One may mention that he, like some others of his party, belongs to a family which has been at Rieka for two hundred years, whereas of the fifteen gentlemen who called themselves the Italian National Council, only one--a cousin of Mr. Gothardi's--is a member of an old Rieka family. Most of the others we are bound to call renegades. It may be asked why the Italian National Council was established, and why its members swore that they would give their lives if they could thus give Rieka to the "Madre Patria." Some of them believed, I am sure, that this was for Rieka's good, cultural and economical; others entertained the motives that we saw at Zadar--personal ambition and the desire to satisfy some animosities. And there were others who remembered what occurred in the great harbour warehouses. They hoped, they thought that if the town fell to the lot of Italy no questions would be asked.[15] There must also have been some who could not bear to contemplate the loss of their old privileged position. THE I.N.C. For a considerable time it was not known who were the members of the Italian National Council. From internal evidence one saw that they were not particularly logical people, for they made much play, in their announcements, with "democratic principles" in spite of the undemocratic fog in which they wrapped themselves. Of course they had not been elected by anyone except themselves; but there was a vast difference between them and the self-elected Croat National Council, since the latter derived their authority from the Croatian Government at Zagreb, which Dr. Vio, in the name of the Rieka municipality, had recognized--whereas the Italian National Council was destitute of any parent, though they would, had they been pressed, have claimed, no doubt, the blissfully unconscious "Madre Patria." Subsequently it turned out that the I.N.C. consisted of Dr. Vio and of fourteen persons who had hitherto not taken part in public life. They were fourteen worthies of the background, the most remarkable act in the life of their President, Dr. Grossich, for example, dating from twenty years ago when he was the medical attendant of the Archduchess Clothilde, and decorated, so they say, his consulting-room with black and yellow festoons. The I.N.C. appeared at its inception to be different from a Russian Soviet because it had no power. THE CROATS' BLUNDER