The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean Part 2

To correctly visualize Fiume you must imagine a town no larger than Atlantic City crowded upon a narrow shelf between a towering mountain wall and the sea; a town with broad and moderately clean streets, shaded, save in the center of the city, by double rows of stately trees and paved with large square flagstones which make abominably rough riding; a town with several fine thoroughfares bordered by well-constructed four-story buildings of brick and stone; with numerous surprisingly well-stocked shops; with miles and miles of concrete moles and wharfs, equipped with harbor machinery of the most modern description, and adjacent to them rows of warehouses as commodious as the Bush Terminals in Brooklyn, and rising here and there above the trees and the housetops, like fingers pointing to heaven, the graceful campaniles of fine old churches, one of which, the cathedral, was already old when the Great Navigator turned the prows of his caravels westward from Cadiz in quest of this land we live in.

Fiume lacks none of the conditions which make a great seaport: there is deep water and a convenient approach, which is protected against the ocean and against a hostile fleet by the islands of Veglia and Cherso and against the north winds by the rocky plateau of the Karst. Yet, despite its natural advantages and the millions which were spent in its development by the Hungarian Government, Fiume never developed into a port of the size and importance which the foreign commerce of Hungary would have seemed to require, this being largely due to its unfortunate geographical condition, for the dreary and inhospitable Karst completely shuts the city off from the interior, the numerous tunnels and steep gradients making rail transport by this route difficult and consequently expensive.

The public life of the city centers in the Piazza Adamich, a broad square on which front numerous hotels, restaurants, and coffee-houses, before which lounge, from midmorning until midnight, a considerable proportion of the Italian population, sipping _cafe nero_, or tall drinks concocted from sweet, bright-colored syrups, scanning the papers and discussing, with much noise and gesticulation, the political situation and the doings of the peace commissioners in Paris. Save only Barcelona, Fiume has the most excitable and irritable population of any city that I know. When we were there street disturbances were as frequent as dog-fights used to be in Constantinople before the Turks recognized that the best gloves are made from dogskins. As I have said, a few days before our arrival a mob had attacked and killed in most barbarous fashion a number of Annamite soldiers who were guarding a French warehouse on the quay. Several prominent Fumani with whom I talked attempted to justify the ma.s.sacre on the ground that a French sailor had torn a ribbon bearing the motto "_Italia o Morte_!" from the breast of a woman of the town. They did not seem to regret the affair or to realize that it is just such occurrences which lead the Peace Conference to question the wisdom of subjecting the city's Slav minority to that sort of rule. As a result of the tense atmosphere which prevailed in the city, the nerves of the population were so on edge that when my car back-fired with a series of violent explosions, the loungers in front of a near-by cafe jumped as though a bomb had been thrown among them. The patron saint of Fiume is, appropriately enough, St. Vitus.

In discussing the question of Fiume the mistake is almost invariably made of considering it as a single city, whereas it really consists of two distinct communities, Fiume and Sussak, bitterly antagonistic and differing in race, religion, language, politics, customs, and thought.

A small river, the Rieka, no wider than the Erie Ca.n.a.l, divides the city into two parts, one Latin the other Slav, very much as the Rio Grande separates the American city of El Paso from the Mexican town of Ciudad Juarez. On the left or west bank of the river is Fiume, with approximately 40,000 inhabitants, of whom very nearly three-fourths are Italian. Here are the wharfs, the harbor works, the rail-head, the munic.i.p.al buildings, the hotels, and the business districts. But cross the Rieka by the single wooden bridge which connects Fiume with Sussak and you find yourself in a wholly different atmosphere. In a hundred paces you pa.s.s from a city which is three-quarters Italian to a town which is overwhelmingly Slav. There are about 4,500 people in Sussak, of whom only one-eighth are Italian. But let it be perfectly clear that Sussak is not Fiume. In proclaiming its annexation to Italy on the ground of self-determination, the National Council of Fiume did not include Sussak, which is a Croatian village in historically Croatian territory. It will be seen, therefore, that Sussak, which is not a part of Fiume but an entirely separate munic.i.p.ality, does not enter into the question at all. As for the territory immediately adjacent to Fiume on the north and east, it is as Slav as though it were in the heart of Serbia. To put it briefly, Fiume is an Italian island entirely surrounded by Slavs.

The violent self-a.s.sertiveness of the Fumani may be attributed to the large measure of autonomy which they have always enjoyed, Fiume's status as a free city having been definitely established by Ferdinand I in 1530, recognized by Maria Theresa in 1776 when she proclaimed it "a separate body annexed to the crown of Hungary," and by the Hungarian Government finally confirmed in 1868. Louis Kossuth admitted its extraterritorial character when he said that, even though the Magyar tongue should be enforced elsewhere as the medium of official communication, he considered that an exception "should be made in favor of a maritime city whose vocation was to welcome all nations led thither by commerce."

