his endeavours; he therefore sought an opportunity to turn him out. On
January 5, 1919, the priest had, by order of his bishop, to read during
the service a pastoral letter on the duties of the faithful towards the
Church and towards their fellow-men; he had also to add a simple and
concise commentary. In this letter there was a passage dealing with
schools, and the priest on that topic remarked that "by divine and human
law every nation may ask that its children should be instructed in their
mother tongue." When Mass was finished, the mayor of the village
assembled the parishioners and notified them that henceforward, by order
of the lieutenant, there would no longer be in the village a Croatian
but an Italian school. And in order to mollify the people he added that
the lieutenant proposed to give subsidies to such as stood in need; they
had only to present themselves before that officer. But, though the
people often found it hard to satisfy their simple wants and were at
that period in very great distress, they walked away from this assembly
without making one step in the lieutenant's direction. This incited him
to such fury that he ran, accompanied by soldiers and carabinieri, to
the priest, and publicly, in a loud voice, insulted him, calling him an
intriguer, a rebel, an agitator. On the following day the lieutenant had
him conducted to the village of Cres by two soldiers and a carabiniere,
who were all armed.... At Cres the priest was brought before the
commanding officer of the Quarnero Islands--our old acquaintance, the
naval captain of Krk--who happened to be in this village. He started at
once to bellow at the priest and, striking the table with his hand,
exclaimed: "This is an Italian island, all Italian, nothing but Italian
and evermore it will remain Italian." About a score of parishioners had
come to Cres behind their priest and his escort; they begged the
commandant to set him free. As an answer he harangued them with respect
to the Italian character of the islands, told them that they would have
to send their children to the Italian school and that the whole village
would be Italianized and that _only in their homes_ would they be
permitted to speak Croatian.... On January 8 the priest was taken from
Cres to the island of Krk, where he was informed that he would have to
leave his parish, but that he might go back there for a day or two to
fetch a few necessities. It was raining in torrents when Father
Hlaća, wet to the skin, arrived at his village on the 11th at seven
o'clock in the evening. As he suffers from several chronic
ailments--which was known to the lieutenant--this bad weather had a
grave effect upon him. When he reached his house he went to bed at once
with a very high temperature. After about a quarter of an hour the
lieutenant appeared with two carabinieri and shouted at him that he must
get up. This draconian injunction had to be obeyed, the more so as the
lieutenant was labouring under great excitement.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account