I forget whether Signor Buonfiglio made any remark, but a few hours later at Velaluka he was most incensed. As our boat—we had returned to the old Porer at Komiža—sailed into the harbour a huge Yugoslav flag was flying from the summit of a hill, with French, British and American flags around it. The destroyer had arrived before us and the burly journalist was striding up and down the quay. "I protest," he exclaimed, as he saw us, "and not as a journalist but as an Italian citizen! I protest!" Between us and the front row of houses, which included the town-major's office, there was a large empty space—the inhabitants could be descried up the side-streets and behind the windows. De Michaelis, the town-major, was evidently a superior young man; as he poured out the champagne he told us with perfect frankness that the educated people at Velaluka were Yugoslavs. Suddenly there was a terrific noise just underneath us. We hurried downstairs and found that the soldiers in their excitement had fired off a machine gun into the wall. Half an hour later the firing could be heard from the top of the hill, but we never ascertained whether anyone was wounded. In this place the Italianist party sent to us an ex-publican who had now joined the police, a small trader and a municipal clerk who had recently been imported from Zadar. The Yugoslavs were a large landowner, a doctor and a priest, who told us that the people for the most part were refusing to accept gratuitous food from the Italians.

ON THE WAY TO BLATO

We were anxious to visit Blato, an inland village of 8000 inhabitants. De Michaelis regretted very much that he had no carriage, but a Yugoslav had a quaint little car on which he was learning how to drive and he was kind enough to take us—for which he was afterwards deported to Italy. The good man made so much noise in changing his gears that our progress was advertised in the uttermost fields, and very few of those who bore down upon us came unprovided with flowers. Several of the bouquets hit Pommerol or myself in the eye, and the Dutch say that the best cause has need of a good pleader. But the people were so gay, waving their hats and running after us (they did not always have to run) and shouting for the various Allies and for President Wilson. I remember two small round-eyed boys who were not old enough to run; they were standing hand in hand by the side of the road, panting the magic word "Wilson! Wilson! Wilson!" There was a sudden contrast when we jerked into the village. People were not rushing towards us, but away from us—with furious carabinieri behind them. We got into the garden in front of the gendarmerie; one of the men was so enraged that he kept on muttering "Bestia! Bestia! Bestia!" In the Commandant's office we met Major Federico Verdinois, the town-major, who said that if he had only known of our coming this wretched scuffle would not have happened. Even as he spoke it started again; we leaned out of the window and saw two or three persons who were being prevented by soldiers from going down the street or from going anywhere. An officer was slashing with a riding-whip at a soldier who was particularly rough. "One can do nothing with the marines; they are brutal," said Major Verdinois. At last there was peace, and the major said that an Italian deputation would come to see us. It consisted of six individuals. The Austro-Hungarian census of 1910 said that the Blato district contained 13,147 Serbo-Croats, 3 Germans and 6 Italians; but these six were not all in the deputation, for two of its members had come from Hvar, one from Zadar, two were ex-Austrian spies and one was a Yugoslav, who hoped in this way to help his people. One gentleman deplored that he had not been told about our journey; had he known he would have told his peasants to appear. Another gentleman assured us that the peasants were afraid of declaring their real wishes. Of course a country whose friends call it the most liberal in the world could not allow such a state of things to continue, and a short time after this the following Order was issued by the staff of the 66th Division of Infantry:

No. 46. Confidential—Personal. VERY URGENT.

June 23, 1919.

TO THE COMMANDERS AT BENKOVAC, OBROVAC, NOVIGRAD, ERVENIK, KISTANJE, SKRADIN, BIOGRAD, NIN, GJEVERSKE, SUKO[VS]AN AND KARIN.

TO THE COMMAND OF THE ROYAL DIVISIONS.

It is necessary to bring about, with no delay and very discreetly, the dispatch of messages to the Prime Minister Nitti and to the Minister of Foreign Affairs Tittoni from the mayor, from societies, etc., of this garrison, expressing the people's keen desire to be annexed to Italy.

A copy of said telegram should be transmitted to me.

THE MAJOR: THE MAJOR-GENERAL: FORESI. SQUILLACE.

To return to the events at Blato—while we were waiting for the Yugoslavs a woman made her way as far as the corridor, flung herself down on her knees and entreated us to protect her. Major Verdinois gave us his word of honour that no Yugoslav with whom we spoke would, for that reason, be arrested. Perhaps he was overruled by his superior officers—at all events he arrested and deported to Italy, in the night of June 19, no less than ten persons, that is, all the Yugoslavs who spoke to us at Blato, with two exceptions. [We cabled this to the Paris Conference, and after some delay the unfortunate men were repatriated.]

WHAT THE MAJOR SAID

For what happened before our arrival I am indebted to the chemist Radimiri, from whose report the following is an extract: "At ten in the morning Major Verdinois had summoned to his office the communal doctor, Moretti, and the secretary, Dragunić, both of them Yugoslavs. He told them that two Englishmen who were cruising about in the Porer would very likely be coming up that afternoon to Blato and he would permit no sort of demonstration. The doctor, he said, would be held responsible for any disorder; and as Moretti was about to make this known to the people, who were just coming out of church, the Italian adjutant approached him with a paper and ordered him to read it to the Yugoslavs. This document—it has been preserved—is in the Serbo-Croat language and was given to the doctor because the adjutant, who did not know the language, mistook it for another one. It was an exhortation to the people, urging them to have nothing more to do with the Yugoslav intelligentsia, which had made a great deal of money during the War. 'And you have given your blood for four and a half years and what has been your benefit?' Dr. Moretti made a personal appeal for the maintenance of order, and the people, having called out 'Long live Wilson!' went their divers ways in peace. Nevertheless three platoons appeared, each with one officer and one N.C.O. The adjutant's platoon distinguished itself, for while the arditi attacked anyone they saw, including women and children, with the butt end of their muskets, Lieut. Giovanoni laid about him with a dog-whip. Several of the soldiers made for a group of four young fellows; three of them escaped and the fourth, Peter Kraljević, was struck with a rifle so severely across the face that he was bathed in blood. As he tried to defend himself he was shot at from a distance of three paces: one bullet went through his nose, another wounded him in the forehead. He fell to the ground, and a teacher, Mrs. Maria Grubisić, who had witnessed the whole incident, sank down unconscious at his side and was covered with his blood. Various other people were injured—three little girls received rifle shots in their bodies. All the main streets were shut off and eight machine guns were placed in readiness. But the people were not to be intimidated, and when the Englishmen arrived their national consciousness was displayed. As a result Peter Čarap was knocked unconscious with a mighty blow of a musket, the fourteen-year-old Joseph Suležić had a similar experience, and among many others who were assaulted we will only mention an ex-official, Anthony Pižtulić, a man of sixty, who was struck twice with a rifle on his stomach and then prevented from going home but chased out into the fields.... It seemed as if it would be impossible for our people to have a conversation with the Englishmen, but at last twenty men and twelve girls managed to reach that house...."

THE PROTEST OF AN ITALIAN JOURNALIST

I would also give Signor Buonfiglio's dispatch from this island—it appeared in the Corriere d'Italia of June 16—but more than three-quarters of it is devoted to an account of some Dalmatian delegates who were received, during the War, by Francis Joseph and expressed their loyalty. The deputation was introduced by Dr. Ivčević, a Croat; and if Signor Buonfiglio wants us to deduce from this how ardently the Croats loved the Habsburgs he will have to give some other explanation for the very loyal speeches of his countryman, Dr. Ziliotto of Zadar. But I presume that his editor did not send Signor Buonfiglio on this journey to the end that he should write of what official speakers saw fit to say during the War. As for the incidents we witnessed and the islanders' aspirations, he merely says that their welcome to us was an artificial affair which the Yugoslav committees, with extreme effort, had organized—and I don't think that that is a very illuminating observation.

We learned that on arriving in Blato the Italians dissolved the town council, on account of its incapacity to do the work. However, a military man to whom it was handed over gave his opinion that he had never seen a better administration.... Out of all that we were told, I will relate the following: some Italian soldiers were playing football, and when they kicked the ball into a maize-field and continued to play amid the maize, the farmers asked them to desist. Two officers and forty men were present; they fell upon the three farmers, and when finally the major commanded them to stop, they dragged them to the barracks and thrashed them so that the people in adjacent houses heard them all the night.

On our way to the minute harbour of Pregorica, where the Porer was waiting for us, we had a repetition of the scenes enacted between Velaluka and Blato; and a number of young men, heedless of the risks they ran, rushed down the mountain-side to Pregorica by the shortcuts. In the harbour were some carabinieri, as well as our escorting destroyer. We therefore had to leave without delay, lest the young patriots should come into contact with the carabinieri. So very hastily and in a very illegible scrawl I copied the original letter given on November 4, 1918, by Lieut. Poggi to the people of Velaluka: "We Italians," it said, "have come to Velaluka as the friends of Yugoslavia and of the Entente. We have come as friends and not as foes, and as such I ask you to accept us. We are hoisting our flag together with that of Yugoslavia, and with your friendly consent we will keep it there until the question of the general peace is definitely arranged, according to your and our ... according to the principles of ..." The two missing words are illegible.

