It was thought at Zadar that the Italians would be followed in the
course of days by the other Allies. Anyhow the Yugoslavs were in no
carping spirit; about 5000 of them assembled to greet the Italian
destroyer; they were, in fact, more numerous than the Italians. And
perhaps one should record that on this memorable occasion--it was at an
early hour--Dr. Ziliotto had to complete his toilette as he ran down to
the quay. Soon the Italian captain, shouldered by the crowd, was
flourishing two flags, the Italian and the Yugoslav--although his
country had, of course, not recognized Yugoslavia. For a little time it
was the colour of roses, and the worm that crept into this paradise
seems to have been a Japanese warship in whose presence each of the two
parties wished to demonstrate how powerful it was. The carabinieri
resolved to maintain order, and as an inmate of the seminary made, they
said, an unpolished gesture at them from a window they went off and,
with some reinforcements, broke into the Slav Reading-Room and damaged
it considerably. The Italian officers and men at Zadar went about their
duties for some time without permitting themselves to be drawn into
local politics, but they were told repeatedly that the Slavs are goats
and barbarians, so that at last the men appear to have concluded that
strong measures were required. Some of them mingled, in civilian
clothes, with the unruly elements, and Zadar's narrow streets became
most hazardous for Yugoslav pedestrians. Girls and men alike were
roughly handled; thrice in one day, for example, a professor--Dr.
Stoikevi['c]--had his ears boxed as he went to or was coming from his
school. Yet Zadar is a dignified old place; the chief men of the town
and the Italian officers did what they could to keep it so. But away
from their control some deeds of truculence occurred. The prison
warders, as the spirit moved them, forced the Slavs there to be quiet,
or to shout "Viva Italia!" Most of the Slavs were in the gaol for having
had in their possession Austrian paper money stamped by the Yugoslav
authorities; these notes were subsequently declared by the Italians to
be illegal; but if a man came from Croatia, for example, and had
nothing else, it was a trifle harsh to lock him up and confiscate the
money. Eight good people went to Zadar prison owing to the fact that
near the ancient town of Biograd they had been sitting underneath the
olive trees and singing Croat folk-songs. Nor was it much in keeping
with Zadar's dignity when the "Ufficio Propaganda" put out a large red
placard which invited boys between the ages of nine and seventeen to
join in establishing a "Corpo Nazionale dei giovani esploratori"--that
is to say, an association of boy scouts. It is superfluous to inquire as
to why these boys were mustered.... When the Austrians collapsed, a few
old rifles were seized by the Italians and the Croats, the latter having
fifteen or twenty which they hid in various villages. A priest and a
medical student were privy to this fearful crime. A hue and cry was
raised by the carabinieri--the priest vanished, the student jumped out
of a window of his house and also vanished. But the carabinieri would
not be denied. They suspected that the Albanians of the neighbouring
village of Borgo Erizzo were abetting the Slavs. It was necessary,
therefore, to castigate them. The 2500 inhabitants of Borgo Erizzo,
nearly all of them Albanians who speak their own language and
Serbo-Croat, while 5 per cent. also speak Italian, used to be divided in
their sympathies before the War--75 per cent. being adherents of the
Slavs in Zadar and 25 per cent. of the Autonomists. Now they have,
excepting 5 per cent., gone over to the Slavs, and as they have retained
some of the habits of their ancestors, they were not going to let the
hostile forces win an easy victory. A student marched in front of the
Italians, then about ten carabinieri, then a few ranks of soldiers, and
then the mob of Zadar. The Albanians were in two groups, twenty
sheltering behind walls to the right of the road and twenty to the left;
they were armed with stones, their women folk were bringing them relays
of these. The encounter ended in three carabinieri and seven or eight
soldiers being wounded. In order to avenge this defeat one Duka, who is
by birth an Albanian and is a teacher at the Italian "Liga" school,
which was built a few years ago at Borgo Erizzo, determined on the next
afternoon to attack the Teachers' Institute, which is situated 400 steps
from his own establishment, and which on the previous day had shown a
strong defence. He led the attack in person, firing his revolver. But
the casualties were light. The Teachers' Institute was, after this,
occupied by the military, and Admiral Millo paid a complimentary visit
to Duka at his school.