BY SONNINO

While the Italians were thus engaged, what was the state of opinion in
their own country? Would Bissolati's organ, the _Secolo_, and the
_Corriere della Sera_, which had been favourable to the Slavs since
Caporetto, have it in their power to moderate the fury of the anti-Slav
papers? Malagodi of the _Tribuna_ said on November 24 that the position
at Rieka had been remedied. But was the public fully alive to what was
happening at Zadar and [vS]ibenik? "While these cities have been
nominally occupied by us and are under the protection of our flag, the
Italian population has never been so terrorized by Croat brutality as at
this moment." The _Mattino_ disclosed to its readers in flaring
headlines that "Yugoslav oppression cuts the throats of the Italian
population in Dalmatia and terrorizes them." Would the people of Italy
rather listen to such thrills or to the _Secolo_, which deprecated the
contemptuous writings of Italian journalists with regard to the
Slavs--the _Gazzetta del Popolo's_ "little snakes" was one of the milder
terms of opprobrium. The _Secolo_ recalled Italy's own illiterate herds
and the fact that the Italian Risorgimento was judged, not by the
indifferent and servile mass, but by its heroes. It explained that the
Treaty of London was inspired by the belief that Austria would survive,
and that for strategic reasons only it had given, not Rieka, but most of
Dalmatia and the islands to Italy.

It was calamitous for Italy that she was being governed at this moment
not by prudent statesmen such as she more frequently produces in the
north, but by southerners of the Orlando and Sonnino type. The _Giornale
d'Italia_ would at a word from the Foreign Minister have damped the
ardour of those journalists and other agitators who were fanning such a
dangerous fire. Sonnino once himself told Radovi['c], the Montenegrin,
that he could not acquiesce in any union of the Yugoslavs, for such a
combination would be fraught with peril for Italians. And now that
Southern Slavs were forming what he dreaded, their United States, it
would have been sagacious--it was not too late--if he had set himself to
win their friendship. Incidents of an untoward nature had occurred, such
as those connected with the Austrian fleet; nine hundred Yugoslavs,
after fighting side by side with the Italians, had actually been
interned, many of them wearing Italian medals for bravery;[20] the
Yugoslavs, in fact, by these and other mons