It was impossible to be at Split without meeting people who had fled
from the occupied islands. It was also, in consequence of what they told
one, impossible to set out with an unprejudiced mind. But, after all, we
have our preconceived ideas on Heaven and Hell, and that will be no
reason for us not to go there. I had become acquainted at Split with
Captain Pommerol, of the British Army, a Mauritian of imposing physique
and, as I was to see, of a lofty sense of justice. He had recently been
spending several months in Hungary on a mission from the War Office.
They had now dispatched him to Dalmatia and Bosnia with a very
comprehensive programme; and, as I secured a little steamer, he came
with me to the islands. [We hesitated to embark on this expedition,
since the islanders whose national desires had been choked for so many
months would probably display their sentiments in such a way as to bring
down grave penalties upon themselves. But the Yugoslavs, both on the
mainland and on the islands, were anxious that we should go; they
doubted whether Western Europe had any knowledge of the Italian methods
of administration. And if the immediate result of our journey would be
to call down upon themselves--as indeed it did--a savage wind, they were
optimistic enough to feel that it would eventually produce a whirlwind
for their oppressors.] ... The S.S. _Porer_, 130 tons, was flying at the
stern the temporary flag of white, blue, white in horizontal stripes
which had been invented for the ships of the former Austro-Hungarian
mercantile marine; on the second mast they displayed the flag of one of
the Allies, and the _Porer_ happened to be sailing under the red ensign.
She had a Dalmatian crew of eight, including the weather-beaten old
captain and the still older and equally benevolent gentleman who
combined the functions of cook and steward. In addition to Serbo-Croat,
they had among them some knowledge of Italian, German and even English.
The scholar was the mate who, having had his headquarters at Pola during
the War, spoke Viennese-German. His wife had died at Split after an
illness of several months, brought on by the idea that her husband had
been killed at Pola in an air-raid.
The large, rather waterless island of Bra['c], which is nearest to the
mainland, seems to be chiefly remarkable on account of its
chrysanthemums, from which an insect-powder is produced; and the number
of changes, no less than twenty, that occurred in the ownership of the
island from the beginning of the Middle Ages down to the Congress of
Vienna. During that period it was sometimes under the Byzantines,
sometimes the Venetians, the Holy Roman Empire, its own autonomous
Government, the Hungarians, the Bosnians, the French, the Russians (one
year, in 1806) and the Austrians. It was not occupied by Italy after the
end of this War, and Baron Sonnino did not ask for it when he was
negotiating, before the War, with Austria.