INTERESTING DELEGATES

Lying off Korčula, that evening, we received the usual delegates. One of the Italians, Dr. Benussi, said in a trembling, tearful voice that the Italians were far too good. And while we were hearing from one of his colleagues what were his views on the subject of a plebiscite, Dr. Benussi moaned unceasingly, "I wish I had not come! I wish I had not come!" He considered that it was outrageous of us to allude to plebiscites. The Yugoslavs did not tell us anything very thrilling; the Italian authorities persisted in writing to the peasants in Italian, of which they scarcely understand a word. What a pity that this is not their most serious fault! A barrister called Dr. Pero Cviličević came, with a companion, to see us the next day, before breakfast. He said that they, like most people on the island, were Croats; and he and his friend belonged to the Serbo-Croat party, which was, he said, a righteous, though rather a small party, as the island had been gravely handicapped by the support which Austria gave the Serbs. "And now," he added—it seemed a trifle illogical—"the people are all very contented. Believe me," he said. Furthermore, he volunteered the information that the law was being administered in the name of the Entente and the United States. It may show a distinct bias on our part, but I fear we asked him whether the blows from the butt end of muskets were being applied under the same sanction.... When we paid our formal visit to the Commandant at his office on the quay he did not ask if we would care to go to one of the Italian schools. An American journalist had made a speech in Rome, describing how he had been taken to a school at Korčula, how the mistress had allowed him to ask the children if they knew Italian, how they had raised their hands, and how this had convinced him that Dalmatia should become Italian. Apparently that journalist had not been told that prior to the War this town of some 2000 inhabitants was provided with five schools in which not a single child spoke Italian, and with one school subsidized by the Liga Nazionale which—as in Albania—lured its pupils by gifts of clothing, books, etc. The teachers, from the Trentino, knew not a word of Serbo-Croat and the children not a word of Italian. But not very much harm was done, as the population considered it shameful to attend this school, and the bribes never succeeded in attracting more than thirty pupils, even when money was paid to the parents. This institution was reopened by the Italian army after the War, and presumably it is the one which the American visited. I do not know whether the schoolmistress, forewarned of his visit, had told the children in Serbo-Croat that a gentleman would come and say something in Italian, whereupon they would hold up their hands.

A DIGRESSION ON SIR ARTHUR EVANS

Seeing that the Adriatic problem, after all these months, had not been solved but on the contrary had been allowed to spread its poison more and more, one naturally wonders what was being done in Paris. The Conference was fortunate enough to have at its disposal, after the Armistice, the famous ethnologist and archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans. This gentleman, whose distinctions are too numerous to mention (Fellow of Brasenose; twice President of the British Association; Keeper during twenty-four years of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford; D.Litt.; LL.D.; F.R.S.; P.S.A., and so forth), has for many years devoted himself to the eastern Adriatic—the second edition of his Through Bosnia and the Herzegovina on Foot appeared in 1877, his Illyrian Letters in 1878, his Slavs and European Civilization in the same year. He never ceased from that time onward to study these matters. "I think," he says in a letter to me from Youlbury, near Oxford, of which he kindly permits me to make any use I like, "that in some ways I have more title to speak on the Adriatic Question than any other Englishman, as Dalmatia was my headquarters for some years. Neither did I approach the question with any anti-Italian prejudices. I was so far recognized as a competent and moderate authority that I was asked by the Royal Geographical Society to give them a paper on the subject.... Anxious, with others friendly to both sides, to secure an equitable agreement between the Italians and Yugoslavs, I took part in a series of private conferences in London which led to a preliminary Agreement forming the basis on which the Congress at Rome approached the question. There the Agreement was ratified and publicly approved by Orlando. How Sonnino proceeded to try to wreck it, you will know. Finally (just before the Armistice, as it happened) there was to have been a new Congress of Nationalities at Paris, which I was asked to attend. It was stopped by the big Allies, as matters were thought too critical, owing to the submission of Bulgaria. But I thought it would be useful if I went to Paris all the same, and I obtained from the Foreign Office, War Office, etc., a passport vised 'British War Mission.' Shortly after I arrived in Paris the Armistice was declared. Soon afterwards, owing to the departure of Mr. Steed and Dr. Seton-Watson, there was left literally no one among our countrymen at Paris who knew the intricacies of the Adriatic Question and the relations of Italy with the Yugoslavs, and the Yugoslav-Roumanian difficulties, etc. That being the case, Lord Derby asked me to be his go-between, and I had an immense lot of work thrown on my shoulders. I had gone to the expense of taking a large salon at the Hotel Continental, where I had private Conferences—the Yugoslav and Roumanian leaders there, for instance, discussed the Banat frontier question, and the conciliatory proposals made no doubt furthered the final solution, with which they harmonized. When there was a serious danger of a clash between the Italian army and the Serbian forces at Ljubljana, knowing the imminence of the danger I made such strong representations to Lord D., which he forwarded to Balfour, that immediate pressure was exercised at Rome, and the Italians just drew back in time. I also was able to convey strong monitions to the other side. I used to let our Ambassador have a short precis almost daily of affairs connected with those regions.... With great trouble I prevailed on the Yugoslav representatives to agree to a scheme, which I drew up, for the neutralization of the East Adriatic coastal waters, and this was taken up by the Americans—Colonel House inviting me to an interview on the subject, in which he expressed his approval. A copy was also sent to the F.O., and for this and for several other bits of work useful to the F.O. I received Balfour's official thanks. I had also many friendly conversations with prominent Italians in Paris, and in every way ingeminated agreement between them and the Southern Slavs. But, meanwhile, I exposed the Nationalist Italian campaign, to which Sonnino was privy, in the Manchester Guardian. Finally I went, at the end of 1918, for a short holiday to England, Lord Derby (with whom I always had the friendliest relations) giving me a diplomatic pass. When, however, early in January 1919 I prepared to return to Paris, where I had kept on my expensive rooms, I found difficulties in my way. Italian intrigue had apparently been on foot. I was advised to write to Lord Hardinge, and I told him briefly the circumstances. This great man never answered or acknowledged my letter, and it was only by making urgent personal representations at the F.O. that I finally got the answer that they refused me a passport.... I gather that it was not only Italian intrigue but the feeling that they did not want 'damned experts.' And so they blundered on, and to this day"—the letter is dated July 17, 1920—"nothing is settled on the Adriatic but unsettlement."

THE DUPES OF NIKITA IN MONTENEGRO

Meanwhile at intervals during this year there had been troubles in Montenegro. On three occasions the Italians at Antivari had endeavoured to extend their sphere of influence, but the armed civilian population had been equal to these emergencies and had each time thrust them back to the coast. At Gaeta, between Rome and Naples, a very well-paid corps was stationed—almost every man was either a commissioned or a non-commissioned officer. The Italian Government was asked by Signor Lazari, the Socialist deputy, for what purpose it allocated 300,000 lire a month to support these peculiar troops. They were mostly Montenegrins—relatives of Nikita, members of the five favoured families, persons who were stranded and so forth; likewise at Gaeta were a number of other Yugoslavs who had been liberated from their Italian internment camps, but many of them, when they discovered what was expected of them, revolted. Thirty or forty of them managed to escape to France, and others to Montenegro, as for example the man who for twelve years had been Nikita's porter. He and three others reached Cetinje one day in August 1920 when I was there. They had with them a picture-card of the sixty-nine officers of the Gaeta army. Every one knows every one else in Montenegro and only two of these officers had held a previous commission. According to Nikita's Premier, Jovan Plamenac, the Italian Government considered this as the Montenegrin army and regarded (rather optimistically) as a loan the money it contributed to keep it up. In driblets the non-revolting part of this Gaeta army was taken to the eastern shores of the Adriatic, for the purpose of making "incidents" in Montenegro. There was a regular scale—so much in cash for the murder of a prefect, so much for a deputy. One day the father of Andrija Radović, a man of over seventy, was cut down; they waited until everyone had left the village to go to some fete in a neighbouring village, and the old man defended himself to the last.

These emissaries from Gaeta, misguided Montenegrins, other Southern Slavs and Italians, made considerable use of the mischievous speeches that were sometimes heard in the British Parliament. They would explain to some poor, ignorant mountain-dweller that such great people in England were still discussing Nikita's return, and if he did return and they had listened to the voice of Radović, woe be to them. Some of these wretched dupes would follow their seducers, who—I have no doubt—would not only have declined his decorations if they had been better informed, but would have placed the matter in the hands of their solicitor, as Gabriel Rossetti threatened to do if he were ever elected to the Royal Academy. And yet, after the character of the scoundrel King was fully exposed, his advocates, so far as I know, had not the grace to own their error. Of course there was in Montenegro a certain amount of uninstigated unrest; the wine of politics, which they were now for the first time freely quaffing, had gone to their heads—it was youth against age, the students were enthusiastic Democrats, the peasants were sturdy Radicals and they did not always restrict themselves to dialectical arguments. A certain number of people had gone to live "u shumi"—"in the woods." But the reasons that impelled them were not so much their devotion to the ex-King, as their own criminal past or their poverty. Others again had taken to this life for what may be called reasons of "honour."[42] Among the brigands was a man who was captured on the borders of Herzegovina, and before his execution—he had murdered seven people—he declared that he was a patriot and had done all this for the sake of King Nicholas, his victims being members of the domineering party. But when reminded that one of them was a baby, he hung his head and said no more.... There was discontent produced by the high cost of living—as the Italians not only held Antivari but even fired on French boats that were taking supplies up the river Bojana, it was necessary to revictual all except the new parts of Montenegro from Kotor. The lack of petrol, from which even the American Red Cross units were suffering, compelled the authorities to fall back on ox-waggons, which at any rate are not expeditious. By the way, it was the staff of another mission, calling itself the International Red Cross, which was to blame for adding to the country's troubles; after they had been installed for a month or two at Cetinje the people themselves, and not the authorities, turned them out, on the ground that they had used the Red Cross to conceal their machinations in Nikita's interest. The Yugoslav Government was held up to reprobation in the British Parliament and press for having hampered more than one British mission in the work of relieving the Montenegrins. The resources of these missions appeared to be moderate—the head of one of them had a meeting with Colonels Fairclough and Anderson of the American Red Cross and suggested that they should provide him with the wherewithal for carrying on. But even if their resources had been scantier their co-operation would have been very welcome if they had satisfied the authorities that they were as non-political as the Americans. It was curious that those who in the British press ventilated the grievances of these missions were the same people who championed Nikita.

The Italians persevered in their manoeuvres—Nikola Kovačević, the police commissary of Grahovo, sent in the month of May a confidential man of his to the Italian General at Dobrota, near Kotor. This man, who speaks perfect Italian, told the General that ever since 1916 he had haunted the forests as the leader of a band. Fifty persons, he said, had attached themselves to him; and he had now come in for a supply of arms and money, also for instructions. It would be impossible, said he, to endure the Serbian troops much longer in the country.

ITALIAN ENDEAVOURS

"You must hold out for a couple of months longer," said the General. "I can give you no money at present, but I can take you on a steamer to San Giovanni, where we have a camp of the King's friends; and from there you can easily go to Italy."

