While the Italians were thus engaged, what was the state of opinion in
their own country? Would Bissolati's organ, the _Secolo_, and the
_Corriere della Sera_, which had been favourable to the Slavs since
Caporetto, have it in their power to moderate the fury of the anti-Slav
papers? Malagodi of the _Tribuna_ said on November 24 that the position
at Rieka had been remedied. But was the public fully alive to what was
happening at Zadar and [vS]ibenik? "While these cities have been
nominally occupied by us and are under the protection of our flag, the
Italian population has never been so terrorized by Croat brutality as at
this moment." The _Mattino_ disclosed to its readers in flaring
headlines that "Yugoslav oppression cuts the throats of the Italian
population in Dalmatia and terrorizes them." Would the people of Italy
rather listen to such thrills or to the _Secolo_, which deprecated the
contemptuous writings of Italian journalists with regard to the
Slavs--the _Gazzetta del Popolo's_ "little snakes" was one of the milder
terms of opprobrium. The _Secolo_ recalled Italy's own illiterate herds
and the fact that the Italian Risorgimento was judged, not by the
indifferent and servile mass, but by its heroes. It explained that the
Treaty of London was inspired by the belief that Austria would survive,
and that for strategic reasons only it had given, not Rieka, but most of
Dalmatia and the islands to Italy.
It was calamitous for Italy that she was being governed at this moment
not by prudent statesmen such as she more frequently produces in the
north, but by southerners of the Orlando and Sonnino type. The _Giornale
d'Italia_ would at a word from the Foreign Minister have damped the
ardour of those journalists and other agitators who were fanning such a
dangerous fire. Sonnino once himself told Radovi['c], the Montenegrin,
that he could not acquiesce in any union of the Yugoslavs, for such a
combination would be fraught with peril for Italians. And now that
Southern Slavs were forming what he dreaded, their United States, it
would have been sagacious--it was not too late--if he had set himself to
win their friendship. Incidents of an untoward nature had occurred, such
as those connected with the Austrian fleet; nine hundred Yugoslavs,
after fighting side by side with the Italians, had actually been
interned, many of them wearing Italian medals for bravery;[20] the
Yugoslavs, in fact, by these and other monstrous methods had been
provoked. But it was not too late. A Foreign Minister not blind to what
was happening in foreign countries would have seen that if he valued the
goodwill of France and England and America--and this goodwill was a
necessity for the Italians--it was incumbent on him to modify his
politics. The British Press was not unanimous--all the prominent
publicists did not, like a gentleman a few months afterwards in the
_Spectator_, say that "if the Yugoslavs contemplated a possible war
against the Italians, by whose efforts and those of France and Great
Britain they had so recently been liberated, then would the Southern
Slavs be guilty of monstrous folly and ingratitude." Baron Sonnino might
have apprehended that more knowledge of the Yugoslav-Italian situation
would produce among the Allies more hostility; he should have known that
average Frenchmen do not buy their favourite newspaper for what it says
on foreign politics, and that the _Journal des Debats_ and the
_Humanite_ have many followers who rarely read them. And, above all
else, he should have seen that the Americans, who had not signed the
Treaty of London, would decline to lend themselves to the enforcement of
an antiquated pact which was so grievously incongruous with Justice, to
say nothing of the Fourteen Points of Mr. Wilson. But Sonnino threw all
these considerations to the winds. He should have reconciled himself to
the fact that his London Treaty, if for no other reason than that it was
a secret one, belonged to a different age and was really dead; his
refusal to bury it was making him unpopular with the neighbours. One
does not expect a politician to be quite consistent, and Baron Sonnino
is, after all, not the same man who in 1881 declared that to claim
Triest as a right would be an exaggeration of the principle of
nationalities; but he should not in 1918 have been deaf to the words
which he considered of such weight when he wrote them in 1915 that he
caused them to be printed in a Green Book. "The monarchy of Savoy," he
said in a telegram to the Duke of Avarna on February 15 of that year,
"has its staunchest root in the fact that it personifies the national
ideals." Baron Sonnino was rallying to the House of Karageorgevi['c]
most of those among the Croats and Slovenes who, for some reason or
other, had been hesitating; for King Peter personified the national
ideals which the Baron was endeavouring to throttle. As Mr. Wickham
Steed pointed out in a letter to the _Corriere della Sera_, the complete
accord between Italians and Yugoslavs is not only possible and
necessary, but constitutes a European interest of the first order; if it
be not realized, the Adriatic would become not Italian nor Slav, but
German; if, on the other hand, it were brought about, then the language
and the culture, the commerce and the political influence of Italy would
not merely be maintained but would spread along the eastern Adriatic
coast and in the Balkans in a manner hitherto unhoped for; if no accord
be reached, then the Italians would see their whole influence vanish
from every place not occupied by overwhelming forces. But Sonnino, a
descendant of rancorous Levantines and obstinate Scots, went recklessly
ahead; it made you think that he was one of those unhappy people whom
the gods have settled to destroy. He neglected the most elementary
precautions; he ought to have requested, for example, that the French
and British and Americans would everywhere be represented where Yugoslav
territory was occupied. But, alas, he did not show that he disagreed
with the _Tribuna's_ lack of wisdom when it said that "the Italian
people could never tolerate that beside our flag should fly other
flags, even if friendly, for this would imply a confession of weakness
and incapacity."