the door of my own house." Giolitti appeared and demanded an immediate inquiry, with what was described as cold and menacing emphasis. And Orlando, the Prime Minister, flew up to the Chamber and parleyed with Giolitti in the most cordial fashion. Centurione's documents were at once investigated and no proofs of treason were found, no witnesses proposed by him being examined. He was expelled from the National Defence group for "indiscipline," his colleagues frustrating his attempts to sit next to them by repeatedly changing their seats. The attitude of the Fascio was humble and apologetic, and the other significant feature of the incident was the haste with which Orlando reacted to Giolitti's demand for an inquiry.

THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY

Baron Sonnino had to take into account not only the unsteadiness of the ground on which the Government stood, owing to these parliamentary regroupings, but the general effects that would ensue from the country's financial position. When, in spite of the victory and the approach of peace, the exchange price of the lira dropped 2 to 3 points towards the end of November, this may have had, contrary to what was thought by many, no connection with a revolutionary movement. The fact that in Triest the authorities had been obliged to isolate Italian ex-prisoners on their return from Russia, since they were imbued with revolutionary principles, at any rate were uttering loud revolutionary cries, may have been the mere temporary infection caught from their environment. But that of which there was no doubt was the entire truth of Caroti's statement when that deputy declared at Milan that while Italy had been triumphant in the military sphere, she had been economically overthrown. Bankruptcy had not been announced, though it existed. Sonnino may therefore have been impelled not only by imperialism, by his inability to adjust himself to the new international situation, but by the hope that through his policy the new internal situation might be tided over. If the thoughts of his fellow-countrymen could be directed elsewhere than to bankruptcy and possible revolution, it might be that in the meantime adroit measures and good luck would brush away these disagreeable phenomena. And he would then be rightly looked upon as one who had deserved well of his country. So he set about the task with such a thoroughness that he turned not alone the thoughts of men, but their heads. Professor Italo Giglioli addressed a letter to The New Europe in which he said that he was claiming now not the territories given by the Treaty of London, but considerably more. He wanted all Dalmatia, down to Kotor. In foreign hands, he said, Dalmatia would be an eternal danger, and besides: "What in Dalmatia is not Italian is barbaric!" It was a melancholy spectacle to see a man of Giglioli's reputation saying that Dubrovnik, the refuge of Slav culture in the age of darkness and the place in which Slav literature so gloriously arose, was, forsooth, throughout its history always Italian in culture and in literature. "Among thinking people in Italy," proclaims the Professor, "there are indeed but few who will abandon to the Balkan processes a region and a people which have always been possessed by Italian culture and which constitute the necessary wall of Italy and Western Europe against the inroads of the half-barbaric East." He protests that it is ridiculous of The New Europe to assert that the secret Treaty of London is supported by a tiny, discredited band of Italians; and indeed that Review has regretfully to acknowledge that many of his countrymen have been swept off their feet and carried onward in the gale of popular enthusiasm. Giglioli ends by asking that his name be removed from the list of The New Europe's collaborators. In vain does the The New Europe say that the Professor's programme must involve a war between Italians and Yugoslavs. "We must be prepared for a new war," said the Secolo on January 12. "The Italians who absolutely demand the conquest of Dalmatia must have the courage to demand that the demobilization of our Army should be suspended, and to say so very clearly." And the Corriere della Sera warned Orlando of the consequences if he took no steps to silence the mad voices. "No one knows better," it wrote, "than the Minister of the Interior, who is also Premier, that on the other coast Italy claims that part of Dalmatia which was assigned to her by the Treaty of London, but not more.... If the Government definitely claims and demands the whole of Dalmatia, then the agitation is justified; but if the Government does not demand it, then we repeat that to favour and not to curb the movement is the worst kind of Defeatism, for it creates among Italians a state of mind tending to transform the sense of a great victory into the sense of a great defeat ... quite apart from the intransigeance which this provokes in the Yugoslav camp." It was in vain. And when Bissolati, having resigned from office on the issue of Italo-Yugoslav relations, attempted to explain his attitude at the Scala in Milan on January 11, his meeting was wrecked, for though the body of the hall and the galleries were relatively quiet, if not very sympathetic—it was a ticket meeting—the large number of subscription boxes, which could not be closed to their ordinary tenants, had been packed by Bissolati's adversaries, who succeeded in preventing him from speaking. After a long delay he managed to read the opening passage, but when he came to the first "renunciation"—the Brenner for the Teutons—disturbance set in finally and he left the theatre. Afterwards the rioters adjourned to the Corriere and Secolo offices, where they broke the windows. And thus the first full statement of the war aims of any Italian statesman could not be uttered. It was spread abroad by the Press. Bissolati claimed to speak in the name of a multitude which had hitherto been silent.... The masses, he said, demanded, that their rulers should devote all their strength to "the divine blessing of freeing mankind from the slavery of war." ... "To those," he said, "who speak of the Society of Nations as an 'ideology' or 'Utopia' which has no hold over our people, we would reply: Have you been in the trenches among the soldiers waiting for the attack?" [Signor Bissolati had the unique record, among Allied or enemy statesmen, of having volunteered for active service, though past the fighting age, and of having served in the trenches for many months before entering the Orlando Cabinet.]

