THE BORDERLAND OF SLAV AND LATIN
It was the same along the entire line of the Armistice from the Brenner
down to Istria. Whenever the officials with whom we talked heard that we
were going to Fiume, they shook their heads pessimistically. "It's a
good place to stay away from just now," said one. "They won't let you
enter the city," another warned us. Or, "You mustn't think of taking the
_signora_ with you." But the representative of an American oil company
whom I met in the American consulate in Trieste regarded the excursion
from a different view-point altogether.
"Be sure to stop at the Europa," he urged me. "It's right on the
water-front, and there isn't a better place in the city to see what's
happening. I was there last week when the mob attacked the French
Annamite troops. Believe me, friend, that was one hellish business ...
they literally cut those poor little Chinks into pieces. I saw the whole
thing from my window. I'm going back to Fiume to-morrow, and if you like
I'll tell the manager of the Europa to save you a front room."
His tone was that of a New Yorker telling a friend from up-State that he
would reserve him a room in a Fifth Avenue hotel from which to view a
parade.
As things turned out, however, we did not have occasion to avail
ourselves of this offer, for we found that rooms had been reserved for
us at a hotel in Abbazia, just across the bay from Fiume. This
arrangement was due to the Italian military governor, General Grazioli,
who was perfectly aware that the inhabitants of Fiume were not hanging
out any "Welcome-to-Our-City" signs for foreigners, particularly for
foreigners who were country people of President Wilson, and that the
fewer Americans there were in the town the less danger there was of
anti-American demonstrations. In view of what had happened to the
Annamites I had no overpowering desire to be the center of a similar
demonstration. Pursuant to this arrangement we slept in a great barn of
a hotel whose echoing corridors had, in happier days, been a favorite
resort of the wealth and fashion of Hungary, but whose once costly
furniture had been sadly dilapidated by the spurred boots of the
Austrian staff officers who had used it as a headquarters; in the
mornings we had our sugarless coffee and butterless war-bread on a lofty
balcony commanding a superb panorama of the Istrian coast from Icici to
Volosca and of the island-studded Bay of Quarnero, and commuted to and
from Fiume in the big gray Lancia in which we had traveled along the
line of the Armistice for upward of 2,000 miles.
We had our first view of the Unredeemed City (though it was really not
my first view, as I had been there before the war) from a curve in the
road where it suddenly emerges from the woods of evergreen laurel above
Volosca to drop in steep white zigzags to the sea. It is superbly
situated, this ancient city over whose possession Slav and Latin are
growling at each other like dogs over a disputed bone. With its snowy
buildings spread on the slopes of a shallow amphitheater between the
sapphire waters of the Adriatic and the barren flanks of the Istrian
Karst, it suggested a lovely siren, all glistening and white, who had
emerged from the sea to lie upon the bare brown breast of a mountain
giant.
The car, with its exhaust wide open, for your Italian driver delights in
noise, roared down the grade at express-train speed, took the hairpin
curve at the bottom on two wheels, to be brought to an abrupt halt with
an agonized squealing of brakes, our further progress being barred by a
six-inch tree-trunk which had been lowered across the road like a
barrier at an old-time country toll-gate. At one side of the road was a
picket of Italian carabinieri in field-gray uniforms, their huge cocked
hats rendered a shade less anachronistic by covers of gray linen, with
carbines slung over their shoulders, hunter fashion. On the opposite
side of the highway was a patrol of British sailors in white drill
landing-kit, their rosy, smiling faces in striking contrast to the
saturnine countenances of the Italians. (I might explain,
parenthetically, that Fiume, being in theory under the jurisdiction of
the Peace Conference, was at this time occupied by about a thousand
French troops, the same number of British, a few score American
blue-jackets, and nearly 10,000 Italians.) The sergeant in command of
the carabinieri stepped up to the car, saluted, and curtly asked for our
papers. I produced them. Among them was a pass authorizing us to go when
and where we pleased in the territory occupied by the Italian forces. It
had been given to me by the Minister of War himself, but it made about
as much impression on the sergeant as though it had been signed by
Charlie Chaplin.
