partment of the police. Rieka was to all
intents in the possession of Italy, and she was learning what that
meant. The town was like a dead place, shops were only open in the
morning, and if the shopkeepers had not been compelled by the
authorities to remove their shutters they would have strolled down to
the quays where the grass was growing--"but, thank Heaven," cried
Grossich, "thank Heaven, it is Italian grass!" (If he ever recalls that
long-distant day, when, as a student, he fought for his fellow-Croats,
and when, as a young doctor, he was an enthusiastic official of the
Croat Club at Castua near Rieka, perhaps this gentleman thanks his God
for having led him to Rieka and turned him into an Italian.) Cut off
from its Yugoslav hinterland the population of Rieka, which consisted
more and more of arditi and fascisti, less and less of Yugoslavs, the
population had nothing to do save to speculate in the rate of exchange
(but not in the local notes which no one wanted) and to prepare for the
elections. Thus, with time very heavy on their hands, there was a great
deal of corruption; cocaine could be obtained at nearly all the cafes.
The elections drew nearer, and one wondered whether the Entente was
going to look at the lists of voters and to inquire how it came that
many natives of the town were not inscribed. What was likely to happen
if the place was delivered altogether to the C.N.I. could be seen when
the harbour of Baro[vs], given by the Rapallo Treaty to Yugoslavia, was
demanded, simply demanded, by the Italian Nationalists; those
ultra-patriots the fascisti, in Italy and in Rieka, when they saw that
in the "holocaust city" everything was going just as well for them as in
the brave days of d'Annunzio, persisted loudly in claiming Baro[vs] as
an integral part of Rieka. The Yugoslavs must be prevented, wherever
possible, from approaching the Adriatic--this being the furious policy
of the Italian capitalists who had succeeded in sweeping most of the
Italian people off their feet. With Baro[vs], a port of limited
possibilities, in the hands of the Yugoslavs, it would mean that the
adjacent Rieka through its Yugoslav commerce would prosper; but anything
that savoured of a Yugoslav Rieka was obnoxious to the capitalists and
their wild followers, since they feared that in the first place it would
raise a grievous obstacle to their penetration of the Balkans, and
secondly it would involve the ruin of Triest, where German ca