The work of the Italian Navy in saving the Serbians has often been ignored. The Serbians appear to have forgotten or altogether denied it, as have also some of their foreign apologists. It may therefore be of interest to repeat what Admiral Sechi, the Italian Minister of Marine, said in the Senate on July 19, 1920 in this connexion. After reminding his hearers that the transport of the remnants of the Serbian Army with their supplies, from the ports of Northern Albania, where they had arrived exhausted and famished, to Valona, was the work of the Italian Navy, it was, he said, one of the Allied Governments that, at the end of October 1915 requested the Italian Government to provide for these necessities, and “in spite of the almost insuperable difficulties of the operation, especially on account of the insidious enemy attacks, and the almost total lack of any landing facilities in the places of disembarkation, the Italian Navy granted the request and the transport was carried out successfully and without interruption.” It was the Italian Navy which provided the transport of supplies for the Serbian Army (about 28,000 tons). In all about 245,000 Serbian soldiers, 25,000 Austrian prisoners whom they brought with them, over 10,000 animals, and a great deal of material, was thus transported. In spite of the ever-present danger of enemy submarines, in all this vast movement not a single ship was lost, nor did a single Serbian soldier die.[14] But we did not only provide transport and food for these most unfortunate warriors and civilians. Our military and naval medical officers worked admirably for the assistance of the Serbians, saving thousands from death by hunger, exhaustion and infection, as typhus and cholera were raging among the Serbians. An English writer has described in eloquent language this work in a book on the Italian Navy. “Day and night,” writes Archibald Hurd, “caring nothing for the risk of infection, striving with all weapons of modern research to prevent this plague spot from infecting half a continent, the naval and military doctors, with their sailor and soldier orderlies, fed, tended, bandaged, and with hands soft as women’s nursed these poor spectres of fellow creatures.”[15] On December 17 it was decided to send the Serbs to Corfu. They were now reduced to 100,000 men with 54,000 rifles, 160 machine guns, and 70 guns. When they were transported to Valona King Peter also went to Corfu and embarked on the Italian torpedo boat destroyer, _G. C. Abba_. He wished to receive the salute of the officers of the ship thanking them with generous words for all they had done and the dangers they had faced on their mission of charity. Reminding them of Garibaldi, their own national hero--to many of them already, perhaps, almost a legendary figure--he told them that he had himself twice met that famous soldier. Recalling to them the dark pages of their own national history, with its eventual triumph, he suggested