Though the Italian element of the population vociferously a.s.serts its adherence to the slogan "_Italia o Morte_!" I am convinced that many of the more substantial and far-seeing citizens, if they dared freely to express their opinions, would be found to favor the restoration of the city's ancient autonomy under the aegis of the League of Nations. The Italians of Flume are at bottom, beneath their excitable and mercurial temperaments, a shrewd business people who have the commercial future of their city at heart. And they are intelligent enough to realize that, unless there be established some stable form of government which will propitiate the Slav minority as well as the Italian majority, the Slav nations of the hinterland will almost certainly divert their trade, on which Fiume's commercial importance entirely depends, to some non-Italian port, in which event the city would inevitably retrograde to the obscure fishing village which it was less than half a century ago.

In order that you may have before you a clear and comprehensive picture of this most perplexing and dangerous situation, which is so fraught with peril for the future peace of the world, suppose that I sketch for you, in the fewest word-strokes possible, the arguments of the rival claimants for fair Fiume's hand. Italy's claims may be cla.s.sified under three heads: sentimental, commercial, and political. Her sentimental claims are based on the ground that the city's population, character, and history are overwhelmingly Italian. I have already stated that the Italians const.i.tute about three-fourths of the total population of Fiume, the latest figures, as quoted in the United States Senate, giving 29,569 inhabitants to the Italians and 14,798 to the Slavs. There is no denying that the city has a distinctively Italian atmosphere, for its architecture is Italian, that Venetian trademark, the Lion of St. Mark, being in evidence on several of the older buildings; the mode of outdoor life is such as one meets in Italy; most of its stores and banks are owned by Italians, and Italian is the prevailing tongue. The claim that the city's history is Italian is, however, hardly borne out by history itself, for in the sixteen centuries which have elapsed since the fall of the Roman Empire, Fiume has been under Italian rule--that of the republic of Venice--for just four days.

The commercial reason underlying Italy's insistence on obtaining control of Fiume is due to the fact that Italians are convinced that should Fiume pa.s.s into either neutral or Jugoslav hands, it would mean the commercial ruin of Trieste, where enormous sums of Italian money have been invested. They a.s.sert, and with sound reasoning, that the Slavs of the hinterland, and probably the Germans and Magyars as well, would ship through Fiume, were it under Slav or international control, instead of through Trieste, which is Italian. One does not need to be an economist to realize that if Fiume could secure the trade of Jugoslavia and the other states carved from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the commercial supremacy of Trieste, which depends upon this same hinterland, would quickly disappear. On the other hand, those Italians whose vision has not been distorted by their pa.s.sions clearly foresee that, should the final disposition of Fiume prove unacceptable to the Jugoslavs, they will almost certainly divert the trade of the interior to some Slav port, leaving Fiume to drowse in idleness beside her moss-grown wharfs and crumbling warehouses, dreaming dreams of her one-time prosperity.

Italy's third reason for insisting on the cession of Fiume is political, and, because it is based on a deep-seated and haunting fear, it is, perhaps, the most compelling reason of all. Italy does not trust the Jugoslavs. She cannot forget that the Austrian and Hungarian fractions of the new Jugoslav people--in other words, the Slovenes and Croats--were the most faithful subjects of the Dual Monarchy, fighting for the Hapsburgs with a ferocity and determination hardly surpa.s.sed in the war. Unlike the Poles and Czecho-Slovaks, who threw in their lot with the Allies, the Slovenes and Croats fought, and fought desperately, for the triumph of the Central Empires. Had these two peoples turned against their masters early in the war, the great struggle would have ended months, perhaps years, earlier than it did. Yet, within a few days after the signing of the Armistice, they became Jugoslavs, and announced that they have always been at heart friendly to the Allies. But, so the Italians argue, their conversion has been too sudden: they have changed their flag but not their hearts; their real allegiance is not to Belgrade but to Berlin. The Italian att.i.tude toward these peoples who have so abruptly switched from enemies to allies is that of the American soldier for the Filipino:

"He may be a brother of William H. Taft, But he ain't no brother of mine."

The Italians are convinced that the three peoples who have been so hastily welded into Jugoslavia will, as the result of internal jealousies and dissensions, eventually disintegrate, and that, when the break-up comes, those portions of the new state which formerly belonged to Austria-Hungary will ally themselves with the great Teutonic or, perhaps, Russo-Teutonic, confederation which, most students of European affairs believe, will arise from the ruins of the Central Empires. When that day comes the new power will look with hungering eyes toward the rich markets which fringe the Middle Sea, and what more convenient gateway through which to pour its merchandise--and, perhaps, its fighting men--than Fiume in friendly hands? In order to bar forever this, the sole gateway to the warm water still open to the Hun, the Italians should, they maintain, be made its guardians.