"I have given my word of honour," said the man, "that I will not go without my people. So I must first of all go back to ask them."

"In a military way," said the General, "the Serbs can now do nothing. They had tremendous losses in the war; and in two months the King of Montenegro will return or else there will be an Italian occupation. Work hard, my friend. I want you, in the first place, to set houses on fire; then to shoot officers and officials who are for Yugoslavia. You should also rob the transports."

Thereupon the man returned to Grahovo and soon afterwards the French General Thaon, who happened to go there, spoke with him for two hours and invited him to his headquarters at Kotor.

The disturbances in Montenegro did not cease; a country through which you could formerly drive with less risk than in Paris, was now infested by outlaws and those who pursued them. And Count de Salis, who had served as H.B.M.'s Minister at Cetinje, was sent back to Montenegro on a mission of inquiry. His report was not published, for the reason that he did not beat about the bush in his references to the Italians and for the further reason that he gave the names of those persons from whom he culled his information. This was a fine opportunity for the foreign busybodies who were thrusting their silly little knives into Yugoslavia. "Count de Salis reports clearly and unmistakably," said Mr. Ronald M'Neill in the House of Commons, "that in his judgment the wish of the Montenegrin people is to retain their own sovereign and their own independence." When Sir Hamar Greenwood subsequently, speaking for the Government, threw out a hint that this was not the case, it was amusing to see how the pro-Nikita party lost their interest in the report. A certain Mr. Herbert Vivian sent from Italy in April 1920 a most ferocious indictment against the Serbs in Montenegro to a London paper called the British Citizen. He said that the Countess de Salis, while at Cetinje, was in danger of her life. But the lady has been dead for many years. I presume this is the same Mr. Vivian who in a book, Servia, the Poor Man's Paradise, trembles with rage whenever a Serb speaks admiringly of Gladstone.

VARIOUS BRITISH COMMENTATORS

Count de Salis's impartial methods did not always please the population, which was by a large majority against the former king's return and—as he clearly stated—heart and soul for Yugoslavia. Balkan people do not yet, to any great extent, appreciate your desire for truth or even your honesty if you should give a hearing to their antagonists. The Cetinje public, therefore, organized a demonstration or two against the Count. They would have preferred that he should reach the afore-mentioned conclusions without such an exhaustive study of the case. He noted that there had been certain irregularities in the Yugoslav administration, but it was inevitable that in those unsettled times the inexperienced officials would not prove equal to every emergency. These officials, by the way, in 1919 were not Serbs from Serbia, but for the most part native Montenegrins. "The country is occupied and administered by foreigners," said[43] Mr. Ronald M'Neill, M.P. "Montenegro," said he, "is full of Serb officials." I suppose one must receive it more with sorrow than with anger if a man like Mr. Massingham of The Nation says that the Serbs "have deposed the Montenegrin judges, schoolmasters, doctors, chemists and local officials, and set up their own puppets." While he might have assumed that the long years of War had left the Serbs with a very inadequate supply of officials for the old kingdom, he would have ascertained, if his sources had been more trustworthy, that Glomažić, the very human prefect of Cetinje, is a native of Nikšić, that Miloš Ivanović, the mayor, is from the Kuči, near Podgorica—and he was a magistrate under Nikita; that Bojović, the prefect of Podgorica, is a barrister of the Piperi, while Radonić, the mayor, was an artillery officer, then a political prisoner and then the food administrator under Nikita; that Jaouković, the prefect of Nikšić, was a magistrate under the old regime—he comes, I believe, from the Morača; Zerović, the mayor and an ex-magistrate, is a native of Nikšić; that the prefect of Antivari, Dr. Goinić, is a doctor of law whose home is between Antivari and Virpazar; that Boško Bošković, the prefect of Kolačin, won great fame as an officer under Nikita, while Minić, the mayor, was Nikita's chief of the Custom-house. As for the doctors who left the country, these consisted of Matanović and Vulanović, who have gone to Novi Sad and Subotica respectively, as it is easier to make a living in those towns than in Montenegro. There are now three Yugoslav doctors at Cetinje (Odgerović, Radović—both of whom were doctors in the time of Nikita—and Matanović, a young man); they are all Montenegrins. So, too, with the chemists and the schoolmasters and the post and telegraph officials—I am sure that Mr. Massingham will excuse me if I do not mention all their names.

Since there are quite a number of Montenegrins in the Serbian administration and army, all the officers and men, for example, of the 2nd—the so-called "iron"—Regiment being of Montenegrin origin, one fails to see for what reason a Serb should be debarred from posts in Montenegro. It is unfortunate when people use the word "Montenegrin" without knowing that there is no separate Montenegrin nation, in the sense that there is a French or Italian nation. The Montenegrins are a small section of the Serbian nation, which sought a refuge among the bare, precipitous mountains and, unlike the other Serbs, maintained its independence. One should, therefore, to avoid confusion, speak of Serbs of Serbia and Serbs of Montenegro rather than of Serbs and Montenegrins. The purest Serbian is spoken in western Montenegro, on the borders of Herzegovina; those districts are ethnically different from the southern region, centring round Cetinje, which is the real old Montenegro, and the north and north-eastern parts, called the Brda, which in speech and customs are akin to the south. In western Montenegro, as in Herzegovina, the people, who live among their mountains on milk and its products, are very prolific, having families of eight or ten children. They are a very healthy, moral race.

Another pro-Nikita, anti-Serbian writer, excusable only on account of his insignificance, is Mr. Devine, who teaches, I am told, at a school near Winchester and seems very unwilling to be taught. If he wishes, by producing a book on the subject, to show other people that he knows painfully little about Montenegro, that is his own affair. But he is just as ignorant with regard to his hero. He says that he "is in a position to state that there is not one single word of truth in the insinuations and charges impugning the absolute integrity and loyalty of King Nicholas towards his Allies." The King was, according to Mr. Devine, a defenceless old man whom it was very bad form to attack. But the King had been defending himself at considerable length not only in a harangue to his adherents in a Paris suburb, but also on various occasions in a newspaper, the Journal Officiel—and both the speech and long extracts from the newspaper are quoted, with approval, in Mr. Devine's book. This quaint person is so frantically keen to pour whitewash over Nikita that he has no time to listen to the main treacheries of Nikita's career. "Malicious falsehoods!" he splutters—and they can be traced to horrible pan-Serbians. He has reason to believe that they wish to make Serbia the Prussia of the new Federation; well, the Croats and the Slovenes and the Bosniaks and all the others cannot say that Mr. Devine has not warned them. My Montenegrin friend Mr. Burić stated in the columns of the Saturday Review that this odd gentleman had nourished the ambition of becoming Montenegrin Minister to the Court of St. James, but that the plan did not succeed. I never saw Mr. Devine's denial—perhaps it fell into the clutches of a ruthless pan-Serbian printer. Naturally, Mr. Devine would not care to be the diplomatic representative of a villain; therefore, when he is brought face to face with certain definite charges he persists in replying "not in detail, but from the broad point of view." He is so exceedingly broad that when an accusation is levelled against the King he sees in this an accusation against the entire country—a country which unfortunately, as he says, "alone of all the Allies has no diplomatic representative in this country." Mr. Devine continues unabashed to repeat and repeat his pro-Nikita stuff in various newspapers. "Il y debvroit avoir," says Montaigne, "quelque corection des loix contre les escrivains ineptes et inutiles, comme il y a contre les vagabonds et faineants...." Not long ago I happened to see that this egregious person described himself as "Hon. Minister Plenipotentiary for Montenegro," but another gentleman, Sir Roper Parkington, a pompous wine-merchant, announced in the Press that he had become "Minister (Hon.) of Montenegro." Perhaps one of them has resigned, and our poor overworked Foreign Office will not be invited to decide between a Minister (Hon.) and an Hon. Minister.

THE MURDER OF MILETIĆ

The Italians' stay at Kotor was drawing to an end. "We have no aggressive intentions," said Signor Scialoja, the Foreign Minister, "and we shall be glad if we are able to establish with our neighbours on the other side of the Adriatic those amicable relations"—and so forth and so forth. This he said on December 21, but if the Government was imbued with the same principles in August it is unfortunate that it omitted to instruct the responsible officers in Dalmatia. The Yugoslav commander, Lieut.-Colonel Ristić, heard one night that the Italian General at Dobrota was harbouring at his residence no less than twenty-one Montenegrin pro-Nikita komitadjis. They were clad in Italian uniforms, and, as a torpedo-boat and a motor-launch were always kept with steam up, could be shipped off at a moment's notice to Italy. Colonel Ristić sent his adjutant to make inquiries, and the Italians gave their word of honour that no Montenegrins were in the house. In order to avoid a conflict Colonel Ristić then requested the French General to send an officer; but this gentleman was not received by the Italians. Four or five Montenegrins, with an Italian lieutenant, came out of the house and fired at the twenty gendarmes who now encircled it. The fire was returned—all the Montenegrins and the Italian were killed. After this the French police disarmed the remaining Montenegrins and imprisoned them; and on the following day, much to his chagrin, the Italian General was told to take up other quarters at Mula, so that he was separated by the French and the Yugoslavs from Montenegrin territory.... Not long after this a certain Captain Miletić was cycling late one afternoon on the road to Mula. Five or six Italian soldiers lay concealed, and so expertly did they murder him that his friends who were cycling a hundred paces ahead and other friends who were fishing very near the spot in a boat heard nothing whatsoever. It was eight days after this when the Italians had to go from Kotor and the neighbourhood.

