On the mainland the Italians were received at [vS]ibenik with some
suspicion. They announced, however, that they came as representatives of
the Allies, and begged for a pilot who would take them into [vS]ibenik's
land-locked harbour, through the mine-field. The Yugoslavs consented,
and after the Italians had installed themselves they requisitioned sixty
Austrian merchant vessels which were lying in that harbour. (They left,
as a matter of fact, to the Yugoslavs out of all the ex-Austrian
mercantile fleet exactly four old boats--_Sebenico_, _Lussin_, _Mossor_
and _Dinara_--with a total displacement of 390 tons.) On the other
hand, at Zadar, they were received in a very friendly fashion. In this
town, as it had been the seat of government, with numerous officials and
their families, the Autonomist anti-Croat party had been, under Austria,
more powerful than in any other town in Dalmatia. With converts coming
in from the country, which is entirely Slav, the Autonomists in Zadar
had become well over half the population,[11] which is about 14,000,
that of the surrounding district being about 23,000. Zadar was thus a
place apart from the rest of Dalmatia, and although the Dalmatian
Autonomists were unable to claim any of the eleven deputies who went to
Vienna, they managed to be represented in the provincial Chamber--the
Landtag--by six out of the forty-one members. The Landtag was not
elected on the basis of universal suffrage; four out of these six
members were chosen by large landowners, one (Dr. Ziliotto, the mayor)
by the town of Zadar and one by the Zadar chamber of commerce. Out of
the eighty-six communes of Dalmatia, Zadar was the solitary one that was
Autonomist. Some very few Autonomists were wont to say that they aspired
to union with Italy, but it was generally thought that most of them
agreed with Dr. Ziliotto when he said in the Landtag in 1906: "We,
separated from Italy by the whole Adriatic--we a few thousand men,
scattered, with no territorial links, among a population not of hundreds
of thousands but of millions of Slavs, how could we think of union with
Italy?" And Dr. Ziliotto was one of those who always regarded himself as
an Italian. But whether the Zadar Autonomists were sincere or not when
Austria ruled over them, the large majority of them hung out Italian
colours after the War, and in this they were undoubtedly sincere,
although the motives varied; in some it was the love of Italy, in some
it was ambition and in some a thirst for vengeance.
[Although both Yugoslavs and Italians criticize the Austrian figures, it
is probable that they are pretty accurate. The census of 1910 gave for
Dalmatia: 610,669 Serbo-Croats, 18,028 Italians, 3081 Germans and 1410
Czecho-Slovaks. The Autonomist party claimed that they were not 18,028
but 30,000; and that 150,000 persons in Dalmatia speak Italian. But the
Orlando-Sonnino Government really did try its utmost to improve these
figures. At the end of November 1918 the Italians, who had charge of the
police at Constantinople, put up notices asking all Austrian subjects
from Dalmatia to inscribe themselves with the authorities and thus
receive protection. In addition to the ordinary large Yugoslav
population, the Austrian army was still there, and two of its officers,
in uniform, inscribed themselves. The Italians had to endure not a few
rebuffs, for they applied to people at their houses--they had found the
nationality lists at the police offices. The Dutch were looking after
Yugoslav interests, but received no instructions.]