"But," you argue, "suppose Jugoslavia does _not_ break up? How can 14,000,000 Slavs seriously menace Italy's 40,000,000?"

Ah! Now you touch the very heart of the whole matter; now you have put your finger on the secret fear which has animated Italy throughout the controversy over Fiume and Dalmatia. For I do not believe that it is a reincarnated Germany which Italy dreads. It is something far more ominous, more terrifying than that, which alarms her. For, looking across the Adriatic, she sees the monstrous vision of a united and aggressive Slavdom, untold millions strong, of which the Jugoslavs are but the skirmish-line, ready to dispute not merely Italy's schemes for the commercial mastery of the Balkans but her overlordship of that sea which she regards as an Italian lake.

Jugoslavia's claims to Fiume are more briefly stated. Firstly, she lays t.i.tle to it on the ground that geographically Fiume belongs to Croatia, and that Croatia is now a part of Jugoslavia, or, to give the new country its correct name, the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. This claim is, I think, well founded, and this despite the fact that Italy has attempted to prove, by means of innumerable pamphlets and maps, that Fiume, being within the great semi-circular wall formed by the Alps, is physically Italian. The Jugoslavs demand Fiume, secondly, because, they a.s.sert, if Fiume and Sussak are considered as a single city, that city has more Slavs than Italians, while the population of the hinterland is almost solidly Croatian. With the first half of this claim I cannot agree. As I have already pointed out, Sussak is not, and never has been, a part of Fiume, and its annexation is not demanded by the Italians. Conceding, however, for the sake of argument, that Fiume and Sussak are parts of the same city, the most reliable figures which I have been able to obtain show that, even were the Slav majority in Sussak added to the Slav minority in Fiume, the Slavs would still be able to muster barely more than a third of the total population. By far the strongest t.i.tle which the Slavs have to the city, and the one which commands for them the greatest sympathy, is their a.s.sertion that Fiume is the natural and, indeed, almost the only practicable commercial outlet for Jugoslavia, and that the struggling young state needs it desperately. In reply to this, the Italians point out that there are numerous harbors along the Dalmatian coast which would answer the needs of Jugoslavia as well, or almost as well, as Fiume. Now, I am speaking from first-hand knowledge when I a.s.sert that this is not so, for I have seen with my own eyes every harbor, or potential harbor, on the eastern coast of the Adriatic from Istria to Greece. As a matter of fact, the entire coast of Dalmatia would not make up to the Jugoslavs for the loss of Fiume. The map gives no idea of the city's importance as the southernmost point at which a standard-gauge railway reaches the Adriatic, for the railway leading to Ragusa, to which the Italians so repeatedly refer as providing an outlet for Jugoslavia, is not only narrow-gauge but is in part a rack-and-pinion mountain line. The situation is best summed up by the commander of the American war-ship on which I dined at Spalato.

"It is not a question of finding a good harbor for the Jugoslavs," he said. "This coast is rich in splendid harbors. It is a question, rather, of finding a practicable route for a standard-gauge railway over or through the mile-high range of the Dinaric Alps, which parallel the entire coast, shutting the coast towns off from the hinterland. Until such a railway is built, the peoples of the interior have no means of getting their products down to the coast save through Fiume. Italy already has the great port of Trieste. Were she also to be awarded Fiume she would have a strangle-hold on the trade of Jugoslavia which would probably mean that country's commercial ruin."

I have now given you, as fairly as I know how, the princ.i.p.al arguments of the rival claimants. The Italians of Fiume, as I have already shown, outnumber the Slavs almost three to one, and it is they who are demanding so violently that the city should be annexed to Italy on the ground of self-determination. But I do not believe that, because there is an undoubted Italian majority in Fiume, the city should be awarded to Italy. If Italy were asking only what was beyond all shadow of question Italian, I should sympathize with her unreservedly. But to place 10,000 Slavs under Italian rule would be as unjust and as provocative of future trouble as to place 30,000 Italians under the rule of Belgrade. Nor is the cession of the city itself the end of Italy's claims, for, in order to place it beyond the range of the enemy's guns (by the "enemy" she means her late allies, the Serbs), in order to maintain control of the railways entering the city, and in order to bring the city actually within her territorial borders, she desires to extend her rule over other thousands of people who are not Italian, who do not speak the Italian tongue, and who do not wish Italian rule. Italy has no stancher friend than I, but neither my profound admiration for what she achieved during the war nor my deep sympathy for the staggering losses she suffered can blind me to the unwisdom, let us call it, of certain of her demands. I am convinced that, when the pa.s.sions aroused by the controversy have had time to cool, the Italians will themselves question the wisdom of acc.u.mulating for themselves future troubles by creating new lost provinces and a new Irredenta by annexing against their will thousands of people of an alien race. Viewing the question from the standpoints of abstract justice, of sound politics, and of common sense, I do not believe that Fiume should be given either to the Italians or to the Jugoslavs, but that the interests of both, as well as the prosperity of the Fumani themselves, should be safeguarded by making it a free city under international control.

