out again. And where the Croat names on banks
and shops and elsewhere had been effaced, demolished--one could hide
them by long strips of paper which they were so busy printing: "Either
Italy or death!" "Viva Orlando!" "Viva Sonnino!"--those papers were the
best reply to people who were asking if the entire Italian Cabinet was
in harmony with Sonnino. Not merely in harmony--the Cabinet _was_
Sonnino and more particularly Orlando was Sonnino. An Italian major came
out on to a balcony one evening, in uniform, and opened his Italian
heart to the crowd. What would the Allies say to that? The _Dante
Alighieri_, the great dreadnought, manoeuvring with her searchlights,
let them rest awhile upon the _Schley_, an American destroyer. What
would the Yankees do? "Avanti Savoia!" Perhaps in the old days they
would have sent a shot or two into the searchlights, just for luck, but
now they did nothing. And what a scene at the Opera when _Andre Chenier_
was performed and one of the singers came to the word "Traitor!" and
some one shouted "Wilson!" and the whole house shouted "Wilson!" and the
singer, forced to repeat the blessed word, added amid indescribable
enthusiasm the name of the President, that ignominious President
concerning whom it was revealed by one of their newspapers that he must
obviously have pocketed Yugoslav money, perhaps a million, and who most
probably had a Yugoslav mistress--when that opera-singer had emended the
phrase, did that very exalted Italian officer leave his box? Why, no--he
stayed until the end of the performance.... Did any Italian in Rieka
read to the end a small and lucid American book, _Italy and the
Yugoslavs, A Question of International Law_, by C. A. H. Bartlett of the
New York and United States Federal Bar? "It is an admitted fact," says
Mr. Bartlett, "that Italy at the outbreak of hostilities had no rights
to, or in, the territory to which she now makes claim. Her title,
therefore, has arisen since the commencement of the War, and must be
founded on either effective possession legally acquired or on
documentary evidence or some other right recognized by international
law." And quoting Professor Westlake (_International Law_, Part I. p.
91) as to the four grounds on which a State may vindicate its
sovereignty over new domain, he discusses the position in the Adriatic,
and concludes that Italy can claim no title by occupancy, cession,
succession or self-determination. We refer elsewhere to Mr. B