D'ANNUNZIO COMES TO RIEKA

The question of Rieka had not yet been settled. The more suave Tittoni, who had succeeded Sonnino, was hoping with the help of France to hold his own against Wilson. Monsieur Tardieu thought that the town with a large strip of hinterland should become a separate independent State under the League of Nations. An arrangement was also proposed by which the city was to be administered by Italy, while the Yugoslavs should have a guarantee of access to the sea. These negotiations were still in a nebulous state, but certain proposals were going to be put into force which were suggested by the Inter-Allied Commission of Inquiry. With French, American, Italian and British representatives this commission had visited Rieka. One of the recommendations was to the effect that public order should be maintained by British and American police; on the very day (September 12) that the British military police were to inaugurate their service, Gabriele d'Annunzio took matters into his own hands. He rose, he tells us, from a bed of fever and, refusing to recognize the Nitti Government, he marched with the appropriate theatrical ceremonies, into his "pearl of the Adriatic." What he called the 15th Italian victory, or, alternatively, the Santa Entrata—the Holy Entry—was accomplished without the shedding of a drop of blood. Rieka, the stage of many fantastic scenes, witnessed one of the quaintest in the simultaneous arrival at the Governor's palace of a General to whom the Allies had entrusted the command of the town and a rebel Lieut.-Colonel who refused to recognize his authority. They seemed to be on the best of terms. The General (Pittaluga) informed the Allies that he was still in supreme command. Being invited on the following morning to explain the situation at a conference on board the U.S.S. Pittsburg, at which were present the Allied naval and military commanders, General Pittaluga informed them that he would be responsible for the maintenance of order and that nothing was to be considered altered in the government of the town. Forty minutes later, without consulting the Allies, he had handed over the town to a rebel and he himself, in his private car, had vanished. In a subsequent message to the Turkish Minister in Berne, sympathizing for the Allied occupation of Constantinople, d'Annunzio's Foreign Department informed him that "the Legionaries of the Commandant d'Annunzio put to flight the English police-bullies who were biding their time to snatch the tortured city." Opinions vary as to whether the poet-pirate was at that time acting in collusion with Rome—his defiance and their thunders being included in the stage directions—or whether he was a real rebel. We may assume that Signor Nitti did not countenance the buccaneer and that if officers and civil servants diverted Government cargoes into his hands they were not acting as Government agents. As for large numbers of these officials, their secret understanding with d'Annunzio received many proofs. On September 29 the Era Nuova reported that, two days before, Major Reina, d'Annunzio's Chief of Staff, was invited to Abbazia, where he had an interview with the Chief of Staff of the 26th Corps. Illuminating also is the report, in the Era Nuova of October 27, of a test case at Genoa, when a sergeant was tried for leaving his regiment and going to Rieka. The prosecutor demanded four months' detention and degradation. The court accepted the plea of the defence, which was that the court could not condemn or dishonour a soldier who was only guilty of patriotic sentiment. Moreover, it transpired that those who returned from Rieka, after receiving there a salary from both parties, were granted three weeks' leave and a reward of 100 lire. One observed that when the S.S. Danubio left Šibenik for Rieka with sixty waggon-loads of coal, the captain received his sailing orders from the Royal Italian port-officer. When d'Annunzio seized Rieka there was on that same night a solemn demonstration at Zadar, led by Vice-Admiral Millo, who was supposed to be governing Dalmatia in the name of the Entente.

* * * * *

The Consiglio Nazionale Italiano of Rieka, that self-elected body which had so often told the world that Rieka was unshakeably determined to be joined to the Motherland, now took to its bosom the modern Rienzi, regardless of that which happened to the mediaeval one. The C.N.I. could now devote itself to serious executive work, for d'Annunzio—in spite of or because of his fever—relieved them of the rather exhausting task of issuing proclamations. In three months he sent out something like a thousand. He did a great many other things—he ruined, for instance, the economic life of the town. Everything had for a time gone swimmingly. The Chief of the Republic of San Marino was voicing the sentiments of numberless Italians when he saluted the poet as a great Italian patriot. Such was the feeling of the majority of the army and navy, so that the Government in Rome was made to look ridiculous. "Mark well what I am telling you," said the poet to the special correspondent of the Gazzetta del Popolo. "I have received a call from a superior hidden force, and though the fever burns within me I am consoled, because the War has made me a mystic and I feel I am inspired from on high in this mission." D'Annunzio and his cohorts refused to have anything to do with the Cabinet. Signor Nitti, supported by the Parliament and the more responsible people, was openly attacked by the Nationalists and secretly by the profiteers and the newly rich on account of his bold taxation programme, by which he hoped to bring 30 milliards of francs into the Exchequer. The Nationalists assisted d'Annunzio to win over the army; and in northern Italy there were many who realized that an army which can be moved by such an appeal can, on the next day, rally to Bolševism. No other troops remained in Rieka, the small French and British detachments having been withdrawn. Before this happened there occurred a repetition, on a larger scale than usual, of a few French soldiers being attacked by a body of Italian warriors who greatly outnumbered them. Some of the French were Annamites, than whom no more harmless persons can be imagined.[44] And it was in order to avoid such untoward incidents that the Franco-British troops were evacuated. D'Annunzio was left to do his worst. Rieka was one of the problems which the Peace Conference had failed to solve, and now they were in much the same inglorious position as the Great Powers who in 1913 warned Turkey not to mobilize, since they would not allow the Balkan Confederation to make an attack, and after the attack gave it out that the Balkan States would not be permitted to acquire any new territory. The Supreme Council in Paris was losing its prestige very rapidly. "A little patience," begged Tittoni, "and my Government will turn out d'Annunzio." "What we want," exclaimed Clemenceau, "is a Government in Italy!"—and the Italian delegates, with flushed faces, pointed out that it was not Italy which wanted Rieka, but Rieka which wanted Italy. They would do their best, although so many men in Italy were now convinced that Rieka would sooner die than give up d'Annunzio. Presently, under his administration, it began to die. But this was not altogether distasteful to certain intriguers who were interested in the future of Triest. There might also arise, to the satisfaction, of other intriguers, an armed conflict with the Yugoslavs. But nothing could be calmer than the Yugoslavs' attitude. Perhaps these barbarians—as they are often styled in Italy—were confident that justice would prevail. Perhaps they thought that they could bide their time, and certainly what happened at Trogir was not calculated to reassure the Italians.

THE GREAT INVASION OF TROGIR

The little, ancient town of Trogir lay some twelve miles to the south of the demarcation line. Its inhabitants, with the exception of five Italophil families, are Yugoslav; and in the month of September 1919 the Yugoslav army was represented by eight men. Truth compels us to mention that on a certain night these men, instead of doing patrol duty, were sleeping off the effects of a carouse; and when the townsfolk looked out of their windows in the morning they saw machine guns and Italian soldiers. At 4 a.m. they had crept into the town with the help of a certain Conte Nino di Fanfogna, who had assembled a National Guard of thirty peasants, the employees of those five families. Conte Nino was striding to and fro; he muttered threats of death. Some of the chief men, such as Dr. Marin Katalinić, Dr. Peter Sentinella and others, came together and were at a loss for some effective means to chase out the Italians, since they had not even a revolver. An American boat appeared, but the captain, when appealed to, said that he was only cruising and could not come ashore. In the town hall Count Nino, labouring under some excitement, dismissed the mayor; and when Ferri, the mayor, told him to go about his business, he protested that he was the dictator and would, if necessary, use force. Outside in the square the Italians and the people stood face to face, and suddenly a few Yugoslav flags were fluttering, and then an old man, Dr. Sentinella's father, climbed up to the place in the town hall where the Italian flag had been hoisted. He tore it down. The soldiers were for shooting him, but the people began pulling the rifles out of their hands. Other soldiers, full of apprehension, dropped their rifles; the people picked them up, and those who were unacquainted with the mechanism cried out certain awe-inspiring sounds. Women and children—I fear this will not be believed; it is none the less true—women and children removed some of the men's helmets, and one group of children turned a helmet into a football. "I am a father of a family!" cried a soldier. "I am innocent, I have been deceived!" cried another. "O, Mama mia!" cried a third. They wept, they bolted into the courtyards, and the women showed them little mercy, for they tore off the men's belts and even struck them with their fists. A Mrs. Sunjara routed four men and went home with their machine gun on her back. In a few minutes the square was free of soldiers, and forty rifles were stacked in the town hall. Fifty soldiers on the quay were dealt with by a butcher who started firing at them; when they heard the shouts of the approaching crowd they threw down their weapons and fled. Two large motors escaped; the third was intercepted at the bridge, and although young Sentinella, who ordered them to stop, had forgotten his own rifle, they all—thirteen men and two officers—threw theirs away. It was suggested that the running soldiers should be pursued. "No," said an old man, "for we would kill them all. Let them rather go back without arms or helmets. It will frighten the others." ... Two hours later a party of Serbian soldiers arrived, but they were not needed, save for the protection of those who had thrown in their lot with the Italians. From Split, a few miles away, 1500 volunteers, who speedily assembled, came with knives or agricultural implements or any other weapon. "The Yugoslavs must realize," said Nitti, "that it is to their interest to maintain sincere relations of friendship with Italy."

THE SUCCESSION STATES AND THEIR MINORITIES

The Yugoslav Government—as if it had not sufficient problems to solve—was ordered now by the Peace Conference to accept sundry regulations as to the rights of minorities, the transit of goods, and an equitable regime for international commerce. The other States which had inherited the Habsburg Empire were, all of them, faced with the same demands; and they objected that to sign such Articles was inconsistent with their sovereignty. The most onerous item—relating to the racial and religious minorities—had been imposed—at America's instance, owing to the manner in which the Jews were treated in Roumania, despite King Charles' promises in 1878. The Yugoslavs, with a far smaller number of Jews and no Jewish outcry, were concerned only for the principle of independence. Not having persecuted the Jews they resented having to undertake that for the future they would act in a liberal spirit. "I will have nothing to do with tolerance," said the Orthodox Bishop of Veršac to a deputation of Jews, when he made his formal entry into the town of Pančevo. And when they stared at him, "It is not tolerance that I will show," said he, "but love." Perhaps the Opposition in the Yugoslav Skupština might have exhibited more kindliness in its attitude towards the Government and have refrained from rousing a storm against the signature of the obnoxious Articles. The Government and the Opposition being practically of equal strength, the Ministers, who in a calm atmosphere could have explained the realities of the situation, found themselves at a grave disadvantage. They could have shown that they would be assuming obligations which they had assumed already. In Macedonia, as any traveller could see, the time-honoured custom of persecuting him who happened to be the under-dog was abandoned; the authorities preferred to ignore the religious difference between themselves and the Bulgarian party, and as the difference consisted in praying for the Exarch instead of the Patriarch in the liturgy there was not the slightest persecution needed to persuade the Exarchists to become Patriarchists. Many who had been unaware of this new spirit which informed Yugoslavia and had fled with the Bulgarian army, afterwards came back to Macedonia. Nor did the Moslems complain: two Bosnian Moslems were expressly included in the Cabinet, and every consideration was shown to them—at Ghevgeli, for instance, where building material was, after the War, so scarce that many of the inhabitants had nothing but a hole in the ground, the prefect caused the two mosques which had been destroyed by shell-fire to be reconstructed.

