[20] Out of the hundreds of available documents it will suffice if I print one. It is the report, given in his words, of a Dalmatian, a native of Sinj, who having been an emigrant could write in English. "On July 1915 I came to the Italian front, and on the morrow I went across the lines and deserted to the Italians. As soon as I arrived at the station of internment I requested the Command to be admitted as a voluntary into the Serbian army. This petition of mine was answered by Italian authorities in the negative. After the Congress of Rome in 1918 I and some of my comrades who had recently applied for admission were permitted to join the Yugoslav legion on June 1. I was right away sent to the front of the Tyrol, where on August 7 I was wounded in a hard bayonet fight. On this occasion I was decorated by the Italian Commander for valour. After 45 days of hospital by my own request I was sent to the front, where I remained up to the break-up of Austria or until we Yugoslav legion were disarmed by Italians and as a reward for our participation in the war we were interned as prisoners of war at Casale di Altamura in the province of Bari. Four days after my internment I succeeded in sliding away, so that on the Christmas Eve I was again in Dalmatia. (Signed) Jakov Delonga."
"In tra 'l gregge che misero e raro
L'asburgese predon t' ha lasciato,
Perche piangi, o fratello croato,
Il figiul che in Italia mori."
("There among the woebegone where the most contemptible Habsburger has abandoned his prey, so that, O my Croat brother, it weeps for the dear son who died in Italy.")
[22] April 23, 1919.
[23] Cf. La Slavisation de la Dalmatie. Paris, 1917.
[24] The Italians are very poorly served by some of their advocates. For years they persisted in demanding the execution of whatever in the Treaty or Pact of London was obnoxious to the Serbs, while they regarded as obsolete another clause, respecting the formation of a small independent Albania, which was distasteful to themselves, and—if I rightly understand the Italophil Mr. H. E. Goad—they were justified because, forsooth, Bulgaria had entered the War on the other side. To say that the idea of this small Albania, with corresponding compensations to the Serbs and Greeks, was held out as a bribe to the Bulgars does not seem to me a very wise remark. However, "ne croyez pas le père Bonnet," said Montesquieu, "lorsqu'il dit du mal de moi, ni moi-même lorsque je dis du mal du père Bonnet, parce que nous nous sommes brouillés." Let the reader trust in nothing but the facts, and I hope that those which I present are not an unfair selection.
[25] When Supilo, the late Dalmatian leader, heard about the secret Treaty, he went to Petrograd and saw Sazonov. The interview is said to have been stormy, for the Russian Minister, according to the Primorske Novine (April 23, 1919), "had not the most elementary knowledge of the Slav nature of Dalmatia, still less of Istria, Triest, Gorica and the rest." Mr. Asquith, whom Supilo afterwards visited in London, is said to have been no better informed than Sazonov.
[26] And appearing subsequently in London, as Nikita's Prime Minister, was the central figure of a reception given by Lord Sydenham at the Savoy. But out of fairness to his lordship I must add that in an hour's conversation he impressed me with the fact that he was even less acquainted with Plamenac's antecedents than he was with other Montenegrin affairs, which he raised on more than one occasion in the House of Lords, endeavouring there—until Lord Curzon overwhelmed him—to play the part that was assumed by Mr. M'Neill in the Commons.
[27] We shall see that the subsequent history of this officer was less laudable.