A FOUNTAIN IN THE SAND

The speech was an admirable expression of that new spirit which the Allies had been fighting for. "Each of the anti-German nations," he said, "must guard itself against any unconsciously German element in its soul, if only in order to have the right to combat any trace in others of the imperialism which had poisoned the outlook of the German people." With regard to the Adriatic: "Yugoslavia exists, and no one can undo this. But to the credit of Italy be it said, the attainment of unity and independence for the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was and must be alike the reason and the certain issue of our War.... Italy felt that if Serbia had been swallowed up by that monstrous Empire—itself a vassal of the German Empire—her own economic expansion and political independence would have received a mortal blow. And so she was on Serbia's side, first in neutrality, then in intervention.... Those who only see, in the formation of the Yugoslav State, a sympathetic or antipathetic episode of the War, or a subsidiary effect of it, have failed to detect its inner meaning." As for the Treaty of London which was concluded against the enemy, it was not to be regarded as intangible against a friendly people. By special grants of autonomy, as at Zadar, or by arrangements between the two States, he would see the language and culture of all the trans-Adriatic sons of Italy assured. He warned his countrymen lest, in order to meet the peril of a German-Slav alliance against them, they should have to subordinate themselves to France and England, and be their proteges instead of their real Allies—a situation not unlike that of the Triple Alliance when Germany protected them against the ever-imminent attack of Austria.... "But perhaps the Yugoslavs will not be grateful or show an equal spirit of conciliation? Certainly they will then have no vital interests to push against Italy, and in the long run sentiments follow interests." There was, in fact, throughout the speech only one questionable passage, that in which he said that "if Italy renounced the annexation of Dalmatia she might obtain from Yugoslavia or from the Peace Conference the joy of pressing to her heart the most Italian city of Rieka, which the Treaty of London renounced." This may have been a sop to Cerberus. But Bissolati's appeals to justice and to wisdom fell upon the same stony ground as his demonstration that Dalmatia's strategic value is very slight from a defensive point of view to those who possess Pola, Valona and the outer islands. There is a school of reasonable Italians, such as Giuseppe Prezzolini, who for strategic reasons asked for the isle of Vis. Mazzini himself, after 1866, found it necessary, for the same reasons, that Vis should be Italian, since it is the key of the Adriatic. Some of us thought that it might have been feasible to follow the precedent of Port Mahon, which Great Britain occupied without exercising sovereignty over the rest of the island of Minorca. The magnificent harbour of Vis, perfectly protected against the bora, would have satisfied all the demands of the Italian navy. Vis is to-day practically as much Slav as Minorca was Spanish, and if the Slavs had been left in possession of the remainder of that island it would have proved the reverse of a danger to the Italians, since with a moderate amount of good sense the same relations would have existed as was the case upon Minorca.... The solution which was ultimately found in the Treaty of Rapallo was to allocate to the Italians in complete sovereignty not the island of Vis, but the smaller neighbouring island of Lastovo.

