When the fisherman was interrogated he refused at first
to give any information, but he finally divulged that he had agreed, for
1500 francs, to take the General down the Danube either to Bulgaria or
Roumania. That evening at nine o'clock the General appeared, with his
son and a servant; he was captured,[54] and among his documents were
some which proved, it was alleged, that he was in communication with
d'Annunzio.
TWO COMIC PRO-ITALIANS IN OUR MIDST
Month follows month. The reading public and some of the statesmen of the
world begin to recognize that, whatever may be the case on other
portions of the new map, there is nothing unreal or impossible or
artificial about Yugoslavia. This State is the result of a national
movement, having its origins within and not without the peoples whose
destiny it affects. The various Yugoslavs, after being kept apart for
all these centuries, have now--roughly speaking--come to that stage
which the Germans reached in 1866. They cannot rest until they reach
the unity which came to the Germans after 1870. And here also, it seems,
the unity will not be gained without the sacrifice of thousands of young
men. "Go, my son," said Oxenstiern the Swedish Chancellor, "and observe
by what imbeciles the world is governed." It is pitiable that the
leaders of the nations, in declining month after month to give to
Yugoslavia an equitable frontier, should apparently have been more
impressed by the arguments of Mrs. Lucy Re-Bartlett[55] than by those of
an anonymous philosopher in the _Edinburgh Review_.[56] "Nationality?"
says the lady, speaking of the country people of Dalmatia, "nationality?
These people of the country districts--the great mass of the
population--are far too primitive to have any sense of nationality as
yet, but if some day they call themselves Italian...." That is what she
says of a people which through centuries of persecution and neglect have
preserved their language, their traditions, their hopes; a people which,
more than forty years ago, won their great victory against the Habsburg
régime of Italian and Italianist officials, so that with one exception
every mayor in Dalmatia and all the Imperial deputies and hundreds of
societies of all kinds, such as 375 rural savings-banks, were
exclusively Yugoslav. Out of nearly 150,000 votes at the last general
election, which was held in 1911 on the basis of universal suffrage, the
Yugoslav candidates received about 145,000 against 5000 to 6000 for the
Italians. It is indisputable that the Dalmatian peasants are backward in
many things, but one is really sorry for the person who declares in
print that they possess no sense of nationality. Let her visit any house
of theirs on Christmas Eve and watch them celebrate the "badnjak"; let
her listen any evening to their songs. Let her think whether there is no
sense of nationality among the priests, who almost to a man are the sons
of Yugoslav peasants. And let her recollect that these are the days when
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