others, to wear this uniform. But one day in 1916 when his friend and fellow-officer, Fran Šojat, teacher at the High School at Sušak, walked into his room at Meja, when he happened to be putting little flags upon a map, he prophesied--King Peter and the Tzar would have been glad to hear him. Presently, he had himself elected as the mayor, which enabled him to leave an army so distasteful to him. How long would he wait until he publicly became a Croat once again? He did not doubt that the Entente would win, and told that same friend Šojat that Rieka on the next day would be Croat. To another gentleman in June of 1918 he said he hoped that he would be the first Yugoslav mayor of the town, and on that day, out hunting, he sang endless Croat songs. In September, to the mayor of Sušak, "You will see," he said, "how well we two as mayors will work together." When the Croat National Council entered into office at the end of October he again met Mr. Šojat, just as he was going up to that interview in the Governor's Palace. "Jesam li ja onda imao pravo, jesi li sada zadovoljan?" he said. ("Was I not right that time? Are you satisfied now?") Joyfully he pressed Mr. Šojat's hand and greeted the two other persons who were with him. And Mr. Šojat was pleased to think that Vio would now be a good Croat, as of old. But on the following day he was an Italian. HIS FERVOUR When I went up to see this variegated gentleman--whose personal appearance is that of a bright yellow cat--he purred awhile upon the sofa and then started striding up and down the room. As he sketched the history of the town, which, he said, had always been Italian and would insist on being so, he spoke with horror of the days when Jellačić was in control, and then, remembering another trouble, he raised both his hands above his head and brought them down with such a crash upon the desk where I was writing his remarks that--but nobody burst in; the municipal officials were accustomed to his conversation. He was reviling at that moment certain Allied officers who had not seen fit to visit him. "I care not!" he yelled. "We are Italian! I tell you we are Italianissimi!" (He was glad enough, however, when his brother Hamlet, who had remained a Yugoslav and was on friendly terms with the chief of the carabinieri, managed to obtain for the mayor a passport to Italy, concerning which the carabinieri had said that they must first of all apply to Rome.) The doctor was sure that Yugoslavia would not live, for it had two religions; and another notable defect of the Croats--"I speak their language quite well," he said--was that in the whole of Rieka not one ancient document was in Croatian. I was going to mention that everywhere in Croatia until 1848 they were in Latin--but he saw what I was on the point of saying and--"Look here! look here!" he cried, "now look at this!" It was a type-written sheet in English, whereon was recounted how the mayor had offered to four Admirals, who came to Rieka