While the vast majority of Italians would not listen to Bissolati they delighted in Gabriele d'Annunzio. The great poet Carducci[21] had his heart full when he thought about the ragged, starving Croat soldiers, pitiable victims of the Habsburgs, exploited by them all their lives and fighting for them in a foreign land—and they fought bravely; but as they were often clad in miserable garments, they were called by those who wanted to revile them "Croat dirt." And that is what they are to Gabriele d'Annunzio. When the controversies of to-day have long been buried and when d'Annunzio's works are read, his lovers will be stabbed by his Lettera ai Dalmati. And if the mob had to be told precisely what the Allies are, it did not need a lord of language to dilate upon "the thirty-two teeth of Wilson's undecipherable smile," to say that the French "drunk with victory, again fly all their plumes in the wind, tune up all their fanfares, quicken their pace in order to pass the most resolute and speedy—and we step aside to let them pass." No laurel will be added to his fame for having spoken of "the people of the five meals" [the English] which, "its bloody work hardly ended, reopens its jaws to devour as much as it can." All Italy resounded with the catchword that the Croats had been Austria's most faithful servants, although some Italians, such as Admiral Millo, as we shall see, when writing confidentially, did not say anything so foolish. Very frequently, however, as the Croats noticed, those who had been the most uncompromising wielders of Austria's despotism were taken on by Italy, the new despot. For example, at Split when the mayor and other Yugoslav leaders were arrested at the beginning of the War, one Francis Mandirazza was appointed as Government Commissary, after having filled the political post of district captain (Bezirkshauptmann) which was only given to those who were in the entire confidence of the Government. As soon as the Italians had possession of Šibenik they took him into their service.

THOSE WHO HELD BACK FROM THE PACT OF ROME

The New Europe, whose directors had taken a chief part in bringing the Italians and the Yugoslavs together, which congress had resulted in the Pact of Rome, of April 1918, pointed out that in those dark days of the high-water mark of the great German offensive, this Pact—which provided the framework of an agreement, on the principle of "live and let live"—was publicly approved of by the Italian Premier and his colleagues, but was rejected now when the danger was past and Austria was broken up. Those who brought about the Pact reminded Italy that she was bound to it by honour and that the South Slav statesmen never had withdrawn from the position which it placed them in with reference to Italy.... Everyone must sympathize with the disappointment of those gentlemen who—Messrs. Franklin-Bouillon, Wickham Steed and Seton-Watson were associated in this endeavour—had striven for a noble end, had achieved something in spite of many obstacles, and now saw that one party simply would not use the bridge which they had built for it. This party had, however, shown such reticence both while the bridge was being made and afterwards that one could scarcely be astonished at their attitude. The Congress at Rome was in no sense official, but a voluntary meeting of private persons, who were got together with a certain amount of trouble. So unofficial, in fact, was the Congress that those Serbs who worked with the representatives of the Yugoslav Committee belonged to the Opposition; the Serbian Government, then in Corfu, not giving their adhesion to the Congress, which was perhaps a very clever move on the part of Pašić. Whether it be true or not that Signor Amendolla, the General Secretary—he is the political director of the Corriere della Sera—was asked by the Yugoslav Committee not to admit any Serbian deputies except those of the Opposition, it appears that no other Serbs took a part in the proceedings. The Italian Government adopted an ambiguous attitude, for while Orlando publicly endorsed the resolutions, as did several other Ministers, notably Bissolati, the Premier gave no confirmation to those who interpreted his attitude as implying the tacit abandonment of Italy's extreme territorial claims. Sonnino was so reserved that he took no share at all in the Congress and refused to receive the Yugoslavs. He made no secret of his determination to exact the London Treaty. Nothing was signed by the Italian Government; and if Orlando's honour was involved it certainly does not seem possible to say the same of Sonnino. It may be that Pašić foresaw what would happen and was therefore unwilling to be implicated. He is an astute statesman of the old school—"too old," says The New Europe, which regards him as an Oriental sultan. But respecting the Pact of Rome they were rather at issue with the Italians. What the Italians gained was that the various clauses of the Pact were used as the basis for propaganda in the Austrian ranks on the Piave. And when once the Austrian peril had vanished the old rancour reappeared, particularly when, by the terms of the military armistice with Austria, Italy obtained the right to occupy a zone corresponding with what she was given by the London Treaty. Whereas in that instrument the frontiers were exactly indicated, there was in the Pact of Rome no more than a general agreement that the principles of nationality and self-determination should be applied, with due regard to other "vital interests." Bissolati's group was in favour of something more definite, but to this Orlando was not well disposed; and Trumbić, the President of the Yugoslav Committee, did not avail himself of the, perhaps rather useless, offer of some Serbs who were not participating in the Congress, but suggested that while he worked with the Government they would keep in touch with the Bissolati group; even as Bismarck who would work openly with a Government, and through his agents with the Opposition.

