But for the various reasons to which we have alluded he is now much more inclined to live in peace with the Yugoslav. Very differently, except if they are charged with gifts, does he receive the Italians; even at the moment of accepting their gifts of military material and cash he regards them with a more or less concealed derision, for he is impressed, as we have pointed out, by nothing so much as by military prowess and the reverse, whereof the news is carried far and wide. At the end of September and beginning of October 1918 two weak Yugoslav battalions of about a thousand rifles accomplished at Tirana what the large Italian forces could not, at any rate did not, achieve. Ten thousand Austrians were in the town, and for three months the Italians had sat down outside it. Then the Serbs descended on the place from the mountains; their carts came by the ordinary road, and on arriving at the Italian lines the drivers asked for hay; but when they explained that the rest of their force was going round by the mountain trail the Italian commandant refused to give any supplies to such liars. (Later on, though, he gave them sufficient for five days.) When an Austrian officer who was stationed in a minaret saw the Serbs coming down from those terrible heights he was so astonished that he felt sure they must be robbers. And after they had captured the town and the Italians conducted themselves as if it were they who had conquered it, the Serbs took to thrashing their allies and ejecting them from the cafés. The Italians did not protest.... 10. DR. TRUMBIĆ'S PROPOSAL