OBLIGATIONS IMPOSED ON THEM BECAUSE OF ROUMANIAN ANTISEMITISM

If the Serbs were to express their grievance against the Roumanian ruling class for having landed them in this position, the Roumanians would reply that the Serbs do not run the same risk as themselves of being swamped by the undesirable Galician Jew. The Roumanians argue that their peasants will go under if they are not shielded. "In our last great manoeuvres," said the late King Charles to M. de Laveleye,[45] "it was proposed to entrust the supply of food to Christians. On the first day the provisions came; on the second everything was late; on the third day the whole army was dying of hunger. I was forced to make a hasty appeal to the Jews. They have great qualities—they are intelligent, energetic, economical; but these very qualities make them dangerous to us on economic grounds." Roumanians acknowledge that the agrarian policy of a few vast landowners and a submerged peasantry did not admit of peasants being made more formidable by increased education, and they doubt whether their country-folk, so fond of music and dancing and drinking, have it in them to rival those Serbian non-commissioned officers who, early in 1919, became millionaires by skilful operations on the money market in the Banat. Yet the Serbs are as much addicted as anyone to the aforementioned delights, and it is probable that the Roumanian boyars do their own people an injustice. But while the people were favoured at the expense of the immigrants—not always very effectively: the Jews have been prohibited from owning land, yet a fifth of the whole of Moldavia belongs indirectly to a single Jew—one would suppose that some distinction might have been made between the more or less pernicious alien who is apt to get the village into his toils and that other Jew whose family has lived perhaps two hundred years in the country, who feels himself a Roumanian but is legally a foreigner. One Magder, a Jewish barrister, performed such exploits at the front during the Great War that he was mentioned in the communique, a distinction only conferred upon two other soldiers. For one and a half years the official publications insisted on Roumanizing his name into Magdeu, after which three Cabinet meetings occupied themselves with the subject and finally announced that the error was not intentional but typographical. A French officer wished the Roumanian Croix de Guerre to be given to him, but Headquarters refused the request on the ground that he was a Jew. One cannot blame the United States for taking the initiative in compelling the Roumanians to modify their legislation, since the clauses of the Treaty of Berlin were merely carried out to the extent of naturalizing a maximum of fifty Jews a year, each case having to undergo innumerable formalities, accompanied with payments to deputies and others that rose to 30,000 francs. Many Jews volunteered for the army in 1913 for the sake of thus obtaining the naturalization that was promised them as a reward; but these promises were frequently not kept. A good deal of injustice occurred during the Great War: the Moniteur Officiel, No. 261 (of February 2, 1918), printed a decree relating to one Kaufman, who together with two Christian soldiers had been away from his corps for twelve days in the previous September. Kaufman was condemned to death, and the others to five years' hard labour. When the King was asked to deal more equitably with the three men, Kaufman's sentence was commuted to "hard labour without limit," i.e. for life. It is superfluous to give many illustrations: at Falticeni seventy-two Jews were imprisoned without a trial for four months, though twelve of them were Roumanian citizens and veterans of 1877, while most of the others had sons at the front; at the village of Frumusica a major caused the Jews to come out of their synagogue in order to listen to a speech in which he advised the Christian soldiers to watch them well, as they were worse than the Germans. No doubt there were Jews in the Roumanian army whose patriotism was less than ardent—and who can blame them? In the 69th Regiment a special corps of Jews was clothed in the discarded, dark uniform that was more visible to the enemy. In the 65th Regiment Jon Dumitru was paid 14 francs a month for spying on his Jewish comrades. At the battle of Savarat, to cover the retreat of three battalions, a special corps of Jews was formed—one hundred and twenty-two men under a Jewish second lieutenant; all but three of them were killed or wounded. After this retreat the General, who lost his head, commanded that the survivors should be killed wholesale on account of self-inflicted wounds; but seeing that they were so numerous (and innocent) he pardoned them, and only executed two Jews, Lubis Strul and Hascal Simha, pour encourager les autres. A young doctor, 2nd Lieutenant Cohn, who came back from Paris, contracted typhus at the hospital where he was serving; afterwards he was sent to the 26th Regiment and kept under observation; it was most suspicious, said the authorities, that a Jew should return from France for his military service. A reward of 2000 francs was offered to anyone who could supply incriminating evidence against the doctor, but this was offered in vain. The Jews, by the way, were told that while they would be removed from menial positions in the hospitals they "would be tolerated" as doctors—and nearly a hundred of these doctors died on active service.

The better class of Roumanians, such as Take Jonescu, is opposed to such methods—he was therefore charged with being in the pay of the Jews, although he was a wealthy man (a very successful barrister) whom politics made poorer. It remains to be seen whether the Roumanians—whose position with regard to the Jews is, partly through their own fault, not without peril—will be willing to put into effect those reforms to which the Supreme Council compelled them to subscribe. The Article in question will probably become a moral weapon, since the Roumanians regard themselves as on a higher level than the Balkan peoples, and will not desire that continual complaints should be made against them. One does not expect their prejudices and their apprehensions to be suddenly renounced—instead of judging each case individually, the railway administration, after the Government had agreed that the Jews en bloc could become citizens, barred them en bloc from that particular service by requiring that candidates should present their certificates of baptism. The Agricultural Syndicates have also introduced a statute which limits their organizations to Roumanian citizens who profess the Christian religion. Gradually—one hopes, for the sake of their country—the Roumanians will bring themselves to adopt a less timorous spirit, and to acknowledge that it is more dangerous to the Fatherland if a Jew as such is prevented than if he is permitted to hold the office of street-sweeper. From such lowly public offices, or from that of University Professor, no citizen should be excluded on religious grounds or admitted to them "by exceptional concession." And if a Jewish cab-driver at Bucharest is so severely flogged by his passengers outside the chief railway-station that he succumbs in the hospital to his injuries—a fate that overtook one Mendel Blumenthal, a man fifty-three years of age, in September 1919—one trusts that a newspaper article asking for an inquiry will henceforward not be censored. "It is true," said Dr. Vaida-Voevod, then the Prime Minister, "that the Jews still evince some reluctance to assimilate intellectually with our people or to identify their interests with those of the Roumanian State. But goodwill should be shown on both sides, and the overtures should be reciprocal." Thanks very largely to the former Liberal Premier, M. Bratiano, whose party was responsible for much illiberal legislation—one of his powerful brothers was popularly said to eat a Jew at every meal—the Supreme Council acted in such a manner as to produce a particularly unwanted crisis in the Yugoslav political world. Neither Roumanian nor Yugoslav need, in the opinion of Take Jonescu, have considered that their dignity was being slighted, for the tendency of the League of Nations is to limit the free will of each of them. The cardinal doctrine of the League, as Lord Robert Cecil has pointed out, is that its members are not masters in their own house, but must obey the decision of the majority. However, the Opposition in the Belgrade Skupština could not resist from using the delicate situation for what many of the deputies thought was a patriotic course of conduct, and nearly all of them regarded as an admirable party cry.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: The Defeat of Austria, as seen by the 7th Division. London, 1919.]

[Footnote 2: Contemporary Review, February 1920.]

[Footnote 3: Afterwards Yugoslav Minister at Madrid and then at Washington.]

[Footnote 4: Fortnightly Review, June 1919.]

[Footnote 5: Cf. Manchester Guardian, December 13, 1918.]

[Footnote 6: Land and Water, May 29, 1919.]

[Footnote 7: Nineteenth Century and After, November 1920.]

[Footnote 8: Au Secours des Enfants Serbes. Paris, 1916.]

[Footnote 9: Several old wooden warships, such as the Aurora, the Schwartzenberg and the Vulcan, were lying for years in Šibenik harbour, where they were used as repair-ships, store-ships, etc. When the Italians evacuated Dalmatia they took these vessels with them, but whether on account of their contents or their history we do not know.]

[Footnote 10: Cf. Die Handelsstrassen und Bergwerke von Serbien und Bosnien wahrend des Mittelalters, by Dr. Constantin Jireček. Prague, 1879.]

[Footnote 11: It is instructive to examine the attendance figures at the schools of this the only Italian town of Dalmatia, as the Italians call it. The figures are those of the school year 1918-1919, and refer both to elementary and secondary schools:

YUGOSLAV SCHOOLS.

Elementary School for Boys Pupils, 342 Elementary School for Girls " 331 Combined Elementary School " 222 Higher Elementary School for Girls " 121 Teachers' Training College " 70 Classical College " 469 —— Total of Yugoslav Pupils, 1555 ——

ITALIAN SCHOOLS.

Elementary School for Boys Pupils, 250 Elementary School for Girls " 221 Higher Elementary School " 93 Classical College " 157 Technical College " 181 —— Total of Italian Pupils, 902 ——

I do not know what were the facts ascertained on the spot by Mr. Hilaire Belloc which enabled him, without any reservations, to inform the readers of Land and Water (June 5, 1919) that "Zara is quite Italian." He added that "Sebenia is Italian too." If this be so, how comes it that in 1919 the Italian authorities found it necessary to terrorize Sebenico (Šibenik)—which is presumably the town Mr. Belloc refers to—with machine guns and hordes of secret police and the very lurid threats of Colonel Cappone, the town commandant? I believe it is nearer the truth to say that the population of this town consists of some 13,000 Yugoslavs and 400 Italianists.]

[Footnote 12: This prelate died in December 1920. With fearless patriotism, said the Tablet (January 1, 1921), he "had defended his flock from the Germanizing influence of the Habsburgs and the more insidious encroachments of the Italians."]

