This and innumerable other manifestations of Prussianism were brought to
the attention of the French, so that it was not surprising when a
Frenchman made a few remarks in the _Rije['c]_ of Zagreb. His article,
entitled "Mise au point," begins by a reference to the Yugoslav cockades
which were sometimes worn by the French sailors. This, to the Italians,
was as if an ally in the reconquered towns of Metz and Strasbourg had
sported the colours of an enemy. "The cases are not parallel," says the
Frenchman. "You have come to Rieka and to Pola as conquerors of towns
that were exhausted, yielding to the simultaneous and gigantic pressure
of the Allied armies. These towns gave themselves up. Are they on that
account your property, and are we to consider as a dead-letter the
clauses of the Armistice which settled that Pola should be occupied by
the Allies? I am not so dexterous a diplomat as to be able to follow you
along this track; let it be decided by others. But we who were present
perceived that your occupation, which you had regulated in every detail,
had a close resemblance to the entry of a circus into some provincial
town, whose population is known beforehand to be of a hostile character.
It is needless to say that this masquerade, these vibrating appeals to
fraternity that were placarded upon the walls gave us in that grey,
abandoned town an impression of complete fiasco." ["It is significant,"
writes Mr. Beaumont the Italophil, "that the Slav population ... observe
an attitude of strange reserve and diffidence. They are silent and
almost sullen. When the Italian fleet first visited Pola there was
hardly a cheer...."] "Now let me tell you," says the Frenchman, "that
our entry into Alsace was different. Foch was not obliged to send
emissaries in advance in order to decorate the houses with flags and to
erect triumphal arches. The French cockades had not nestled in the dark
hair of our Alsatian women since 1870, for forty-eight years the
tricolors had been waiting, piously folded at the bottom of those wooden
chests, waiting for us to float them in the wind of victory--nous
rentrions chez nous tout simplement. Or, vous n'etes pas chez vous ici,
messieurs." ["Common reserve and decency should have induced the
Jugo-Slavs to abstain," says Mr. Beaumont, "from rushing to take a place
to which they were not invited ... an exclusively Italian city."]
"Whatever you may assert," says the Frenchman, "everything seems to
contradict it. Your actors play their parts with skill, but the public
is frigid. Now the decorations are tattered and the torches on the
ramparts have grown black.... Permit me, following your example, and
with courtesy, to call back the glories of old Italy, to remind myself
of the great figures that stride through your history and that give to
the world an unexampled picture of the lofty works of man. Our sailors,
who are simple and often uncultured men, have no remembrance of these
things; the brutal facts, in this whirling age in which we live, have
more power to strike their imagination. What is one to say to them when
they see their comrades stabbed, slaughtered by your men as if they were
noxious animals--yesterday at Venice, the day before that at Pola,
to-day at Rieka. Englishmen and Americans, your Allies, receive your
'sincere and fraternal hand' which holds a dagger. As a method of
pacific penetration you will avow that this is rather rudimentary and
that the laws of Romulus did not teach you such fraternity. We have also
seen you striking women in the street and disembowelling a child. What
are we to think of that, _fratelli d'Italia_? Excuse us, but we are not
accustomed to such incidents. Is it not natural that the legendary,
gallant spirit of our sailors should infect the crowd? Our bluejackets
have looked in vain for the three colours which are dear to them and
which you have excluded utterly from all your rows of flags. Well, in
default of them, they had no choice but to array themselves in the
cockades which dainty hands pinned on their uniforms.... And our
'poilus,' in their faded, mud-smeared garments walk along 'your'
streets, disdainfully regarded by your dazzling and pomaded Staff. Do
you remember that these unshaven fellows who thrust back the Boche in
1918 are the descendants of those who in 1793 conquered Italy and Europe
with bare feet? Therefore do not strike your breasts if now and then a
smile involuntarily appears upon their lips. O you who henceforth will
be known as the immortal heroes of the Piave, if our fellows see to-day
so many noble breasts, it was not seldom that they saw another portion
of your bodies."