Talking of numbers, one may mention that the Yugoslavs formed about 65
per cent. of the Austro-Hungarian navy, as one would naturally expect
from the sea-faring population of Dalmatia and Istria. In the technical
branches of the service only about 40 per cent. were Yugoslavs, for a
preference was given to Germans and Magyars. Out of 116 chief engineers
only two were Yugoslavs. Serbo-Croat was an obligatory language; but
German, as in the army, was the language of command. Thus one sees that,
in spite of not being favoured, the Yugoslavs of the Adriatic, who are
natural sailors, constituted more than half the personnel of the navy.
"These Slav people," writes Mr. Hilaire Belloc,[6] who took the trouble
to go to the Adriatic with a view to solving the local problems, "these
Slav people have only tentatively approached the sea. Its traffic was
never native to them." If he had continued a little way down the coast
he would have seen many and many a neat little house whose owners are
retired sea-captains. "They are not mariners," says Mr. Belloc. If he
had made a small excursion into history he would have learned that
Venice--since it was to her own advantage--made an exception of
Dalmatia's shipping industry, and while she was placing obstacles along
the roads that a Dalmatian might wish to take, allowed the time-honoured
industries of the sea to be developed. Such fine sailors were the
Dalmatians that Benedetto Pesaro, the Venetian Admiral against the Turks
in the fifteenth century, deplored the fact that his galleys were not
fully manned by them, instead of those "Lombardi" whom he despised.
"They are," says Mr. John Leyland,[7] the naval authority--they are
"pre-eminently a maritime race. The circumstances of their geography,
and in a chief degree the wonderful configuration of their coast-line,
with its sheltered waters and admirable anchorages, made them
sea-farers.... The proud Venetians knew them as pirates and marauders
long ago." And "there has never been a better seaman," adds Mr. Leyland,
"than the pirate turned trader." In 1780 the island of Bra[vc] had forty
vessels, Lussin a hundred, and Kotor, which in the second half of the
eighteenth century quadrupled her mercantile marine, had a much larger
fleet than either of them. The best-known dockyards were those at
Kor[vc]ula and Trogir, while the great Overseas Sailing Ship Navigation
Company at Peljesac (Sabioncello) occupied an important position in the
world of trade. The company's fleet of large sailing vessels was of
native construction; both crews and captains were natives of the
country, so that it was in every way the best representative of the
Dalmatian mercantile marine of the period. When the Treaty of Vienna in
1815 gave Venice, Istria and the Eastern Adriatic to the Habsburgs the
vessels plying in those waters were very largely Slav. And with the
substitution of steam the Dalmatians are still holding their own, with
this difference, that the ships are now built, even as they are manned,
not by nobles and the wealthy _bourgeoisie_, but by men who come from
modest sea-faring or peasant families. In the Austrian mercantile marine
German capital formed 47.82 per cent., Italian capital 19.37 per cent.
and Slav capital 31.80 per cent. One of these Dalmatian Slavs,
Mihanovi['c], going out in poverty to the Argentine, has followed with
such success the shipbuilding of his ancestors that he is now among the
chief millionaires of Buenos Aires. With regard to fishing, there are
along the Istrian and Dalmatian coast more than 5000 small vessels which
give employment to 19,000 fishermen, of whom only 1000 are citizens of
Italy. But Mr. Belloc says that these Slav people have only tentatively
approached the sea, that its traffic was never native to them, and that
they are not mariners. It is marvellous that you can be paid for writing
that sort of stuff.... By Mr. Belloc's side is the Marchese Donghi, who
in the _Fortnightly Review_ of June 1922 says: "It is superfluous to add
that everything which has to do with navigation [in Dalmatia] is
entirely in the hands of the Italians." But I think it is superfluous to
contradict a gentleman who ingenuously believes that Dalmatia is largely
Italian because on our maps we have hitherto used Italian place-names.
Will he say that the population of Praha is not Czech because on our
maps that capital is commonly called Prague? It pleases the Marchese to
be facetious about what he describes as "that queer thing called the
Srba Hrvata i Slovenca Kralji (Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and
Slovenes)"; he should have said "Kraljevina Srba, Hrvata i Slovenaca."
He says that in Serbia "no industry is possible," whereas in one single
town, Lescovac, there are no less than eleven textile besides other
factories. He says that one-third of the population of Dalmatia is
Italian, and "almost exclusively the nobility and the upper
_bourgeoisie_." I suppose that is why more than 700 of Dalmatia's
leading citizens were deported by the Italians after the Great War. He
says many other nonsensical things, and sums it all up by telling us of
the "bewildered incomprehension" of the Adriatic problem!