[Footnote 13: The population of Veprinac, according to the last census, is: Yugoslavs, 2505 (83.7 per cent.); Italians, 24 (0.8 per cent.); Germans, 422 (4.1 per cent.).]

[Footnote 14: Pribičević issued a statement to the effect that the interviewer, Magrini, had put into his mouth the precise opposite of what he had said with regard to Triest and Pola. Pribičević had told him that the whole of Istria, with Triest, should be Yugoslav. He reminded Magrini that a third person was present at the interview.]

[Footnote 15: The supplies for the Austro-Hungarian army in Albania had been concentrated at Rieka. These had to be guarded by Yugoslav troops, as the Hungarian watchmen at the port had disappeared, and the Russian prisoners employed there—about 500 men—had also vanished. In order to keep off nocturnal plunderers, the Yugoslav troops were told to fire a few shots now and then into the air. Is it not possible that the two Italian boys who, as Mr. Beaumont reported, were hit during the night by stray bullets and succumbed in hospital to their injuries—is it not possible that they were out for plunder and that this incident should not be used to illustrate what Mr. Beaumont (of the Daily Telegraph) calls "the worst characteristics of Balkan terrorism" on the part of the troops? During the twenty days of the Yugoslav regime their authorities sold, as they were justified in doing, tobacco from these warehouses to the value of 120,000 crowns. It was generally said in Rieka that the Italians in four days had given away six million crowns' worth, that large quantities of flour were removed until the British put a stop to this, and that the robberies were flagrant. These allegations may have been untrue or exaggerated, but individuals were pointed out who in a mysterious manner had suddenly become affluent; it would at any rate have been as well if the I.N.C. had ordered some investigation. Since they failed to do so, it is natural that gossip flourished. In Triest, by the way, even the Italian population is reputed to have been disgusted when about forty waggon-loads of flour and twenty of sugar were taken from the stores of the former Austrian army and shipped to Italy.]

[Footnote 16: Most people have assumed that this was done in order that Rieka should be left to Austria-Hungary, although they should have taken with some grains of salt this Italian generosity which presented the Habsburgs with a good harbour instead of one of those others in Croatia which the Italians of to-day are never weary of extolling. The real reasons why Rieka was omitted from the Treaty of London are, as the Secolo (January 12, 1919) remarks, perfectly well known. "In order," it says, "to claim Fiume it is necessary to make appeal to the right of the people to dispose freely of themselves. In this case the same principle must be admitted for the people of Dalmatia, who are Slav in a crushing majority. But this is precisely the negation of the Treaty of London."]

[Footnote 17: The Italianist employes of the Rieka town council who took the census in 1910 asked the humbler classes if they were acquainted with the Italian language; those from whom they received an affirmative reply were put down as Italians. Had they, on the other hand, asked the people if they spoke Croatian and put down as Croats those who answered yes, there would, in the opinion of an expert, Dr. Arthur Gavazzi, have remained not one single Italian—certainly not the members of the Italian National Council—as everyone, he says, speaks and knows Croat. This is a fairly emphatic proof that the fortunes of Rieka are bound up with those of its suburbs and the hinterland.]

[Footnote 18: Being the senior in rank of the Allied Generals, General Grazioli claimed supreme command of all the Allied troops, but this the French General refused, maintaining—much to the disgust of the Italians—that he was under the orders of Franchet d'Esperey, who was then in command of the Army of the Orient. The Italians were so determined to preserve in their own hands the military supremacy that a very senior General, one Caneva, was kept in the background of the palace with the sole object of stepping forward if any Allied officer senior to General Grazioli should by chance be posted to the town. The disrespectful Allies used to call Caneva "the man in the cellar."]

[Footnote 19: The town of Yugoslavia which, after Austria's collapse, was stirred the most profoundly by its postage stamps was Zagreb. In order to commemorate the establishment of the new State the Croatian Post Office published four stamps, which were on sale on November 29. The whole edition consisted of 100,000 stamps, of which 24,000 were allotted to Zagreb, the rest going to other parts of the province. It was obvious that there would be a great demand for these stamps, and in order to check any abuses or clandestine traffic it was decided that they should be sold nowhere but at the post offices, also that each purchaser would only be allowed to buy a limited quantity. At 8 a.m. the sale began, but at seven many hundreds of people were waiting outside the chief post office, the post office at the station and another in the Upper Town. The face value of the four stamps, added together, was one crown. At first they were resold for between 4 and 20 crowns, then the price jumped to 30, and by 10 a.m. the 45-heller stamp (of which only 15,000 had been printed) was sold out. Collectors were paying 8 or 10 crowns for it, in order to complete their sets. At noon the offices were all shut, as the rush was considered too dangerous. More than 1000 persons were in the great hall at the Head Office and another 2000 were gathered outside. Nearly all the windows where the stamps were being sold were broken. At the Station Post Office the people began to fight with the sentries. The National Guard had to be sent for. At 4 p.m. the post offices had no stamps left (and citizens who had been waiting all day to buy an ordinary stamp could not be served). At 5 p.m. people who for the first time in their lives were taking an interest in philately, wanted 300-500 crowns from collectors for a whole series. Between 5 and 6 p.m. a stamp exchange was held in the entrance hall. Eight hundred to one thousand crowns were being demanded for the series. Soldiers were willing to give the four stamps in exchange for a pair of boots, others were asking for sugar, coffee or petrol. The price which was ultimately established was 250 crowns.]

[Footnote 20: Out of the hundreds of available documents it will suffice if I print one. It is the report, given in his words, of a Dalmatian, a native of Sinj, who having been an emigrant could write in English. "On July 1915 I came to the Italian front, and on the morrow I went across the lines and deserted to the Italians. As soon as I arrived at the station of internment I requested the Command to be admitted as a voluntary into the Serbian army. This petition of mine was answered by Italian authorities in the negative. After the Congress of Rome in 1918 I and some of my comrades who had recently applied for admission were permitted to join the Yugoslav legion on June 1. I was right away sent to the front of the Tyrol, where on August 7 I was wounded in a hard bayonet fight. On this occasion I was decorated by the Italian Commander for valour. After 45 days of hospital by my own request I was sent to the front, where I remained up to the break-up of Austria or until we Yugoslav legion were disarmed by Italians and as a reward for our participation in the war we were interned as prisoners of war at Casale di Altamura in the province of Bari. Four days after my internment I succeeded in sliding away, so that on the Christmas Eve I was again in Dalmatia. (Signed) JAKOV DELONGA."]

[Footnote 21:

"In tra 'l gregge che misero e raro L'asburgese predon t' ha lasciato, Perche piangi, o fratello croato, Il figiul che in Italia mori."

("There among the woebegone where the most contemptible Habsburger has abandoned his prey, so that, O my Croat brother, it weeps for the dear son who died in Italy.")]

[Footnote 22: April 23, 1919.]

[Footnote 23: Cf. La Slavisation de la Dalmatie. Paris, 1917.]

[Footnote 24: The Italians are very poorly served by some of their advocates. For years they persisted in demanding the execution of whatever in the Treaty or Pact of London was obnoxious to the Serbs, while they regarded as obsolete another clause, respecting the formation of a small independent Albania, which was distasteful to themselves, and—if I rightly understand the Italophil Mr. H. E. Goad—they were justified because, forsooth, Bulgaria had entered the War on the other side. To say that the idea of this small Albania, with corresponding compensations to the Serbs and Greeks, was held out as a bribe to the Bulgars does not seem to me a very wise remark. However, "ne croyez pas le pere Bonnet," said Montesquieu, "lorsqu'il dit du mal de moi, ni moi-meme lorsque je dis du mal du pere Bonnet, parce que nous nous sommes brouilles." Let the reader trust in nothing but the facts, and I hope that those which I present are not an unfair selection.]

[Footnote 25: When Supilo, the late Dalmatian leader, heard about the secret Treaty, he went to Petrograd and saw Sazonov. The interview is said to have been stormy, for the Russian Minister, according to the Primorske Novine (April 23, 1919), "had not the most elementary knowledge of the Slav nature of Dalmatia, still less of Istria, Triest, Gorica and the rest." Mr. Asquith, whom Supilo afterwards visited in London, is said to have been no better informed than Sazonov.]

[Footnote 26: And appearing subsequently in London, as Nikita's Prime Minister, was the central figure of a reception given by Lord Sydenham at the Savoy. But out of fairness to his lordship I must add that in an hour's conversation he impressed me with the fact that he was even less acquainted with Plamenac's antecedents than he was with other Montenegrin affairs, which he raised on more than one occasion in the House of Lords, endeavouring there—until Lord Curzon overwhelmed him—to play the part that was assumed by Mr. M'Neill in the Commons.]

[Footnote 27: We shall see that the subsequent history of this officer was less laudable.]

[Footnote 28: Cf. Nineteenth Century and After, January 1921.]

[Footnote 29: This very able priest became Vice-President of the Council of Ministers when the first Yugoslav Cabinet was formed. When Cardinal Bourne visited Belgrade in the spring of 1919 a Mass was celebrated by the Yugoslav Cabinet Minister, the British Cardinal and a French priest who was an aviation captain in the army. Monsignor Korošec's position reminds one that in the early days of Bulgaria's freedom her Premier was the Archbishop of Trnovo.]

[Footnote 30: Cf. p. 60, Vol. II.]

[Footnote 31: Cf. The New Europe, March 27, 1919.]

[Footnote 32: There are in the Banat some ultra-patriotic Magyars, such as the man at Antanfalva (Kovačiča) who, having lost something between his house and the post office, insisted on advertising for it in the Buda-Pest papers. But the Yugoslav rule was so satisfactory that, two or three years after the Armistice, I found in the large Hungarian village of Debelyacsa—where the intelligentsia called the sympathetic Serbian notary by his Christian name—not one of the inhabitants proposed to remove to Hungary. No doubt the goodness of the soil had something to do with this decision, but, more, the liberal methods of the Serbs. No military service was as yet exacted—all that the Magyars had been asked to do was to work for two months in obliterating the ravages of war. The priest and the schoolmaster who had come from Hungary before the War still exercised their functions, and—in contrast with what had previously been the case—both the Magyar and the Serbian language were taught, the latter from the third class upwards. Altogether there was perfect harmony between the Magyars and the Serbs; when I was there the only racial question which occupied the Magyar farmers was the resolve of their intelligentsia to have, as centre-half in the football team, not a Magyar but a more skilful Jewish player.]

