The Consiglio Nazionale Italiano of Rieka, that self-elected body which had so often told the world that Rieka was unshakeably determined to be joined to the Motherland, now took to its bosom the modern Rienzi, regardless of that which happened to the mediæval one. The C.N.I. could now devote itself to serious executive work, for d'Annunzio—in spite of or because of his fever—relieved them of the rather exhausting task of issuing proclamations. In three months he sent out something like a thousand. He did a great many other things—he ruined, for instance, the economic life of the town. Everything had for a time gone swimmingly. The Chief of the Republic of San Marino was voicing the sentiments of numberless Italians when he saluted the poet as a great Italian patriot. Such was the feeling of the majority of the army and navy, so that the Government in Rome was made to look ridiculous. "Mark well what I am telling you," said the poet to the special correspondent of the Gazzetta del Popolo. "I have received a call from a superior hidden force, and though the fever burns within me I am consoled, because the War has made me a mystic and I feel I am inspired from on high in this mission." D'Annunzio and his cohorts refused to have anything to do with the Cabinet. Signor Nitti, supported by the Parliament and the more responsible people, was openly attacked by the Nationalists and secretly by the profiteers and the newly rich on account of his bold taxation programme, by which he hoped to bring 30 milliards of francs into the Exchequer. The Nationalists assisted d'Annunzio to win over the army; and in northern Italy there were many who realized that an army which can be moved by such an appeal can, on the next day, rally to Bolševism. No other troops remained in Rieka, the small French and British detachments having been withdrawn. Before this happened there occurred a repetition, on a larger scale than usual, of a few French soldiers being attacked by a body of Italian warriors who greatly outnumbered them. Some of the French were Annamites, than whom no more harmless persons can be imagined.[44] And it was in order to avoid such untoward incidents that the Franco-British troops were evacuated. D'Annunzio was left to do his worst. Rieka was one of the problems which the Peace Conference had failed to solve, and now they were in much the same inglorious position as the Great Powers who in 1913 warned Turkey not to mobilize, since they would not allow the Balkan Confederation to make an attack, and after the attack gave it out that the Balkan States would not be permitted to acquire any new territory. The Supreme Council in Paris was losing its prestige very rapidly. "A little patience," begged Tittoni, "and my Government will turn out d'Annunzio." "What we want," exclaimed Clemenceau, "is a Government in Italy!"—and the Italian delegates, with flushed faces, pointed out that it was not Italy which wanted Rieka, but Rieka which wanted Italy. They would do their best, although so many men in Italy were now convinced that Rieka would sooner die than give up d'Annunzio. Presently, under his administration, it began to die. But this was not altogether distasteful to certain intriguers who were interested in the future of Triest. There might also arise, to the satisfaction, of other intriguers, an armed conflict with the Yugoslavs. But nothing could be calmer than the Yugoslavs' attitude. Perhaps these barbarians—as they are often styled in Italy—were confident that justice would prevail. Perhaps they thought that they could bide their time, and certainly what happened at Trogir was not calculated to reassure the Italians.

THE GREAT INVASION OF TROGIR

The little, ancient town of Trogir lay some twelve miles to the south of the demarcation line. Its inhabitants, with the exception of five Italophil families, are Yugoslav; and in the month of September 1919 the Yugoslav army was represented by eight men. Truth compels us to mention that on a certain night these men, instead of doing patrol duty, were sleeping off the effects of a carouse; and when the townsfolk looked out of their windows in the morning they saw machine guns and Italian soldiers. At 4 a.m. they had crept into the town with the help of a certain Conte Nino di Fanfogna, who had assembled a National Guard of thirty peasants, the employees of those five families. Conte Nino was striding to and fro; he muttered threats of death. Some of the chief men, such as Dr. Marin Katalinić, Dr. Peter Sentinella and others, came together and were at a loss for some effective means to chase out the Italians, since they had not even a revolver. An American boat appeared, but the captain, when appealed to, said that he was only cruising and could not come ashore. In the town hall Count Nino, labouring under some excitement, dismissed the mayor; and when Ferri, the mayor, told him to go about his business, he protested that he was the dictator and would, if necessary, use force. Outside in the square the Italians and the people stood face to face, and suddenly a few Yugoslav flags were fluttering, and then an old man, Dr. Sentinella's father, climbed up to the place in the town hall where the Italian flag had been hoisted. He tore it down. The soldiers were for shooting him, but the people began pulling the rifles out of their hands. Other soldiers, full of apprehension, dropped their rifles; the people picked them up, and those who were unacquainted with the mechanism cried out certain awe-inspiring sounds. Women and children—I fear this will not be believed; it is none the less true—women and children removed some of the men's helmets, and one group of children turned a helmet into a football. "I am a father of a family!" cried a soldier. "I am innocent, I have been deceived!" cried another. "O, Mama mia!" cried a third. They wept, they bolted into the courtyards, and the women showed them little mercy, for they tore off the men's belts and even struck them with their fists. A Mrs. Sunjara routed four men and went home with their machine gun on her back. In a few minutes the square was free of soldiers, and forty rifles were stacked in the town hall. Fifty soldiers on the quay were dealt with by a butcher who started firing at them; when they heard the shouts of the approaching crowd they threw down their weapons and fled. Two large motors escaped; the third was intercepted at the bridge, and although young Sentinella, who ordered them to stop, had forgotten his own rifle, they all—thirteen men and two officers—threw theirs away. It was suggested that the running soldiers should be pursued. "No," said an old man, "for we would kill them all. Let them rather go back without arms or helmets. It will frighten the others." ... Two hours later a party of Serbian soldiers arrived, but they were not needed, save for the protection of those who had thrown in their lot with the Italians. From Split, a few miles away, 1500 volunteers, who speedily assembled, came with knives or agricultural implements or any other weapon. "The Yugoslavs must realize," said Nitti, "that it is to their interest to maintain sincere relations of friendship with Italy."