No account of the extraordinary drama--farce would be a better name were its possibilities not so tragic--which is being staged at Fiume would be complete without some mention of the romantic figure who is playing the part of hero or villain, according to whether your sympathies are with the Italians or the Jugoslavs. There is nothing romantic, mind you, in Gabriele d'Annunzio's personal appearance. On the contrary, he is one of the most unimpressive-looking men I have ever seen. He is short of stature--not over five feet five, I should guess--and even his beautifully cut clothes, which fit so faultlessly about the waist and hips as to suggest the use of stays, but partially camouflage the corpulency of middle age. His head looks like a new-laid egg which has been highly varnished; his pointed beard is clipped in a fashion which reminded me of the bronze satyrs in the Naples museum; a monocle, worn without a cord, conceals his dead eye, which he lost in battle. His walk is a combination of a mince and a swagger; his movements are those of an actor who knows that the spotlight is upon him.

Though d'Annunzio takes high rank among the modern poets, many of his admirers holding him to be the greatest one alive, he is a far greater orator. His diction is perfect, his wealth of imagery exhaustless; I have seen him sway a vast audience as a wheat-field is swayed by the wind. His life he values not at all; the four rows of ribbons which on the breast of his uniform make a splotch of color were not won by his verses. Though well past the half-century mark, he has partic.i.p.ated in a score of aerial combats, occupying the observer's seat in his fighting Sva and operating the machine-gun. But perhaps the most brilliant of his military exploits was a bloodless one, when he flew over Vienna and bombed that city with proclamations, written by himself, pointing out to the Viennese the futility of further resistance. His popularity among all cla.s.ses is amazing; his word is law to the great organization known as the _Combatenti_, composed of the 5,000,000 men who fought in the Italian armies. He is a jingo of the jingoes, his plans for Italian expansion reaching far beyond the annexation of Fiume or even all of Dalmatia, for he has said again and again that he dreams of that day when Italy will have extended her rule over all that territory which once was held by Rome.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE INHABITANTS OF FIUME CHEERING D'ANNUNZIO AND HIS RAIDERS

"Save only Barcelona, Fiume has the most excitable population of any place that I know."

The patron saint of the city is, appropriately enough, St. Vitus]

He is a very picturesque and interesting figure, is Gabriele d'Annunzio--very much in earnest, wholly sincere, but fanatical, egotistical, intolerant of the rights or opinions of others, a visionary, and perhaps a little mad. I imagine that he would rather have his name linked with that of that other soldier-poet, who "flamed away at Missolonghi" nearly a century ago, than with any other character in history save Garibaldi. D'Annunzio, like Byron, was an exile from his native land. Both had a habit of never paying their bills; both had offended against the social codes of their times; both flamed against what they believed to be injustice and tyranny; both had a pa.s.sionate love for liberty; both possessed a highly developed sense of the dramatic and delighted in playing romantic roles. I have heard it said that d'Annunzio's raid on Fiume would make his name immortal, but I doubt it. Barely a score of years have pa.s.sed since the raid on Johannesburg, which was a far more daring and hazardous exploit than d'Annunzio's Fiume performance, yet to-day how many people remember Doctor Jameson? It can be said for this middle-aged poet that he has successfully defied the government of Italy, that he flouted the royal duke who was sent to parley with him, that he seduced the Italian army and navy into committing open mutiny--"a breach of that military discipline," in the words of the Prime Minister, "which is the foundation of the safety of the state"--and that he has done more to shake foreign confidence in the stability of the Italian character and the dependability of the Italian soldier than the Austro-Germans did when they brought about the disaster at Caporetto.

I have heard it said that the Nitti government had advance knowledge of the raid on Fiume and that the reason it took no vigorous measures against the filibusters was because it secretly approved of their action. This I do not believe. With President Wilson, the Jugoslavs, d'Annunzio, and the Italian army and navy arrayed against him, I am convinced that Mr. Nitti did everything that could be done without precipitating either a war or a revolution. Much credit is also due to the Jugoslavs for their forbearance and restraint under great provocation. They must have been sorely tempted to give the Poet the spanking he so richly deserves.

