'c], to be pulled out of his bed in the middle of a
winter's night and taken across the hills on a donkey to Starigrad,
afterwards on a destroyer to Split, from where--but for the intervention
of the American Admiral--he would have been deported to Italy; and all
on account of his having written, in English and French, a scientific
ethnographical treatise on the islands.

PROCEEDINGS AT STARIGRAD

At Starigrad on our arrival the harbour and its precincts looked like the
scene of an opera, with an opening chorus of carabinieri. They were posted
at various tactical points and no one else was visible. One of them
advanced, however, and conducted us at our request to the office of the
Commandant, a major who must have played a very modest part in the War, as
I believe he only had three rows of ribbons.[39] He gave us some vermouth
and informed us that the population was very quiet, very happy. When I said
that I would like to see the mayor he sent an orderly, and in less than one
minute his worship stood before us. He immediately confirmed what the major
had said with regard to the population. In fact the picture which he drew
brought back to memory the comment of the Queen of Roumania who, when an
American lady at a reception in Belgrade told her that she lived at a place
called Knoxville or Coxville in the States, replied "How nice!" The good
Italians, quoth the mayor, were distributing supplies among the natives,
and with the exception of the Croat _intelligentsia_ they all wished for
union with Italy. I asked him if he did not think that, looking at it from
the economic point of view, there would be some difficulties when the
island's exports--wine and oil and fish--would have to compete with the
products of Italy. But he said that one must think of the other
benefits--no longer would the island have to bear the hated Austrian. It
was all the fault of Austria, he continued, that after 1885 the Starigrad
municipality had been Croat; since then the Italians had lost their school
and their orchestra. But now it would all be changed. He was clearly a
product of the new dispensation; and he told me that as the ex-mayor was an
Austrian of course he had to be discharged. Nothing else did this gentleman
tell me, which was a pity, as in a message, presumably sent by him, to an
Italian newspaper, _La Dalmazia_,[40] of Zadar, it was stated that in this
conversation I had displayed a supreme ignorance of local questions....
Then