be remembered that this is the first
contact (_il primo contatto_) which the population, as yet primitive and
uncultured in its mass, has had with Italy, where it instinctively sees
the enemy and the new oppressor. We must do our best to make them see
in Italy their friend and liberator.... It is evident and it leaps to
the eyes of all how delicate and important is the moment of this first
contact. Nothing more than a superficial knowledge of the circumstances
is needed for the officer to understand that in all his official and
personal acts he must behave in such a manner that the population, which
is primitive and simple and therefore all the more susceptible to
suggestions, should regain the impression that Italy is a great country,
the country of liberty and right, that its people is educated and
civilized, that its officers and soldiers are here to fulfil a work of
civilization and education, of love, in a country which must be Italian
on account of historic rights and for the exigencies of Italy's defence:
in which the Slavs, who have been introduced by the course of events and
as an effect of the expansive potentiality of their race and the
artifices of those who dominated the country, will find in the
independence and development of their nationality a great fatherland
which is civilized, powerful, humane and free.... In estimating the
enmity of the Croats the fact must be taken into account that the
Croatian world, I mean to say the Croat people, with its action in the
interior of Austria while the Italian army was acting outside,
resolutely and victoriously, has co-operated in precipitating the
downfall of Austria and in freeing itself from a detested regime;
particularly in the last year of the War this sentiment of nationality
became accentuated with the fervent aspiration for liberty.... These are
the circumstances which have determined a special psychology composed of
joy and ecstasy--both elements which, in minds that are laden with all
the influences of the East, produce a facile and dangerous excitement.
On the other hand there survives in the Italian population the hatred
against the Croatian supremacy, a hatred which is comprehensible but
which in time must give place to other sentiments, rendering possible a
fair coexistence of the two populations, whose aim should be common--the
prosperity and development of Dalmatia, in the prosperity and for the
prosperity, in the greatness and for the greatness of