When the small army of newspaper correspondents who were despatched by the great New York and London dailies to Khartoum to interview Colonel Roosevelt upon his emergence from the jungle started up the White Nile to meet the explorer, they were deterred, both by the shortage of boats and the question of expense, from chartering individual steamers. But the public at home was not permitted to know of these petty limitations and annoyances. On the contrary, people all over the United States, at their breakfast-tables, read the despatches from the far-off Sudan dated from "On board the New York _Herald's_ dahabeah _Rameses_" or "The New York _American's_ despatch-boat _Abbas Hilmi_," or "The Chicago _Tribune's_ special steamer _General Gordon_," and never dreamed that the young men in sun-helmets and white linen who were writing those despatches were comfortably seated under the awnings of the same decrepit stern-wheeler, which they had chartered jointly, but on which, in order to lend importance and dignity to his despatches, each correspondent had bestowed a particular name.

But the destroyer _Sirio_, which we found awaiting us at Fiume, we did not have to share with any one. Thanks to the courtesy of the Italian Ministry of Marine, she was all ours, while we were aboard her, from her knife-like prow to the screws kicking the water under her stern.

"I am under orders to place myself entirely at your disposal," explained her youthful and very stiffly starched skipper, Commander Poggi. "I am to go where you desire and to stop as long as you please. Those are my instructions."

Thus it came about that, shortly after noon on a scorching summer day, we cast off our moorings and, leaving quarrel-torn Fiume abaft, turned the nose of the _Sirio_ sou' by sou'-west, down the coast of Dalmatia.

The sun-kissed waters of the Bay of Quarnero looked for all the world like a vast azure carpet strewn with a million sparkling diamonds; on our starboard quarter stretched the green-clad slopes of Istria, with the white villas of Abbazia peeping coyly out from amid the groves of pine and laurel; to the eastward the bleak brown peaks of the Dinaric Alps rose, savage, mysterious, forbidding, against the cloudless summer sky. Perhaps no stretch of coast in all the world has had so varied and romantic a history or so many masters as this Dalmatian seaboard. Since the days of the tattooed barbarians who called themselves Illyrian, this coast has been ruled in turn by Phnicians, Celts, Macedonians, Greeks, Romans, Goths, Byzantines, Croats, Serbs, Bulgars, Huns, Avars, Saracens, Normans, Magyars, Genoese, Venetians, Tartars, Bosnians, Turks, French, Russians, Montenegrins, British, Austrians, Italians--and now by Americans, for from Cape Planca southward to Ragusa, a distance of something over a hundred miles, the United States is the governing power and an American admiral holds undisputed sway.

Leaning over the rail as we fled southward I lost myself in dreams of far-off days. In my mind I could see, sweeping past in imaginary review, those other vessels which, all down the ages, had skirted these same sh.o.r.es: the purple sails of Phnicia, Greek galleys bearing colonists from Cnidus, Roman triremes with the slaves sweating at the oars, high-powered, low-waisted Norman caravels with the arms of their marauding masters painted on their bellowing canvas, stately Venetian carracks with carved and gilded sterns, swift-sailing Uskok pirate craft, their decks crowded with swarthy men in skirts and turbans, Genoese galleons, laden with the products of the hot lands, French and English frigates with bra.s.s cannon peering from their rows of ports, the grim, gray monsters of the Hapsburg navy. And then I suddenly awoke, for, coming up from the southward at full speed, their slanting funnels vomiting great clouds of smoke, were four long, low, lean, incredibly swift craft, ostrich-plumes of snowy foam curling from their bows, which sped past us like wolfhounds running with their noses to the ground. As they pa.s.sed I could see quite plainly, flaunting from each taffrail, a flag of stripes and stars.

The sun was sinking behind Italy when, threading our way amid the maze of islands and islets which border the Dalmatian sh.o.r.e, we saw beyond our bows, silhouetted against the rose-coral of the evening sky, the slender campaniles and the crenellated ramparts of Zara. It was so still and calm and beautiful that I felt as though I were looking at a scene upon a stage and that the curtain would descend at any moment and destroy the illusion. The little group of white-clad naval officers who greeted us upon the quay informed us that the governor-general, Admiral Count Millo, had placed at our disposal the yacht _Zara_, formerly the property of the Austrian Emperor, on which we were to live during our stay in the Dalmatian capital. It was a peculiarly thoughtful thing to do, for the summers are hot in Zara, the city's few hotels leave much to be desired, and a stay at a palace, even that of a provincial governor, is hedged about by a certain amount of formality and restrictions. But the _Zara_, while we were aboard her, was as much ours as the _Mayflower_ is Mr. Wilson's. We occupied the s.p.a.cious after-cabins, exquisitely paneled in white mahogany, which had been used by the Austrian archd.u.c.h.esses and whose furnishings still bore the imperial crown, and our breakfasts were served under the white awnings stretched over the after-deck, where, lounging in the grateful shade, we could look out across the harbor, dotted with the gaudy sails of fishing craft and bordered by the walls and gardens of the quaint old city, to the islands of Arbe and Pago, rising, like huge, uncut emeralds, from the lazy southern sea. At noon we usually lunched with a score or more of staff-officers in the large, cool dining-room of the officers' mess, and at night we dined with the governor-general and his family at the palace, formerly the residence of the Austrian viceroys. Dinner over, we lounged in cane chairs on the terrace, served by white-clad, silent-footed servants with coffee, cigarettes, and the maraschino for which this coast is famous. Those were never-to-be-forgotten evenings, for the gently heaving breast of the Adriatic glowed with a phosph.o.r.escent luminousness, the air was heavy with the fragrance of orange, almond, and oleander, the sky was like purple velvet, and the stars seemed very near.