"This is good only for Italy," he said. "It will not take you across the
line of the Armistice."
[Illustration: AT THE GATES OF FIUME
Major Powell (second from left), Mrs. Powell, Captain Tron of the
Italian _Comando Supremo_, and the car in which they travelled 1,000
miles]
Thereupon I played my last trump. I produced an imposing document which
had been given me by the Italian peace delegation in Paris. It had
originally been issued by the Orlando-Sonnino cabinet, but upon the fall
of that government I had had it countersigned, before leaving Rome, by
the Nitti cabinet. It was addressed to all the military, naval, and
civil authorities of Italy, and was so flatteringly worded that it would
have satisfied St. Peter himself. But the sergeant was not in the
least impressed. He read it through deliberately, scrutinized the
official seals, examined the watermark, and then disappeared into a
sentry-box on the roadside. I could hear him talking, evidently over a
telephone. Presently he emerged and signaled to his men to raise the
barrier. "Passo," he said grudgingly, in a tone which intimated that he
was letting us enter the jealously guarded portals of Fiume against his
better judgment, the bar swung upward, the big car leaped forward like a
race-horse that feels the spur, and in another moment we were rolling
through the tree-arched, stone-paved streets of the most-talked-of city
in the world. As we sped down the Corsia Deák we passed a large hotel
which, as was quite evident, had recently been renamed, for the words
"Albergo d'Annunzio" were fresh and staring. But underneath was the
former name, which had been so imperfectly obliterated that it could
still easily be deciphered. It was "Hotel Wilson."
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 _café 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 massacre 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 café 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 Canal, 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
municipal 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 pass 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 municipality, 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-assertiveness 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 asserts 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 ægis 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 classified 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 constitute 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 pass into either neutral or Jugoslav hands, it would mean the
commercial ruin of Trieste, where enormous sums of Italian money have
been invested. They assert, 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 passions 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 surpassed 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 attitude 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
title 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 assert, 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 title which the Slavs have to the
city, and the one which commands for them the greatest sympathy, is
their assertion 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 assert 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 principal 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 passions aroused by the
controversy have had time to cool, the Italians will themselves question
the wisdom of accumulating 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 participated 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 classes 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.
[Illustration: 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 passionate
love for liberty; both possessed a highly developed sense of the
dramatic and delighted in playing romantic rôles. 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 passed 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 Phœnicians, 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
shores: the purple sails of Phœnicia, 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 brass 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 passed 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 shore, 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 spacious after-cabins,
exquisitely paneled in white mahogany, which had been used by the
Austrian archduchesses 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
phosphorescent 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 spacious 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 shore, 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 multitudes 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 _canales_, brilliantly clear to a depth of several
fathoms. As a rule, the surrounding hills are rugged, bleached yellow or
pale russet, and destitute 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, Lésina, Curzola, and
certain others--in order to protect her Adriatic shores. 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 pass 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 assure 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 assertions
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 passed. 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
aprons, 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 attitude 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
attitude is aptly illustrated 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 participated 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 façade 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 façade 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 assaults 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 façade are fruit, tobacco, barber, shoe, and tailor shops,
whose proprietors drive a roaring trade with the sailors from the
international armada assembled 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.
"He does not," was the answer.
"Then you must have picked up some Serb or Italian," I hazarded.
"Niver a wurrd of thim vulgar tongues do I know," said he.
"Then how do you and the bishop get along?"
"Shure," said Father Mullane, in the rich brogue which is, I imagine,
something of an affectation, "an' what is the use of bein' educated for
the church if we were not able to converse with ease an' fluency in
iligant an' refined Latin?"
When we were leaving Spalato, Father Mullane presented us with a _Bon
Voyage_ package which contained cigarettes, a box of milk chocolate, and
a five-pound tin of gum-drops. The cigarettes we smoked, the chocolate
we ate, but the gum-drops we used for tips right across the Balkans. In
lands whose people have not known the taste of sugar for five years we
found that a handful of gum-drops would accomplish more than money. A
few men with Father Mullane's resource, tact, and sense of humor would
do more than all the diplomats under the roof of the Hotel Crillon to
settle international differences and make the nations understand each
other.
