To grasp the conditions at Split we must go back to the years just before the War. From the reports of the Austrian Intelligence Officer, Captain Bukvich, we shall see what was the attitude of the Slavs and the Italianists respectively towards the Government, and hence towards each other. It may be that the very loyal, some would call it cringing, attitude of the Italianists was forced upon them by the great inferiority of their numbers. What they were aiming at, with very few exceptions, were the benefits of the moment, rather than those others of which here and there an isolated Italianist would dream, when between the smoke of his cigarette he saw the Italian tricolour flying over Dalmatia. If this lonely dreamer had gone to Italy before the War with the purpose of awakening in people an interest in what some day might happen, he would have found that most of the Italians had never heard of Dalmatia. But among those who had heard were the officials of the "Liga Nazionale," which assisted the Dalmatian Italians to support those famous schools. In a report (Information No. 668) which Padouch, the successor of Bukvich as Intelligence Officer, sent from Split on September 25, 1915, to the Headquarters at Mostar, we are told that "an Italian of this place, with whom I confidentially spoke on the subject before the outbreak of the War, openly and candidly told me that in their Liga school one-third of the children, at the most, have parents whose nationality has always been Italian. The others are children of the people, of that class which on account of its humble social position has lost its national consciousness. He told me that the parents received subsidies and the children clothes, school-books, etc., gratuitously."