fter all there were witnesses
enough.

During the night of October 30th-31st, a radiogram, destined for President
Wilson, was composed. "Together with the Czechs, the Slovaks and the Poles,
and in understanding," it said, "with the Italians, we have taken over the
fleet and Pola, the war-harbour, and the forts." It asked for the dispatch
of representatives of such Entente States as were disinterested in the
local national question. But now a telegram was received from Zagreb,
announcing that Dr. Ante Tresi['c]-Pavi[vc]i['c], of the chief National
Council, would be at Pola at 8 a.m. and that, pending his arrival, no
wireless was to be sent out. Dr. Tresi['c]-Pavi[vc]i['c],[3] poet and
deputy for the lower Dalmatian islands, had always been, in spite of his
indifferent health, one of the most strenuous fighters for Yugoslavia. Two
years of the War he spent in an Austrian prison, but on his release he
managed to travel up and down Croatia and Dalmatia, inciting the Yugoslav
sailors to revolt; many of them had already read a speech by this
silver-tongued deputy in the Reichsrath, a speech of which the reading and
circulation had been forbidden as a crime of high treason. About 9 a.m. of
the 31st there was a meeting, on board the _Viribus Unitis_, between
Tresi['c]-Pavi[vc]i['c] and Koch. There was a brief ceremony, the leader of
the Sailors' Council handing over the vessel to the deputy, as representing
the National Council of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. Admiral Horthy, in his
cabin, likewise drew up a _proces-verbal_ to the same effect, saying that
he was authorized to do this by the Emperor, and he supported his statement
by the production of a wireless message. Koch urged on the doctor the
necessity of sending the above-mentioned wireless to Wilson. "The news of
this great event," says Tresi['c]-Pavi[vc]i['c] in an article in the
_Balkan Review_ (May 1919), "was dispatched to all the Powers by wireless."
But unfortunately he seems, whether on his own responsibility or that of
Zagreb, to have prevented Koch from sending it on that day. Captain Janko
de Vukovi['c] Podkapelski was then placed in command of the fleet, though
the Sailors' Council at first declined to accept him. He was at heart a
patriot, but had taken no active part in Yugoslav propaganda and, unluckily
for himself, he had been compelled to accompany Count Tisza in his recent
ill-starred tour of Bosnia, when the Magyar leader made a last attempt to
browbeat t