ist and archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans.
This gentleman, whose distinctions are too numerous to mention (Fellow
of Brasenose; twice President of the British Association; Keeper during
twenty-four years of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford; D.Litt.; LL.D.;
F.R.S.; P.S.A., and so forth), has for many years devoted himself to the
eastern Adriatic--the second edition of his _Through Bosnia and the
Herzegovina on Foot_ appeared in 1877, his _Illyrian Letters_ in 1878,
his _Slavs and European Civilization_ in the same year. He never ceased
from that time onward to study these matters. "I think," he says in a
letter to me from Youlbury, near Oxford, of which he kindly permits me
to make any use I like, "that in some ways I have more title to speak on
the Adriatic Question than any other Englishman, as Dalmatia was my
headquarters for some years. Neither did I approach the question with
any anti-Italian prejudices. I was so far recognized as a competent and
moderate authority that I was asked by the Royal Geographical Society to
give them a paper on the subject.... Anxious, with others friendly to
both sides, to secure an equitable agreement between the Italians and
Yugoslavs, I took part in a series of private conferences in London
which led to a preliminary Agreement forming the basis on which the
Congress at Rome approached the question. There the Agreement was
ratified and publicly approved by Orlando. How Sonnino proceeded to try
to wreck it, you will know. Finally (just before the Armistice, as it
happened) there was to have been a new Congress of Nationalities at
Paris, which I was asked to attend. It was stopped by the big Allies, as
matters were thought too critical, owing to the submission of Bulgaria.
But I thought it would be useful if I went to Paris all the same, and I
obtained from the Foreign Office, War Office, etc., a passport vised
'British War Mission.' Shortly after I arrived in Paris the Armistice
was declared. Soon afterwards, owing to the departure of Mr. Steed and
Dr. Seton-Watson, there was left literally no one among our countrymen
at Paris who knew the intricacies of the Adriatic Question and the
relations of Italy with the Yugoslavs, and the Yugoslav-Roumanian
difficulties, etc. That being the case, Lord Derby asked me to be his
go-between, and I had an immense lot of work thrown on my shoulders. I
had gone to the expense of taking a large salon at the Hotel
Continental, where I had private Conferences--t