Though the population of Dalmatia is overwhelmingly Slav, quite two-thirds of the 14,000 inhabitants of Zara, its capital, are Italian.

Yet, were it not for the occasional Morlachs in their picturesque costumes seen in the markets or on the wharfs, one would not suspect the presence of any Slav element in the town, for the dim and tortuous streets and the s.p.a.cious squares bear Italian names--Via del Duomo, Riva Vecchia, Piazza della Colonna; crouching above the city gates is the snarling Lion of St. Mark, and everywhere one hears the liquid accents of the Latin. Zara, like Fiume, is an Italian colony set down on a Slavonian sh.o.r.e, and, like its sister-city to the north, it bears the indelible and unmistakable imprint of Italian civilization.

The long, narrow strip of territory sandwiched between the Adriatic and the Dinaric Alps which comprised the Austrian province of Dalmatia, though upward of 200 miles in length, has an area scarcely greater than that of Connecticut and a population smaller than that of Cleveland.

Scarcely more than a tenth of its whole surface is under the plow, the rest, where it is not altogether sterile, consisting of mountain pasture. With the exception of scattered groves on the landward slopes, the country is virtually treeless, the forests for which Dalmatia was once famous having been cut down by the Venetian ship-builders or wantonly burned by the Uskok pirates, while every attempt at replanting has been frustrated by the shallowness of the soil, the frequent droughts, and the mult.i.tudes of goats which browse on the young trees.

The dreary expanse of the Bukovica, lying between Zara and the Bosnian frontier, is, without exception, the most inhospitable region that I have ever seen. For mile after mile, far as the eye can see, the earth is overlaid by a thick stratum of jagged limestone, so rough that no horse could traverse it, so sharp and flinty that a quarter of an hour's walking across it would cut to pieces the stoutest pair of boots. Under the rays of the summer sun these rocks become as hot as the top of a stove; so hot, indeed, that eggs can be cooked upon them, while metal objects exposed for only a few minutes to the sun will burn the hand.

Scattered here and there over this terrible plateau are tiny farmsteads, their houses and the walls shutting in the little patches under cultivation being built from the stones obtained in clearing the soil, a task requiring incredible patience. No wonder that the folk who dwell in them are characterized by expressions as stony and hopeless as the soil from which they wring a wretched existence.

No seaboard of the Mediterranean, save only the coast of Greece, is so deeply indented as the Dalmatian littoral, with Its unending succession of rock-bound bays, as frequent as the perforations on a postage-stamp, and its thick fringe of islands. In calm weather the channels between these islands and the mainland resemble a chain of landlocked lakes, like those in the Adirondacks or in southern Ontario, being connected by narrow straits called _ca.n.a.les_, brilliantly clear to a depth of several fathoms. As a rule, the surrounding hills are rugged, bleached yellow or pale russet, and dest.i.tute of verdure, but their monotony is relieved by the half-ruined castles and monasteries which, perched on the rocky heights, perpetually reminded me of Howard Pyle's paintings, and by the medieval charm of Zara, Sebenico, Spalato, Ragusa, Arbe, and Curzola, whose architecture, though predominantly Venetian, bears characteristic traces of the many races which have ruled them.

Just as Italy insisted on pushing her new borders up to the Brenner so that she might have a strategic frontier on the north, so she lays claim to the larger of the Dalmatian islands--Lissa, Lesina, Curzola, and certain others--in order to protect her Adriatic sh.o.r.es. A glance at the map will make her reasons amply plain. There stretches Italy's eastern coastline, 600 miles of it, from Venice to Otranto, with half a dozen busy cities and a score of fishing towns, as bare and unprotected as a bald man's hatless head. Not only is there not a single naval base on Italy's Adriatic coast south of Venice, but there is no harbor or inlet that can be transformed into one. Yet across the Adriatic, barely four hours steam by destroyer away, is a wilderness of islands and deep harbors where an enemy's fleet could lie safely hidden, from which it could emerge to attack Italian commerce or to bombard Italy's unprotected coast towns, and where it could take refuge when the pursuit became too hot. All down the ages the dwellers along Italy's eastern seaboard have been terrorized by naval raids from across the Adriatic.

