Dalmatia, as is shown by the number of emigrants, is not a wealthy
province; and one would have supposed that if the Italians thought it
necessary to occupy a country whose inhabitants were so unmistakably
opposed to them, it would have been--to put it at the lowest--politic to
hamper no one in the getting of his livelihood. Austria had established
fourteen military fishing centres (besides others in Rieka, Istria,
etc.), and these the Croats joined most willingly, as a means of
avoiding service in a hated army. After the war, when their nets were
worn out, Italy supplied her Chioggia fisherfolk with new ones. Owing to
the conditions of the Triple Alliance, the Italians enjoyed the right to
"high-sea" fishing, that is to say, the fishing up to three miles from
the Dalmatian coast; but now the Italian boats occupied all the rich
fishing grounds among the northern islands. These dispossessed natives
were originally more preoccupied with fish than with Italians. Is it
strange that they refused to see that Italy was, in the words of Admiral
Millo, the friend and liberator?... A German firm, the Steinbeiss
Company, had built in Bosnia a very narrow-gauge line for the
exploitation of its forests; during the War this line was continued to
Prijedor, and with great difficulty it had served for the transport of
food-stuff and passengers from Croatia: on the Croatian lines up to
Sissak normal gauge; from there to Prijedor narrow gauge; from there to
Knin very narrow gauge, and from there to Split or [vS]ibenik narrow
gauge. Thus with the loading and unloading between 30 per cent. and 50
per cent. of the goods were lost; but when Italy sat down at Rieka the
inhabitants of Dalmatia looked to this line. At Prijedor hundreds of
waggons of wheat and corn were waiting to be forwarded, and with Italy
blocking the road at Knin they simply perished.