I had been warned by archæological friends, before I went to Dalmatia,
that the ruins of Salona, which once was the capital of Roman Dalmatia
and the site of the summer palace of Diocletian, would probably
disappoint me. They date from the period of Roman decadence, so my
learned friends explained, and, though following Roman traditions,
frequently show traces of negligence, a fact which is accounted for by
the haste with which the ailing and hypochondriac Emperor sought to
build himself a retreat from the world. Still, the little excursion--for
Salona is only five miles from Spalato--provided much that was worth the
seeing: a partially excavated amphitheater, a long row of stone
sarcophagi lying in a trench, one or two fine gates, and some
beautifully preserved mosaics. I must confess, however, that I was more
interested in the modern aspects of this region than in its glorious
past, for, standing upon the massive walls of the Roman city, I looked
down upon a panorama of power such as Diocletian had never pictured in
his wildest dreams, for, moored in a long and impressive row, their
stern-lines made fast to the _Molo_, was a line of war-ships flying the
flags of England, France, Italy, and the United States. On the right of
the line, as befitted the fact that its commander was the senior naval
officer and in charge of all this portion of the coast, was Admiral
Andrews's flag-ship, the _Olympia_, but little changed, at least to the
casual glance, since that day, more than twoscore years ago, when she
blazed her way into Manila Bay and won for us a colonial empire. On her
bridge, outlined in brass tacks, I was shown Admiral Dewey's footprints,
just as he stood at the beginning of the battle when he gave the order
"You may fire when you are ready, Gridley."
Of the 18,000 inhabitants of Spalato, less than a tenth are Italian, the
general character of the town and the sympathies of its inhabitants
being strongly pro-Slav. In fact, its streets were filled with Jugoslav
soldiers, many of them still wearing the uniforms of the Austrian
regiments in which they had served but with Serbian _képis_, while
others looked strangely familiar in khaki uniforms furnished them by the
United States. It being warm weather, most of the men wore their coats
unbuttoned, thereby displaying a considerable expanse of hairy chest or
violently colored underwear and producing a somewhat negligée effect.
Because of the presence in the town of the Jugoslav soldiery, the crews
of the Italian war-ships were not permitted to go ashore with the
sailors of the other nations, as Admiral Andrews feared that their
presence might provoke unpleasant incidents. Hence their "shore leave"
had, for nearly six months, been confined to the narrow concrete _Molo_,
where they were permitted to stroll in the evenings and where the
Italian girls of the town came to see them. For a Jugoslav girl to have
been seen in company with an Italian sailor would have meant her social
ostracism, if nothing worse.
Though Italy will unquestionably insist on the cession of certain of the
Dalmatian islands, in order, as I have already pointed out, to assure
herself a defensible eastern frontier, and though she will ask for Zara
and possibly for Sebenico on the ground of their preponderantly Italian
character, I believe that she is prepared to abandon her original claims
to Dalmatia, which is, when all is said and done, almost purely
Slavonian, Jugoslavia thus obtaining nearly 550 miles of coast. Now I
will be quite frank and say that when I went to Dalmatia I was strongly
opposed to the extension of Italian rule over that region. And I still
believe that it would be a political mistake. But, after seeing the
country from end to end and talking with the Italian officials who have
been temporarily charged with its administration, I have become
convinced that they have the best interests of the people genuinely at
heart and that the Dalmatians might do worse, so far as justice and
progress are concerned, than to intrust their future to the guidance of
such men.