And Italy has determined that they shall be terrorized no more. How history repeats itself! Just as Rome, twenty-two centuries ago, could not permit the neighboring islands of Sicily to fall into the hands of Carthage, so Italy cannot permit these coastwise islands, which form her only protection against attacks from the east, to pa.s.s under the control of the Jugoslavs.

"But," I said to the Italians with whom I discussed the matter, "why do you need any such protection now that the world is to have a League of Nations? Isn't that a sufficient guarantee that the Jugoslavs will never attack you?"

"The League of Nations is in theory a splendid thing," was their answer.

"We subscribe to it in principle most heartily. But because there is a policeman on duty in your street, do you leave wide open your front door?"

To be quite candid, I do not think that it is against Jugoslavia, or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say, against an unaided Jugoslavia, that Italy is taking precautions. I have already said, I believe, that thinking Italians look with grave forebodings to the day when a great Slav confederation shall rise across the Adriatic, but that day, as they know full well, is still far distant. Italy's desperate insistence on retaining possession of the more important Dalmatian islands is dictated by a far more immediate danger than that. She is convinced that her next war will be fought, not with the weak young state of Jugoslavia, but with Jugoslavia _allied with France_. Every Italian with whom I discussed the question--and I might add, without boasting, many highly placed and well-informed Italians have honored me with their confidence--firmly believes that France is jealous of Italy's rapidly increasing power in the Mediterranean, and that she is secretly intriguing with the Jugoslavs and the Greeks to prevent Italy obtaining commercial supremacy in the Balkans. I do not say that this is my opinion, mind you, but I do say that it is the opinion held by most Italians. I found that the resentment against the French for what the Italians term France's "betrayal" of Italy at the Peace Conference was almost universal; everywhere in Italy I found a deep-seated distrust of France's commercial ambitions and political designs. Though the Italians admit that the Jugoslavs will not be able to build a navy for many years to come, they fear, or profess to fear, that the day is not immeasurably far distant when a French battle fleet, co-operating with the armies of Jugoslavia, will threaten Italy's Adriatic seaboard. And they are determined that, should such a day ever come, French ships shall not be afforded the protection, as were the Austrian, of the Dalmatian islands. Italy, with her great modern battle fleet and her 5,000,000 fighting men, regards the threats of Jugoslavia with something akin to contempt, but France, turned imperialistic and arrogant by her victory over the Hun, Italy distrusts and fears, believing that, while protesting her friendship, she is secretly fomenting opposition to legitimate Italian aspirations in the Balkan peninsula and in the Middle Sea. (Again let me remind you that I am giving you not my own, but Italy's point of view.) You will sneer at this, perhaps, as a phantasm of the imagination, but I a.s.sure you, with all the earnestness and emphasis at my command, that this distrust of one great Latin nation for another, whether it is justified or not, forms a deadly menace to the future peace of the world.

Because I did not wish to confine my observations to the coast towns, which are, after all, essentially Italian, I motored across Dalmatia at its widest part, from Zara, through Benkovac, Kistonje, and Knin, to the little hamlet of Kievo, on the Jugoslav frontier. Though the Slav population of the Dalmatian hinterland is, according to the a.s.sertions of Belgrade, bitterly hostile to Italian rule, I did not detect a single symptom of animosity toward the Italian officers who were my companions on the part of the peasants whom we pa.s.sed. They displayed, on the contrary, the utmost courtesy and good feeling, the women, looking like huge and gaudily dressed dolls in their snowy blouses and embroidered ap.r.o.ns, courtesying, while the tall, fine-looking men gravely touched the little round caps which are the national head-gear of Dalmatia.

Kievo is the last town in Dalmatia, being only a few score yards from the Bosnian frontier. Its little garrison was in command of a young Italian captain, a tall, slender fellow with the blond beard of a Viking and the dreamy eyes of a poet. He had been stationed at this lonely outpost for seven months, he told me, and he welcomed us as a man wrecked on a desert island would welcome a rescue party. In order to escape from the heat and filth and insects of the village, he had built in a near-by grove a sort of arbor, with a roof of interlaced branches to keep off the sun. Its furnishings consisted of a home-made table, an army cot, two or three decrepit chairs, and a phonograph. I did not need to inquire where he had obtained the phonograph, for on its cover was stenciled the familiar red triangle of the Y.M.C.A.--the "_Yimka_," as the Italians call it--which operates more than 300 _casas_ for the use of the Italian army. While our host was preparing a dubious-looking drink from sweet, bright-colored syrups and lukewarm water, I amused myself by glancing over the little stack of records on the table. They were, of course, nearly all Italian, but I came upon three that I knew well: "_Loch Lomond_," "_Old Folks at Home_" and "_So Long, Letty_." It was like meeting a party of old friends in a strange land. I tried the later record, and though it was not very clear, for the captain's supply of needles had run out and he had been reduced to using ordinary pins, it was startling to hear Charlotte Greenwood's familiar voice caroling "_So long, so long, Letty_," there on the borders of Bosnia, with a picket of curious Jugoslavs, rifles across their knees, seated on the rocky hillside, barely a stone's throw away. Still, come to think about it, the war produced many contrasts quite as strange, as, for example, when the New York Irish, the old 69th, crossed the Rhine with the regimental band playing "_The Sidewalks of New York_."

