garian army in
Albania had been concentrated at Rieka. These had to be guarded
by Yugoslav troops, as the Hungarian watchmen at the port had
disappeared, and the Russian prisoners employed there--about
500 men--had also vanished. In order to keep off nocturnal
plunderers, the Yugoslav troops were told to fire a few shots
now and then into the air. Is it not possible that the two
Italian boys who, as Mr. Beaumont reported, were hit during the
night by stray bullets and succumbed in hospital to their
injuries--is it not possible that they were out for plunder and
that this incident should not be used to illustrate what Mr.
Beaumont (of the _Daily Telegraph_) calls "the worst
characteristics of Balkan terrorism" on the part of the troops?
During the twenty days of the Yugoslav regime their authorities
sold, as they were justified in doing, tobacco from these
warehouses to the value of 120,000 crowns. It was generally
said in Rieka that the Italians in four days had given away six
million crowns' worth, that large quantities of flour were
removed until the British put a stop to this, and that the
robberies were flagrant. These allegations may have been untrue
or exaggerated, but individuals were pointed out who in a
mysterious manner had suddenly become affluent; it would at any
rate have been as well if the I.N.C. had ordered some
investigation. Since they failed to do so, it is natural that
gossip flourished. In Triest, by the way, even the Italian
population is reputed to have been disgusted when about forty
waggon-loads of flour and twenty of sugar were taken from the
stores of the former Austrian army and shipped to Italy.]

[Footnote 16: Most people have assumed that this was done in
order that Rieka should be left to Austria-Hungary, although
they should have taken with some grains of salt this Italian
generosity which presented the Habsburgs with a good harbour
instead of one of those others in Croatia which the Italians of
to-day are never weary of extolling. The real reasons why Rieka
was omitted from the Treaty of London are, as the _Secolo_
(January 12, 1919) remarks, perfectly well known. "In order,"
it says, "to claim Fiume it is necessary to make appeal to the
right of the people to dispose freely of themselves. In this
case the same principle must be admitt