passing on to the "Workers' Society," which the
young Commandant had founded for the purpose, according to Spadoni, of
helping the people to find work and of looking after their interests. We
were subsequently told by the Yugoslavs that the Commandant himself
called the members his "Rice Italians," for many of them did not speak
the language and did not even sympathize with Italy. But on joining they
had committed themselves to something that was printed at the top of the
paper, which part had been turned over. It really doesn't sound very
worthy of a Great Power. When some of the members, discovering to what
they were committed, sent in their resignation, it was refused. At
Komi[vz]a all the municipal officers had been discharged by the
Italians, the reading-rooms and places of amusement had been closed, and
the Food Administrator at Split was forbidden to send any food, lest he
should interfere with the Italians' object in distributing rice, etc.
Once he was permitted to forward some American flour, and the people had
to pay forty crowns of duty on each hundredweight.

THE WOMEN OF BI[vS]EVO

From Komi[vz]a, the next morning, we steamed over on the destroyer to
the wonderful blue grotto of Bi[vs]evo (or Busi), which surpasses Capri.
An Austrian Archduke, we were told, had once waited a week at Komi[vz]a,
but had been compelled to leave without seeing the cave. We were more
fortunate--the wind, the water and the sun were kind to us; we entered
in a rowing-boat the little pearl-grey Gothic chapel which Nature has
constructed underneath a hill, and as we gazed into the blue-green
waters, through which from the rocks below a fountain of most brilliant
blue was rising, every time an oar was dipped the waters painted it a
silvery white. The population of Bi[vs]evo consists of about 150 people,
who mostly live around the little church of Saint Sylvester, two hundred
feet above the sea. They occupy themselves with sheep and fruit and bees
and fish, and with the vines that are even more famous than those of
Vis. A good part of the population had assembled on a grassy platform
high above the entrance to the cave, and as we climbed out of the
rowing-boat on to the destroyer a much larger rowing-boat came round a
promontory. Sixteen women formed the crew. They sang their national
Croatian songs, and when they approached us some of them stood up and,
while the wind played with their straw-coloured and golden hair, they
laughing