As soon as the War was over, Italy disembarked on the islands which she
had obtained by the Treaty of London. Something has been said on
previous pages of the way in which she introduced herself and made
herself at home. As we were sailing towards the pretty town of Jel[vs]a
(Gelsa) on the island of Hvar, we left Vrbo[vs]ka on our right. The
Bishop of Split had told me of a grievance which the Italian troops at
that place had lodged with his brother, the mayor. Some of them had
visited, for the fetes of carnival, both the Yugoslav Club, where they
found many persons who could speak Italian, and the Italian Club, where
they were annoyed to find that it was spoken by very few. As we came
into the little port of Jel[vs]a, with the green shutters of its white
houses harmonizing with the foliage of the cypresses and oleanders, we
could see a crowd of people running round--and carabinieri running with
them--to that part of the harbour where we were unexpectedly going to
stop. There was some confusion, the carabinieri pushing the people back,
evidently to prevent them shaking hands with us; and one small boy who
did not hear or did not understand what they were shouting received a
terrific blow in the back from the fist of a furious Italian. Some cries
were raised in honour of Yugoslavia, Wilson, France and England, which
may have been imprudent; but when a place in which there is not one
single Italian has been held down for months, has been forbidden to
show the slightest joy on account of the birth of Yugoslavia, has been
savagely punished for having a copy of a Yugoslav newspaper, has
repeatedly been cursed and cuffed and ordered, at the bayonet's point,
to execute some wish of the carabinieri--one cannot be astonished if in
the presence of some non-Italian foreigners they could no longer repress
their feelings. Some of the people had brought flowers with them, and as
Pommerol and I plunged into the whirlpool and made our way towards the
Italian commander's office, we had many flowers either thrust into our
hands while the carabinieri were looking the other way or else we had
them thrown at us, in which case some of them would usually descend upon
the shoulders or the three-cornered hats of the carabinieri. Whenever
anybody uttered one of the forbidden exclamations one or more of the
carabinieri would fling themselves into the crowd and attempt, with the
help of vigorous kicking, to reach the culprit. Thus, in the midst of a
series of scrimmages, we got to the captain's quarters. We found him a
very pleasant young man, keenly conscious of the difficulties of his
position; as we afterwards heard, he was such an improvement on his
predecessor that the carabinieri were convinced he was a Yugoslav and
had been heard to mutter threats against his life. He had apologized to
the inhabitants, and had dismissed one of his men who had hauled down a
Yugoslav flag and blown his nose on it. For these men an extenuating
circumstance was that they had been very drunk on the night before our
arrival, as they had heard--it was in the first half of June 1919--that
the islands had been definitely given to Italy, and this they had been
celebrating. We knew that after an American and an Englishman had
visited Jel[vs]a, in the time of the other commandant, some of the
people were interned; the young captain assured us that he would do no
such thing. And one could see that he would never imitate the brutality
of his predecessor, who had caused a frail old man of sixty-six,
Professor Zari['c], to be pulled out of his bed in the middle of a
winter's night and taken across the hills on a donkey to Starigrad,
afterwards on a destroyer to Split, from where--but for the intervention
of the American Admiral--he would have been deported to Italy; and all
on account of his having written, in English and French, a scientific
ethnographical treatise on the islands.