THE SUCCESSION STATES AND THEIR MINORITIES

The Yugoslav Government—as if it had not sufficient problems to solve—was ordered now by the Peace Conference to accept sundry regulations as to the rights of minorities, the transit of goods, and an equitable régime for international commerce. The other States which had inherited the Habsburg Empire were, all of them, faced with the same demands; and they objected that to sign such Articles was inconsistent with their sovereignty. The most onerous item—relating to the racial and religious minorities—had been imposed—at America's instance, owing to the manner in which the Jews were treated in Roumania, despite King Charles' promises in 1878. The Yugoslavs, with a far smaller number of Jews and no Jewish outcry, were concerned only for the principle of independence. Not having persecuted the Jews they resented having to undertake that for the future they would act in a liberal spirit. "I will have nothing to do with tolerance," said the Orthodox Bishop of Veršac to a deputation of Jews, when he made his formal entry into the town of Pančevo. And when they stared at him, "It is not tolerance that I will show," said he, "but love." Perhaps the Opposition in the Yugoslav Skupština might have exhibited more kindliness in its attitude towards the Government and have refrained from rousing a storm against the signature of the obnoxious Articles. The Government and the Opposition being practically of equal strength, the Ministers, who in a calm atmosphere could have explained the realities of the situation, found themselves at a grave disadvantage. They could have shown that they would be assuming obligations which they had assumed already. In Macedonia, as any traveller could see, the time-honoured custom of persecuting him who happened to be the under-dog was abandoned; the authorities preferred to ignore the religious difference between themselves and the Bulgarian party, and as the difference consisted in praying for the Exarch instead of the Patriarch in the liturgy there was not the slightest persecution needed to persuade the Exarchists to become Patriarchists. Many who had been unaware of this new spirit which informed Yugoslavia and had fled with the Bulgarian army, afterwards came back to Macedonia. Nor did the Moslems complain: two Bosnian Moslems were expressly included in the Cabinet, and every consideration was shown to them—at Ghevgeli, for instance, where building material was, after the War, so scarce that many of the inhabitants had nothing but a hole in the ground, the prefect caused the two mosques which had been destroyed by shell-fire to be reconstructed.