We touched at Sebenico, which is forty knots down the coast from Zara, in order to accept an invitation to lunch with Lieutenant-General Montanari, who commands all the Italian troops in Dalmatia. Now before we started down the Adriatic we had been warned that, because of President Wilson's att.i.tude on the Fiume question, the feeling against Americans ran very high, and that from the Italians we must be prepared for coldness, if not for actual insults. Well, this luncheon at Sebenico was an example of the insults we received and the coldness with which we were treated. Because our destroyer was late, half a hundred busy officers delayed their midday meal for two hours in order not to sit down without us. The table was decorated with American flags, and other American flags had been hand-painted on the menus. And, as a final affront, a destroyer had been sent across the Adriatic Sea to obtain lobsters because the general had heard that my wife was particularly fond of them. After that experience don't talk to me about Southern hospitality. Though the Italians bitterly resent President Wilson's interference in an affair which they consider peculiarly their own, their resentment does not extend to the President's countrymen. Their att.i.tude is aptly ill.u.s.trated by an incident which took place at the mess of a famous regiment of Bersaglieri, when the picture of President Wilson, which had hung on the wall of the mess-hall, opposite that of the King, was taken down--and an American flag hung in its place.

The most interesting building in Sebenico is the cathedral, which was begun when America had yet to be discovered. The chief glory of the cathedral is its exterior, with its superb carved doors, its countless leering, grinning gargoyles--said to represent the evil spirits expelled from the church--and a broad frieze, running entirely around the edifice, composed of sculptured likenesses of the architects, artists, sculptors, masons, and master-builders who partic.i.p.ated in its construction. Put collars, neckties, and derby hats on some of them and you would have striking likenesses of certain labor leaders of to-day.

The next time a building of note is erected in this country the countenances of the bricklayers, hod-carriers, and walking delegates might be immortalized in some such fashion. I offer the suggestion to the labor-unions for what it is worth.

Throughout all the years of Austrian domination the citizens of Sebenico remained loyal to their Italian traditions, as is proved by the medallions ornamenting the facade of the cathedral, each of which bears the image of a saint. One of these sculptured saints, it was pointed out to me, has the unmistakable features of Victor Emanuel I, another those of Garibaldi. Thus did the Italian workmen of their day cunningly express their defiance of Austria's tyranny by ornamenting one of her most splendid cathedrals with the heads of Italian heroes. Imagine carving the heads of Elihu Root and Charles E. Hughes on the facade of Tammany Hall!

Next to the cathedral, the most interesting building in Sebenico is the insect-powder factory. It is a large factory and does a thriving business, the need for its product being Balkan-wide. If, for upward of five months, you had fought nightly engagements with the _cimex lectularius_, you would understand how vital is an ample supply of powder. Believe me or not, as you please, but in many parts of Dalmatia and Albania we were compelled to defend our beds against nocturnal raiding-parties by raising veritable ramparts of insect-powder, very much as in Flanders we threw up earthworks against the a.s.saults of the Hun, while in Monastir the only known way of obtaining sleep is to set the legs of one's bed in basins filled with kerosene.

Four hours steaming south from Sebenico brought us to Spalato, the largest city of Dalmatia and one of the most picturesquely situated towns in the Levant. It owes its name to the great palace (_palatium_) of Diocletian, within the precincts of which a great part of the old town is built and around which have sprung up its more modern suburbs.

Cosily ensconced between the stately marble columns which formed the palace's facade are fruit, tobacco, barber, shoe, and tailor shops, whose proprietors drive a roaring trade with the sailors from the international armada a.s.sembled in the harbor. A great hall, which had probably originally been one of the vestibules of the palace, was occupied by the Knights of Columbus, the place being in charge of a khaki-clad priest, Father Mullane, of Johnstown, Pa., who twice daily dispensed true American hospitality, in the form of hot doughnuts and mugs of steaming coffee, to the blue-jackets from the American ships. As there was no coal to be had in the town, he made the doughnuts with the aid of a plumber's blowpipe. In the course of our conversation Father Mullane mentioned that he was living with the Serbian bishop--at least I think he was a bishop-of Spalato.

"I suppose he speaks English or French," I remarked.