"Italy's reward," says Mr. Beaumont, "must be commensurate with her
sacrifices, and this is the attitude assumed here. It is quite apart
from the mere question as to whether the Jugo-Slavs are in a majority in
certain districts or not. Those districts form a part of old Italian
territory, of Italian lands once peopled and occupied by the Italian
race and into which, with Austria's encouragement, Slav populations have
filtered." [I should love to know what are Mr. Beaumont's sources.] "The
question must not be left to local ambition and antipathies. It must be
decided authoritatively and quickly in strong counsel to the Jugo-Slav
leaders." ... Let us leave Rieka and see how the Italians decided
authoritatively and quickly on the island of Cres (Cherso). It is a
large but not thickly populated island; having 8162 inhabitants for 336
square kilometres. The Yugoslavs, according to the census of 1910,
number 5714 or 71.3 per cent., while the Italian-speaking population
amounts to 2296 or 28 per cent. About the middle of November the Italian
authorities placed in the village of Martin[vs]['c]ica, which is in the
south-western part of the island, 17 soldiers, 3 carabinieri and a
lieutenant. Let me say at once that I have never been to Cres, all my
knowledge of this case comes from a Franciscan monk who lives there, the
Rev. Ambrose Vlahov, Professor of Theology. At Martin[vs]['c]ica, he
says, there is not a single Italianist; the entire village is Yugoslav.
When the Italian military arrived the lieutenant insisted that the
priest, Karlo Hla['c]a, should cease to sing the Mass in Old Slav, and
that for the whole service he should use Italian, the only language,
said the lieutenant, which he (the lieutenant) understood. It was futile
for the priest to demonstrate what a ridiculous and unreasonable demand
this was; the lieutenant always came back to the subject, being sometimes
merely importunate and sometimes using menaces. As Hla['c]a was a model
ecclesiastic, highly esteemed by his parishioners, the lieutenant
comprehended that as long as this priest remained, he would be foiled in
his endeavours; he therefore sought an opportunity to turn him out. On
January 5, 1919, the priest had, by order of his bishop, to read during
the service a pastoral letter on the duties of the faithful towards the
Church and towards their fellow-men; he had also to add a simple and
concise commentary. In this letter there was a passage dealing with
schools, and the priest on that topic remarked that "by divine and human
law every nation may ask that its children should be instructed in their
mother tongue." When Mass was finished, the mayor of the village
assembled the parishioners and notified them that henceforward, by order
of the lieutenant, there would no longer be in the village a Croatian
but an Italian school. And in order to mollify the people he added that
the lieutenant proposed to give subsidies to such as stood in need; they
had only to present themselves before that officer. But, though the
people often found it hard to satisfy their simple wants and were at
that period in very great distress, they walked away from this assembly
without making one step in the lieutenant's direction. This incited him
to such fury that he ran, accompanied by soldiers and carabinieri, to
the priest, and publicly, in a loud voice, insulted him, calling him an
intriguer, a rebel, an agitator. On the following day the lieutenant had
him conducted to the village of Cres by two soldiers and a carabiniere,
who were all armed.... At Cres the priest was brought before the
commanding officer of the Quarnero Islands--our old acquaintance, the
naval captain of Krk--who happened to be in this village. He started at
once to bellow at the priest and, striking the table with his hand,
exclaimed: "This is an Italian island, all Italian, nothing but Italian
and evermore it will remain Italian." About a score of parishioners had
come to Cres behind their priest and his escort; they begged the
commandant to set him free. As an answer he harangued them with respect
to the Italian character of the islands, told them that they would have
to send their children to the Italian school and that the whole village
would be Italianized and that _only in their homes_ would they be
permitted to speak Croatian.... On January 8 the priest was taken from
Cres to the island of Krk, where he was informed that he would have to
leave his parish, but that he might go back there for a day or two to
fetch a few necessities. It was raining in torrents when Father
Hla['c]a, wet to the skin, arrived at his village on the 11th at seven
o'clock in the evening. As he suffers from several chronic
ailments--which was known to the lieutenant--this bad weather had a
grave effect upon him. When he reached his house he went to bed at once
with a very high temperature. After about a quarter of an hour the
lieutenant appeared with two carabinieri and shouted at him that he must
get up. This draconian injunction had to be obeyed, the more so as the
lieutenant was labouring under great excitement. He looked at the
priest's permit which allowed him to come back to the village, and said,
"If I were in your shoes I wouldn't venture to come back here." These
words gave Father Hla['c]a an impression that his life was in danger.
The lieutenant then ordered him not to go out among the people, but to
stop where he was until he was taken away. Five days after this the
priest was taken to Rieka, so that the villagers were left with nobody
to guard them against the violence and the temptations offered them by
the Italians. The Croat inscription outside the school was replaced by
one in Italian and, with the lieutenant acting as teacher, the doors
were thrown open. But the only children who went there were those of the
lieutenant himself and those of the mayor, who was a renegade in the pay
of the Italians. It was announced that heavy fines would be inflicted if
the other children did not come. The villagers were in great trouble and
in fear, with nobody to give them advice or consolation.... There may be
some who will be curious to know concerning the "Italian" population of
this island, which, according to the 1910 census, reached the large
figure of 28 per cent. At a place called Nere[vz]ine it was stated, in
the census of 1880, that the commissioner had found 706 Italians and 340
Yugoslavs. Consequently an Italian primary school was opened; but when
it was discovered that the children of Nere[vz]ine knew not one traitor
word of that language, the school was transformed into a Yugoslav
establishment. This is one case out of many; the 28 per cent. would not
bear much scrutiny.... But the Italian Government, at any rate the "Liga
Nazionale" to whose endowment it contributes, had been taking in hand
this question of elementary schools in Istria and Dalmatia among the
Slav population. The "Liga" made gratuitous distribution of clothing, of
boots, of school-books and so forth. Some indigent Slavs allowed
themselves in this way to become denationalized.
* * * * *
When, however, you examine the embroideries of these
islands--particularly beautiful on Rab and on the island of wild olive
trees, the neighbouring Pag--you will be sure that such an ancient
national spirit as they show will not be easily seduced. The Magyars, by
the way, whose culture is more modern, borrowed certain features that
you find on these embroideries--the sun, for instance, and the cock,
which have from immemorial times been thought appropriate by these
people for the cloth a woman wears upon her head when she is bringing a
new son into the world, whose dawn the cock announces. Older than the
workers in wood, much older than those who carved in stone, are these
island embroiderers. In this work the people reproduced their tears and
laughter.