[Footnote 33: The Southern Slavs generally acknowledged that the Foreign Office was bound to behave to Italy, one of the Great Powers, with a certain deference. They also recognize that the Foreign Office is not actuated by malevolence if she treats Belgrade as she did Morocco, when in place of the strikingly appropriate and picturesque appointment of Sir Richard Burton our Legation there was occupied by one of a series of diplomatic automata. After all, these automata, who have spent more or less laborious years in the service, have to be deposited somewhere. But if one does not demand of the Foreign Office that she should make a rule of sending to the Balkans, where the personal factor is so important, such a man as the brilliant O'Beirne, who during the War was dispatched too late to Bulgaria, yet a moderate level should be maintained—it has happened before now that we have been represented in a Balkan country by a Minister who, some time after his arrival, had not read a Treaty dealing with those people and of which Great Britain was one of the high contracting parties; when taxed with this omission the aforesaid Minister hung his head like a guilty schoolboy.]

[Footnote 34: October 13, 1921.]

[Footnote 35: This has been done, but to a much more limited extent, in Hungary where several hundred men who distinguished themselves in the European War have been granted the Gold Medal for Bravery, which entitles each of them to a goodly portion of land. This the recipient may not sell, but he need not leave it to his eldest son if a younger one is more interested in agriculture. Each medallist, by the way, is authorized to exhibit outside his house a notice which informs the world that he possesses this most treasured decoration; but perhaps to our eyes the strangest privilege the Medal carries with it is the permission to write "Vitez" (which is the Hungarian for "brave") in front of the name. Thus if Koranji Sandor is decorated he is to call himself henceforward Vitez Koranji Sandor, and that is the correct address on an envelope. Not only is the honorific awarded to him, but is to be used by all his sons and by their sons. We might imagine that a man would shrink from permanently calling himself Brave John Smith, especially if he has been very brave, but the average Magyar will not feel excessively awkward, since he is not altogether repelled by that which is garish.]

[Footnote 36: The Czechs believe that Agrarian Reform should be the work of a generation. They are beginning on the very large estates, those which run to more than 50,000 hectares, and in calculating the price to be paid, 40 per cent. is deducted for the State on properties of this size. On those of between 20,000 and 50,000 hectares 30 per cent. is deducted, and so on down to the 5 per cent., which is appropriated from the holdings of from 1000 to 2000 hectares. It is also the Government's intention in Czecho-Slovakia to take in hand such properties as are badly administered, and, by a wise proviso, when a denunciation arrives to the effect, for example, that the proprietor is not using manure and that thus the State is suffering injury, a dozen men, belonging to the various political parties, go down to investigate. If they find that the accusation is not justified and that the place is satisfactorily worked, then the man who made the charge is obliged to pay the examining committee's expenses.]

[Footnote 37: The trouble arose at the end of May when a number of citizens of Šibenik, men and women, donned the American colours as a compliment to the sailors of the U.S. warship Maddalena, who had taken to wearing those of Yugoslavia. The Šibenik ladies and men, relying perhaps on the words of Admiral Millo with regard to Allied colours, never dreamed that any objection would be made. But suddenly one evening everybody with these colours was attacked by Italian soldiers, who tore them off and explained that it was done by the General's order. Italian officers did not interfere while ladies were being very roughly handled. A certain Jakovljević, a shopkeeper, who had sold an American flag, was imprisoned. On the same evening a number of prominent citizens were summoned before the town commandant, Colonel Cappone, who spoke as follows: "A Croat, a Croat has dared to display a flag before an ardito!" [An American flag.] "This fool! instead of giving him a black eye, the ardito pulled off his flag. This is Italy! Mind you don't go to the Maddalena to-morrow! Whatever it costs me, I shall prevent it! You are the leaders who will be responsible for anything that happens to-morrow." [This was the eve of the Italian national celebration of June 1.] "Our arditi are blood-thirsty; do not be surprised if some lady of yours receives a black eye.... We are the masters here! This is Italy! This is Italy! We have won the War, we have spent milliards and sacrificed millions of soldiers." On this Mr. Miše Ivanović remarked: "I beg your pardon, but the Paris Conference has not yet decided the fate of these territories." And the Colonel replied, "It has been decided! But even if we had to leave, remember that on taking down our flag we shall destroy everything, with 5000 machine guns, 2000 guns and 40,000 men! Good night, gentlemen." This declaration made by the town commandant, presumably a responsible officer, was testified by the signature of all those who were present.... When, in 1921, the Italians were leaving Šibenik they destroyed a large number of young trees in the park and elsewhere. The Venetians, in the Middle Ages, had cut down millions of Dalmatian trees, but always with a utilitarian purpose.]

[Footnote 38: In view of what the census said with regard to this place it is superfluous to add that when an Italian officer in my hearing asked one who was stationed there if there was any social life, the other answered: "None at all; the whole population is Slav." I find that Modern Italy (published in London) quoted with approval the following telegram which appeared, it said, in the Tempo of May 9: "A remarkably enthusiastic celebration took place at Obrovazzo. Several thousands, including representatives of the neighbouring villages, formed a procession and marched through the town. In the principal piazza, the President of the National party, Bertuzzi, delivered a stirring speech, which was enthusiastically applauded."]

[Footnote 39: It is customary for Serbian officers to wear but one decoration, the highest among those to which they are entitled. To illustrate this Serbian modesty regarding honorifics, I might mention that one evening at the house of a Belgrade lawyer I heard his wife, a Scotswoman, to whom he had been married for more than a year, ascertain that he had won the Obilić medal for bravery and several other decorations which—and his case was typical—he had not troubled to procure.]

[Footnote 40: June 24, 1919.]

[Footnote 41: May 15, 1919.]

[Footnote 42: Mr. Leiper in the Morning Post (June 23, 1920) scouts the idea of these malcontents being the supporters of Nikita, who "were all laid by the heels or driven out of the country long ago—largely by the inhabitants themselves." He observes that the land is one land with Serbian soil—its frontiers are merely the artificial imposition of kings and policies. The nations, he points out, are not two but one—one in blood, in temperament, in habits, in tradition, in language; round the fireside they tell their children the same stories, sing them the same songs: the greatest poem in Serbian literature, as all the world knows, was written by a Prince-Bishop of Montenegro. Since the day when the Serbian State came into existence it has been, he says, the constant, burning desire of the Montenegrins to be joined to it. We may well rub our eyes at a letter in the same newspaper from Lord Sydenham, who makes the perfectly inane remark that this constant, burning desire was never probable. "Montenegro already is Serbia," says Mr. Leiper, "and Serbia Montenegro, in every way except verbally." But Lord Sydenham has set himself up as a stern critic of the Serbs in Montenegro; therefore he cannot countenance the Leiper articles, which give him "pain and surprise." Is he surprised that Mr. Leiper, a shrewd Scottish traveller, who is acquainted with the language, should disagree with him? "The great mass of the people," says Mr. Leiper, "are as firm as a rock in their determination that Nicholas shall never return." Listen to Lord Sydenham: "I am afraid," says he, "that your correspondent has been misled by the raging, tearing Serbian propaganda with which I am familiar." And he quotes for our benefit an unnamed correspondent of his in Montenegro who says that the people there are terrified of speaking. It is much to be desired that a little of this terror might invade a gentleman who plunges headlong into matters which he does not understand.]

[Footnote 43: Cf. Morning Post, November 17, 1920.]

[Footnote 44: A most vivid account of this affair was contributed to the Chicago Tribune (July 13, 1919) by its correspondent, Thomas Stewart Ryan, one of the two neutral eye-witnesses. He came to the conclusion that as Italy was an interested party and was exasperated by the long delay in the decision, an outbreak even more violent might occur unless her forces were brought down to the level of the other Allies. In alliance with the city rabble, the Giovani Fiumani, Italian soldiers attacked the French: "I can state emphatically," says Mr. Ryan, "that the French guards did nothing whatever to provoke the assault, some details of which would blot the escutcheon of most savage tribes. I saw soldiers of France killed, after surrender, by their supposed Allies.... I could scarcely believe my ears when Italian officers rapped out the order to load. But they seemed to remember that Frenchmen can fight." However, he also saw an Italian officer who "prevented this murder and held back the civilians who were trying to reach their victim. I must record it to the credit of this officer that his was the only Italian voice to defend the game little soldier. 'A hundred against one! Shame on you, soldiers of Italy!' I wish I knew this officer's name." At another part of the harbour, "A British naval officer, fearing that the wounded Frenchman would be stabbed inside the court to which he was dragged, followed the body and defied the captain of carabinieri, who ordered him to leave." And at the close "I was no longer alone with my friend as a neutral eye-witness. The British Admiral Sinclair appeared, causing much perturbation to the Italian officers, who though some of them had just taken part in the shambles, were already glib with excuses. 'The British Admiral wants to know' was enough to bring the Italian officer running and bowing, with 'I beg of you....' 'We are willing to explain all....' American naval officers of the destroyer Talbot were also among this post-mortem crowd. In a French motor bearing two Italian officers who stood up to ward off possible shots, came a French captain. He was of that calm, splendid type that makes you think of the Chevalier Bayard, a knightly figure. Quietly he moved among his dead. Not by the flicker of an eyelid did he give token of what was working deep down in that French heart of his. I heard an Italian officer tell him that the French had started the most regrettable affair by firing on the Italian ships. The officer spoke this falsehood under the glazed stare of the French dead and the protesting gaze of the wounded. The French captain nodded his head, remarked, 'Oh yes! of course. Now we must only pick up the wounded,' and, with all the gentleness of a mother beside her child's sick-bed...." A very good account of this shocking episode is contained in A Political Escapade: The Story of Fiume and d'Annunzio, by J. N. Macdonald, O.S.B. (London, 1921). His narrative is extremely well documented—he appears to have been a member of the British Mission. "It is incomprehensible," says he, "how officers and men could attack the very post that they had been sent to defend. Moreover, they were over 100 strong and fully armed, whereas the French garrison was small and had no intention of putting up a defence." One of the lesser outrages described by Father Macdonald, since it was not attended with fatal results, was that which happened to Captain Gaillard, who from his window saw an Italian lieutenant shoot and kill with his revolver an unarmed Annamese. The captain cried out with rage, and when his room was entered by fifteen men carrying rifles with fixed bayonets and they ordered him to go with them, Madame Gaillard tried to intervene and received a blow on the arm dealt with the butt end of a rifle. At this juncture an Italian officer appeared and roughly told Gaillard to come without further delay. A mob of civilians and soldiers who were outside greeted Gaillard with a shower of blows, and while they went along the street, the officer escorting him kept up a volley of abuse against France and England. Very fortunately for Gaillard he was brought into the presence of an Italian officer to whom he was personally known. This gentleman, looking very uneasy, refused to give the name of his brother-officer, but caused the Frenchman to be released.]