OBLIGATIONS IMPOSED ON THEM BECAUSE OF ROUMANIAN ANTISEMITISM

If the Serbs were to express their grievance against the Roumanian ruling class for having landed them in this position, the Roumanians would reply that the Serbs do not run the same risk as themselves of being swamped by the undesirable Galician Jew. The Roumanians argue that their peasants will go under if they are not shielded. "In our last great manœuvres," said the late King Charles to M. de Laveleye,[45] "it was proposed to entrust the supply of food to Christians. On the first day the provisions came; on the second everything was late; on the third day the whole army was dying of hunger. I was forced to make a hasty appeal to the Jews. They have great qualities—they are intelligent, energetic, economical; but these very qualities make them dangerous to us on economic grounds." Roumanians acknowledge that the agrarian policy of a few vast landowners and a submerged peasantry did not admit of peasants being made more formidable by increased education, and they doubt whether their country-folk, so fond of music and dancing and drinking, have it in them to rival those Serbian non-commissioned officers who, early in 1919, became millionaires by skilful operations on the money market in the Banat. Yet the Serbs are as much addicted as anyone to the aforementioned delights, and it is probable that the Roumanian boyars do their own people an injustice. But while the people were favoured at the expense of the immigrants—not always very effectively: the Jews have been prohibited from owning land, yet a fifth of the whole of Moldavia belongs indirectly to a single Jew—one would suppose that some distinction might have been made between the more or less pernicious alien who is apt to get the village into his toils and that other Jew whose family has lived perhaps two hundred years in the country, who feels himself a Roumanian but is legally a foreigner. One Magder, a Jewish barrister, performed such exploits at the front during the Great War that he was mentioned in the communiqué, a distinction only conferred upon two other soldiers. For one and a half years the official publications insisted on Roumanizing his name into Magdeu, after which three Cabinet meetings occupied themselves with the subject and finally announced that the error was not intentional but typographical. A French officer wished the Roumanian Croix de Guerre to be given to him, but Headquarters refused the request on the ground that he was a Jew. One cannot blame the United States for taking the initiative in compelling the Roumanians to modify their legislation, since the clauses of the Treaty of Berlin were merely carried out to the extent of naturalizing a maximum of fifty Jews a year, each case having to undergo innumerable formalities, accompanied with payments to deputies and others that rose to 30,000 francs. Many Jews volunteered for the army in 1913 for the sake of thus obtaining the naturalization that was promised them as a reward; but these promises were frequently not kept. A good deal of injustice occurred during the Great War: the Moniteur Officiel, No. 261 (of February 2, 1918), printed a decree relating to one Kaufman, who together with two Christian soldiers had been away from his corps for twelve days in the previous September. Kaufman was condemned to death, and the others to five years' hard labour. When the King was asked to deal more equitably with the three men, Kaufman's sentence was commuted to "hard labour without limit," i.e. for life. It is superfluous to give many illustrations: at Falticeni seventy-two Jews were imprisoned without a trial for four months, though twelve of them were Roumanian citizens and veterans of 1877, while most of the others had sons at the front; at the village of Frumusica a major caused the Jews to come out of their synagogue in order to listen to a speech in which he advised the Christian soldiers to watch them well, as they were worse than the Germans. No doubt there were Jews in the Roumanian army whose patriotism was less than ardent—and who can blame them? In the 69th Regiment a special corps of Jews was clothed in the discarded, dark uniform that was more visible to the enemy. In the 65th Regiment Jon Dumitru was paid 14 francs a month for spying on his Jewish comrades. At the battle of Savarat, to cover the retreat of three battalions, a special corps of Jews was formed—one hundred and twenty-two men under a Jewish second lieutenant; all but three of them were killed or wounded. After this retreat the General, who lost his head, commanded that the survivors should be killed wholesale on account of self-inflicted wounds; but seeing that they were so numerous (and innocent) he pardoned them, and only executed two Jews, Lubis Strul and Hascal Simha, pour encourager les autres. A young doctor, 2nd Lieutenant Cohn, who came back from Paris, contracted typhus at the hospital where he was serving; afterwards he was sent to the 26th Regiment and kept under observation; it was most suspicious, said the authorities, that a Jew should return from France for his military service. A reward of 2000 francs was offered to anyone who could supply incriminating evidence against the doctor, but this was offered in vain. The Jews, by the way, were told that while they would be removed from menial positions in the hospitals they "would be tolerated" as doctors—and nearly a hundred of these doctors died on active service.

The better class of Roumanians, such as Take Jonescu, is opposed to such methods—he was therefore charged with being in the pay of the Jews, although he was a wealthy man (a very successful barrister) whom politics made poorer. It remains to be seen whether the Roumanians—whose position with regard to the Jews is, partly through their own fault, not without peril—will be willing to put into effect those reforms to which the Supreme Council compelled them to subscribe. The Article in question will probably become a moral weapon, since the Roumanians regard themselves as on a higher level than the Balkan peoples, and will not desire that continual complaints should be made against them. One does not expect their prejudices and their apprehensions to be suddenly renounced—instead of judging each case individually, the railway administration, after the Government had agreed that the Jews en bloc could become citizens, barred them en bloc from that particular service by requiring that candidates should present their certificates of baptism. The Agricultural Syndicates have also introduced a statute which limits their organizations to Roumanian citizens who profess the Christian religion. Gradually—one hopes, for the sake of their country—the Roumanians will bring themselves to adopt a less timorous spirit, and to acknowledge that it is more dangerous to the Fatherland if a Jew as such is prevented than if he is permitted to hold the office of street-sweeper. From such lowly public offices, or from that of University Professor, no citizen should be excluded on religious grounds or admitted to them "by exceptional concession." And if a Jewish cab-driver at Bucharest is so severely flogged by his passengers outside the chief railway-station that he succumbs in the hospital to his injuries—a fate that overtook one Mendel Blumenthal, a man fifty-three years of age, in September 1919—one trusts that a newspaper article asking for an inquiry will henceforward not be censored. "It is true," said Dr. Vaida-Voevod, then the Prime Minister, "that the Jews still evince some reluctance to assimilate intellectually with our people or to identify their interests with those of the Roumanian State. But goodwill should be shown on both sides, and the overtures should be reciprocal." Thanks very largely to the former Liberal Premier, M. Bratiano, whose party was responsible for much illiberal legislation—one of his powerful brothers was popularly said to eat a Jew at every meal—the Supreme Council acted in such a manner as to produce a particularly unwanted crisis in the Yugoslav political world. Neither Roumanian nor Yugoslav need, in the opinion of Take Jonescu, have considered that their dignity was being slighted, for the tendency of the League of Nations is to limit the free will of each of them. The cardinal doctrine of the League, as Lord Robert Cecil has pointed out, is that its members are not masters in their own house, but must obey the decision of the majority. However, the Opposition in the Belgrade Skupština could not resist from using the delicate situation for what many of the deputies thought was a patriotic course of conduct, and nearly all of them regarded as an admirable party cry.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The Defeat of Austria, as seen by the 7th Division. London, 1919.