GATHERING WINDS

As the Serbian Society of Great Britain observed in a letter of welcome which they addressed to Baron Sonnino on the occasion of a visit to London, they were convinced "after a close study and experience of the Southern Slav question in all its aspects and some knowledge of the Adriatic problem as a whole, that there is no necessary or inevitable conflict between the aspiration of the Southern Slav people towards complete unity and the postulates of Italian national security and of the completion of Italian unity; but that, on the contrary, there exist strong grounds for Italo-Southern Slav co-operation and friendship." The Italian Government, however, had now got almost their whole country behind them, and in the months after the War so many Italians had become warlike that they were enchanted with the picture drawn by Gabriele d'Annunzio: "And what peace will in the end be imposed on us, poor little ones of Christ? A Gallic peace? A British peace? A star-spangled peace? Then, no! Enough! Victorious Italy—the most victorious of all the nations—victorious over herself and over the enemy—will have on the Alps and over her sea the Pax Romana, the sole peace that is fitting. If necessary we will meet the new plot in the fashion of the Arditi [units of volunteers employed on specially dangerous enterprises], a grenade in each hand and a knife between our teeth." It is true that the other poor little ones of Christ, the Franciscans, who are greatly beloved by the people of Dalmatia, from whom they are sprung, have hitherto preached a different Pax Romana. The Dalmatian clergy, who are patriotic, have been rather a stumbling-block in the way of the Italians. A very small percentage of them—about six in a thousand—have been anti-national and opportunist. At one place a priest whom his bishop had some years ago had occasion to expel, returned with the Italian army in November 1918 and informed the bishop that he had a letter from the Pope which reinstated him, but he refused to show this letter. He was anxious to preach on the following Sunday; the bishop declined to allow him. Then came unto the bishop the chief of the Italian soldiery and he said unto him: "Either thou shalt permit this man to preach or I will cause thine office to be taken from thee." Unfortunately the bishop yielded, and the sermon, as one would imagine, was devoted to the greater glory of the Italians. Sometimes the Italians, since their occupation, have made a more humorous if not more successful use of the Church. On Palm Sunday, after the service a number of peasants, in their best clothes, were walking through a village holding the usual palm leaves in their hands. They were photographed, and a popular Italian newspaper printed this as a full-page coloured illustration. It was entitled: "Dalmatian Peasants on their way to pay Homage to Admiral Millo."

This policy of a grenade in each hand and a knife between the teeth makes a powerful appeal to the munition firms. And others who feed the flame of Italo-Slav hatred are, as Gaetano Salvemini, the anti-chauvinist, pointed out in the Unita of Florence, those professional gladiators who would lose their job, those agents of the Italo-German-Levantine capitalism of the Triest Chamber of Commerce who want to be rid of the competition of Rieka and think that this can only be obtained by annexation, and also those Italian Nationalists who believe that the only path to national greatness is by acquiring territory everywhere. No light has come to them from the East; the same arguments which are now put forward by such societies as the "Pro Dalmatia" could be heard in Italy before she possessed herself of Tripoli. One heard the same talk of strategic necessities; one heard that nearly all the population was waiting with open arms for the Italians; one heard that from a business point of view nothing could be better; one heard that the Italians without Tripoli would be choked out of the Mediterranean. And what have been the fruits of the conquest of Tripoli? No economic advantages have been procured, as Prezzolini wrote, no sociological, no strategic, no diplomatic benefits. A great deal of money was thrown away, a vast amount of energy was wasted, and thousands of troops have to be stationed permanently in the wilderness. That expedition to Tripoli, which was one of the gravest errors of Italian politics, was preceded by clouds of forged documents, of absurdities, of partial extracts out of consular reports, of lying correspondence which succeeded in misleading the Italians.