It had been our original intention to steam straight south from Spalato
to the Bocche di Cattaro and Montenegro, but, being foot-loose and free
and having plenty of coal in the _Sirio's_ bunkers, we decided to make a
detour in order to visit the Curzolane Islands. In case you cannot
recall its precise situation, I might remind you that the Curzolane
Archipelago, consisting of several good-sized islands--Brazza, Lésina,
Lissa, Mélida, and Curzola--and a great number of smaller ones, lies off
the Dalmatian coast, almost opposite Ragusa. From Spalato we laid our
course due south, past Solta, famed for its honey produced from rosemary
and the cistus-rose; skirted the wooded shores of Brazza, the largest
island of the group, rounded Capo Pellegrino and entered the lovely
harbor of Lésina. We did not anchor but, slowing to half-speed, made
the circuit of the little port, running close enough to the shore to
obtain pictures of the famous Loggia built by Sanmicheli, the Fondazo,
the ancient Venetian arsenal, and the crumbling Spanish fort, perched
high on a crag above the town. Then south by west again, past Lissa, the
western-most island of the group, where an Italian fleet under Persano
was defeated and destroyed by an Austrian squadron under Tegetthof in
1866. A marble lion in the local cemetery commemorated the victory and
marked the resting-places of the Austrian dead, but when the Italians
took possession of the island after the Armistice they changed the
inscription on the monument so that it now commemorates their final
victory over Austria. It was not, I think, a very sportsmanlike
proceeding.
Leaving Lissa to starboard, we steamed through the Canale di
Sabbioncello, with exquisite panoramas unrolling on either hand, and
dropped anchor off the quay of Curzola, where the governor of the
islands, Admiral Piazza, awaited us with his staff. In spite of the
bleakness of the surrounding mountains, Curzola is one of the most
exquisitely beautiful little towns that I have ever seen. The next time
you are in the Adriatic you should not fail to go there. Time and the
hand of man--for the people are a color-loving race--have given many
tints, soft and bright, to its roofs, towers, and ramparts. It is a town
of dim, narrow, winding streets, of steep flights of worn stone steps,
of moss-covered archways, and of some of the most splendid specimens of
the domestic architecture of the Middle Ages that exist outside of the
Street of the Crusaders in Rhodes. The sole modern touches are the
costumes of the islanders, and they are sufficiently picturesque not to
spoil the picture. How the place has escaped the motion-picture people I
fail to understand. (As a matter of fact, it hasn't, for I took with me
an operator and a camera--the first the islanders had ever seen.)
Besides the Cathedral of San Marco, with its splendid doors, its
exquisitely carved choir-stalls black with age and use, its choir
balustrade and pulpit of translucent alabaster, and its dim old
altar-piece by Tintoretto, the town boasts the Loggia or council
chambers, the palace of the Venetian governors, the noble mansion of the
Arnieri, and, brooding over all, a towering campanile, five centuries
old. The Lion of St. Mark, which appears on several of the public
buildings, holds beneath its paw a closed instead of an open
book--symbolizing, so I was told, the islanders' dissatisfaction with
certain laws of the Venetians.
But the phase of my visit which I enjoyed the most was when Admiral
Piazza took us across the bay, on a Detroit-built submarine-chaser, to a
Franciscan monastery dating from the fifteenth century. We were met by
the abbot at the water-stairs, and, after being shown the beautiful
Venetian Gothic cloisters, with alabaster columns whose carving was
almost lacelike in its delicate tracery, we were led along a wooded path
beside the sea, over a carpet of pine-needles, to a cloistered
rose-garden, in which stood, amid a bower of blossoms, a blue and white
statue of the Virgin. The fragrance of the flowers in the little
enclosure was like the incense in a church, above our heads the great
pines formed a canopy of green, and the music was furnished by the birds
and the murmuring sea. Here we seemed a world away from the waiting
armies and the great gray battleships, from the quarrels of Latin and
Slav. It was the first real peace that I had known after five years of
war, and I should have liked to remain there longer. But Montenegro,
Albania, Macedonia, all the unhappy, war-torn lands of the Near East lay
before me, and I turned reluctantly away. But my thoughts keep harking
back to the little town beside the turquoise bay, to the restfulness of
its old, old buildings, to the perfume of its flowers, and the
whispering voice of its turquoise sea. So some day, when the world is
really at peace and there are no more wars to write about, I think that
I shall go back to where
"Far, far from here,
The Adriatic breaks in a warm bay
Among the green Illyrian hills."