ad under their control the immensely important junction-point where the
main trunk line from Venice to Vienna is joined by the line coming up
from Fiume and Trieste. The Jugoslavs, recognizing that the possession
of Klagenfurt would give them virtual control of the principal railway
entering Austria from the south, and that such control would probably
enable them to divert much of Austria's traffic from the Italian ports
of Venice and Trieste to their own port of Fiume, which they
confidently expected would be awarded them by the Peace Conference, lost
no time in occupying the town with a considerable force of troops. They
further justified this occupation by asserting that Jugoslavia was
entitled to Carinthia on ethnological grounds and that the inhabitants
of Klagenfurt were clamoring for Jugoslav rule. In view of these
developments, I had expected to find Jugoslav soldiery in the town, but
I had not expected to be challenged, a mile or so outside the town, by a
sentry who was, judging from his appearance, straight from a _comitadji_
band in the Macedonian mountains. He was a sullen-faced fellow wearing a
fur cap and a nondescript uniform, with an assortment of weapons thrust
in his belt, according to the custom of the Balkan guerrillas, and with
two bandoliers, stuffed with cartridges, slung across his chest. He was
as incongruous a figure in that pleasant German countryside as one of
Pancho Villa's bandits would have been in the Connecticut Valley. And
Klagenfurt, which is a well-built, well-paved, thoroughly modern
Austrian town, was occupied by several hundred of his fellows, brought
from somewhere in the Balkans, I should imagine, for the express
purpose of aweing the population. It was perfectly apparent that the
inhabitants, far from welcoming these fierce-looking fighters as
brother-Slavs and friends, were only too anxious to have them take their
departure, having about as much in common with them, in appearance,
manners and speech, as a New Englander has with an Apache Indian. So
great was the tension existing in Klagenfurt that a commission had been
sent by the Peace Conference to study the question on the spot, its
members communicating with the Supreme Council in Paris by means of
American couriers, slim young fellows in khaki who wore on their arms
the blue brassard, embroidered with the scales of justice, which was the
badge of messengers employed by the Peace Commission.

A few miles outside of Klagenfur