WHY THE ITALIANS CLAIMED DALMATIA

"The Italian Government," said the Morning Post,[22] "is well qualified to judge of the interests of its own people." Here the Morning Post is not speaking of the Italian Government which dealt with Tripoli, but that which has been dealing with Dalmatia. The reasons which have been advanced for an Italian or a partly Italian Dalmatia are geographical, botanical, historical, ethnical, military, naval and economic. As for the geographical reasons: even in the schools of Italy they teach that the Italian natural frontier is determined by the point of division of the waters of the Alps and that this frontier falls at Porto Re, a few miles to the south of Rieka—everything to the south of that belonging to the Balkan Peninsula. We may note the gallant patriotism of an Italian cartographer mentioned by Prezzolini; this worthy has inscribed a map of Dalmatia down to the Narenta with the pleasing words: "The new natural boundaries of Italy." As for the argument that the flora of Dalmatia resembles that of Italy, this can equally well be employed by those who would annex Italy to Dalmatia. Historically, we have seen that Venice, which held for many years the seacoast and the islands, did not alter the Slav character of the country. It is not now the question as to whether Venice deserved or did not deserve well of Dalmatia, but "the truth is," says M. Emile Haumant,[23] the learned and impartial French historian, "the truth is that when Marmont's Frenchmen arrived they found the Slav language everywhere, the Italian by its side on the islands and the coast, Italian customs and culture in the towns, and also the lively and sometimes affectionate remembrance of Venice; but nowhere did a Dalmatian tell them that he was an Italian. On the contrary, they all affirmed that they were brothers of the Slav beyond, in whose misfortunes they shared and whose successes they celebrated." The Italians themselves, in achieving their unity, were very right to set aside the undoubted historical claims of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, those of the House of Este and those of the Vatican, seeing that they were in opposition to the principle of nationality and the right of a people to determine its own political status. With regard to the ethnical reasons, we are flogging another dead horse, as the statistics—even those taken during the Italian occupation—prove to the meanest intellect; and now the pro-Italians, despairing to make anyone believe that the 97.5 per cent. of the people of Dalmatia are truly Italians who by some kink in their nature persist in calling themselves Slavs, have invented a brand new nationality, the Dalmatian, after the classic style of the late Professor Jagić who at Vienna, under the pressure of the Austrian Government, began talking of the Bosnian language in order not to say that it is Serbo-Croat. He was drowned in laughter. With respect to the military reasons, the Dalmatian littoral cannot be defended by a State which is not in possession of the hinterland. In time of peace a very strong army would be needed; Italy would, in fact, have to double her army for the defence of a frontier 700 kilometres long. And in the event of war it would be necessary either to abandon Dalmatia or to form two armies of operation, one on the frontiers of Julian Venetia, the other in Dalmatia, and without any liaison between them. From the military point of view it is incomparably more to the interest of Italy that she should live on friendly terms with the people of the eastern shore of the Adriatic than that she should maintain there an army out of all proportion to her military and economic resources—an army which in time of war would be worse than useless, since, as M. Gauvain observes, the submarines, which would find their nesting-places in the islands, would destroy the lines of communication. An Italian naval argument is, that if she had to fight on the eastern side of the Adriatic her sailors in the morning would have the sun in their eyes; but the Yugoslavs would be similarly handicapped in the case of an evening battle. With regard to the economic reasons, the longitudinal lines will continue to guarantee to the Germans and Magyars the commercial monopoly of the East, and Italy will perceive that she has paid very dearly for a blocked-up window. The sole method by which Italy can from the Adriatic cause her commerce to penetrate to the Balkans is by concluding with a friendly Yugoslavia the requisite commercial treaties, which will grow more valuable with the construction of the lateral railways, running inland from the coast, which Austrians and Magyars so constantly impeded.