[Footnote 45: Cf. The Balkan Peninsula (English translation). London, 1887.]



VII

FURTHER MONTHS OF TRIAL

D'ANNUNZIO SPREADS HIMSELF—THE WAVE OF ITALIAN IMPERIALISM—THEIR WISH FOR RIEKA, DEAD OR ALIVE—FRUITLESS EFFORTS OF ITALY'S ALLIES—SOME OF RIEKA'S SCANDALS—PROGRESS OF THE YUGOSLAV IDEA—DESPITE THE NEW PHENOMENON OF COMMUNISM—THE RISE AND FALL OF COMMUNISM IN YUGOSLAVIA—OTHER LIONS IN THE PATH—THE NADIR OF DEVINE AND NIKITA—A GENERAL—TWO COMIC PRO-ITALIANS IN OUR MIDST—THE BELATED TREATY OF RAPALLO—ITS PROBABLE FRUITS—NEW FORCES IN THE FIRST YUGOSLAV PARLIAMENT—(a) MARKOVIĆ, THE COMMUNIST—(b) RADIĆ, THE MUCH-DISCUSSED—THE SERBS AND THE CROATS—THE SAD CASE OF PRIBIĆEVIĆ—LESSONS OF THE MONTENEGRIN ELECTIONS—WHICH ONE GENTLEMAN REFUSES TO TAKE—MEDIAEVAL DOINGS AT RIEKA—THE STRICKEN TOWN—HOPES IN THE LITTLE ENTENTE.

D'ANNUNZIO SPREADS HIMSELF

When the Serbian army came, during the Balkan War, into the historic town of Prilep a certain soldier sent his family an interesting letter, which was found a few years afterwards at Niš and printed in a book. One passage tells about a conversation as to a disputed point of mediaeval history between the soldier and a chance acquaintance. "Brother," said the Serb, "whose is this town?" And the man of Prilep recognized at once that his catechist was not referring to the actual possessor but to Marko of the legendary exploits. When the same question was asked of Gabriele d'Annunzio he said that Rieka was Italian then and for ever, and that he who proclaimed its annexation to Italy was a mutilated war-combatant. Most of the citizens, as time went on, began to think that they would sooner hear about Rieka's annexation to another land, which was the work of Nature. Those who did not entertain this view were the salaried assistants of d'Annunzio and the speculators who had bought up millions of crowns in the hope that Italy, as mistress of Rieka, would change them into lire, even if she did not give so good a rate as at Triest. The poet addressed himself to the France of Victor Hugo, the England of Milton, and the America of Lincoln, but not to the business men of Rieka, who would have told him that 70 per cent. of the property, both movable and immovable, was Yugoslav, while 10 per cent. was Italian and the rest in the hands of foreigners. Not waiting to listen to such details, d'Annunzio sailed, with a thousand men, to Zadar, had a conference with Admiral Millo, and won him over. Whether he would have persuaded Victor Hugo, Milton or Abraham Lincoln, we must gravely doubt. "I am not bound to win," says Lincoln, whom we may take as the spokesman of the trio, "but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to what light I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right; stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong." In view of the wilful trespass committed by Italians on the property and rights of the Yugoslavs and the oft-repeated guarantees of protection given to the Slavs by the American Government against such invasion, it is passing strange that d'Annunzio should have appealed to Abraham Lincoln of all people. As for Admiral Millo, he telegraphed to Rome that he had thrown in his fortunes with those of d'Annunzio, and he made to the populace a very fiery speech. It is not known whether he communicated with the France of Clemenceau, the England of Lloyd George and the America of Wilson, whose representative he apparently continued to be for the rest of Dalmatia, while relinquishing that post with regard to Zadar, his residence.

THE WAVE OF ITALIAN IMPERIALISM

If Admiral Millo's rebellion had been published in the press of November 16th, it is most likely that 250, instead of 160, Socialists would have been successful at the General Election—an election which Signor Nitti, that very able parliamentarian, had brought about for the purpose, amongst other things, of testing the forces and popularity of the Nationalist party. The old Chamber had—voicing the wishes of the people—voted for the open annexation of Rieka, without war or violence; the Nationalists, in order to gain their ends, would seemingly have stopped at nothing. Military adventures, the breaking of alliances, agrarian and industrial upheaval—it was all the same to them. They scoffed at the common sense of the imperturbable Nitti when he said that the Italians, like their Roman ancestors, must return to the plough. Furiously they harped upon the facts that bread was dearer now, that coal was nearly unprocurable. And Giolitti, who in 1915 had strenuously tried to keep the country neutral, said in a great speech before this 1919 election that the War had been waged between England and Germany for the supremacy of the survivor and that Italy should never have participated. He enlarged upon the fearful sufferings of his countrymen, and he compared the gains of Italy with those of her Allies. Nor was he deterred when Signor Salandra, the former Premier, called him Italy's evil spirit who, devoid of any patriotism, would have sold the Fatherland to the Central Powers for a mess of pottage. Giolitti, on whom 300 deputies had left their cards in the tragic hours before the declaration of war, had good reason to know that even if Giolittism had melted away, the House had secretly remained Giolittian.

A new electoral system was introduced, whereby the people voted for programmes and parties rather than directly for individual candidates. This, it was hoped, would render corruption more difficult by enclosing the individual within the framework of the list, and it was also hoped that there would be less violence than usual. As a matter of fact there probably was a diminution with respect to these two practices, but only because of the large number of abstentions—merely 29 per cent. voted in Rome, 38 per cent. in Naples, and in Turin scarcely more. The people were tired of the excessive complexity and dissimulation of Italian politics. There was a good deal of violence—in Milan, Florence, Bologna and Sicily the riots were sometimes fatal—and with such an electorate, more extensive than heretofore, so that symbols had often to be used instead of the printed word, it was to be expected that there would not be an atmosphere of even relatively calm discussion. At Naples 132 candidates struggled for eleven seats—their meetings were indescribable. And it may be thought that in such conditions the victorious parties would not necessarily reflect the wishes of the country. The Nationalists were dispersed, the Giolittians were routed—the Socialists increased from 40 to 156, and the Catholics from 30 to 101. Gabriele d'Annunzio had been the Socialists' chief elector.

THEIR WISH FOR RIEKA, DEAD OR ALIVE

There was now a fair hope that the Government would be in a position to solve the Adriatic problem. The Italian delegates in Paris had suggested that, in the independent buffer State, Rieka should have a separate municipal status, and that a narrow strip of land should join the buffer State to Italy. On December 9, a memorandum was signed by the representatives of Great Britain and America, which was the best compromise which anyone had yet proposed. The strip was dismissed as being "counter to every known consideration of geography, economics and territorial convenience." [Nevertheless this very dangerous expedient of the strip, after having been thus roundly rejected by the Allies, formed a part of the Treaty of Rapallo in November 1920—the Yugoslavs had most generously given way rather than leave this exasperating Adriatic problem still unsolved.] Rieka with her environment was to be a corpus separatum—and this was the chief point which made the proposals inacceptable to Italy. That Socialist group which is represented by the Avanti seemed to be the only one whose attitude was not intransigeant. The question of Rieka, it argued, was not isolated, but should be considered as one of the numerous questions of Italian foreign politics. It laughed at those who every moment cry "Our Fiume," because there are in the town many people who speak Italian. Other groups of Socialists had altered very much from the day when the three delegates—Labriola, Raimundo and Cappa—spoke of the Adriatic at the Congress which Kerensky summoned to Petrograd. Labriola was considered the most arrogant and chauvinist of the trio, but not even he demanded Rieka—there was no question of it at the time. Still less did he dream of Zadar or Šibenik; what he pleaded for was Triest, Istria and an island.... In December 1919 some Italian Socialist papers were printing reports on the economic life of Rieka, which was in a disastrous condition. But the great majority of Italians were so bent upon securing Rieka that they did not seem to care if by that time she were dead. And they threw a little dust into their eyes, if not into the eyes of the Entente, by declaring that if they did not annex Rieka that unhappy, faithful town would annex them. The self-appointed Consiglio Nazionale Italiano of Rieka was, however, at this time less preoccupied with the Madre Patria than with her own very troublesome affairs; she had no leisure to organize those patriotic deputations to Rome, which sailed so frequently across the Adriatic and which, as was revealed by Signor Nitti's organ Il Tempo,[46] were too often composed of speculators who liked to receive in Italy the sum of 60 centesimi for an unstamped Austrian paper crown that was barely worth ten. The disillusioned C.N.I. would have given a good many lire to be rid of d'Annunzio; the citizens were invited to vote on the following question: "Is it desirable to accept the proposal of the Italian Government, declared acceptable by the C.N.I. at its meeting of December 15, which absolves Gabriele d'Annunzio and his legionaries from their oath to hold Rieka until its annexation has been decreed and effected?" On December 21, in the Chamber, Signor Nitti announced that more than half the citizens had voted and that four-fifths of them were in favour of the suggestion of the C.N.I. But d'Annunzio, whose adherents by no means facilitated the plebiscite, proclaimed it null and void. Yet, after all, Italy had likewise, on every occasion when the Yugoslavs suggested a plebiscite under impartial control, refused to sanction it.